With its rolling hills, lush foliage and sparkling river views, New York’s Hudson Valley is certainly a tourist destination. Apple orchards, artists’ communities and even a culinary school dot the region. In the past few years, the area along the Hudson River south of Albany to the tip of Manhattan has become a cradle of beer—and cider—in the Empire State.

In the Hudson Valley, brewers “have come together as a group, to really make themselves known as a destination for great beer,” says Paul Leone, executive director of the New York State Brewers Association.

Brewpubs churning out classic styles were the places to go for beer in the region until Keegan Ales arrived in Kingston in 2003, followed by Captain Lawrence Brewing Co., first in Pleasantville and now in Elmsford, and Defiant Brewing Co. in Pearl River, both in 2006.

Captain Lawrence was started by Scott Vaccaro, who trained at the University of California, Davis, brewing school. His brewery maintains a sharp focus on quality control and precision with its Freshchester Pale Ale, IPA, Kölsch and Liquid Gold Belgian Style Ale. At the same time, Captain Lawrence, with its beer, pushes the boundaries with unusual styles and ingredients, and a barrel-aging program. Just two examples are Cuvee de Castleton, which was made with muscat grapes and aged in French oak wine barrels, and Nor’Easter, a winter warmer brewed with elderberries and aged in bourbon barrels. The brewery’s influence has trickled out to newer operations in the area.

“We do not have a regular West Coast American IPA. When someone asks us why, we say because Captain Lawrence makes an amazing IPA, so try that one,” says Paul Halayko, president and COO of Newburgh Brewing Co., in Newburgh, which he opened in 2012 with brewmaster Christopher Basso.

Beers in Newburgh’s lineup include a Chile Lime Stout, Black Oyster Cult gose, Baltic spruce porter and C.A.F.E Sour, which is made using cold brewed Ethiopian coffee. Though its aroma is all-coffee, the taste is distinctly tart. “We thought the acidity from the coffee might go really well with a beer being acidic, a sour beer of some kind,” Halayko says.

Newburgh recently joined forces with Plan Bee Farm Brewery, founded in Fishkill in 2013 by husband-and-wife team Evan and Emily Watson. Evan had previously brewed at Captain Lawrence. In 2015 Plan Bee began construction on a 25-acre farm and brewery in Poughkeepsie. While waiting for the new location to be built, the two relied on bottled collaboration beers, offered at the Beacon Farmers Market.

The Newburgh/Plan Bee joint venture was dubbed Cross-Pollination, a New York sour ale. The brewers produced the wort together and divided it into two batches for fermentation. One half was fermented with Newburgh’s house yeast, the other with a yeast unique to Plan Bee. Bottles were sold by the pair.

“We culture yeast from our spring and fall honey harvests every year,” Evan Watson explains. “Every year it’s slightly different. … It’s romantic, haphazard chemistry. I’ve learned by experience and research.”

He strives to use as many local ingredients as possible. “All our recipes are dictated by agriculture … what’s in bloom or not, what we can pick,” he says. “The Hudson Valley is one of most biodiverse areas in the country.”

If you’re talking Hudson Valley agriculture, you’ve got to mention apples. “We have near-perfect climate, soil and topography,” says Andy Brennan of Aaron Burr Cidery, who looks to his crops when creating cider. He sources apples from the hundreds of trees on his nine-acre farm on the border of the Hudson Valley and Catskill regions.

Brennan plants the trees himself. After pressing the apples for cider, seeds remain in the leftover pomace. He scatters the seeds over a hillside, almost a million by his estimation, out of which about 100 trees will grow.

“When they reproduce on their own, apple trees don’t produce the same variety as their parents. There are five seeds in a McIntosh apple. All five generate different varieties,” he explains. “[Humans] reproduce individuals which are unique and never existed before, and so do apple trees.”

Because of this, each batch of Aaron Burr Cider is unique. “We focus our batches by where they’re foraged from. The idea there is that the apples in each region [of the farm] will express the soils and climates that are unique to that area. We don’t want to blend those different experiences the trees have.”

Farther up the river is a combination apple orchard/brewery. Sloop Brewing Co. leases a barn from Vosburgh Orchards in Elizaville, a 134-acre apple farm run by the Vosburgh family for six generations. The brewery and taproom share space with a farmer’s market, offering apples, cider doughnuts and other local eats and handmade wares.

“Every once in a while we’ll do a beer that’s close to 100 percent local ingredients,” says co-founder and sales director Adam Watson, even incorporating Vosburgh apples. Beers have included a Belgian farmhouse ale dry-hopped with Galaxy hops, a black sour ale brewed with raspberries and an American pale ale brewed less than 24 hours after its hops have been harvested.

Another brewer making his mark on the area is Jeff O’Neil, who came to the Hudson Valley as brewmaster of Peekskill Brewing in 2011 after almost a decade at Ithaca Brewing Co. in New York’s Finger Lakes region. While at Peekskill, he made waves by using a coolship for open fermentation and producing hop-heavy beers like Amazeballs and Eastern Standard. In 2015 he started his own venture, Industrial Arts Brewing Co., where he will hone his hop-forward approach.

“I think there’s a sort of maverick spirit that’s expressed by the wide variety of approaches that you see from the breweries in the valley,” O’Neil says. “For instance, we intend to do something that’s so different from a place like Plan Bee that we almost could be seen as completely different types of beverage businesses.” O’Neil adds that Captain Lawrence paved the way for other local breweries, with the focus on quality and consistency.

“There’s a great appreciation for food in the area due to the wonderful resource that is the Culinary Institute,” he continues. “I’ll say that the concept of beer as food is embraced here more willingly than I’ve seen elsewhere.”

That’s thanks to Douglass Miller, a professor at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park who started a “Beer Appreciation” class four years ago. “I want to change the conversation the hospitality industry has with beer,” Miller says. “By training students that are future chefs, once they get out in the industry they’ll have a better understanding of beer. Now we have a fully operating brewery on campus.”

Recently, the Brooklyn Brewery teamed up with the CIA to open the facility and brought on Hutch Kugeman as head brewer. Kugeman previously brewed at Crossroads Brewing, also in the Hudson Valley. For a second beer class, “Art and Science of Brewing,” students are in lecture with Miller, then get hands-on experience making beer
with Kugeman.

“There’s a great agricultural moment throughout the Hudson Valley. … What that’s also doing is spawning tourism. People are coming up from New York City, for day trips. They could do a brewery, winery, restaurant, farm, apple picking,” Miller explains.

For Kugeman, “it’s an exciting time in a sense that there are lots of new breweries doing new things. They’re taking risks and developing their own identities. It raises the bar for everybody.” In Kugeman’s class, students work on brewing three beers: Cleaver IPA and Mise en Place Belgian Wit—recipes he developed alongside Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery—and a class project beer, a stout during the inaugural semester.

“It certainly puts the ideas of beer as a learning tool on the map nationally,” says Kugeman. “It brings together the energy and resources of New York City with the agricultural community. I’ve moved around the country quite a bit. There aren’t that many places where, an hour in either direction, you have a major metropolitan center and farmland.”

The post A Blossoming Beer Scene in New York’s Hudson Valley first appeared on All About Beer.

That a spot like Temecula—once and arguably still a bedroom community for commuters to Los Angeles or San Diego—is exceedingly worthy of a beercation may come as a shock even to those in LA, San Diego and Orange County.

Just a few decades ago, Temecula was a ranch town of 10,000 people. Nowadays, population 100,000-plus, orange groves have made way for vineyards. Most people who vacation here come for wine tasting and hot air ballooning, to say nothing of the golf courses such as Temecula Creek Inn and Pechanga Resort (for both of which Visit Temecula Valley provided accommodations and tee times for this reporter). Pechanga Resort  is more popular for its Indian casino. Yet clearly locals love their beer, since Temecula is home to 10 breweries.

