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The Site

Collected notes, rambles, and general ideas related to beer and the intersection of brewing and science.  Beer proudly stands on the shoulders of tradition, and finds rejuvenation in both innovation, and convenient failings of memory. The beverage is too easy a canvas for marketers, and yet well suited for artisans. I am fascinated by the tension between business,  creative, and technological forces.

The Author

When Ben's not writing, researching, or otherwise experimenting with beer, Ben works as an engineer in the biopharmaceutical industry.  His position offers some opportunity to travel to lands with diverse brewing traditions.
e-mail: ben@beerthoughts.com



A few previously published pieces are included, and are so noted.

Greatest Hits

Nostalgia and New Ideas: Craft Beer Luminaries Find Ways To Stay Relevant

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I'm not envious of the youngsters starting out in an era when good beer is available on every street corner.   Yes, things have never been more exciting in US Micro brewing but I feel the grip of  nostalgia.  New breweries are opening almost weekly.  New taprooms draw crowds to taste new, photogenic beers.  Novelty, at times, seems to surpass quality in importance to today's promiscuous drinkers.  Which isn't to say that we didn't get around in my day.  It's just that we didn't make such an effort to make an obvious trail, or tally our conquests.  Which were, admittedly, somewhat smaller in number.  Might today's craft drinkers missing some great beers from great breweries, in a quest for the next big thing, and a desire to avoid drinking one of dad's many microbrews?  The good news is that many are doing cool things to stay interesting, and remain in conversation. So many brewing luminaries of my youth are now ancient.  Gr...
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Beer Destinations: Prague

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Beneath a fairy tale skyline of spires, domes, and towers, a modern city of industry and commerce sits upon cobblestone streets and ancient bridges.   Prague is a maddening riddle.   Brilliant minds like Franz Kafka and Bohumil Hrabal relied upon surrealistic visions to make sense of it.   Despite the city’s complex and frankly tumultuous history, there’s a millennia of brilliantly preserved architecture, miraculously spared the devastation of fire, war, and tasteless modernizations that have continuously reshaped many European cities. Located between the noble hop fields of Žatec (Saaz in German) and Moravia’s cascading barley fields, Prague is within easy reach of the ingredients to needed to sustain a vital brewing scene.    However, the city was not spared the 20 th century’s assault on local beer culture.   In the early 1990s, international breweries monopolized the city’s tap handles.   Brewpubs were mostly forgotten, a novelty for tourists, a...
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The Post-Malt Era of American Craft Brewing

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Once seen as a key differentiation between better and mass marketed beer, the 2-row barley malt may now be the least important ingredient in a brewery.  Malt has disappeared from our beer conversations.  There are still palettes stacked high with 50 lb bags, and fork lifts. By weight, it's still beer's second largest ingredient, after water of course.  However it's lost our attention, and its contributions intentionally minimized to better showcase on the other players - most typically hops and Yeast (or other microflora). The mighty hop has always been a lead character in American craft beer.  There's something in our soil that makes hops express pungent aromas and aggressive flavors.  European brewers traditionally considered these hops too vulgar to feature prominently in a beer's finish.  They kept quiet about cost savings from the use of american hops to bitter.  American craft brewers found ways to feature these piney, resinous flavors as virt...
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