Stand for just a moment with your back to the large white event tent and soak in the scene. Directly in front of you is the winery and its tasting room. To your left is the distillery, where aging barrels hold copper-colored liquid and other spirits. Across the stone plaza and to your right is... View Article
Most of us have had a beer so good that drinking it was “like a religious experience.” But when was the last time you were served a bowl of murky grog at church? Early people from Mesopotamia to Mesoamerica celebrated everything with beer—from their daily prayers and good harvests to human sacrifice and their gods.
There are people who feel at home referring to Miles Davis by his first name, but I am not one of them. When I was growing up, my parents played white people jazz at home—Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck—and it never really occurred to me that jazz wasn’t an indigenous white musical form. Imagine,... View Article
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.
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,... View Article
This feature couldn’t have been written 25 years ago. The idea that beer should be taken seriously as a partner for fine food—that beer might be wine’s peer when we search for a compatible beverage for the table—would have provoked dismissive chuckles from wine aficionados, and it wouldn’t have occurred to beer people at all.
We all know how craft beer history goes. Beer was great until the 19th century, when mass production of lagers took over the world, and American brewers put corn and rice in their beer to make it cheaper. By 1950, everyone was hypnotized by marketing into drinking the fizzy yellow beer. It looked bad, but... View Article
There once was a time in America, not that long ago, when we had brewers, winemakers and distillers. It was a simple, orderly era. Each group existed among its own kind, occasionally venturing to sample the wares of another group, but never straying.
Jean Van Roy couldn’t have anticipated the answer he would get when he asked American brewers who had brought him distinctly American hops how much he should add to his boiling kettle.
