Tales of ales from the heart of Ohio to the ends of the Earth
I’ve traveled the world looking for good beer and interesting places. I’ve written about locales from Bend to Boston, from Burlington to Santa Barbara, and many points in between. I’ve journeyed to faraway places exploring the origins of beer styles such as gose (Liepzig), sahti (Helsinki), Berliner Weisse (Berlin), and pilsner (Pilsen). My travels have... Continue Reading →
In the 21st century a wealth of brewing tips, techniques, and recipes are accessible to anyone with access to the internet. Bohemian pilsner malts, New Zealand hops, Belgian yeast strains are available to brewers from Texas to Tokyo. Water chemistry can be bent to the brewers will. Geographic differences in beer styles that were once... Continue Reading →
Corvallis, Oregon is one of America’s quintessential college towns. It’s bounded by the Willamette River to the east and the highest peak in the Coastal Mountain range to the west. The Pacific Coast, the Cascade Mountains and Portland are all within two hours driving distance. It has the kind of natural beauty and geographic diversity... Continue Reading →
A few weeks ago work took me to Colorado and Wyoming for the better part of my spring break. What follows are some notes from a Sunday exploration of the Mile High City, plus a few quick peaks at breweries further north on the Front Range. This is the third time I’ve written about Denver,... Continue Reading →
About two weeks ago I wrote a post highlighting my favorite British breweries with the promise to follow up with similar posts from my forays into mainland Europe. In today's post we move across the English Channel to the Low Countries. Last April I spent 10 days with my wife and daughter visiting Belgium, The Netherlands... Continue Reading →
At this time of year it’s customary to publish best of lists. In past years I have published a list of my favorite Central Ohio beers, but this year I’m going in a different direction. As many of you know I recently returned from an 11-month sabbatical in Northeast England. Many people have asked me... Continue Reading →
In a recent post I recapped my visit to Vermont’s most celebrated breweries—Hill Farmstead and The Alchemist. It was a popular post, due in no small part to the current craze for hazy IPAs, but there’s more to the Vermont beer scene than aromatic hop oils and colloidal suspensions of polyphenols and yeast. In this... Continue Reading →
I’ve spent a considerable chunk of my spare time over the past year exploring the roots of historical beer styles ranging from pilsners to Flander’s Reds to Scottish Ales, On returning to the US what better way to reintroduce my palate to home grown brewing than a trip to Vermont, a state that can take... Continue Reading →
When you strip it back to the basics brewing beer is a pretty simple process. You need some malted grains, preferably barley, some water, and a way to heat the water. The quality and efficiency goes up significantly if you can measure and control the temperature, but there are workarounds like decoction mashing if you... Continue Reading →
It’s a Friday afternoon in early April, two days into my Belgian beer holiday. As I write this I’m sitting in the modern tasting room of Brouwerij Drie Fonteinen, savoring a 2012 vintage bottle of oud geuze and a cheese board. Sunlight streams through the windows, it seems like the first completely sunny day in... Continue Reading →
I just returned from a short family vacation to Scotland. My traveling companions for the journey included my wife Laurinda, our daughter Iris and two of her friends from Columbus, and my buddy Ralph Wolfe, who also doubles as father of one of the aforementioned friends. On a trip where half of the party are... Continue Reading →
Welcome to the third installment of my Belgian beer adventure. Those who have been following along at home may remember that part two ended on a Monday afternoon at Brasserie Dupont in the tiny village of Tourpes. After leaving Dupont we crossed back into Flanders and made our way to the beautiful city of Ghent,... Continue Reading →
Belgium is formally divided into three regions, Dutch speaking Flanders in the north, French speaking Wallonia in the south, and bilingual Brussels lying roughly in the middle. Setting the capital territory aside, the other two regions are separated by more than just language. Each has its own parliament, political parties, religious preferences, and of course... Continue Reading →
Last month I completed a week long, beer-centric trip around Belgium. What an amazing trip and not just because of the beer. For a country with the second highest population density in Europe, it has a surprising amount of green space. We encountered vistas as diverse as the wooded hills of the Ardennes, the verdant... Continue Reading →
Have you ever stumbled across a bottle of beer that has been forgotten for far too long? I’m not talking something that's just a few years old, but a beer that was bottled when you were just a kid or possibly before you were born. Your first instinct might be to toss it in the... Continue Reading →
After spending a few enjoyable days in Amsterdam, today I leave the land of tulips and windmills, Rembrandt and van Gogh, Heineken and Grolsch. My destination, Belgium, has long been at the top of my list of dream travel destinations. The anticipation is palpable, and for good reason. In Belgium brewing is elevated to an... Continue Reading →
After a few months of the dark, damp English winter my wife was pining to head south to reacquainted herself with the sun. A few destinations were discussed, and eventually Rome rose to the top of the list. With all that the Eternal City has to offer—unrivaled history, inspiring architecture, amazing food, babes suckling on... Continue Reading →
When I first moved to the UK it didn’t take long to figure out that Cloudwater Brewing represented something very modern. The visuals—16 oz cans with wrap on labels, ingredients listed on the can for all to see, prodigious hop additions, premium pricing—were immediately familiar to someone from the USA. When I bought a can... Continue Reading →
It’s New Year’s Day in Dublin, the first day of my first visit to the Emerald Isle. With temperatures hovering a little above the freezing point and a stiff wind blowing out of the west, this is not the night for a leisurely walk by the Liffey. It’s not raining, but the streets are still... Continue Reading →
If beer styles were celebrities Berliner Weisse might well be viewed in the same light as David Hasselhoff or Def Leppard, more popular abroad than in its native land. Yes, I know Napoleon dubbed it the champagne of the north when his armies occupied Berlin, but the 20th century was not a good one for... Continue Reading →
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