Soaking Up the Suds by James Crane   Let this session surprise you Between their He’brew line and their Coney Island lagers, I’ve been having a love affair with Shmatlz brewing as of late. Their brews are varied and generally pretty great. No matter what you’re in the mood for, they have something that will do the trick. This week, however, I’m...

OUR BI-WEEKLY BEER COLUMN GIVES YOU A TASTY RECOMMENDATION by Jame Crane   A Brazilian adventure Today I’m drinking what I believe to be my first beer from Brazil. As exciting as that might be for me, I honed in on this brew for other reasons. It has a name I was unsure of how to pronounce and proclaimed to be of a style I was not familiar with. Not...

OUR BI-WEEKLY BEER COLUMN GIVES YOU A TASTY RECOMMENDATION In the last Soaking Up the Suds, I reviewed Victory’s Hop Wallop. I’d just like to start with a quick recap of that review. It’s awesome. Go get some. Anyway, moving on. Since it was so good, I decided to do another hoppy beer this week. This one comes from Shmaltz brewing’s Hebrew line, which...

Soaking Up the Suds by James Crane Sometimes less is more When it comes to summer beers, the general feeling seems to be that less is more. Summer is a time generally thought to be more about quantity than quality. The hot weather beers seem to be judged on how smoothly they go down, not on their level of complexity. To an extent, this is understandable as a...

Soaking Up the Suds by James Crane A must-have beer Beer is one of the oldest beverages that humans have produced. By this point, we’ve been cranking out Ales for thousands of years. There isn’t much out there that has stood the test of time like beer. It’s even said that it very well may be responsible for civilization, as nomads settled down to one area...

Soaking Up the Suds by James Crane Birra Moretti, summer in a glass As I’ve mentioned before, there are only two main types of beer in the beer world — ales and lagers. The main difference is mainly in the style of yeast used. Lager yeasts ferment from the bottom while ale yeasts ferment from the top. Each of these impart a number of different tastes and...

Soaking Up the Suds by James Crane ‘Jewbelation’ indeed! For many of my favorite breweries, I can pick the beer that put them under my radar. There’s usually a certain brew that makes me realize that they have something special. With more and more breweries popping up, it’s harder and harder to stand out from the crowd. It’s not enough to make a solid...

Soaking Up the Suds By James Crane Stone Cali-Belgique IPA Stone Brewery has a thing for Belgian yeasts. This is not all together noteworthy, but what’s interesting is that they’ve been introducing them into other beer styles. I first took note of this when, starting last year, they released two of their regular releases that had been fermented using...

Soaking Up the Suds By James Crane Let’s get wild I find something incredibly interesting about the idea of wild fermentations. While many brewers strive to keep pure strains of their yeasts, which impart distinctive flavors upon their brew, wild yeast is kind of the opposite. Usually when beer is brewing, it’s completely closed off from the outside world...

OUR BI-WEEKLY BEER COLUMN GIVES YOU A TASTY RECOMMENDATION Solid gold Every time I have a Dogfish Head brew, I’m reminded why I should drink more from them. Their beers are routinely unique and interesting. Despite their adventurous styles, they always seem to produce a good solid beer. I’ve yet to try anything Dogfish Head has brewed that is less than...