When citing the year of their inception, many breweries—well, how to say this delicately?—polish the apple somewhat. The date you find on a bottle may refer to monks who brewed there once, or an unrelated brewery from centuries earlier, or some other abstruse connection to antiquity. That’s why it’s nice to be able to highlight... View Article
EVENTS May 5-20 Punk in Drublic Festival Austin, Ft. Worth, Richmond, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Brockton Stone Brewing Co. and Rockstar Energy Drink are behind this rolling music-slash-craft-beer festival as it visits five different cities from May 5 to 20, starting with Austin and ending with Pittsburgh. punkindrublicfest.com facebook.com/punkindrublicfestival May 6 Fish Brewing SLURP Olympia, Washington The... View Article
Nashville is reveling in its newfound status as “It City,” attracting millions annually to take advantage of its music, art and culinary scene. Tourists plan “eat-ineraries” to visit Music City’s most popular restaurants and sample the iconic hot chicken that will burn the taste buds off your tongue. When it comes to craft beer, Nashville... View Article
For as long as he has worked in beer, Peter Bouckaert has also worked in wood. He spent a decade early in his career at Brewery Rodenbach, a brewery with several cellars filled with large, oak foeders containing sour ales. Later he would grow his own “foeder forest” at New Belgium Brewing Co., where he... View Article
Many breweries have no trouble moving India pale ales. If anything, some breweries have trouble keeping up with production, as crowds line up outside taprooms to purchase limited batches of IPAs as soon as they’re released. It’s a good thing, too, as most agree that IPAs are best consumed fresh, when the hop character is... View Article
The Craft Brewers’ Compendium: An Omnibus of Brewing Materials By Ted Bruning and Don Burgess $18.99, Posthouse Publishing Does the world need another encyclopedic approach to beer? Ted Bruning and Don Burgess thought so. The two have undertaken the Herculean task of cataloging as many varieties of malt, hops and yeast as they could find.... View Article
The Wildcrafting Brewer: Creating Unique Drinks and Boozy Concoctions from Nature’s Ingredients By Pascal Baudar $29.95, Chelsea Green Publishing There’s been a resurgence of interest lately in foraged or place-based beers, as evident by a number of new books on the subject. This latest is less about beer—especially as most know it—and brewing here loosely... View Article
Best Beers: The Indispensable Guide to the World’s Best Craft & Traditional Beers By Stephen Beaumont and Tim Webb $14.99, Mitchell Beazley While Stephen Beaumont and Tim Webb are two accomplished beer writers, there are—believe it or not—beers they have yet to consume, breweries they have yet to visit (in the introduction, they estimate that... View Article
The Scratch and Sniff Guide to Beer: A Beer Lover’s Companion By Justin Kennedy $22, Harper Design Given how critical the sense of smell is to enjoying beer, it’s surprising it took this long for such a book to hit the market. But it’s here, complete with scratch-and-sniff stickers for everything from the obvious (hops)... View Article
