Ingredients

A bit of wheat is hard to beat—and it shows up in a bunch of today’s most popular beers and styles, even if most drinkers have no idea it’s there. Well beyond wheat beers and weizens, the golden grain has become one of the most useful ingredients in the modern craft brewery.

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

For fellow fonio-curious brewers anywhere in the world, Brooklyn brewmaster Garrett Oliver shares these tips based on what he’s so far learned about the ancient African grain.

Breweries big and small are discovering the huge, modern potential of this tiny, ancient grain.

The power of sensory analysis isn’t only for finished beer—you can also apply it to raw materials, including hops and malt. In this clip from her video course, DraughtLab cofounder Lindsay Barr outlines two key methods: the hop grind and the hot steep.

Saaz, Kazbek, and ... Juno? Whether punching up lagers or adding interest to IPAs, newer Czech hop varieties—little known outside their country—are an overlooked source of distinctive flavors.

Innovation in the fermentation space shows no sign of slowing, as today’s yeast suppliers continue to expand the brewing world’s access to novel and functional yeast varieties—and delivered in better shape than ever before. Here’s a handful of yeast-related developments piquing our interest.

From chomping on grains to hot steeps and running the grains through an espresso machine, Randy Mosher offers some simple tips and tricks to better evaluate your malt—and to improve your flavor imagination.

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

Perhaps the oldest way of preparing grain for brewing, drying malt in the open air was traditional for lambics, white beers, and various rustic ales scattered around Europe, Africa, and beyond. Today, brewers and maltsters interested in history, terroir, and old-fashioned methods are taking their malt back out into the sun.

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.

Know your raw materials, and you’ll forever have the upper hand when you brew.

We all know how profoundly the types of malt we use can change what we brew. Less obvious is how independent brewing is changing how barley itself is being grown—leading, eventually, to exciting new options for brewers.

Few experiences in brewing are more rewarding—or make for better practice—than bringing some undersung, underloved, old-fashioned beer styles to life in your own brewhouse. Josh Weikert makes the case for learning, drinking, and brewing the canon.

Still buying only what you need for that next batch? Josh Weikert makes the case for building a library of ingredients, where it’s not just about quality, it’s about quantity.

A year without trade shows didn’t stop suppliers from bringing new malts and hops to market. Here we run down some of the most promising new varieties to try in our own breweries (starting with a couple that we’ve already taken for a spin).

While heading the innovation side of The Bruery, Andrew Bell developed as many as 300 different recipes per year. Now, as director of brewing for newly opened Radiant Beer, he’s building a new brewery identity from the ground up.

These craft maltsters from across the country work with online retailers, making it possible for homebrewers to have a wide variety of unique malts sent straight to their doorsteps.

We asked for your favorite hops and malts you like to use for brewing, and you told us. Here are your 2020 Readers’ Choice picks for favorite ingredients.

Andrew Kelly, cofounder of Aslin Beer in Alexandria, Virginia, breaks down the elements of flavor and reminds us to think about what different brewing ingredients bring to the table when trying to mimic the flavors of favorite foods.