I hit the new brew capital of the Inland Empire with my father. Since Temecula offers stellar links and a burgeoning brewery scene, we headed out for a weekend of golfing by day and beer tasting as our “19th hole” crawl.

Our first day, we stayed and played at played the original course in the area, Temecula Creek Inn. After the round we went to Wiens Brewing (27941 Diaz Road), headed by brewmaster Ben Wiens and family, which is part of what’s known as the Class of 2012, when four of Temecula’s breweries opened for business. Beers include the Millennium Falconers, an India pale lager hopped with, you guessed it, Millennium and Falconer’s Flight hops, and lighter fare like the Honey Wheat.

Refuge Brewing (43040 Rancho Way) opened about a month after Wiens and just a block away. Curt Kucera and his son Jake are the brewers, but everyone in the Kucera clan serves a function. Speaking of functions, we arrived during one of the brewery tasting room’s many parties, this time being Jake’s birthday, and hundreds of locals turned out to enjoy live music, nosh from local food trucks and quaff their mostly Belgian-leaning offerings, such as the flagship: Blood Orange Wit. The simple story goes that on their neighbor’s gentleman’s farm stood a blood orange tree, so they added the fruit, whole, to a batch of their witbier. This being SoCal, Refuge has several citrus-fruit-infused beers, including an incredible grapefruit IPA.

Nearby is Ironfire (42095 Zevo Drive), where Habanero 51/50 IPA stoked interest. Aptly named because it’s crazy hot (hence usage of the police code) but at least not as fiery as Ballast Point’s Habanero Sculpin IPA. And for those who wanna go 52/50, or whatever one more than crazy is, there’s a jar of “salsa” made with Scoville-chart-topping Carolina Reaper peppers that your server is happy dose your beer with a drop of. On a 90-degree golf day, Gunslinger Golden Ale—a 4.5% and 16 IBU cream ale—is the ideal quencher.

If you’ve noticed that none of these places have been aptly described, it’s because they’re all dimly lit and located in industrial warehouses. Not much to look at from the outside, but plenty to drink inside. It appeared that the one with the largest tasting room is Black Market (41740 Enterprise Circle N.) with barrels aplenty that double as space partitions. Although there’s a larger room in the back with its own bar and life-size Jenga blocks, we happily sat at the front bar near the entrance. I found many good IPAs like Aftermath. It’s piney—five hops, so it also throws some grapefruit pith—but quite sessionable at 5.8%. The magical part was the discovery of three 3.8% Berliner weisses. There’s the base version called 1945 and a pair of fruited ones: Cherry Sour and Blackberry Sour as well as a traditional, house-made woodruff syrup that smacked of toasted green marshmallows.

As for the brewery with perhaps the biggest generational gap, Aftershock (28822 Old Town Front St. #108) earns its name by being small yet mighty, and the 20 or so taps give it easily the most house beers in town. There are crowd pleasers like the 9.2% Faultline IIPA, bursting with resinous, mouth-coating hops and caramelly malts. For the more adventurous, the brewers split batches, so perhaps you’ll find an espresso stout as well as one called Affogato, meaning they added vanilla beans. Those beans, or real fruit, frequently turn one beer into multiple offerings, for those who want to see what strawberries or peanut butter do to a cherished style. Not only do they make a variation called Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Ale, it just won a medal at this year’s Great American Beer Festival (GABF).

There are two homegrown brewpubs in town, and Garage Brewing Co. & Pizzeria (29095 Old Town Front St.) took home Temecula’s other GABF medal—a gold for Bucket Seat Blonde in the Munich-style Helles category. Bulldog (41379 Date St., Suite B) in Murietta (meaning a minute over Temecula’s city limits) excels at pub grub. We ordered the French Poodle—topped with brie, bacon and aioli—and the Man’s Best Friend flatbread (meaning pizza for one) with tri-tip, grilled red onions, jalapenos and Sriracha aioli. The fries are basically whipped and fanned out, so they appear almost like golden seashells, and are like nothing I’ve seen or tasted before.

There are great nonbrewery food options, too, and our breakfast at Temecula Creek’s dining room, overlooking the first hole and water feature, where I got bourbon-soaked bacon pancakes (much needed), was a pleasant discovery. Pechanga (45000 Pechanga Parkway) is spiffier, meaning it’s more modern and Vegas-lite. The steakhouse, Great Oak, grills mouthwatering prime cuts and nicely muffles the noise from the tables and slots outside. As for said gambling, I don’t understand the rules governing Indian casinos like the roulette wheel featuring playing cards marked with red or black numbers but no ball. We preferred to spend our time on the greens—a very lush course dubbed The Journey. My dad tried to explain the profundity of the name. Though a nongolfer, I get it: tackling the course is a journey. But Temecula’s brewery scene is its own odyssey.

The post Temecula: The Cradle of Beer in Southern California first appeared on All About Beer.

This party town loves a good time with its frozen daiquiris sold at drive-thru windows (which always hit the spot on a hot and humid summer night), the rum-based Hurricane and the neon-green Hand Grenades found on Bourbon Street. Drinking in the street between bars and parties is no problem as long as it’s not in a glass container—have go-cup, will travel.

Beer has historically been barely a second thought: something light for taking it easy, day drinking, tailgating, parades and to temper the heat of the locally loved crawfish boil. Louisianians seemed often to use beer to take the place of water for thirst-quenching purposes, and the light lager style and lack of flavor in the beer most frequently imbibed reflected that all too well.

But more and more people in New Orleans and Louisiana, with their well-evolved palates for food, wine, and cocktails, are understanding how beer can have flavor and complement local ingredients and add to the pleasure of dining and drinking. Over the past 10 years, the proverbial streetcar has finally left the station, and local beer options are popping up at an exponential rate.

In pre-Prohibition days, New Orleans was considered to be the brewing capital of the South, with its rich German immigrant brewing traditions and status as a major port city. The evidence is all over the city, like the old Jax Brewing building overlooking the Mississippi River in the French Quarter, the old Falstaff Beer brewery (which has been converted into apartments) and the Dixie logo painted on the side of venerable music club Tipitina’s. Dozens of breweries sprang up in the city between 1845 and 1920, but as in so many other cities, Prohibition and brewery consolidation chipped away at the numbers. By the late ’70s-early ’80s, brewing culture was all but lost in New Orleans.

In 1986, the Abita Brewing Co. opened in a tiny town located to the north of the city, way across Lake Pontchartrain. In 1991, Wolfram “Wolf” Koehler opened up Crescent City Brew-house in the French Quarter. Koehler says of his decision, “A lack of good beer in New Orleans seemed to be a perfect invitation for a German brewmaster looking for a place to put a brewery.”

A New Orleans outpost of the Gordon Biersch family of brewpubs opened next to the Harrah’s Casino in 2004.

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit, the levees fell, and the entire city of New Orleans had a demarcation line of what life was like “before” and “after.” The entrepreneurial spirit that led to the rebuilding of homes and structures also gave birth to looking at the culture in a new way, in order to make it not only what it was “before,” but to make it even better.

In the Wake of the Storm

When Kirk Coco retired from the U.S. Navy to help rebuild his native city, he recalls putting in a hard day’s work and reaching for a Dixie, what he thought was a local beer. However, he read on the label that it was contract-brewed in Wisconsin. Dixie Brewing Co. had closed in 2005, in the months just before Katrina, and had switched to contract brewing.

