Beyond Liquid Sunshine – Maui Brewing Company & Origin Coffee Co.

The magic between Maui Brewing Company and Origin Coffee Company began in 2012 with a post Craft Brewers Conference meeting between Maui Brewing founder Garrett Marrero and roastmaster Heather Brisson-Lutz. Heather invited Garrett to visit her roastery to “experience specialty coffee on a more raw level.” After Garrett left, the two remained friends and returned to California and Hawaii and continued to talk about coffee.

“I’ve always loved good coffee,” says Garrett. “I had never looked at coffee in quite that detail. I didn’t have the knowledge of coffee that I have now. I love good beer, I love good whiskey, I love good coffee, I just didn’t know that much about coffee.” Something about the way the cupping elevated the taste of the coffee remained with Garrett. “That cupping blew my mind to how much coffee could change based on the process, something like the temperature that you bloom the coffee could have such an effect. Then knowing there wasn’t a good cold brew in Hawaii that was made at any scale, we saw that as an opportunity to create Origin for distribution throughout Hawaii.”

Fast forward to 2016 when Garrett offered Heather’s wife Kim a job as head brewer at Maui Brewing. Garrett and Heather then began to talk about the leaps and bounds that canned cold brew coffee had made in the coffee market and took this opportunity to create a business that realized the canned cold brew Heather and Garrett had talked about.

(Related: The Mad Scientist Behind Dozens of Medal-Winning Coffee Beers)

From there Heather remembers, “Origin Coffee Roasters opened up later in 2018… and found a home inside the new expansion of Maui Brew co. We set up our roasting facility and purchased a 25bbl cold brew brewhouse.” Origin Coffee Roasters then pushed forward and through partnership with Maui Brewing began canning Origin cold brew coffee.

“When you look at all of the things we do together and Maui Brewing is essentially a contract packager for Origin where we are canning the cold brew coffee on our filling line in order to supply that product to Origin,” says Garrett.

Origin coffee’s blend became Liquid Sunshine a mix of coffees designed to get the best flavor into the cold brew, and the coffee is more than just beans to Origin. “Heather has some great connections to many of these farms in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and places that are growing amazing coffee all over the world,” says Garrett. “Getting quality coffee direct from the grower, then we have that relationship that helps to develop. Then we can talk about a farm as opposed to a broker.”

Maui and Origin’s collaboration on beer dates back four or five years. In that time, the meeting of the minds between Heather, Kim, and Garrett has produced such beers as Grandma’s Coffee Cake Imperial Porter and Flat White Imperial Coconut Porter. “We were lucky having Kim as a resource to commission our brewhouse,” says Heather. “She still assists on our brew to this day.”

Beyond coffee collaboration, Heather is also starting to work with Maui Brewing’s distilling company, Kupu Sprits, to develop coffee liqueurs and different types of distilled beverages that utilize coffee, “potentially even a coffee cocktail in a can.”

As the word spreads about Origin, distribution of the beverage has grown from one island to many.  Origin’s distribution started out on Maui only, and now stretches throughout Oahu and neighboring islands.

One thing I often forget outside of Maui Brewing is that everything made in this building is produced with solar energy. Obviously the roaster uses propane, but any electrical use in the roastery is the same electricity the brewery uses and we are one of the most sustainable buildings because we have a 1.2 megawatts of solar and batteries and biodiesel generators. Being made here at Maui Brewing allows that coffee to be made with sustainable energy.

It Started with Stout – Modern Times Coffee

For San Diego’s Modern Times Beer Company, roasting coffee dates back almost to the birth of the brewery, says Coffee Program Manager Tessie Warnecke. “Jacob McKean (our CEO/Founder) decided that one of our initial core offerings would be a coffee oatmeal stout,” remembers Tessie. “This would become Black House Coffee Stout, and the coffee used in the recipe was (and is) all roasted in-house, giving us a lot more control over the profile & consistency of the coffee used in the beer.” The brewery’s growth foreshadowed and echoed the growth of the coffee business – “Modern Times Coffee as a standalone division was not in the original business plan; it grew organically.”

Modern Times Coffee has been led by Tessie Warnecke since September of 2020.  Prior to that, she “has been the Green Coffee Buyer and focused my attention on development of new products, as well as coffee education for staff and customers.”  Tessie has seen Modern Times Coffee grow from humble roots, sourcing the coffee to be roasted 2 lbs at a time in one beer of Modern Times’s core lineup to its current state. Tessie recalls, “We didn’t sell an actual bag of the coffee itself until the year after the official opening of MT—all coffee that was roasted up until that point was for beer or cold brew on draft.”  Modern Times’s current equipment investment in coffee “allowed us to really focus on the business of coffee, including launching our cold brew in cans. 7 years later, we’re roasting over 100,000 lbs of coffee a year (which is a lot for a small operation like us!).”

One of the offspring of Modern Times Coffee’s curiosity has been the proliferation of different blends of spirit barrel-aged coffee, that is coffee beans that have been rested inside spirits barrels to pick up the flavor and aroma of spirits like bourbon and brandy, for starters. But Tessie has discovered that while barrel-aged coffee is popular, one of the biggest challenges is a lack of reference materials. “There are no articles, references, or masters in this realm, which has made it one of the most exciting, educational, experimental, and all around beastly of product lines.” Tessie says that the way forward lies in experimentation and fascination with the potential new flavors that the team can discover. “We do quite a bit of sensory and quality tests, and we are always trying new processes to see how we can get the best results from the barrel aging process. Constantly asking questions on the amount of time in barrels, the type of barrels, how the moisture content and density is affected, what that means to roast profiles, which coffees work the best in which barrels, how temperature impacts the results.”

While both the brewery and the roastery release their own products, so many positives come from the collaboration between Modern Times Coffee and Modern Times Beer. Tessie describes the interplay between the two operations as “wonderful to see professionals from two very different industries able to talk shop and discuss flavors—even though the products are very different. If you “taste” for a living, you have the ability to calibrate your palettes much easier than the average person. This is a tremendous advantage that allows the collaboration process to work, not seamlessly, but with enthusiasm and passion from everyone involved.”

Double Shot Leads to a More Fulfilling Cup – Tree House Brewing and Coffee

At their core, all coffee programs evolved from a shared love of coffee and beer, but at Massachusetts’s Tree House Brewing Company, the thought of adding a coffee roaster was the result of the brewery’s desire to make their coffee beer the best it could be.

Tree House Co-Founder and Head Brewer Nathan Lanier says that roasting coffee was “something I wanted to do since we began our coffee beer program in 2014, but the program took flight when the brewery worked on their “Shot Series” of beers. Each beer is named for a coffee order (Single Shot, Double Shot, Triple Shot, etc.), and Nathan says that his love of Double Shot Coffee Stout and his desire “to have the ultimate control [of the beer] through roasting was something we just needed to do. Internally, we try to outsource as little as possible because we think it contributes to a better end product.”

As Tree House Coffee evolved, so too did the Shot Series and Tree House Brewery’s use of coffee.  Nathan says that Tree House’s “beers have benefitted from the addition of coffee, and we literally have dozens at this point, but our “Shot” series all use custom roasted blends to best meld with the base beer.”

Nathan also says that the synergy between Tree House Coffee and Tree House Brewery goes beyond collaboration at this point. Nathan and Coffee Program Manager Adam Bonaccorsi have wholly integrated the programs at Tree House. “The production staff on the beer side work directly with Adam and his team every day. There is a very tangible desire to relentlessly improve our offerings, and with the capability to sample roast, roast, and dissect our beans in house, this happens constantly,” Nathan stresses.

Ultimately, for Nathan and the staff of Tree House Brewing and Tree House Coffee, the energy that pushes both operations forward comes from the drive toward sustainability and the people involved.

“The leaders in the industry are doing tremendous things working directly with farmers to ensure they can comfortably subsist within an ecosystem that conspires to drive prices down. Coffee folks are amazingly passionate about what they do, why they do it, and what results from their work. It’s infectious and exciting to be a part of.

One of our biggest accomplishments this year was our first Direct Trade relationship. To meet the farmers who grow the beans we roast, and to develop a relationship with them, makes the cup more fulfilling in the end.”

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Pizza and beer — they are perfect together. While no one would deny the inherently complementary nature of the two fermented wonders, some brewpubs are taking the pairing a step further. They are adding pours of their prized craft beers to the pizza dough they serve in-house.

For Short’s Brewing Company in Bellaire, Michigan, adding pizza to the menu was a must when the pub finally expanded to include a “real kitchen” in 2015, recalls Erin Kuethe, the general manager.

“We finally had the space and capacity to make pizza dough. And this was a top priority with the new space,” Kuethe adds. “We have always been a from-scratch kitchen, but we were never able to make dough in the old layout.”

Meanwhile, at Stormcloud Brewing Company in Frankfort, Michigan, co-owner Rick Schmitt also felt strongly about the beer-pizza connection. “We started using beer with our pizza dough from the first day we opened in 2013,” Schmitt explains. “Our original chef was passionate about the baking process and dough in general.”

Testing, Testing

When adding beer to pizza dough — just as when crafting any menu item, or any beer — extensive testing was the key to nailing the perfect recipe. Both breweries landed on the ideal beer only after a lot of experimenting.

For Short’s, the recipe was carefully developed over more than a year, which included surveying a slew of taste-testers and eventually bringing in a dough expert to complete the recipe.

“Through all of these tests, there was never a question as to whether or not we would incorporate beer — it was a matter of what kind and how much,” Kuethe says. “Our menu is beer-infused. And our dough would be no different.”

Ultimately, not only was beer incorporated into the final dough recipe; ingredients from Short’s malt supplier, Briess, are also included. Additions such as malt flour and malt syrup help “give the dough the ultimate beer infusion,” Kuethe notes.

A Match Made In Kitchens

Years ago, Tom “The Dough Doctor” Lehmann, a pizza industry consultant based in Manhattan, Kansas, had done similar experiments with beer-infused pizza dough in his longtime position as director of bakery assistance at the American Institute of Baking (now AIB International). Even traditional pizzerias were yearning to partner  with breweries to take advantage of their crust-enhancing byproducts.

“Back in the early ’90s, when microbreweries were becoming more popular, pizzerias would take the dregs at the bottom of the brewing barrels for use in their dough,” Lehmann remembers. “It worked really well for making pizza crusts and proved to be pretty successful.”

Lehmann notes that improved flavor is the main benefit of adding beer to pizza dough.

“Some people say it adds a more malty flavor,” he says. “In our experiments with some mainstream light beers, we found they did not add much in terms of taste, even in blind taste tests—robust or full-flavored beers worked better. Now, with so much advancement in craft beer, there are many more flavorful beers on the market.”

How Beer Affects Pizza Dough Flavor

During the extensive tests at Short’s, employees tried plenty of recipes (and ate a lot of pizza in the process). Needless to say, debates raged on.

“Pizza comes in so many shapes, sizes and flavors, and everyone has an opinion on what kind is the best,” Kuethe says.

Short’s makes its dough with Local’s Light, an American lager, because it proved the “most approachable” of its beer range. “We felt it would appeal to the masses,” Kuethe explains. “It has a lighter flavor and gives an understated hint of beer in the pizza dough but does not steal the show like some of the other beers we tried.”

For example, she says, when staff tried using Bellaire Brown, it gave the dough a rich sweetness, with a hint of caramel flavor and a much darker color.

“In testing, many people thought the darker color meant the dough was whole-wheat or overcooked,” Kuethe says. “We also tested with Huma, our flagship IPA, and Pandemonium, a pale ale, both of which added an intense hop flavor. The bitterness was appealing to the avid hop-head, but for our kids’ pizzas and people less interested in hops, it was a bit intense.”

‘Secret Sauce’ In the Pizza Dough

Similarly, the original chef at Stormcloud performed extensive tests in the kitchen, trying out different beer types and finding the right malt balance to create its ultimate recipe. “It does make a flavor and consistency difference, and we find our customers can tell the difference,” Schmitt notes. “I won’t give out the specific beer we use — it’s a ‘secret sauce’ kind of thing — but it’s safe to say that it is a more malt-based beer.”

For those who do want to add a darker beer to dough, Lehmann agrees that, while it adds a very unique flavor, the crust will darken beyond the normal color one expects from a white-flour crust. For this reason, he recommends balancing out the recipe with a bit of wheat flour. As a bonus, many consumers perceive the addition of wheat as a healthier option.

“We took our regular dough formula and simply replaced 25 percent of the white flour with whole-wheat flour and used beer as 100 percent of the liquid added,” Lehmann explains. “The whole-wheat factor adds a darker color already, so the darker color from the beer is right at home and a wonderful accent to the wheat crust.”

Getting the Most Flavor

Lehmann recommends adding beer at a rate of at least 50 percent of the total liquid ingredients (and up to 100 percent) to get the most flavor impact from the beer addition.

“You really want to use no less than 50 percent of the total liquid as beer,” Lehmann recommends. “Using too-light or delicate beers, or at a rate less than 50 percent, you might find that the flavor is not different enough to justify the expense of adding beer at all.”

Short’s adds its beer with the other wet ingredients, as pizza makers mix it in with the dry ingredients. Meanwhile, brewers and chefs have learned to work together at Stormcloud, where Schmitt’s staff has perfected the formula’s timing. “We have a pouring schedule of when to add the beer when mixing the dough batch,” he says. “It’s not rocket science, but it’s very close to that impactful!”

One of the challenges for Schmitt, however, is balancing the production of beer for drinking with the beer needed for pizza dough. “It takes away from the beer availability for the pub, especially during the peak summer season,” he explains. “We have a challenge just keeping up with pouring pints for customers, so saving enough beer for pizza dough is tough for about a month out of the year.”

Another challenge for breweries, Lehmann points out, may be concern from customers surrounding the addition of beer to pizza. In the past, Lehmann has witnessed parents worried about the alcohol factor in their kids’ pizzas, but the concern is unfounded.

“Alcohol is a byproduct of yeast fermentation, so when you ferment a dough for two days, there’s already alcohol in it” Lehmann says. “When adding beer to dough, the alcohol burns off before the water does, just like you’d find with dishes such as beer-battered fish.”

A Perfect Pairing

Challenges aside, craft breweries who have married the quintessential combination of pizza and beer find that their unique products—combining two of America’s favorite indulgences—help them stand out from the crowd and bring in customers who crave an extra flavor boost in their beloved pies.

“Pizza and beer—what’s not to love?” Kuethe concludes. “The experience at the pub as a whole, and the atmosphere, is what really stands out in our guest reviews, and pizza obviously plays a huge role. The feeling people get of being comfortable and at home is reinforced by good homemade food, made by people who care. Our pizza is no different, and infusing the dough with beer and beer ingredients gives it a unique touch.”

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Leave the visions of sugar plums to the little ones this year. For grown-ups, it’s all about those wonderful Christmas beers from independent craft breweries, and we’ve got a dozen classics lined up to get you into the spirit of the season. Put the kids in charge of decorating and kick back with one of these fantastic festive brews.

Great Lakes Brewing Co. | Christmas Ale

It’s difficult to explain the phenomenon of the annual Great Lakes Brewing Co. Christmas Ale release to people who don’t live in Ohio. At the brewery’s “First Pour” release event during the last week of October each year, a pint of Christmas Ale gets poured an average of every five seconds for 12 straight hours. That’s 70 kegs of beer in one day, and it’s only the beginning. Co-Founder Pat Conway says the beer has become an essential part of the season for Ohioans since first being brewed in 1992.

“When you taste it, you think of Christmas and the conviviality and warmth of the season,” he reflects. “It just seems to marry with the energy around Christmas.”

The beer is brewed with ginger, cinnamon and honey, and weighs in at a warming but gentle 7.5% ABV. The Great Lakes co-founder expresses what many Midwesterners feel about this Ohio Christmas tradition:

“When I take a sip, it’s like I’m wearing a sweater.”

Tröegs Brewing | Mad Elf

Belgian breweries often brew a special high gravity beer for the Christmas season, but strong Belgian Christmas ales from American breweries can be tricky to find. Fortunately, Pennsylvania’s Tröegs Brewing makes plenty of Mad Elf to go around. This Belgian quadrupel is brewed with cherries and honey, and the first batch in 2002 used 300 pounds of local honey from the Happy Beekeeper farm.

“That 300-pound order has increased to 25,000 pounds a year,” says Jeff Herb, who handles marketing at Tröegs.

Tröegs brews several variants of Mad Elf, including Naked Elf (the base beer without the cherries and honey), Wild Elf (a barrel-aged, mixed-fermentation version), and Mad Elf Grand Cru (a luxurious, limited edition version with Balaton cherries, wildflower honey and demerara sugar).

“We like to think of Grand Cru as our ‘Director’s Cut,'” says Herb.

(RECIPES: Traditional Christmas Desserts Made with Beer)

Revolution Brewing | Fistmas

Remember shopping malls? Revolution Brewing remembers shopping malls.

Rather than a conventional holiday party at one of their Chicago taprooms to celebrate their Fistmas Holiday Ale, the folks at the largest independent brewery in Illinois are hosting a mall crawl. Attendees of the Fistmas Bar Crawl at Woodfield Mall on the northwest side of Chicago will don elf hats and meander between the mall’s restaurants and bars sipping the titular spiced ale, and stops along the way will allow for gift wrapping and DIY Christmas ornament decorating.

Fistmas is 6.5% ABV and is brewed with ginger and orange peel. The beer has stayed more or less the same since it was first brewed in 2010, though it spawns a bolder taproom-only version called Fist of Krampus that changes year to year.

Bell’s Brewery | Christmas Ale

This legendary Michigan brewery is best known for its to-style classics, some of which helped define those styles in the first place. While beers like Two Hearted Ale have earned their status by standing firm on classic flavor profiles in a shifting beer landscape, Christmas Ale has changed with the times and received a significant update in recent years. While the beer was formerly a somewhat “timid” (as far as Christmas beers are concerned) 5.5% ABV, it jumped to 7.5% to better reflect consumer expectations for comforting holiday beers.

“Christmas Ale was revamped in 2017 to be a more rich, impactful and stronger beer for celebrating the holidays, stylistically inspired by non-peated Scotch Ales,” says Josh Smith, communications manager for Bell’s. The rich malt base and warming strength makes Christmas Ale a suitable companion for those cold Michigan Decembers.

(BEER TRAVEL: Plan Your Next Beercation)

Deschutes Brewery | Jubelale

This year marks the 32nd edition of Jubelale, even though Deschutes has only been open 31 years. That’s because Jubelale was the first beer the brewery in Bend, Oregon, ever bottled, all the way back in October 1988. That first year, founder Gary Fish hand-bottled the beer (with some help from his first employees) at his small brewpub. Production has grown a bit since then, but the recipe–based on traditional malty English winter ales–has remained the same.

Since 1995, the label art for each vintage of Jubelale has been designed by a different regional artist and inspired by Oregon winters. This year’s label by Mark Rada depicts birds in a forest, which Rada says represent the Jubelale artists of previous years, and a deer with robotic antennas, which speaks to being attuned to our environment.

“The earth is speaking to us here in Bend,” says Rada. Luckily for us, one of the languages it speaks is beer.

Sierra Nevada Brewing | Celebration Ale

Few beers are as iconically linked to the holiday season across the country as Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale. This fresh hop IPA was first brewed in 1981 and the recipe has stayed the same for nearly 40 years, offering festive flavors of citrus and pine with a brisk hop bitterness that matches the cold winter air. Celebration includes plenty of fresh Chinook, Centennial and Cascade hops from the hop fields of the Northwest. Sierra Nevada spokesperson Robin Gregory says the arrival of those succulent hop cones is cause for its own annual celebration at the brewery in Chico, California.

“The fresh hops usually arrive at our dock in the middle of the night, and you should see our brewers,” says Gregory. “They are running around like kids on Christmas morning.”

Even for one of the largest independent craft breweries in the country, the excitement about great ingredients and great beer never fades.

The Lost Abbey | Gnoel de Abbey

The Lost Abbey of San Marcos, California, first brewed Gnoel de Abbey in 2017, but in just a few years, it’s already earned its place in this esteemed brewery’s venerated line-up. The beer isn’t spiced as many holiday beers are, but it stands out from the crowd due to its unusual concept. The brewery takes an imperial stout that’s been aging in bourbon barrels for over a year and blends it with a younger and lighter brown ale.

The resulting 8.5% ABV brew has the strength and roast of the imperial stout and the oak notes of the barrel but in a lighter, easy-drinking body, even at this formidable strength.

(MORE: Splurge-worthy Beer Gifts)

Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales | Noel de Calabaza

The sour ale pioneers at Michigan’s Jolly Pumpkin put their own personal stamp on a classic Christmas-y style with Noel de Calabaza. They brew a Belgian dark strong ale, a style many Belgian brewers release as a holiday seasonal, and then put it in oak barrels for six months where it receives the signature Jolly Pumpkin mixed-fermentation treatment.

What emerges is a dazzlingly complex 9% ABV beer with richly layered malt and barrel character, some acidity and subtle funk, and notes of dark fruit and chocolate.

Boston Beer Company | Samuel Adams Winter Lager

Sam Adams Winter Lager is certainly one of the most widely available Christmas beers, and likely one of the first such beers many drinkers ever tried, much as their Octoberfest introduced many American drinkers to that German autumn style.

Winter Lager is a “warming bock with festive spices,” and while its 5.6% ABV is lower than many other beers on this list, its comforting malt flavors and spices make it a fine choice for a casual holiday party or watching a Christmas movie or football game on a December afternoon. The good folks at Boston Beer use ginger, cinnamon and orange peel to lend Winter Lager its festive character.

Victory Brewing | Winter Cheers

When you think of traditional winter or holiday beer styles, hefeweizen probably isn’t one that comes readily to mind. That uniqueness is exactly what makes Victory‘s Winter Cheers Hazy Wheat Ale stand out. While Christmas beers are often spiced, Winter Cheers gets its subtle clove spice from its Bavarian weizen ale yeast, which produces banana-like esters and clove-like phenols.

The beer is a little stronger than many hefeweizens at 6.7% ABV, and its high effervescence and balance of fruity and spicy yeast notes make it an excellent pairing beer for holiday dinners. It even has a nice kick of Citra hops to give it an American twist. You might not have thought of this style as a winter beer at first, but a few sips of this expressive Pennsylvania wheat ale will make you a holiday hefeweizen convert.

Warped Wing Brewing | Esther’s Lil Secret

Warped Wing Brewing from my hometown of Dayton, Ohio, brews a few excellent Christmas and winter seasonals, including a spiced amber lager called Holiday Special and a smooth and comforting doppelbock called Abominator.

