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…
Originally published in the May/June 2011 issue of Zymurgy magazine. [Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Brewing Better Beer, recently released from Brewers Publications] Just as a chef must understand the products he or she works with in order…
Originally published in the May/June 2011 issue of Zymurgy magazine. When the first prehistoric humans stumbled across the miracle of fermentation, it was viewed as a sacred process—a gift from the gods. For most of human history, beer has been…