“It baffled me that there was no brewery here,” he says. “It just made no sense.”

He decided to start NOLA Brewing, the first post-Katrina production brewery in New Orleans. Coco didn’t brew, however, which led him to Peter Caddoo.

Caddoo, who trained at the Culinary Institute of America, was a chef who worked at the Creole restaurant Commander’s Palace under Emeril Lagasse before he quit in order to become a brewer at Dixie. After the storm, Caddoo was back in the culinary world when Coco approached him to be brewmaster at NOLA.

In 2009, Coco and Caddoo were ready to start selling their beer, and one of the first stops was the Avenue Pub, a nearby 24-hour dive bar that had just started dabbling in offering brands like Rogue Ales and Brooklyn Brewery.

According to owner Polly Watts, her distributor told her that there was a new brewery in town and suggested she save a couple of taps for its beer.

Watts recalls, “He told me that it’s going to be a higher price point, probably selling for $5 a pint. And I said, ‘Five dollars for a blond ale? No one’s going to pay that.’ ”

“Then the beer comes out, and we tap one keg of NOLA Blonde and one keg of NOLA Brown. It was gone in like two hours. So I think it’s a fluke, just because nobody else in town has it on tap. So I order two more the next day. Gone in another two hours.”

“I think we were very fortunate to have Polly at the time when we were starting,” Coco says. “Because, if not, I don’t know if our brand could be what it is right now, without her educating the beer drinkers in the city and bringing all the other bars to a higher level. The other bars, they were good, but when Polly came, they were better.”

A Brewing Revival

Between 2005 and 2010, things started to change, not just inside the city, but in the surrounding areas as well. Bayou Teche Brewing and Parish Brewing opened to the west of New Orleans in the culturally rich Cajun country near the city of Lafayette. Covington Brewhouse, which had been brewing just down the road from its north shore neighbor Abita under a different name and brewmaster since 2005, expanded and rebranded.

Starting in 2010, the breweries began opening more quickly: Tin Roof in Baton Rouge, the state’s capital; Chafunkta Brewing and the Old Rail Brewing Co. brewpub in Mandeville, right on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain across from New Orleans; 40 Arpent Brewing just across the Orleans Parish border in Arabi; and Gnarly Barley Brewing, to the northwest of New Orleans in Hammond, between Lake Pont-chartrain and Baton Rouge.

It’s impossible to talk about the creation of beer culture in New Orleans without also mentioning Dan Stein of Stein’s Market and Deli. Stein opened his uptown Jewish deli in 2007 and subsequently began stocking an extensive and esoteric beer selection and hosting style-focused beer education classes—on seasonals or sours, for example—for both beginners and experts.

Recent Surge of Growth

With all the growth in the outlining areas, it wasn’t until 2014 that the Big Easy’s second production brewery opened. Courtyard Brewing is a nanobrewery where owner-brewer Scott Wood serves his beer alongside guest taps.

Working with the city to get his little brewery up and running, Wood remembers butting heads over the architectural plans with city employees.

“They said, ‘Who is going to want to come to a desolated warehouse to stand around and drink beer?’ I told them, ‘Lots of people. Beer geeks. Trust me.’”

Wood’s brewery is in half a small warehouse space with a bar made of salvaged wood, with concrete floors below and exposed ceiling pipes and wires above. A record player sits on the far end of the bar, and patrons are invited to bring their albums to share while drinking Wood’s hop-forward and Belgian-style beer. There isn’t any regular seating, but folding chairs can be deployed to set up impromptu groupings around makeshift tables—repurposed cable and wire spindles—both inside and out. The outdoor courtyard is adorned with twinkling white strings of lights, and most days a food truck is parked right next to it.

Wood couldn’t make enough beer on his three-barrel system to satiate the local demand. He’s just added three new tanks to increase his production, but in less than a year after opening, the business has surpassed all expectations and projections he and his wife (and business partner), Lindsay Hellwig, had anticipated.

Beer bar Snooty Cooter also opened in 2014, in the back bar of the oyster-shucking sports bar Cooter Brown’s. Cooter Brown’s has been known for its many beer taps of imports and lagers like Newcastle Brown Ale, Stella Artois, Guinness, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Abita’s famous Amber, for almost 40 years, but the selection was more geared to football fans than discerning beer drinkers. Cooter Brown’s owner Larry Berestitzky and general manager Jonathan Junca sought to change that perception and opened The Snooty Cooter, a small beer bar within a sports bar, tucked in back like a secret speak-easy, symbolizing new trends within old traditions, and speaking to the change in attitudes about beer in New Orleans. Now, its 46 taps dispense Belgian beer, local rarities and specialty beers from all over the country.

Local restaurants have recognized the flavor profile potential and have been expanding their beer lists: Nathanial Zimet’s Boucherie restaurant has been ahead of the beer curve for years, having hosted a Brooklyn Brewery beer dinner with Garrett Oliver in 2010, well before such a concept was even on the radar of other chefs or beer professionals.

The restaurants in local superstar chef John Besh’s New Orleans empire are also forward thinking in combining beer and food. Besh’s flagship, Restaurant August, offers a well-thought-out, food-friendly bottled beer list. Downtown seafood restaurant Borgne, also owned by Besh, also carries a large selection of beer on draft and in cans. In addition, the John Besh Foundation has paired with a Louisiana brewery, Great Raft Brewing, to explore the relationship between cooking and brewing by having its chefs work with the brewer to create four unique beers.

As Crescent City Brewhouse’s Koehler says, “for us to have a brewery in the French Quarter was like a dream come true, because all the other ingredients that I like about a city are here—the good food, music, architecture, the people, the Mardi Gras, you name it. It had everything except the brewery. You know, New Orleans used to have 22 breweries at the turn of the last century. Maybe by the turn of this century, we’ll have 22 breweries again.”

The post New Orleans: Once Hard, Now Easier first appeared on All About Beer.

WELLINGTON, NZ—As you step from the gate of the main terminal into the waiting area of the airport here, Gandalf soars overhead on a great eagle, his right arm outstretched, staff in hand. This is, after all, Middle Earth, and the direction the wizard points is squarely toward an adventure.

In a very short time, the island nation of New Zealand has become a beer destination. Thanks largely to hop farms that are producing in-demand varieties, along with a growing number of national breweries, beer adventurers are flocking here in droves, and the Kiwis are eager to welcome the travelers.

New Zealand’s capital city and region is home to just over a dozen breweries, and the sense of pride this industry brings to residents is palpable, even if it’s still in the early years of a new era.

It’s possible to hit all the city’s premier beer spots in just a few days, and Wellington, despite weather that changes by the minute, is easy to navigate on foot, on a bicycle or in a car.

Golding’s Free Dive is a great place to start and get acclimated to the capital. Tucked down the alleylike Leeds Street, it’s chocked full of “Star Wars” memorabilia, from a Millennium Falcon above the hand pulls to Yoda over the entrance, and a painted mural along one wall proclaims that “beer is love.” It’s the rare kind of bar where a first-time visitor can feel immediately at home and treated like a long-standing regular.

There is little denying that the American beer influence plays a big role in the country, with refrigerated containers arriving by ship on the shores here, largely filled with hoppy West Coast ales (and a few Midwest offerings as well). At Golding’s a cooler is full of offerings from Ballast Point Brewing Co., Speakeasy Ales & Lagers, Lakefront Brewery and more. The United States is a large importer of NZ hop varietals—which are harvested annually in the spring. As such many American beers that come back to New Zealand have native ingredients.

“The scene is going to change from import to local beers,” said David Cryer, the festival director of Beervana, which celebrates the Kiwi beer culture.