The crown jewel of holiday brews from this Gem City brewery, however, is Esther’s Lil Secret, which releases in November each year and is brewed in collaboration with 90-year-old Dayton chocolate company Esther Price Candies.

The recipe for Esther’s Lil Secret changes every year and, true to its name, is a closely guarded secret until the annual “release and reveal” party at the brewery taproom. This year’s edition is a Scotch ale brewed with chocolate, caramel and sea salt.

“We wanted to mimic the flavors of Esther Price’s now-famous Sea Salt Caramel,” says Warped Wing co-founder Nick Bowman. The rich and layered beer is a secret worth keeping.

(READ: Affordable Beer Gifts)

Great Divide Brewing | Hibernation Ale

While most of the beers on this list are themed around Christmas, the big holiday is just the beginning of a long winter. For most of the country, there are months of cold weather ahead after the presents are unwrapped. Folks in Colorado know this better than most, and Denver’s Great Divide Brewing releases a beer to carry us through the long, cold winter.

Hibernation Ale is an English-style old ale, a hearty beer with rich, layered malt flavors and enough strength at 8.7% ABV to brace us through those dark, cold evenings. This beer has been brewed since 1995 and has won multiple awards. It’s perfect to enjoy as your Christmas Eve nightcap, but be sure to hold onto enough cans of this traditional English style to last till to crocuses begin to peek through the frosty soil in spring.

Published Dec 11, 2019.

The post 12 Beers of Christmas appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Finding a perfectly hopped IPA or a deliciously smooth stout during my journey from Minnesota to California and back was marvelous. But more often than not, the people inside the taproom — not the beer — were what made the breweries so impactful. Whether I was with friends, strangers at the bar or chatting with the beertender, breweries were a steady source of community during my month on the road.

North Platte, Nebraska

On the first day of my trip I drove 10 hours by cornfields, billboards and a Klown Doll Museum. The lack of compelling topography allowed my mind to wander to the “what ifs.” What if I run out of gas? What if I got lost? What if I shouldn’t have done this alone?

I stopped in North Platte, Nebraska, to spend the night. Before hitting the hay, I went to Pal’s Brewing Company in hopes of silencing the “what ifs.”

When I opened the door to the brewery, laughter, voices and music spilled out. I walked in and grabbed a spot at the almost-full bar. I noticed the beertender was addressing most of the customers by name. I was in a room full of regulars. The beertender said, “Minnesota, huh?” After checking my ID. I told him about my solo road trip and that Pal’s was my first stop.

While serving the other customers, the beertender continued to keep me company. After an Irish stout on nitro and an apricot wheat, I got up, thanked the beertender and he said, “Come as strangers, leave as pals” as I walked out the door, head free of “what-ifs.”

Durango, Colorado

The next morning I left bright and early for Durango, Colorado. I was on my way to stay with my friends Kristina and Jared. The three of us had met while working at a brewery in Minnesota. Kristina and Jared had fallen in love and moved to the mountain town in Colorado.

Catching up is best paired with a cold beer,  And we had a lot of catching up to do. The three of us reconnected over what had brought us together in the first place. During my three days in Durango, we went to five breweries: Steamworks, Carver, Animas, Chainless and Ska Brewing Company.

San Diego

It was tough tearing myself away from Colorado, but I had trails to hike, beer to drink and miles of driving to tackle on this solo road trip. With a few days of camping in Arizona thrown in between, my next destination was San Diego.

When I got there, I met up with my friend Kathryn at Ocean Beach Brewing Company. She moved to California earlier in the year for no reason other than she wanted to. I’ve always had a fear of being timid and settling for complacency, so I admired her bravery moving to a new state on her own.

Sharing pints and stories at the brewery with Kathryn, complacency was nowhere to be found. We were actively participating in life, 2,000 miles away from home, out of our comfort zones, together. And it felt really good.

The next day, I went to Stone Brewing Company in Kettner. I read a couple chapters of Stephen King’s “Outsider” by the fire while a group of men at the table next to me complained about their jobs. Then, for the last brewery in San Diego, I went to Fall Brewing Company with Kathryn’s friend Fletcher whom I had met the day before. We talked about music, our jobs and politics, and as we parted ways, we vowed to stay in touch.

San Clemente, California

As I made my way from San Diego to Los Angeles, I decided to stop in San Clemente to have dinner and a couple of beers at Pizza Port Brewing Company. I found a place at the bar and started to read my book.

“Must be tough to read in here,” a middle-aged man said as he sat down next to me. “It’s so loud.”

He seemed like he just wanted somebody to talk to. I was happy to be that person, so I closed my book.

As we drank our beer, he showed me pictures of his new dog and complained about his commute from the University of Southern California where he was a professor. When he finished his second beer, he stood up and said, “Well, I’m off to play Dungeons and Dragons.”

The professor left to fulfill his role as dungeon master and I left for Los Angeles.

Los Angeles

I was sitting at the bar, reading my book at Trustworthy Brewing Company when an older man said, “You don’t see that much anymore.”

I looked up, smiled, and asked, “See what?”

“People your age reading.” He was in his late 60s, and wearing a flannel. He tilted his head to the side to read the spine of my book. “My wife likes Stephen King, too.”

He told me that they had been married for 38 years.

“I’ve never seen your wife in here,” the beertender interrupted.

“She doesn’t like good beer!” The man said. He raised his glass, looked at me, and said,” Cheers to love! Even if love has bad taste in beverages.”

We clinked glasses.

Salt Lake City

As I left California and began to make my way through Utah, I was officially homeward bound after my solo road trip. I stayed the night in Salt Lake City where I went to the last brewery of the trip: Uinta Brewing Company.

As I sipped on my Grapefruit Hop Nosh IPA, I told the beertender that in the last 30 days, I had spent more on beer than I did in lodging. I slept in my car, my tent, at friends’ houses, a motel, and in a trailer on a goat farm. I had a limited budget… and my priority wasn’t luxury. My priority was good beer. Good beer led me to breweries, which provided me with a sense of community.

The breweries on my solo road trip held new friends, beertenders that mend loneliness, stories told by strangers, and overheard conversations. They held the substance of my invigorating journey and the realization that sometimes, adventure is best shared over a beer.

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Although the Center for Disease Control and Prevention says that the United States has one of the safest public drinking water supplies, there are emerging issues with Americans’ water. These concerns prompted the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to create Brewers for Clean Water in 2013. Since then, the initiative has been gaining ground. The fight for clean water is on.

Brewers for Clean Water Gets its Start

In 2013, NRDC began working with several organizations in the environmental community to push the Environmental Protection Agency to clarify which waterways were protected by the Clean Water Act (CWA). “This was – and still is – a subject of great confusion,” says Becky Hammer, senior attorney and deputy director of Federal Water Policy for NRDC.

To aid their efforts, NRDC began investigating what other voices they could partner with to make sure water sources were protected. Breweries were a natural fit. “No matter the size, breweries intuitively understand that they need to have clean water,” Hammer says.

NRDC first began reaching out to breweries in the Midwest. As word got out, big-name breweries like Allagash and Sierra Nevada joined its movement. And their efforts paid off. In 2015, the Congress passed the rule they’d been pushing for limiting water pollution.

In 2016, everything changed when the new administration took over. Since then, the NRDC has been playing defense in response to a multi-phased rollback by the government that will undo CWA. “They put out their own rule that redefines protected waterways in ways that are worse than how it was in 2015,” Hammer says.

As a result, fewer waterways are protected under these new rules. The threat is a problem everywhere, but certain parts of the country will be hit hardest. In Arizona, for instance, 80 percent of its waterways will no longer be protected under the CWA. Breweries are paying attention, and it’s safe to say that many are worried.

The cause for concern

If you’ve ever brewed beer, you know that mineral content matters. “How hard or soft water is in the area can be problematic,” says Layne Carter, local brand and sustainability manager at Aslan Brewing Company in Bellingham, Wash. “Depending on where you live, the mineral content might be a lot for a brewer to work around.”

In Bellingham, for instance, water is drawn from Lake Whatcom and, occasionally, the middle fork of the Nooksack River. Because the water is soft, it’s perfect for brewing beer. “We’re basically starting with a blank canvass, and we can add minerals if we want,” says Frank Trosset, Aslan’s head brewer.

For Cahaba Brewing Company in Birmingham, Ala. “The water in Birmingham has always been among the top-rated across the country,” says Eric Meyer, Cahaba’s co-founder and brewer. “Yet because there could always be a change in the water chemistry with heavy rains or changes in the water treatment plant, we have charcoal filters and constantly check our water.”

Cahaba has a full lab to test the water, which generally takes about 15 minutes. Cahaba brews two days a week, and on the first day of every brewing cycle, the brewery tests the water. It doesn’t usually get tested the second day, as Meyer assumes the water will be the same.

While these breweries and others haven’t yet encountered issues with water quality, there is growing concern. “There’s absolutely a sense of urgency,” Carter says. “Whether or not it be in our area, we know that advocating for clean water is important, especially considering recent changes in environmental protection and water supply safeguarding.”

Enter Brewers for Clean Water, which currently consists of over 100 breweries. It costs nothing to join – filling out a simple form is the only step to becoming a member, outside of having the brewery’s name listed on the web site as a supporter.

Once breweries are registered, they can decide what actions by the NRDC they want to endorse. For instance, when NRDC composed a letter to the administration opposing some of its clean water rollbacks, breweries could choose whether or not they wanted to add their signature. The situation was the same when NRDC sent letters to oppose the administration’s attempts to weaken water standards for coal-fired plants.

Becoming Part of the Clean Water Movement

It seems like every brewery should want to be part of this movement. But Hammer suspects there are a few reasons that may be holding breweries back.

For starters, capacity issues are an obstacle for some. “Some breweries are so small that the only person reading the emails is the owner who’s also trying to run the business,” Hammer says. While it requires only a minimal time commitment to participate, brewery owners do have to read emails and letters to decide if they want to sign on. “For some small breweries, they just don’t have time to do this.”

Some breweries also cite political reasons. “Some believe that advocating policy issues would be perceived by customers as a political move,” Hammer says. “They don’t think it’s worth losing business if customers who support the Trump administration get mad.”

Yet outside of those two reasons, there’s little reason not to join. Hammer also admits constraints by time limits in getting the word out to breweries. “With over 8,000 breweries in the country, I don’t have time to email each one of them,” she says. Fortunately, breweries that want to participate don’t need to wait for Hammer to contact them. They can fill out a form online  and wait for confirmation of their registration.

Joining was a no-brainer for Bent Paddle Brewing Company in Duluth, Minnesota. “We had already been putting out statements about how important water is for us,” says Laura Mullen, co-founder and VP of marketing and outreach. Bent Paddle sources its water from Lake Superior, which is renowned for its quality. “We have such neutral water here that it can mimic any water table in the world, and clean water matters to our bottom line.”

Aslan Brewing also didn’t hesitate. “Our team at Aslan takes a lot of pride in our sustainability efforts,” Carter says. “Being a large brewery in a small town, we strive to do as much advocacy for the environment as possible, and we welcome any chance to be a voice in the craft beer industry when it comes to protecting our planet.”

While Meyer understands why breweries might be skeptical at first, he believes the benefits outweigh any negatives. “The biggest benefit is that as breweries, we’re united as one voice under an organization that knows how to word things the right way,” he says, adding that having a voice will be vital when the government lessens restrictions on water quality, which could then add more impurities to the water. “Any changes in water quality will have a big impact on the craft beer industry.”

The post Craft Brewers Band Together for Clean Water appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

That intro would set her down a path that would lead to becoming the highest ranking woman judge in the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) by reaching the level of Grand Master VI.

Earning that distinction in July 2019 hasn’t slowed her down.

“Probably in two or three months, I’ll go to Grand Master VII,” she says. “I’m really close.”

How to Become a Grand Master

To become a judge, you have to pass an online exam to get a program identification number. This is followed by a proctored tasting exam requiring a score of at least 60 to earn the rank of Recognized. Scores of 70 — or higher — coupled with at least five experience points moves a person to the next rank: Certified. Experience points may be earned by organizing, stewarding, or judging at qualifying competitions or proctoring BJCP exams.

To move to a higher rank, at least half of one’s experience points must come from judging. Anyone with a score of an 80 or higher with a minimum of 20 experience points are then permitted to take a written proficiency exam to attempt a National rank. Those with a score of 90 or above with the necessary amount of experience points may then qualify for the Master rank, followed by Grand Master rank with 100 experience points.

(Graphic: Gold Medal IPAs 1989-2018)

Grand Master ranks allow high-ranking judges with extraordinary levels of participation to be recognized for their continued service. As of March, there are 7,431 active judges around the world, 53 of which are Master levels with only three Grand Master VI: Dave Houseman of Chester Springs, Pennsylvania; Peter Garofalo of Wilmington, Delaware; and Cockerham. There are currently only three judges ranked higher than Cockerham, placing her in the top 0.04 percent of active BJCP judges in the world.

Her Path to the Top

In the mid-1980s, she brewed her first beer with whatever supplies she could find at her local store. “We as homebrewers and pro brewers today are very, very spoiled,” she quips, noting she supplemented her ingredient purchases with copies of Zymurgy Magazine from the American Homebrewers Association. “Even though now they’re all online, I still cannot make myself throw away the ones that I have from the 80s,” Cockerham laughs. “That was a fabulous, big change in my beer life when I learned about the beer community out there.”

Homebrewing took a backseat when she decided to go to law school. But during one fateful encounter after graduation, she ran into an attorney friend whose husband was in a homebrew club. Her friend mentioned a mutual acquaintance was putting together a class starting that November to become a BJCP judge. “I thought, ‘well, I’m done with school now. I need a hobby. Sure. I’ll take the class.’ So I signed up, and that little interaction was sort of life changing.”

By that March, Cockerham was officially part of BJCP.

Grand Master Judging

In the following years, she’s judged as far away as Lima, Peru, and Anchorage, Alaska, but some of her most memorable judging experiences have been closer to home. “One of my favorite ones was the first year I judged at the Great American Beer Festival [in 2014],” recounts Cockerham. Paired with Ninkasi Brewing Company‘s co-founder and brewmaster Jamie Floyd, she recalls judging India Pale Ales and awarding the gold medal to a beer she describes as “transcendental.” As she would find out later, that IPA was Breakside IPA from Breakside Brewery in Milwaukie, Oregon.

(Related: Agonizing Decisions, 2-Day Drives, and the Spectacle Behind America’s Largest Beer Competition)

“I think that gold medal was sort of the thing that really got their brewery going, so that’s really a fun and cool memory,” says Cockerham.

Cockerham took her first exam in March 2007 and steadily moved up the hierarchy. In 2012, the same year she achieved Master level, she also became an official mead judge. She reached Grand Master in 2014 and has moved one level higher each year since. And last year, she reached her current level of Grand Master VI. She also became a certified cider judge in April 2019 and is currently the Midwest region representative and assistant exam director with Gail Milburn, whom she laughingly calls her “best beer friend, my BBFF.”

Advice For Aspiring Judges

“My friend Gail and I would talk about beer… we would encourage each other: ‘you should try to take the test, you should try to take that,’ back and forth. Both of us did eventually go to the Master level,” Cockerham explains. “This is what I tell judges a lot. Find a buddy! Find yourself your brewing friend, your judge friend. Occasionally get together, try some beers, write notes, talk about them, work to figure out where there’s a gap in your palate. That’s the reason I’m a master — I had friends [and] we encouraged each other.”

(Related: So You Want to Be a Beer Judge?)

She also recommends stewarding at sanctioned competitions to observe how they’re run and how judging works, as well as participating in local classes and homebrew clubs to better understand the mechanisms of brewing. “Download the BJCP app on your phone,” she continues. “You go to a place and you see a Baltic Porter... go in and read about it. Teach yourself. There are lots of things out there to help you learn more.”

Finally, she encourages all judges to remain open to styles. “Unless you have a real dislike or medical reason, I’d say be flexible. Challenge yourself. Don’t launch yourself into only what you like, because you won’t grow as a judge.”

The Future of BJCP

“My goal is to grow the BJCP and to make as many female judges rising up through the ranks as possible,” Cockerham says. “Women have really good palates for the most part, and so they can test as good or better.”

Since the BJCP doesn’t track demographic data like age, gender, or race, it’s difficult to ascertain how many women are joining the program outside of anecdotal observations. “All we care about is how they judge,” according to Cockerham. “[But] we’re trying to support more women in those underrepresented regions.”

With BJCP’s emphasis on sharing knowledge, Cockerham sees lots of overall potential outside the United States. “We’re having lots of international growth, and it’s been a very positive thing,” she explains. “In South and Central America, where I travel a fair amount, they’re excited. They’ve got the craft beer bug, and they are becoming judges like crazy… it’s helping them do a better job of evaluating their beers, and that’s just helping everything grow in a positive manner.”

The post Sandy Cockerham Blazes Beer Judging Trail For Women appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

The craft beer community is indeed answering that call. One of the widest-reaching initiatives is a global beer collaboration called All Together, spearheaded by Brooklyn’s Other Half Brewing. According to alltogether.beer, nearly 560 breweries worldwide have signed on. All Together will raise money for participating breweries’ local hospitality industries, as well as the breweries themselves.

“With our industry connections, we felt like we could use as many as those as possible to mobilize people to help,” Other Half co-founder and brewer Sam Richardson says. “There’s only so much one brewery can do, so we wanted to do something with enough parties involved that would make a difference but wouldn’t negatively impact any single brewery, all giving small amounts to a larger cause.”

At alltogether.beer, Other Half has listed the purposefully simple All Together beer recipe, with the choice of a New England or West Coast IPA. “We used a malt bill that’s fairly inexpensive, and hops that are pretty widely available,” Richardson explains. They enlisted Stout Collective to design can artwork that can be customized by each brewery, and Blue Label Printing to print labels at cost.

(More: Nationwide List of To-Go Beer Options by Breweries)

Proceeds from Other Half’s own All Together brew will benefit the Restaurant Workers Community Foundation (RWCF). Richardson hopes to have the beer ready by mid-April. After that, the invitation to brew All Together is open-ended. “If a brewery wants to brew it in June, that’s great,” Richardson notes. “Our goal is to make it something that people can keep making and keep giving.”

You can keep track of what breweries are joining in at alltogether.beer. However, there are even more breweries participating who haven’t signed up on the website. CraftBeer.com talked to some breweries around the country about their versions of All Together.

Non Sequitur Beer Project

For Non Sequitur’s All Together, the New York City brewery will use pilsner malt instead of two-row (a Non Sequitur trademark). Founder Gage Siegel says they’ll also use some Mosaic hops on hand from a different beer, plus HBC-586. Non Sequitur had planned to travel to Houston to partner with Sigma Brewing on an IPA using the experimental Pacific Northwest hop. Since the trip couldn’t happen, Siegel proposed that both breweries still use it as a kind of collaboration between them.

Non Sequitur is already in the habit of giving proceeds from their beers to charity, and Siegel is happy that to maximize that effort by joining such a large-scale collaboration. “I’m glad because it gives us a direction and we know our impact, however small, is going to pool with Other Half and a lot of other people,” Siegel says.

Non Sequitur plans to release All Together around the end of April, and will also donate to the RWCF.

Side Project Brewing

Co-owner and brewer of St. Louis’s Side Project Cory King started waiting tables at 18. “The hospitality industry is what he knows and loves, and the Side Project team had been looking for a way to help it when All Together came along.”

“The economies of so many cities run on the vibe and the feeling and the nightlife, which is almost all derived from the food and beverage industries,” King says. “When this ends, and everyone wants to go out, a lot of those places won’t be open. So, [we’re doing] anything we can to help, for places to maybe make it on the fringe.”

For Side Project, 100% of their beer’s proceeds will be donated. Their cause is the Gateway Resilience Fund. Side Project is following Other Half’s prescribed malt bill and Citra, plus they’ll be testing out an experimental New Zealand hop blend. Side Project’s All Together, called Shared, will be released at the end of April.

(More: What Happened to the Beer? World Beer Cup Entries Saved From Going Down the Drain)

Southern Grist Brewing

“We are overwhelmed and humbled by the support of the community,” says Southern Grist’s Kevin Antoon. “Our bartenders are making what they used to before COVID-19 due to the generosity of customers and [our] delivery program.” The team has also felt the love from fellow breweries. “In times of crisis, there is no industry I have ever been a part of that pulls together and supports each other in so many ways.”

Southern Grist is paying it forward, donating All Together proceeds to the Tennessee Craft Brewers’ Guild. “The guild mobilized immediately to request tax relief and abatement from our governor, push for delivery, and relief on laws against out-of-state shipping,” Antoon says of the guild’s impact. For the beer, brewer Jared Welch says they are taking the hazy route and sticking mainly to the recipe. “We’re particularly excited to play around with Cascade and Simcoe, which are not normally a part of our hop repertoire,” Welch says. Southern Grist’s All Together will debut mid-to-late April.

Mikerphone Brewing

Chicago’s Mikerphone Brewing went from celebrating its fifth anniversary on March 15 to figuring out how to survive the shutdown and support the community. Founder and head brewer Mike Pallen says so far they’ve participated in a raffle of exclusive bottles of beer, and have donated to a “brewery of the week.” All Together is another way they’re helping. Mikerphone will mostly follow Other Half’s recipe and will brew a fruity New England style. “We’ll go a little harder on the hops,” Pallen notes. “[The recipe] is a little lower than what we typically use, and we want to keep it in line with what we do.” It will be available in early May, with proceeds going to Mikerphone staff members and the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild.

Fifth Hammer Brewing

Queens, New York brewery Fifth Hammer is planning to brew a “soft, hazy 6.5% ABV” New England IPA, according to co-owner and brewer Chris Cuzme. “If the NE IPA is one of the best selling styles in the current market and this project is about raising the most money possible for a great cause, then let’s make the most delicious version…so that we can give our hospitality workers one hell of a charitable gift,” he says.

Explaining that he sees beer as “a people business,” Cuzme is hopeful about how All Together can help brewery, bar and restaurant employees who are out of work. “This project aims to alleviate some of the fiscal complications and fear they are enduring,” he says. “None of us know how long this is to continue and being able to completely cover the fiscal hit for hospitality workers would be impossible with this project. But in this climate, any small amount directed to the appropriate place is a large amount!” Fifth Hammer’s All Together will be available in early May.

