One thing I love is snacks. If I’m not eating, I’m thinking about how far away from snacks. Thus, doing a beer pairing with classic high tea finger sandwiches seemed like a natural idea.

The Belhaven Scottish Ale paired perfectly with the vegetarian version. The caramel maltiness tempered the heat from the spicy Italian Beyond sausage as well as highlighted the Maillard flavors from the deep frying. The herbal and earthy hop flavors highlighted the beer horseradish mustard I paired with the Scotch eggs.

I enjoyed Newcastle the best because it accented the earthiness of the tofu and basmati rice while highlighting the umami and acidity of the tomato-based sauce. The sweetness of the malt cut the spiciness from the chiles and spices to let the flavor really shine through and tamed the heat just enough that I was ready for another bite.

Like most people, I rarely rely on my own knowledge to recall anything and I almost exclusively rely on various software, apps, and algorithms to determine how I move through my daily life. This reliance naturally extends to my homebrewing.

The virtue of whatever dish I'm making is that the individual ingredients taste good when you cook them into one dish - I'm not making toothpaste and orange juice casserole.

As an adult, some nights I spend my time looking over open enrollment paperwork, trying to decide which plan really feels like "me." Other nights I tell my husband not to fill up on dinner because we have seven different kinds of candy to pair with beer while we watch Stranger Things 2.

Let's get bananimated about esters! Why does some beer taste and smell like banana? That banana flavor and smell are caused by isoamyl acetate, an ester, which is the largest group of flavor compounds in alcoholic beverages. Esters are formed by the reaction of organic acids and alcohols created during fermentation.

"To-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another."

I held out on becoming a BJCP judge for a surprisingly long time for someone who is obsessed with getting points and advancing ranks. There are plenty of times, even for me, when I want to just. drink. a. beer. Not evaluate it.

It's been 77 days since I brewed my 100% Brett-fermented beer and I'm happy to report three things.

Lately I've been seeing gummies popping up made of wine, booze, and now beer. Curious about how to make them, I started researching recipes. As it turns out, beer gummies are super easy and quick to make.

The very best way to think of the difference between extract brewing and all grain brewing is to think of the difference between using a cake mix and baking a cake from scratch.

As I predicted, I did not pass. I missed it by a total of 9 points.

I had never wondered about the corks in my beer (and sometimes wine) bottles beyond their abilities to put an eye out or to turn evidence of my beer drinking habits into quirky craft projects.

I've had a week now to digest my Advanced Cicerone exam experience. It's been weird not having to stress out about when I'm going to squeeze in studying and I feel a little bad for my box of now-neglected study materials. They were getting so much attention for so long and now they've been discarded like so many old toys.

Thanksgiving is a weird holiday – it’s basically like a dress rehearsal for how everyone is going to get along at Christmas. This year, why not shake things up a little by pairing beer with your Thanksgiving dinner?

When you spend a lot of time looking at brewery websites like I do, you find yourself consistently running into a delay that seems to be different for each website: being asked if you’re at least 21 years old before being allowed to enter the website.

Researching the different age gates and reading about the self-regulation led me to a tantalizing thought: what happens when you indicate that you are not 21 years old?

Being able to visualize what kinds of ingredients are in my beer adds to my enjoyment of it. It's sort of like when you see the music video for a song you like in that the next time you hear that song, you'll have an image of the song being performed. 

If you read my latest I Tried It about Walmart’s private label beer, then you’ll recall that Walmart’s beer is contract brewed by a company called Trouble Brewing. Contract brewing is when a company brews and packages its beer using equipment it does not own and comes in a few forms. In cases such as Walmart’s, finding out more about the contract brewery - Trouble Brewing, in this particular case - sometimes proves to be a Nancy Drew-level mystery.

In a little over six months, I’ll go to the Cicerone Certification Program offices in Chicago, where I’ll sit for the day-long exam. The Advanced Cicerone exam will cover a subset of the information within the Master Cicerone exam and will have the same sections tested on each Cicerone level exam: keeping and serving beer; beer styles; beer flavor and evaluation; beer ingredients and brewing processes; and pairing beer with food.