By Lew Bryson
Published March 2009, Volume 30, Number 1
“For [beer] possesses the essential quality of gulpability. Beer is more gulpable than any other beverage and consequently it ministers to the desire to drink deeply. When one is really thirsty the nibbling, quibbling, sniffing, squinting technique of the wine connoisseur becomes merely idiotic. Then is the moment of the pint tankard of bitter.”–Anonymous, 1934
Talk with beer aficionados, or read what they say on beer rating websites or the thicket of beer blogs, and you will discover that they often want beers to be bigger. “If it was bigger” is a common comment, or a plaintive “I wish it were bigger.” Yet you have to wonder just how big they want it, after reading about the “drinkability” of 8 percent or 10 percent beers. Sure, they may have a refreshing flavor, but after two or three…or four, how can you tell from down there on the floor?
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By Charles D. Cook
Published January 2009, Volume 29, Number 6
Walk into a good multi-tap bar these days or, especially, a good beer retail store, and Belgium rules. A beer lover shopping for new flavors is confronted with bewildering choices: bottles that are corked and wired in the manner of champagne, beers that claim religious connections and others with fruit incongruously depicted. The labels, written in Flemish or French, may display examples of the cartoons for which the Belgians are famous, but the high prices of some of these brews are no joking matter. Faced with expanding choices, how to choose?
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By Roger Protz
Published November 2008, Volume 29, Number 5
Poland has a cruel nickname: “The country on wheels.” For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, it was ruled by Austro-Hungary, Russia and Germany, and then became a satrapy of the Soviet Union for 50 grim years. Its modern borders bear little relation to the ones it enjoyed a century and a half ago. Is it any wonder that its brewing traditions have been fashioned more by foreign intervention than by indigenous styles?
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By Red Diamond
Published September 2008, Volume 29, Number 4
In a world of refined and sophisticated beercraft, the most cutting-edge beers today may also be the most reckless. They shun laboratory yeast strains. They scoff at sanitation. They are ancient, magical and funky—almost mythological. They are known as wild ales.
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By Alan Moen
Published May 2008, Volume 29, Number 2
Walking into the brewery at the Glacier Brewhouse in Anchorage, AK, you might think you were in a wine cellar instead. There in one alcove is head brewer Kevin Burton’s “wall of wood”—an impressive row of about 50 oak barrels, all filled with beer. “Everything goes in the barrel,” Burton says, especially his stout, porter, Scotch ale, bock and barley wines. “It’s a lot of work, but it gives you more options with a batch of beer,” he claims.
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By Roger Protz
Published September 2007, Volume 28, Number 4
If cats have nine lives, then India pale ale can certainly lay claim to two. Its first span was relatively brief, not more than a hundred years. But during that time, this beer style refashioned 19th century brewing, not only in Britain but also on a world scale.
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