(More: The Curb Economy: Craft Breweries Rise to Pandemic Challenge)

Modist Brewing

“The hospitality, food service, and craft beer industry work extremely hard to create memorable experiences for our patrons, and that can be overlooked or undervalued by convenience,” says Keigan Knee, co-founder and director of product development for Modist Brewing in Minneapolis. “Local businesses in our industries are essential to our culture, both here in Minnesota and across the world.” Knee feels All Together will help hospitality workers financially “while showcasing how important it is to support local hospitality businesses in our communities.”

Modist will only make a few tweaks to the All Together recipe, substituting Sabro hops since they don’t have Cascade hops on hand. Their brew will be available at the end of April (Modist’s Instagram page will have updates). It will benefit Minnesota-based collective The North Stands.

Outer Range Brewing Co.

Emily and Lee Cleghorn, co-founders of Outer Range Brewing in Frisco, Colorado, responded quickly to the shutdown’s impact on their community. They started a “cans for cans” drive, where customers get 20% off to-go beer when they bring canned goods for the local food pantry. “We have unbelievably received well over a thousand pounds of food donations already,” Lee Cleghorn says. “Our food pantry estimates that three out of four families in our area are now unable to cover all of their expenses, so the donations go a long way.”

All Together essentially helps Outer Range help even more. Their New England IPA will follow Other Half’s recipe, and proceeds will go to the Colorado Bartenders Guild’s Colorado Family Meal Initiative. The brew will be available mid-April.

Industrial Arts Brewing Company

“[All Together] is a way we can reinforce a tenet of craft beer that has made it the truly great community it is: the sharing of knowledge and resources to help raise each other up,” says Sofia Barbaresco, brand director of Industrial Arts Brewing Company in Garnerville and Beacon, New York. “But mostly, this is a way to show support for the people who have supported us in our three and a half years. We wouldn’t be here without all the hospitality workers that have been behind us since day one.”

Industrial Arts will carefully follow Other Half’s recipe, “but given the individual characteristics of our brewing system, water profile, and fermentation processes. “It will definitely come across as an ‘Industrial Arts’ beer,” Barbaresco explains. They will release their beer on April 30 and give proceeds to the RWCF.

Keep an eye on alltogether.beer to see what breweries by you are participating, and follow breweries’ social media feeds for exact dates of All Together releases.

The post All Together: Breweries Collaborate to Help Hospitality Workers appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

It was the right move.

The BA would not risk the health and safety of its members, staff, contractors, anyone. There would be more Craft Brewers Conferences and more World Beer Cups, just not this year. That was clear – one thing that was unclear? What to do with all the beer.

As the organization acted to halt the preeminent industry conference and community gathering, shipments of beer entries for the World Beer Cup had already begun to arrive at the BA’s consolidation warehouse. Staffers and volunteers had spent weeks preparing beer entries for judging in the World Beer Cup’s host city, San Antonio. At the time of the cancellation – late on March 12 – international consolidation points and individual breweries were in various stages of sending even more beer, but growing reports of a pandemic loomed over the future of many large events. Earlier that day, Dry Dock Brewing head brewer Alan Simons’ musing on Facebook about his entry preparations proved prophetic, “I have a feeling I’m sitting in a cooler bottling beer for nothing.”

While many of the beers collected at the international consolidation points never made it out of port, early entries that did arrive sat sorted and ready for a competition that would never happen. Organizers were left with approximately half of the beer entries slated for San Antonio. Calls to judge the beer remotely, ship the beer back or donate it to a good cause were met with logistical problems and red tape that proved too large to overcome.

“It was super depressing.” said Chris Williams, the Brewers Association’s Senior Event Manager, speaking on the prospects of having to destroy the entries.

“It made me want to cry.”

A Clear Solution

On a sunny Tuesday in April, tucked away in a mixed-use area of Boulder County, masked volunteers are busy dumping beer. Inside a warehouse, five tables flank a path to a trailer with large, industrial plastic totes. Adam Dulye banters with his team of volunteers like he would with his kitchen staff.

(Related: Agonizing Decisions, 2-Day Drives, and the Spectacle Behind America’s Largest Beer Competition)

Adam is the Brewers Association’s executive chef. Normally charged with developing the menu for the World Beer Cup Awards dinner, Dulye spends a lot of time working with Williams and the events department. Faced with such a grim fate for the thousands of bottles and cans, some – in very different circumstances – could have been awarded gold medals, it was Dulye who offered a path forward.

In the days since COVID-19 swept across the country, the need for disinfectant solutions has become a vital weapon for those on the frontline risking their personal safety to care for the ill. In the search for cleaning agents effective against the novel coronavirus, the Center for Disease Control guidelines suggest solutions that are at least 70% alcohol as being an effective disinfectant. The same alcohol locked up in bottles and cans in the BA’s warehouse – albeit in a diluted state.

“How do we not destroy the beer?” Explains Dulye, “I have a truck. I can pull a trailer. I think we can make this work.”

Dulye began calling around to local distilleries to see if they’d be interested in distilling the World Beer Cup entries, eventually connecting with Denver Distillery and Ballmer Peak Distillery.

(More: Nationwide List of To-Go Beer Options by Breweries)

Alcohol evaporates at a lower temperature than water. The distillation process utilizes this by heating wash to capture alcohol vapor, then cooling and condensing it back into a liquid. The resulting liquid is a more pure form of alcohol. The plan was set; convert all of the World Beer Cup beers into high-grade alcohol to be used as a sanitizer for frontline workers. One problem: get the beer out of the packaging to be distilled.

Adam’s Kitchen

True to form, chef Adam’s table was the cleanest in the warehouse. BA staffers, Mille Shamburger, Joe Damgaard, Stacey Wetzel and Emily Silver joined longtime GABF volunteers, Lindsey Barela, Jordan Cleppe and Heather Camerer to open each bottle of beer, dump them into 5-gallon buckets and eventually into 275-gallon totes. The totes will then be driven by Dulye to the distilleries via the chef’s truck. Despite the masks and social distancing, the atmosphere is light, with music playing. Barela, Cleppe, and Camerer all work in event planning. Without any events to plan, they are helping out in Adam’s kitchen, of sorts. The team has been working daily since the previous Thursday. They will eventually empty enough entries to produce between 400 – 500 gallons of high-grade alcoholic hand sanitizer.

“I doubt this was the fate that brewers expected when they tasted through their entries,” Dulye acknowledged, “but based on the options we had available, I hope they feel a sense of closure, maybe some relief.”

It was not the solution that most would have hoped for the beers. Brewers put their hearts and souls into brewing them for the World Beer Cup, but for those who had hopes of earning gold on an April night in San Antonio might find some solace in knowing that their effort did not go down the drain. And that, in hindsight, perhaps being a part of a solution is more meaningful than a medal. In this case, clarity came from chaos – and that clarity packs a 140 Proof – nasty virus killing – punch.

Most of the sanitizer distilled by Denver and Ballmer Distilleries will be donated to first responders. Customers at Denver Distillery will have a chance to get a bottle of sanitizer with the purchase of one of their other products. Ballmer Distillery is providing the community their sanitizer on Wednesday and Saturdays. Customers should bring a container.

The post What Happened to the Beer? World Beer Cup Entries Saved From Going Down the Drain appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

This story is not true. By the time I started working in the beer industry this myth had been widely debunked yet still spread. Those of us who know try their best to set the record straight.

In the same way it’s important to re-explore history, it’s valuable to re-examine how we talk about beer basics. Beer basics include ingredients and process, styles and flavors and pairing beer with food–what people need to know to start their journey as a beer geek. 

(More: Nationwide List of To-Go Beer Options by Breweries)

As craft beer has made great strides, the topics and techniques we follow to educate should too. As a craft beer and sensory consultant, international judge and Master Cicerone©, my mission is to help drive the craft beer movement forward. And I keep coming back to this thought: It’s 2020, and I think it’s time to re-think beer basics.

Examining how we talk about beer basics isn’t just about eliminating inaccuracies but making sure we’re mindful about how we talk about beer basics to make sure we’re not overwhelming people who are new to it.

Homebrewing and Wine’s Influence on Early Craft Beer

The exact origins of the beer basics we share now are unknown. This being said, we can see clear influences from both homebrewing, and wine appreciation. 

Although beer has been around for thousands of years, the way we currently talk about it has its origins in the late 70s homebrewing movement. Inspired by foreign beers and the writings of Michael Jackson, fine folk across America started making a range of beer styles at home. These are the roots of craft beer. 

Those days, if you were into craft beer, you were either a homebrewer or a friend of a homebrewer. It’s therefore understandable that much of our jargon in beer is highly technical. Think IBUs. This is a technical specification and, yet, it’s a measurement that’s often requested by beer drinkers. By contrast, wine or spirit drinkers are not seeking out and sharing technical specs on their respective beverages, apart from ABV, which is required by law. 

(More: Helping Our Craft Brewing Community During the COVID-19 Pandemic)

Meanwhile, the wine influence on beer basics can be found in how we divide beers and pair them with food (both of which are explored below) as well as the basic tasting and palate cleansing technique we use for beer. Wine has also informed how we choose the best glass to highlight the attributes of different beer styles, for example, the long narrow shape of a pilsner glass mirrors the champagne flute, which was designed in the 1750s to preserve carbonation and concentrate its delicate aromas. 

It makes sense that we would borrow from wine; the North American wine renaissance pre-dates the craft beer movement by about 10 years. At this time, there was an increased interest in local wine production as well as wine education. By the time craft beer came along, a lot of the research had been done with regards to the best way to enjoy wine and this information could easily be adapted to beer.

It’s now 40 years later. Our understanding of beer has grown a lot, as has the variety of beers that we have access to. Although it would be more convenient to keep things the way they’ve always been, it is worth examining beer basics to see if there’s a better way to communicate them.

The Division of Ales vs. Lagers

One aspect that I believe deserves scrutiny is the division of beer into ales and lagers. Of course, it’s true that most beers are either ales or lagers. It’s also true that, for brewers and homebrewers, it’s important to know if a style is an ale or a lager. From a beer lover’s perspective, though, is it that helpful? 

The ale vs. lager question is one that comes up often with beginners. When it does, it’s easy to share a basic explanation, but this involves details on yeast types and fermentation temperatures and can cause more confusion than clarity. It’s highly technical information. Have you ever successfully explained to someone the difference between ales and lagers? I mean, have you ever walked away thinking: “From now on, this person will now easily be able to tell if any beer they drink is an ale or a lager.”

(Related: A Sour Beer Pickle: Can American Brewers Better Define this Beer Style?)

Perhaps the instinct to divide beer into two categories comes from wine, which is always divided into red and white. The thing about red vs. white wine is that it’s an easy distinction, even for beginners, and these categories inform glassware selection, food pairing, and personal preference. Most wine menus list their wines in these categories.

The issue with dividing beer into ales and lagers is that it doesn’t inform personal preference. Some people indeed prefer lagers, but these people are usually referring to golden lagers, which are just one of many lager expressions. It’s much more common to hear people ask, “What do you have that’s hoppy?” or “Do you have any dark beers?” rather than, “Which ales do you have?” 

There’s a reason we don’t see this division on menus; it’s not useful. And, yet, we still talk about these two categories as if they’re critical to beer enjoyment. Why not create a few more categories that better reflect the overall flavor profiles of beer? 

Without any accepted beer categories, menus are a hodgepodge. Some divide by bottle vs. draught, some by region, some by mood or key descriptor, and some not at all. Wouldn’t it be great if there were standard categories, like the ones used in wine, that would allow drinkers to quickly identify which beers they might like? When I was writing my book, I spent a lot of time thinking about which categories might be useful and landed on four that work well: Refreshing, Mellow, Striking and Captivating. 

If you check out the CraftBeer.com Beer Style Guide, you’ll see it offers six similar sensory categories, like Sour, Tart & Funky, Crisp & Clean and Dark & Roasty. These types of categories reflect what a drinker might be in the mood for and serve as a more informative guide than simply ales vs. lagers.

Examining How to Talk About Beer and Food Pairing

Another area I propose we re-examine is how we talk about beer and food pairing. In this area, there are a lot of different theories and approaches but the one that comes up the most is cut, complement or contrast. This is likely an expansion of the common “complement or contrast” theory used for food pairing with wine. The idea is that you can pair a wine with food that has similar traits (complement) or use a food item or ingredient that completes the wine by adding a taste or quality that is not present in the wine (contrast). 

(More: Beer and Food Pairing Guide)

The issue in transferring this theory to beer is that beer has a much wider spectrum of tastes and flavors. Wine relies, for the most part on a balance of alcohol, acidity, tannins and sweetness. Beer, however, can have any of a combination of tastes, including those listed for wine, as well as bitterness, salt and umami, and a much broader range of flavors. The “cut, complement or contrast” approach oversimplifies the large potential there is for flavor interactions.

Again, in an attempt to keep things simple, the guidance can cause confusion. Cut, complement and contrast are easy to explain and can result in solid pairings. They can, however, backfire horribly as they only take into account a narrow slice of the beer’s flavor profile. These three techniques work best when they are used together. This combined method is one of many approaches to food pairing. 

As with beer categorization, food pairing is an area that has inspired a lot of theories and techniques. So much so that it’s easy to get lost in all of the different instructions. Again, this will be a process of trial and error, finding a system that is both effective and easy to explain.  

The craft beer landscape has evolved so much since its inception. We now have access to an unending variety of beer styles and flavors to enjoy and share. Beer is a complex beverage and our responsibility as beer lovers is to communicate its many qualities as simply and as accurately as possible. 

The more we hone the way we communicate beer basics, the more people we can welcome to the delicious world of craft beer appreciation. This isn’t a change that will occur overnight, but rather an evolution. Through experimentation and critical problem solving, I’m confident we can settle on a new way to talk about beer basics. Let’s start exploring possibilities!

The post It’s Time to Rethink How We Talk About Craft Beer Basics appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Exciting initiatives have joined a roster of organizations and movements that have had their theoretical noses to the grindstone for years, from Queers Makin’ Beers to the Pink Boots Society to the relatively newer Fresh Fest. In 2020, we get to see all these projects in action. We’re talking to the leaders behind movements including #IAmCraftBeer, the Diverse Beer Writers Initiative, and Beer. Diversity. to examine where they gauge the community is in the push for greater inclusion in craft beer and what we have to look forward to in 2020.

#IAmCraftBeer: From Twitter Hashtag to Meetups

On September 9, 2019, Chalonda White — a.k.a. Afro Beer Chick — tweeted out a racist email she had received. Replies were of shock and disgust at the message as well as support for White, but the conversation didn’t end there. The Brewers Association’s Diversity Ambassador Dr. J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham saw the tweet and started the hashtag #IAmCraftBeer as a way for those who don’t feel represented in the beer scene to see each other.

“[I] think it’s really important to highlight the diversity that is already in the industry that perhaps we don’t see,” Jackson-Beckham says. “The hashtag was really more of an effort to say, ‘You know what, in this industry where we have lots of opportunities in front of us and lots of work to do and progress to make, to make sure everybody feels that they have space.’ It’s not like there’s no one in craft beer and it’s not like the people in craft beer are all the same person. I just thought it made sense to take a moment and highlight the fact that we are all already very individual, unique people.”

(More: Don’t Drink Another Beer Before Reading This)

Craft beer drinkers of every background emerged to tell their stories, which Jackson-Beckham has been archiving.

“I am so happy that something so ugly turned out to be something so beautiful,” White says. “People are always going to have their opinions who should and shouldn’t belong. At first I wasn’t even going to share the tweet, but I’m glad I did. […] When Dr. J started the whole hashtag, you’re seeing that it’s not just bearded white dudes drinking beer. It’s a lot of other people–people of different races, religions, cultures, colors. Beer is a rainbow, and I’m loving it.”

As inspiring as #IAmCraftBeer has been, White stresses that the movement must extend beyond social media to have a lasting impact.

“The conversation needs to kick off change. That’s what I’m not really seeing too much because I’m starting to see that people are using this diversity and inclusion as a trend,” she says.

As far as bringing a Twitter initiative to life in the real world, White has been taking charge alongside fellow advocates like Liz Garibay, curator of History on Tap and founder of the Chicago Brewseum. White and Garibay organize #IAmCraftBeer events at breweries in different cities where all beer drinkers can come meet each other.

“There are a lot of people who are talking about stuff, and there are people who are actually doing it,” Garibay says. “You need both. When you actually physically come together and inform yourself and educate yourself, that’s when real change happens.”

Opportunities to Affect Change

Jackson-Beckham, White and Garibay are all busy both talking about and acting on ways to improve representation, diversity and inclusion. Also an assistant professor of communication studies and beer scholar at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia, Jackson-Beckham runs her own diversity consultancy called Craft Beer For All. Coincidentally on the same day that White received the email that catalyzed #IAmCraftBeer, Jackson-Beckham launched the nonprofit Craft x EDU, offering grants, scholarships, education, support and resources to people of all backgrounds looking to work in beer.

The work that Jackson-Beckham is doing intersects frequently with the rallying and unifying that White and Garibay do with their own projects and their enthusiastic #IAmCraftBeer outreach. #IAmCraftBeer’s mission also includes partnering with breweries to brew collaboration beers for which the proceeds support the breweries’ local nonprofits as well as the upcoming #IAmCraftBeer innovation grant fund.

All three advocates express optimism about the year ahead along with specific areas where they see immediate opportunities for improvement.

(More: Aurora Hunting and Craft Beering in Fairbanks, Alaska)

“One of the things that I find interesting and often frustrating is the way that we perceive and talk about inclusion, equity, diversity efforts,” Jackson-Beckham says. “We tend to think of them as very end-goal … We expect that all of a sudden, places will immediately look different very quickly and that’s just, for me, both dangerous and wrong-headed. Equity and inclusion, diversity, these are organizational business goals. This is not a cheerleading effort that you lay on top. These are things that affect your profitability, they affect your compliance with federal law, they affect your human resources, they affect your corporate culture.”

Two specific actions White is calling for are improved representation in beer festivals’ advertising, and for breweries to seek out partnering with black-owned breweries.

“I’m telling these beer fests, ‘When you send me your media kit, if I do not see people that look like me, then don’t invite me,’” she says. “Some of these beer fests I have attended, I know people of color are there, I’ve taken pictures with them, so why is it that when you’re advertising for your beer fest, we are not included?”

Regarding collaborations as a conduit for representation, White tweeted her idea and says she immediately started hearing from breweries like 2nd Shift Brewing asking her for information on black-owned breweries they could contact.

“What happens is you’re bringing them into a community that might possibly often overlook them,” White encourages.

“Beer is the perfect place to set an example for other industries to start making some changes and bring people together.” Liz Garibay

“People are really into this. They want to see change, they want to see different types of people in those spaces and different people making beer,” Garibay says. “They’re really rooting for more female brewers and more brewers of color—we want that, we want to see that sort of rainbow. This is the place for it to happen. Beer is more than just a beverage–it’s a powerful cultural force with the ability to bring people together and the power to make change. This issue of diversity is one of those things that completely encompasses that mantra. Beer is the perfect place to set an example for other industries to start making some changes and bring people together.”

The Diverse Beer Writers Initiative

Yet another positive movement that sprung from #IAmCraftBeer is Beth Demmon’s Diverse Beer Writers Initiative. Demmon is a journalist in San Diego focusing largely on craft beer, and often specifically on diversity in beer. She wrote about #IAmCraftBeer for Vice’s food and drink vertical, Munchies, and one response to her story got Demmon thinking.

“I saw there was a woman who works in the beer community who is black and she basically said, ‘Why is there a white writer talking about a black beer issue?’” Demmon recalls, paraphrasing the question. “At first, I was a little upset. I was like, ‘Well, I’ve worked hard to build relationships with editors and I’m using my privilege to amplify a very important movement taking place. Then, I had to take a step back and say, ‘Well, you know, should I be the person talking about these types of issues? Who else could be a better person within that community to discuss this on a much wider platform?’”

Demmon was one of two recipients of the North American Guild of Beer Writers 2019 Diversity in Beer Writing Grant; her article about parenting in beer published here on CraftBeer.com. She experienced firsthand how such an initiative can open the beer world up to fresh voices.

“It is difficult to break into beer writing or any media because there’s a lot of gatekeeping in media and editorship,” Demmon says. “That’s not a critique, that’s just the way that it is … So when the North American Guild of Beer Writers puts together an opportunity that is open to anybody and is specifically looking to amplify underrepresented voices with kind of no strings attached, that’s the beauty of a grant, there’s no ulterior motive.

Demmon wanted to play an active role in welcoming more diversity into beer writing, seeking to help others receive opportunities similar to hers through the NAGBW grant, and to work toward more representation in the discussions we have about craft beer.

(More: Is 2020 the Year of the Low-Cal IPA?)

“I thought, if I’m really serious about changing the landscape of the craft beer community as a writer, as a consumer, as an advocate, I need to put my money where my mouth is and help promote the writers who don’t have the connections or the experience that I do to be able to tell [these] stories,” she explains.

Demmon launched the Diverse Beer Writers Initiative in which she offers free consulting to anyone from anywhere in the world looking to write about beer. The range of advice she offers caters to total beginners as well as more experienced writers, pertaining to everything from monetizing a blog to finding publications to write for. Demmon is excited about what she has seen people she’s worked with accomplish. Some have applied for the guild’s 2020 Diversity in Beer Writing Grant while others are pitching editors.

Between the Diversity in Beer Writing Grant and movements like Demmon’s initiative, 2020 offers hope that beer lovers will continue to hear more diverse voices and perspectives when they read about beer.

Ren Navarro’s Beer. Diversity.

Ren Navarro entered the craft beer world through sales. On the side, she began doing talks as Beer. Diversity., focused on improving inclusion in the community.

She thought consulting on and discussing diversity in beer would be a side hustle, but by May 2018, it was clear that enough breweries and businesses in the U.S. and Canada (where she calls home) had the need for guided conversations about representation. Beer. Diversity. became Navarro’s full-time calling.

Through Beer. Diversity., Navarro not only speaks at breweries and on various panels, but she also helps organize events aimed at speaking to underrepresented communities who work in or want to work in beer. One initiative is focused on bringing those voices to conference stages.

(Find a U.S. Brewery: Brewery Finder)

“You’ll look at a conference and be like, ‘Yeah, that’s this guy who always speaks at this thing, that’s that same guy who always speaks at that thing.’ We thought we’d just kind of divert it. Say we want a group of indigenous brewers speaking–[or] I want a group of black women. So, we have people who don’t normally get up on stage to be like, ‘Hello, this is my experience.’”

