The Craft of Stone Brewing Co.: Liquid lore, epic recipes, and unabashed arrogance

Authors: Greg Koch and Steve Wagner with Randy Clemens

Subject: Craft beer and the history and lore of Stone Brewing Co.

Synopsis and Review: Any beer drinker worth their hops is going to be a fan of Stone Brewing Company’s beers.  And as is so often the case, any company with such a following is going to be run by some pretty interesting characters.  Greg Koch and Steve Wagner certainly don’t disappoint, as their newly-released book is a fairly intimate glimpse into their philosophies on life, high-fructose corn syrup, and beer.  With a big dose of focus and organization from Randy Clemens, they’ve pulled together a beautifully illustrated and quite exhaustive look at how Stone has trail blazed a path for craft brews.

These guys make a beer called ‘Arrogant Bastard,’ so it’s no surprise that there is a good dose of arrogance going on in this book (well meaning, I’m sure).  It tries to be a book for everyone out there: in addition to a history of Stone, quick write-ups of all the Stone beers, and recipes for home-brewing your own Stone concoctions, there is a very lengthy and very basic introduction to the properties of beer, along with a primer for homebrewing.  While it’s all very comprehensive and helpful, you’ve got to wonder if the average buyer of a book about Stone Brewing Co. really needs to be told what hops and barley are.  That being said, advanced readers of the book can still glean some grains of knowledge from the very well written ‘Nature Of Beer’ selection (I dog-eared the pages with charts explaining all the different malt and hops varieties).

Why We Recommend It: Arrogance aside, it’s a gorgeous book, and the history of the brewery is told in a warm, entertaining way.  The story of the Arrogant Bastard Ale is revealed in all of its serendipitous glory, though the recipe for it is a conspicuous omission from Part Three.  Profiles and descriptions for every one of their beers are included, from that first Stone Pale Ale through every last collaboration beer.  Not to be outdone by similarly arrogant wine tomes, there are also nineteen recipes for dishes that pair perfectly with the beer.  At $25 and 208 pages, this book is a perfect gift for the beer lover on your list.  As founder Greg Koch says, even if they don’t read it, it still makes “a badass coffee table decoration.”

About the Authors: Greg Kock and Steve Wagner founded Stone Brewing over ten years ago and have grown it into the biggest brewery in Southern California and a beacon in the craft beer movement throughout the country. Need I say more? They’ve written it with Randy Clemens, who is a BJCP Recognized Beer Judge, established beer writer, and PR coordinator for the brewery.

Given my inscrutable reasoning, it pains me to say that there is one thing more important than beer, and that is water itself — which, given the amount of various compounds it contains, is roughly 99.985% H2O.  Because of this remaining 0.015% , not all water is the same, and I don’t mean to sound bigoted, but some waters are better than others.

Various brewing styles around the world weren’t initially dictated by marketing campaigns but rather by a region’s respective natural water supply. The differences in the beers are often black and white, or in brewing terms, black and light.

For example, it was destined that Guinness, a dark stout, would originate in Dublin while Pilsner Urquell, a light lager, first appeared in Plzen, or Pilsen, in what is today the Czech Republic. Their water sources necessitated it.  It comes down to hard or soft. Hard water is full of calcium and magnesium, is alkaline, and will react with beer’s other components in a distinct way. Less mineral-laden soft water will react completely differently.

In the case of the famous Dry Irish Stout, we have Dublin’s limestone deposits to thank for the hard water. In the chapter on pH balancing in John Palmer’s How to Brew (I’ll spare you some of the technical aspects), Palmer notes: “The water of Ireland … has a fair amount of calcium… This results in hard, alkaline water… The high alkalinity of the water makes it difficult to produce light pale beers that are not harsh tasting,” because if the same lighter malts were used, the water would “extract harsh phenolic and tannin compounds from the grain husks.” Basically, acidic water and light malt will produce a harsh, unpleasantly bitter beer.  Palmer concludes by saying, “The highly roasted black malts used to make Guinness add acidity to the mash,” and this matching of acidity makes for a harmonious brew.

