Beer Geek Wednesday

We’ve all had it, that beer that (unintentionally) smelt like feet. A wild yeast infection here, a touch of bacterial sourness there, the quickest way to ruin a beer experience is with contaminatin...

One of a family of chemicals called vicinal diketones (you might see it referred to as VDK), diacetyl arises through normal fermentation. The precursor to diacetyl, which is flavourless, is produce...

Mashing is the process of combining the milled grain, together with water, to breakdown complex molecules into simple components that can be consumed by yeast. Without mashing, the malt would be to...

Imbuing a beer with Nitrogen gas (N2) was originally conceived as a way to replicate the experience of British cask ales, in a packaged product (bottles or cans). Breweries sought parameters like a...

Hops are a remarkable bine that grow 5-10 meters every year, from a rhizome. Female plants fruit once a year, responding particularity to UV exposure during fruiting. That’s why they produce better...

There’s high gravity brewing and then there’s high gravity brewing, and of course high gravity brewing. Our 11.5% behemoth is somewhere on the high gravity brewing side of that spectrum. All natura...

Oxygen and beer are not friends. Whether it’s oxidised fatty acids that give a stale/cardboard flavour or oxidised hop compounds that lack the characteristic fresh grassy hop notes, in place of dul...

I first learnt about kettle/quick sours from the Craft Brewers Conference in 2014 and have been fascinated with them ever since. They produce a straight up, “one-dimensional” lemon kick. However, b...

Before East Coast was imposed on the brewers vernacular, West Coast was simply “American IPA”. American IPA all started at Anchor Brewing in San Fran, where the guys wanted to make an English IPA w...