For the Love of Hops--The Birth of a Style?
"In the grand scheme of things, craft brewers know very little about hops."

Brilliant Beer Bars
We asked a long list of writers, industry professionals and beer lovers for the names of their favorite bars. Check out their recommendations, and see if these bars belong on your list of favorites.

Remarkable Retail
What makes a great beer retail store? We asked our beer friends about the best places to buy beer, and their comments read like a how-to list for any beer retailer who aspires to be the best.

Extreme Brewing: Pushing the Envelope West Coast Style
"Fritz, the scion of the Maytag washing machine family, was by his nature positively Jeffersonian in his eclectic pursuit of quality and substance."

Great Beer Festivals: Around the Calendar, Around the World
When it comes to beer festivals, our experts agreed: there is an essential triumvirate everyone's heard about—and all beer lovers should attend at least once.

Matching Beer & Food at the Brewmaster's Table
Real beer is a far more versatile beverage than wine, bringing a wider range of flavors and aromas to the table.

Must-Taste Beers
Which beers should all beer lovers be sure to try? We asked thirty beer professionals to name their "must-taste" beers. See the results!

Beer In Mexican Paradise
"Mexico is beginning to return to its brewing roots with the emergence of local breweries."

Taxing The Pour: How Taxes Have Changed Our Beer
"Many of the beers we enjoy today were shaped by taxes as much as by taste or technology."

Drinking Dutch
"During the 1990s, many small breweries opened in the Netherlands. Some survived, some didn't."

Let Me Call You Honey — The Buzz on Mead
"The movement toward traditional, all-natural foods and beverages — the same movement that gave us the microbrewing revolution — has discovered honey wine."

Danish Delights: Land of Lager
"The Danes became avid and technologically adept brewers, leaders in all advancements in the brewing sciences."

Beer 101 -- Build Your Beer Knowledge
"The exciting thing about being a beer lover is that there is so much to enjoy beyond the sensory pleasure of drinking beer."

Are Cave-Aged Brews Making a Comeback?
"We may have left the cave as a dwelling place millennia ago, but some determined brewers are now going back underground in search of better beer."

Fantastic Finland: Foam in the Far North
"Brewing has probably been a part of life for the peoples of this region for at least a thousand years."

The Natural Affinity of Running and Beer
"Thirst quencher, social elixir, reward -- beer is a natural accompaniment to running. It's cold and wet when a runner is hot and dry."

Beer and Your Health
"Moderate drinkers have a 32 percent lower risk of dying from a heart attack than those who don't drink alcohol."

Vintage Beers at Belgium's Beer Cafes
"If you have the taste for aged beer, your destination has to be Belgium."

Beer Goes To War
"Camp-following breweries even strapped beer casks beneath the wings of fighter planes for the great D-Day Invasion of June 1944."

A Beer Lover's Guide to Fly Fishing
"You can't always count on the fish to cooperate, but you can always count on a good beer when the day is done."

Imperial Russian Stout
"In its day, and in its pomp, it was a beer of considerable importance."

Beer Saints: With Beer On Their Side
"Arnold of Soissons, the patron saint of hop pickers, pulled his proliferation number after a monastery roof collapsed in Flanders, destroying the monk's supply of beer."

Beer & Television: Perfectly Tuned In
"Television offered beer makers something tremendously valuable and unique: the ability to target the beer drinker right at the barstool."

Your Dad's Beer: Sipping A Generation
One of the greatest generations of this country has to be that of pre- and post-World War II. This was our father's era. Television and super highways came on the scene. On the road, dad got to experience the wealth of regional breweries across America.

Beer (and) Man's Best Friend
By nature, the dog is a pack animal. You are a six-pack animal. No wonder you and Fido get along so well.

Tasting a Century of Beer
"Sometimes, an old bottle has a story to tell, a story that not only sheds some light on brewing history but also on the mystique of a beer made to have an appeal long after its brewer has gone from the world."

In Search of Lambic
Horse Blanket. Barnyard. Old Leather. Musty. Cheesy. Cidery. Fruity. Tart. Acidic. Lactic. Dry. Put them all together and you've found yourself a Lambic. And a damn good one, at that.

And Yet Another Diatribe On Youth Drinking
Fred Eckhardt compares American youth drinking policies with those in other parts of the world.

Leap Into The Dark
Gregg Glaser explores the dark and mysterious world of dark beers.

American Originals: Brewers Who March To A Different Beat
"The country is dotted with small brewers who entered the market without the benefit of a consumer survey. Their products defy stylistic guidelines. Their labels and packaging are over the top. Their marketing practices are unorthodox, to say the least."

Fruit Cocktail
Take a look at fruit beers with Rob Haiber.

We Want Beer! Prohibition and the Will to Imbibe
(part 1: November 2000 and part 2: January 2001)

The so-called "Noble Experiment" American Prohibition, lasted from 1920 to Repeal in 1933. It didn't succeed in eliminating alcohol from American life, but it destroyed legitimate businesses, put the "organized " into crime, and left us a legislative legacy today.

The Magic Moment in Italian Craft Brewing
Beer faces an uphill battle in Italy, where it has always been considered inferior to wine. But a small group of craft brewers are the protagonists of a lively and exciting new reality. Their goal is the development of a real Italian beer culture.

