Beer
First brewed at least 5,000 years ago, beer is one of the oldest and most universally consumed alcoholic drinks. It is usually made from cereals, most frequently malted barley, but other ingredients can be used, such as wheat, corn, or rice. In the majority of cases, hops are added to the process (originally as a preservative), although in centuries past other flavorings were used. Today, a whole host of flavored beers exist, ranging from conventional ingredients such as fruit to crazier additions including bacon, donuts, and rocky mountain oysters (aka bull testicles). The most popular beer style, however, is the easy-drinking pale lager style. It used to be thought that beer in cans was inferior quality to beer in bottles, and that there was a safety worry over the use of aluminum, but that is no longer the case. Cans are perfectly safe and sales of canned beers are growing while bottles are on the decline.
Top Beer Posts:
Lager? Ale? Beer? What’s the Difference?
6 Beers from Melvin Brewing, 2018
12 Beers from New Belgium, Early 2017 Releases
7 Beers from North Coast Brewing Co.
Brooklyn Brewery is back again with another bottling — well, a canning, this year — of its iconic bourbon barrel-aged Black Ops, which for the fourth year running is a collaboration with Four Roses bourbon. The 2022 Black Ops Imperial Stout spent 9 months finishing in Four Roses Small Batch Bourbon barrels — in other…
Read More
Goose Island’s Bourbon County Brand Stout lineup hit shelves this fall with seven different expressions, including the return of the much-loved Coffee Stout, which has not been seen for five long years. At this point, I’m pretty sure you know how a coffee stout baby is born, but here’s some more backstory from Goose Island.…
Read More
Stone Brewing Company recently partnered with Foundry Distilling Company of Des Moines, Iowa to create Stone Imperial Stout Whiskey. Here’s how the whiskey is made, per Stone: “The wort of Stone Imperial Stout (liquid resulting from the first stage of the brewing process), was distilled and aged in charred oak barrels, creating the distillery’s first…
Read More
There’s Hershey’s chocolate in Yuengling’s Hershey’s Chocolate Porter — available for the fourth year in a row — but there surely isn’t much of it. This beer, while suitably festive, doesn’t cut a much different picture vs. a traditional porter, though a touch of added sweetness — more cola than chocolate, in this writer’s opinion…
Read More
Everything’s available as a subscription these days, including beer. Case in point: The Bruery’s Reserve Society, which gives drinkers access to its limited-edition beers once a year, netting you 12 750ml bottles for $325 plus tax. (You can choose between sours, non-sours, or a mix.) Members also get discounts on additional online purchases plus priority…
Read More
Two new releases from California’s Sierra Nevada — a no-longer-experimental IPA, new to the market, and a seasonal essential. Let’s go! Sierra Nevada Cryo Fresh Torpedo Wet Hop IPA – This IPA is made by flash freezing wet hops at harvest, thus perfectly (presumably) preserving them for the time when they’re used to make beer.…
Read More
It was less than a year ago that we reviewed the first batch of this exciting collaboration between (otherwise unrelated) Breckenridge Brewery and Breckenridge Distillery in which they shared barrels used for their beer and whiskey. (As a refresher: Breckenridge Brewery brewed an Imperial Oatmeal Stout which was aged in Breckenridge Distillery Bourbon barrels. After…
Read More
Vermont’s Lawson’s Finest Liquids recently released its first black IPA, Big Poppy, which is made with five hop varieties and seven malts — all of them apparently well-roasted into dankness. Black IPAs can be a curious undertaking, and this beer is no exception. Heavily blackened with notes of coffee grounds and burnt toast, it at…
Read More
Bravo, Cashmere, and Mosaic hops… and fresh mango(!), all in a single IPA from Deschutes. The mango here isn’t overblown, adding a light tropicality to a straightforward burst of orange-fueled citrus, piney bitterness, and layers of modest sweetness. Increasingly bitter on the finish, the mango manages to eventually muscle its way into the picture, but…
Read More
For over a decade now, Firestone Walker has offered an impressive variety of barrel-aged beers as part of its Proprietor’s Vintage Series, and all of those brews were available exclusively in glass bottles. But not anymore. For 2022, the California-based brewery has released its first-ever canned Vintage beer, Parabolita. As the name suggests, this beer…
Read More