Quadrupel, Malheur 12°, Brouwerij De Landtsheer NV, Buggenhout, Belgium
(12.0% alc)
The Belgians don’t pussyfoot around with their beer.  Not only is their country regarded as the Holy Grail for beer lovers, but they have a penchant for naming their beers with an ironic sense of danger that will draw a ghasp from the most hardened nun.
Why [...]

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They say that any day brewing is a good day.  I couldn’t agree more (well, except for all that pesky sanitizing—that can be a real bitch).  However, a good day brewing can go sour.  And for us this weekend, it did.
Dead yeast?  Nope.  A broken carboy smashed all over our apartment?  Nope.  A boil-over volcano [...]

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Dunkelweizen, Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu, München, Germany
(5.0% alc)

You gotta love it when your friends prepare to move and unload their stuff on you.  Especially when its their booze.
A good friend of mine, Tamara, has just moved to London to begin a new adventure overseas.  The fortunate thing for me is that she had amassed quite a wine and beer collection [...]

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Many beers we know and love are actually brewed by “contract brewers”, who can be hundreds of miles or even entire states away.
“What?! What?!”, you say, “but that’s my hometown beer!”
Now, I hear you and I was surprised to learn this too, but its actually quite common.
A brewery that hires another is called a “contract [...]

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Just before Christmas Eve dinner, the guests of the Royal Family retire to the Saloon to enjoy gin and tonics with the Queen (who drinks a dry Martini).  Afterwards, the guests are seated at 8:30 pm for a splendid, candlelit meal that unfolds in rehearsed waves of grandeur.  White wine is served with the hors [...]

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Baltic Porter, Oy Sinebrychoff Ab, Kerava, Finland
(7.2% alc)
I hereby declare that all our soldiers be supplied with the latest in body armor technology, lightweight night-vision goggles and Camelbak drinking systems filled with Imperial Porter.
In an attempt to fill out my beer list at Hearth and Terroir with some eclectic, international styles of Porter, I stumbled [...]

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What’s life without the barrel?
It seems that everywhere I look these days, my favorite breweries are releasing tricked-out, new barrel-aged beers.
Port barrels, whisky barrels, sherry casks, madeira casks, wine barrels.  Its kind of dizzying.
What’s next?  Monkey barrels?  Fish barrels?  Oil drums?  (Who knows, perhaps an Exxon Light Crude Porter would pair beautifully with my grilled Rib Eye [...]

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Autumn is the bite of a harvest apple. – Christina Petrowsky
All hail the glorious apple.  Man’s relationship with this versatile and forbidden fruit goes back thousands of years.  Today, there are over 55 million tons of apples produced worldwide each year…now that’s some serious fanaticism.
I was tasked to bring in 6-8 new ciders for our [...]

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Sometimes you gotta do your homework.  And when it comes to beer drinking, this ain’t homework you’ll go into kicking and screaming.
In an attempt to further my beer education, I caught a ride to Brooklyn’s Bierkraft and began grabbing single bottles of anything that looked unfamiliar or whispered my name in a sweet Irish brogue [...]

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Owning a microbrewery is a labor of love.  Often times, the genesis is a mad homebrewer’s hobby growing so big that their basement, kitchen, garage and children’s closets become so clogged with gear that they HAVE to go pro.
This is what happened to Matt and Renee Nadeau who are about to celebrate the tenth anniversary [...]

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