France's Road Less Traveled
By Mike Tessier
Published March 2010, Volume 31, Number 1
Everyone remembers that one bottle of beer that awakened their thirst for beer knowledge. Mine was Sans Culottes from La Choulette. At the time I had no idea what a bière de garde was, but with my high school French I knew that the beer’s name literally meant “without underwear” and it bought back memories of a playground song from my childhood: “In the land of France where the ladies wear no pants, but the men don’t care ‘cuz they wear no underwear.” However, after examining and translating the label, it became clear that this was more than a bottle of beer, or a reference to a silly rhyme; it was a piece of France’s history. Read More…
Flavors of the Countryside
By Adrian Tierney-Jones
Published March 2010, Volume 31, Number 1
In his magisterial The Brewmaster’s Table, Garrett Oliver wrote that if he were forced to drink just one beer style with food for the rest of his life it would be a Wallonian saison. Such a sense of certainty makes perfect reasoning when you ask him what he means by a saison and hear his liberal interpretation: “In my mind, there are really only a few things truly required of a saison. It must be dry—residual sugar would have a considerable effect on the beer’s ability to keep through the summer. They should also be fairly hoppy. Moderate alcohol, 5 to 7 percent, would make them strong enough to last for a while, but not so strong that they’d stun the farm workers who drank it. So perhaps it is not a style that lends itself to orthodoxy, but rather one that originally existed to answer a question—‘What can I brew that’s nutritious, refreshing, tasty and will last for at least a year in the cellar?”’ Read More…
Bucolic Beers for the Modern Era
By Phil Markowski
Published March 2010, Volume 31, Number 1
Life on a farm a few centuries ago probably possessed few luxuries outside of a warm fire and a tankard of house-brewed ale. It was likely a simple brew made with no thought to dazzle, be pondered or least of all, taste consistent from batch-to-batch. It was brewed for a basic purpose—to refresh, sustain and comfort a hard-working body and mind. Read More…
New Brewers and Old Oak
By Julie Johnson
Published January 2010, Volume 30, Number 6
In 1994, Chicagoans were treated to an extraordinary beer created to celebrate the 1,000th batch brewed at the Goose Island brewpub: Bourbon County Stout, an intense, black stout that brewer Greg Hall had aged in oak barrels fresh from the Jim Beam bourbon distillery.
Read More...
Creating the World's Biggest Beers
By Greg Kitsock
Published November 2009, Volume 30, Number 5
You might call them craft beer’s nuclear club. We’re talking about breweries that have pushed the alcohol content of beer past 20 percent by volume, through the process of fermentation alone.
Read More...
The Growing Obsession with Limited-Edition Brews
By Adem Tepedelen
Published July 2009, Volume 30, Number 3
There’s a bite to the breeze coming off Lake Michigan on this unseasonably cool spring evening in Northern Indiana. The people queued outside the large, industrial-looking building—some are Chicagoland locals, while others have traveled a great distance to get here—don’t seem to notice. They’re dressed warmly enough and there is plenty of beer being passed around. The mood is jovial, and the charge of anticipation for tomorrow’s event is palpable. It dominates the conversation between the diehards who have dedicatedly staked out their place in line.
Read More…
