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News, Nuggets & Longreads 25/04/2015

Before you head off to the newsagents to spend your pocket money on a copy of Whizzer & Chips and a 10p-mix-up, here’s our pick of beer-related reading around the internet from the last week.

→ Michael ‘Sour Beers’ Tonsmeire provided a recipe for ‘Alsatian Saison’ with a reminder that home brewers have the luxury of taking some pretty effective shortcuts:

To bolster the flavors of the hops and yeast I blended in an entire bottle of Trimbach Gewurztraminer at kegging. I find this to be a much easier, more consistent, and effective way to introduce wine flavors than soaking oak cubes in wine that are in turn added to the beer.

→ Breandán Kearney at Belgian Smaak looked at Petrus Aged Pale Ale through the prism of Michael Jackson’s influence… or did he look at Michael Jackson’s influence through the prism of Petrus? Either way, it’s a great read.

→ Bryan ‘Beer Viking’ Betts looked into why hip brewers from overseas are so keen to come to the UK and produce beers for the frankly rather un-hip Wetherspoon chain of pubs.

→ Michael Lewis’s grumpy summary of the state of US craft beer for a local newspaper (via @BeaumontDrinks) is an entertaining read:

I referred to brewing as a profession; she thought that a silly term to describe brewers whom she characterized as hairy and with shabby shoes whose greatest claim to fame was a prize at the county fair for their home-brew. This turned out to be a fair description of many of the 11,000 attendees at the [Craft Brewers’ Conference]… And that’s the problem with this extraordinary expansion of the craft industry: the need for brewers has vastly outstripped the available supply of those who actually know what they are doing…

→ Stan Hieronymus reported that hop extracts are now available via the Amazon web store and took the opportunity to remind us that some of the world’s most highly-regarded beers rely on these once taboo products to achieve their zing.

→ The Campaign for Real Ale annual general meeting passed several ‘progressive motions’ last weekend: here’s their press release and (just in case you missed our link to it earlier in the week) Tandleman’s commentary, with discussion.

→ For completeness, even though it’s rather a dry back-end-functions story despite all the whooping: BrewDog has launched another wave of fund-raising, and is opening a hotel. (Telegraph.)

→ We enjoyed this, via @robsterowski:

https://twitter.com/thetombie/status/591660083995607040

→ And also this from Evan Rail:

5 replies on “News, Nuggets & Longreads 25/04/2015”

I see the breakfast has got as far as a bacon butty now. I won’t be happy till I see some black pudding though!

Interesting article on American craft beer quality. In general the beer bought whilst I was in Portland was of good quality, but the free samples were more miss than hit. Could well be because they were from smaller, less technically competent breweries.

We’ve got quite a list of requests for future breakfast items. Next one might be something a bit off the wall…

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