So what on earth is this defensive, disingenuous, petty, and off-putting video supposed to accomplish? What's the target audience? I have spent a lot of years in and out of politics, and the optics of this video, which has an overtly political valence, are terrible. Anyone with even a dodgy BS-detector is going to sniff this one out.
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Is summertime saison time? That's what both Goose Island and Deschutes seem to think, and I'm starting to think they're onto something. Both have released sunshiny blond saisons, delicate and warming as a June day.
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Yesterday, the Brewers Association announced a logo--or "seal" in their jargon--certifying a brewery's independence. It demonstrates the Brewers Association has narrowed its focus to what is truly important to members and is preparing to move to the offense. This is a smart initiative.
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Scientific American has a fascinating article about a new yeast strain pulled from a bumblebee with the capacity to ferment beer. It's an interesting strain, with the capacity to do both lactic and alcohol fermentation.
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It's a remarkable beer. I mean really remarkable. I was hanging out with friends who were helping me work through some of that backlog, and it stopped two or three people in their tracks.
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As the last post in Homebrew Week, I offer you a complete chapter from The Secrets of Master Brewers. Whether you want to brew this beer or not, it will give you the sense of this book and what you'll find inside. It's great for homebrewers or people just interested in fully understanding beer styles.
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The following few paragraphs will take you through the process of making all-grain beer, from mashing through bottling. Just one session of brewing will illuminate more about the process—the chemistry, the variables, and the ingredients—than the most elegant description. When you’re done, you’ll have eight 500 ml swing-top bottles (or ten regular bottles) full of a classic American pale ale.
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Rodney Kibzey, a local homebrewer, got things started by pouring us his excellent grodziskie. I moved to a pre-prohibition lager, had a dalliance with cider makers, located some great farmhouse ales, moved on to the meads and then ... wait a second, is something missing?
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Most of the homebrewing world is geared to introduce newbies to homebrewing by a method called “extract brewing.” I'm an unusual partisan here: I have absolutely no problem with extract brewing as a method of making beer. With the products available today, you can make fine beer that way. What I'd like to argue, though, is that when you start, you should start with all-grain
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Fans and even historians of beer have often conflated age and history. This is a tendency encouraged by individual breweries of a certain age. Most of the world's dominant mass-market brands promote their historical importance as a matter of PR, but we needn't accept it at face value.
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I have spent the past four days feasting from the buffet of delicacies offered in the museums of our nation's capital (and, more recently, judging for the World Beer Cup). I had intended to keep blogging, but it is not to be. I hope to pick things up tomorrow--but I had hoped to start regular blogging yesterday. So stay tuned--
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Next Sunday (June 18) is Father's Day. I would be remiss if I didn't suggest a couple of titles you might consider for dear old dad. The first is my newly-released The Secrets of Master Brewers, which is ostensibly a homebrew book. In fact, it's great for anyone who has a deep interest in understanding the beer traditions of the world.
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In 1948, after three years of drifting politics, Czechoslovakia adopted a new government following what became known as the Ninth of May Constitution. It was a triumph of this newish experiment of Communism, and one of its signature features was nationalizing all commercial and industrial enterprises.
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The reason homebrewers brew, and the reason non-homebrewers fail to understand why, has nothing to do with the finished product. It has everything to do with the process. We create because we can’t help it.
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"The big difference between spontaneous fermentation and mixed fermentation is with spontaneous you go with wort on wood and we go with young beer."
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If you've just recently returned from Botswana, there's a small chance you missed the news that Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band turned fifty last week. I wouldn't be listening seriously to music until the late 1970s. By that time Sgt Pepper's was an oldie, and all the polyphonics the Beatles deployed were familiar and considered normal.
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What do all these details tell us? At the best, they provide accurate information to the small minority of people who know what they mean. At the worst, they provide misinformation. Mostly, though, I think people just tune them out. You really have to know a lot about beer to interpret them and, even then, they are for the most part not that revealing.
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