By comparison, Bohemian well water is far lower in minerals and the low alkalinity of their soft water perfectly marries with the low acidity of pale lager malts, providing a welcome solution for the spicy, noble Saaz hops abundant in the Czech lands, resulting in the beer that made Pilsen famous: Pilsner Urquell. I once conducted a blind taste test comprised of Czech and American pilsners and, over 150 years after its debut, a panel deemed this Pilsen-native still the best.

Nowadays, brewing science not only takes water’s mineral content into account, it compensates for it practically all the time. Heck, I’m not that great a homebrewer but even I have the easy option of dosing my brewing water with gypsum (calcium sulfate) to replicate the hardness of Burton-on-Trent’s water that perfectly produces Bass and other pale ales in England. Rare is the craft brewer who doesn’t “Burtonize” (or “Burtonise” to keep it properly British) their water when making an IPA since the high level of sulfates allows for assertively hoppy ales.

No matter if you’re brewing in Vienna or Portland, water picks up or sheds compounds along its journey from rains and rivers through aquifers and soils. Good luck finding truly pure water (and you can’t brew with distilled water because it’s the very ions and minerals that dictate how hard or alkaline your water may be). When using tap water, beware of the chlorine that many metro sources contain, because it’s off flavors become exacerbated in the brew. Luckily, there are ways to counter this additive.

“With modern technology, water is water,” says Bill Coors, former chairman of the Adolph Coors Co. (predecessor to today’s MillerCoors) in a Denver Post story. “Anything in the water you don’t want, it is easy to get that out and put in what you do want.” The truth is, he is right.  From fairly dark Munich Oktoberfests to actually dark London porters, the styles of every great beer region are dictated by their natural water supplies, creating a true sense of provenance. When it comes to American brewing, the same rings historically true, even if brewers have found ways to approximate the makeup of any given water. So, when it comes down to it, is the water used for brewing actually that important?

You bet your wet bottom it is!

Take this poetry from Rob Mullin, brewmaster at Grand Teton Brewing in Victor, ID: Teton Valley is blessed with abundant water, the result of massive annual snowpack and millennia-old glaciers. The water we use to brew our beers is pristine glacial run-off filtered over hundreds of years through Teton Mountain granite and limestone before it bubbles to the surface at a spring just down the road from the brewery.

But this isn’t bucolic 19^th century Pilsen, or even Golden. Mullin can’t very well fill pails at the stream to make up that 93% of the beer he brews. At first he says, “We refuse to treat our water. Many breweries filter their water. Some remove all minerals—and flavor—through reverse osmosis, then add back the minerals they desire for brewing.” Then he admits the fact that the brewery uses “Victor city water,” which is sourced down the road from the brewery. Unlike most metro water, which is 7 parts per million chlorine, Victor’s is 2 ppm, sometimes actually zero. So is it really untreated? Yes, says Mullin, “except for that minimal chlorine dose by the city.” But that’s not something Dubliner Arthur Guinness ever worried about.

By Brian Yaeger

So the brewers tried making lager beer without refrigeration — at ale temperatures. At first it was a total flop. By the time the hot brew of hops and barley cooled, wild yeasts and other buggers had gotten in and spoiled the batch before the lager-style yeasts could be added. Some nameless, innovative brewer came up with “cool ships”: long shallow pans into which the beer was poured, allowing the wort (unfermented beer) to cool much more rapidly. Once the temperature had dropped to where the lager yeasts could survive, they were added to the mix and went about their busy little microbial lives creating alcohol.

This beer, made with lager yeasts and fermented at ale temperatures, came to be called steam beer. Some said watching the beer ferment in cool ships was like watching steam, or that the vats could be seen steaming as they cooled in the cold San Francisco air. But the most widely accepted story is that the beer earned its title due to its copious carbonation. Published in 1902, Wahl and Heinus’s American Handy Book of Malting and Brewing says, “The beer is largely consumed throughout the state of California. It is called steam beer on account of its highly effervescing properties and the amount of pressure it has in the trade packages.”

