Professor Good Ales

Profiled by Ken Carman for professorgoodales.net

Another interesting Dogfish creation. Ingredients culled from hieroglyphics, this is a brew Rah would rah, rah.

Za’atar is a blend of spices, salt and sesame. Dried sumac is one of the poisons…. ah, “spices.” (Most likely a non-poison version of sumac?) Doum seems to be a palm fruit or derivative and chamomile. Wheat-based beer.

Pillow head with tad rock that fades fast. Just a tad hazy with rising bubbles. SRM 2-3 at best.

Sweet, caramelized fruity malt nose. Not much else.”Free range Egyptian yeast” was used. In other words they probably found a back porch or two (or more) and collected yeast. Light, plum-like, taste with caramelized malt sense clinging to roof of mouth.

Ta Henket is brewed with an ancient form of wheat and loaves of hearth-baked bread, and it’s flavored with chamomile, doum-palm fruit and Middle Eastern herbs. To ferment this earthy ancient ale, Sam and friends traveled to Cairo, set out baited petri dishes and captured a native Egyptian saccharomyces yeast strain.

Malt mouthfeel is light and a bit sweet, with perhaps some pilsner malt. This is a light beer, body and abv-wise. There’s almost a sweet wine like sense without the grapes or the higher abv.

The native sacc. yeast is probably one of the lightest treatment of that yeast of a beer I’ve had.

This is a unique, light and very satisfying beverage. One hopes they bring it back and back. I would drink this before any supposed “lawnmower” beer I’ve ever had. 4.5 abv. No hops sensed except slight bitter.

Written by Brandon Jones for embracethefunk.com

When I started brewing I remember looking over all the yeasts at my local home brew shop and being amazed at the sheer number of types.  As a young brewer I bought Wyeast more than any other yeast brand mostly because of the smack pack type packing. When I was starting out in home brewing I was concerned about every little thing so I can still remember the first time once of my packs swelled before I smacked it. Nervous my yeast was messed up somehow I contacted Wyeast and Dave Logsdon quickly put my fears to rest.

I’ve come along a bit in my brewing since then and Dave has since moved into another role. So it’s very cool for me to have gotten the chance to talk with Dave about his new adventure: Logsdon Organic Farmhouse Ales.
Continue reading “Dave Logsdon of Logsdon Farmhouse Ales Q&A”

Photo by Bill Chappell/NPR

Written by Bill Chappell for npr.org

It’s a good time to be a craft brewer, as Americans are thirsty for full-flavored and local beers. But when small breweries grow, they can also risk losing some of the “craftiness” their fans love. And when they expand, many brewers have to rewrite their recipes — starting with the water.
Continue reading “To Grow A Craft Beer Business, The Secret’s In The Water”

If you want to know where beer is headed tomorrow, find a homebrewer today and drink his or her beer.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. It was homebrewers, after all, who launched the microbrewing revolution by turning pro. And it was homebrewers who originated many of the recipes that were refined for commercial products.

Judging by the homebrews I sampled throughout Philly Beer Week, I’d say we’re in for a round of big, unusual flavors that taste a lot better than they sound.

For example, Salted Caramel Chocolate Stout.

Yeah, it sounds like a treat you’d munch on the Wildwood Boardwalk. But this rich, dark ale was superb; I’d gladly drink another glass.

It was crafted by Sean and Andy Arsenault, a pair of 30-year-old South Philly twins who have been brewing together for about five years. The beer was the “People’s Choice” at Home Sweet Homebrew’s Extreme Home Brew Challenge at Jose Pistola’s in Center City.
Continue reading “Homebrewing Reaches for the Extremes”

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York brewmeisters can celebrate with some Saranac beer brewed in the foothills of the Adirondacks or Brooklyn’s Monster Ale now that state officials have found a way to restore a tax break for craft beer brewers.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state Legislature not only restored a per-gallon tax exemption eliminated by a lawsuit from a rival Massachusetts brewer, but New York is increasing its bet on an industry that’s flourishing despite a slow overall economic recovery. The package of laws announced Wednesday will even allow farmers to sell craft beer at farmers’ markets.

“This legislation will give our state’s growing craft beer industry the tools needed to create jobs, promote agriculture, and encourage environmentally friendly economic development across New York state,” Mr. Cuomo said Wednesday.

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Written by Evan S. Benn for stltoday.com

Hundreds of gallons of beer that were set to be poured this weekend at the sixth annual St. Louis Brewers Heritage Festival will have to find a new home after the city’s excise commissioner ruled Monday that serving it at the festival would be illegal.

“We discussed the fact that homebrewers’ beers have been available for patrons to sample at the Heritage Festival as well as other area festivals in the past,” Schlafly CEO Dan Kopman wrote after his meeting with St. Louis Excise Commissioner Robert Kraiberg. “While everyone acknowledges the value to our brewing community of having the homebrewed beers available, the fact is that we have concluded it is illegal for us to serve these beers at the Festival.”
Continue reading “St. Louis: Homebrew is Illegal at Heritage Festival”

 

Written by Greg Kitsock for The Washington Post

SAVOR weekin Washington left a sour taste in my mouth — in a good way.

The most memorable beers were, tart, acidic and refreshing, or complex, earthy and mouth-puckering. Let’s start with Terra Incognita, the collaboration that Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. and Boulevard Brewing Co. whipped up expressly for this year’s beer-and-food festival, held June 8 and 9 at the National Building Museum.

Sierra Nevada cooked up the wort, then shipped the unfermented beer to Boulevard in Kansas City, reversing the path of the 19th-century pioneers who followed the California Trail to the American West.

At Boulevard, the wort was fermented and siphoned into 21 barrels, some of which held wine or bourbon, some freshly fashioned out of new oak. After two months, all were sampled, and the contents of 12 were deemed suitable for the blend. As a final flourish, the brewers added a dash of the wild yeast Brettanomyces to spark a new fermentation in the bottle.

Continue reading “Craft Beer Takes a Sour Turn at SAVOR Festival”

Written by Christine Hsu for medicaldaily.com

Scientists have discovered that a hidden vitamin in beer and milk called the “miracle molecule” may prevent obesity.

A new study found that nicotinamide riboside (NR), a molecule found to indirectly influence the activity of cell metabolism, could play an important role in preventing weight gain and diabetes, improving muscular performance and providing other “extraordinary health benefits,” according to a Switzerland-based research team.

Researchers from the Polytechnic School in Lausanne say the results of the mice study were “impressive”.
Continue reading ““Miracle Molecule” in Beer and Milk”