Ale Street News Online

Every month new beers become available and every season breweries are producing specialty beers that are available only for a limited time. Some breweries are marketing beers truer to the more traditional styles while others are producing more experimental products.

A man sitting alone at a bar is a person having a drink. A woman sitting alone at a bar is a more complicated thing.

Few people realize how long skates have been in use, but the history of skating parallels the rise of civilization. The first skates were ice skates, which have been traced back to the 11th century Viking era.

In 1841 in Vienna, Austria, Anton Dreher established a new style of beer, the Vienna lager, by introducing a new, richly malted barley, kilned differently than all others before it, that imparted a glowing amber tinge to the beer and a subtly sweet texture to its flavor.

What Dave Alexander of RFD Washington lacks in punctuality, he more than makes up for with events. As a quasi-followup to the Lupulin Slam, Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head and Adam Avery of Avery Brewing paired up for the Lupulin Lovefest.

When thinking about beer from Japan one generally does not think of innovative brewing. Actually, Japanese consumers are known for coveting some of the best products on the market and beer is no exception.

When last I left you, I had mentioned how I had recently picked up a disk by the group OYAB at a restaurant in Canada owned by Unibroue Brewery. Imagine yourself walking through olde Quebec City at night. Let’s just say 175 years ago. I suspect these would be the sounds you would hear coming from some back alley way tavern, or in the back of a comfortable cafe.

After a deluge on setup day, the skies remained clear for the next five days, the beer poured freely, and Le Mondial de la biere saw a record crowd.

The next time you reach for a pint of your favorite beer, consider what’s in the glass. A fine concoction of yeast, malt, water and hops, for sure — but a growing number of beer lovers are wondering if anything else might lurk in their luscious libations.

It takes roughly 11 hours to fly from Toronto to Brussels via London’s Heathrow Airport, whereas Cooperstown, NY, is considerably closer, if somewhat less exotic. And so it was that rather than heading off to Belgium again this past August, I instead hit the road to welcome ‘Het Bierland’ to my backyard in the form of Brewery Ommegang’s annual Belgium Comes to Cooperstown extravaganza.

Sometimes it takes a special individual, outside of one’s immediate circle of family and friends, to help one maintain a sense of well-being — a therapist, a hairstylist, a wisecracking TV detective.