That festival, held annually in August, is the premier spot for the locals and visitors alike to get a taste of native beer. Held on the concourse of Westpac Stadium, home to several rugby teams, the festival draws nearly all of the country’s brewers together to pour their wares. With roughly 100 breweries in the country at this point, it’s a manageable way to survey the scene.

However, locals and visitors alike will be forgiven if they occasionally confuse this Beervana with the one on the West Coast of the United States. There is a big connection between Wellington and Portland, OR. Lately, it’s not uncommon to find Rose City beers on tap throughout Wellington, and more and more NZ brewers are sending their ales and lagers north. A number of collaboration beers have also popped up, including Portland’s Gigantic Brewing Co. working with Fork & Brewer and 8 Wired Brewing Co.

Realizing the strong connection between the two cities, and the relative ease of a trans-Pacific flight (despite a 19-hour time difference), there are a number of unofficial partnerships between the pair of Beervanas, including support from government officials. Last summer Wellington mayor Celia Wade-Brown—who is an enthusiastic supporter of local beer—welcomed brewers from Portland to her city, sampling that city’s ales during a reception at the United States Embassy in Wellington. The mayor even had a brown ale aptly named after her by local brewers Yeastie Boys. Kiwi brewers have received similar warm receptions in the Pacific Northwest.

If you’re here, drink and eat local. Head over to the Fork & Brewer, a brewpub located on the second floor—brewhouse and all—of a commercial block downtown. It’s an eclectic space with Astroturf on the floor and stone accents on one side, and a more sleek wood- and metal-finished space on the other. Smack in the middle is a circular bar done in barrel fashion (that design continues to the bathrooms and the sink design) with 40 taps—20 of which are made in-house and continually rotate. Get several samplers. Try the burger.

Garage Project, a small but growing brewery housed in a former gas station, makes one of the more recognizable beers in New Zealand, thanks to sparse packaging: an all-white can with four, large, bold, black letters—BEER. This is the brewery’s 4.8% Czech pilsner.

Garage Project also has a strong working relationship with one of the country’s better-known businesses, the Weta workshop, a special effects company that did much of the work on the Lord of the Rings movies. Weta frequently loans out props to be displayed among the fermentation tanks during big events. Take, for example, the life-size statue of space explorer Lord Cockswain, a Weta creation that adorned the brewery last summer to commemorate the release of a double bourbon barrel-aged porter named after the character.

The Garage Project ales and lagers are found alongside offerings from other commercial breweries, like Epic of Auckland and the audacious, style boundary-pushing Yeastie Boys. Stop in a bar like D4 on Featherston Street, the Malthouse—the city’s original beer bar—on Courtenay Place, or the Hop Garden, a beer-themed restaurant on the outskirts of town, and you won’t be thirsty after leaving.

If there is one business that outnumbers the bars, it would be coffee shops. Kiwis love their coffee, and the national caffeinated drink is the flat white. It’s steamed milk over a shot or two of espresso, close to a cappuccino, but with a greater concentration of coffee. It is perfect for before, during (many bars serve coffee) and most certainly the morning after a solid drinking session.

Culturally, there is much to do in the city. It’s worth taking a day to explore the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. There, you can explore native Kiwi culture and even check out a preserved giant squid. For a taste of the island, book a private tour that explores the museum’s garden, where you learn about local ingredients, capped by a meal that includes the same. It’s a wonderful local experience.

Looking to get out of the city for a bit but still on the hunt for beer? Take a train to the Upper Hutt region to the north and visit the Kereru Brewery, just a quick walk from the rail station. There, brewer Chris Mills, who was raised in Brookline, MA, is making beers derived from and inspired by native ingredients from manuka wood to NZ-harvested hops.

Of course, if you’re making the trip to New Zealand, there should be more to your itinerary than just Wellington, but no visit is complete without a few days in the Southern Hemisphere’s Beervana.

The post The Island of Beervana first appeared on All About Beer.

Frank Zappa famously said, “You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” Luxembourg, ergo, qualifies as a real country. Then again, Luxembourgers refer to it as a Grand Duchy, since it’s the only sovereign state ruled by a duke: Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg. Today, it boasts a whopping seven breweries. Per capita, however, it bests America, since the entire population is 550,000 and Americans have roughly 3,100 to slake 314 million thirsts. I schemed to hit them all. In a weekend.

All visits should start in Luxembourg City to explore, on foot, its charming Old City with slate and sandstone façades everywhere you look. The Bock promontory, dating to 963, makes an ideal fortress since the cliffs served as three walls offering better natural protection than any walled city. It worked for several centuries. But the Burgundians, then the Spaniards, French, Germans, et al., had their way with this tiny land strategically centered in Europe. Think of it as the center square in a continental game of tic-tac-toe with its many occupants playing the role of dynastic x’s and o’s. Unlike neighboring countries Germany, Belgium and France, Luxembourg hasn’t developed its own beer styles, but the breweries it does have are in beautiful locales.

So, no, the name of the fortress rock may be the Bock—exploring the historic, man-made casemates is a must—but don’t expect to find Luxembourgish bockbiers lagering in them.

Directly in the valley below on the banks of the Alzette River, the Clausen quarter is where the Big Beer Co. (12 Rives de Clausen), housed in the 500-year-old Brasserie Mousel, serves as a Bavarian-inspired brewpub geared equally toward families and young revelers. The entire old brewery grounds were redeveloped as party central with ample bars. Part of Mousel’s antiquated brew house remains in place, but the much smaller installation now brews Clausel (a portmanteau of Clausen and Moselle—the river for which Alzette is a eventual tributary). Clausel Pilsner is sold in both filtered and nonfiltered form. I preferred the nonfiltered version of this extra pale lager since the creaminess rounds out its slightly tart edges. The abundant menu offers native, rustic dishes such as bouneschlupp (green bean soup) and judd mat gaardebounen (smoked pork neck with broad beans) and the largest roasted pork knuckles I’ve laid eyes on.

For a nightcap, the adjacent quarter is fairytale-esque Grund, where Liquid Bar (15-17 Rue Munster) offers what must be the city’s largest selection of bottled beer, including many from Belgium. Liquid, directly on the river, offers a small terrace with idyllic views. While in town, sweet-tooths ought to find Oberweis (1 rue Guillaume Kroll), a member of Fournisseur de la Cour, the guild of approved caterers to the royal family. If you can make it past the pastries and confections regally displayed on the ground floor, a gallery of chocolate-enrobed pralines awaits upstairs. Fans of both cocoa and peaty Scotch need to get the “Islay” infused with Laphroaig and framboise.

Getting around the Grand Duchy is easy and economic; the trains and buses are punctual, and fare is covered by a Luxembourg Card (€11 for one day and cheaper per day for two- or three-day passes) that grants admission to every museum—about 60. Check out VisitLuxembourg.com for info. (Getting to every brewery’s town by bus and/or train is quite easy, even within 48 hours.)

Most Luxembourgish breweries are in the northern region of the Ardennes. Ourdaller in Heinerscheid (Hauptstrooss 83), the northernmost brauerei, produces less than 400 barrels a year at this Brasserie Simon-owned installment tucked into the pastoral Cornelyshaff Hotel. The brewery is open for visits on Fridays from July through September, but goes on holiday in August. Otherwise, group-only tours may be arranged in advance. The most distinct beers are under the Ourdaller brand—an Ourdaller is someone from the nearby Our Valley along the German border—and include Wäisen, a light and refreshing hefeweizen and Wëller, a Belgianish red ale with more than a hint of yeast spice and toasty malts. Eight kilometers to the south in Clervaux, the humanist collection of photographs, The Family of Man (SteichenCollections.lu), curated by Edward Steichen (a native Luxembourger) initially for a 1955 installment at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), is on permanent display. The quotidian poignancy is powerful enough to demand a visit.