California had its steam beer, which has turned out to be one of few styles of beer invented in America, and now is technically classified as “California common beer.” There were maybe fifty breweries churning out beer at the time, including Golden City Brewery. Owned by German brewmaster Gottlieb Brekle, it was sold in 1896 to Ernst F. Baruth and his son-in-law Otto Schinkel Jr. and the business was renamed Anchor Brewery. The miners, pioneers, and sailors drank beer and the breweries made money, until two evils befell the world of beer: prohibition and industrialization.

Prohibition wiped out a rich tradition of brewing across America. Distributors went bankrupt, and the passage of knowledge between brewmasters nearly ceased, eradicating refined recipes and techniques. No one is sure how Anchor Brewing survived these dark times — at least no one’s talking. It is possible they produced root beer and other soda-pops. More likely, in a city famous for its indomitable lawlessness, they were able to turn a trade on the black market.

At any rate, Anchor got back to brewing steam beer in 1933 after the repeal of prohibition only to face the scourge of industrialization a few years later, furthered by the massive production efforts of the World Wars. America had gotten very much in the habit of making thousands and thousands of the same thing, whether that was tanks, or jeeps, or boots, or Spam, or beer. And thus, adjunct American lagers swept the land, overtaking many a small brewery.

Ironically, Anchor Brewing was saved by money made from one of these industrialized products. The Maytag Corporation prospered selling washing machines — quite a few of those same-things that everybody wanted. And so it came to be in 1965 that a young Fritz Maytag, great-grandson of company founder Frederick Maytag, was sitting at the Old Spaghetti Factory in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, enjoying an Anchor steam beer when he was told that it would be the last one he would ever have. The brewery was closing.

Fritz headed down to the brewery and ended up using some of his inheritance to purchase a controlling share in the failing brewery. The young Stanford graduate then went about learning everything he could about brewing beer. He took an interest in reviving the older styles of steam beer.

“The only hope we had to get traction was to be more traditional,” says Maytag today, sitting in Anchor’s Potrero Hill brewery. “To be more real, more old-fashioned.”

And by being more old-fashioned, Anchor spearheaded the revival of craft brewing in America. Sadly, between sugary sweet soda and the cost-reducing production tactics of corporate America, the USA had come to expect mass-produced lager beers. There was a whole other world of beer that was being sorely neglected. Anchor’s beers helped reawaken American taste buds.

“Normal people now want beer like that,” says Maytag of their hoppy, flavorful brews. “In those days that was just unheard of. Why would you drink a beer like that? What’s wrong with it? It looks like it’s dark.”

“We were not doing anything goofy,” says Maytag. “We were trying to go back to the most solid, old-fashioned, traditional beers imaginable. And nowadays to make a stir you have to do something… you have a chocolate-strawberry stout. In those days there was not a porter in all of England when we launched Anchor Porter and it was the only real dark beer in America. It wasn’t colored with… we didn’t use coloring, it was made with dark and black malt.”

But they didn’t stop there. Dan Mitchell, who’s worked at Anchor Brewing for over twenty-five years, says Fritz Maytag would walk up to him on the production floor and simply say, “You know, nobody makes the original American whisky.” And then just walk away.

America’s original whisky was rye whisky. Heck, the original recipe for a Manhattan calls for rye, but prohibition was the death of rye. Americans had become accustomed to the smooth flavor of blended whiskies from Canada and Ireland, smuggled across the borders. Or they grew to favor the toasty backwoods, bootleg bourbons of Kentucky.

And in the same way that Anchor helped resurrect steam beer and craft brewing, they were among the first to begin distilling rye. Made from a single copper pot still, Anchor’s Old Potrero Rye (Straight and Colonial styles), and Old Potrero Hotaling’s Whisky (named for the whisky warehouse that survived the 1906 earthquake and fire), are made in limited batches and are hard to find, even in San Francisco.

