Fruit Beer

Perhaps the most famous and enduring beer that uses fruit is Belgian fruit lambic, where fruits are added to a lambic beer. Kriek, which uses cherries, is the most widely recognized (“kriek” is the Dutch word for the sour cherries). The beer is aged in special casks for about 18 months (sometimes longer) and the…

Oy! Are Those Oysters in My Stout?

There are probably more than a few people who are surprised when they first hear about oyster stout, but actually this combo has been a pretty tasty hit since olden times in England. In the 1720s, laborers fairly commonly drank porter. Oysters, meanwhile, were fairly easy to get in London and a cheap source of…

The Smoking Gun: Malt

Have you ever had a beer with a smoky aroma? Such beer goes very well with sausage, smoked salmon and recipes with bacon. But how, then, does smoky beer get that aroma? The answer is in the kind of malt a brewer uses. Why does the brewer use malt that’s been smoked? That’s actually the…