About

The Site

Collected notes, rambles, and general ideas related to beer and the intersection of brewing and science. Beer proudly stands on the shoulders of tradition, and finds rejuvenation in both innovation, and convenient failings of memory. The beverage is too easy a canvas for marketers, and yet well suited for artisans. I am fascinated by the tension between business, creative, and technological forces.

The Author

When Ben's not writing, researching, or otherwise experimenting with beer, Ben works as an engineer in the biopharmaceutical industry. His position offers some opportunity to travel to lands with diverse brewing traditions.
e-mail: ben@beerthoughts.com
Follow @Ben_Mcl

A few previously published pieces are included, and are so noted.

Greatest Hits

Fathers Day Gift Ideas for the Beer Lover

June is a busy month with graduations, the coming of summer, and the wind down of the school year. Fathers day always seems to come out of no where. No worries. Here are some ideas for the last minute father's day shopper. Beer Tour Beer tourism is a real and growing business segment. Your city probably has one or two operators guiding minibus loads of attendees to typically 3-4 craft beer destinations. It's a great way to sample a lot of new beers, and meet like minded folks. Operators are a quick google away. Consider companies like Boston City Brew Tours , The New Hampshire Beer Bus , Portland OR's BeerVana , The Chicago Beer Experience , Indy Brew Bus, the Evan Rail designed Eating in Prague Czech Craft Beer Tour , and even a Napa Valley Hop Train . Books I read a lot in the summer. If your dad does too, here are some books he may enjoy. Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business b

Beer Destinations: Prague

Beneath a fairy tale skyline of spires, domes, and towers, a modern city of industry and commerce sits upon cobblestone streets and ancient bridges. Prague is a maddening riddle. Brilliant minds like Franz Kafka and Bohumil Hrabal relied upon surrealistic visions to make sense of it. Despite the city’s complex and frankly tumultuous history, there’s a millennia of brilliantly preserved architecture, miraculously spared the devastation of fire, war, and tasteless modernizations that have continuously reshaped many European cities. Located between the noble hop fields of Žatec (Saaz in German) and Moravia’s cascading barley fields, Prague is within easy reach of the ingredients to needed to sustain a vital brewing scene. However, the city was not spared the 20 th century’s assault on local beer culture. In the early 1990s, international breweries monopolized the city’s tap handles. Brewpubs were mostly forgotten, a novelty for tourists, at best. This Prague earned a reput

Will we ever use this beer bottle designed for space?

Vostok Space Beer Bottle Is it time for Craft beer to move into the final frontier? An Australian partnership believes so. 4 Pines Brewing and Saber Astronautics have partnered to design both a bottle for use in space, and a beer to suit the pallet of zero g drinkers. They call it Vostok Space Beer , honoring the craft that sent Yuri Gregarin into space, and launched a million dollar IndieGoGo campaign earlier this week. Interest seems low. The striking bottle design by Angelina Kwan is named "Dark Side of the Moon". It's highly stylized and would fit better on the set of Star Wars than 2001: A Space Odyssey. Space age design elements are cool. I love to see increased use of scientific motifs in design, even if it's not hyper realistic. The PR photos are designed with the commemorative market in mind, and have a nice detachable glass at the bottom. The technological design brief is to find an artful way to move liquid from storage to the drin

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