All things having to do with fermented beverages, including craft beer, mead, and wine – beautifully made and attempts thereto.
This site is meant as a gateway for moderns to learn history and historians to make good homebrew. I want it to be a good, clear, accessible resource. I try to explain things in straightforward ways making as few assumptions as possible. And I like to tell an interesting story. […]
It’s amazing to me how many brewers ask me where to find medieval brewing recipes for beer, mead, whatever . Let’s start with some basics. When you’re looking for documentable historical sources for medieval brewing recipes, it’s important to know which ones to quote. What is a primary source? The […]
A quick mead takes 10 days-2 weeks, and tastes like slightly alcoholic soda pop. It runs 2-4% alcohol – just enough so it’s more than honey water, but not so much that a long cold drink will hurt you. Quick meads are great for camping events, particularly when you’ll be there […]
Every homebrewer has days like this. I started out to make a perfectly reasonable porter recipe. English chocolate malt, English dark crystal malt, English black malt, a little wheat malt, Chinook bittering hops and US Goldings. One packet of Lallemand ale yeast with starter. I was going to add oak cubes and […]
Sam Adams is hosting a national Pitch Room Competition for entrepreneurs who have an idea for a food/beverage/beer related business. The prize is a $10,000 grant and a year’s free coaching. Sam Adams is one helluva business success – in 2013 their “1,122 employees sold 3.4 million barrels of beer […]
I’ve been building a homebrewers website for a club with some special parameters. Since homebrewers’ clubs are sprouting up like mushrooms (do NOT take that as inspiration, the world does NOT need ‘shroom beer) I thought I’d take some time to look at the kinds of decisions made to get this new site […]
Denizens Brewing Co. in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland is open! This is exciting for several reasons: 1. The next nearest brewpub – a place that serves the beer it makes – is about eleven miles away through some of the worst traffic in the country. Eleven miles might as well […]
I went to Ireland and checked in on the state of craft beer. (I suffer so for my art.) I simply had to go to Dublin this summer. The European Beer Bloggers Conference was there, and it was a good excuse to go to Ireland, not that I really needed […]
Sometimes I just love being a beer blogger. I get notices like this magically appearing in my inbox, allowing little ol’ me to be on top of the very latest in trends and business momentum. It’s not like my blog’s all that big or anything, so this is a real […]
Things happen when you start to pay attention to beer, particularly the one in your hand. Take a sip. Subtle flavors rise, you breathe deep, you say “Aaaaaah!” Your beer satisfies your thirst and presents you with a whole host of sensory delight. That’s usually when people start noticing […]
We felt like rock stars. When the Beer Bloggers’ Conference arrived at Harpoon Brewery in Boston this summer, we were quietly ushered away from the rather impressive stream of visitors pouring in for the brewery tour. Off to the side, inside a small courtyard, were black-clad staff with trays of […]
Ring, ring. It’s two days before I leave for vacation in Ireland and Scotland. I’m ending the trip with the European Beer Bloggers’ Conference in Edinburgh. I brim with anticipation, excited as a child, delighted to the tips of my fingers dancing happily over the keyboard; I can’t wait to board that plane. Then […]
Which beers can you find in Montgomery County Maryland? How do you know? Why do we care? Why is finding beer (if you care about which beer) so hard? I’ve lived in Maryland for thirteen years this time around, but I’ve been resident in so many states I have trouble keeping […]