Professor Good Ales

A Finnish brewery has made good on its 2013 promise to recreate a 1840s-era beer salvaged from the bottom of the ocean: The Guardian reports Stallhagen brewery is ready to release Stallhagen 1842 and Stallhagen 1843, beers that scientifically re-create the brew discovered on-board a Finland shipwreck (the shipwreck, discovered in 2010, dated back to 1842). Stallhagen’s brewmaster teamed with scientists from the Leuven Institute for Beer Research to determine the specific types of yeast and “living lactic acid bacteria” used in the original beer, which researchers concluded originated from Belgium. The modern-day recreation results in a beer “much sweeter than modern brews because of the way the malt was produced.” (Stallhagen CEO calls the flavor profile “Champagne-like,” noting that the light and subtle flavors represent how “luxury beer tasted in early 1800s.”)

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Maybe it’s the cooler, darker afternoons. Maybe it’s the wind, rain, and drifting foliage. One way or the other, fall makes us craft autumn beer styles—märzen, a.k.a. Oktoberfest, especially. But one oft-overlooked beer style (or collection of related styles, actually), is the humble brown ale.

Derived from English, German, and Belgian origins, the tawny colored ales get their color and malty backbone from roasted barley. They range in flavor from hoppy to sour to biscuit-bready and even nutty.

What’s your favorite brown ale? Tell us below.

And read on for five recommendations of five different brown ale styles from around the country.

Rockies
La Folie – New Belgium Brewing, Fort Collins, CO
A Flanders oud bruin, or “old brown” style beer, New Belgium’s La Folie—a mainstay of their adventurous Lips of Faith series—varies from year to year, blend to blend, but always rocks a pleasant tart-tannic tang from the interplay of oak, cocoa-like malts, and souring lactic acid. It’s been a pathbreaking beer for over a decade. Seek it out. (7%abv)

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Pumpkin beer’s not all sugar and spice: There’s a faction of fall brews that depend as much on sinister roasty malts as they do on gourd meat and cinnamon. Go on over to the dark side and search for these sultry seasonals.

Avery Pump[KY]n: This barrel-aged beaut wins the biggest pumpkin (beer) contest, topping out at about 17% ABV. A beastly spiced porter aged 6 months in bourbon barrels (there’s the “KY”!), the beer’s a sibling of Avery’s Rumpkin (a pumpkin ale aged in rum barrels) and the newest addition to the brewery’s Barrel Series. Huge additions of nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice and cloves are joined by alcohol spice and offset by chocolate and toffee malts and vanilla-bourbon sweetness.

RedHook Out of Your Gourd: Nearly sessionable at 5.8% ABV, this pumpkin porter reads cola-like with just a smidge of dry pumpkin juice in the middle and earthy maple in the finish.

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HERE

Written by Franz Hofer for Tempest in a Tankard

A half-hour’s drive along the winding Highway 119 out of Boulder and just east of the Continental Divide, Nederland exudes a rough-hewn and offbeat charm. Nederland, which means both lowland and the Netherlands in Dutch, came by its name when a mining company from Holland purchased the nearby Caribou Mine in 1873. Indeed, the name of the town is more than a little ironic, given that Nederland sits at an elevation of around 2500 meters (8200 feet) above sea level. But for the miners who trudged up the mountain to work and then down again in the evening for a cold one after a long day, the moniker was more than apt.

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This is how many brewers made it through Prohibition…-PGA

Among craft beer fans, Sprecher Brewing Co. might be best known for its Sprecher Amber — or perhaps its Black Bavarian.

But the Glendale-based brewer’s most popular brand, by far, is one with a sweeter taste: Sprecher Root Beer.

Sprecher Brewing sells around three times as much root beer and other sodas as beer. And, while that’s unusual within its industry, Sprecher isn’t alone among U.S. brewers that also sell soda. The dual beer and soda makers include other smaller Wisconsin brewers, as well as Chicago-based MillerCoors LLC, which has a sideline business in root beer tucked among dozens of large brands that include Miller Lite and Coors Light.

To be sure, most of the nation’s brewers, including more than 2,700 craft brewers, aren’t in the soda business. And some, such as Chicago-based Goose Island Beer Co., owned by industry giant Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, have sold their soda operations to better focus on the growing thirst for craft beer.

But, for other brewers, sodas remain a lucrative venture.

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