Gear

It doesn’t take a bespoke lager brewery to bring the subtle complexities of decoction to craft lager—but it does take some ingenuity.

The old tech of the oak barrel still works beautifully in the brewery—but it does need a nice, solid thwack with the mallet now and then. Brewers are already janitors, plumbers, and microbiologists, among other things. Might as well add coopers to the list.

We’ve tested plenty of gear over the past 10 years, but which among them have taken a licking and kept on ticking? Which ones do we find ourselves still using frequently, after all this time? Here’s a look back at our favorite products over the years that still bring us joy.

As demand grows for nonalcoholic craft beer, brewers and manufacturers are answering the call with a new wave of innovations—and the results have never tasted better.

Harvest-hopped beers are a seasonal delight no longer limited to breweries near the hop fields—nor even to the harvest season. Here’s a look at the logistics and tech that are expanding the harvest in time and space.

Between the farm and the brewery, much of beer’s flavor is born in the malthouse. Here we journey inside a traditional floor maltings—and inside a kernel of grain—to witness the daily toil and tools that turn a raw cereal into the soul of beer.

The beating hearts of a brewery aren’t glamorous and won’t impress casual visitors, but they can do a great deal to improve how brewers do their jobs. They can also make a lot of noise.

What does it mean to worship at the altar of crisp? For brewers, it means special attention to technique and to the cellar.

Brewers don’t make beer, yeast do—but they also make a lot more yeast. Here’s a look at some of the specialized gear that brewers use to propagate and ensure consistent pitches from batch to batch.

Some brewhouses are forever, even if they don’t stay put—and more than a few have traveled their way around the country and even around the world. At each location, that unique set of equipment and the brewers who use it must form a connection that inevitably affects what we drink.

Among the many takeaways of the pandemic: Drinking beer at home can be a real pleasure. Here, our Gearhead considers some of the gadgets, equipment, and other improvements that can help make your beer-house a beer-home.

Legal hurdles aside, there are also technical obstacles to getting the main psychoactive component of cannabis into beverages in a stable, predictable way. John M. Verive explains the challenge, the science, the gear—and why it’s coming to a brewery near you.

The entrepreneurs outfitting classic hot rods and fire engines with draft lines and cold boxes say they’re in the business of spreading joy—and in the meantime, they’re winning new converts to craft beer.

Great lager depends upon exacting attention to details—and not only when it comes to fermentation, and conditioning. Here, we climb the decks of brewhouses specifically designed with lager in mind to better appreciate what makes them different.

Arguably the most important gear in the brewhouse is what we wear ourselves: personal protective equipment, the armor that keeps us from harm amid the boiling-hot, corrosive, slippery dangers of manufacturing beer.

Brewers are dumping their blow-off buckets and reusing precious carbon dioxide rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. The benefits include cost savings, reducing greenhouse emissions—and, some say, better beer.

It’s not easy to prioritize the planet and its people alongside the product, but even small steps taken by small breweries can have a big impact. Water use is one area where breweries can make an outsized difference.

Does slow, subtle cask ale still have a place in today’s variety-driven, can-cluttered American scene? Along with a primer on the gear and vocabulary, here’s why this is an endangered tradition this side of the Atlantic—and why it refuses to die.

Here are the favorites you picked in these homebrew-related categories.

Some brew systems make beer for us to drink. Others just solve mysteries—providing an acceptable outlet for failure and serving as the lifeblood of craft beer. John M. Verive is on the case.