116 of the Best Saisons, Blind-Tasted and Ranked
In the course of conducting this tasting, the regular crew of Paste blind tasters hit upon an essay prompt of a question: If you could only drink one beer style ever again, what would it be?
The almost expected answer, at least at this point in the American craft beer experiment, would be IPA—or perhaps pale ale for the drinker favoring approachability rather than all-out hop decadence. But over the course of nine days tasting farmhouse ales, many of us came to a new conclusion. It’s the most versatile, eclectic and adaptable of all beer styles. Like champagne is to wine, saison is to beer—you can pair it with anything, and a variant exists for any situation.
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Parducci: A Mendocino Reinvention
When makers of beer and wine manage to stick around for decades and remain curious and self-critical and keep trying…they get better – sometimes a LOT better.
More and more, lately, I seem to be faced with reminding people of producers whose names have become submerged a bit in that vast sea of the New and Buzz-worthy – those breweries and wineries that you probably liked at one time but trampled a bit in your understandable rush to try and explore new things. That’s not a criticism. I do it, too. Everybody does it. What’s new is always more interesting than what’s been done, seen, tasted, experienced before. That’s human nature but human nature also dictates, as time passes, that we read a name online or in a magazine or on TV that prompts a little spark to crackle inside our synapses, causing us to mutter, “Oh, yeah…”
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Maria Devan Reviews Campout Porter Sierra Nevada and Garage Project
Maria Devan Reviews Green Flash Blonde
Beer in Ancient Egypt
Considering the value the ancient Egyptians placed on enjoying life, it is no surprise that they are known as the first civilization to perfect the art of brewing beer. The Egyptians were so well known as brewers, in fact, that their fame eclipsed the actual inventors of the process, the Sumerians, even in ancient times. The Greeks, who were not great fans of the drink, wrote of the Egyptian’s skill while largely ignoring the Mesopotamians.
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Full Sail @ Full Throttle: Spring Forward
Seven years ago, I would have taken a Full Sail beer if one was handed to me but the name was not at all in the front of my mind. I had tasted everything and it was all enjoyable but none of it – except for that majestic barrel-aged Imperial Stout – moved my meter much at all.
Funny how times change.
Let’s just get this out there: Full Sail Brewing, of Hood River, Oregon IS…KILLIN’…IT.
And they’re not just doing it once in a while. They send me a box of beers to review and I have to bust out my aluminum yardstick to measure just exactly how far my jaw drops with each beer. Lots of people here in the PNW felt like I did and many of them still do. They THINK they’ve seen and tasted it all from Full Sail and, in fact, I get emails from saying things like, “Full Sail? REALLY? You havin’ a slow month or what?” That used to irritate me…
Now, I just feel sorry for them.
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Maria Reviews Green Flash Blond
Brew Biz: Werts and All
The Topic: The Pour Fool was Right (In InBev’s name I curse.)
Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay, Salt City, Clarksville Carboys and Music City Homebrewers, who has been writing on beer-related topics and interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast, for over 15 years.
Written by Ken Carman
Early morning in my Eagle Bay cabin, another beautiful Adirondack day, now cursed by my mental state. Really? InBev feels the need to have its claws sunk into a site that rates beer; for some odd reason called RateBeer?
In the last Fool column on this topic I felt Fool might be being a tad, well, foolish. InBev, unlike A/B, is a conglomerate of many distinct breweries and, unlike the Busch family, they might not feel so inclined as to ruin all those distinct brands just to bring back the mega beer crime families gory days of barely more than one style of cheap adjunct beer.
Not the slightest bit “foolish” this time.
InBev shouldn’t have any control over websites that rate beer. This is not a new topic to me, and a firm principle. When the brewer for a brewpub in Nashville wanted to become head of communications for Music City Brewers: a homebrew club, I objected in strong terms to the president. I made an enemy of the brewer, I’m sure, but I don’t care. It’s the principle: the head brewer at one brewery in town shouldn’t be given any control over whom we communicate with, or not. There were, and are, many other breweries in town. If people wanted to say something in print that did not reflect well on his brews they should be able to say that without worrying that the Communications person might stifle them. If the club wants to have meeting at another brewery instead of his there shouldn’t even be the slightest possibility that communications regarding this would be limited in any way; or the perception it had been limited. And I was writing a column for the newsletter, and one local magazine, that, in part, critiqued breweries and what was on tap, or bottle, or can. Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”
RateBeer Joins the Borg Collective: AB Harpoons Another One
AB has sunk its tentacles into yet another property designed to do absolutely NOTHING but gain them cred that they cannot earn for themselves and which they will now use to weaked and erode the solidarity and spirit of the American Indie Brewing community.
I posted this comment on Joe Tucker’s own post – the founder and owner of the seminal beer rating website, RateBeer.com – so I’m not going behind his back. This is what I wrote on the partnering of RateBeer with a division of Anheuser Busch…and this was me showing every bit of the restraint that I have in me…
“Joe, let me blunt, here: There is NO POSSIBLE WAY that you’re going to be able to rationalize this out and make it palatable for MOST of your users. You have just struck a deal with the Devil and NO amount of slick explanation is going to invalidate or blunt the simple FACT that you are now beholden to the very company that is making the most concerted effort – in fact, pretty much the ONLY concerted effort – to hamstring or destroy altogether this culture that has spawned your own personal success, that of the 5000 small, independent breweries that make up the Indie/Craft community, and the happiness and enjoyment we all have lived out for the past 25 years, in watching our beer horizons open wide and carry us up and out of the century+ morass of sameness and forced homogeneity of beer.”
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