As recently as a couple years ago, it was pretty easy for Americans to distinguish good beer from bad, independent beer from corporate-owned beer, and local beer from nationally- or internationally-owned beer. And in most cases, good, independent and local beer all lined up neatly on one side of the ledger. In the past two... View Article
[Full Disclosure. The following post came as a result of a visit I made to Dublin to the Guinness brewery. The folks at Diageo, Guinness’ parent company, paid for the trip and put me up while I was in Dublin. Guinness is also a sponsor of my personal blog, Beervana.] Dublin, Ireland’s reputation for beer-drinking... View Article
I have seen the future—or tasted it—and it is the tart IPA. (The future may need help with names, because “tart IPA” is terrible—but more on that in a moment.) Over the past decade, IPAs have been in near-constant motion, but they’ve been heading in the same direction. Taking their cue from the key ingredient—American... View Article
The islands of wild and sour ales are, like Borneo or Madagascar, exotic and remote. For most drinkers, they exist on the periphery, little worlds that can be safely enough ignored. For those who delight in a buffet of entirely different and interesting flavors from most beers, though, they are worth a small expedition. But... View Article
The writer James Fallows and his wife Deborah spent three years working on a project for The Atlantic called “American Futures.” They traveled around the country to small and midsized towns in a single-engine airplane, hoping to get a different view of American life than we normally see reflected in the media. It culminated in... View Article
In the ever-expanding universe of beers labeled IPA is a newcomer that confuses just about everyone—the Brett IPA. Casual drinkers will wonder who or what Brett is and, tasting the beer, shrug and smile. Nerdier beer fans will recognize the name as a shortened nickname for Brettanomyces, a wild yeast strain. But that’s confusing, too;... View Article
The history of cider doesn’t involve much in the way of technical innovation until the 20th century. The biggest challenge for cidermakers has always been the juice—it is heavy and takes up huge amounts of space. Because apples ripen only once a year, cidermakers end up having to deal with a year’s supply as it... View Article
The more I learn about beer, the more I think it all comes down to culture. We think of beer as this knowable thing, this quantifiable thing. It must be balanced and harmonious; it should not have certain objectionable flavors; it should look a particular way. But these general platitudes are contradicted even within the... View Article
Normally, when you tour a brewery it goes something like this. You begin either with the malt storage or the brew house, admiring the assorted shiny vessels used in preparing and boiling the wort (the “hot side”). Then you move to the “cold side,” where the beer is fermented and conditioned, sometimes deep under the... View Article
