The Red Derby is a homey, unpretentious hole-in-the-wall bar in Washington, DC’s Columbia Heights neighborhood. Inside you’ll find a pile of board games like Risk and Operation, a poolroom in the back, and a chalkboard listing about 30 brands of beer. A bonanza for beer connoisseurs?
Here is the paradox of water as it relates to brewing beer: it is, by volume, the dominant ingredient, yet it’s the one that you hear the least about. Hops, with the myriad of exotically named varieties—Fuggles, Tettnanger, Crystal, Nugget, et al.—is the attention-getter that has become the sexy ingredient du jour. Malt, beer’s backbone... View Article
Burton-on-Trent, England The bedrock below Burton, where the city draws its water is rich in minerals—calcium, magnesium, sulphur—and thus quite hard. Though you don’t specifically taste them in the English pale ales, such as Bass, that made the area famous, the effect they have is unmistakable. The clipped, pronounced edge to the hop bitterness is... View Article
I’m not much for soda pop. To my taste, most of it is bland, mass-market stuff lacking in real character or subtlety. But in researching old beers, I’ve seen references to earlier “soft” drinks, not entirely alcohol-free, brewed for refreshment and hydration. While ginger and root beers are still made today, other old school brews... View Article
Aristotle observed, in his classic work Metaphysics, that “the whole is more than the sum of its parts.” He may not have been talking about beer when he said that, but then again, he was on to something. Over the past decade or so, there’s a trend that’s been slowly building as craft brewers are... View Article
Every glass of beer holds a number of miracles: the malt, so willing to turn its own starch reserves into fermentables; the perfect bitterness of hops that just happens to be a passable preservative as well; the complex protein chemistry that allows foam to form and remain just so, until the glass is drained. But... View Article
Frosted Pint Glass We’re mounting a campaign against the frosted glass: the chill drops the temperature of your beer another five degrees and robs you of flavor. But this is a simple shaker pint with a lightly sand-blasted exterior. That’s a frosted glass we can welcome. $4.00 each, Pub Glasses, www.pubglasses.com
As you can imagine from your own fumbling at the dishpan, there isn’t a lot of genuine 16th century glass left intact. So if you want to know what it’s like to hoist one of these ancients pots to your lips and drink from it, you’re going to have to go repro. There are a... View Article
Since the dawn of civilization, people have been drinking their favorite beverage out of special, artistically decorated vessels: pottery and metal at first, befitting the social class. Glass was used in Roman times, but became much more important for drinking vessels in late Medieval times. Drinking glasses have always been, as they are today, status... View Article
