A Fight Is Brewing
Mikkel Borg Bjergso, a 38-year-old former high-school science teacher who runs the Danish brewery Mikkeller, stuck his face into a bag of hops and inhaled deeply.
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Get PocketMikkel Borg Bjergso, a 38-year-old former high-school science teacher who runs the Danish brewery Mikkeller, stuck his face into a bag of hops and inhaled deeply.
In 1990, Cambridge archaeologist Dr. Barry Kemp unearthed Queen Nefertiti’s Royal Brewery buried beneath the Egyptian sands. There, he found ten brewing chambers containing ancient beer residue. With the help of some electron microscopy, the 3,250 year-old recipe was identified.
Small batch brews are all about local flavor—both in and on the bottle. For those who appreciate craft beers, life has never been so good. The world of American artisanal brews is one of astonishing variety.
There was once a time when it was easy to throw around the term "craft beer" and know exactly what you were talking about.
CRAFT breweries may be a big story in the media these days, but they face much tougher challenges than most other small businesses.
Brian Hunt and I sat under a redwood tree in his rutted, gravel driveway in a rural part of Sonoma County, California. We were somewhere around Santa Rosa, but I couldn’t say where, and nor could my dashboard Garmin.
On a recent Monday morning, the stretch of Route 100 that runs through sleepy Waterbury, Vt., was bumper-to-bumper. The line of Camrys, Sierras, and Outbacks, some from as far away as Illinois, inched forward in the crisp air, their drivers united in a singular goal.
It's happened to the best of us. You fancy yourself to be pretty well-versed in all things ale and lager, but suddenly, you find yourself reading through the extensive menu at an ambitious new beer joint and you feel like someone dropped a foreign-language dictionary into your lap.
SAN DIEGO — Troels Prahl, a brewer and microbiologist at the Southern California yeast distributor White Labs, sits at his company’s tasting room bar with four half-pints of beer. He describes each between thoughtful sips.
Brewer Jamie Hancock is having a "moment". He is recalling the occasion, 10 years ago, when he tasted Magic Hat #9, his first proper, hop-loaded, American pale ale.
Ken Grossman has survived his share of froth and burst bubbles in the 35-plus years since he cofounded Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. Now 59, he still oversees the nation’s largest private craft brewery, producing nearly 1 million barrels of beer a year and ringing up more than $200 million in sales.
Craft beer is big. Independent craft breweries saw their collective sales grow 20 percent last year, and they’re slowly taking away sales from the giants. Overall beer sales are flat, but locally brewed India Pale Ales are killing it. Craft beer is also small.
Mike Garrett of Dogfish Head Brewery inspects bottles of beer before packaging. Time was, beer came in one size: whether bottle or can, the stuff inside measured a reliable 12 ounces.
As of March, the United States was home to two thousand three hundred and sixty craft breweries, the relatively small, artisanship-oriented producers best known for India pale ales, porters, and other decidedly non-Budweiser-esque beers.