Through Beer. Diversity., Ren wants to reach both brewers and drinkers, encouraging breweries to expand their demographics and the general public to go out into the world and discover new breweries where they can be seen and participate in the beer community. Navarro teaches staff workshops to help breweries assess how they hire, how they address the public, and how they treat their employees. She says it’s important for these small businesses to create an open dialogue so everyone is heard.

Navarro says another vital goal for 2020 is continuing to “make room at the craft family table … I would really love to see more people of color, more differently-abled people, more LGBTQ+ people, more indigenous brewers.”

Navarro doesn’t want to see complacency hinder progress, but she’s cautiously optimistic about the year ahead.

“I’m still getting booked,” she says. “Until I don’t get booked, I don’t think we’ve done it yet. My calendar is filling up, I’m booking into the summer. That tells me that we’re not at that point where people are like, ‘Yeah, we’ve got it.’”

The post Outspoken Advocates for Diversity in Beer Enter 2020 Cautiously Optimistic appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Inspired by Failure

Peetz graduated from college with a Bachelor of Science in biology and a minor in sustainable development. A friend gave him a homebrew kit for graduation, and he started brewing his own beer. His first beer was an amber ale. It wasn’t good.

“It was an absolute failure,” he says. Regardless, he was excited. He realized brewing was the perfect blend of science and art.

He also loved the fact that brewing was something anyone could do.

(More: Breweries Experiment with Local Wild Beer Yeast)

“There’s no barrier to brewing,” says Peetz. “The field is open and level for everyone.”

Fermentation and yeast became a passion. He kept trying and experimenting—even after he exploded five gallons of beer all over his house and harvested dandelions for an infused beer (which was also terrible).

He returned to school and obtained a Master of Science in biology in 2012. During his studies, he worked with a researcher specializing in the science of brewing. He fell in love with beer and never looked back.

A Career in Yeast

Over the years, Peetz has specialized in yeast at a range of organizations and businesses, from the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus to the Brewing Science Institute to Gevo, a biofuels company. In 2015, he co-founded a brewing business that grew bigger than he wanted and took him away from working with yeast, so he left to start a new company in 2018—Propagate Lab, LLC in Golden, Colorado.

At Propagate, Peetz focuses on quality, openness and a full range of yeast strains. Unlike many labs, Propagate welcomes visitors.

“We have an open lab,” says Peetz. “We’re transparent and want people to see how our product is made.”

There are 65 different yeasts in the catalog, although Peetz has a list of more than 200. He calls himself a hoarder when it comes to yeast.

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“It’s kind of like having a zoo,” he says. “All these creatures do something different.”

Even so, he says 90 percent of what people buy is about a handful of yeast strains.

In addition to yeast, Propagate sells bacteria to breweries to produce acidity and tartness for sour beers. It offers a kit for seltzers, an area of growth for craft breweries. Peetz also advises breweries on fermentation, equipment, recipe creation and more.

“Matthew really knows what he’s doing and always has great suggestions on what yeast strain to use for a particular style beer,” says owner and brewer Jason Bilodeaux of Over Yonder Brewing Company in Golden and a Propagate client. He reached out to Peetz based on positive word of mouth reviews. “He’s also very approachable, which is important to me being new to this industry,” says Bilodeaux.

More Ways to Share His Knowledge

These days, Peetz is an accomplished brewer who not only advises craft breweries, but also teaches. He began lecturing in Denver-based Regis University’s Applied Craft Brewing Certificate Program when it started in 2014. Three years later, he became its first permanent director.

He shares his passion for yeast with his students, colleagues and clients.

“Yeast is the least respected ingredient,” he says, “yet it’s the most complicated one.”

He notes that yeast makes 10,000 different flavor compounds and wants people to know how much it contributes to beer’s flavor. His mantra is that brewers make the wort—the sugar water at the beginning of the brewing process—and yeast makes the beer.

(#SeektheSeal: Independent Craft Brewer Seal)

Kelissa Hieber, head brewer and owner at Goldspot Brewing Company in Denver, agrees. She completed the certificate program in 2015 and now teaches in it. She’s also a Propagate client.

Hieber uses yeast blends for Goldspot’s unique beer styles and has worked with Peetz to create the perfect flavor profile and balance. She partnered with him on one brewing collaboration that used a yeast at a much lower temperature than normal, which changed the beer entirely.

“We would have never thought to use the yeast in that way without Matthew,” she says, “and the beer was amazing.”

Peetz also uses his knowledge to provide feedback to brewers as a professional beer judge. He’s been judging homebrew competitions for about five years and served as a judge at the 2019 Great American Beer Festival.

In addition to working with yeast, he loves being part of the tight-knit brewing industry and knowing his customers.

“Most people see other brewers as collaborators, not competitors,” says Peetz. “Plus, you’re making something you get to enjoy in the process.”

The post Matthew Peetz Says Working with Yeast is a Little Like Running a Zoo appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Bell’s Light-Hearted is among the most recent entrants in the low-cal craft beer space. The Michigan craft brewery tweaks the timeless, award-winning recipe of Two Hearted to arrive at a lower 110 calorie count. Bell’s Brewery Communication Manager Josh Smith says the reason for creating the low-cal IPA was simple: beer lover demand.

“We recognized that there was an opportunity to give beer lovers–Two Hearted fans or not–an option that had everything they were looking for: lower calories, a lower ABV and all of the deliciousness that is Two Hearted,” he says.

Bell’s Light Hearted Ale is among the most recent low-cal IPA releases. Odell Brewing introduced Good Behavior (110 calories, 4% ABV) in fall 2019, echoing similar motivation of meeting beer drinkers in the “better for you” beer space.

“We love light, sessionable beers after a bike ride, hike, or summiting a 14er…Most of the beers in the market that fit this bill are light lagers and we simply love hops too much to not try to create a lighter, lower calorie IPA that would be perfect for all these moments,” says Odell Brewing’s Community Manager Kristen Wood.

Deschutes Brewery took the opportunity to take the trend even further by combining it with the hazy IPA beer style. The result is their recently introduced WOWZA! hazy pale ale (100 calories, 4g carbs, 4% abv). According to Deschutes’ VP of Marketing Neal Stewart, the creation of WOWZA came from the brewery’s ambitious innovation program.

(#SeektheSeal: Seek the Independent Craft Brewer Seal)

“We saw an opportunity to innovate within this space while offering something that is very much on trend, which is what led us to a hazy pale ale. We wanted to ‘embrace the impossible’…[brew a] low ABV hazy pale ale that checks all these boxes and still tastes great.”

Oskar Blues fell back on its decades of experience making big, burly IPAs to craft its low-cal IPA. Aaron Baker, Oskar Blues’ senior marketing manager, says the inspiration behind the brewery’s buzzed-about One-y Low-Cal Hazy IPA (100 calories, 4% abv) was the ability to appeal to drinkers who have enjoyed previous IPAs from Oskar Blues.

“We wanted to brew a beer that could satisfy a range of beer drinkers, from hardcore IPA lovers to those who prefer something more sessionable,” he says.

Brewing a Low-Cal IPA

With the influx of low-cal IPAs comes the introduction of new ingredients that help remedy the complex equation of delivering the full-flavored beers drinkers have come to expect, but with lower calories and ABV.

Atlanta’s Monday Night Brewing made light of its own new creation, Lay Low IPA (90 calories, 3.2% ABV), in a press release, calling it “something totally unoriginal.” But the brewery explained it’s a difficult style to perfect.

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“It turns out that’s pretty hard to achieve,” says co-founder Jonathan Baker, “but using science, dedication, and the spirit of the mighty tiger, we think we’ve finally nailed it.”

To achieve a balanced body with traditional hazy and West Coast IPAs, one common technique for brewers is to boost the sugars in the malt bill to level out the bitterness, which adds to the beer’s calorie count. A new fix is the addition of monk fruit, which adds sweetness but not calories. The wonder fruit is present in both Dogfish Head’s Slightly Mighty (95 calories, 4% abv, 3.6g carbs, 1g protein and 0g fat per 12oz serving) and Hi-Wire Brewing’s new Go Getter low-calorie IPA (100 calories, 4% abv).

Firestone Walker took a very tactical approach to the creation of Flyjack low-cal IPA (96 calories, and 4% abv), delicately weighing how many calories they could allocate to drive a memorable hazy hop flavor in a 12oz package. After accounting for the 4 percent of alcohol content (which seems to be the standard level for low-cal IPAs), Walker says the brewery had about a quarter of the calorie allocation (roughly 24 calories) to hit the requisite flavor notes, which was a “riddle and a huge challenge for the team.”

The solution for Walker and team was the addition of the new Strata hop, which is designed to deliver more hop aroma in a smaller quantity, along with an “expressive” yeast strain which they say heightens the esther and fruitiness of the beer, creating a flavor-laden beer at a lower calorie count.

“Personally and professionally, I am happy to have a beer I can drink that spaces out the calorie count; I drink a lot of tasty beer,” says founder David Walker.

(Editor’s Pick: Sierra Nevada’s Resilience IPA Inspires Aussie Brewers After Devastating Wildfires)

Low-Cal Could Prove to be Big Win

According to Neal Stewart, Deschutes’ low-cal hazy pale ale was launched in conjunction with the news that the brewery was to be the sponsor of Portland Trail Blazers Radio Network back in October. The soft launch quickly led to a huge sales uptick as WOWZA! became Deschutes’ best-selling beer at the Moda Center, which is where the Blazers play their NBA games.

With a clear hit on their hands, Stewart and the team decided to expedite their launch schedule to align it better with a period where many drinkers become more calorie-conscious: January.

“Distributor orders wiped out our initial forecasts and we’ve added several additional brews to the schedule to keep up with demand,” said Stewart.

While people drinking a low-cal IPA wouldn’t technically be participating in the popular month-long sobriety trend dubbed Dry January, being thoughtful with their beer purchasing and consumption habits is a clear consumer trend that doesn’t seem to have a 30 day expiration date.

The post Is 2020 the Year of the Low-Cal IPA? appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

I’ve got a beer in front of me as I write this. It’s Stone IPA, my go-to. Go grab yourself a beer you find yourself going back to again and again. It’s a rare thing these days, but apparently, so is this experience–drinking with intent.

My name is Simon Nielsen. I’m head brewer at Central Waters Brewing Company in Amherst, Wisconsin. If you could share one thing about yourself with me, what would it be? Mine: connecting with others and using beer as the vehicle to do so was the main reason I was drawn to craft beer to begin with. There are plenty of beers for people who want to drink beer alone. But I want to talk about creating connection.

You know the first thing that tells me a person knows how to drink beer? They look at it!

Did you pour yourself a glass of your go-to beer yet? Good. What do you see? Give me a few descriptors out loud. I know, I know, I am not actually sitting with you, but humor me. This helps your brain know you are drinking this beer on purpose. This is going to cause some tension within yourself–this is important–but think of it as ambiance for now.

Give that thing a good swirl. We’re releasing the aromatics and looking to see what kind of head this beer has and can sustain. Ask yourself, “What is this beer actually made of?”

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By intentionally looking at and agitating the beer in order to experience it more deeply, you are activating the 90 percent of the experience that you aren’t always aware of.  Your brain takes notice that you aren’t blindly drinking and unconsciously begins to pick out nuances you can’t consciously comprehend. Your brain is going to communicate this to you through feelings. Do you ever feel like you know an aroma or flavor in a beer but can’t find the word for it? This happens when we taste foods that carry us back to our childhood or a distant memory. I’m a sucker for those deeper experiences. Without connecting to our unconscious, the best we can experience is 10 percent of our beer (or anything, for that matter).

I realize I am talking to you like we are actually sharing this beer together (fourth wall broken). However, it is possible to actually share a very similar experience emotionally as I write this and as you read it, so please, stick with me a little longer. It’ll be worth it.

Besides, you haven’t finished your beer yet.

The disconnect we experience between our conscious and unconscious is not only the cause for our inability to describe beer flavor and aroma, but it is also the same cause for our inability to connect with others. The principles involved in beer tasting, and even drinking, reach far beyond beer–they speak to our inner character. Show me how someone drinks a beer and I will tell you what they value and want out of life.

(More: If Taste is All You Care About in Beer, You’re Missing the Point)

Now, smell the beer. Tease the thing at first, don’t shove your nose straight in the glass. Beer isn’t a gentle creature, and it will overwhelm your senses to the point that you won’t experience everything. Pass the glass under your nose a few times first. Take a few short, sharp sniffs. Breathe it in. Be overwhelmed. This is the time you want to describe what you are experiencing in at least three words–but the more the better! Say them out loud and make this experience 10 times better.

Finally, taste the thing. Release the tension. Notice the beginning, middle, and end. What do you think? What are you feeling?

Follow these steps not only to deepen your experience with the beer but to continually experience this pleasure indefinitely.

Being intentional about drinking beer causes your brain to release as many of those magical little pleasure chemicals as possible. Isn’t that what we are trying to do when we drink? Isn’t that what we are trying to do in life?

I would much rather spend my life sharing and experiencing my beer, my food, my wine, with the ambiance, relationships, and love that develops from embracing the tension of being face-to-face with others. Enjoying those things intentionally brings new depth and meaning to them. Enjoying those things in a way that allows us to connect with our experiences and each other beyond the sample-sized pours I’m hocking at those beer festivals. Let’s embrace each other, the experience, the beer a little deeper. Isn’t that what drew you to craft beer in the first place?

The post Don’t Drink Another Beer Before Reading This appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

The rise of craft beer has changed all that. Today, adjuncts are celebrated.

As an adjunct, rice has long been used in mass-produced beers to increase the alcohol level while maintaining a light body. Now rice is taking top billing as craft brewers are recognizing all that it can offer.

Rice as a Brewing Grain

There are many rice options to use when brewing beer nowadays, including whole rice, syrup and flakes. Craft brewers are using the ingredients in three different ways: to help in the brewing process itself, to serve as a fermentable source of sugar and to add flavor.

“Rice is an awesome grain that’s versatile and can offer a huge influence of flavors in beer,” says Ben Acord, head brewer at Evasion Brewing in McMinnville, Oregon. Evasion is a gluten-free brewery that uses rice in all but two of its beers.

Acord started off using rice hulls to help in the mash, which is the mixture of malt or adjuncts and hot water that starts the brewing process. Rice hulls, also known as husks, are the hard outer coating of the grain. Acord used the hulls to create an effective filtering bed so the mash doesn’t get stuck.

“A lot of breweries will add rice hulls to aid the process,” says Acord.

The challenge is getting the right amount of hulls. Too many and they bind together and clog grain handling systems. Not enough and you don’t have an effective filter bed.

(More: Denizens Goes ‘Bock to the Future’ to Brew Recipe Found in Smithsonian Archives)

Now Acord uses malted rice which has the grain and the hull intact. In addition to the hulls, it has the added benefit of available sugar from the malt.

He cites the best advice he received when he was learning how to brew: “Know your malts. Make the best base beer you can with the malts you have and whatever hops you put in it will only make that beer better.” So that’s what he does. As an example, Evasion’s IPAs use three different kinds of rice malt in each.

Acord and many others who make gluten-free beer say products that have come onto the market over the last 15 years—like Eckert Malting and Brewing’s line of rice malts, Briess Malt & Ingredients Company’s rice syrup and BSG CraftBrewing’s flaked rice—are game changers for brewing. The ingredients can replace malt as the sugar source and add flavor.

Acord references Evasion’s Blonde Ale as the brewery’s best example of how rice influences flavor.

“The Blonde Ale is rice and millet and Saaz hops only,” he says. “The rice malts really lend themselves to crackery biscuit flavors that meld nicely with the Saaz hops.”

Black Rice’s ‘Unexpected’ Umami Quality

Rice isn’t just for gluten-free craft beers; it’s incorporated for flavor in traditional brewing as well. Anderson Valley Brewing Company in Boonville, California, currently makes one rice beer in its portfolio: Black Rice Ale. Brewmaster Fal Allen tried black rice for the first time in 2018 and found its dark and savory notes a delightful surprise.

“It had an umami quality I hadn’t expected,” he says. “The flavors were nutty, smooth and delicious, and I immediately started thinking about how I could incorporate it into a beer.”

First Allen cooked with black rice to learn more about it. Then he conducted some brewing experiments. He started to make Anderson Valley’s Black Rice Ale in 2018 and it went into cans in fall 2019.

(Recipe: IPA Risotto)

In addition to the unusual flavors, the black rice provides a dark inky color to a light hoppy ale.

“It has the body of a pilsner and the flavors of a lighter German dark lager,” he says. “It’s an unusual combination.”

Because he uses the rice for flavor rather than as a fermentable, the brewing process isn’t much different than the traditional approach. Instead, Allen’s challenge was finding a supplier.

“Black rice comes from China and is not a common type of rice,” he says. “It was once called ‘forbidden rice’ in China and was originally allowed to be consumed only by the royalty.”

Similar to Evasion, Anderson Valley uses rice hulls to create a filter bed while rinsing sugar from the grains for the Black Rice Ale, as well as most of the brewery’s higher gravity beers and those that contain more than 40 percent wheat.

Moody Tongue’s Chef-Brewmaster Pays Homage to Chinese Culture

Another new rice beer release is the Toasted Rice Lager from Moody Tongue in Chicago. The lager was originally a 2018 ceremonious release in China during the Chinese New Year and later offered as a limited release at the brewery’s tasting room. As of fall 2019, the beer is available in draft and bottles throughout the United States.

Jared Rouben, Moody Tongue’s president and brewmaster, and a Culinary Institute of America graduate, brings his chef’s mindset to the brewing process. He created the Toasted Rice Lager to accompany and as a homage to Chinese food—his favorite cuisine.

During his travels throughout China, Rouben learned to love the flavors, tastes and aromas of the different regions. He wanted to create a beer that offered balance and didn’t overshadow the food. By using rice, he could elevate an ingredient that’s celebrated throughout Chinese cuisine and keep the beer light and refreshing.

Toasting the rice creates nutty aromatics.

(More: Two Ancient American Beers Light a New Path at Dos Luces Brewery)

“Light lagers aren’t easy,” says Rouben. “Your beer has to be incredibly right or it’s wrong.”

He uses rice in the mash and doesn’t encounter any brewing challenges.

“We do use rice in some of our other beers, but we don’t speak to them as rice beers because they’re not part of the aromatics,” says Rouben.

All three brewers use whole grains for their beers to maintain the taste of the rice, which, along with the other challenges, are more expensive than other rice forms. They all agree it’s worth it.

“Using the whole grain has a more traditional taste to me,” says Acord. “But there are a lot of great beers using rice flakes and syrups.”

The post Craft Brewers Find Flavor and Flexibility with Rice appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

We know this because Jeff’s Portola Coffee has been used in 13 Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup-winning coffee beers since 2010. Portola Coffee beers have nabbed 21 medals in total including the San Diego International Beer Festival competition and California Craft Brewers Cup by collaborating with four breweries: Pizza Port, Beachwood BBQ & Brewing, Tustin Brewing, and Gamecraft Brewing–all local breweries to Portola Coffee in sunny Southern California.

I sat down with Jeff and some award-winning craft brewers that use his beans to see what makes a great coffee beer.

(VOTE NOW: Great American Beer Bars 2020)

Q: How does one craft a great coffee beer?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: Just like a brewer wouldn’t just order hops off of a shelf, they shouldn’t do that for coffee. The key is to strategize. A brewer is very good at sourcing their grains, their yeast, their hops, but most of them don’t know coffee…they may drink it, but they may not understand the chemistry, solubility, extraction efficiency–or how beer is a solvent and what it’s doing to pull the flavors out to create what they want. It’s not just a great brewer and a great coffee roaster coming together, because there’s already a lot of that going on out there. It’s always a conversation with me.

Julian Shrago, Beachwood Brewing: I have a very cerebral understanding of his signature flavor profile. There’s a thread that runs through all his coffees, which is primarily an intense fruitiness and his roast profiles create sustained flavors when they’re in beer. Irrespective of beer style, I treat everything as an ingredient, and treat nothing as an additive. So, with a beer like Mocha Machine, which has done really well in competition, the base beer doesn’t exist as some other beer on its own. If you tried it without coffee, it might come across as some weird doppelbock. It’s super fruit-forward with restrained roast as the coffee brings roast, it brings bitterness, it brings a different type of acidity to the finished product.

(READ: American Brewers Fall for Spicy Amburana Wood)

Q: Why so many medals in competition?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: I’m 100 percent convinced that a significant factor in our success is based on sourcing quality beans. We source coffees that are unique, rare, and some have never been exported to the U.S. before. We go through great lengths to hand-select our coffees because they taste amazing. So if you’re not starting with quality coffee, forget an award. The same way a brewer is selecting the finest hops and malts, coffee’s also up there.

Q: How are hops similar, or different, from coffee in a beer?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: What makes both great are their volatile aromatics. Most of what we taste is what we smell, so both hoppy beer and coffee beers should be consumed fresh as they’re both subject to oxidation. Both are agricultural products and can change from year to year as well, which can pose different problems for the brewer or roaster to adjust their process for consistency. Coffee is different from hops as I’m not just delivering green beans to the brewer. I have a very specific roasting technique just for coffee beers.

Q: How big of a role does the origin of coffee play in a beer?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: Origin doesn’t play as big of a role, to be honest. Like someone may say they love Guatemalan coffee, where I can appreciate that, they essentially just had a good Guatemalan coffee… There’s nothing about that country that will make it categorically better than a Costa Rican or Ethiopian coffee. It all has to do with the varietal selection, the health of the trees, the microclimate, the processing, all that stuff is really what makes that bean what it is.

Julian Shrago, Beachwood Brewing: Mocha Machine has medaled with three different coffee origins–not only that, three different continents. It’s kind of like medaling with the same hop varietals grown in Washington, Oregon, or Idaho. As long as you know what characteristics you’re going for, you can achieve predictable results.

(READ: Musings on Utopias)

Q: What’s the best way to introduce coffee in beer?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: Cold steeped grounds post-fermentation prior to carbonation is the best. We’ve done it every way…we’ve pulled shots of espresso, added cold brew, in the whirlpool, and you just don’t get the intensity of flavor as cold steeped grounds.

Q: What about the dreaded green bell pepper off flavor that’s common in coffee beers?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: We adjusted our roast profile based on that flaw. Not only that, we have a separate roast curve for coffee beers in general from our standard roast profile for drinking coffee. The reason we did that was to adjust for the bell pepper issue. We’ve developed a curve that we’ve successfully volatilized whatever compound caused it. Nobody knows what causes it. Here’s the thing, green bell pepper notes are time-dependent because we certainly didn’t taste it when the beer was a couple of months old. There’s something happening over time, and we don’t know that it’s oxidation…it may not be. If we’re going to be scientific about it, it may not even be the coffee that causes the flavor, but rather something with the coffee compounds that are causing the conversion of that flavor in the beer. We don’t know.

