I love lounging in bed on weekends and catching up on all my favourite beery reading. From the American craft beer scene, local beer news and anything else that tickles my beery fancy, there is a lot of excellent reading material out there! Every weekend (though I may miss the occasional one due to forgetfulness!) I’m posting a list of the articles and blogs that have enjoyed and hope that you will too!
All About Beer | Creating a “Beer From Here”
Beer has always been strongly linked to a sense of place. Beer styles can be unique to regions, embedded in a country or towns history and story, such as Pilsner arising from the Czech town of Plzen or Kolsch from Cologne in Germany. Often beer styles are determined by the history of their local ingredients, like farmhouse ales – a category that covers Saison and Biere de Garde – which were brewed on local farms during winter to sustain farm workers during summer. They spiced beers with whatever was nearby and the water would have been different from farm to farm, all in all adding up to a beer that was different at each farm.
Read More: Craft Beer – Farmhouse Beer: Rustic Meets Exquisite
Today brewers can get their hops from the United States, speciality malts from Germany and all sorts of other ingredients from all over the world. This article features breweries who are trying to source their ingredients locally, it’s important to them and their beers but once upon a time it wasn’t even a choice. Interesting how things come full circle!
Pencil and Spoon | A New Beer Flavour Wheel
I have always liked the beer flavour wheel and, if you haven’t seen the original then don’t worry as it’s in the link too. Beer is a minefield of flavours and aromas and the words to describe them are, pardon the pun, on the tip of your tongue and you just can’t find the right word. This wheel is a good step in the right direction to helping you find those words. By no means it is the only way to describe beer, hell I thought a beer had some aromas of skittles whilst at the Perth Royal Beer Show judging earlier this week, but it’s a good place to help understand what’s going on in your beer.
The Brewing Network | Craft Malting
This one isn’t so much beer reading as it’s beer listening- a podcast! It’s an American podcast and during this episode they chat with New Zealand craft maltsters Gladfield Malt. A really interesting interview with owners Doug and Gabi Michael and well worth listening to. I will be chatting with Doug and Gabi in the near future so hope to bring you a post on Gladfield Malt soon. They were also the on Australian Brews News podcast if you want to hear more.
