Fonio
RahrBSG, 50-pound bags, bsghandcraft.com
The West African grain championed by brewers such as Brooklyn Brewery’s Garrett Oliver and Russian River’s Vinnie Cilurzo is now more widely available in the United States via RahrBSG. This gluten-free grain is known for its sustainability—it’s drought-resistant and requires minimal resources to grow—as well as its unusual flavor notes of mango, lychee, and gooseberry. There’s also no need to mill fonio, which works well as an adjunct at 10 to 20 percent of the grist. (For much more about fonio and brewing with it, check out CB&B Podcast Episode 380 with Oliver and Cilurzo.) —J.S.
Bespoke Barrel-Aged Beer
The Bruery, $550–$1500
While bottle clubs and barrel programs are nothing new, the Bruery is offering an unusual program that includes personalized bottles from a specially blended batch of their Black Tuesday barrel-aged imperial stout. The Bruery’s Private Barrel Program doesn’t involve selecting and having your own barrel. (You, uh, gonna drink all that yourself?) Instead, it’s a more manageable number of bottles—12, 24, or 36—of a special blend pulled from blender-selected bourbon and port barrels. Buyers can choose a template and customize the front and back labels—perhaps adding the name of their homebrew club, an inside joke among friends, holiday wishes, or other personalized messages. Those who buy three dozen get the additional option to add either Vermont maple syrup or Madagascar vanilla beans to the barrels from which their bottles are filled. Buyers at all levels also get an invitation to attend the Private Barrel Pickup Reception—a fun party among like-minded folks to celebrate a particular sort of generosity, or excess. —J.S.
The 2025 MJF Hop Blend
John I. Haas, $14/pound from Yakima Valley Hops
John I. Haas has released a special hop blend to raise funds for the Michael James Jackson Foundation for Brewing & Distilling (MJF). Each pound includes a $5 donation to support scholarships for people of color who are continuing their education in the brewing industry. Members of the MJF board came together to choose the blend from 16 different varieties, going through two selection rounds before arriving at the final blend: equal parts Citra, Citra Lupomax, Elani, and El Dorado (alpha acids 12.4%, beta 5.7%, total oils 2 ml/100 g). The Citra comes from Loza Farms, the country’s only Latino-owned hop farm. —J.S.
Beer Baron Bobbleheads
$35 each or $130 for four, store.bobbleheadhall.com
Finally: action figures for all the would-be lager tycoons among us. Now available for presale from the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee, this special set celebrates the city’s history with bouncy likenesses of Valentin Blatz, Frederick Miller, Frederick Pabst, and Joseph Schlitz. According to the museum, this is the first time anyone’s ever made bobbleheads of these influential figures, and we are inclined to believe them. Presale open now, with orders shipping out in October 2025. —J.S.
The Brew Deal: How Beer Helped Battle the Great Depression
By Jason E. Taylor, Palgrave Macmillan, $32.99
Historical economics can make for dry reading, but “dry” is the point of this dive into the history of Prohibition, its impact not just on the brewing industry but the American economy as a whole, and the mechanisms by which cooler heads found space for a “Brew Deal” that led to a four-month period in the United States where one-third of those unemployed found work. With distance, it’s easy for us to dismiss 3.2 percent ABW beer as a historical anachronism, but Central Michigan University economics professor Jason Taylor makes a compelling case for this “nonintoxicating” beer’s central place in an interconnected economy, with impacts from manufacturing and refrigeration to agriculture, hospitality, glass, textiles, printing, and beyond. History buffs will enjoy the winding stories of bustling late 19th and early 20th century breweries, but the economic story is the one we shouldn’t forget—the sheer power of the beer business, how shuttering it helped bring on one of the worst economic disasters in the nation’s history, and the political wrangling it took to open space for 3.2 beer, jumpstarting the economy once again. —J.B.