Heading back south but still in the north, the aforementioned Brasserie Simon (14 rue Joseph Simon) is in Wiltz. Simon brews several styles, but as is expected, Simon Pils is the flagship. The hoppiest of Luxembourg’s blond lagers is a treat, but for something a touch different, Dinkel is brewed with spelt, and the extra graininess could almost give brown ale fans something to sate themselves with. The Belgian witbier brand, Okult No. 1, can be hunted down. The banana sweetness of this wheat beer actually extracts pear notes via ample orange peel. Brasserie Simon is near the lowest elevation in this hillside town, but well worth the uphill hike is the Musée National d’Art Brassicole (35 rue du Château). The National Brewery Museum, replete with Luxembourgish breweriana (there used to be more than seven breweries) and explanations of the brewing process, is fun for the whole family.

Read More: Beer and Brewery Museums

Southward still in Heiderscheid (careful not to confuse it with Ourdaller’s home in Heinerscheid) is Den Heischter (4 Bei Clemensbongert). You’ll know you got off at the right bus stop if it smells like a cow pasture. Luxembourg is mostly rural. The brewery itself was closed when I visited, but fortunately it’s adjacent to All In, a “family fun center” that features six bowling lanes, foosball and air hockey and bottled Heischter (a witbier).

Speaking of breweries I didn’t enter, Luxembourg’s second-largest brand is Diekirch, brewed in the city of Diekirch. It’s owned by A-B InBev and refuses visitors. It’s frequently found in a cocktail called panachè—beer and cola—which I won’t be ordering a second time.

The last destination on a comprehensive brewery trip to Luxembourg is Bascharage. Here, the largest of the breweries is the 100 percent family-owned Bofferding (2 Blvd. Kennedy). The ultra-efficient brew house produces 169,000 hectoliters (more than 140,000 barrels) a year of the filtered Bofferding Pils. This medical-grade clean pilsner brewed with equal parts Hallertau Perle and Herkules hops enjoys 60 percent market share. Among their Battin family of brands, brewed off site, there’s Extra (a Leffelike Belgian blond), Blanche (a German-style weisse), and even Fruité for fans of sweetened framboises. A proper visitors’ center is under construction.

Finally, Bascharage’s other, much tinier brewery is housed in the restaurant/hotel Beierhaascht (240 Ave. de Luxembourg) that actually is an offshoot of the three-generations-old butcher shop. As such, the grilled ham braised in house beer was one of the best meals I had and paired with the Dark beer—think bock more than porter—was both delicious and a change from the norm, although the clean, tasty Helles is understandably the bestseller. And even if you do most of your drinking at Bofferding, a room here is only a kilometer away. And yes, there’s room service for both meat and beer.

The post Beer in the Grand Duchy: The Breweries of Luxembourg first appeared on All About Beer.

The Italian brewing industry has grown up. Ten years ago it was a boisterous infant, noisy and colorful in the beers it made, spices, herbs, fruit and vegetables chucked into the mix with willful abandonment. It was not all tantrums, though. Some of the beers, packaged in wine-sized bottles with prices to match, were calmer and more considerate, at ease on the dinner table.

Many world-class beers emerged during this playtime. There was Birrificio Le Baladin’s Xyauyù for instance, an elegant, esoteric and powerfully alcoholic beer that spends 18 months sitting in a barrel alfresco in the brewery’s courtyard. Birrificio Italiano’s Tipopils was a complete contrast: big and bold in both nose and flavor with a crisp and refreshing mouthfeel and arguably one of the best pils in Europe.

Now, it doesn’t feel such a step in the dark when searching  for a beer in Italy. For instance the annual Birra dell’Anno beer competition features 26 categories, which can only suggest a high level of confidence in the quality of the beers being entered. On an anecdotal level, it’s easy to search online and discover the thoughts and comments of gleeful beer tourists who have visited and enjoyed bars in Bologna, Venice, Florence and Rome. The recent opening of a BrewDog bar in Florence suggests that the canny Scottish brewery has also thought the time right for bold-flavored beer. The Italian beer scene has not only grown up but also has matured into a handsome young adult.

Fancy an IPA? Here’s Foglie d’Erba’s Hop-felia, a ringing, chiming assemblage of Northern Brewer, Tettnang, Centennial, Citra and Amarillo hops that all come together to form a bright, brilliant, zestful and cheerful IPA. What about a Belgian-style dubbel? Then please help yourself to a glass of Birrificio del Ducato’s warming Chimera, a smooth confection of caramel, butter fudge, pear and apple on the nose, echoed on the palate alongside a brief mid-palate burst of acidity giving the beer an extra complexity. There are double IPAs, sours, honey beers, weissbiers and wits, beers married with grape must, beers aged in all manner of barrels, beers matured in terra cotta (Birra del Borgo’s Etrusca for instance) and, of course, chestnut beers, which are often seen as an indigenous Italian style.

Italy’s burgeoning beer scene was initially highlighted in a 2001 story in All About Beer Magazine, and later in Michael Jackson’s 2007 book, Beer, while various travelers’ tales on the Internet about the same time also related the sense of exploration and excitement surrounding beer in one of the great wine countries. There was Le Baladin, founded by Teo Musso, who played music to his fermenting beers. Near Lake Como, Birrificio Italiano’s brewer Agostino Arioli was so obsessed with the pils style that he would drive to Bavaria annually to choose his hops. Along with Musso and several others, he is seen as a founding father of the Italian beer renaissance. Arioli’s portfolio of beers currently includes five pils, black IPA, bock, beers aged in wine barrels, beers with Brettanomyces and a grodziskie in collaboration with Quebec’s Trou du Diable.

“I think that the scene is really creative and not crazy like it was ten and a half years ago when there were stupid beers being made,” says Arioli. “Italian brewers are now beating their own way forward; they are referring to classic styles from the U.K., U.S., Germany and Belgium, but then developing their own styles. Even though we are being submerged by a tide of IPAs and American pale ales, we still have some new innovative beers. Out of, say, 700 micros, there are 20 world-class breweries which have consistency.”

One of these world-class breweries most certainly is Birrificio Grado Plato, located south of Turin in the region of Piedmont. Grado Plato, which opened in 2003, is a positive veteran. Its founder and brewer, Sergio Ormea, is a thoughtful person when it comes to brewing; for a start he is positively pleased with the relative newness of Italian brewing.

“It is fortunate that we do not have a brewing tradition,” says Ormea. “This means we are free to do experiments without fear of judgment. I try not to copy others and am a proud supporter of the revolutionary value of ignorance. Of course, I don’t mean absolute ignorance that is dangerous, but instead just a pinch.”

This “revolutionary ignorance” has led to him producing such beers as Weizentea, where the banana and clove character of Bavarian weizen gets along well with the herb notes of green tea. He has also brewed a Christmas beer, which at the time of writing remained without a name. “This is influenced by the mountains of Piedmont,” he says. “It has rye, the typical cereal of the area, fir honey and caramelized pine buds. It is very elegant and drinkable despite the strength of 7.3%.”

Then there is Chocarrubica, a dark chocolaty beer that was created after Ormea watched a TV documentary that showed American GIs handing out chocolate bars to Sicilian kids during World War II. Up until then they’d only had carobs, and the idea of merging the flavor characteristics of chocolate and carob brought forth Chocarrubica.

“It is a very special stout,” he says, “because it is impossible to classify: It is an oatmeal stout because it has a huge amount of oats, it is a chocolate stout because it has cocoa, it is an imperial stout because it is strong in alcohol (7%), and it is a sweet stout because it is pretty sweet.”