Julian Shrago, Beachwood Brewing: We did have an older batch of Tovarish Stout that trended toward that green bell pepper after a couple months, which was fine early on. So Jeff created this new roast profile that still captured all the signature profiles we were looking for, but he was able to drive off all that raw green vegetable characteristic. So if you were to grab a year-old coffee beer of ours now, it might not be as dynamic of a beer due to age, but it won’t have that green bell pepper note.

(READ: The Lighter, Brighter Side of Coffee Beers)

Q: What’s that moment like when you’re tasting a finished beer for the first time with your coffee in it?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: I’m always breaking it down. I’m OCD and always striving to be the best, but of course, I enjoy it, but I’m analytical about it. If it’s not as good as I’d hoped I’m bummed. If I know a beer that I’ve collabbed on gets submitted to competition and it doesn’t win, we’ll get together and change it up. Like Tustin’s Portola Breakfast Stout is probably on its fourth or fifth year and it just started winning. That beer is a culmination of tweaking, where one year we got close to winning, so adjustments were made.

Jerrod Larsen, Tustin Brewing: I just let Jeff do whatever with my beers. It’s a true collaboration where I hand him the base beer and he’ll taste it and decide what needs to happen on the coffee side. I do the beer I want and he does the coffee side. It’s great. Early on I wasn’t getting anything at GABF for a few years, but we started adding dosing with more coffee and that’s what tipped Portola Breakfast Stout over the edge.

Julian Shrago, Beachwood Brewing: When Jeff tastes one of our beers with his coffee, he’s able to dig out the full expression of his coffee in the beer.

Q: Aside from porters and stouts, what are some other beers that marry well with coffee?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: Name a beer style and I think we’ve done it. Recently we did something new with Eagle Rock in LA with a hazy coffee IPA; I introduced a method we’ve never used before. Firstly, I didn’t want coffee to dominate with typical coffee flavors, so in this case, I wanted to pull off the things that come off the quickest and easiest, and that’s the coffee acids. So we did whole bean introduced on the hot side in the whirlpool, and we pre-soaked the beans with hot water so when we went to dump it in, we wanted the beans to give everything they have on contact. It turned out great!

With so much pure soul-awakening coffee aromatics bursting out of Jeff’s Portola Coffee beer collaborations, there’s a case to be made that coffee beers are basically breakfast IPAs. Sure, coffee beers will never overtake the IPA in popularity, but if you’re ever jet-lagged around Orange County, California, there’s a solid cuppa beer waiting to jolt whatever ails you.

The post The Mad Scientist Behind Dozens of Medal-Winning Coffee Beers appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Brewery-Run Beer Clubs

Twelve years ago, The Lost Abbey launched a crusade of craft beer by unveiling the Patron Saints and Sinners Club. According to The Lost Abbey, it is considered to be the oldest currently operating brewery-run beer club in the U.S. For an annual fee, members got beers otherwise unavailable to the masses. Remember Duck Duck Gooze, Yellow Bus and Cable Car — the mythical beers that remain “white whales”? Those were only released to Patron Saints and Sinners beer club members.

The program was on hiatus between 2010 and 2018 due to workforce constraints. Since relaunching the club in 2018, it has remained sold out.

“We gave our original members the first option to renew,” explains Adam Martinez, media and marketing director at The Lost Abbey, “but there is a waitlist to join should spots become available.”

The brewery hosts a pickup party based on when the next barrel-aged beer is projected to be ready.

(READ: Extraordinary Beer Gifts)

“We give our members a chance to come in and taste the beer for free,” says Martinez. “Most of these bottles run $40 so it’s nice to let them taste the beer without having to open one.”

The Lost Abbey won’t ship beers, but it does allow members to designate people (a “proxy”) to pick up the beers on their behalf. Beers for Patron Saints and Sinners members are small-batch and usually produce between 100 and 200 cases at a time. A select number of beers that yield 200 cases may be available to the general public.

“Traveling around the country to different beerfests I run into members who don’t live in California,” says Martinez. “There’s a lot of comradery, and just around Thanksgiving we were seeing lots of pictures of members opening bottles with their families. It has a real social club aspect.”

Why have a beer club? Why not just make beer and host special releases?

“As we’ve all gotten older,” explains Martinez, “we don’t have time to sit outside a brewery overnight. The craft beer community, especially at our age, have bought houses and had kids. They can’t camp in a parking lot, and we understand that. We ourselves don’t want to watch them overnight. We created a membership for the people who really wanted the beers and a guarantee they get them.”

“I didn’t know of a brewery membership existing before The Lost Abbey,” says Chad Yakobson, Crooked Stave’s founder and brewmaster, “so I believe we were the third to have a membership program.” Crooked Stave ran its program, Cellar’s Reserve, between 2012-2019 (skipping a year in 2015).

“We’re now rebranding our program to be the Cooper’s Collective,” says Yakobson. “Our membership program has been extremely successful for us. The idea to start our program was that we were so small that we didn’t even have a brewhouse, and I was brewing inside another brewery. We had so little of the beers we made that we couldn’t distribute them out into the world. So we decided to reward people who were into us, into our brand, and make beers for them and release them to them first.”

“When you do this you create loyal followers,” says Yakobson. “You create people who represent your brand. The beers I created for them allowed me to think outside the box and get creative.”

The new Cooper’s Collective will now feature two tiers, released quarterly, and come in three-bottle or six-bottle memberships. If members cannot pick up their bottles in person or through a proxy, then Crooked Stave is also beginning a partnership with Tavour to get members’ bottles shipped to where they live.

(READ: Musings on Utopias)

Beer Clubs Work to Customize What’s in the Box

Started in 2013, Tavour features beers from 47 different states and over 600 independently owned craft breweries. Via the Tavour app, subscribers get access to two different beers each day, and from those offerings build their custom boxes for delivery.

“Our founders came from Amazon and Microsoft,” says Megan Birch, marketing manager for Tavour. “They noticed there wasn’t a big selection of craft beers in grocery stores, but they knew there were so many good craft breweries out there. They wanted to get those beers to craft beer fans around the country, so they started working with local Washington breweries and actually bottled their beer for them and hand delivering it to people’s doorsteps.”

Six years later, the company now ships beers to a few hundred thousand subscribers.

Breweries that supply Tavour ship beer directly to the company. Those beers are stored in a temperature-controlled warehouse where they are immediately featured on the Tavour app and shipped as soon as each box is filled by a subscriber or as part of a regularly scheduled subscription.

Beer subscribers have two main choices for shipments. They can build their own box a beer at a time, or they can subscribe to various themed boxes such as “Hoppy and Juicy, Dark and Intense, Sour and Funky, Light and Crisp, and Cider, or you can mix and match all of those,” says Birch. Those are available in six or 12-beer packages sent every month, two months, or three months.

Beer Drop is one of the newest beer subscription clubs on the scene, launching in 2019 by two brothers, Bryce and Bret Forester. This Colorado-based beer subscription service differentiates itself by aiming to be “built for the customer,” says Bryce Forester.

“We wanted something that we actually wanted – beer from the local breweries– [and to] be able to pick what I wanted in the box itself.”

A truly unique offering from Beer Drop is its custom-coded recommendation engine, which takes information provided by the subscriber about preferred beers and beer styles and makes recommendations for what beers Beer Drop has available.

(VOTE: Great American Beer Bars 2020)

To build a custom box on Beer Drop, subscribers pick five categories from Top Picks, Hoppy, Sour, Dark, Lagers, Belgian, Malty, Fruity. Subscribers then have the option to upgrade to Beer Drop Plus or Beer Drop Ultimate, which upgrades to taproom-only choices and special releases.

“You can pick two hoppy beers, a Belgian beer, a dark beer and you can say ‘best of the best,’” says Bryce, “and we’ll look through the list of all the beers we’ve built relationships with and give you the best version of that with whatever plan you end up picking.”

Subscribers can go with what’s recommended or swap out beer after the fact.

Beer Drop is currently working with 30 different Colorado breweries and has plans to expand with other states’ breweries. What sets this beer subscription apart is the format it makes beers available to subscribers. Depending on the beers chosen, Beer Drop will include crowlers as part of its offerings.

Beer clubs reward craft beer fans for their support and they bring rare beers, small-batch beers, and beers that a brewery would otherwise never be able to get across state lines, much less outside their city, to people who are eager to drink them and share them. It carries much less risk than beer trading and offers another level of community that has long been a foundation for craft beer.

The post Want Rare or Out-of-Reach Beers? Join the Club – a Beer Club appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

If I had two wishes that I could make this holiday season, the first would be for all the children of the world to join hands and sing in a spirit of harmony and peace, and the second would be to revive what I remember true Christmas ales or winter warmers to be. That’s it.

Oh, and revenge against my enemies!

“Christmas ale” used to be an actual thing with an actual history. In Europe, brewers used to (and still) make special ales to be served around the holidays. We’re talking beers like Bush de Noel and Scaldis Noel (Dubuisson), St. Bernardus Christmas Ale or N’ice Chouffe (Brasserie D’Achouffe/Duvel). As I see it, these beers all share commonalities. Generally, they are dark, big (7%-plus ABV) and spiced and similar to Belgian-style grand crus or English-styles strong ales. Some examples include holiday spices, like cinnamon, ginger or cardamom, but carefully selected yeast and masterful fermentation often offers a spice complexity to the beers on their own.

(READ: 12 Beers of Christmas)

The goal of the holiday ale beer experience should be celebratory;  meant to be shared, and should have you asking yourself when drank, “Do I have visions of sugar plums dancing in my head?”

If it doesn’t, then I would be disappointed.

Do I have visions of sugar plums dancing in my head?

Do brewers still make these beers? Am I just blind to them? Perhaps the warmer winters have necessitated a change in the beer menu from malt- and yeast-driven beers to holiday IPAs. Or have these types of beers become memories of antiquity that signal I am becoming that grumpy elder millennial? Soon I’ll be reviewing whiskey and yelling at clouds.

(VOTE NOW: Great American Beer Bars 2020)

There’s nothing wrong with winter seasonal IPAs and holiday pastry stouts. Some of the most classic Christmas beers from craft breweries are exactly those styles. But there isn’t much difference between those tropical IPAs and coconut stouts from beers from the rest of the year. Beer, like many sensory pleasures, transports us back in time or to a place. If there is ever a time of year to embrace nostalgia, it’s this time of year. Yes, we as a culture have blown it with anything pumpkin spice, but cardamom isn’t “basic.” We can still enjoy that, right?

So really my wish is, if you’re reading this, reach out and let me know that craft brewers still are making holiday ales and Christmas beers, somewhere. I’d love to get my hands on one if you think it’s worthy of sharing over the holidays. That. Then all-encompassing power. Then, $30 million every month to me – tax-free, in a swiss bank account -, then revenge against all my enemies. And of course, for all the children of the world to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace.

If that’s your wish too, here are some beers that include one or more of those elements for you to enjoy during this holiday season.

Some Combination of Dark, Strong and/or Spiced Beers from Small & Independent U.S. Craft Breweries

•  A Christmas Beer | Exile Brewing Co. | Des Moines, IA
• Belgian Christmas Ale | pFriem Family Brewers | Hood River, OR
• Ebenezer’s Heavy Metal Christmas Ale | 105 West Brewing Co. | Castle Rock, CO
• Three Ryes Men | Reuben’s Brews | Seattle
• Buche De Noel | Burns Family Artisan Ales | Denver
• Turtle Tinsel Christmas Ale | Salty Turtle Beer Co. | Surf City, NC
• Bourbon Barrel-aged Kringle | Braxton Labs | Bellevue, KY
• 2019 Father Christmas | Barrel of Monks | Boca Raton, FL
• Lebkuchen Christmas Ale |Atwater Brewery | Detroit, MI
• We Needed a Coffin | Mad Cap Brew Co. | Kent, OH
• Childhood Memories | Over Yonder Brewing Co. | Golden, CO
• Gingerbread Stout | Talisman Brewing Co. | Ogden, UT
• Kacey’s Kristmas Ale | Rohrbach Brewing Company | Rochester, NY
• Ghost of Christmas | Galaxy Brewing Co. | Binghamton, NY
• Yule Shoot Your Rye Out | Hamburg Brewing Company | Hamburg, NY
• Cold Mountain | Highland Brewing | Asheville, NC
• Figgy Pudding | Block 15 Brewing | Corvallis, OR
• AdAmAn Holiday Ale | Pikes Peak Brewing | Monument, CO

The post My Holiday Ale Wish for You appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Even After Prohibition, Negativity Toward Beer Lingered

At the beginning of World War II in 1941, eight years after passage of the 21st Amendment ending Prohibition, 7,700 jurisdictions in 12,400 local option elections voted to be dry. There even was a proposal in the U.S. Senate to ban alcohol from military training camps. It aimed to create “moral zones” that would outlaw alcohol and other “immoral” activities within 10 miles of the camps. Modern Brewery Age wrote, “The ghost of national prohibition has returned and will attempt to come to life under the guise of wartime need.”

Prohibition activists were successful in promoting an unsavory general public perception that treated beer and distilled spirits with similar disdain.

“From the mid-19th century into the 20th century, beer came to be associated with the working man, who was drinking outside the home at a saloon or tavern,” says Theresa McCulla, resident beer scholar at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and curator of the American Brewing History Initiative, a project supported by CraftBeer.com publishers the Brewers Association. “Temperance advocates were especially critical of saloons’ popularity among the nation’s many new immigrants. Criticism of saloons played an important role in leading to Prohibition.”

(MORE: Heroes of the Brewhouse)

The Brewing Industry’s Wartime Campaign

That perception continued into World War II while the country united behind the war.

The brewing industry’s wartime campaign “Morale is a Lot of Little Things” appeared in widely distributed magazines. That included “Colliers”, “Time”, “Life”, “Look”, “Ladies Home Journal”, and almost a dozen farm magazines. Many of these ads show everyday scenes such as a man exiting a barber’s chair, a picnicking family, or someone fly fishing.

One frequent theme of the brewing industry’s wartime campaign depicts a soldier, sailor, or marine in an inset picture writing home. The ad’s central image shows him waxing nostalgically on activities such as lying in a hammock with his wife bringing him a beer, smelling the grilling steaks at a family barbecue, or fishing for trout. The implied purpose was to encourage writing to the troops, an effort for which the U.S. Army, Navy and Marines reportedly gave recognition to the United States Brewers Foundation.

The ads conjured up the small pleasures the soldiers were fighting for. The ads also described beer as “a beverage of moderation.” And it ended with words similar to, “A glass of beer or ale — not of crucial importance, surely…yet it is little things like this that help mean home to all of us, that do so much to build morale–ours and his.”

Making Beer Belong in America After World War II

In 1944, as the war entered its final year, companies started preparing and planning for post-war America. Brewers were well aware that the war years from 1941 to 1945 saw beer consumption grow from 56.8 million barrels to 80 million. Recognizing the war’s end as a potential moment for re-imagining the role of beer in America, the Brewers Foundation hired J. Walter Thompson, one of the largest PR firms in the world, to develop an advertising campaign.

As expected, post-war America saw a huge increase in consumer spending as goods became more available. The GIs returned home, many having learned to like beer during their time in Europe, got married, bought homes and appliances, and moved to the suburbs.

In this environment, the PR firm conducted a national survey of beer consumption to provide a focus for its campaign. The study found, not surprisingly, that the majority of beer drinkers were men between the ages of 21-40. The study found non-drinkers supported Prohibition by about 60 percent. It also found that beer was neither socially acceptable nor suitable for home consumption. The firm understood that “The home is the ultimate proving ground for any product.” And, “Once accepted in the home, it becomes part of established ways of living.” So the “Beer Belongs” campaign was born. It was conducted through the major mass media magazines.

The Beer Belongs Campaign Uses Art to Change Perception

The Beer Belongs campaign served several purposes. The two most important: make beer socially acceptable so that it would become a part of American life, and to stave off efforts to resurrect Prohibition. A third purpose was to recognize women’s roles as the purchasers and servers of beer in their homes.

Jim McGreevy, the president and chief executive officer of the Beer Institute (successor to the Brewers Foundation), says that the series “Home Life in America” was pivotal in changing perception of beer in America in the 1940s and 1950s.

“Whether being served while friends picnic on the beach or being the celebratory drink of choice after a marriage proposal, the images from this campaign made these and many other occasions synonymous with beer,” McGreevy says.

(MORE: Form & Function: Brewery Visits with an Architect)

Campaign Hires Well-Known Artists to Create Idyllic American Scenes that Include Beer

Commissioned art by renowned artists of the time was at the heart of the first series of the Beer Belongs advertisements. These notable artists include Lucille Corcos, Doris Lee, Julien Binford, Marianne Appel, Fletcher Martin and William Palmer. Their style ran the gamut from modern primitist to social realist and included a variety of painting techniques. Doris Lee’s “Harvest Time” now hangs in the Smithsonian’s Reynolds Center for American Art. It’s one of the pieces that shows these works went beyond advertising art and went into museums and private collections.

Virginia Mecklenburg, chief curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum, notes that, “All of these were well-known artists whose names would resonate with readers.” The participation of these artists helped to legitimize the campaign and generate interest.

The artworks depicted scenes of Americana — Midwest farms, a baseball game — while including beer as a part of the scene. Reinforcing text would read: “In this America of tolerance and good humor, of neighborliness and pleasant living, perhaps no beverage more fittingly belongs than a wholesome beer. And the right to enjoy this beverage of moderation…this, too, is part of our American heritage of personal freedom.”

Each ended with “America’s Beverage of Moderation” and, in large print: “Beer belongs … enjoy it.”

The ads also offered, “Reprints of this oil painting, without advertising and suitable for framing,” if a request was sent to the Brewers Foundation. The artwork was popular enough that people wanted to display it in their homes. One estimate of the number of requests is more than 100,000.

The reprints as well as the ads are readily available on eBay and Amazon for less than $20. A number of the original paintings currently are in the offices of the Beer Institute in Washington, D.C.

Second Series of the Beer Belongs Campaign

Artists in the second series included Douglass Crockwell and Haddon Sundblom. Sundblom is probably the best known of the artists, renowned for his other commercial artworks. He created the Quaker Oat Man, the smiling visage of Aunt Jemima and Coca-Cola’s Santa Claus. This second ad series also included text supporting beer as a natural part of home life in America.

The illustrations convey typical American family activities — from bowling nights to weekends as the lake. Somewhere in the image, beer is on a table, in a cooler, on a serving tray, or in people’s hands.

Haddon Sundblom’s “Planning the Newlywed’s Home” shows two older parents and their newlyweds looking over an architect’s plan. There’s a beer on a back table. Crockwell’s “Thanksgiving Dinner” displays a dining room table with a huge roasted turkey while the gray-haired mother carries a tray with flutes of beer; his “Grandmother Hangs the Mistletoe” has much the same scenario.

(VISIT: Breweries in Historic Buildings)

A Reflection of the Times

The ads were a reflection of the culture and considered one of the great advertising campaigns of the era. For comparable perspectives in TV think “Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” “Father Knows Best,” and “Leave It To Beaver.”

The artworks meant to change the perception of beer in American homes share core themes. The people portrayed all seem to be upper-middle-class or more. It was perhaps a tactic to provide inspiration and aspiration for others.

In most of these idyllic illustrations, there are equal numbers of well-dressed men and women. Men often wear suits with white shirts or sport jackets in home settings. Women generally wear dresses or long skirts. Like many of the advertisements in the pre-Civil Rights era, no minorities are pictured.

The series ended in 1956, but its combined effectiveness using fine art to reach the public certainly lingers today. Now, beer can be found in most homes, virtually any social setting and at life celebrations. Members of the 1940s-era Brewers Foundation who set out to show America that Beer Belongs would be proud.

The post How Art Helped Convince Post-WWII America That ‘Beer Belongs’ appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

If you’re the big gift-giver type, skip our guide to affordable beer gifts and check out the extraordinary beer gifts guide below. Some of the gifts are from breweries, but the bulk of the guide is full of items that could bring the beer exploring experience to the next level.

Here are some splurge-worthy options for the truly deserving beer drinker on your list.

Fashionable Beer Gifts

Limited Edition Merrell X Dogfish Agility Synthesis X | $110

Performance shoemaker Merrell collaborated with Dogfish Head Craft Brewery to create a shoe inspired by the brewery’s popular SeaQuench Ale. The material comes from a variety of sustainable and recycled sources (the midsole is made from 10 percent algae; the laces are 100 percent recycled materials). The brands say they’ll be donating $10,000 to the Conservation Alliance as part of the brewery-shoe collaboration.

adidas München Oktoberfest Sneakers | $240

With these sweet kicks, beer will always be on your mind and feet. Inspired by the traditional Oktoberfest fashions, the adidas München Oktoberfest beer shoes come with high-quality leather and premium materials. Who knew adidas stood for “All day I dream about suds”?

(More: Musings on Utopias)

Extraordinary Beer Gifts for the Home

Kegmate 54 Qt. Jockey Box Cooler | $399

The ultimate outdoor party planner would love to have their very own jockey box for draft beer in the backyard. Trust me. Made out of stainless steel, this single faucet cooler is designed for ideal portability so you can ditch the bucket and keep the keg dry. The Kegmate comes complete with stainless steel 54-quart cooler, an interchangeable tap handle, coils and connections.

(More: Girls In Craft: Meet the Women Behind Female-Focused Beer Merchandise)

Champagne (Du Nord) Saber | $165.95

A few years ago, our good pals at the American Homebrewers Association showed us that sabering wasn’t just for wine bottles. Tis the season to drink your beer cellar and sabering all of those large format bottles is made way easier and far more festive with a sabering sword. Please, wear eye protection!

Waterford Crystal Decanting Carafe | $275

Surprise! Fancy schmancy decanters aren’t just for wine – beer drinkers can use them for wild and sour beers, and it makes a great splurge-worthy beer gift. At Denver’s Goed Zuur, John Fayman’s team ensures that when you order a wonderfully complex bottle of gueuze, no one gets stuck with a glass of dregs with your charcuterie board. “We always try to offer the most authentic beer experience possible and when dealing with sour and wild ales that means pouring the bottle for the customer to ensure a perfect, yeast-free pour,” John tells us. “It’s a great tool for allowing a slow pour and a impart a softer mouthfeel to the beer if it’s lively.”

