Breweries have long been trailblazers. These are taking that tradition and running with it.
The post These Breweries Are Redefining Community, Collaboration, and Fermentation appeared first on CraftBeer.com.
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Breweries have long been trailblazers. These are taking that tradition and running with it.
The post These Breweries Are Redefining Community, Collaboration, and Fermentation appeared first on CraftBeer.com.
Breweries have long been trailblazers. These are taking that tradition and running with it.
The post These Breweries Are Redefining Community, Collaboration, and Fermentation appeared first on CraftBeer.com.
Breweries have long been trailblazers. These are taking that tradition and running with it.
The post These Breweries Are Redefining Community, Collaboration, and Fermentation appeared first on CraftBeer.com.
Breweries have long been trailblazers. These are taking that tradition and running with it.
The post These Breweries Are Redefining Community, Collaboration, and Fermentation appeared first on CraftBeer.com.
Breweries have long been trailblazers. These are taking that tradition and running with it.
The post These Breweries Are Redefining Community, Collaboration, and Fermentation appeared first on CraftBeer.com.
How do breweries find balance in an always evolving industry, where trends come and go and drinkers show both loyalty and adventurousness?
The post Evolving Tastes: How Breweries Are Finding Balance appeared first on CraftBeer.com.
Cider’s explosive growth runs parallel to that of beer, driven by creative makers reimagining what cider can be.
The post The Surge of Cider appeared first on CraftBeer.com.
This Brewer Spotlight highlights Bracket Brewing’s Mike Meletopoulo who speaks to Beer & Brewer about his career built on finding balance. American craft breweries are finding surprising opportunities and eager consumers overseas.
The post Across the Atlantic: How U.S. Breweries Navigate the European Market appeared first on CraftBeer.com.
Craft sake brewers are bridging the gap between beer and sake by creating hybrid products, drawing in curious craft drinkers with innovative, approachable takes on traditional Japanese brewing.
The post Kanpai! How Sake Is Segueing into Craft Beer appeared first on CraftBeer.com.
Inspired by travels during his twenties, Brett Philips shares how he found his love for beer in Europe and how that inspires his work today. A brewery can write an airtight recipe, source top-shelf raw materials, and brew a flawless beer, but all those efforts are for naught if a draught system is dirty.
The post Drafting a Solution: Inside the Dirty World of Cleaning Tap Lines appeared first on CraftBeer.com.
Stavros ‘Stav’ Yiannoukas is National Sales Director at Hawke’s Brewing but his journey to the business was far from traditional. 
Evin Craney sat down with Beer & Brewer to reflect on his decade-long career in independent beer and highlight the initiatives he's driving forward as IBA Chair. As we’re looking ahead to everything that 2025 will bring, we’d also like to take a moment to look back at some of the stories and people who defined craft beer in 2024.
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This week I take a look at homebrew clubs, and why joining a homebrew club may be one of the
From industrial chemistry to marketing to brewing, Esker Beer Co’s Charlie Claridge leans on his diverse experience to create award-winning beer. What's behind the collaborative nature of the global brewing community?
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These movers and shakers are not only brewing top-notch beer, but are also making game-changing steps toward a craft beer industry that welcomes all.
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If the only things certain in life are death and taxes, then the only things certain in craft beer are inspectors and taxes. For brewers looking to release a new label, that means working with the once-dreaded Taxman.
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One of Australia's oldest independent breweries has become the latest operation to look to restructure its business after 35 years of operation. Some brewers are finding unexpected flavors growing right outside their doors, from mushrooms to pine tips.
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Pirate Life South Melbourne brings high energy food and beverage experiences to a former mechanics garage. Pairing produce with beer — with delicious results. A look at the glorious interplay between farmers market fare and craft beer.
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Hops once destined for beer have found a new prominence in hard seltzers, kombucha, and cocktails.
The post New Hope For Hops appeared first on CraftBeer.com.
American craft breweries are known for their ability to strengthen community connections. These three breweries are case in point.
The post Beyond the Beer: Three Breweries Serving Their Communities appeared first on CraftBeer.com.
Many chefs are finding the sweet spot for beer and smoked food, managing the level of smoke intake for a more pleasurable meal.
The post Smoke and a Beer appeared first on CraftBeer.com.
Our batch analysis/QC at Sapwood Cellars is pretty basic. Mostly it's me finding time each weekend to taste a recent release (ideally side-by-side a comparable example from another brewery). I write up tasting notes, include feedback I've gotten from other people, and recipe/process tweaks for next batch.
