Cask & Vine’s What’s On Tap: Seth Simonian from HopHeadUnited.com
New England based group of beer enthusiasts creating a community for both casual and hardcore beer aficionados to come together and discuss beer!
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Bert’s Better Beers’ Draft Pick of the Week:
1. DDH Elle from From the Barrel Brewery
Listen to hear our reviews!
Kettle to Keg’s In the Kettle: Your Water Quality
Ale Communications:
Against Hoppy Beer
The craft beer industry’s love affair with hops is alienating people who don’t like bitter brews.
As a beer writer, I often find myself preaching the word about craft beer to people who don’t want to hear it. There are a lot of Bud Light fans and people who’d rather sip a zinfandel, even in the craft beer capital of the world, Portland, Ore., where I live. So when a homebrewer friend recently decided to visit my husband and me from Tennessee, I was excited to spend time with a kindred spirit, someone with whom I could share my favorite brews without having to make a hard sell. The first brewery I took him to was Hopworks Urban Brewery, where I ordered us a pitcher of the Velvet English session beer.
I was floored. Session beer is light and drinkable—it’s called session beer because you’re supposed to be able to drink several over the course of a drinking session without ruining your palate. If one of my favorite session beers was too hoppy and bitter for an avid beer drinker—for a homebrewer who is currently brewing beer to serve at his own wedding—what would he think of the famed Pacific Northwest IPAs? Do friends let friends drink only pilsners? READ MORE
Brewing the “First” Alcoholic Beverage
My fermentation obsession has reached new heights – on Christmas day I bottled my first mead, and it was delicious. My wife also gave me a book on mead making, and I’m getting ready to start a wild-ferment mead. So what is mead?
Mead is an alcoholic ferment of honey. All alcoholic ferments start with the same essential ingredients: a source of sugar dissolved in water, and yeast that metabolize the sugar into alcohol. The source of the sugar can be just about anything – fruit (grapes become wine, apples become cider), malted grains (as with beer), rice (think sake), and many others westerners generally aren’t familiar with. Basically, if a thing has sugar, it can be (and probably has been) fermented into alcohol, and honey is no exception. In fact, honey is quite a bit easier to ferment than wine or beer – no crushing or sprouting required. If you just add water to raw honey, there are plenty of yeast present to get the fermentation going. READ MORE
Brews Travelers Finish Epic Beer Road Trip
Well, they did it. Brandon Wurtz and Michael Roberts, otherwise known as the Brews Travelers, have finished their year-long road trip across the country, hitting breweries in every state in the lower 48. We’re not sure what they learned about themselves, or the state of craft beer, during their journey, but by the looks of things, they had a good time.
Here’s a numbers breakdown of their epic adventure.
Days on the road: 365
States visited: 48
Miles driven: 40,007
Breweries visited: 789
Wurtz and Roberts broke down their trip even further, with a full array of numbers and statistics on their website. Here are some of our favorites. READ MORE
THS 52: Stoneface Brewing Co.!
THS 34: Able Ebenezer Brewing Co.
THS 25: Brian Link from Milley’s Tavern & Stark Brewing Co.
THS 44: Wiggly Bridge Distillery
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