Epicurean Mash Paddle | $108.90

This epicurean mash paddle is a great gift for the legit homebrewer who should probably just make her hobby a business.

High-end Can Art by Christina Massey | $150 to $850

Perhaps in your formative beer years, when you displayed what one could call “can art,” it was triangular. Today, beer art is more permanent and still spectacular. Take, for instance, artist Christina Massey, the sculptor who turns her favorite hazy IPA cans into vivid bursts of shape and color. Many of the cans she uses are sourced from her home base in NYC from craft brewers like Other Half and Sixpoint.

Rush Creek Reserve Cheese | $35 per wheel

We love whale beers, but what about whale cheeses? I’d call this one a game-changer cheese. Rush Creek Reserve lives up to the hype. This limited cheese from Upland Cheese is produced only in the fall, as the diet of Rush Creek’s cows begins to change from summer pasture to the winter’s dry hay. This rich milk is perfect for a cheese like Rush Creek Reserve. The cheese is soft and so decadent it’s often referred to as savory custard. Each Rush Creek Reserve is wrapped in spruce bark which gives shape to the cheese and imparts a subtle woodsy flavor.

I can personally vouch that this cheese is bonkers when you pair it with beer. John Mallett of Bell’s Brewery once served it with Bell’s Cherry Stout at an event. He wrapped each piece of cheese in foil and placed it in the oven until it was warm and gooey. At $35 a wheel, this is the least expensive beer gift on the list, but you’ll want to by at least three to share.

(More: Heroes of the Brewhouse: Here’s What Brewery Workers Actually Do)

Beer Travel Gift Ideas

BierGardeValise | $349

What do you give the beer lover who loves to go on beercations? Give them a way to safely transport their newfound beer stashes home safely. The BierGardeValise is built as luggage for beer travelers. The carrier helps keep those special releases and hard-to-find beers secure during travel. As a beer lover who travels, trust me: nothing says you care like alleviating anxiety at baggage claim.

Guided Fly Fishing at Blackberry Farms | $95 to $495

Is your beer nut also a trout bum? Instead of buying them bottles and tippet, why not share an experience with them? Famed Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tennessee, is quite the experience and spending a day on the water is but one of the many experiences they provide. No matter what you choose, there’s always a farmhouse ale from Blackberry Farm Brewery to end the night.

Any beer fan would be lucky to get any one of these extraordinary beer gifts, but if you’re the type of person looking to splurge on a gift for someone, they’re pretty lucky already. We hope they appreciate you and your generosity and make time to open a few special bottles from their beer cellar this holiday season. Ultimately, the best gift of all for a beer lover is someone to share a bottle with. Happy holidays from CraftBeer.com.

Editor’s Note: We are not getting financial kickbacks from this list. We just thought these were really cool gifts for beer lovers.

The post Splurge-worthy Extraordinary Beer Gifts appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

It’s not an easy beer to either make or acquire but I’ve been most fortunate to try each of the vintages since its inception. As a beer journalist, I’ve also been fortunate to occasionally talk with brewers who have made its various vintages.

My initial impression usually is Utopias’ marvelous aroma of port or sherry, although once it seemed closer to cognac. Other aromas wafting to my anxiously waiting nose include dark fruit, oak, vanilla, and sometimes coffee, toffee, raisins or maple syrup, varying from release to release. Since what most of us smell usually foretells what we will taste, this luscious aroma presages a luxurious, complex experience which I look forward to. It’s definitely a nose I wish were available as a scent freshener for my car’s rearview mirror. I easily would buy a case of them.

2019 Utopias Tasting Notes

Opening up the new 28% ABV 2019 Utopias with friends, we were struck with the ambrosial nose of both port and cognac with slight alcohol, vanilla, raisins and a hint of caramel — a prophecy of the delicious flavors in the beer itself.

The 2019 Utopias beer, like its ancestors since the 2002 original, has its traditional maple syrup backbone from the 1994 Sam Adams Triple Bock which broke ABV level barriers of the era, leading to Millennium and finally the various Utopiases (Utopii?). When fresh, that 1994 Triple Bock tasted decidedly uninviting with way too much in-your-face alcohol, overwhelming sweetness and maple sugar. I was able to try one of the 1994 bottles in 2017 expecting the worst. It had mellowed beautifully and that ancestry now is evident in the new Utopias.

This brewing accomplishment is especially notable in these days of ever-higher ABV claims because it is achieved completely by the brewing process (beers with astronomically high ABVs are made through freeze distillation, a process that is not natural fermentation). Jim Koch, the founder/brewer at Boston Beer once mentioned to me that he thought the maximum achievable ABV was 30%. But I know that the base beer over time has attained over 30% ABV, I believe reaching 33%, but it is always blended down because, Koch says: “The goal is not record ABV levels but crafting complex flavors.”

Over time the beers have continued to be aged in a wide variety of wooden casks, dating back over 25 years to that barrel-aged Triple Bock, barrels of the brewery’s other extreme beers, more recent experimental casks, and barrels such as scotch, Armagnac, and rum. They then are blended to achieve the final version of Utopias. This year’s base beers were aged in Buffalo Trace, Aquavit, Carcavelos wine and ruby port barrels and, for the first time, cognac and Madeira finishing barrels, adding vanilla, nutty and dark fruit aromas.

“The goal is not record ABV levels but crafting complex flavors.” Jim Koch, Boston Beer Co.

I once asked Jim Koch how he creates the special “Ninja” yeast used for Utopias. He explained that they take the survivors from the initial fermentation of near 18% ABV and culture those surviving yeasts, repeating the process until they reach the desired level (or a level beyond which the beer cannot go). I also asked him if they feed the survivor yeasts more complex sugars at the end, and he said: “To the contrary! At the end, they are getting simple sugars.” It’s awesome imagining the years of work, care and experience that goes into each bottle of Utopias.

(READ: Before Mott the Lesser, There was the Legend of Kate the Great)

Utopias Ages Beautifully

Now I’m looking forward to this latest vintage joining the basement’s remainder of bottles from former vintages for our traditional vertical tasting to celebrate each new release. In 2017 the oldest bottle, an 8-year-old 2009 Utopias, had aged well with a port-like finish and a light sweetness that changed to dryness in the aftertaste. In 2013 and 2015, Boston Beer released bottles of both the base beer and later the final blended version. In each case the final version was much more complex, less sweet and with a better blended alcohol. Kudos to the blenders.

Given the amount of work, time in barrels, warehouse space, sugar and yeast management and continuous brewer attention, I sometimes wonder if Boston Beer makes a profit on Utopias–or cares to. Then I recall an early discussion with Koch who said: “We are like the Starship Enterprise, ‘Going where no brewery has gone before.'” I suspect that is the real motivation.

The post Musings on Utopias appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

While beer geeks can attend stout releases virtually weekly, to understand the context of the Mott the Lesser release, first you’ll have to learn about Kate the Great and “Kate Day,” the OG of beer release days. Before pre-dawn lines became the norm in craft beer, there was Kate Day: a once a year event at a small New Hampshire brewpub that took place in the frigid early spring to celebrate the release of a 12% ABV Russian Imperial Stout.

‘Kate the Great’ Crowned as Legendary Beer

In spring 2008, at The Portsmouth Brewery, then-assistant brewer Tyler Jones came to work on the morning of the annual release day for a beer called Kate the Great. The beer was packaged in 22 oz. bottles, hand-capped, and adorned with handwritten labels. Each transfer from tank to bottle netted around two-and-a-half cases.

As he’d done countless times before, Jones walked the two cases through The Portsmouth Brewery restaurant and into the shop, where he placed them atop the counter to be loaded into the cooler.

“Walking through the brewery, I could feel the eyes on me,” says Jones, who is now a co-founder at Oxford, Connecticut’s Black Hog Brewing. “It wasn’t normal.”

When Jones got back downstairs, the phone rang. They needed more Kate. When Jones insisted he just dropped off two cases, he was shocked to find out they had sold out.

“That’s f**king weird,” he said. “Okay, you have to give me like a half an hour, 45 minutes.”

It became mythologized and sought-after on every beer trading board imaginable. The legend of Kate the Great was born.

“It was the first beer that people lined up for,” says Tod Mott, the recipe’s creator, who was The Portsmouth Brewery’s head brewer at the time. “Now, with technology and social media, people are just herded to the release of the next Holy Grail.”

“It really blew me away the first time people lined up,” says Mott. “Oh my God, [it was] insane.”

(More: Milk Stouts Brewed with Dairy Alternatives)

Artistry of ‘Kate the Great’ Brewer Tod Mott

At that time, as is true now, New England beer drinkers would be hard-pressed to find a brewer more revered than Mott. Kate the Great was a recipe that Mott had been developing for years, beginning at the long-gone Commonwealth Brewing Company in Boston. Kate the Great was, in December 2007, rated the No. 1 beer in the United States by Beer Advocate and No. 2 in the world, and still lives in infamy.

“When that accolade came out, we knew we needed to brew another batch,” he says. “We doubled our production. When it blew out in a month I thought, ‘We’re in deep sh*t.’ It used to last a few months and we were selling it in f**king growlers.”

“The reason it is great is because of what Tod is as a brewer,” says Jones. “He’s a true artist. He’s really known for these beautiful malt bills in his beers.”

The original Kate the Great beer was ahead of its time. It was a recipe being “tweaked at every spot” he worked, Mott says. Even though it wasn’t billed as a barrel-aged stout, it utilized port wine-soaked oak spiral from a nearby distillery. Before barrel-aging became the norm, Mott understood the alchemy that would make the beer better. And beer lovers responded by lining up before the sun came up in the cold each spring. Drinkers lined the streets for their allotment of Kate the Great.

(Related: Epic Fall Road Trip: New England Breweries Off the Beaten Path)

The limits of a small brewpub made it tough to defend having an imperial stout take up so much tank space regardless of how good it was. Mott used this to his advantage.

“When it blew out in a month I thought, ‘We’re in deep sh*t.’” Brewer Tod Mott

“We could make this beer once a year, enjoy it, but then we’d have another year to think about how to make it better,” says Jones.

In 2009, the beer sold out in a day, both in bottles and on-tap (much to the chagrin of locals, who flooded the brewery’s website with complaints). The system changed annually to get Kate into the hands of as many customers as possible. In 2011, the brewery sold scratch-off lottery tickets for $2 apiece at 10 per person per day. Scattered throughout those tickets were winners that allowed for purchase of bottles. The next year, the brewery moved the format of the beer from 22 oz. bottles to 11.2 oz steinie bottles (and reduced the price), thus essentially doubling the amount of bottles available. One year, there was even a literary contest where writers were asked to pen a poem that was judged by Portsmouth Brewery employees. Winners received a bottle for their superior literary chops.

(More: Form & Function: Brewery Visits with an Architect)

In 2012, Mott, who’d been brewing professionally for the better part of two decades, decided it was time to move on from The Portsmouth Brewery to open Tributary Brewing in 2014. The Portsmouth Brewery owned the naming rights to Kate the Great, so the empress was laid to rest when Mott departed. Jones took over for Mott and, while he didn’t shy away from brewing an imperial stout, Kate the Great was no more.

The recipe — which evolved at every professional brewing stint and from Boston to Maine — lives on with Mott the Lesser.

Mott the Lesser’s More ‘Civilized’ Release

At the Mott the Lesser release, it would be difficult to find people lining up solely out of “Fear of Missing Out.” It’s not the social media crowd getting its filtered photos into everyone’s feed.

“The crowd at these releases is experienced beer drinkers,” Mott says. “The whole thing about Mott the Lesser is that it’s civilized. No one needs to get out early in the morning. People show up at four in the afternoon and will get the beer.”

This is the 10th release of the beer, and Mott said that he’s got all 10 versions. He’s going to do a staggered release of all 10 versions in the coming weeks. As for this iteration:

“It’s a beautiful beer,” he says.

The post Before Mott the Lesser, There was the Legend of Kate the Great appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

The beer-making community is working to kick the stigma that it’s only for bearded dudes in flannel. The beer merch world has traditionally reflected that male clientele. With the exception of the odd fitted women’s tank here or there, the selection was generally geared toward men.

But as the beer world expands to be more diverse, so does its merch. The clothing and accessories you can wear to proclaim your love of beer are more varied than ever before, courtesy of visionary women building brands and contributing their talents to the beer merch arena.

Girls In Craft Sparks Female-Focused Beer Merch Movement

One of the trailblazers of the female-focused beer merch movement is Jenn Suarez, who established Girls In Craft in 2017. The company is growing quickly. Its selection of products currently ranges from tanks, tees and hoodies to sweatpants, jackets, hats, patches, phone accessories, luggage tags, bottle share bags and a tulip glass that appears quite frequently in any scroll of the craft beer corner of Instagram.

Jenn is the brand manager for a high-volume screen printing shop in Southern California. Since she was 15, she’s worked her way from retail to manufacturing to branding in the action sports world and then branding for action sports apparel companies.

(More: Lady Justice Brewing Dreams Big, Supports Women-Based Causes)

Her knowledge and experience in merchandising can be seen in Girls In Craft’s thoughtful product range. Jenn’s brand caters to items women want, like comfortable clothes for running errands and sturdy, high-quality mugs. She puts careful thought into how the products are made, paying special attention to detail on fits made for women, and researching the best materials.

Girls In Craft was born from Jenn wanting to see more inclusive options in beer merchandise.

“I love buying craft beer merch, I have a ton of brewery merch … it lets someone know you went and tried that beer, you had that experience,” she says. “Most of the merch I saw was catered toward men. T-shirts were thicker, heavier, not as soft. Being from the apparel industry, I’m very picky about t-shirts. I wanted something softer, flowy, not cotton but tri-blends.”

Jenn wanted Girls In Craft to create products for a variety of women, recognizing the majority of female beer drinkers want things that fit them and feel good, as well as selections that fall between the bedazzled beer merch she sometimes saw for women and the made-for-men tees.

As part of her mission to offer choice to the spectrum of female beer drinkers, Jenn makes sure her clothing runs from size small to 2x or 3x and features different shapes and silhouettes.

“Our girl is every girl,” she says. “It’s the one thing I want to be known for. We do not exclude any type of woman. From shape and size to gender, transgender, gay—it’s a place where everyone can be.”

If Girls In Craft’s online community is any indication, women are indeed feeling seen by the brand. The brand’s Instagram feed is full of loving comments and praise, and there are ambassadors who love the clothing and accessories so much that they’ve incorporated it into their own content. The fans illustrate the success of Jenn’s inclusivity mission—yes, even men can be spotted rocking Girls In Craft hats and tees.

The community spirit filters into a focus on collaborations that Jenn is looking to build upon. In addition to spreading the word about Girls In Craft organically through ambassadors, Suarez has already started working with artist Emily Gilberg of adoodleandabeer, printing Emily’s designs on Girls In Craft clothing.

The goal, Jenn says, is to feature lots of different collaborations. In addition to adoodleandabeer, there would be partnerships with creators Jessica Walsh of HopHeart, Sabrina Rain Grimes of Boozy Craft Corner, and other artists and artisans.

Girls In Craft will give these creators “a broader marketplace to be seen,” Jenn says, bringing together exciting new female-focused designs, and giving talented creators a platform.

Creating Beer-focused Drawings and Designs

Emily Gilberg’s adoodleandabeer started when she decided to combine her two passions, craft beer and drawing, into one dedicated Instagram account about two years ago. Her posts and videos quickly started garnering a fanbase.

The self-taught artist had been drawing her whole life. She got into beer by attending can and bottle releases with her husband and loving the familial atmosphere, explaining, “Beer is more of a community than anything; that’s what drew me into it.”

Since her Instagram took off and her partnership with Girls In Craft began, Emily has found different opportunities to make her mark in the visual aspect of beer. Breweries have commissioned labels by her and other brands have come to her for artwork and logos. Some Instagram users even contact her for tattoo designs.

The artist has loved seeing how women are helping breathe new life into the beer scene by expanding on what beer merch means and the different kinds of art that can cover cans and represent craft brews.

“It kind of blows me away,” Emily says. “Beer is an art platform; it’s evolved into this thing where the beer inside is special but people also chase after it for the label as much as what’s inside. Women play a huge role in all of that … they bring a lot to the table. It’s like, let’s change it up; it’s not just, ‘Here’s my double IPA.’ They bring a lot of flair and expertise.”

(Related: PHOTOS: Celebrating Women in Beer at 2019 Beer With(out) Beards Festival)

HopHeart Founder Creates Beer-themed Accessories

HopHeart’s Jessica Walsh brings her flair and expertise to weekender bags, jewelry, tanks, patches, pins, hats, glassware and more. The entrepreneur has just sold the taproom she owned with her husband in California in order to focus on their next venture–opening a brewery.

She finds time to channel her creative energy and lifelong love of drawing, painting and scrapbooking into her brand that celebrates the girly-girl in beer lovers—Jessica says she is a fan of bright colors and bold pinks and patterns; the HopHeart weekender has “serious Betsey Johnson vibes.”

She started HopHeart after wanting beer-themed accessories but only finding apparel (usually men’s apparel) at breweries.

“The venture started out as a very selfish project,” Jessica says. “I wanted stuff that wasn’t there.”

She points out that it’s still not common to find too much merchandise outside of apparel at breweries, but Jessica is helping change that with HopHeart’s range of products that, like Girls In Craft’s, are designed to bring one’s love of beer into all different parts of life, from working out to traveling. HopHeart is as much about community as it is about the products, if not more.

“I wanted to cultivate a community so that females, girly or not, could come together and talk about beer without being cut off, judged, or manipulated,” Jessica says. “I wanted to connect with other girls in the community and connect them with others, as well.”

The HopHeart community is so important to Jessica that she doesn’t call the people who buy her creations “customers,” but friends. She loves hearing stories from them like how one woman spotted another woman wearing a HopHeart tank from across the pool on a cruise and they ended up becoming pals. She’s received photos from two other women who met at a brewery and started chatting when they realized they were both wearing HopHeart bracelets. Jessica feels this kind of camaraderie is especially vital now for women in beer.

“As of late, there’s been some bullying against females in craft beer online, and I want to keep combating that,” she says in an email.

Jessica collaborated with Hop Culture’s Beer With(out) Beards festival celebrating women in beer by creating pins for the event, and has created a bangle for Left Hand Brewing. She’s currently gearing up to roll out some new products and work with Girls In Craft.

(Related: Brewers Association Releases Brewery Employee Diversity Data for the First Time)

Illustrator Behind “Boozy Craft Corner” Celebrates Women

It’s the infinite range of different beer fans that is at the center of Sabrina Rain Grimes’s Boozy Craft Corner. On her Instagram, the artist illustrates posts made by women in the craft beer community, highlighting the scene’s diversity.

When Sabrina illustrates characters of her own making, it’s an entire slideshow in all different skin tones. She depicts different body types, adds body hair and honors a very beautiful kind of reality in her bright, whimsical designs.

On her Etsy page, you can find the artist’s playful take on craft beer life in the form of prints — gumball machines with hop leaves instead of gumballs, an array of different beer glasses with faces to portray diversity — as well as tees and beer-themed planner stickers.

When explaining how Boozy Craft Corner got started, Sabrina echoes her fellow female-focused beer merch makers sentiment: she couldn’t find beer merch that felt like her when she shopped at breweries.

“Me and my best friend, Hayley, every time we went to a brewery and would look at t-shirts, we’d get upset that there weren’t cute girls’ tees.”

Sabrina says her friend is her “silent partner in crime” for Boozy Craft Corner, and that the two set out to give the beer world merchandise that makes women feel seen.

“I wanted something brighter and more open for women to look at and smile and be happy they’re doing what they’re doing, and not think, ‘I can’t drink beer because I’m a girl.’”

(More: Hot Experimental Hops Create Compelling Flavors)

Sabrina says she draws women of all backgrounds because she never wants anyone to feel left out in her work. As for her overarching color scheme of pink and blue, she explains that she wanted to take the two colors traditionally linked to the two different genders and unite them so they’re always together and not seen separately.

Like adoodleandabeer and HopHeart, part of Boozy Craft Corner’s future will play out through collaborating with Girls In Craft. In addition to putting her own influential stamp on beer merchandise, Jenn Suarez is bringing together the women offering their own female-focused unique creations to form one united front. Like the beer community, itself, this united front has a lot of different looks and approaches, but the common goal is to celebrate beer and every one of its fans.

The post Girls In Craft: Meet the Women Behind Female-Focused Beer Merchandise appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Crooked Hammock Brewery in Lewes, Delaware, has teamed up with nearby ILC Dover to create a beer called One Giant Leap. ILC Dover made the spacesuits worn by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during the Apollo 11 moon landing 50 years ago.

ILC Dover’s place in the moon landing is an important footnote in Delaware history, but one that isn’t particularly well known, even by locals. Crooked Hammock’s head brewer, Jon Schorah, says he wasn’t aware of the connection until recently. When America was celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the moon landing this summer, a server at Crooked Hammock whose mom works at ILC Dover told Schorah the history. That’s all it took to inspire him.

(Related: How Space Launched Huntsville’s Craft Beer Scene)

“Over beers, it came up they created the spacesuit that was used in the Apollo mission specifically for the moon landing,“ says Schorah.

Schorah reached out to ILC Dover to see if they’d be interested in brewing a collaboration beer. They came up with One Giant Leap, a beer they’re calling a “suborbital” stout. As an homage to the space trip, the beer recipe includes a favorite space snack.

“We added a whole ton of ice cream sandwiches–the space ice cream sandwiches. The freeze-dried stuff you get,” explains Schorah.

One Giant Leap is a rich, oatmeal stout that includes dark chocolate malts, chocolate wheat and vanilla beans. But the space ice cream sandwiches steal the show.

Finding enough dehydrated space ice cream to make a bunch of beer was not an easy task since the ice cream itself weighs only a few ounces.

“I researched this for weeks,” Schorah says. “We found a company online that made bulk orders that could send us a few hundred pounds.“

When they first called to request a few hundred pounds, there was a mad rush to check the warehouse to see if the company had that much dehydrated ice cream. Luckily, for beer lovers, they did; the final ingredient for the space-inspired beer fell into place.

(More: Form & Function: Brewery Visits with an Architect)

“There’s an underlying sweetness to One Giant Leap. [The space ice cream] definitely boosted the chocolate and vanilla flavor to it. The vanilla flavor is a very underlying tone but the chocolate is upfront and hits you,” says Schorah.

The brewer admits he created the beer as a throwback to his own childhood. He and his family would vacation in Florida every year and made a trip to the Space Coast part of their routine.

