To borrow from Jane Austen, “it is a truth universally acknowledged that a brewer in possession of pristine water must be in want of an appropriate recipe to brew with it.” It is also popularly stated that the classic beer styles, such as pilsner, stout, porter, pale ale, etc., were developed by brewers working with... View Article
Growing breweries depend on local governments for a wide range of necessities, from zoning changes to promotional activities to utilities, like water. But the last time Bear Republic Brewing Co. asked Cloverdale, CA, for approval to expand its production facility, the city didn’t grant building permits because it didn’t have the water infrastructure to support... View Article
On the Saturday morning of the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) weekend, the energy is electrifying. Hundreds of brewers, brewery owners and founders, and others in the craft beer industry sit in the Mile High Ballroom of the Colorado Convention Center, perhaps somewhat anxiously, sipping beers and looking up at the screen in the front... View Article
From Larry Bell’s college days in Kalamazoo, MI, when he homebrewed by mixing clean water with good yeast inside 15-gallon soup kettles, his beer business has only grown. A South Chicago native, Bell loved Kalamazoo so much that he decided to build his life there. In the mid-1980s he opened what would become his namesake... View Article
For the last several years, it has become increasingly popular to age beers in whiskey barrels. The trend has become so popular that in 2011, the Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Beer category at the Great American Beer Festival was the second-most competitive category (the first was American-Style IPA) with 118 entries. But now we’ve come... View Article
Chief Oshkosh Red Lager was about to go national. It had found a distribution and marketing partner, and was ready to bust out of Wisconsin. Jeff Fulbright, the founder and president of the brewing company behind Chief Oshkosh, Mid-Coast Brewing, excitedly placed the beer in a spectrum that showed both his ambition and confidence.
Spend enough time in a tavern or a taproom and you’ll almost certainly hear it. Hophead: a beer lover with a bad case of the bitters. From extra-pale ales to imperial stouts, nothing makes them happier than a pint exploding with hop flavor and aroma. You know who you are. Plenty of brewers put themselves... View Article
It’s not exactly a closely kept secret that the U.S. craft beer industry is growing, and growing fast. Approaching the end of 2012, the Brewers Association’s running tally of U.S. breweries had already surpassed 2,200 (the highest point in more than 100 years), while the number of breweries-in-planning had blown past 1,300 and was on... View Article
GROUP EFFORT In John Palmer’s How To Brew, he recommends pitching around 400 billion yeast cells for a 5-gallon batch of high-gravity beer. (He does not, thankfully, recommend counting them out one by one.) On a per-bottle basis, that means more than 7 billion yeast helped make that 12-ounce bottle of imperial stout—equivalent to the... View Article
