Topic: Recipes
Award-Winning American Pale Ale
MEMBERS ONLYIt’s been about nine years since I last wrote about American pale ales, and with a lot of evolution to the style in the time since, it’s time to revisit the style in the context of looking at some recent Best of Show winning recipes. As with other survey articles, I screened the Beer Judge
Steampunk Brewing
MEMBERS ONLYLike any good collaboration, Staten Island, New York neighbors Scott Van Campen and Mark Zappasodi’s “Brewing as Art” — a fully functional, gravity-fed brewing apparatus on wheels that happens to look like something from a Victorian-era horror movie set — began over beer. “We were hanging out having some beers and talking about the art
Russian Imperial Stout Clones & Brewing Tips
FREEWhen you’re talking beer and you say “stout,” some things come immediately to mind, most notably the words “dark” and “roasty.” When you say “imperial stout,” however, you’ve just left the realm
Milking It: The New Age of Lactose
MEMBERS ONLYCreativity in the brewhouse and experimentation with new ingredients by craft and homebrewers continues to produce new styles of beer and variations on traditional styles that would not have been dreamt of even a decade ago. One of those ingredients that is rapidly gaining popularity is lactose. A non-fermentable sugar, at least by Saccharomyces cerevisiae
American Brown Ale
MEMBERS ONLYLast May, I was in Argentina to judge and speak at the South Beer Cup, sort of the Great American Beer Festival of South America. I spent several hours traveling with Pete Slosberg, one of the heroes of the early days of the modern American craft beer movement who was also there to judge, and
Session Meads: Making Carbonated, Lower-ABV Meads
FREEWhile mead is usually a double-digit ABV beverage, a relatively new style of more sessionable mead is becoming popular. Learn the keys to making carbonated, lower-alcohol meads to be enjoyed on any occasion.
AmeriCAN Revolution: Oskar Blues Brewery Clone Recipes
MEMBERS ONLYDale Katechis needed a plan. It was 1999, and Oskar Blues Grill & Brew, the cajun-style joint he’d founded two years earlier in tiny Lyons, Colorado, was struggling to bring in customers. “I was thinking that all of the people who told me I shouldn’t open a restaurant in a town of 1,400 people in
Mexican Lager
MEMBERS ONLYWhen I recently wrote about grisette being a type of saison, I hadn’t expected to write a similar column about lagers but I keep getting questions that spark my interest. This time, the question was about Mexican lager, a style that has gotten a fair amount of interest over the last few years. I first
Neomexicanus Hops
FREEHops are the defining ingredient of the American craft beer movement. But most of the popular aroma varieties that define styles and set trends originated in Europe, and though now grown here,
Kveik – Norwegian Farmhouse Yeast
MEMBERS ONLYStop me if you know this story; farm brewers ferment without access to commercial yeast, sterile culturing, or precise temperature control. Passing their strains down and sharing them, the mixed-cultures adapt to warm fermentation, creating unique flavors. Eventually, knowledge of the strains’ precise origins is forgotten. Isolated strains eventually gain popularity in both traditional and
Grisette
MEMBERS ONLYBY THE NUMBERS OG: 1.028–1.032 FG: 1.002–1.004 SRM: 3–10 IBU: 20–30 ABV: 3.1–3.9% I hadn’t intended to write about this style now, but it’s come up as a question several times over the last month so I thought it must be topical. Usually the question is, “Under what category do I enter a grisette in
Modern Meadmaking
MEMBERS ONLYMead, which is a fermented beverage made from honey, is arguably one of the oldest alcoholic beverages. Vessels found in China dating back to 7000 BC have organic compounds consistent with fermented honey and rice. Mead was the revered “nectar of the gods” in ancient Greece and the “drink of kings” throughout history, though it