“My dad was a big space nerd,” remembers Schorah. “We would go to Cape Canaveral and watch shuttle launches.”

Every child, or adult, knows dehydrated space ice cream is a highlight of that trip.

“I always got that as my souvenir when I went to Cape Canaveral for the shuttle launches so I was like, if we’re doing a space beer we have to put this in there,” explains Schorah.

(More: Craft Brewers Create $79.1 Billion Impact on U.S. Economy)

About half a dozen ILC Dover workers were part of the brewing process at Crooked Hammock.

“They got to help us weigh out the hops and break up the ice cream sandwiches and dump them in,“ Schorah says.

One Giant Leap launches Oct. 17 and will be available at the brewpub in Lewes.

“To think that craft beer created a relationship between a brewery and restaurant and a science company that does medical devices and made the Apollo spacesuit … To be able to draw that connection through beer is so cool,” says Schorah.

The post New Beer Tells Story of Delaware’s Place in Moon Landing History appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

There has always been an intense focus on quality in craft beer. After all, better, more flavorful beer, is what has drawn most of us to the craft community. As this community matures, even more focus is being put upon the key ingredient that forms the basis of beer.

“I’m seeing a little bit of an increase in how malt is perceived and people are appreciating it a little bit more,” said Dustin Craft, craft sales manager for Malteurop, one of the world’s largest commercial malting companies. “I think malt is kind of the next frontier.”

Small craft malt houses have been popping up across the United States over the past decade or so, but the craft market has now grown to a point that even the bigger players that have predominately supplied macro brewers are taking notice of craft brewers as well.

Craft (isn’t his name perfect for this job?!) says Malteurop’s entry into craft malting is two-fold: to refine some of its more mainstream malts and to develop some new proprietary varieties, both of which add nuance and depth to the character of any beer style.

“[We’re working on] malts that aren’t ideal for folks that are brewing tons and tons of beer and trying to maximize every dollar, but malts designed for people who really want flavor and character and some uniqueness, but not necessarily in specialty malt,” said Craft at the 2019 Beer Now Conference in Great Falls, Montana.

“We’re kind of working on both fronts,” he said. “There are the barley varieties that can lead you to a base malt or a specialty malt with a different character. We’re also working on different ways to make specialty malts that are unlike anything else.”

While Malteurop isn’t likely to be all things malt to all brewers, it doesn’t need to be. The size of the company allows it to drive innovation in quality and variety at a larger scale, while smaller malthouses fill the gaps of the micro and nano markets.

Malteurop’s entry into the world of craft malting is likely to benefit smaller brewers like JC McDowell at Bandit Brewing in Darby, Montana, who like to source ingredients from nearby suppliers as more and more of the craft segment goes hyperlocal.

(READ: Maui Brewing Goes Off-the-Grid)

McDowell buys from Malteurop in Montana, but primarily relies upon it for base malt, as specialty malt varieties have tended to be limited or transported too far away for them to be cost-effective in the small quantities he needs.

“We do get our base two-row malt from Malteurop. It’s a Montana barley. It’s a great quality product and it’s pretty affordable,” said McDowell. “I think Malteurop is doing a good job, but definitely on the craft side, we have to have a wide variety of specialty grains.”

Like most craft brewers, Bandit keeps a certain number of flagship beers on tap, but also relies upon variety and experimentation to drive new customers and keep regulars coming back. That’s one of the tremendous upsides of a small brewhouse: there isn’t a lot of risk in developing a new recipe, even if it doesn’t go over so well.

One of the curses of that flexibility is having to source grains from numerous suppliers, as there isn’t one that meets all the needs that variety requires.

“We get (our specialty grains) from Great Western out of Washington. On the craft beer side, reality is that you don’t have a choice. You have to get Canadian, some American, German, and English grains because you can’t get that wide of a variety here, domestically, kilned,” McDowell explained. “And there’s no way you can reproduce an ESB unless you have an English grain. You just can’t get that same flavor profile.”

(VISIT: Find Breweries Near You)

That’s not likely to change to the point where all grains for any craft brewer will be supplied by one source, but that’s also a part of what keeps craft so different from macro brewers.

With a fraction of the craft world gravitating toward more timeless, balanced beers, lagers and session beers are becoming more and more popular. These are particularly the styles that would rely heavily upon quality malts to give them a flavor profile.

Like McDowell, Graham Hart, owner and head brewer of Bonsai Brewing Project in Whitefish, Montana, relies upon the quality and variety of malts available to him to produce an ever-rotating lineup of quality small-batch brews in his taproom centric brewery.

Hart relies upon Malteurop for his base malts, but sources much of his specialty grains from smaller maltsters like Farm Power Malt in Montana and Proximity Malt, a regional maltster that has a location in Colorado. The combination provides him with all the variety necessary to create unique brews that draw new customers.

“I like Malteurop’s [base] malt, it’s super clean. Ryan at Power is trying to hit niches of flavor characters that other malteries aren’t hitting. So, he’s pulled out some really neat stuff,” said Hart. “Proximity [Malt] has a lot of character to it, so that’s a lot of fun. From all the suppliers out there, I probably haven’t gone through 10 percent of [the varieties] that are available, probably. There’s a bunch of new stuff to play around with.”

But in an age when the focus on hops and adjuncts has reached a fever pitch, like many other brewers, Hart is pleased to have suppliers that not only provide variety but malts that allow him to add depth to his recipes.

“Everybody is all hops, hops, hops. Everybody is focused on the new hop, so it’s good to see these malteries coming through with just good, fresh, well cared for ingredients,” Hart added. “That’s really nice. People see the difference.”

It’s not clear if malt will ever have the same sex appeal with consumers as hops do, but there is no doubting that the renewed focus on malt isn’t going unnoticed in the brewhouse, which means better beer, spotlight or no spotlight.

Editor’s Note: You can read the full version of the original article on BeerNow.org. Authors Ken and April Pishna of “Living a Stout Life” wrote the piece after experiencing their first Beer Now Conference in Great Falls, Montana, in June 2019. Malteurop was a #BeerNow19 sponsor.

The post Malteurop will #MakeMaltSexy appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Craft-brewed Italian pilsners in America can trace their family tree back to a single beer: Birrifico Italiano’s Tipopils. Brewed in Limido Comasco, a small Italian town southwest of Lake Como, Tipopils may be the most influential beer Americans have never heard of.

It was the inspiration for Firestone Walker‘s revered Pivo Pils which debuted in 2012, and since then it’s remained something of a well-kept secret among brewers. (At this past year’s Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Fest, numerous brewers told me Tipopils was the beer they were most looking forward to tasting, as Birrifico Italiano attends the festival every year.) After tasting Pivo and Tipopils at festivals like the Invitational and Birrificio Italiano’s Pils & Love, American brewers couldn’t wait to return stateside and brew their own versions.

(TRAVEL: Remarkable Brewery Taprooms)

Characteristics of Italian-style Pilsners

So, what makes an Italian pilsner an Italian pilsner if it’s brewed in America?

The simple answer is that Italian pilsners are German-style pilsners that have been dry-hopped with European hops for maximum aroma. (Dry hopping is the process of adding hops to beer to maximize aroma without imparting bitterness.) Italian pilsners are dry, squeaky clean, and as Kevin Davey, brewmaster at Portland, Oregon’s Wayfinder Beer puts it, should “punch you in the face with Noble hops.”

Unlike some other lager styles, Italian-style pilsners are less about malt and all about the hops. Using German-grown Noble hops like Tettnanger, Spalt, Hallertau Mittelfruh, other German varieties like Polaris and sometimes Saaz hops from the Czech Republic, American brewers recreate a German-style pilsner–but with amplified, American levels of hop aroma.

“American brewers were really struck by the Italian pilsners because we all make a lot of pilsner, but theirs are so floral and interesting and use different hops than are normal for us,” Davey says.

Italian pilsners made such an impression on him and his fellow American brewers from Modern Times and Heater Allen who attended Pils & Love that the three breweries vowed then and there to brew one together. Last fall, they teamed up to make a version called Terrifica. It’s since become popular enough to warrant status as a rotating release from Wayfinder. (“I’d like it to be a regular release,” Davey admits.)

(TREND: It’s Not Wine–It’s Brut Lager!)

Hop Choice is Crucial for Brewing Italian-style Pilsners

What’s the secret to its appeal? Davey says the hop choice is crucial. Brewing a pilsner with citrusy hops like Mandarina Bavaria or fruity American hops like Citra won’t recreate the slightly spicy, minty, verdant hop nose so crucial to Italian pilsners. And it’s that super-charged, dry-hopped aroma that defines the style and made Tipopils such a revolutionary beer.

“Amazingly, dry hopping was not Reinheitsgebot-compliant,” says Tim Adams, owner of Portland, Maine’s Oxbow Brewing, which was the first to label its beer, called Lupulo, an Italian-style pilsner. “But here [Birrifico Italiano brewer] Agustino Arioli is in Northern Italy, close to Germany, so he learned very much the German way of brewing pils, but made it his own. It’s a wonderful beer. The Italian brewers coming up after him were drinking Tipopils and loved it and were like ‘Okay, this is what pils should be.’ So it became the norm in Italy to dry hop their pils.”

Given American drinkers’ obsession with hop aroma, a hopped-up pilsner hasn’t been a hard sell. Adams says sales of Lupulo have “taken off,” especially after Oxbow began packaging it in cans. Lori Beck, co-owner of the venerated craft beer bar Holy Grale in Louisville, Kentucky, has high praise for Oxbow’s version: “Oxbow is one brewery that I can say is incredibly passionate about Tipopils, and their beer pays real homage to it. They’re not just jumping on the bandwagon and making a style that’s hyped-up right now.”

(LEARN: 75+ Beer Styles Made Simple)

Brewers are Smitten with Hoppy Italian-style Pilsners

Maybe Italian pilsners haven’t become regular on draft lists yet, but drinkers are certainly ready for them. A recent batch of a collaboration Italian pilsner from Waunakee, Wisconsin-based Untitled Art Brewing and Minneapolis’ Fair State Brewing Cooperative, sold out almost as quickly as it hit shelves.

“It’s a good gateway beer because IPA is king right now, and craft lager is still steadily growing. It’s a good in-between to bring IPA drinkers to the table. It’s bitter; it’s got a kick; it’s got lots of aroma,” says Untitled Art‘s head brewer Ben Knutson. “Even for the lager drinker, to get them into a more hoppy beer, it’s the same thing. I think it’s a cool bridge beer for people who prefer different styles.”

“I think it’s a cool bridge beer for people who prefer different styles.” Ben Knutson, Untitled Art

Plus, Knutson adds, the fact that so many brewers are smitten with the style should tip drinkers off to how good it is.

“Italian-style pils is a challenge to brew and great to drink. The brewer has it in their face all day, so if they want to drink it then it’s probably worth checking out.”

Beck says Holy Grale will order “as much as it can” of unpasteurized, unfiltered kegs of Tipopils when it’s available, trusting her enthusiastic staff will guide drinkers who are new to the style toward it.

“When we have beers that our staff gets behind because they love it, it’s gone immediately,” she says. “Tipopils reminds me of the Italian cooking philosophy: Less is more; pay respect to the ingredients.”

(READ: These are the Experimental Hops Brewers are Testing Right Now)

While Tipopils can be elusive in the States, plenty of American breweries are trying their hand at the style. Besides versions from Wayfinder/Heater Allen/Modern Times, Oxbow, and Fair State/Untitled Art, other American-born Italian-style pilsners have come from Orange County, California-based Green Cheek; Madison, Wisconsin’s Working Draft Beer Company; and a Brooklyn-born collaboration between Threes Brewing and Kings County Brewers Collective.

“I hope that if people are starting to get excited about Italian-style pils, they’ll also explore some of the other Italian beers out there,” Oxbow’s Adams says. “Italy has made such a unique contribution to the beers of the world but I feel like it’s not that well-known here in the States.”

Looks like the secret’s finally out.

The post How One Beer Birthed an American Crop of Italian-style Pilsners appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Once reserved for the state’s famous oranges, Florida craft breweries are now successfully applying for and using the Fresh From Florida seal if a specific beer promotes produce or products grown within the borders of the Sunshine State.

For the Love of Florida-grown Strawberries

Clearwater’s Pair O’ Dice Brewing was founded by husband-and-wife partners Ken and Julia Rosenthal after moving from Austin, Texas, to the Tampa Bay area, where Julia had grown up.

The Rosenthals were inspired by their time living in Austin to look for local ingredients to help tell the story of their beers.

“We loved their ‘Keep Austin Weird,’ support-your-local-business culture,” Julia recalls. “We wanted to bring as much of that with us back to Tampa Bay, and that is what inspired us to look into Florida ingredients.”

She had fond memories of the annual Florida Strawberry Festival in Plant City. Lucky Lucy is the beer Pair O’ Dice brewed that ultimately brought those memories to life. The strawberry blonde ale earned a bronze medal at the Best Florida Beer competition in 2014.

“Those memories of the [Florida] Strawberry Festival inspired us to design a beer to highlight Florida strawberries,” she says.

With Lucky Lucy, Pair O’ Dice became the first craft brewery to get approval to use the Fresh From Florida seal on their beer. The Department of Agriculture made a special site visit to ensure brewery staff was using actual Florida ingredients to brew the beer.

Pair O’ Dice Brewing’s Clearwater Honey Cream Ale is also labeled Fresh From Florida; it’s made with honey from Haines City.

Julia says that the experience of working with local ingredients has inspired Pair O’ Dice Brewing to always look to ingredients designated Fresh From Florida when searching for new beer flavors.

“The first place we look for new ingredients is Florida,” she says. “Locally grown ingredients are the freshest ingredients you can get, and you know exactly where they came from. Supporting local business is also very important to us so it’s a win-win.”

(Related: There’s No Taste Like Home: Booming Beer Agriculture Supports Local Brewers)

Fresh From Florida Satsuma Oranges are the Answer for Lake Tribe Brewing

Head Brewer Jesse Ross of Tallahassee’s Lake Tribe Brewing Company was not originally going to put oranges in his wheat beer. Lake Tribe beer was only available on draft and in the brewery’s tasting room, and Beckster’s Wheat Ale was selling well. All of that changed when Kim Jones with Florida Georgia Citrus, a family-owned farming business, stopped by the brewery to talk about Satsuma oranges.

“He told us about their increasing popularity and what made them ideal for growing in northern Florida,” Jesse recalls. “After he dropped off some juice for me to work with, I knew I needed to make a beer to highlight the bright and awesome flavors.”

Jesse knew that Beckster’s Wheat Ale would help highlight the bright, sweet and tart flavors of these unique oranges (similar to Mandarin oranges and related to tangerines). Jesse set out to craft Lake Tribe’s version of an orange wheat ale.

Once the beer was complete, Jesse took Kim Jones’ recommendation and applied to use the Fresh From Florida® seal for the beer. The Florida Department of Agriculture granted the request.

Jesse says that for Lake Tribe Brewing, using local ingredients to produce local craft beer is a perfect fit and a win-win.

“Getting local oranges fit perfectly with our whole idea of starting the brewery in the first place–keeping things fresh and local,” Jesse says. “We want our beer to be as fresh as possible, which means we will only ever want to serve it in our surrounding region. Getting local ingredients works in that same way.”

Using Satsuma oranges has gone so well, that Jesse says that Lake Tribe is seeking out other Florida-produced ingredients to use in their beer, like Florida honey.

(More: AirbnBeers: Breweries with Hotels, Inns, Camping and More)

Beer with Florida Tangerines, Cucumbers, and Oysters

Brew Bus Brewing and Florida Avenue Ales are two brewing companies that share a brewery in Tampa’s Seminole Heights. The brewery is striving to make a name for itself with its statewide collaborations, including a beer made for Tallahassee’s FSU Fans, dubbed War Daddy Light Lager.

In sourcing fruit for their Berliner Weisse beers (also dubbed “Florida Weisse”), Brew Bus owner Anthony Derby discovered fresh Florida cucumbers to use in the brewery’s Cucumber Berliner Weisse, and they have never looked back.

“Cucumbers are not the first ingredient people think of to use in beer. It’s an unusual combination for sure,” says Anthony. “But the finished beer ends up so refreshing that we found our customers really enjoyed it in the dead of summer. Most other cucumber beers use an extract, but we feel using fresh cucumbers really make the beer shine.”

Brew Bus Brewing is also using Fresh From Florida tangerine zest in their Tangerine Splash Belgian-style Witbier. But tangerines are not the most unusual ingredient the brewery uses in its beer – that award goes to the oysters in Boat Beer Sea Session Ale. While tangerines gave Brew Bus Brewing’s citrusy witbier a bit of Florida’s groves, Anthony took a similar approach to put Florida’s aquaculture into a beer for the waters.

Boat Beer Sea Session Ale is a beer brewed in collaboration with Boat Run Oyster Company out of Tampa. This light and citrusy session ale is brewed with lime zest and a full bushel of Florida-raised Boat Run oysters in each batch. This special beer is available through Brew Bus Brewing and their distribution, but also available with fresh oysters from Boat Run’s oyster stand.

(Related: Southwest Florida’s Beer Scene is as Sunny as its Forecast)

Plenty More Fresh From Florida Beers

Brew Bus Brewing/Florida Avenue Brewing, Pair O’ Dice Brewing, and Lake Tribe Brewing Company are not the only breweries that are currently using Florida-sourced produce in their beers – they are the ones who are working with the growers and using the Fresh From Florida seal to help tell the story of their beer and meld it with the story of local growers.

(Find A Brewery Near You)

Julia from Pair O’ Dice stresses the importance of local businesses helping local businesses.  In a state that can have 15 to 20 items in-season at any time of year, the more Florida breweries grow to adopt the Fresh From Florida seal, the more unique tastes of Florida will be available for beer drinkers.

The post Florida Breweries Utilize ‘Fresh From Florida’ Label Once Reserved for Oranges appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Given such a prolific field, winning a GABF medal can springboard a small brewery to national recognition. With so much at stake, and so many moving parts, attention to detail is critical, both for brewers and festival staff. Every year, thousands of people work tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure the GABF competition goes off without a hitch.

Agonizing Decisions: Which Beers to Send to GABF Competition

For brewers, it all starts months before, in the heat of summer, when they must select which beers to submit for judging. As the festival has grown, breweries have been limited to submitting a maximum of five beers – for brewery groups with multiple locations, this increases to up to 20 entries. Regardless, choosing a few beers out of a brewer’s entire portfolio can be agonizing.

“We have to be incredibly selective about what we enter,” says Mark Edelson, director of brewery operations at Iron Hill Brewery, which throughout the years has claimed 49 GABF medals across its 16 locations in Philadelphia and beyond. “We brew about 300 beers companywide each year, and that leads to a lot of vigorous conversation back and forth.”

To narrow down such a field, Edelson and his team conduct their own blind tasting in early August. In his words, it’s “kind of a GABF judging before the GABF judging.”

(More: Stories Behind 10 Strange Beer Names)

For six hours, Iron Hill staff will taste and debate the merits of both flagship and limited-edition beers shipped or driven from all their locations.

“At the end, sometimes you’re just splitting hairs,” Edelson says. “But it is a kind of an honor for one of our brewers when [he or she] wins our blind tasting.”

Delicate Task of Getting Competition Beers to Denver in One Piece

After choosing which beers to enter, the next hurdle is physically getting competition samples to Denver. Trusting traditional shipping risks both poor temperature control and breakage, something Stevenson Rosslow, owner of Wrecking Bar Brewpub in Atlanta, has seen firsthand.

“Six years ago, after we put together all our beers, we unfortunately got news that not all of them made it. We lost a third to half of our submissions to breakage by FedEx,” Rosslow says.

In order to medal, a beer must make it through several rounds of GABF judging.

“So while some beers moved on, they didn’t have enough beer to sample in the later rounds,” he says. “At that point the entire expense and process was basically completely fruitless.”

The following year, Rosslow decided to cut out the middle man and drive the beers himself. With the help of co-founder and former brewmaster Bob Sandage, they tackled the 21-hour, 1,400-plus-mile trip straight through.

(More: American Brewers Fall for Brazil’s Spicy Amburana Wood)

Now the trek has become an annual tradition. Rosslow and members of the Wrecking Bar staff load up his Ram 2500 with their own beer submissions, plus those of roughly 30 Georgia breweries, complete with insulated packaging, ice, heavy blankets and tarps to keep the precious cargo secure.

As always, they drive straight through to Colorado. But after safely unloading the beer at the Brewers Association warehouse, they make the most of the trip back, plotting a route each year that takes them to new breweries. Last year, they took the northern route, hitting up Toppling Goliath, New Glarus and 3 Floyds, trading bottles along the way. When they returned to Atlanta, they threw a party for all of the breweries whose beer they transported, using bottles scored during the trip.

“The goal is to simply get ours and other breweries’ beers to Denver as quickly as possible without any mishaps, but it’s also a good bonding experience for the team,” Rosslow says. “We get to see what’s going on at other great breweries around the country.”

In 2018, their efforts paid off, as Wrecking Bar brought home a GABF silver medal for its Willet Barrel-Aged Ye Old Sprinkler barleywine in the Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Beer category.

Thousands of Hours Sorting Thousands of Entries

As competition shipments arrive in Colorado, the onus now shifts to Brewers Association staff and volunteers. The last week in August, every competition beer from around the country arrives at a warehouse north of Denver.

Nathan Sheiko, the competition’s software engineer, oversees the team of volunteers tasked with handling all these shipments. In a single week, his team will receive more than 54,000 individual bottles or cans of beer, all of which has to be unpacked, sorted and reorganized.

To keep everything straight, Sheiko continually looks for ways to streamline the process.

“When I started in 2012, the competition had around 4,000 entries and sorting was completed on paper,” he says. “In 2015, I wrote a new tablet app that allowed volunteers to enter data digitally on the floor with instantaneous error checking. For GABF 2019, we’re taking it one step further with a new barcoding system to handle the 9,000-plus entries. Brewers are now attaching barcodes to each bottle or shipping box to help us enter information into the app faster.”

Still, the task requires a massive volunteer force. Mike Aronson oversees the warehouse and estimates the whole sorting process takes up to 6,400 working hours to complete. Volunteers work in shifts – three shifts per day at four hours each, five days a week for four weeks.

“In 2001, Boulder Beer let us use their 600-square-foot cooler space for sorting. Now we are in our own 10,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse, and are using every inch,” Aronson says. “In the end, cases will be palletized by category for shipping to the convention center for judging. The past few competitions we built 26 full pallets and filled more than a 53-foot refrigerated trailer.”

