Intellectual Ferment of a Different Kind
People and personalities. It’s the reason I love beer travel so much. I’ve met people from all walks of life in North America and Europe since starting this blog, be it folks who have left comfortable careers to follow the siren call of the brewhouse, …
A Beer Like No Other Over twenty years had passed since I stopped off briefly in Bamberg en route between Prague and Heidelberg with an old friend on a crazy road trip in my grandma’s rickety Renault 5. On that sunny afternoon in the …
Bamberg’s one of those places that you immediately sense is a beer town. The moment you step off the train on any given day, you’re greeted with the sweet aromas of malt from the Weyermann facility just north of the train station. And oh, the …
What’s in a Date? 23 April, Lagers, and Munich’s Iconic Beer Gardens In brewers’ lore of yore, April meant more than showers bringing May flowers. In fact, the Feast of St. George on 23 April has influenced both the emergence of lager beers and …
~Antwerp Through the Ages~ Like so many cities and towns in Belgium, Antwerp is but an hour and change by train from Brussels. If you’re like me and your trips to Belgium never amount to more than about five days at a time, …
I headed out to Stone Brewing’s Berlin outpost in Mariendorf with less than great expectations. Stone’s arrival in Berlin had, after all, been anything but auspicious. During a press conference in 2014, co-owner Greg Koch presided over the destruction of a pallet of main-stream European …
American-style IPA, that beloved child of the craft beer renaissance, has left the building. In recent years, IPA has become detached from its local context on the West Coast of the United States to emerge as a globalized signifier of everything exciting and novel about …
The holiday season is in full swing, and if you’re like me, you’ve woken up and realized that this whole gift thing is going to go down at the last minute. Again. Plus ça change. No worries, though. You’ll find something quite easily, given the …
“A pocketful of money, and a cellar full of beer / We wish you merrie and a happy new year.” “Enter Wassel, like a neat sempeter and songster, her page bearing a brown bowl, dressed with ribbons and rosemary, before her” (Ben Jonson). …
~Some of Prague’s Best Beer Spots~ Prague is justly famous for its Old Town Square, its Castle District dominated by St. Vitus Cathedral, and the Charles Bridge, majestic despite the throngs of tourists. Beyond that, Prague is famous for the Defenestration of Prague. (Defenestration: …