The Great American Beer Festival held its awards ceremony today.  DelMarVa-DC was well represented.  Congratulations to our local breweries-done-good!  For those of you who don’t know GABF, it is the pre-eminent craft beer event in the U. S. every year.  It’s an intense week of classes, meet ‘n’ greets, tasting sessions, master [...]

It’s a pretty well known phenomenon.  There is far more out there asking whether women can like beer than there is about beer for women.  There are more women who brew beer and blog about beer than ever before, and we get a lot of attention from beer-loving men (there’s [...]

For you medievalists who might be able to actually attend, and all you crazy brewers who like getting together with other brewers to see what’s shakin’, may I recommend this weekend’s  Brewers’ Roundtable?  It’s something we do a lot of in the historical brewing world that you modern types may [...]

What did the thirteen  dwarves, Gandalf, and Mr. Bilbo Baggins drink in The Hobbit?  Here are the references to beer, ale, porter, mead and wine.  I am seeing ever more searches online for this information – I hope a lot are from home brewers – but be forewarned, there isn’t [...]

I’m back home from medieval summer camp (where I and ten thousand of my closest friends re-create camps and life in different eras prior to 1600 AD, complete with battles, bards, and all manner of arts displays, tournaments, and competitions – have I mentioned the parties?).  I am thinking about [...]

Here is my list of secondary sources for historical brewing; the references I reach for regularly.  I’ve already posted my personal list of primary sources on this site.  I’m planning three or four of these.   I think my next one will be modern how-to brewing sources I routinely use, and [...]

I’ve been preparing my list of historical brewing sources.   I am chagrined each time I see a post from a newbie on one of the brewing history forums, asking whether there are period sources.  You bet there are!  Clearly my eleven-page bibliography needs to become a searchable database available from [...]

I used to know it as a fun fighting event. It all started like this In the world of medieval enactors in the Society for Creative Anachronism, an integral part of an event is the afternoon Court.  The local baron and/or baroness preside, and sometimes we have Royalty as well [...]

May 11-17 is American Craft Beer Week.  This is important to know. This is the Mother of all Beer Weeks.  If you like craft beer, this is the week that your local favorite tapster will have their best available and probably at a discount. This week there will be specialty [...]