There’s a convincing corollary to the continuing surge of Italian beer: It’s getting easier to find beer bars in many cities and towns. Even Rimini, which some might not think of as a hotbed of beer, has two, Cantinetta and Fob. The latter is keen on beer cuisine, and menus have included bone marrow with Westmalle bread, pork ribs cooked in bock and dry-hopped potatoes. Rome has the fantastic Ma Che Siete Venuti A Fà in the hip neighborhood of Trastevere, while Florence’s Beer House Club has 10 beer taps plus hand pumps for cask beer. It has its own brewery, and its imperial stout is a rich and powerful example of the style.

It’s not all sweetness and light: Some brewers make what they call a double IPA, but during brewing it seems that they get to the hop precipice, look over and turn back. Not everything Le Baladin brews is always swooned over, while some brewers grumble about businessmen moving into breweries. Yet such is the vibrancy of Italy’s beer scene that the good completely outweighs the bad with the results making the country one of the most exciting places in Europe in which to drink beer. Bellissimo.

Ciao Bella! Eight Beers to Try

A Modo Mio Pils, Birrificio San Giovanni (pils)

BB10, Birrificio Barley (imperial stout with Cannonau grape must)

Café Racer, Birrificio Toccalmatto (stout)

Demon Hunter, Birra Montegioco
(Belgian strong ale)

Ghisa, Birrificio Lambrate (rauchbier)

My Antonia, Birra Del Borgo (imperial pils)

Saison, Extraomnes (saison)

Vùdù, Birrificio Italiano (dunkelweizen)

This story appears in the January 2015 issue of All About Beer Magazine. Click here to subscribe.

The post Falling in Love with Italian Beer first appeared on All About Beer.

For years, two giants have held a virtual duopoly over the beer market in Mexico. Grupo Modelo, which owns Corona, Modelo and Pacifico and was purchased by Anheuser-Busch InBev in June 2013, and Cervecería Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma, which produces brands like Tecate and Dos Equis and is owned by Heineken, controlled about 98 percent of the Mexican market as of 2013. SABMiller, the world’s second-largest beer producer, had another 1 percent of the market. That left 1 percent for everybody else.

Now, Baja California, the sunny Mexican peninsula known to many as the home of tourist destinations like Tijuana and Cabo San Lucas, has quietly become the epicenter of a rebellion against the Mexican beer establishment.

Modelo and Moctezuma built their duopoly by snapping up beer licenses from the government and reselling them at a discount, along with perks like free refrigerators—as long as vendors only sold their products. The result? At one bar, you could get a Tecate but not a Corona; at another, you could order Modelo but not Dos Equis.

It was perhaps inevitable that some would be unhappy with this situation—namely, the beer giant that felt it was being left out in the cold. In 2010, SABMiller filed a complaint that led Mexico’s Federal Competition Commission to announce a decision in July 2013 that dealt a blow to the duopoly system. Modelo and Moctezuma can no longer legally restrict the sale of Mexican craft beers. Exclusive contracts must be transparent, with a written end date, and the two giants can only sign exclusivity contracts with 25 percent of their retail outlets. That number must be reduced to 20 percent by 2018.

A revolution begins

Jordan Gardenhire, a Colorado native, along with his father, Charlie Gardenhire, and friend Rob Kelly, started Baja Brewing Co. in 2007 as a response to the limited beer offerings in Mexico. Jordan had no plan to open a brewery when he moved to Cabo San Lucas, but it wasn’t long before he began to miss the ales he’d grown accustomed to drinking back in Boulder. 

“The whole lifestyle here is very laid-back, and we’re a brand that says you can have it all,” he said. “Party all night; sleep on the beach all day.”

Getting the brewery started was an adventure. Brewing equipment was not readily available in Mexico, so Gardenhire and his partners had everything shipped from Laguna Beach, CA, on a flatbed truck—a journey of over 1,100 miles. 

Then they had to navigate the Mexican bureaucracy. Today, Baja Brewing Co. has three brewpub locations in the Cabo San Lucas area that feature the company’s eight beer offerings as well as a full menu. The flagship beer is a blond ale called Cabotella, a combination of the Spanish words “Cabo,” for “cape or “end,” and “botella,” for “bottle.” It’s light and medium-bodied with a clean finish, the result of over 50 recipe iterations based on customer feedback and aimed at getting it just right.

“A lot of people would come into the brewpub expecting Mexican lager and we’d say, ‘Here, try this stout.’ Now we have some of the most loyal fans you can think of,” Gardenhire said. 

In the years since Baja Brewing Co.’s debut, Baja California’s beer scene has changed drastically. That is to say, it actually has a beer scene now. And it’s thriving.

“The people here have vision for great things,” said Carlos Castillo of Cervecería Costa Azul. “We already had wine and gastronomy; now we have great craft beer from all over the state. And you find different things in Tijuana than in Mexicali or Ensenada or Tecate. The water is different, the climate is different and the people are different, so you have lots of variables for making different beers.”

The post Exploring Baja California’s Thriving Beer Scene first appeared on All About Beer.

Although Portland has a reputation as a laid-back beatnik liberal paradise, much of Oregon is sparsely populated, Republican and rural. Pendleton, eastern Oregon’s commercial center, counts fewer than 17,000 residents. The brewers that start their businesses in what locals have begun to dub “Beervana East” are hardy souls, motivated by the same pioneer spirit that brought their forebears here to farm and ranch more than a century ago. They’re finding inspiration in the wild beauty of their landscapes or seeking a higher quality of life and lower rents; or in some cases, just coming home.

That was the case with The Prodigal Son Brewery and Pub, the resident brewery in Pendleton, a town that is home of the Round-Up, a world-class rodeo in an old-time cow town with a wide main street fronted by two-story, brick-fronted saddleries and steakhouses. It’s the kind of place where you swing saloon doors open, spurs jingling. With his wife, Jennifer, Tim Guenther opened The Prodigal Son here in 2010, serving sweet, mild golden ales and stouts that are perfect as a beer back for a shot of whiskey. “Not everyone likes Belgians and sours,” Tim says. “We don’t try and overthink it. We just have beers that I’d like to have every day.”

Pendleton is also the home of the Pendleton Woolen Mills, whose vibrantly patterned trading blankets were created with the input of the local Native American population and have since found their way into high fashion and pop culture. The valleys east of Pendleton and along the Wallowa River used to be the home range of the Nez Perce, led by the legendary rebel Chief Joseph. Now it’s a series of small family farms and ranches, cradled on three sides by the peaks of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest.

State Highway 82 follows the Wallowa River through a series of plains and canyons and arrives in Enterprise, a town of about 2,000 that is the home of one of Oregon’s landmark breweries. Founded by Steve Carper and his in-laws, the Duquettes, Terminal Gravity Brewing uses glacial runoff to produce full-bodied, malt-heavy beers. The IPA is a classic, a golden color with that distinctive citrus-and-pine Northwestern hop aroma and a big bitter aftertaste. Carper claims it’s the first IPA brewed true to style in Oregon. “Our company mission statement is: No fruit, no honey, no wheat and no damn marketing department,” he says.

For a beer that seems so prevalent—Carper estimates that nearly 80 percent of his barrelage is distributed rather than sold in the pub—the brewing operations seem humbly modest. Enterprise is a typical small Western town, with gas stations and diners lining a main street that cuts straight through its center. Terminal Gravity is located just off the main street, on a cul-de-sac, and the pub is a small renovated Craftsman bungalow strung up with Christmas lights. Order a buffalo burger and it comes with kettle chips and a pickle on a paper plate; with the locals lounging on the sofa and the television going, the pub feels more like a friend’s Super Bowl party than a restaurant or bar.

