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After chasing larger volumes through distribution for the past 12 years, the pandemic led to reckoning and reconnection for these two breweries in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Now, they’re sizing down to let customers and brewers, rather than distributors, drive the creative narrative.

• Podcast

A dry Irish-style stout is ideal for pairing with shepherd’s pie—and a splash or two also finds its way into this moderately spicy version with ground bison, a dish sure to keep you warm while waiting for spring.

• Cooking with Beer
• Dry Irish Stout

Sanitation is the first essential step in making great beer—and it’s not difficult to do it right. From our Illustrated Guide to Homebrewing, here are the basics and some useful tips.

• Homebrewing
• Sanitation
• Cleaning

If “fruit beer” was once a niche style, it has since evolved into something much more significant, absorbing other traditions along the way to become a vibrant celebration of some of the most popular flavors on Earth. Here are five picks from the pros.

• Five on Five
• Fruit Beer

You can simply add a bunch of fruit to a beer and see how it goes. Or, you can take a step back, carefully consider the flavors involved and how they intermingle, and—from creativity to reality—plan and execute a more superlative fruit beer.

• Fruit
• Flavor Fever
• Fruit Beer

Maplewood founder Adam Cieslak and brewers Roger Cuzelis and Adam Smith get under the hood of stouts ranging from session-strength to big and barrel-aged, discussing the mechanics of layering in flavor while keeping them balanced and drinkable.

• Video
• Full Video

With thanks to Ben Howe and Karolina Lobrow, cofounders of Otherlands Beer in Bellingham, Washington, here’s a recipe for their take on a Polish pilsner—one of our Best 20 Beers in 2022.

• Beer Recipe
• Pilsner

The popularity of cold IPA has blown the cover off a quiet yet long-running practice in commercial brewing: using lager yeast to make beer sold as ale. Sam Tierney, brewing manager at the Firestone Walker Propagator brewery in Los Angeles, offers some perspective.

• Cold IPA
• Lager Yeast
• Hybrid Beers

From our Love Handles files on beer bars we love: This long-running nerve center of British Columbian craft remains a house of hospitality dedicated to lesser-known breweries.

• Love Handles
• British Columbia
• Vancouver

By adopting a dogmatic and precise approach to quality—from evaluating honey quality through bottling without stabilizers or preservatives—Schramm’s Mead is setting standards and exploring what’s possible at the forefront of honey and fruit fermentations.

• Podcast

From a beautifully shot lambic documentary to an exploration of alcohol’s role in human evolution, here are a few suggestions for your screen and your shelf.

• Editors’ Picks
• Beer Books
• Beer Movies

From Wisby Ölverk in Visby, Gotland, Sweden, here’s a small brewery’s take on the island’s traditional farmhouse ale.

• Beer Recipe
• Gotlandstricke
• Smoked Beer