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 »

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 »

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 »

The Mad River Brewing Company is a welcome reminder that not all the beers coming out of California are big, bold and hoppy.

Beers of the weird
"One tasted like Hi-C, one smelled like a basement, one made us want to puke"
Written by Rochelle Hentges

I was already longing for our annual summer beers taste test (that will be coming soon, I promise), and I needed some kind of excuse to imbibe new and interesting beers. Then copy editor Marcia Greenwood happened to pass on a bit of information about California Rollin's Wasabi Ale. "Why not do a taste test of weird beer flavors?" she suggested. Brilliant!  read more »

Quick question -- do Tettnanger hops give a kind of phenolic aroma to beer? Or do I have a Belgian yeast cross contamination in my fermenter?

I brewed a beer with White Labs 530 Abbey Ale yeast, cleaned the 10-gallon corny fermenter well, sanitized well, and a month or so later, brewed up the fest-type beer. The fest beer had Tettnanger and Hallertauer first wort hops as the only hop addition, fermented with White Labs 001 California Ale. When I transferred it yesterday, it had a spicy, almost clovey aroma to it. The spice didn't really carry over into the taste, but I didn't like the smell at all. The only thing that I can compare the smell to is a Belgian phenolic beer.  read more »