In the old days, every brewer was a maltster. And if you couldn’t make good malt, you didn’t make good beer. The world has changed of course, but some folks just have to do things the hard way. This article tells what you need to know to start practicing the maltster’s art in your brewery.

A master maltster might taste a sample of malt and tell you not only the type of malt and variety of barley, but what state that barley was grown in. In this age of change in the brewing world, such wisdom adds valuable insight and perspective to our practice of the brewer’s art.

Seasonal strong beers have long been the stuff of legend among American craft beer drinkers. This feature chronicles the history and culture of one of the most well-known and most anticipated of these annual legends.

Our newest department puts kits into the hands of good brewers to see what they’ll come up with. The resulting five recipes show the way to some great extract beers.

Wanna win gold at Nationals with extract beer? Look no further. Ed Westemeier tracks down winners from recent National Homebrew Competitions to chat with them about their champion extract beers and how they brewed them.

Everyone has seen them and most have brewed them: those simple no-boil beer kits. But how good is the beer really? We put them to the ultimate test with a panel of choosy judges. You may be surprised at what we found.

Everyone knows that cyanide will kill you, and pretty quickly too. Our well-informed authors Dick VanDyke and Joe Formanek help you make sure you’re not putting a dose of lethal poison in your next fruit beer.

Long-time extract brewer Jay Ankeney gets his feline companion involved in a bit of ghost-writing to lay out some new and sometimes unusual tips for basic brewing. Every reader will find a new idea here.

Lauter Dynamics: Design Priorities Based on Fluid Flow Studies.