Back to School Brewing

30/12/2024

One more gift before the New Year!

16/08/2024

Is it September yet?

01/08/2024

Brasserie Dupont - Tourpes, Belgium

Couldn't get a tour but their shop was well stocked with my absolute favorite saison. Not much else in the area, but that aligns with the farmhouse ale concept. They also make Moinette (blond and amber), which I hadn't seen before.
Next time I'll try to visit when they have a tour scheduled. Beautiful, sprawling red brick facility.

30/07/2024

Had a great day at Abbaye de Scourmont and the Chimay Experience.
Was able to taste Chimay Doree (Gold), Rouge (Red), Forte (Blue), and 150 along with cheeses from the abbey.
The cheeses were mild and the beers were yummy (especially the 150).
Then, as we stopped by the abbey (separate from the restaurant /museum, we were super lucky to get a tour of the brewery from the abbot and production manager. Pictured are their mash filter and laboratory.
Batch size is 250 hL with only four fermenters that each hold 1000 hL. They fill one each brew day and the yeast takes 3-5 days to ferment. After another 7 -10 days of secondary fermentation they centrifuge and transfer the batch to a truck(along with fresh yeast) which takes it to a separate packaging facility. From there it is bottled and conditioned further.
No public tours are offered so this was so special to get to see.

29/07/2024

Belgian Beer Tour 2024 - Orval

Orval only brews one beer, but at the abbey restaurant you can taste Orval Vert (very young, draft only version), Orval, and Vieil Orval (aged for at least 12 months).

They are unique, funky beers brewed with local hops (Strisselspalt) and hops from Bavaria (Hallertau) and Slovenia (Styrian Goldings). It's fermented with Brettanomyces bruxellensis to give it a distinct "wild" character and the refermentation in the bottle develops it further - very obvious in side by side tasting.

30/06/2024

Kicked off summer travel with a visit to Vienna, Austria - the home of Vienna Lager. I really like this light, malty beer that dates back to 1840 when Anton Dreher first produced it. It was one of the first pale lagers in the world, due to the new pale malt that he came across while traveling in England.
Later the style would influence the beers produced in Mexico as Austrian brewers moved to North America and continued to brew familiar styles there.

12/05/2024

Springtime suds.

03/06/2023

Bergkirchweih 2023

31/03/2022

Virtual tasting tonight with Ms. Jackson's school staff. So fun to get back into talking about beer.

05/09/2021

Intro to Beer seminar at HK PolyU this past Saturday. It's been a long time since I last had an eager audience to taste some beers and find out how the magic of brewing and fermentation happens. Loved sharing some of the creations from . It was also nice to try out some of our new graphics from a project we've been working on. Stay tuned for more details. Thank you for the opportunity.

12/09/2020

New blog post up about Trappist beer. If you've ever wondered: what is special about Trappist beer? How many Trappist breweries are there? Why are some beers called "Abbey Ales"? - then this was written for you!

Belgian beer is certainly special, with many of their traditional brands and styles being truly unique in terms of their flavor, ingredients and production methods. Most Belgians will argue that they have the best beer in the world and while I won’t be supporting that argument in this post I will ...