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Craft Beer

  • Beer Department: What is a Cicerone?

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    In our day-to-day lives, everyone needs a little guidance from time to time. What car should I buy? Where should I go to dinner? How do I hang a door? Perhaps most importantly, we are often in need of guidance as to what beer or wine we might want to drink. In all of these instances, we lean on the knowledge and expertise of those with more experience than us. That, however, raises the question of how we certify that someone is an expert.

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  • Beer Department: Get to Know a Style: Kölsch

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    With warmer weather on the horizon, it seems a great time to offer a little insight into a great light beer option that’s often misunderstood, even in the geekiest of beer geek circles.

    Kölsch is the native beer style of the city of Cologne (Köln in German) in northern Germany. Its production dates back to the early 20th century at the Sunner brewery. At one time there were as many as 40 breweries in and around Cologne brewing Kölsch but the devastation wrought by World War II reduced the number of functioning breweries to just two.

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  • Beer Department: The Rise of American Craft Lager

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    Lager is something of a dirty word in American craft beer circles. Before a few centuries ago, all beers were brewed as ales, i.e. warm, top fermented beers with plenty of secondary yeast aromas and flavors. All ales also used to be some shade of amber, brown or black. The ability to gently dry malt that yielded a lightly colored golden beer coincided with the isolation of lager yeast in the 19th century. Thereafter, these clean,

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  • Beer Department: Get To Know A Style : Altbier

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    Until fairly recently, Altbier was a supremely obscure style of beer, mostly relegated to the city of Dusseldorf in western Germany. In recent years however, Altbier has experienced a bit of a resurgence here in the U.S. thanks in large part to the ever growing popularity of Alaskan Brewing Company’s Amber Ale, which is brewed in the Altbier style. This trend has even swept up other craft brewers. 50 West produces a darn fine altbier called Alternate Route.

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  • 7 Barrel Aged Beers to Try at This Year’s Barrel Aged Beer Bash

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    Jungle Jim’s Barrel Aged Beer Bash is an ode to all things barrel aged – be they stouts, porters, wild ales, sours, or any other kind of beer (yeah, we’ll even have a barrel aged kolsch). With over 100 beers to choose from – from all over the world – where do you even start?

    We have a few ideas.

    Check out what we recommend you take the time to try while you’re walking around the bash.

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  • Beer Department: What are IBUs, anyway?

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    ​IBUs (International Bittering Units) are widely shared, on tap lists, websites, apps, and beer labels. Breweries even tout the IBUs of their more aggressively bitter IPAs as a way to entice hopheads, who in turn brag about their heavily IBU-laden conquests. Despite the pervasiveness of the term, there seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding as to what an IBU actually is.

    ​Simply put, an IBU is a measurement of the amount of isomerized alpha acid in a beer. Read article

  • Beer Department: Holidays, Beer Styles, & Food Pairings

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    ​The gradual approach of the holiday season is cause for plenty of stress, not least of which is the stress about what to drink. Whether attempting to be a gracious guest or an accommodating host, the prospect of selecting the very best libations can be daunting. The challenge is made all the harder if you’re trying to pair your selections with the litany of foods on a holiday table. I’m here to try to de-mystify and streamline your holiday beer choices so you can wow your friends and family with classy, Read article

  • Beer Department: Beer For The Holidays

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    ​Now that November is upon us, it’s high time we start thinking about what delicious libations to bring to bear for all of the forthcoming festivities. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and all the merrymaking in between are full of opportunities for gastronomic indulgences, so you need beers that will hold their own against such hefty fare.

    Finding one single beer to pair with everything offered at a typical holiday meal is fairly impossible,

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  • Beer Department: Beer Vacations: Asheville

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    I know we’re not exactly in tourist season, but I recently returned from yet another trip to one of my favorite places on Earth and can’t help but recommend Asheville for your next vacation. And if you’re like me, you love to soak in the local beer culture of anywhere you travel. So feel free to take the pointers I’m about to give you and tuck them away until the next time you’re planning a vacation, Read article

  • Beer Department: Get to a know a style: Oktoberfest/Marzen

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    ​This time of year, everyone seems to be churning out an Oktoberfest beer, often referred to interchangeably as Marzen. The history and evolution of this style of beer is rather winding and confusing, so what follows is the best effort to summarize its origins as concisely as possible.

    The first Oktoberfest Festival was held on the wiesn, or fairground, of Munich in 1810. At that time, the best historical data suggests that the festival beer of choice would’ve been Dunkel,

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