Joseph, OR, is mere minutes south, a little town of 1,000 with dazzling vistas, the peaks of Eagle Cap Wilderness framing the still, blue waters of Wallowa Lake. It’s the ideal resting place for Chief Joseph, whose tombstone is located in a small Native American cemetery on the north shore. A short drive away on the south shore, you can enter the tall pines and hills of the Eagle Cap Wilderness. Rapidly rebounding wolf populations are a cause for concern for many ranchers here, but not, apparently, for deer; all along the snowshoe trails, big-eyed does and bucks stare at hikers, completely unafraid.

Back in town, Mutiny Brewing and Stein Distillery cater to the hundreds of backpackers, climbers, boaters and campers who descend on the town every year. Mutiny brewer Kari Gjerdingen makes beer in a brewpub that gleams all over in honey-colored wood, and the outdoor patio features stunning views of the mountains that lean over Joseph on every side.

And Stein Distillery, while not a brewery, is a can’t-miss stop as well. For generations, the Stein family members have raised wheat, barley and rye on their nearby family farm. The natural next step was producing smooth barrel-aged whiskeys, along with rum, vodka and fruit cordials, on their custom-built imported still.

Returning to I-84 (via 82) from Joseph feels like coming back to civilization, though in this part of the state that would be a largely relative term. Baker City is the seat of Baker County, bordered by the Wallowa Mountains on each side. While the snow in western Oregon is popularly known as “Cascade cement” for its heavy, sodden quality, the snow in eastern Oregon more closely resembles the fine, dry powder of neighboring Idaho. The only difference is that while Sun Valley is littered with movie stars and tech magnates, no one except the locals seems to know about the high piles of freshies at Anthony Lakes Mountain Resort—which also features Nordic backcountry skiing along with lifts from the highest base elevation in Oregon.

Baker City’s historic downtown has streets wide enough to turn around a Conestoga wagon and features landmarks like the Geiser Grand, a hotel with a somewhat Gothic exterior and high stained-glass ceiling that was built in 1899 to bring a bit of big-city glamour out West. Off the main street, Bull Ridge Brew Pub is somewhat more modern. The floors are carpeted and the wall is a bright white, and all in all the pub feels as if your dad’s hunting cabin and your dentist’s office married and had a baby. Brewer Johnny Brose’s hefeweizen won a gold at the Best of Craft Beer Awards in Bend this year, but perhaps the most striking feature about the place is Hamilton, the large stuffed deer that greets visitors just inside the front door.

Just across the street from Bull Ridge and off the main drag is Barley Brown’s Brew Pub, whose beers, service and atmosphere would be outstanding in a much larger city. The brewery was already doing quite well long before current brewer Eli Dickison arrived. Owner Tyler Brown and brewer Shawn Kelso had already presided over a long string of award-winning brews served at a hugely popular local pub off Baker City’s main drag.

Dickison is a Baker City native and worked at the pub while in college; he joined Brown and brewer Marks Lanham after graduating from Oregon State’s fermentation science program. Since Lanham left, Dickison has overseen Barley Brown’s expansion across the street into a new brewery and taphouse, and overseen their latest string of awards. Standouts include the chili beer Hot Blonde—whose latest incarnation, Joan, adds a bit of ginger to take off the oily jalapeño finish and add a refreshing aftertaste—and Pallet Jack IPA, whose sweetness, smoothness and complex, grapefruit-and-floral tinted fragrance belies its IBUs.

At this point, eastern Oregon has a mere fraction of the visitors that its sister cities to the west can claim. For example, Bend is only a few hours away—with Mount Bachelor, mountain biking and over a dozen prominent Oregon breweries like Deschutes, Crux, 10 Barrel and Boneyard. It’s a region ripe for explorers and pioneers, for people as adventurous as the ones who came out here to brew and serve their beer in the first place. You can leave the spurs at home.

The post Pushing Boundaries in Eastern Oregon first appeared on All About Beer.

The story of Japanese drinking culture is a tale of two countries, and a story of both night and day. The rising sun shines upon a diligent nation of survivalists holding cultural tradition in the highest regard. By day, the country’s citizens are fixated on projecting a proper outward image that communicates their hard-working, upstanding nature. Under the cover of night, however, decorum and inhibitions are traded for stiff drinks and raucous, gluttonous adventures. For centuries, an evening of spirited revelry revolved around the usual suspects—sake, firewater or macro-brewed lagers. And for most in Japan, this remains the norm. But make no mistake, modern brewing has taken root and is slowly expanding like a small yet extremely formidable blowfish. Little by little, the nation’s beer drinkers are happening upon artisanal ales and lagers brewed in styles going far beyond the light-bodied Germanic variety upon which the Japanese, like inhabitants of so many other Asian countries, have solely sustained themselves for so long.

In 2013, the country’s largest annual beer event, Yokohama’s Great Japan Beer Festival, turned up a level of diversity that was twofold. In addition to beer styles hailing from England, Belgium and the United States, the imbibers sampling spanned many demographics—male and female, young and old, locals and far-flung visitors. And while there is still a solid percentage of Japanese drinkers with a penchant for subtler, more sessionable beers, the tastes of the country’s average beer enthusiast veer unmistakably toward the extreme. Last year’s GJBF turned up more barley wines and double India pale ales than ever before. Similarly bold-flavored and high-alcohol barrel-aged beers also garnered much attention from attendees, inspiring lines requiring as much as 15 minutes of patience for small samples of oak- and spirit-laced brewing ingenuity. These are hardly the types of beers outsiders (or most locals for that matter) think of when considering the brews coming out of Japan. But, even at the modest growth rate of the nation’s smaller artisanal breweries, it won’t be long before they will be.

Extreme Beer Only is the tagline for Thrash Zone, a Yokohama bar that perhaps most succinctly communicates Japan’s changing tastes as well as America’s influence in that development. Plastered in Xerox-era U.S. punk band fliers and an entire wall’s worth of Marshall guitar amp facings with video footage of metal concerts blaring on an endless loop, it is the lair of publican and brewer Koichi Katsuki. His big-hop, massive-ABV beers like Speed Kills IPA and Hopslave, an Amarillo-based double IPA he’s brewed since 2009, share space with imperial brews plucked from throughout Japan as well as American outfits like North Coast Brewing Co. and Green Flash Brewing Co.

Demand among local enthusiasts is driving an increase in the trickle of American beer into Japanese bars. A hophead on the loose in Tokyo can sample core and specialty offerings from the United States at a number of establishments devoted to Western wares. Battling for supremacy in this arena are Beer Club Popeye with 70 taps, a modernistic pour house perch called Goodbeer Faucets that’s just a few short blocks from the world’s busiest intersection and archived bottle depository Craftheads. Smaller, but just as devoted to offering local craft intermingled with liquid Americana, are operations like The Watering Hole brewpub and The Hangover, the product of a proud U.S. transplant.

Another American expat who has left an indelible stamp on the Land of the Rising Sun is Bryan Baird. Since he opened Baird Beer in 2001, his overseas empire has grown to include a quartet of taprooms, all serving his largely English-influenced family of beers. Similarly, the pubs borrow heavily from the U.K. pub aesthetic while providing uniquely Western food experiences—Southern-style barbecue in Bashamichi, and heavy pizza pies in Nakameguro. Not surprisingly, it is a favorite of other expats as well as locals looking for a slab or slice of something different. And like quality taprooms in Baird’s homeland, his look to educate visitors on all beer can be. They serve a wide array—to-style pale ales, ambers, IPAs, porters and stouts—at proper temperatures versus the ice-cold any-and-every-bar norm.