Part of my routine is to scroll through Untappd to see if I can spot any common threads to the compliments or complaints... but I don't put a huge amount of stock in the average score (see this post). Blind rating by a skilled tasting panel is the gold standard... but having a large/diverse group of beer drinkers give you feedback has value as well! With four years of Untappd scores for our IPAs at my disposal, I thought it would be interesting to see which hops "the beer drinking public" preferred in Sapwood Cellars IPAs and DIPAs!
All IPAs and DIPAs
Pairing Hops
Part of my routine is to scroll through Untappd to see if I can spot any common threads to the compliments or complaints... but I don't put a huge amount of stock in the average score (see this post). Blind rating by a skilled tasting panel is the gold standard... but having a large/diverse group of beer drinkers give you feedback has value as well! With four years of Untappd scores for our IPAs at my disposal, I thought it would be interesting to see which hops "the beer drinking public" preferred in Sapwood Cellars IPAs and DIPAs!
Cheater Hops IPAs
We started this series of IPAs when we opened to showcase our favorite hop varieties. We recently released #22 (Citra-Motueka). All of the batches were 6.5-7.5% ABV, with similar malt bills (American pale barley, chit, wheat, and oats), fermented with an English-leaning yeast, and dry-hopped post-crash at 3-4 lbs/bbl. The table below is the average Untappd score of all batches dry hopped with the variety listed.
The table below include all 65 "big batch" IPAs and DIPAs we've released that don't contain adjuncts (although I did include Phantasm beers). These are diverse in terms of recipe construction, alcohol strength, and dry hopping rate. As a result, the scores are a bit more prone to bias compared to the Cheater Hops data set.
For some batches you'd expect to see a high rating due to pairing two great hops together (e.g., Nelson/Galaxy or Mosaic/Citra). Both varieties score well across all our beers, so no surprise combing them results in a well-rated IPA. More interesting is sorting by the average standard deviation for the hops included. This shows which combinations rated higher than expected given the average scores for those hops across all beers. Snip Snap (Citra/Galaxy), Cheater Hops #22 (Citra/Motueka), Shard Blade (Mosaic/Galaxy), Cheater Hops #13 (Mosaic/Simcoe), and The Dragon (Nelson Sauvin/Mosaic/Hallertau Blanc) were all in the top-10 "overachievers." These hop blends follow different approaches either "leaning into" a particular flavor (fruity, or winey) or balancing fruity with a danker variety.
Rounding out the top-10 are two all-Simcoe (Cheater Hops #12 and Drenched in Green), two all-Mosaic (Fundle Bundle and TDH Trial #1), and an all-Nelson beer (3S4MP). Certainly a sign that these hops can shine alone compared to Citra and Motueka which are highly rated in blends, but haven't exceled in single-hop beers (despite our best efforts). Of course you need a great lot of hops for this to work; the bottom-10 also includes single-hop beers featuring: Simcoe (Cheater Hops #9), Nelson Sauvin (Cheater Hops #11), and Mosaic (Fumble Bumble)!
Two beers with Galaxy and Nelson (Cheater X and X2) each had a standard deviation close to 0. They still rate well, but no better or worse than expected across all beers with Nelson or Galaxy.
Surprisingly three of the bottom four included three varieties Cheater Hops #7 (Simcoe, Citra, Mosaic) Cheater Hops #6 (Motueka, Mosaic, Simcoe) False Peak (Idaho 7, Sultana, Citra). Blending hops can create a generic "hoppiness." These beers may have been missing a distinct "wow" aroma for people to grab onto.
Take Aways
The high/low scores for different batches brewed with the same single hop variety really drives home how unreliable this data likely is. Without multiple batches hopped with the same hop combination, it is impossible to say with certainty if a beer scored well because of aromatic synergy or a delicious lot of hops. Luckily several of the top-rated combinations are beers we have brewed multiple times.
The data does suggest to me that using one or two varieties for the dry hop is the best bet for making the most appealing IPA unless you have something very specific in mind. Often when breweries use a large number of hop varieties in a beer it is to promote consistency (batch-to-batch and year-to-year). It would be interesting to expand the data set to include beers from other breweries. That would produce data that is less specific to our particular brewing approach, hop sourcing, and customers' palates.
Help Provide Data
At several breweries in the UK, people who have learning disabilities have proven themselves to be effective and valuable employees when given the opportunity to show what they can do.
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