In one of the tinier pockets of the brewing world, a heated debate rages. What should Americans call the beer made in the manner of spontaneously-fermented Belgian lambic? This wasn't remotely an issue until about 2007, when Allagash Brewing started a program that followed the practices quite closely. There may have been some efforts along the way toward traditional lambic-style beer, but Allagash built a dedicated coolship room and committed to an ongoing program making the beer. Last year, one of the small club of Americans making these beers decided to name and codify it, and thus began the debate.
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Platonic ideals--theoretical states of perfection unattainable in the mortal world--are useful because they establish a North Star. In the real world, no beer ever receives achieves this state but, presumably, if one did, we would all recognize it.
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The recent Facebook post by Atlanta-based Scofflaw got a lot of attention for its ill-advised tone and photo. More interesting was how it surfaced an issue that doesn't get a lot of discussion: the role class and culture play among beer drinkers, brewery workers, and increasingly, among small breweries.
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As brewers in the United States began developing their own approach to brewing hoppy ales, a few beers became watersheds in advancing the American palate. One of those is certainly Russian River's Pliny the Elder. I spoke with founder and brewer Vinnie Cilurzo about it back in 2012.
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In 1993, Redhook's Paul Shipman made an interesting decision--he decided to reach out to Anheuser-Busch. That phone call would eventually lead to the first investments by big beer into smaller breweries, as the company bought minority stakes in Redhook and later Widmer.
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The difference between a ripe piece of fruit and fruit-flavored candy approximates the difference between a good New England IPA and a poor one.
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Thirty-two years ago, three psychologists published a paper "On the Misperception of Random Sequences"--also known as the "hot-hand fallacy." They looked at several data sets and concluded that the previous performance of the player had no effect on the likelihood he'd make any given shot.
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The banks closed in early May, staying closed through mid-November. Things had actually been grinding down from March, and it would take until early 1971 for them to come fully back on line, so "banking in Ireland was disrupted for nearly a full year."
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Back in the glorious 1980s amid what was surely the most hideous moment of fashion*, there was a certain hairstyle that was "all business up front, but a party in the back." And yes, I will eventually connect this to a fascinating trend in beer.
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Here in the awkward moment between seasons, when most of the world has nothing better to do than brace for pumpkin season, there exists a fine moment for think pieces. Into the breach step Boak and Bailey, with one of their typically thought-provoking posts, "Seven Stages of Beer Geek."
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On the first commercial break, MillerCoors ran an add touting the way Coors Light is made: "Cold lagered," "cold filtered," and "cold packaged," read the animation. This is part of a long tradition of beer companies touting bog-standard brewing practices in order to impress people who don't know the first thing about brewing.
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In the Pacific Northwest, there is a spectacular harvest product made with hops plucked straight from the bine and placed thereafter in boiling wort, a whirlpool, and/or a tank of conditioning beer. These are known as fresh hop beers.
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There will be two cask engines pouring proper ales, a barrel of kellerbier or altbier on the bar, and taps with rauchbier, gueuze, old ale--or whatever I can find from the island of misfit styles.
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The brewer at Kout na Šumavě spoke not a word of English--that I heard. Back in 2014, we visited the brewery and Evan Rail translated what Mr. Hlavsa said. What started to emerge was one of the oddest processes I've encountered for making světlé pivo (what we call pilsner).
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There are a lot of ways a beer can go sideways, and the most difficult to discuss is when it happens as a function of poor recipe design. The perfect test case for this presented itself to me on Monday, when I sat down behind a Pelican Sun Flare pale ale.
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Over the weekend, teenagers sparked one of the most shocking wildfires in memory in the Columbia River Gorge. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this region, that's the large waterway separating Oregon and Washington State, just east of Portland. It is one of of the state's great natural wonders, and a playground for the city's residents.
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Brewing is having its moment as a high-status job, but the work itself is blue-collar, lift-and-sweat labor. Even at small breweries, where new-recipe creation happens each week (the glamorous part), for the people who must put water to malt and make those beers, the days are long and hard.
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That left The Commons in a no-man's land. They made unusual beers that never catered to mass tastes, which necessarily limited their audience. But they didn't send the simultaneous message that the beer was a rare and special treat that drinkers might have to stretch to appreciate.
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