Mexican Slow Beer in Italy
I was delighted to receive an invitation to present at a workshop by the Mexican Slow Beer delegation at the recent Slow Food Salone del Gusto in Torino, Italy.
Prize-winning Porchetta
This is the Italian dish, most famous in Emilglia-Romana, featuring a whole pig, boned out and stuffed with its own meat and herbs, roasted and typically sliced into slivers and served as rustic sandwiches. Having done a variety of “fake” porchetta creations in the past, I thought it would be fun to try to the real deal for the recent Chicago Beer Society picnic’s “Other Meat” category.
South African Adventure: Johannesburg to Cape Town
These requests always pop up unexpectedly on email: “Would you consider coming and giving a talk at our beer event? We’ll pay your expenses.” I can’t always accept them, but I will if schedule, workload and other travel are favorably aligned.
Beer Bubbles
I’m not talking about the bubbles swarming into foam on top of that IPA in front of you, but something entirely different. It’s the bubble inside which every one of us lives, traveling through the world looking out at our own personal version of reality as we drift through it. The Hindus came to this conclusion millennia ago, and in many ways their metaphor is increasingly verified by science. Nothing about our perception is objective. To understand, we must abandon the comforting notion that our senses provide accurate and truthful representations of the world around us.
Drinking With Our Eyes
From the glass on the table to the smells of the beer frothing up, to the sights and sounds of the barroom and beyond, our world usually feels solid and reliable enough. It is an illusion, however—nothing more than a projection created by our highly fallible perceptions. Ancient wisdom makes a point of it; modern science increasingly verifies this unsettling truth.
Mouthfeel: Beer’s Stealthy Charm
Every beer taster can recognize the bitter snap of hops on the palate, the caramel-to-roasty spectrum of malt aromas, and occasionally the spicy, fruity signatures of certain yeast strains. We love beer’s boldness, and in recent years the volume has definitely been turned up. Amid all the hubbub it’s easy to overlook one of its most unique charms: mouthfeel.
Food and Beer Pairing Worksheet
I presented at the recent AHA conference in Baltimore along with Cicerone’s Pat Fahey, on behalf of the Brewers Association’s Beer & Food Working Group, a small committee that is working on trying to put a scientific basis behind beer and food and how pairings work–or don’t.
The Elemental Stench of Sulfur
A single element might seem an odd choice as a theme for a beer article, but this one is truly special. Of all the things in the universe our noses are capable of smelling, sulfur compounds are by far the stinkiest. Because of its importance in a host of biochemical processes, quite a few volatile sulfur compounds are found in beer. Many of them are detectable in astonishingly small quantities.
Connoisseurship
It’s obvious that we human beings are all pretty different from one another—in appearance, experience, attitude, gender, and countless other attributes. Each of us has things that come effortlessly and others at which we struggle. It goes without saying that these differences affect our abilities as tasters…
Printmaking Under the Influence
5 Rabbit Cervecería was asked to participate in a 2016 Craft Beer Week collaboration with the Lakeview brewpub, DryHop Brewers. This would also include an art show, which I eventually understood to mean I had to come up with some actual art. While I’ve been doing beer labels and other commercial design work for decades, fine art is a little alien to me.