Is American beer any good? TheStar.com - living - Is American beer any good? The idea of weak American suds is being laid to rest by the boom in indie ales, stouts and pilsners Buffalo's Premier Gourmet has become a magnet for Canadian beer lovers by stocking around 1,000 beers, half of them brewed in the U.S. Where does the best beer come from?  read more »

By Angelo De Ieso II Oregons easternmost brewery is Beer Valley Brewing Company located just west of the Idaho border in the small town of Ontario . Head brewer Pete Ricks developed his model for Beer Valley while living and brewing in the Southwestern United States. His design grew out of his work as a Southwest correspondent for Celebrator Beer News and his partnership with Santa Fe Brewing in New Mexico. A self-proclaimed extreme brewer, Ricks brewed his first four batches of a mammoth imperial stout called Black Stout at Santa Fe. The eleven-percent brew began with distribution in New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California before making its way to Oregon. Employing eight different malt varieties and four different hops while boasting over 100 IBU, the brew remains abysmally dark and recklessly bitter. Most people dont like dark beer, and most people dont like really bitter beer says Ricks. What I intended to do with that beer was make it the darkest, bitterest beer you could pretty much buy everywhere. When Ricks made the move to Oregon in the summer of 2007, he had a relatively wide distribution base already in tact. He sought the input of former Stone Brewing brewmaster Lee Chase. (Chase) helped me in Ontario when we were first planning and formulating Black Flag explains Ricks. He looked at my recipe for Black Flag and said Are you sure you want to put that much hops in your beer?  read more »

Great interview from TheFullPint.com and within the interview Stone's Steve Wagner reveals the new Stone 12th Anniversary beer "Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout". Cheers, Frank TheFullPint.com is proud to bring you a one on one interview with Steve Wagner, Brewmaster & President of Stone Brewing Company. Stone Brewing Co was founded in 1996, and started in San Marcos, CA. Stone is famous for larger than life brews, painted on labels, and their gargoyle mascot. Behind these great icons is Steve Wager, Greg Koch and the entire Stone Team.  read more »

By John Cloud/San Diego (Time.com)

...And we're speaking about beer and cheese. In the past days, the singular and hedonistic pairing of these two staples has announced itself in my life time and again; I imagine I'm stating the apparent to many of you, however, the readiness and propensity for such pleasure and complexity from such an unpretentious pairing has gripped me and simply will not loosen. Pity for you... Unexpectedly, Tuscany and California met in my mouth just a few days ago. I hadn't planned the match. In fact, far from being a culinary architect, I felt afterwards as though whatever muses sang to cheesemongers and beer stewards had let loose an odd note which, by some circumstance, rang to a pitch discernible by one idiot savant, namely myself!  read more »

My old friends and I have an annual tradition. Once a year we get together to celebrate the opening of trout season. What started out as a mind bending day trip has gradually morphed into a four day holiday. When we were in High School (over 25 years ago), we used to load into my '72 International Scout and my friends '78 Bronco, hitting the road at 3am to make it for the opening "drop the line" 7am whistle. We would travel 2-3 hours just to fish. Actually, I think we drank more beer than we fished. We would crack our first can of beer at 6am, drinking in the cold morning air waiting for 7am to come. We'd fish for a few hours and then hit the beers, eventually heading home. Always with a designated driver and our parents were never the wiser.

Over the years we got older and the routine changed. We'd still head to our spot in the wee hours of the morning getting there two hours before fishing time, start drinking and then fish and then drink some more. But now because we were older we needed after fishing entertainment. That's when the "shaker joints" came into play. After a morning of fishing and drinking we would head for the Adult Entertainment venues. Nothing worse than a bunch of drunk college students in a strip bar. I am glad we grew out of that phase of our fishing trips or should I say lived through it.  read more »

On my way back from my in-laws this weekend, we stopped at the Firestone-Walker Brewery in Paso Robles, CA this Monday. Firestone Walker is a regional brewery located in the Central California Wine country. The founder is a son of the big Firestone wine family and they take a wine approach to making beer. They only produce 3 varetials, employ wine country sensory experts, and ferment in an Oak Cask, Burton union system. Their signature is Double Barrel Ale an english bitter/amber, a clone kit designed by head brewer Matt Bryndelson is for sale at morebeer.com. Their Pale Ale uses fuggles, chinook, cascade and centennial for a moderately bitter and highly aromatic pale that is one of my favorites.  read more »

Another day, another new beer. Make that 3 new beers, 2 new flavors of Beer Chips, and a partridge in a pear tree. OK, the partridges were out of stock, but we'll get them soon...  read more »

We wanted to see if we could grow hops at our brewery in Chico, California so we planted our own hop field selecting our prized Cascade and Centennial varieties along with some specialty hop varieties to experiment with. To our surprise, we not only could grow hops, we were also able to harvest them in late summer due to Chicos ideal climate. Chico Estate Harvest Ale is one of the very few estate harvest ales produced anywhere in the world today. All the hops in the beer are grown naturally on the premises of our brewery in Chico.  read more »

I am doing three apa's this week and were wondering about what you all think?
I have not done my own recipes before. These will be my first pale ales also
I used pro mash and will be for 5 gallon

1.
% Amount Name Origin Potential SRM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
80.0 6.00 lbs. Briess DME- Gold America 1.046 8
6.7 0.50 lbs. Munich Malt Germany 1.037 8
6.7 0.50 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row) America 1.036 2
3.3 0.25 lbs. Crystal 20L America 1.035 20
3.3 0.25 lbs. Crystal 40L America 1.034 40  read more »