Tasting beer under the sea
Michael Jackson takes a group of booksellers on a mobile beer tasting, from London, under the English Channel by tunnel, through France and into Belgium, with beers from every location.

Grungy bars I have loved
Of course, it may be seedy, or even be a bit messy; but a good grungy bar is neither sleazy nor greasy-spoon-with-beer. Homer Simpson would love a grungy bar. It certainly won't be the neatest place in town, but it will be well-lit, with good beer on tap.

All About Beer is 20 years old!
What in the world possessed the men who founded All About Beer twenty years ago? Compare the beer landscape then and now, and decide if they were madmen or visionaries.

Brewers Garden
Ignore the chill in the air, close your eyes and imagine a sun-dappled garden, with where row after row of green-gond barley stalks wave, a trellis swathed in fragrant hop vines and a shaded place to sip a summer brew, surrounded by the plants that are the heart of beer.

It's a Gas!
The beer in a standard 12-ounce bottle contains enough CO2 to fill a 16-inch softball. How does it get in? Where does it go? Ray Daniels, for your edification, on the origination, destination, and fascination of carbonation.

The New Independents
Independently-owned breweries have more in common than just their ownership structure. Lacking the muscle, distribution networks, and economies of scale of the mega-breweries, the independents live or die on regional loyalty. Quality, not quantity, is the watchword. But in some countries, the indies are the main source of innovation, while in others thay are an endangered species. In this year-long series, we look at the independent sector in the U.S. and Canada, England, Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Australia.

Welcome to the Bier Garten
You cannot avoid it -- even if you wanted. Beer is so central to German life that you can even find people who have it for breakfast. But if you had only one day to get acquainted with the German devotion to beer, you should spend it in a bier garten in Bavaria.

Vanishing Mild
Roger Protz chronicles mild ale, the historic style that was once the most popular beer in Britain, easily outselling pale ale and bitter. Today, mild ale is on its death bed. Does anybody care?

Bringing beer-casks, bottles, cans and widgets
The brewmaster takes 20 days to get the beer right, then the packaging department ruins it in 20 minutes. That's how many brewers feel about the necessary evil of beer packaging-and knowledgeable consumers often agree. Ray Daniels, 1998 Quill and Tankard Beer Writer of the Year, tells you how beer packaging affects the quality of your beer.

Cwrw Gorau Cymru means "The Good Beer of Wales"
Welsh breweries are caught between producing traditional ales for working men in neighborhood and village pubs, and younger generations that seem inclined to abandon old styles in favor of lager and alcopops served in city-center theme bars. Can the best of the old survive the prosperity of today?

Beer goes to the movies...
Less than a star but more than a prop, beer is a time-honored player on the silver screen.

The shape of beer to come
What will you be drinking in next millennium?

Beer 'cocktails'
To most brewmasters, to mix their finished product with another beer, or worse, some foreign substance, is like whipping out a marker and drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa. But can beers be blended to balance flavors, to mask unfavorable characteristics, or to create something wholly new that is greater than the sum of its parts? Find out.

Beer Nut: Two words say it all
It's the name that grabs people's attention and sticks in their memories: Beer Nuts. Two words that say it all. In fact, the name is almost too perfect. Visit where they are made, taste them and find out what beers to enjoy with Beer Nuts.

Looking back, looking ahead
Pioneer Bert Grant, who 15 years ago opened the first brewpub in the United States, offers opinions on how far craft beer has come and where it is headed.

Ask the authors
How long will homebrew last? Can a web page actually smell like beer? Tim Harper and Garrett Oliver, authors of The Good Beer Book, answer questions posed by the readers of All About Beer Online.

Alaska: The beer frontier
Interest in beer abounds in Alaska. For instance, the Anchorage area is in contention for having the highest per capita concentration of breweries of any city in America.

The real ale revolution
The July 1997 issue of All About Beer Magazine takes a wide-ranging look at cask-conditoned ale. First, Roger Protz explores the history of real ale.

Brewing real ale at home
How can you not brew real ale at home? Making an authentic British-tasting ale at home, though, is more challenging. While "realness" is a key component, there is much more to it.

Continental quality
Roger Protz visits some of the finest breweries in Germany, Belgium and France, including the Schloss Kaltenberg Brewery (pictured at the left) southwest of Munich.

Cocktail, anyone?Beers have long been blended to balance flavors, to mask unfavorable characteristics, or to create something wholly new that is greater than the sum of its parts. Here are a few of the concoctions.

The Legends: An interview
Michael Jackson and Charlie Papazian reflect on nearly 20 years of pursuing quality beer

The future is theirs
Ten years ago, most American regional breweries were fighting to hang on. Today, the survivors have been joined by a growing group.

Beer championships
Despite talk of "medal fatigue," the number of beer championships continues to grow. Here's a close look at the competitions themselves and what drives the phenomenon.

The birth of lager
As the church and the monstaries were the early seats of study and learning, so were they the birthplace of brewing science. Michael Jackson takes a close look at the birth of lager.

The rebirth of ale
As we approach the millennium, it is a remarkable and demonstrable fact that the beer style consigned to the grave -- not the least by the major British brewers -- is now clambering out of the coffin and finding a new generation of admirers. Roger Protz explains.