The hot number in Baird’s current arsenal is its newest—Suruga Bay Imperial IPA. But it’s not the only abundantly hopped double IPA generating big buzz. So, too, is one recently invented at Coedo Brewery in Kyodo Shoji. It is vibrant in its tropical fruit nuances and assertive bitterness, and on par with any West Coast-style IPA being produced in the United States. This assertion comes courtesy of Shawn DeWitt, director of brewery operations for Coronado Brewing Co. out of San Diego, who tasted the beer while in Japan to brew a collaboration beer with Coedo brewmaster Hiromi Uetake.

It was Uetake’s third collaborative effort with an American brewer. The first two came when he worked with Ballast Point Brewing and Spirits to create a pair of IPAs brewed at each company’s brewery. “The night before I brewed with Ballast Point, I couldn’t sleep at all,” says Uetake. “American brewers are like gods to us. There isn’t a single brewer in Japan that isn’t aware of what American brewers are doing.” Having worked closely with several, Uetake now understands that American brewers are essentially no different—just further along. And he is looking forward to catching up. Coedo has procured barrels from Japanese whiskey producer Ichiro’s Malt. Those barrels will not only be used to age beer. Once Coedo has siphoned spirit-tinged suds from those receptacles, they will be returned to the distillery, where they will be used to store whiskey that, once bottled, will be infused with the essence of the beer.

Though early in its development, Japan’s modern beer movement has legs and serious determination behind it in the form of brewers looking to change the landscape and perception of brewing in their country. It’s unlikely the sun will set on its budding culture of higher quality, more greatly diversified and increasingly extreme ales and lagers anytime soon.

This story appears in the May issue of All About Beer Magazine. Click here for a free trial of our next issue.

The post America’s Influence on Japan’s Budding Extreme Beer Culture first appeared on All About Beer.

Something’s going on in the Czech brewing world. Whether it should be called a revolution, evolution or just plain curiosity is still up for grabs, but there’s no denying that there’s a new wave of Czech craft brewers emerging and eager to expand their horizons. Alongside the pale pilsner-style lagers so beloved of the Bohemian beer fan, it’s getting more common to come across India pale ales, imperial stouts, wheat beers and bocks at the bar, especially in new brewpubs. Who knows, Czech sours could be just around the corner.

“I think the word is getting around that there is something better, different or more exciting than the big-brand beers,” says expat Californian and homebrewer Chris Baerwaldt, who is planning to open his own brewery. “The craft beer message is getting through. I have also noticed a big increase in homebrewers; it’s like it’s the same group of people that helped to create the U.S. craft beer movement.”

For a straight-in-at-the-deep-end experience of this change in the air, visit the annual Sunshine in the Glass (Slunce ve skle) festival, which last fall finished  its sixth annual run. Over one Saturday in late September, dozens of small breweries set up stalls in the courtyard at Purkmistr brewery, a spa, hotel, brewery, bar and restaurant complex outside Pilsen. By midafternoon the place is filled  with beer fans while traditional music plays in the background and the aroma of roasting meat wafts through the air.

What to drink? Among the highly accomplished světlý ležák  there are plenty of interesting beers. How about the bittersweet Harrach American Pale Ale or Pivo Hastrman’s rich American Stout? Perhaps something from Pivovar Kocour, based in the northern Bohemian town of Varnsdorf. These guys began brewing in 2007, swiftly becoming known for an eclectic portfolio, including Scotch ale, IPA and German-style rauchbier. Back in 2012, the beer of the festival was their Gypsy Porter, a gorgeous Baltic porter brewed in collaboration with English brewery Steel City and Prague-based beer writer Max Bahnson.

A growing number of brewpubs are also ringing the changes. Minipivovar Labut is a small brewpub in the northern town of Litomerice. In an arched brick cellar, the bar and restaurant shared space with a gleaming copper-fronted brew kit. The majority of beers produced are pilsner-style, but specials include American pale ale and weissbier. The APA had a fragrant citrus overload on the nose and a big bitter finish, while the weissbier’s regulation banana custard notes and its refreshing, quenching mouthfeel were enjoyable.

Litomerice is also home to Pivovarek Koliba, with its gorgeous Cascade-forward Czech-American Pale Ale.  Then there’s U Tří růží, Pivovarský dům and Klášterní Pivovar Strahov in Prague; meanwhile an equally open-minded group of craft beer bars are providing outlets. These include Zly Casy and the Prague Beer Museum in the capital and Klub Malých Pivovarů in Plzeň. The times they are certainly changing.

“Ten years ago I do not think you could find a pale ale anywhere in the country,” says Chicago-born Max Munson, who runs Prague-based restaurant-bar Jama, which has 13 beers on tap, four of which come from microbreweries such as Nomád, Kocour and Matuška. “Now each part of Prague will have a pub or two where you can find them on tap. The supermarkets are still dominated by Czech lagers, often from the larger international companies, but even there you are seeing a slow change. They now often have selections of specialty beers.”

These are certainly exciting times, but is revolution the right word? Adam Matuška, of the eponymous brewery, which was founded by his father, Martin (whose résumé includes U Fleků and Strohov), isn’t so sure.

“I do not know whether it is right to call it a beer revolution,” he says. “Everywhere in the Western world, Europe and United States especially, craft brewing is very popular, because it already had some time to evolve. In the Czech Republic it would also have become more popular earlier if it could have been possible. But we have had a small delay because of the communist times, when it was impossible to own a small brewery. Despite the emergence of craft breweries, we still have drinkers who say that IPA is not a beer, because they dislike its fruity and citrusy aromas. The only reason they say this is that they didn’t have a chance to try this beer style before and say they will never accept it and never drink this nontraditional beer. Fortunately there are less and less people like this.”

One aspect of the changing Czech craft beer scene that would be familiar to U.S. consumers is the emergence of the cuckoo brewery. One is Nomád, which was started by Honza Kočka, a leading light in Czech beer both as brewer and media figure. At the start of 2013, while judging with him at the Birra Dell’Anno in Rimini, Italy, this reporter was able to try his Karel IPA, an assertively bitter beer that was kept in line by its fragrant citrusiness. However, for him, the Czech craft beer is as much about the past as it is about the now and then.

“We had smoky, darkish top-fermented beers the same as elsewhere in Europe before pale malt, cooling and other technological advances were discovered,” he says. “White beers were very popular here, while in winter until a century ago strong bottom-fermented beers like Baltic porters were brewed.”

Whether old or new, it’s an exciting time in Czech brewing, but this activity raises a crucial question: What is distinctively Czech about this new wave of IPAs, stouts and pale ales? What makes them stand out? Can there be such a thing as a Czech-American IPA?

Over to Chris Baerwaldt: “Some of the breweries that make IPAs apply traditional lager production techniques like decoction mashing, open-top fermenters, natural carbonation and no filtering. This then gives the IPAs a regional flavor.”

Surely here is the most exciting thing about the revolution-evolution shaking the country’s brewing industry: Czech brewing techniques applied to beer styles from other countries. For instance, think of when a brewery takes a beer style such as IPA and then brews an interpretation based on its own country’s traditions and outlook: Sound familiar?

Five Czech Beers to Try

Falkon Milk Stout, 6.5%, pivofalkon.cz

Matuška Weizenbock, 6.8%, pivovarmatuska.cz

Gypsy Porter, 7.1%, pivovar-kocour.cz

Nomad Karel IPA, 7.6%, pivovar-nomad.cz

Višňové (cherry beer), 5.2%, pivovarskydum.com/pivo/

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