But that may be changing. Last year, Fritz Maytag sold the brewery to the Griffin Group of Novoto, known for their work in the spirits world, most notably with Skyy Vodka (later selling their share to Campari Group). Liquor marketers Berry Brothers and Rudd of London are also partial owners.  Through these transactions, Anchor has gone from a small maker of craft beer and whisky to a company with an importing arm boasting over fifty brands from around the globe.

“Fritz had come to the point where he was ready to move on,” says Keith Greggor of Griffin Group, late one afternoon in the brewery’s taproom. “And we thought, what a great synergy to put the two businesses together. That would enable us to strengthen the spirits that are made here — Junipero Gin and Old Potrero Whisky — which were not really getting their fair shake out in the industry because this is a beer focused company. But we could use our spirit distribution network to help those.”

After the sale, a murmur arose from beer aficionados around the world, wondering: “Will Anchor now start cutting corporate corners? Will it become another mass-produced American beer?”

“One of the things with Fritz was, you know, you had to pass a test,” says Greggor. “You had to be approved. And it took a while to get to know Fritz and to really convince him that the very values that he had put together in this company were something that we believed in.”

And one of the first new releases that came from Anchor Brewers and Distillers confirmed this. Much like Maytag had revived a late nineteenth century beer recipe and a whiskey recipe from the late eighteenth, Berry Bros and Rudd’s No.3 London Dry Gin chose to emulate what gin may have been like at the end of the seventeenth century. “I wanted to create the gin we would have made 250 years ago,” said David King, creator of the gin, between sips of his preferred cocktail, the classic Negroni.

During San Francisco Beer Week last year, Anchor released Brekle’s Brown, a brown ale named in homage to the breweries original founder, George Brekle. And so things come full circle, and Anchor’s tradition of honoring those that came before continues full steam ahead.

By Sam Divine

Photos by Amy Widdowson

Prohibition and the three-tier system. Prior to prohibition, the alcohol industry was very loosely regulated, and dominated by a few very large producers. Anti-competition practices abounded: if a brewery or distillery didn’t have its own bar, it ‘invested’ in bars by giving loans or furniture and, in exchange, demanded that no other brands be sold on the premises. These big, bad breweries also required increasing sales, so the bars forced drinks upon the innocent public. Thus the 18th Amendment was passed, and prohibition saved the righteous American families from the evil alcohol producers.

Without getting into the nitty gritty, prohibition didn’t work and along came the 21st Amendment. But the 21st Amendment made a decisive change in the way that alcohol laws were handled with Section 2: “The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.”

Basically, the power to erect alcohol laws now lived on the state level.  Remembering the gross exercise of power by producers prior to prohibition, most of the states erected the three-tier system. All accounts (retail, restaurant, bar, etc) had to buy from a distributor, and all distributors bought from a producer. In most states, producers could only name one distributor to avoid unnecessary competition, and they had to find a different distributor in each state. This provided transparency for taxation’s sake, the power of the producers was limited, and the distributors were advocates for social responsibility. Everyone lived happily ever after!

Not so fast. With fifty different bodies erecting their own alcohol laws, there were bound to be some exceptions. Enter Alcoholic Beverage Control States, which take on the roll of distributor (and even store, in some cases). Called ‘Monopoly States’ by detractors, these eighteen states completely control the distribution of alcohol within their borders; that means they also control the products that are available, and all pricing. These states come in many flavors, from Utah who says their control is a means “not to promote the sale of liquor,” to Pennsylvania whose running of both distribution and stores is a nightmare for producers and consumers alike, to Vermont who allows private liquor stores to sell but collects a commission (which one can only imagine is somehow passed along to the consumer).

For some producers, this works very well. As the number of distributors has dwindled due to a rash of mergers and acquisitions, the number of channels through which a producer can move their product has also decreased. A distributor is going to ‘push’ what is easy to sell: big brands that can cut discounts, give large volumes, and have huge advertising budgets. On the flip side, it is very easy for small brands to get lost. Put yourself in the shoes of a sales rep for a distributor: you need to make your quota for the month. Do you try to sell something like Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay, or a tiny artisan gem no one has heard of?

