Brewing

Most professional craft brewers get their start as homebrewers, often with simple extract-based kits. Pinter’s mission to make that process easier—and the beer better—is helping a new generation of future brewers connect with the art and craft of making.

From helpfully updated software to usefully colored malts, here are a few recent recs from our editorial team.

Meant to represent the kind of pale lagers that were brewed by the likes of John Wagner, who brewed the first lager in the United States, this is kind of like German or Czech Pilsner but includes some local variability and flair.

In England’s East Midlands, the brewing trailblazer Thornbridge has rescued and is continuing to use a vital piece of British brewing heritage—an original Burton Union system. More than just a museum piece, the technology lends a suppleness to the ales that course through it.

In the never-ending quest for quality, brewers turn to specialized instruments to build a better understanding of their raw materials, their processes, and their beer.

Before investing in equipment, ask these four critical questions to ensure your brewery is set up for long-term growth, flexibility, and success.

From beer-barreled whiskey to brewery hikes and your new favorite player in the transfer portal, here are a few things we’re stoked on, now.

Every brewer should have a house beer they use to get better—the one you could brew in your sleep to fine-tune your process, get to know your ingredients intimately, and dial in flavor and quality. For Annie Johnson, that beer is her throwback American amber ale.

From the angel’s share to dilution, River North founder Matt Hess lays out some key considerations to keep in mind when you’re planning to age your beers in spirits barrels.

Here’s how homebrewers can punch up their pale ales with the bright flavors of New Zealand hops. Plus: a method for getting a whirlpool-like flavor burst without having to whirl anything.

From dextrose to brewer’s crystals, River North founder Matt Hess covers some of the key things to consider when choosing and adding sugars to boost the gravities of very strong beers.

From recipe design and ingredient choices to barrel-aging, blending, and packaging, River North founder Matt Hess and head brewer Matt Malloy share the methods and philosophy behind their unusually robust and flavorful award-winning beers.

A great helles is simple in composition—but simple can be surprisingly hard to get right, especially when there’s nowhere for mistakes to hide. It's a worthy challenge, and the payoff is a beer that pretty much everyone is happy to drink.

In centuries past, much of European brewing happened on the farm—and the choice of what to brew was as pragmatic as what to grow. With insights that could inform your next farmhouse ale, Lars Marius Garshol shares some truths about what those farmer-brewers planted, malted, and put into their beers.

Farmhouse brewing was once common across much of Europe, though documentation can be scarce. Here’s what we know about a surprising and little-known rural brewing tradition in northwest Germany.

Once derided as cheap adjuncts, sugars have become useful, flavorful tools for today’s creative brewers.

Today’s British brewers are melding traditional cask bitter with brighter, modern hopping for a crushable alchemy greater than the sum of its parts. Will the rest of us ever catch on?

Have those countertop, push-button homebrew machines gotten any better over the years? Let’s find out.

Evan Price, cofounder and head brewer of Green Cheek in Orange, California, explains the thinking behind using different chloride-sulfate ratios for their West Coast pilsners, IPAs, and double IPAs.

When it comes to smoked malt, there are far more options for all-grain brewers than for those who rely on extracts. This partial-mash recipe maps out just one way to get it done.