Randy Mosher, Author at Randy Mosher

beer, gose, stange, glass, wheat, grain, salt, gold, amber, white, bead board

The Tightrope of Gose

Despite the slow, orderly evolution and subtle trends that beer styles often follow, there are many cases where something new—or obscure, or even dead—will suddenly catch fire and fit the moment perfectly. This is the case for gose, which disappeared in the 1960s from its home in Northeastern Germany after a couple of centuries or more. I’ve been writing about this fascinating style since the 1990s; for a while, gose got only sporadic love from craft breweries, mostly as an exercise in curiosity. At some point about ten years ago, this reclusive style bounded onto the American craft scene, ready to rock.

Beer glass with Raw material hops and pineapple for beer fermentation. Concept beer craft. beer homemade.

Seeing Through the Haze: Double & Triple “Juicy” IPAs

Sublime juice. Yeasty swill. The apex of 15,000 years of brewing art. Why can’t these lazy brewers clarify their beers? Deeply held opinions swirl around these controversial beers. Whatever your feeling, there’s no denying that these aromatic, fruit-tinged IPAs have upset the norms around IPA, including the level of passionate devotion to them.

Flavor Assault: Sour-Sweet-Bitter-Fruity-Hazy-Funky Beers

In the last few years, a cluster of new beer styles has been creating a lot of excitement: sour IPAs and/or milkshake IPAs. They really are quite unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Making Sense of Sour Beers

While sour beers are unlikely to ever dominate our beer landscape, they’ve emerged from the shadowy backwaters and taken their rightful place on the shelves alongside so-called “normal” beers.

Delicious and dark gothic cake with black chocolate and black beer

Pastry Stout: Liquid Nostalgia

In the last couple of years, this loosely defined style has turned into a feeding frenzy driven by craft beer’s hyper-enthusiastic core. These are the beers that devotees will wait in line for, hoard, covet, trade and generally lust after.

Brazilian Beer Tour de Force

Trip was organized by Diego Masiero, my Brazilian publisher of Radical Brewing, in coordination with Mondiale de la Bière and BrasilBrau (local equivalent to Craft Brewers Conference) in São Paulo. In addition to helping judge Mondiale, we had a Radical Brewing booth at BrasilBrau, and I gave a speech.

Recipe: Vermouth with a Spanish Accent

I had been researching and recreating antique vermouth recipes for some time before I was Invited to Northern Spain by Los Cerverceros Caseros, the Spanish homebrewers’ association. I was excited to see vermouth everywhere in Bilbao, Barcelona and Madrid, and fascinated to see how the locals enjoyed it.

Spanish Sojourn: Tapas, Vermouth, Cider & More

I was honored to be invited by ACCE (Asociación de Cerveceros Caseros Españoles, Spain’s homebrewing association) to give a presentation at their annual convention in Bilbao. Of course I accepted and used it as an opportunity to explore Northern Spain a bit. The homebrew conference was like they all are: lots of thrillingly geeky and enthusiastic brewers looking to exchange information and enjoy each other’s company—and beers.

Quest for Local Flavor in Mexico, Part 1

In Mexico you don’t have to look very far to discover a panorama of exciting flavors! Much of the food there remains fiercely local and always shows a particular point of view. These photos show a few interesting aspects of my 2017 trip to Oaxaca and Mexico City, as well as a separate beer trip to Puebla and Cholula.

Quest for Local Flavor in Mexico, Part 2

The purpose of the trip was to judge Slow Beer, a specialized competition highlighting ingredients of interest to the Slow Food organization, many of which are important in its ongoing programs. Ingredients ranged from seemingly commonplace items like coffee and vanilla, but often sourced from special regions or involving unique varieties, to much more exotic items like xoconostle, black sapote, chapulines and more.