“But I bought this biodynamic Sauvignon Blanc straight from the winery!” you say. And there, you hit upon the most interesting issue that has sprung up since the 21st Amendment.  Prior to prohibition, the wine industry was very small, and hardly artisan. It wasn’t until the sixties and seventies that the movement really took hold in places such as California and New York, and the states took notice of these new potential tax revenues. They could collect the sales tax, and the producers would be able to get their full retail margins.  State laws were changed to allow in-state wineries (and breweries in some places) to sell directly to consumers, but in an effort to protect the in-state producers, out-of-state producers still had to go through the three-tier system.  In 2005, it was ruled in Granholm vs. Heald that such laws ran afoul of the the Commerce Clause, and states could no longer discriminate against out-of-state producers.

As one can imagine, this opened the floodgates, as far as legislation is concerned, for Direct To Consumer (DTC) shipping. An offshoot of three-tier laws, state DTC laws are even more varied and confusing, and are in a constant state of flux. Each state has different requirements that can include any or all of the following: licenses for the producer, licenses for each label, a fee for each producer and label, special shipping stickers, monthly sales reports, monthly tax payments, age verification, and bonds. It’s a lot of work, but again, totally manageable for the big brand who can hire a team of compliance specialists. For your favorite tiny winery with a team of six? This becomes quite a burden.

As with any large collection of legislation in the United States, the three-tier system is a largely partisan one (though the red states tend to want more alcohol regulation than the blue states, for what it’s worth). Wholesalers staunchly proclaim that they are keeping alcohol sales transparent, championing the producers, and protecting society.  Producers proclaim they are being squashed by big brands and pinched by shrinking margins. Consumers just want to drink what they want to drink, when and where they want to drink it.  For more information on both sides of the coin, I’d urge you to take a look at www.nbwa.org and www.freethegrapes.org.

Join us for the Drink Me’s Grand Tasting Party – filled with spirits, beer, wine and fun hats.  There is NO better party going on next friday.

WHERE: 111 Minna // WHEN: Friday, November 4th // HOW: www.DrinkMeGrandTasting.Eventbrite.com

Hendricks Gin’s blog always has some of the most interesting and quirky stuff going on.  And they always seem to be having more fun than anybody: check out this writeup of London Cocktail Week, the Cucumbermobile, and the Cucumbrella Cup Contest!

Check out these wine labels. Now.  We all have an inner data geek, and these brilliant infographic wine labels show you everything you could ever need to know about Five Bells wines… and they still look good on the shelf.

Gothamist grills Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery on his Oxford Companion To Beer, and the worst beer in the world?

After a handful of visits to Boston in the last year, we’ve become lifelong friends of ‘Gansett (when is it coming to California?).  They’re going to make their first year round craft beer; go vote on either Cream or Rye!

To most religious zealots and even many craft beer connoisseurs, the strength of certain beers has gotten out of hand in an arms race to see who can reach the highest number. Scotland-based BrewDog brews a beer called The End of History, a Belgian Strong Ale that weighs in at 55% ABV, meaning it’s stronger than almost every whiskey on the market. There are dozens of other beers that boast upwards of 20% alcohol.

Name a style today and there’s an “imperial” version of it, wherein the brewer will approximately double the malt bill to extract even more fermentable sugars thereby augmenting the alcohol content. The term comes from the stouts brewed in England in the 18th century to be shipped to the Russian Imperial Court. To survive the trip, the stouts were brewed stronger, since alcohol is a natural preservative. Russian Imperial Stouts are quite common among global craft brewers, even if none of them are destined for St. Petersburg. And exactly how Catherine the Great would’ve felt about a bitter Hopslam Imperial IPA from Bell’s in Michigan or a spice-laden Imperial Belgian Pumpkin Ale from Delaware’s Iron Hill is anybody’s guess.

