American industrial lagers and light beers already reign in lawnmower-land, and they do serve their purpose. But as homebrewers, we can see obvious room for improvement to suit our own creative instincts and particular tastes. So here’s a few mini-recipes, which I leave to you to flesh out into actual malt, hops, wheat, oats and whatever else you can think of.
This upcoming book took six years of mostly full time effort to write and edit.It was transformative for me, and I hope the information will be for you as well. Here are some of my major takeaways about our amazing chemical senses and the ways they are processed in the brain.
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. But how, exactly?
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. But how, exactly?
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. But how, exactly?
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. But how, exactly?
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. But how, exactly?
As brewers and beer enthusiasts we fuss over every little thing, whether it’s the best ingredients or process, classic or inventive recipes, or ratings, reviews and the latest hop-du-jour. But how much attention do we pay to how fresh our beer is? Do we recognize the complex, telltale signs when a beer is past its prime?
Beer is more complex than any other beverage known. No one’s keeping the master list of odor chemicals, but it’s huge. Hops alone contain more than 1000 terpenoids with citrus, floral and other aromas, with many other chemicals, too. In malt, Maillard and other browning processes create hundreds more. Fermentation and subsequent maturation creates a third enormous family of aromas, yet there are more. Add them all up and you get far in excess of the widely quoted number of 600–1000 odor chemicals in wine.
Like living organisms, the evolution of beer styles follows a principle called “punctuated equilibrium.” This states that as long as conditions remain unchanging, there is little evolutionary change other than random drift. But when conditions change, entities either adapt or radiates to fit changing niches or gets pruned back as unfit. With long-dormant American beer, changes started in the 1970s.