With summer picnic season in full swing, you may be assigned the most important job: bringing the beer! And with great power, comes great responsibility. Because there will be shelves and shelves of options at the local grocery store. You’ll have to decide on brand, style and even whether it’s in a bottle or a can.
Enjoying a beer in the sun is a summertime rite of passage. There’s only one thing that could ruin it…getting skunked! While being sprayed by a certain black and white striped animal would certainly not be ideal, we’re talking about when a bottle of beer is exposed to direct sunlight, resulting in a sulfur taste. (more…)
We know what you’re thinking. Beer doesn’t need all the fancy accouterments that cocktails do. It is perfect all on its own. But what if you could make it…more perfect?
When used right, a garnish can complement, enhance or mirror the natural flavors in beer to unlock new levels of flavor. Here are some of our favorites. (more…)
Wine may have the stronger reputation, but beer can also pair deliciously with chocolate.
In fact, beer and chocolate have a lot in common. They both undergo significant flavor development from the process of fermentation and both require a delicate balance of bitter and sweet flavors. Plus, the carbonation in beer actually cleanses and awakens the palate, better preparing you for whatever comes next.
Since you already know how to perfectly pair your food and beer, let’s take it a step further. Here are tips and tricks to cook with the hoppy beverage to complement and bring out a variety of different ingredients, flavor profiles and textures. (more…)
In this case, “barleywine” manages to be both a helpful description and a tricky misnomer.
Let’s start with what it gets wrong. Barleywine is not wine. It is a beer made from sugars extracted from grains. So why in the world is it called a wine? Because of its strength and complexity that are similar to that of wine. (more…)
Before we can even make a single “here’s how the story gose” joke, the beer is pronounced “goz-uh.” So that won’t exactly work. But it does have a storied history going all the way back to the thirteenth century that is still worth telling today – especially for those who love a good comeback. (more…)
In this case, the name is both a helpful and slightly deceptive place to start. It is in fact a style born from the Belgian Trappist brewing tradition, but nothing is exactly tripled in its production.
Nonetheless, we have to go back to those early days in monastery breweries to better understand how we ended up with a perfectly golden-hued thirst quencher.
While this question may seem straightforward, the answer is as murky as the beers themselves. Because a porter and a stout are only separated by a thin line and sometimes even that becomes blurred. In order to better understand these two subtly different beer styles, it helps to go back to the beginning. (more…)
