I don’t often get to write about mead. Maybe “get” isn’t the right word. We know beer. We know wine. We’re learning about cider. And if you don’t make one of these beverages at home, you can bet your home-roasted coffee beans your neighbor or friend does. But there’s so little awareness of mead. Our friends at Kookoolan Farms are busily, buzzily changing that. Besides, what a fun word. Koo koo lan.
Charlie Papazian’s now-extinct Beer Town USA online poll, by virtue of the name, excluded foreign cities. Otherwise people might vote for Munich or London, or probably Brussels. But there’s a pretty strong argument that they’d all be dead wrong. The answer may very well be Copenhagen. No longer are the Danish merely famous for their, uh, Danishes…the craft beer movement is gaining traction throughout Scandinavia and credit goes to Mikkel Borg Bjergsø—known to beer geeks the world over—is the mind behind the Mikkeller brand.
The Craft of Stone Brewing (AAB, Vol. 33, Iss. 2, 2012) is the hoppy, tell-all from CEO Greg Koch and co. It benefits from reading more like you’re listening to all the players spinning yarns on a front porch (of an industrial business park in North County San Diego).
I really liked the A&E editor at Willy Week when I came on board. Then there was a schism. Then a new guy was hired and we got back into bed together. Me & the alt-weekly, not the new dude. It started with this post on Belgian-style Hair of the Dog going to Belgium.
For the last five years, much-decorated Belgian brewmaster Dirk Naudts, who develops beer recipes for brewers throughout Holland and Belgium, brings an American brewer over to his village, Lochristi, to collaborate. The chance to work with Naudts at his Na De Proef Brouwerij is much sought—beer writer Michael Jackson once described Naudts’ ultrasophisticated brewhouse as “the ultimate toy for the aspiring homebrewer.”
These Islands are Hopping ran in AAB (Vol. 32, Iss. 1, 2012) and takes a gander at a few island destinations where craft beer isn’t just a mirage including the US Virgin Islands, Sydney (hey, Australia‘s an island!), and BC’s Vancouver Island, home to the province’s capital of Victoria.
Beer West (nee Beer Northwest) had a short but sweet life as a regional beer magazine for which I contributed just a few stories. One of the first was this cover story on the LA beer scene, warts and all. Somewhere online there’s a fantastically long response it got from an area brewer who wasn’t a fan of the reporting. And somewhere else is my fantastically longer rebuttal.
National Parks finally makes the connection between hop cones and pine cones (though only one features forest setting) in AAB (Vol. 32, Iss. 5, 2011). To soak up both some of the best of Mother Nature and those who nurture our beers, head to Biscayne Bay National Park near Miami (FL), Mammoth Caves National Park near Louisville (KY), and Crater Lake National Park above Medford (OR).
AAB 32.5
This cover story in All About Beer (Vol. 32, Iss. 5, 2011) was rooted in some of the entries I wrote for the Oxford Companion to Beer on hop varietals and really learning how long it takes for a new hop to go from a little-hope experiment to A-list hop, essentially, getting to know tomorrow’s hops today. Hop Forward is one of my favorite stories I’ve ever researched’n’written as a beer writer.
Dr. Shaun Townshend of Oregon State University amidst offspring from the 2010 breeding crosses, grown in partnership with Indie Hops.
Wherein I review Lisa “The Beer Goddess” Morrison’s (full disclosure: we’re friends) guidebook to the luscious craft beers of the Pacific Northwest. The narrative is friendly and reads more like behind-the-wheel banter rather than an outdated, second-hand field guide.
Why River Rafting? In AAB (Vol. 32, Iss. 4, 2011) I postulate that lovers of craft beer and outdoor enthusiasts have been one and the same since the get-go. Most of the pioneers of post-Prohibition brewing are in fact or in heart grizzled nature buffs who carved out career paths that enabled them to make a natural and thrilling product far away from the mainstream. Not unlike wild rivers themselves.
And like the beer we love, some of these rivers are easy to navigate, some are too challenging for most, they’re each about 95 percent water (remember, it’s air that makes rapids white), and, thankfully, these liquidy adventures can be sourced from all over the country. Namely: the Gallatin River near Bozeman (MT), the Rio Grande River near Santa Fe (NM), and on the Chattooga River near Athens (GA) and Greenville (SC).
Brian Yaeger: Beer Writer 