Damn straight Guinness is good for you

One of the beer world’s most famous advertising slogans is “Guinness is good for you,” which dates to the 1920s and is credited to...

40 Years in Beer, Part Twenty-One: Those legendary working beers with the FDJ in...

Previously: 40 Years in Beer, Part Twenty: Beer, zakuski, vodka and ice cream. As August approached, I’d been tourist-grade ambulatory in the East Bloc for...

40 Years in Beer, Part Twenty: Beer, zakuski, vodka and ice cream

Previously: 40 Years in Beer, Part Nineteen: Moscow skyline in twilight, 1989. Founding Soviet patriarch Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died in early 1924, and while he...

Bock beer’s back story, because the time draws near

Is Bock the G.O.A.T.? This question has been nagging me since Jimmy Carter was in office. All I knew for sure at the time was that...

40 Years in Beer, Part Nineteen: Moscow skyline in twilight, 1989

Previously: 40 Years in Beer, Part Eighteen: In Ostrava, the beer of the people at the factory gates. In the autumn of 1989 my travels...

R.I.P. Gravity Head, with a reprise: “I’d stop drinking, but I’m no quitter”

Today would have been the kickoff of Gravity Head at the New Albanian Brewing Company, which has quietly let it be known that the...

Business of Better Beer: Draft beer selections benefit from thoughtful guiding principles

No photos or videos, just words. With the passing of Common Haus Hall in Jeffersonville, where I served for the past year as beer director,...

40 Years in Beer, Part Eighteen: In Ostrava, the beer of the people at...

Previously: 40 Years in Beer, Part Seventeen: Uncle V’s beery introduction to Bohemia (June 1989). In 1989 the city of Ostrava (population 330,000) was communist...

40 Years in Beer, Part Seventeen: Uncle V’s beery introduction to Bohemia (June 1989)

  Previously: 40 Years in Beer, Part Sixteen: In 1988, I had a slightly better year than Michael Dukakis. In May 1989 I gave notice at...

40 Years in Beer, Part Sixteen: In 1988, I had a slightly better year...

Previously: 40 Years in Beer, Part Fifteen: A clash of titans (with Elephant Beer) in Copenhagen, 1987. Returning briefly to our contemporary era from distant...

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Diary: Nature teaches beasts to know their friends

Title credit courtesy of Shakespeare (Coriolanus). During The Edge’s and Bono’s recent Tiny Desk Concert at NPR, Bono introduced the U2 song "Stuck in a...

40 Years in Beer, Part Twenty-Two: A placid traditional Danish lunch in Copenhagen, 1989

Previously: 40 Years in Beer, Part Twenty-One: Those legendary working beers with the FDJ in the GDR. There was a faint glow, and an aura...

Green with entropy?

Regardless of who invented it, the first people to make green beer probably made it the same, slightly unintuitive way it's made today: a...