The Hop-Edition

By: Adam Bereznicki First-Year Brewmaster Student Like many of my classmates and fellow craft beer enthusiasts, I find myself often casually scrolling through social media, searching for new beer releases from a multitude of my favourite breweries. Recently, however, I came across a picture that stopped my scrolling in its tracks. It was an advertisement for a new beer, of course, but not just any new beer. The label on the can featured a swirling background of sky-blue and lilac, with bold red lettering highlighted by a unicorn and a rainbow. As gaudy as the appearance of the packaging was, more shocking were the contents of a small glass next to it – a hazy, orange liquid filled with swirling motes of glitter.  Yes,  glitter . To be honest, even I had a brief flash of giddy excitement when I more closely inspected this sour ale (brewed with fruity breakfast cereal and edible glitter). After all, drinking craft beer so often means looking for new and exciting produc...

By: Keaton Erickson First-Year Brewmaster Student Since the earliest day of the rise of the craft beer industry, there was one word not even the most Urquell-loving brewer would utter to their sales and marketing team:  Lager.  The unjustly villainized lager was, for many years, the bane of the craft beer scene. Much as Hip-Hop was an answer to Disco, overblown IPA's were the answer to American style adjunct lagers. Over the past five or so years, however, brewers and consumers alike have grown tired of Bourbon barrel pop tart double dry hopped farmhouse breakfast session ales. Our palates have been over-saturated, and we crave the beer equivalent to a great pizza when your lazy ass is too tired to make dinner. This was predicted early by Joshua Bernstein, one of America's most prominent beer journalists in a 2017 article he wrote for Bon Appetit. Now as we are well into the new year of 2019, we are seeing his predictions become reality. More and more custom...