What is the effect of time and good cellaring on a beer? There are two ways to find out. One is to lay down a number of bottles of a promising beer: sample one each year, keep comprehensive notes, and hope you have a good, consistent palate.
Aged beer? The very concept of deliberately aging a beer contradicts everything we hear and see in beer ads. One megabrewery touts its “born on date” to encourage people to buy its beer. Local micros stress that fresh beer is the best beer.
It was dusk when we reached the cave, a gaping hole in a hillside in the Basque country of northern Spain. I had hoped to visit the famous Altamira caves nearby but did not receive permission from the Spanish government in time before arriving there in summer 1993. Just by chance, I noticed another cave... View Article
For some people, a dark beer is any beer darker than slightly tinted water. That would include bitters, pale ales, IPAs, amber lagers, Octoberfests and a host of other beers that more knowledgeable beer drinkers don’t consider truly dark. Here’s a simple list of some better-known dark beer styles with a few commercially available examples.... View Article
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day! –John Milton (Samson Agonistes, line 80) Milton’s words could be the lager drinker’s mantra when contemplating anything other than the lightest colored brew. Fear. Dread. Horror. Apprehension.
Belle-Vue Brewery Sint-Jans-Molenbeek & Brussels Production: 210,000 hectoliters Beers: Sèlection Lambic (old gueuze), Gueuze, Kriek, Kriek Primeur (first of new season’s cherries), Framboise Bell-Vue is the largest of the lambic breweries, holding a 63 percent market share of lambic in Belgium. Belle-Vue brews at a new brewery in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, just outside Brussels, ages and blends... View Article
Horse blanket. Barnyard. Old Leather. Musty. Cheesy. Cidery. Fruity. Tart. Acidic. Lactic. Dry. Put them all together and you’ve found yourself a lambic. And a damn good one, at that.
With regard to hard cider, America has played the role of a fickle lover. There have been times when we couldn’t get enough of the stuff. And there have been times when the drinking public almost forgot that cider existed. Could the cycle be repeating itself?
How much cider do Americans drink? That’s hard to get a handle on. Until recently, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms lumped cider with wine for statistical purposes. After Congress created a new tax bracket for cider in 1997, the ATF added a column for cider on the production reports that wineries must submit.... View Article
