Best of 2025: First Time Brewery Visits (1-5)
5. Fair Isle Brewing Seattle, Washington My only regret about Fair Isle was not getting to spend a lot of time there, but there was just way too much ground to cover. Lots of saison, sour type beers, but as I often do, I went for a classic beer flavored beer, a Czech Dark Lager. The…
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Best of 2025: First Time Brewery Visits (6-10)
10. Discourse Brewing Overland Park, Kansas This relatively small taproom with what’s described as a “coastal living room vibe”, and a relatively large sticker wall, featured a number of German inspired beers and IPAs, including a side pull beer: their I’m a Dinosaur Helles. Crisp, easy drinki…
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The Voyager Mission as an Inspiration for Light Day Away
For just about as long as I can remember, space has been a source of endless fascination. I remember as a kid looking at a book about space, I had to have been around 5 years old, I can’t remember for sure, but what I do remember was the awe-inspiring photographs of Neptune taken by the Voyager 2…
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Honorable Mentions: Best First Time Brewery Visits 2025
I think I've managed to live up to my blog's name pretty well this year, by my count, I've managed to have first time visits to 31 different brewery tap rooms this year. I decided it might be cool to do a top 10 of sorts, but realized quickly it would leave quite a few good experiences out. So this…
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Origin of the Beer Style: English Bitters
What’s in a name? It turns out it can have quite an impact, as even recently, someone I encountered seemed to recoil at the thought of the word “bitter”, but said they liked pale ales.Further, authentic examples have begun rebranding such beers as "amber ales" (e.g. Spitfire Amber Ale), a term…
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Light Day Away: Brewing an Historic Bitter at the Leprechaun’s Lab
This past year, I won the Wichita Homebrewers Organization's "Homebrewer of the Year" award, which gave me the opportunity to brew a beer at The Leprechaun’s Lab with brewer / owner, Patrick Root. Each time I get the opportunity to brew something scaled up, I want to do something a little different…
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Brewing Classic Berliner Weisse
What is "Classic" Berliner Weisse? That's a good question to ask: as it has changed over its (roughly) 250 year documented history. I'll follow up with a deep dive on the history of the style, but I will give a quick run down here as well: Berliner Weisse is thought to have evolved from anothe…
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3... 2... 1.... Luftmalz!
Recently, I decided to try to make my own air-dried wheat malt. Now why would I be interested in doing that? Isn’t that a lot of work? Yes, it was. I won't pretend otherwise. The reason I would want to try that: history, of course! A Very Brief History of Malt Kilning In the old days, breweries by…
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What Happened to You, Sour Beer? You Used to be Cool (Part 3)
I would say there was a point I got fatigued on sour beer, at least for a while. I was visiting Crane Brewing Company in Kansas City, before a Royals game. I was a huge fan of their Berliner Weiss interpretations, particularly their Apricot Weiss. However, with all the acidity from the beer getting…
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What Happened to You, Sour Beer? You Used to be Cool (Part 2)
In Spring 2016, I took an extended Colorado beercation, visiting breweries in Denver, Boulder, and Fort Collins. I went on brewery tours in each city, but the Fort Collins leg featured a pilgrimmage of sorts to the source of the beers that sent me down the sour rabbit hole: La Folie, and Le Terroir…
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