Recent Articles

Jim Crooks, master blender at Firestone Walker Barrelworks, describes the process of tinkering with elegant beer recipes to get the desired complexity and character after months or years of maturing with yeast and bacteria.

The serial collaborator from Oceanside, California, discusses the techniques he’s honed to build balanced flavor with energy and flair in intensely adjunct-forward beers.

Here are two books we can recommend to any brewer or beer enthusiast.

Over the years at Firestone Walker, Matt Brynildson has brewed several heralded stouts—including Nitro Merlin, named one of our Best 20 Beers in 2020. Here, he walks us down that path of iterations, from gateway beers to what’s around the next corner.

From our Love Handles department for beer bars we love: In Japan’s eclectic and hectic drinking scene, Watering Hole remains a Tokyo craft-beer pioneer.

From cask-centric Machine House in Seattle, here is a homebrew-scale recipe for their Dark Mild—a rich, session-strength ale ideal for cask-conditioning yet sturdy enough for kegging or bottling.

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.

In rural Flemish Brabant, Antidoot Wilde Fermenten’s house mixed culture includes various wild yeasts they have captured over the years. Here, Tom Jacobs offers tips for success in wrangling your own local strains.

The most important step in brewing with coconut is ensuring that this special ingredient is of the highest quality.

With detailed advice from Jim Crooks, master blender at Firestone Walker’s Barrelworks, you can brew complex but balanced mixed-culture beers meant for patient wood-aging and blending.

Whether clean and malty or dry and spicy, the beers that claim this category cover a wide range.

Courtesy of Tania Hewett-Mader and Nick Mader of Kansas City’s Alma Mader Brewing, this locally popular pilsner embraces Bohemian malt and Noble hops, including an aromatic burst of spicy Saaz in the whirlpool.

Whether it’s pinpoint pilsners, lush, juicy IPAs, or big, balanced stouts, the upstarts at family-run Alma Mader in Kansas City have something that just about any kind of drinker can love.

There wasn’t any one moment when David Walker knew that the brewery he founded with his brother-in-law was going to be successful. Instead, they’ve laid layer atop layer over 25 years to add reach while improving quality.

For Chris Lohring, founder of Notch Brewing in Massachusetts, there is real beauty to be found in beers that follow known traditions while offering character that makes them uniquely loveable.

From deceptively easy-drinking to weighty and ponderous, the comforts of these dark delights run the gamut. Here, five pro brewers share their favorites.

Microscopic and difficult to measure, thiols can nonetheless add up to big tropical aromas in IPAs and other beers. In this video tip, Alvarado Street brewing director J.C. Hill describes a way to free up more thiols using a special yeast.

Courtesy of Joe Bowden, head brewer at Munkle Brewing in Charleston, South Carolina, here is a homebrew-scale recipe for the beer that won GABF gold in 2018 in the category Belgian-Style and French-Style Ales.

As a niche style, bière de garde doesn’t always medal at the Great American Beer Festival—but Munkle’s 5 Branches took home gold in 2018, then Echo’s Junebug did it again in 2019. Here, the head brewers from both breweries sketch out the blueprints.

From our Love Handles department for beer bars we love: In Kailua, Hawaii, the Aloha State’s first self-pour bar doubles as a community nonprofit.