Author: Jeff Alworth
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The Beer Bible Blog - Web Only -
The Beer Bible BlogThe Riddle of Scarcity in New England
December 1, 2016 - Jeff Alworth My wife’s family is scattered across New England, from Wrentham, south of Boston, to Norway in Maine (just a few miles north of Poland Springs, for you mineral water fans). Every couple years, I get to visit for a week around Thanksgiving, and it has allowed me to keep my finger on the pulse of... View Article -
Classic BeerBourbon County Brand Stout: The Original Bourbon-Barrel-Aged Beer
November 25, 2016 - Jeff Alworth The following article appeared in the January issue of All About Beer Magazine. Subscribe today to have the magazine delivered straight to your mailbox, tablet, smartphone or computer. Beer aged in bourbon barrels is an innovation not unlike the internet—it’s almost impossible to imagine a time before each existed. And yet it was only relatively recently,... View Article -
Brewing FeaturesThe New Carlsberg: A Brewing Giant Turns to a Small Approach
November 1, 2016 - Jeff Alworth COPENHAGEN—We should invent a name for this kind of thing—ghost brewing or reincarnated beer, something like that. It’s when a brewery revives an old recipe and tries to brew it to the standards of a lost era—often with ancient ingredients. Recently, the Carlsberg Brewery ran through this exercise after successfully cropping yeast from a 133-year-old... View Article -
Classic BeerRodenbach Grand Cru: An Incomparable Burgundy
November 1, 2016 - Jeff Alworth The brewery at Rodenbach is gorgeous. Its modern, steel-clad system is enclosed in a glass cube that gives brewers a floor-to-ceiling view of the 19th-century brick buildings of the brewery complex. If you ever have a chance to tour Rodenbach, though, you’ll race through it. Unlike most breweries, Rodenbach doesn’t put much emphasis on the... View Article -
The Beer Bible BlogPerennial Wheatgrass Makes Its Debut
October 21, 2016 - Jeff Alworth The word “innovation” is hugely overused in the beer world, but a recent news story points to some agriculture that really earns the title. Patagonia Provisions (owned by the outdoor clothing company) and Hopworks Urban Brewery in Portland, Oregon, have brewed a beer called Long Root Ale with a novel ingredient: Kernza, a proprietary strain... View Article -
Classic BeerBlind Pig: Built to Deliver a Punch
September 26, 2016 - Jeff Alworth One metaphor in thinking about the world of beer would be a great castle, not only filled with treasures, but also built on a sturdy foundation of the world’s classic beers. But the metaphor is inapt. Beer styles are constantly in motion, and the ground beneath that foundation is forever quaking and buckling. A better... View Article -
The Beer Bible BlogWill IPAs Fuel a Draft Comeback in the U.S.?
September 4, 2016 - Jeff Alworth In a recent post on “The Drinking Classes,” Jon Urch made the provocative case that IPAs are “doomed.” The most insightful part of his case was this: The modern IPA is so loaded with delicate hop oils it can barely go a few weeks without losing its complex, dank, citrusy aroma – maybe less if it’s... View Article -
Classic BeerSchlenkerla Märzen: Drinking Through the Smoke
September 1, 2016 - Jeff Alworth A mouthful of rauchbier can create the sense of cognitive dissonance. Rauch (pronounced “rowk”), or smoke, is one of the most ancient accents in our culinary experience—but it tends to evoke meat, rather than beer, in our brain. We associate the flavor of certain woods in our mind with the meats they’re typically smoked over—hickory and... View Article