Expert interviews, brewing insights, and industry trends.
Scholars have long argued that alcohol is a way of “cheating” the brain’s pleasure circuits. But in his book, “Drunk,” Edward Slingerland synthesizes research that shows our success as a species is linked to our 14,000-year relationship with beer.
Through his career, Cohesion’s Eric Larkin has always gravitated to breweries with narrower style focuses. Now, with the Czech-style lager focus of his new endeavor, he’s exploring the creativity possible within the bounds of style expectations.
In the Chicago suburb of Lake Zurich, Illinois, Beth May and Lane Fearing of Roaring Table have built a small, unassuming brewery that's making waves with an impressive variety of styles.
The R&D director of the Chicago-based yeast purveyors combines her brewhouse experience with years of lab work in yeast genetics to help brewers understand how yeast does—and doesn’t—create stable haze.
Minnesota’s Surly Brewing has a reputation for brash and unapologetic beers, but head brewer Ben Smith is exploring ways to maximize flavor in IPAs by doing less, not more.
For Austin Jevne, cofounder of Forager in Rochester, Minnesota—and now owner and head brewer of the Humble Forager brand—creative flavors are the crux of brewing.
When the former head brewer of a prominent Texas brewery left the large-scale production world for his own small project, the reasons were as much systemic as they were creative. Now, his Costa Rican-based brand is poised to grow… and tell new stories.
Tilquin’s strategy for blending gueuze is one part romance, one part math, as the experience he’s developed with lambics from different Belgian brewers informs every piece of the blend—from age to technical performance and flavor.
Known for their high-gravity beers and irreverent attitude, the Struise Brouwers have injected fresh energy into Belgian beer over the past two decades. Yet the systems they’ve built to brew these big beers are as creative as the beers themselves.
In the Belgian province of Limburg, near the town of Hasselt and the Haspengouw region known for fruit-growing, the Bokke blendery is getting back on its feet.
At The Eighth State in Greenville, South Carolina, cofounder and head brewer Cameron Owen is employing a careful culinary approach to create unexpected layers of complexity in fruit beers and ingredient-laden stouts and barleywines.
For De Ranke, looking back was looking forward. When the Belgian beer industry was minimizing bitterness, De Ranke embraced it instead, carving out a hop-forward niche that’s been influencing fellow brewers for nearly three decades.
In France near the Belgian border, family-run Brasserie Au Baron fuses the character of local ingredients, a distinctive house yeast, and the traditions of both saison and bière de garde.
This wife-and-husband brewing team in Wallonia blend their Belgian and Brazilian roots with a deep love of tradition and a spark of contemporary creativity.
The philosopher-brewer expounds on not conforming to preconceptions of style, staying small to protect their creative vision, and using a full range of herbs, spices, fruits, and vegetables to find that signature Antidoot aroma and flavor.
Through dire decades for traditional lambic, this multigenerational Brussels brewery kept the flame lit long enough to witness the current renaissance. Yet Cantillon continues to explore methods for using fruit while staying true to the family’s vision.
Werner Van Obberghen and Lukas Van den Abeele discuss extending the tradition and digging deeper into lambic history with the next phase of the historic blendery and brewery.
The author of several quintessential works on food and beer pairing ponders the question “why we brew” and offers a primer in developing your flavor lexicon.
The director of brewing operations for the progressive Wisconsin brewery discusses finding their flavor voice in a way that transcends style.
This suburban Atlanta brewery is on a broader mission to show that low-ABV beers across the style spectrum can be just as exciting as their stronger counterparts.
For Denver’s Our Mutual Friend, subtle tweaks and improvements over years of brewing have brought their hoppy beers into medal-winning form, but the big and brash flavors in their smoked beers showcase their penchant for dramatic statements.
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.
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.
Florida is known for flavor, and Orlando’s Broken Strings hits it right in that sweet spot. Yet founder and brewer Charles Frizzell doesn’t take a cynical approach—every beer is brewed to wow, from pastry stout and “soda sour” to triple-decocted Kölsch.