Building and destroying a beer empire

Beer was promoted as a temperance beverage before prohibition, given its comparatively low alcohol in the face of spirits. Beer, in addition to being mighty, mighty tasty, has always served various roles. Even glossing over its early roles in religious rituals, it was often considered safer to drink than water, thanks to having the water boiled before usage. And lest ye think abstaining from beer is puritanical, then why did the Puritans drink beer during (and eventually after) their sea voyage to the New World?

Sadly, many drinking laws remain unchanged since the repeal of prohibition, and blue laws—church-oriented laws restricting un-Godly acts and vices—are slow to enjoy legislative evolution (or extinction). Several states ban beer sales on Sundays, Christmas, and Easter. Sometimes crazy beer laws become urban legend (like the one about bar owners in Nebraska not being able to serve beer unless they’re simultaneously making soup), but is it any less crazy that no beer in Mississippi can top 5% ABW? Perhaps it’s not surprising considering Mississippi was the first to enact statewide Prohibition in 1907 and didn’t reinstate liquor sales until 1966! No wonder there’s only one production brewery and a tiny brewpub in the entire Magnolia state (it’s also one of the only two states left in the nation where homebrewing is still illegal.) Additionally, almost half of the counties in the state remain dry to this day.

Neighboring Tennessee is still home to many dry counties. Inexplicably, these include Moore County, which includes Lynchburg, where every drop of Jack Daniels is made. I’ll never forget the time I toured the distillery and discovered I could buy souvenirs but not the actual whiskey. Having said that, while standing outside the souvenir shop, I overheard a young girl say, “Daddy only drinks alcohol.” To which her little brother corrected, “That’s not true! He drinks beer, too!”

Nine states ban beer in the 12-15% ABV window, including Ohio. There, Chris Nascimento, president of homebrew club the Cincinnati Malt Infusers
explains that, “Religious, right-wing radicals who are against any kind of alcohol sales or consumption also opposed a bill [raising the limit to 18%], back-channeling through churches and groups such as Citizens For Community Values.” He adds that the local Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) argued that such beers would lead to underage drivers getting drunk quicker. As if they’d spend many more dollars for a single bottle of high-end craft beer over a suitcase of industrial swill.

Nascimento also mentions that “Ohio’s current governor, John Kasich, is an Evangelical who does not drink. His viewpoints and lack of experience with alcohol may also play a factor [in the bill’s demise].” Their Attorney General, oxymoronically named Mike DeWine, is outspoken about the sale of high alcohol beers, even those under the legal limit, because, “Drinking one can of a high alcohol malt beverage is the same as drinking a six-pack.” DeWine is well-known for being a religious conservative who for opposes any alcohol consumption.

The imperial strikes back

“Our Strong Beer Month” is not a reaction to anything, really,” explains McLean. “It predates any recent fuss over high-ABV beers and the ‘arms race’ as you put it… [it’s] nothing more than an exploration of tastes, styles, and techniques.”

The site Ratebeer.com keeps a list of the Top 50 beers from around the world as decided by the average rating it has received. Among that list, only five are not considered a “strong” or “imperial” beer or don’t clock in at over 10% ABV. Beer lovers, the world over, love high gravity beers.

Anyway, why not? McLean thinks it’s fun to expand the criteria and take a look at all manner of big beers. Whereas throughout the year, Magnolia is renowned for offering low-alcohol beers that permit drinkers to keep their composure, the contrasting offering in February “more or less perfectly illustrates (his) own viewpoint: that big beers have their time and place and that they lend themselves really well to being special occasion beers…like a musical performance in which good use of dynamic range enhances the overall experience.”

The next time you want to buy a cold beer in Oklahoma (hope you like Bud Light because anything stronger than 3.2% ABV needs to be sold at room temp) or, say a craft lager in the state of Texas (Brooklyn Brewery calls theirs “Brooklyn Lager, In Texas Malt Liquor” to make fun of the state where it can only be “beer” if it’s under 5%), hopefully you’re just passing through on your way to your home state that allows you the freedom to enjoy strong beer. Full strength and full flavor beer is not a crime, except, when it is.

