Nearly 10 years ago, Michael Tonsmeire brewed his first batch of beer in a student-taught class at Carnegie Mellon University. Now, he's written American Sour Beers, has a cult following on his blog, The Mad Fermentationist and consults for Modern Times Brewery in…
Originally published in the January/February 2014 issue of Zymurgy magazine. Late last spring and into summer, nearly 50 breweries and brewpubs across the country served beers with names like Iron Horse IPA, The Cure, and, most often, Ales for ALS.…
Originally published in the July/August 2013 issue of Zymurgy magazine. Here's the condensed version of a story you've likely heard before. After the price of hops spiked in 2007 and 2008, scores, perhaps hundreds, of farmers and would-be farmers across the…
Originally published in the July/August 2013 issue of Zymurgy magazine. A few years back, a British colleague and I had a business-related trip to Solana Beach. With the work of the day concluded, we had some time to kill before…
It all started in mid-August 2011 with an email from the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., asking me if I would give a presentation about ancient Egyptian beer-making in April 2012. The museum had an…
Originally published in the November/December 2012 issue of Zymurgy magazine. Ask any brewer which style of beer Ireland gave to the world, and dry stout would be the immediate reply. Most brewers could also easily identify a number of different beer…
Originally published in the September/October 2012 issue of Zymurgy magazine. Some things go together: bacon and eggs, thunder and lightning, hippies and sandals, and of course coffee and beer. Many coffee lovers are beer lovers, and vice versa. When well…
Which is better, bottling or kegging? It’s one of the great homebrew debates, right up there with extract vs. all-grain and batch sparging vs. fly sparging. Both bottling and kegging have their advantages and disadvantages, and both can be onerous…
Editor’s Note: “So I Married a Homebrewer” appeared in the September/October 2007 issue of Zymurgy. “How’s the marriage going?” It’s an odd question, really, but I doomed myself to forever encounter it by writing a story about my betrothal to a homebrewer.…
Over the past few decades, beer has reclaimed its rightful place as both ingredient and accompaniment in private and professional kitchens. Beer for deglazing a pan, steaming mussels, mopping a roast, or providing substance to a beef stew has long…