Aronson says for 2019, the team built 28 pallets and filled a trailer and a half!

(More: Graphic: Gold Medal IPAs 1989-2018)

Behind the Closed-Door, Secret Spectacle of GABF Competition Judging

Finally, the beer arrives in Denver for judging, which takes place alongside the public aspect of the festival.

Competition Director Chris Swersey will utilize roughly 330 judges for this year’s competition. Over the course of three days, judges will blind taste beer in their assigned categories, comparing them to style guidelines published by the Brewers Association. With so much beer to taste, Swersey takes steps to ensure judges’ palates remain fresh.

“As we’ve grown the competition, we’ve also grown the number of judges to keep the tastings at a reasonable number of beers,” he says. “In fact, the total number of beers each judge evaluates on average is about five percent lower than it was 10 years ago.”

In each session, a judge tastes no more than 12 beers.

“For higher alcohol and more bitter styles, we intentionally decrease the number of beers per judge to avoid fatigue,” Swersey adds.

The two largest categories, Juicy or Hazy  IPA and American IPA, are tasted in five sessions, with the first sessions in each category requiring more than 120 judges.

The judging process is also aided by competition stewards, a team of 210 volunteers overseen by Assistant Competition Staff Manager Kris Latham. From 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., for three straight days, these volunteers stage, pour and deliver beer samples to judges, acting as a buffer to ensure the tasting is truly blind. They also sign a confidentiality agreement, barring them from discussing breweries or beers during the judging.

(More: So You Want to Be a Beer Judge?)

Latham is entering her 21st year leading the stewardship team and values their contributions.

“These volunteers travel on their own dime, take time away from their families and work long days to make the competition a success,” she says.

New stewards are recruited based on references from within the existing team.

“Some are veterans, doctors, airline pilots, engineers, and yes, even rocket scientists,” Latham adds. “They are true beer folks who are super passionate, and it’s a big reunion when we all get together each year.”

This lengthy and painstaking process–from beer selection to shipping to judging–culminates on Saturday morning, the last day of the festival, at the GABF awards ceremony. Thousands of brewers crowd the convention center auditorium waiting to hear their name called, to come on stage for the ultimate prize – a GABF medal and a fistbump from Charlie Papazian, Brewers Association past president and founder of the Association of Brewers and the Great American Beer Festival.

The post Agonizing Decisions, 2-Day Drives, and the Spectacle Behind America’s Largest Beer Competition appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

One of the most popular ingredients for nostalgic, beer-y experimentation is peanut butter. Peanut butter has been a favorite in candy bars, cereals, desserts, and everyone’s favorite lunchbox sandwich for decades, and it was popularized in craft beer with offerings like Willoughby Peanut Butter Cup Coffee Porter and DuClaw Sweet Baby Jesus, both of which were mentioned often when I polled Twitter about the best peanut butter beers for this article (if Twitter wasn’t around in your era, it’s where we all go to yell at each other in the shortest sentences possible).

We’ve talked about peanut butter beers here before, but there are constantly new and noteworthy examples popping up, so here are some of the best new(ish) peanut butter beers out there today.

Garage Brewing | Peanut Butter Chocolate 

“As many breweries know, these days we have to walk down the path of innovation and creativity on a daily basis,” says Garage Brewing brewmaster Guy Bartmess. His brewery’s Peanut Butter Chocolate is a milk stout that shines on the merits of the beer’s two very popular title ingredients.

“We’re not the first people to put these two flavors together by a long shot,” he acknowledges. “Nonetheless, we’ve put a lot of work into balancing these two flavors. You can always create a beer that might be a curiosity to a customer. We wanted to create a beer that would be that go-to beer when people reach for a dark, rich, and decadent beer.”

The 7.1% ABV stout represents a lot of work on the part of the Garage Brewing team to achieve a true peanut butter flavor.

“Without revealing any secrets, let’s just say that it isn’t made the easy way,” says Bartmess.

Mast Landing Brewery | Gunner’s Daughter

Mast Landing Brewing in Maine employ a nautical theme for their beer names, and marketing director Parker Olen says the name of their best-selling beer, Gunner’s Daughter Peanut Butter Milk Stout, has an ironic high seas origin.

“It derives from an old nautical punishment,” he explains. “Something that used to be quite terrible is now something very pleasant and enjoyable.”

The founders tasted a similar beer when they were still homebrewers and decided to recreate it at Mast Landing.

“We wanted to get as close to the flavors of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in beer form as possible,” says Olen.

The brew was intended to be a one-time special release, but popular demand led to it being a year-round can offering. The brewery also releases a 10% ABV Imperial Gunner’s Daughter during the colder months.

(READ: Peanut Butter Beers You’ll Crave)

Rusty Rail Brewing | Fool’s Gold

If you were expecting the largest brewpub in Pennsylvania to play it safe with their distribution beers, you were wrong. Rusty Rail Brewing’s best-selling beer is a true weirdo, though a delicious one: an imperial peanut butter hefeweizen called Fool’s Gold.

Brewery director Guy McCarty says the brew team wanted to brew a peanut butter beer but didn’t want to brew the typical porter or stout. They decided to play on the flavor of a popular improvised childhood snack by combining the banana esters from Hefeweizen yeast with peanut butter.

“We knew it was a relatively out-there concept to do an imperial peanut butter hefe, so we released it draft-only as a one-off,” says McCarty of the 8% ABV beer. “It shocked us how awesome the final product tasted.”

(Recipe: Sea-Salted Peanut Butter Brownie Bars)

Liquid Mechanics | Peanut Butter Porter

Davin Heldin, “Captain of the Ship and Head Paper Filer” at Liquid Mechanics Brewing in Lafayette, Colorado, says his brewery doesn’t just want to make a sweet peanut butter beer. That’s why Liquid Mechanics Peanut Butter Porter is a beer first and a peanut butter beer second.

“Our goal is to create a beer that still tastes like beer, but with a hint of roasted peanut, not necessarily peanut butter,” he explains. “Subtlety with this beer is important to us. We want the peanut flavor to enhance the experience of drinking an imperial porter, not have the flavor of an imperial porter enhance the experience of drinking peanut butter.”

The beer came about as a collaboration with Justin’s Nut Butter, an organic peanut butter company from Boulder, Colorado. It was originally sold as a Valentine’s Day special release, but is now available year-round.

“We wanted the base for a peanut butter beer to have chocolate notes and mild roast,” explains Heldin. “Chocolate so that we could get close to having it taste like a dark chocolate peanut butter cup without adding any actual chocolate, and mild roast so that the peanut flavor tasted more like peanuts than peanut butter.”

Trillium Brewing | Peanut Butter PM Dawn

The peanut butter version of Trillium Brewing’s beloved PM Dawn coffee imperial stout was originally brewed to celebrate the Boston brewery’s 5th anniversary, but it has since returned as a small batch offering.

It’s the coffee here that really makes this beer unique. Trillium adds slightly less of their signature cold brew Italian roast coffee from Barrington Coffee Roasters than they do in the standard version, and the resulting synergy between nuts and beans will perk up even the most jaded of stout drinkers. The silky brew evokes images of peanut butter chocolate milkshakes or peanut butter toast with coffee.

We won’t even blame you if you have it with breakfast.

(More: Craft Beers for Margarita Lovers)

Mother Earth Brewing Co. | Sin Tax 

Kamron Khannakhjavani, director of marketing for Mother Earth Brewing Company in San Diego, gives credit where it’s due when asked about the origin of his brewery’s Sin Tax Imperial Peanut Butter Stout.

“The idea was spawned when fellow San Diego brewery Karl Strauss brewed a Peanut Butter Cup Porter,” explains Khannakhjavani. “We cranked up the ABV and chose a similar, yet differentiated style in imperial stout that we were confident could stand up to so many big flavors.”

In the collaborative spirit of independent craft brewing, the folks at Karl Strauss helped out with the big beer.

“Obviously respect for those that had produced something similar before us came into play when making the decision,” says Khannakhjavani. “So we consulted Karl’s co-founder Chris Cramer as well as their highly respected brewer Paul Segura and they provided tips on how to create a well-balanced offering. We adopted that to create a complementary yet different beer from theirs. Peanut butter has a distinct, rich flavor so we knew it had to be paired with something robust with enough viscosity and complexity to be complementary.”

He also says Sin Tax is a great table companion for a classic PB & J sandwich (the brewery even does a fruited version of the beer periodically) or barbecued dishes.

WeldWerks Brewing | Peanut Butter Medianoche

The highest ranked beer on Untappd from last year’s Great American Beer Festival wasn’t a hazy IPA or a barrel-aged sour. It was a peanut butter beer.

WeldWerks Brewing in Greeley, Colorado, is well-known for their line of Medianoche imperial stouts, and in 2018 they unveiled Peanut Butter Cup Medianoche. This decadent 13.1% ABV stout was first aged in Woodford Reserve Double Oaked and Breckenridge Distillery bourbon barrels, which were then blended together. Peanut flour was then added, as well as 15 lbs. per barrel of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Medianoche releases are ultra rare and highly coveted, but if you have the chance, don’t pass this one up!

Lakewood Brewing | Peanut Butter Temptress

When Lakewood Brewing of Garland, Texas, stopped making the peanut butter version of their popular 9.1% ABV Temptress milk stout last year, they heard about it from fans right away. According to Wim Bens, founder and president of Lakewood, the brewery received some spirited phone calls from fans after the peanut butter beer sold out.

“We actually had someone call the brewery and say, ‘I heard you had a hard time making that beer. Figure it out!’” said Bens in a recent press release. They decided to make more this year, and used about a ton of peanuts to make it happen.

Temptress milk stout tangos with a lot of different fun ingredients in its Seduction line of variants, including mint, raspberry, and coconut, though peanut butter has seemed to be the most popular. Grab it before it’s gone—we wouldn’t want you to leave an angry call on poor Wim’s voicemail.

(Graphic: Gold Medal IPAs 1989-2018)

Listermann Brewing | Nutcase

Listemann Brewing in Cincinnati, Ohio, is known for brewing unusual beers, including Chickow! imperial brown ale brewed with hazelnuts, but they’re no strangers to peanut butter either.

“Peanut butter is one of those comforting flavors of American childhood, a time when things felt simpler, possibly magical, when the world was new to you,” says Listermann head brewer Jared Lewinski. “All of those feelings were what we hoped to evoke when someone drank a Nutcase. We had a great porter base, and then we added lots of peanut butter character.”

Never content to keep things normal for too long, the Listermann team have cranked out numerous variants of Nutcase, including fruit versions to play on familiar peanut butter and jelly flavors. They’ve also brewed an Imperial Marshmallow Fluff variant.

Jared Brewer, manager at Listermann, says they originally brewed Nutcase as a joke when the world was supposed to end on December 2012 according to the Mayan calendar.

“Our co-owner Dan Listermann was very against us making a peanut butter beer,” he jokes. “We made one for the end of the world so if it did end, we would get to try this beer out.”

Fortunately, we’re all still here, and Nutcase isn’t going away either.

Garrison City Beerworks | Moral Sweatshirt 

With tens of thousands of beers being brewed by craft breweries in the U.S., coming up with memorable beer names can be tricky. Andy Gray, co-owner of Garrison City Beerworks in Dover, New Hampshire, came up with the odd name for his brewery’s peanut butter stout entirely by accident.

“The name was kind of an inside joke,” he says. “The staff was talking music one day and I walked in when Earl Sweatshirt came up, and I was convinced there was a rapper named Moral Sweatshirt. We decided that had the makings of a good beer name.”

The brewers had enjoyed several peanut butter stouts from other breweries, including the Mast Landing beer highlighted in this article, and wanted to put their own spin on the idea.

“We wanted to make something a little thicker, more velvety, and capture the best parts of the peanut flavor,” says Gray. “The base is chock-full of cacao nibs, the perfect complement to peanut butter. We wanted something drinkable, but smooth.”

The brewery does variations on the 7.5% ABV peanut butter beer from time to time, including one with banana and one with strawberry.

“There will be more to come, as there’s a ton of sweet flavors that pair well with PB and bring back visions of childhood,” says Gray. “How about s’more with PB?”

The post New and Noteworthy Peanut Butter Beers appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Almost as soon as a technique, ingredient, or process hits brewers’ tool kits, they can’t wait to see how far it can stretch. The latest example of stylistic exchange: brut lagers.

Birth of the Brut IPA

Brut lagers wouldn’t be possible without their parent style, brut IPAs. And brut IPAs wouldn’t have been possible without an enzyme called amyloglucosidase or amylase. Thankfully, you don’t need to know how to spell it or even pronounce it to understand its effects on beer.

This enzyme piqued brewers’ interest at the tail end of 2017, when Kim Sturdavant of San Francisco’s Social Kitchen and Brewery used the ingredient, which craft brewers typically reserved for big beefy stouts, to brew an IPA.

(Related: Hot Experimental Hops Create Compelling Flavors)

Amyloglucosidase breaks down malts’ sugars into smaller bites, making them easier for yeast to eat. That changes the character of the beer by drying it out, decreasing its perceived weight on the palate, and making it highly effervescent like the brut champagne that brut IPAs are named for.

The style spread, and now you might find brut IPAs in six-packs on grocery store shelves. But it got a couple craft breweries wondering: What if they applied the enzyme to lagers?

Brut Lagers Filling a Void?

While no one had used the term “brut lager” until 2019, brewing lagers with this type of enzyme goes back to the 1960s. It was a key component of some large breweries’ light beers, as it helped remove the malt sugars that would add a fullness to beers, and it made the final beers lower in calories.

So when Dave Berg, brewmaster at August Schell Brewing Co. in New Ulm, Minnesota, heard about its use in brut IPAs, he thought it was a natural fit for the lagers his brewery is known for. His goal in brewing August Schell’s Brut Lager was to replicate what drinkers liked in brut IPAs—aromatic hops, a light body—and translate it to a lager.

“We used a lot of late-addition hops trying to imitate the brut IPA style, and we used some newer hop varieties,” Berg says. “I think people are apparently more calorie conscious but they still want flavor, and so it seems like that’s a pretty large untapped area right now.”

(More: Brewers Association Releases Brewery Employee Diversity Data for the First Time)

Drinkers seeking lots of hop character but in an easier-drinking package than an 8% IPA could find their answer in the Brut Lager, which was part of the brewery’s summer variety pack that debuted in June. The word brut, so associated with IPAs in the beer world, helped convey effervescence and aromatic hops.

“I think it was something different to try. Brut had become a name that people actually recognize in beer,” Berg says.

While he’s not sure the word brut will still grace beer cans five years from now, Berg thinks the refreshing, flavorful components of a brut lager have staying power.

“Everybody’s been doing the big imperial stouts and really boozy beers for a long time and they’re great, but especially as you get older, you can’t drink that much. I think there’s probably a market for reduced carb beers that have more flavor,” he says.

It’s Not Wine, It’s Brut Lager

But the lower-malt aspect of brut lagers wasn’t initially what drew Kinslahger Brewing Company to the emerging style. For co-owner Keith Huizinga, it was all about its proximity to wine.

The brewery in Oak Park, Illinois, has brewed primarily lagers for just over three years, and its brewer Steve Loranz is constantly on the search to expand drinkers’ perceptions of what the category can be. When people hear lager, Huizinga says, they think of a certain flavor. But lager is just a type of fermentation, a part of a beer’s overall design that doesn’t pigeonhole it any more than the word “ale” would.

“We wanted to create a different type of experience, something almost like a sparkling wine, but 100 percent beer,” says Huizinga. “The idea was combining the dry brut techniques with a hop selection that would emphasize that almost grapelike character.”

Their hop choice was a blend of Nelson Sauvin and Hallertau Blanc hops which teamed up to give the lager, named Sauvin Blanc, its vinous aroma and flavor. That the beer’s name sounds like the wine varietal sauvignon blanc only helped get Kinslahger’s point across.

“Originally we released it as a taproom-only beer back in March. We loved it; the customers loved it, so we turned around and got an extra batch in the tanks,” Huizinga says. “The initial feedback was strong, once we can get over people thinking it’s wine.”

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Brewers Experiment

Kinslahger adds the crucial amylase enzyme to the brewing process at the end of fermentation to break down those long-chain sugars. But August Schell’s brewers actually add the enzyme in the mash phase. Brewers seem split on the question of when to add the enzyme in the brewing process; both August Schell and Kinslahger say their methods achieved their end goals for the beer.

Because brut lagers are an even newer spinoff of the relatively new brut IPA style, there’s much for craft brewers to still explore when it comes to processes and ingredients. But its defining characteristics—a barely-there malt bill and aromatic, usually wine-reminiscent hops—seem firmly established. As with any new beer style, though, where it goes next is anyone’s guess.

The post Brut Lagers?! Brut Lagers! appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

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The report was released in mid-July, but small and independent U.S. craft brewers don’t need a report to tell them what beer lovers want. Several breweries have already recognized there’s a place in their portfolio for non-alcoholic craft beers.

While you still have to search a little to find them, non-alcoholic craft beers exist. The breweries who make them are eager to extend the craft beer experience, minus the alcohol, to people who want to be part of the craft beer community.

Breweries Dedicated to Non-Alcoholic Craft Beer

There are a few craft breweries already dedicated to making non-alcoholic beer: Athletic Brewing Co. in Stratford, Connecticut, and the Wellbeing Brewing Company in suburban St. Louis, Missouri.

Before opening Athletic Brewing Co., Bill Shufelt says he went on a journey that “introduced moderation into my life.” At the time, he says the landscape of non-alcoholic beers didn’t fit with all the exciting things happening in the beer and food world.

“I thought to myself what a huge positive impact making moderation ‘cool’ could have. It could potentially positively impact millions of lives,” he says. “I immediately knew at that point, I had to quit my day job and do this full time.”

He teamed up with John Walker, co-founder and head brewer, and they got to work creating a craft brewery dedicated to non-alcoholic beers.

Shufelt says their customers typically fall in the 25 to 45 age range, and that a “high percentage” of them are weekend warriors who seek out activities including boot camp, Soul Cycle, and obstacle races, like the Spartan and Warrior Dash series.

“We’ve never been out to cannibalize drinking occasions–we love the craft beer world!” he explains. “Our drinkers don’t necessarily ‘switch’ to non-alcoholic. Most of our customers also drink at other points during the week.”

Brooklyn Brewery Releasing a Non-Alcoholic Craft Beer

New breweries aren’t the only ones looking to bring the craft beer experience (and flavor) to non-alcoholic beers.

New York’s Brooklyn Brewery, founded in 1988, is among the early pioneers of America’s craft brewing scene, so it’s not surprising they’re among the early craft breweries prepared to release a non-alcoholic craft beer in the U.S. The beer is already available in parts of Europe.

“We’ve always known beer to foster an inclusive, come-one, come-all environment and as we see consumer preference shift towards alternative beverage options, we don’t want the inclusion of alcohol to drive anyone away from that,” explains Samantha Itzkovitz from Brooklyn Brewery.

Bottom line: Brooklyn Brewery bets that people who aren’t necessarily interested in alcohol are still interested in all the things that come with sharing a beer with friends, like connecting with their communities and good conversation.

Brett Robinson is the founder of Silver Branch Brewing Co., which opened in Silver Spring, Maryland, in early 2019. He agrees that offering a low- or non-alcoholic beer is a way to welcome more people into the craft beer community.

“I would definitely consider brewing an NA beer. I love beer because it’s such a flavorful beverage and my love for beer is very closely tied to my love for food,” Brett says. “Non-alcoholic beer as a category plays an important role within the beer landscape, especially as the collective conscience of what ‘beer’ can be continues to expand. I would love to see the development of more flavorful, craft-oriented non-alcoholic beers in the states.”

(GRAPHIC: Gold Medal IPAs from 1989 to 2018)

Science Behind Brewing Non-Alcoholic Beer

There are a few different ways brewers create a non-alcoholic beer.

Matthew Humbard has a Ph.D. in microbiology–and an impressive collector of yeast, I might add–and is in the process of opening Patent Brewing and beer laboratory in Maryland. While he doesn’t plan to offer a non-alcoholic beer at his new brewery, he walked me through the three ways non-alcoholic beer is made.

The first option is through reverse osmosis. This is where extreme pressure filters fully-fermented beer. During this process, water, volatile acids, and alcohol are the only components that make it through the filter. The alcohol is then removed using traditional distillation methods. This helps maintain the unique flavors of the beer. Once the alcohol is removed from the water solution that passed through the RO filter, it is recombined with everything that did not make it through the RO filter; resulting in an alcohol-free product.

Vacuum distillation is the section option. The beer is put into a vacuum chamber that lowers the pressure so that the alcohol’s boiling point is much lower. This way the beer doesn’t need to be heated to the point where it would lose its flavor in order to distill the alcohol. In the end, the beer needs to be force carbonated.

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Humbard says technically you could heat the beer to 175 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 to 30 minutes and let the alcohol evaporate. This would change the character and flavor of the beer drastically.

The third option is fermentation, and Humbard says it’s about the yeast.

“There’s an alternative yeast family called Pichia. The species Pichia kluyveri is known to make about 1 percent or less alcohol by volume in traditional fermentation,” he says. “In order to do a good job at this, you also have to mess with the brew itself to make it basically unfermentable [increase the mash temperature or mash with non-convertible grains]. Also, some Pichia strains can come off as a little medicinal … but it’s definitely doable.”

Non-Alcoholic Beer Isn’t Always Alcohol-Free

I think it’s important to note that all beers labeled “non-alcoholic” here in the United States might not actually be alcohol-free. Legally, a beer can contain up to 0.5% ABV and still be considered “non-alcoholic” in the U.S.

While that trace amount of alcohol may not deter all customers who choose to order one, this is a bit of a sticking point for some. I spoke to a recovering alcoholic and he explained there are many different thoughts behind recovery (some people are very literal and won’t even eat something with vanilla extract in it because of its alcohol content). His main point is that if something is labeled “non-alcoholic” but still contains alcohol, it takes away a person’s ability to make the decision for themselves.

(VISIT: Find a U.S. Brewery)

The big takeaway here: if you’re in the market for a non-alcoholic beer, be sure to read the label, just like you would read food labels if you’re trying to avoid an allergen.

As I sit here, finishing this article, I’m sipping on a 6% ABV pale ale from DC Brau in Washington, DC. I can’t help but wonder if I would get the same satisfaction in my reward at the end of a long shift with a non-alcoholic craft beer. Possibly?

Either way, I’m excited to see where this trend goes.

The post Why Breweries are Making Non-Alcoholic Craft Beers appeared first on CraftBeer.com.