Since the home and craft brewing boom began, most types of fruits, grains, adjuncts, flavors and spices have been tried at one time or another as either an innovation or a tribute to a traditional or indigenous brew. Thankfully, some of these “innovations” have gone the way of “My Mother The Car.” Many, however, have... View Article
The Assignment: Taste and provide informed commentary on the beers from Canada’s 163 breweries and brewpubs between May and November 2000 to prepare a beer guide. Travel in excess of 10,000 kilometers by car and spend more than 50 hours flying time to gather the information. Conduct more than 60 blind tastings of beers sent... View Article
Beer came to the Canadian wilderness with the United Empire Loyalists who drank it to define their culture from that of their “dram drinking Republican cousins” to the south. Beer also came with the British army who were issued six pints a day for their “health and convenience.”
Fans of Michael Jackson’s beer writing will be excited to see a new Jackson book on the market, Great Beer Guide: 500 Classic Brews. However, if these fans have faithfully collected all of Jackson’s books, they will quickly discover that they’ve seen much of the material in the Great Beer Guide before, in Ultimate Beer,... View Article
When it comes to beer-drinking culture and the place of beer in daily life, the Germans have few peers. Visions of frothy steins, pretzels, wurst, and singing in the biergarten come to mind. For the most part, the everyday beer of the Germans, especially in Bavaria, is Munchener helles. Easy to drink, mellow in character,... View Article
In 1812, when Davis Embree placed his modest little newspaper advertisement announcing that his brewery, the first in Cincinnati, was now churning out ale, porter and beer, he could not have imagined the ultimate magnitude of what he had just inaugurated. Over the next century and a half, Cincinnati would build a brewing industry rivaled... View Article
In 1996, President Bill Clinton called Milwaukee “America’s most German-American city,” a distinction that the Wisconsin burg has enjoyed nearly since its founding. Playing host to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the President’s decision to put Milwaukee high on the list of tour destinations was a no-brainer. It was, in Clinton’s own words, a place where... View Article
The best and most rewarding thing about homebrewing is that you can make lots of your favorite beer. There is certainly no dearth of information on gadgetry, technique, ingredients and recipes. Enter North American Clone Brews, a new compilation of recipes by Scott R. Russell. As the name implies, the bulk of this book is... View Article
Jolly Good Ale and Old is the official history of Coopers Brewery, originally published by Wooster/Aussie beer books in 1987 for the brewery’s 125th anniversary and then reissued with an additional chapter on the 1990s. It’s a better-than-average company history because Painter is a good writer who gives a lot of the history of south... View Article
