A Place to Gather and Talk
Vienna, city of music. Home to Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Strauss, and Mahler. Vienna, a showcase of architectural styles from the soaring Gothic-era Stephansdom to the Baroque opulence of the Karlskirche, and from elegant Ringstrasse historicism to the fin-de-siècle modernism of Otto Wagner. Vienna’s pastries rival those of Paris, as does its coffeehouse culture. Chocolate? Plenty of that, too.
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In 1774 the first Continental Congress was convening, America was starting to take shape, and one beer was all the rage in Philadelphia: Mr. Hare’s Porter. To say this beer was popular is an understatement. Many of the attendees of the Continental Congress enjoyed a pint or two of the porter regularly, but George Washington and John Adams were the beer’s biggest fans. Washington was such a fan that during the Revolutionary War he would regularly send for the beer to be shipped to wherever he was at the front. Washington even tried to recreate the brew himself when he retired to Mount Vernon, though he was never able to exactly copy it.
The porter, and Mr. Hare, seemingly came out of nowhere and exploded in popularity at dramatic speed. Thanks to an impending war, and a desire to stop buying English goods, Robert Hare went from brewer to socialite in mere seconds. It’s a quintessential American tale: make a product people demand and follow your product’s rise to riches – that rise might even involve a stint in politics if you’re lucky.
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The concept is simple: if yeast doesn’t provide the necessary tools and environment to conduct a healthy fermentation, the final mead or beer can be riddled with flaws.
In order to combat this problem, mead nutrient additions can be added to yeast during fermentation that will make for a fast, robust fermentation and lessen the chances of developing off-flavors.
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Well this makes it better… NOT-PGA
Budweiser, a beverage that vaguely resembles beer, is attempting to change its name from “Budweiser†to “America†for the summer of 2016.
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(CNN)Purists, rejoice: This year marks the 500th anniversary of the Reinheitsgebot, known in English as the German Beer Purity Law.
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A mystery is brewing in Georgia after thieves stole two trailers containing nearly 3,300 cases of beer early Tuesday.
SweetWater Brewing Co. said the trailers had been loaded for an early morning pickup when they were taken from the company’s plant north of downtown. The two trailers carried 3,272 cases altogether — or more than 78,500 bottles — of SweetWater’s Summer Variety Pack, company spokeswoman.
Both trailers were located with the help of GPS later Tuesday. However, the beer was gone.
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Invert sugar is ubiquitous in the culinary world. Added to confections like chocolate ganache, fudge, and taffy, it discourages other kinds of sugars from crystallizing. Incorporated into frozen desserts like gelato, sorbet, and ice cream, it delivers a smooth, creamy texture. And invert sugar bolsters the moist, tender crumb of madeleines and brioche. Naturally hygroscopic, it absorbs moisture and lengthens the shelf lives of foods that include it.
Invert sugar also happens to make a great beer. And boiling up your own is easier than you might think.
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Delaware
Mispillion River Brewing – Milford, DE
Everyone and their mother is aware of the massive impact that Dogfish Head has had on the national craft brewing scene, and when it comes to Delaware one should also really acknowledge how important Iron Hill Brewery and its string of brewpubs has been to the state’s development. Mispillion River, meanwhile, was founded in 2013, and is the sort of scion that has grown out of the small state’s rapidly expanding craft beer community while taking the legacy of Dogfish Head to heart. Their year-round IPA Reach Around is a perfect companion beer to the classic 60 Minute, while the amusingly named Holy Crap! Imperial Red Ale feels a lot like an East Coast version of Oskar Blues tasty G’Knight. And those are just the year-rounders—the bigger family of Mispillion beers includes everything from a “mojito-inspired ale†to a tart orange Berliner weisse, a Harry Potter-inspired tripel and sweet potato pie beer in the fall, made with local produce. It’s just a well-balanced, creative, thriving brewery making serious forays into regional distribution. –Jim Vorel
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If you’ve ever been out roaming among the beer hipsters of the beer-iverse, you’ve probably heard plenty of chatter about sour beers. While it seems like a conversation in an encrypted WWII language made to fool the Nazi’s, not everything us beer hipsters say is nonsense. Sour beers are a stronghold of the beer hipster, so if you want to stand any chance of finding out about or discussing the newest sours to hit the local beer shoppes, you need to know your styles. This will only focus on a small part of the sour beer world, but step one is pronunciation.
Gose:
G-oh-suh (as in Van Gogh with a “suh†at the end)
Gueuze:
G-er-zah (if you’re Belgian);
Goo-zuh (if you’re nasty);
G-oo-z (as in “goo†with a marketing firm’s urban “z†at the end)
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As an entry level brewer I did little more than buy a Whitelabs vial, bring it to 70ish degrees, gave it a good shake and pitched it into a carboy full of cool wort. Voila! It worked. Eventually, curiosity, evolution, the desire for better beer, or whatever we are calling it today, took over and I started really researching and experimenting with my process. I quickly (after about 2 batches) made the switch from extract to all-grain. I soon realized how much I really didn’t know about brewing and how many areas of my process needed attention.
I read through John Palmer’s How to Brew, and The Complete Joy of Home Brewing by Charlie Papazian. At the time, I figured the easiest change that I could make would be to start making yeast starters. I constructed a few stir-plates and began making starters with dry malt extract (DME). My fermentations started much sooner and typically finished more completely and with lower final gravity readings.
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