It is common knowledge that hops are one of the key ingredients in beer, but do you know what are hopes used for, exactly? Hops were used in beer brewing since time immemorial. According to “Food plants of the world: An illustrated guide,” there is evidence of wild hops utilized in making beer as early as 3000 years ago.

You would think that no one in their right mind pays people for traveling the world and drinking beer. If so, you are wrong. While some occupations out there are, in fact, conducive to seeing the world and drinking a lot of beer, in those jobs you paycheck will regrettably come from performing some activity.

Continuing its campaign of mockery, Budweiser released another Super Bowl commercial making fun of craft breweries. Craft beer is sure to retaliate in kind. Craft beer and big beer, apparently, cannot just live together in peace and harmony. So much so, that Budweiser continues to attack craft beer in their Super Bowl commercial for the second consecutive year. Below is…

There are hoppy beers, and there are malty ones. Do you know how to tell the difference? Despite the growing popularity of craft beers that can contain anything from burnt sugar to maple syrup, the basic beer ingredients, as per German beer purity law, are still the same: hops, barley, and water. Since pure water is, in fact, tasteless (and…

A truly horrible thing happened: According to Nielsen, the Super Bowl is no longer about drinking beer. How come? Let’s be frank about it: for most people, the finale of the NFL season is not about sports per se. Surely, we watch sports, but we do not participate in the game. What we usually do is meet with our family…

People of the United Kingdom rise against the government in protest against unfair beer taxes. Taxes on beer in the United Kingdom are among the highest in Europe. British taxpayers pay a beer tax of £0.52 (approx. $0.76, or just over 15.5 percent) per pint of beer—one of the highest taxes in Europe. An average price for a pint of…

There is an old Australian tradition to ask neighbors for help with various tasks in exchange for a bottle or two of Aussie beer. Nowadays, people in Australia started using Facebook to speed up the process; the Australian government considers this practice “illegal.” There is a least one “secret” Perth-based Facebook group with over 50,000 members that facilitates the exchange…

Have you ever wondered what is that plastic thing inside Guinness can? If so, you probably know that it has something to do with nitrogen and that it helps in forming the head of the beer. But how exactly does it work?

Three UPenn students came up with a way to speed up the beer brewing process by up to nine times. Their invention won them the first prize in this year’s Y-Prize Competition—10,000 USD and the commercialization rights for the technology. Alexander David, Shashwata Narain, and Siddharth Shah, students at the University of Pennsylvania, have developed a novel way to make…

The Boston Beer Company, maker of the Samuel Adams beers, has recently presented three new beers that contain nitrogen along with carbon dioxide. The new ales—the Nitro Coffee Stout, Nitro White Ale, and Nitro IPA—are infused with nitrogen. Without going into the chemistry of the process, the primary difference between carbonation and nitrogenation of beer is that dissolved nitrogen forms…