The beauty of an India Session Ale? The brew retains the hop-powered IBUs (international bitterness units) of an IPA while you retain more of your wits with lower ABV. In time for summer in the May, 2013 issue of Portland Monthly, I delved into five ISAs for the “Wallet Guide.”
A month after my debut muckraking post for The New School (April ’13), I had some fun again both by declaring IPA dead and, more egregious to publisher Ezra and the beer community on the whole, announcing that another editor of mine, Willy Week’s Martin Cizmar, was “right.” Again, the comments blew up. I can see how this kind of needling is addictively fun.
Oh, my central tenet? “White chocolate is not chocolate. It’s a derivative of chocolate containing cocoa butter, but chocolate requires actual cocoa! If I sauté broccoli in cocoa butter did I make green chocolate? White chocolate is an abomination used to sell a disgusting confectioner’s creation using a delicious marketing name.”
Edit: This story was awarded 2nd place in the “Brewspaper” category at the inaugural North American Guild of Beer Writers (NAGBW) awards in October 2013)
When Willy Week resurrected the Beer Guide, I was tasked with writing the oral history, as it were, of one of this city’s most seminal beer offerings: Widmer Brothers’ Hefeweizen. It has protagonists, controversy, some romance, and pretty much everything needed for a Hollywood blockbuster save for a rando choreographed fight or homecoming dance scene. Oh, this story also netted me a 2nd place finish in the inaugural award ceremony of the North American Guild of Beer Writers!
Image courtesy Widmer Bros.
Thinking about the popular bar snack beer nuts, I pitched this exploration nutty beers to CraftBeer.com (Dec, 2012). Truth in advertising is vital in craft beer culture. There better be fresh hops in our fresh hop beers, real cherries in our krieks, and just as seasonally-relevant, real pumpkin in our field or pumpkin beers. Yet the distinguished British classic, nut brown ale, contains nary a nut.
The name derived from this medium-bodied beer’s use of toasted malted barley as opposed to roasted malt—gives the style its telltale nutty color and flavor.
Brewers are musicians who compose songs made of beer. Put these brewing and musical artists together and the ensuing duets (bruets? brewets?) and the results can be music to your mouth.
Many bands are comprised of a guitar, bass, drums and a singer. Beer is made from hops, malted barley, water and yeast. The similarities between those four instruments and ingredients truly rock!
Think of a beer’s malt bill as the bass, providing the foundation by laying down the rhythm. Hops are analogous to guitars, as top notes keep everything in harmony and are usually flashier. Tempo is the crucial element of any given piece—yet rarely gets the glory—so water plays the role of drums. Finally, what’s a song without a melody, so think of the voice as yeast. Coincidence? Find out in this CraftBeer.com post from Sept 2012.
It seems that shandies and radlers–light beers mixed with soft drinks such as lemonade or fruit soda–are becoming all the rage in the United States. Alan Newman, already ahead of the curve as the founder of Vermont’s Magic Hat, realized that we’re actually way behind this refreshing style of summer sipper compared to all of Europe, so he launched House of Shandy.
When does a collaboration beer between two brewing companies only include one brewery? When the partner brews coffee (CraftBeer.com, Aug. 2012). More and more, coffee beers are brewed with help from a craft brewery’s local roaster who likely understands their individual needs and personalities, for the ultimate friends with beanies.
Though hops often do the heavy lifting for beer’s aroma and flavor, when coffee is added, it contributes quite the pick-me-up.
Gluten Free is Big Business. That’s due partly because there are a lot of glutards and partly because some people just think being gluten free is, like, healthy and stuff. But for the folks who really are gluten intolerant, it’s serious stuff. When Widmer Bros. unveiled their gluten-free beer, Omission, it was both hailed and vilified by different camps within the GF community. (Author’s note: I like it. I’m not glutarded. It tastes like beer. My one friend who I know to be legitimately gluten-intolerant loves this stuff.) But here’s the rub:
According to the TTB, wine, beer or distilled spirits “made from ingredients that contain gluten (cannot) be labeled as ‘gluten-free.’” This could spell trouble for Widmer, which has invested significant time and money in a new gluten-free beer.
Being the investigative journalist that I am, I tracked down the TTB’s spokesman to quote on this matter. TTB’s Tom Hogue said that the FDA continues to look into issues surrounding gluten-free labeling and that the 20 ppm of gluten standard is “proposed but not final.” The TTB’s ruling affecting Omission’s gluten-free labeling only pertains to interstate commerce, so beer labeled gluten-free in Oregon could be just “handcrafted” in California, Washington, and everywhere else it will show up.
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.”
Well, I pitched this story to Draft (vol 6.1, 2011) as an intro to the trend of educational beers. Yes, beers that teach the consumer (and usually the brewer in the process) something such as releasing a series of beers with a control and one variable distinguishing the other iterations. In other words, a pale ale each hopped with a different, single varietal, or a stout and a series of that same batch aged in one differing spent barrel each. The king of these–they’re certainly not vertical tastings which takes one beer as sampled at once over several vintages so instead I call it horizontal tastings–is Mikkeller from Denmark. Dark Horse, one of my favorite Michigan breweries, had a different sort of horse in this race.
Brian Yaeger: Beer Writer 