Author: JBT Staff

By Anne Abrahamson, who was a graduate of Yokohama International School before attending the University of California, Berkeley. She has worked at several breweries since, and is currently the Director of Operations at Cerebral Brewing in Colorado. Dark beer was my gateway to craft beer. Although styles like “stout” and “porter” sounded more intimidating than “pale ale”, that first exploratory sip yielded familiar flavors I already loved. After all, what’s not to like about a beer that evokes memories of creamy espresso, chocolate cake, and dark fruit? On moving to Northern California from Yokohama and learning to brew, I soon…

By Wes Lashley (Brewer at Fukuoka Craft) About sixteen years ago, I had my very first American IPA at a local craft beer-focused watering hole near my apartment in Seattle. I was new to Seattle and craft beer. The first few sips of the beer were not what I was expecting. My untrained palate thought the beer tasted terrible, like nickels. I hated it. But I didn’t let that deter me from craft beer. Slowly, after more visits and more beers, I started to enjoy craft beer. But wait, I’m getting way ahead of myself. This article is about the…

By Alex Tweet, cofounder and head brewer of Fieldwork Brewing Co. in Berkeley, California. Fieldwork was featured in JBT31. As the global craft beer movement has hit fever pitch, spawning new trends and styles that shift with the wind, it can be rather daunting for a newcomer to understand not just what they are drinking, but more importantly, whether it is even beer. The demand for modern-day brewers to produce whimsical beers can be irritating to most older brewers who came of age in an era before the term “craft” was synonymous with any and all beer that was not…

By Tom Ainsworth. Australian Ainsworth is the cofounder and head brewer at Kyoto Beer Lab, hereafter KBL; see feature in JBT35. How many times have you been on the hunt for a beer, throat as dry as a dead dingo’s donger, covered in sweat as the sun beats down on you, following the directions of Google Maps, your personal pied piper to the nearest watering hole? As you sit down to order a refreshing pint, you are passed a menu with DDHTIPAs, milkshake monstrosities, double fruited vanilla infused POP sours, and an imperial stout darker than the river of Hades.…

By Lars Marius Garshol Among the first things you learn as a brewer is that to make beer you must go through three steps: mashing the malt to make wort, boiling the wort, then fermenting it. You can imagine my surprise the first time I heard that some farmhouse brewers don’t boil the wort. That is, they make what’s called raw ale. What you’re told as a brewer is that it’s necessary to boil the wort in order to kill the bacteria in it, since otherwise the beer will go sour. Now, I first heard about this a long time…

By Chris Macomber, the Head Brewer at Libushi Bashamichi (part of Anglo-Japanese Brewing) in Yokohama. Growing up in Oregon was great for a number of reasons–lots of good people, easy access to a wide variety of outdoor activities, and a strong sense of community are just a few. As I got older all the great beer produced in Oregon was another aspect that has greatly influenced me throughout my life, inspiring me to become a professional brewer myself. By the time I turned 21 I had moved to Portland from my hometown of Salem, Oregon. Even in the mid-1990s we…

by Lars Marius Garshol  Saisons used to stand out as this odd style of beer that wasn’t actually made in a brewery, but was instead made by farmers for enjoyment on the farm. Over the last few years it has started to sink in that saisons are just the tip of the iceberg. People realized, for example, that Finnish sahti and Swedish gotlandsdricke are also farmhouse ales. Which is odd. How much does the Finnish countryside, a Swedish island in the Baltic, and western Belgium have in common? Not much beyond farmhouse brewing turns out to be the answer. This…

By Momoyo Kagitani, Brewmaster at LocoBeer in Sakura, Chiba. Kölsch is one of my favorite beer styles. Its birthplace is historic Cologne, Germany, a city along the Rhine River dotted with remnants of ancient structures from the days when the Roman Empire’s reach encompassed the area. Kölsch ranges from straw-colored to golden in hue. It must be completely absent of chill haze. Ideally, it should have a somewhat frothy head with substantial head retention. There should be little to no fruity esters. If present, there will be hints of pear, apple or Riesling, accompanied by a wine-like character. Noble hops…

By Chris Poel who is the Chief Brew Officer at Shiokaze BrewLab, Chiba City. Anyone who has known me for longer than a minute knows that I love hops. There’s nothing better than nice hoppy aroma and clean bitterness. I’ve never met a hop I didn’t like. Well, there are a couple that I don’t much care for, like Sorachi Ace or Cluster, but overall hops are the gods’ gift to mankind. Given my affinity for hops, you might naturally guess that my favorite beer style is IPA in all its many wonderful iterations. Well that’s not the case. For…