All in Beer Books

Beer Foam

Beer Foam

Justin Jackson
Brewing Resources, Beer Books, Practical Home Brewer

We’ve all seen the server or bartender go through the painstaking process of slowly pouring beer from the faucet or out of a can or bottle into a nearly-horizontal glass, making every effort to not allow any foam to show up at the top of the glass. However, every brewer will tell you that foam is an important characteristic of beer that is supposed to be there. In some countries there is a clear line below the top of the glass, highlighting the level of liquid that you paid for (with room for foam on top). In other countries the liquid is meant to be held together by surface tension at the brim of the glass without a trace of foam.

In this post I won’t be sharing about how much foam each pint should have, but I will share some ways that brewers can improve foam in their beer. Particularly, I’ll share some takeaways from Dr. Charles Bamforth’s 2012 book, Foam, from the ASBC “Quality Series”.

5 Ways That Beer Explains the World - from Beeronomics

5 Ways That Beer Explains the World - from Beeronomics

Justin Jackson
Beer Books, Beer History

Beeronomics hit the shelves in 2017 and offers fifteen chapters of beer stories laced with economic principles that have shaped the world today.  This book has loads of interesting history of beer told through the eyes of economists who have delved a little deeper to reveal some of the economic drivers for everything from how hopped-beer came into popularity to the real reasoning behind the German Beer Purity Law.  In this blog post I will highlight some of the stories from the book that I found most interesting.

Seven Useless Facts I Learned from "Portland Beer: Crafting the Road to Beervana".

Seven Useless Facts I Learned from "Portland Beer: Crafting the Road to Beervana".

Justin Jackson
Brewerism, Beer Books, Beer History

As a brewer, I’m always interested in learning more of the science behind brewing and fermentation. As a beer enthusiast, however, I always love a good history lesson about beer and brewing. American Palate has published a series of historical books on beer and as I have traveled I have come across a few of the titles to supplement my, often dry, beer science knowledge with the more colorful story of beer around the world.

Having recently visited Portland, aka “Beervana”, and other parts of Oregon on a summer family road trip, I came across Portland Beer: Crafting the Road to Beervana at the locally famous Powell’s Bookstore. Needless to say I was happy to avoid another technical brewing text to go for a more enjoyable read to give me more of a background on this city that has come to be recognized as one of the hubs for craft beer in America.

In this post I wanted to filter out a handful of historical facts that I found interesting.