By Brian Yaeger

NY Craft Beer Week kicked off this Friday with Freaktoberfest, a party hosted by Shmaltz Brewing Co. that featured representatives from over 20 breweries, a bevy of Coney Island freakshow performers, 2 floors of live music, and a mustachioed emcee named Donny Vomit who juggled knives and swallowed balloons between sets.  The third annual celebration went down at Southpaw, a raucous music venue in Park Slope, Brooklyn where beer geeks boogied and sipped unlimited tastings alongside soul singers, industry types, and burlesque dancers.

The spirit of the event was embodied by its highlighted beer and official drink of NY Craft Beer Week: Geektoberfest, a collaboration between Captain Lawrence, Ithaca Beer Co., and Shmaltz Brewing Company, is a blend of seven barrel-aged sour brown ales.  The beer, only available on draft during Craft Beer Week, is a spirited, tart ale with hints of raspberry, a kitchen-sink project that brings together sours with history all over the state.

We sampled the national launch of Genesis 15:15, Shmaltz’s new barrel-aged harvest barleywine ale with a whopping 13.4% ABV, brewed with pomegranate juice, fig juice, date & grape juice, aged in rye whiskey barrels – the perfect tipple for the Jewish New Year!

Shmaltz also celebrated the recent launch of the world’s tiniest craft brewery, Coney Island Brewing Company, who welcomed five of the guest brewers they had at their facility this summer (we especially liked The Horny RYEnocerous, a dry-hopped rye IPA, brewed by Fritz Fernow).  Other notable participants were Greenport Harbor, a two year old Long Island brewery who served up a double IPA; Ommegang with a palate-cleansing, summery Belgian pale ale; Speakeasy, who shared a two-month release from their Bootlegger Limited Series (Butchertown Black Ale, a roasted but light-bodied IPA-type brew); and Goose Island, a Chicago-based brewery who featured Matilda, a dark, fruity pale ale targeted at wine drinkers, and Sofie, a tart, Belgian-style farmhouse ale aged in wine barrels with orange peel .

Freaktoberfest had all attendees in high spirits, ready to embark on a week-long celebration of New York’s finest brews.

Beer Craft

Authors: William Bostwick and Jessi Rymill

Subject: Brewing your own great beer

Synopsis and Review: The book is a beautiful guide to making your own beer.  It doesn’t assume that you’re a pro, but gives you more than just a taste into making your beer great.  In case you needed some inspiration, it’s sprinkled with interviews and information (and tips!) from some of the country’s most well known and best brewers.  We love that it breaks down the art of brewing into simple illustrations, and even when it gets into the science-y lessons of yeast strains, it keeps it fun.  This isn’t your typical “how to” started guide.  It’ll take you from 0 to 60 in one pint and help you understand how to make, drink, name, pair and even market your own beers.

Why we recommend it: We love this book.  If you’ve ever thought for a moment that you might pick up home brewing, this is your first step.  This book proves to be an extremely clear and useful tool in making beer and an entertaining guide along the way. We were so inspired after flipping through the pages that we headed to the local brewing supply store to get ourselves a carboy and hops.  This isn’t the kind of read that you need to sit down and concentrate for two hours – rather it’s part encyclopedia, part recipe book and part choose your own adventure.  It has all sorts of side notes that help you get a better understanding of the brewing process and the authors carefully offer advice along the way – example: the chart that has one column that says, “my beer smells like…” and an adjacent column that gives a reason and remedies.  Needless to say, you’ll finally figure out how to get your beer to stop smelling like cardboard, cheese, and soy sauce.

About the Authors: William Bostwick is a writer, a beer critic (like we all strive to be) and an avid brewer.  Jessi Rymill is an editor and designer (and collects beer labels and bottle caps).  The book is clearly a mash of their talents and interests.  They currently live and brew in Brooklyn and San Francisco.