Hops, Yeast, Water, Malt (Feb-Mar 2020)

From the Love Handles department of our February-March 2020 issue, here are three favorite haunts (and here's to hoping they can all reopen again soon).

Drew Beechum demystifies the chemistry, boiling water down to all you really need to know to make better beer.

Ulrike Genz at Schneeeule makes a variety of beers, but this is the closest thing they have to a flagship and her purest expression of what she believes a traditional Berliner weisse ought to be.

No simple kettle sours, these. In Berlin, Schneeeule is waging a battle to revive a more traditional mixed-fermentation Berliner weisse.

The industrial trick of moistening malt just before milling can allow finer grinds—and thus greater efficiency—without stuck mashes. Here’s how to do it at home.

From his Make Your Best series, here is Josh Weikert's not-so-sweet sweet stout, which gets some roast malt and Fuggles hops to balance the milk sugar and add complexity.

Neil Fisher and his team at WeldWerks developed this low-cal, low-carb, hazy session IPA using monk fruit concentrate to add body and sweetness for balance.

Monk fruit is an Asian gourd, and it’s extremely sweet. Its extract is often used as a low-calorie sweetener. So, ready to brew a "lifestyle" beer?

Port City Brewmaster Jonathan Reeves has been making some version of this robust porter recipe since 1995, but this represents the award-winning beer that he and his team brew today in Alexandria, Virginia.

Port City Porter has become a Beltway mainstay while racking up medals over the years. It's a recipe with roots in the 1990s, amid punk-rock shows, the homebrewing boom, and the brewpub bubble. Joe Stange hears the tale from Brewmaster Jonathan Reeves.

Courtesy of Rowley Farmhouse Ales, this IPA recipe—brewed with Japanese green tea—was the basis of John Rowley’s 2012 GABF Pro-Am beer with Caution Brewing.

Rowley Farmhouse Ales of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is carving out a sour and funky niche in the Southwestern desert.

Brewers looking to perfect their beer are proving that pasteurization has a place even at small breweries.

Consider that you might be better served and produce better beer by choosing from a curated selection of go-to yeasts. Josh Weikert explains the how and why.

Here are five porters that exemplify the best of America’s own approach to this dark and drinkable style.

In this edition of Jeff Alworth's Style School, we look to the early days of American microbrewing, when attempts to recreate a neglected British style may not have been historically accurate—but they were something altogether new (and delicious).

This is Chicago-based Hop Butcher for the World’s hazy, Simcoe-focused ode to a brewery-favorite local cuisine.

In this Learning Lab, we intentionally make things harder for our yeast cells—to better understand what can go wrong, and how to recognize what happened.

Think you need to throw out all that fragrant green sludge? Maybe you don’t. A few American brewers are experimenting with reusing spent dry hops, and the results are intriguing.

Bring spent grain to (after) life with these three recipes using your best brewing by-products.

A nearly forgotten style became a popular plaything in American brewing. Balance, as usual, is the trick—and how to pull it off depends on what you put in it.

New Anthem says the grist of this hazy IPA has evolved over the past few years; this recipe reflects the most recent state of the juicy-hops-driven beer that scored a 100 with our blind panel and was named one of our Best 19 Beers of 2019.

Meticulous attention to raw materials and the embrace of under-loved hop varieties have helped the beers of New Anthem Beer Project stand out in a thickening crowd.

Based on frequency of use in various types of social media, here is a quick glance at how people use various words to describe their beers.

Stephen Mastroianni of Nova Scotia's unusual Horton Ridge Malt and Grain—a craft maltster and brewery—explains how green malt yields none of the typical malt flavors, opening up a whole new canvas on which to brew.

From the legendary Cantillon lambic brewery in Brussels, fourth-generation brewer Jean Van Roy chooses a six-pack of beers that have influenced him over the years. They feature the bitter, the dry, and a lifelong appreciation for good old-fashioned pils.

From his Make Your Best style series, try this recipe for Josh Weikert's "Headsplitter"—a richly malted strong Scotch ale, a.k.a. wee heavy (hold the peat).

From bespoke historical beer recipes to a thing that turns your can into a cup, here are our Editors' Picks from Issue 37 (February–March 2020).

On the last days of winter, what could be better than spicy soup, a roast with smoky character, and a winter-warmer-spiked bread?