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AboutDavid Nilsen, Author at PorchDrinking.com – Page 8 of 9

Posts By David Nilsen

North High Brewing | Cover Crop Beer

February 4, 2019 |

A new beer from North High Brewing in Columbus, Ohio, is shining a light on the importance of agriculture in the world of craft beer. North High has partnered with Ohio Farm Bureau to brew Cover Crop Beer, a blonde ale brewed in honor of the centennial anniversary of the latter organization, which exists to promote and support Ohio farmers.

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Book Review & Interview | Fal Allen on Gose

January 29, 2019 |

Five years ago, most craft beer fans had never heard of Gose, the sour German wheat ale seasoned with salt and coriander. Now, it’s tough to find a brewery that hasn’t made one and many breweries offer multiple Goses with various fruit additions. How did the style go from obscurity to ubiquity in just half a decade?

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Book Review | Brew Beer Like a Yeti Embraces the Unconventional

November 29, 2018 |

Eschewing hops in your beer is not the best money-making business model in American craft beer in 2018, but if you’re brewing it for yourself, who cares? Actually, those last two words form a sort of unofficial mantra for Jereme Zimmerman’s attitude toward accepted homebrewing guidelines in his new book. Learn the rules, then break them.  

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Taft’s Ale House | Gustav Vienna Lager

November 12, 2018 |

Ryan Blandford, head brewer at Cincinnati’s Taft’s Ale House, won his first gold medal at the World Beer Cup while working for crosstown brewery Fifty West in 2016. When he heard Fifty West’s 10 & 2 Barleywine announced, he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“I was jumping up and down and swearing,” laughed Blandford when we spoke on the phone last week. “As a young brewer you look up to these guys who are winning all these medals and when you’re fortunate enough to win one, well, you’re kind of freaking out.”

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Ale-O-Ween | Getting Spooky with Ohio Breweries

October 23, 2018 |

The Ohio Craft Brewers Association’s second annual Ale-O-Ween beer festival descended upon Dayton this past Saturday evening, October 20. To set the mood, Mother Nature made sure it was a dark and stormy night, and while that caused more than a few problems for the breweries set up outside as the evening wore on and the weather worsened, the event was still a resounding success. Read More

Book Review & Interview | Brewing Eclectic IPA

September 27, 2018 |

While India Pale Ale has more sub-styles than perhaps any other family of beers, most of them are minor deviations from a central theme. When we order an IPA, we usually expect a lot of hops (though how that presents on the palate has morphed somewhat in recent years), not a whole lot of malt, unobtrusive yeast and not much else. Industry vet Dick Cantwell thinks the style has plenty more room for creativity than that simple formula, however. In Brewing Eclectic IPA: Pushing the Boundaries of India Pale Ale, the Magnolia Brewing chief and former Elysian Brewing brewmaster opens up a world of possibilities for craft beer’s most popular style.

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The OGs of Craft Beer | Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

August 21, 2018 | 1

Friends, I was lucky: I never went through a crappy beer phase.

When I reached the legal drinking age in the early 2000s, I drank a lot of really bad wine instead, believing myself to be refined. When I finally loosened up and decided to give beer a fair chance, a friend who worked at a liquor store pushed me straight past the macro shelves toward the craft beer section. I found the variety confusing (if I thought that during the first George W. Bush term, I can only imagine what it’s like for a newcomer today) so I asked him what he drank.

“Most nights? Sierra Nevada Pale Ale,” he said. “That’s my go-to.”

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The OGs of Craft Beer | Great Lakes Brewing Edmund Fitzgerald Porter

August 6, 2018 |

“It just feels right that this is a beer that comes from Cleveland,” says Great Lakes Brewing Company co-founder Pat Conway of his brewery’s Edmund Fitzgerald Porter. The iconic dark brew is named for the ill-fated iron ore freighter that sank on Lake Superior with all hands during a vicious storm on November 10, 1975.

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Book Review & Interview | The Beer Bucket List

July 12, 2018 |

If you’re reading PorchDrinking, chances are you have a list in your head of breweries you really want to visit, distant cities rich in brewing tradition you want to travel to, and rare beers you have to taste before you die. British beer writer Mark Dredge started writing down his own such list a few years ago, and then decided to tick as many items off that list as he could and write a book about it.

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Book Review & Interview | Cheese & Beer

June 19, 2018 |

It may come as a surprise to many people that beer pairs beautifully with cheese. Wine has long held a stranglehold on cheese pairing, and while excellent wine and cheese combinations abound, cheese might actually find its ideal companion in the nectar of malt and hops rather than grapes. Janet Fletcher has written a book to help beer lovers get the most of this match made in heaven.

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Carillon Brewing | Coriander Ale

June 6, 2018 |

I don’t have a pretty photo of Carillon Brewing Company‘s Coriander Ale to show you. Carillon’s beers and, more importantly, the brewing techniques used to craft them, are from a time when the appearance of beer was only just beginning to matter with the emergence of pale malts and clear glassware. Their anachronistic visual appearance—often a bit murky—is part of the authenticity of enjoying a flight of beers inside Carillon’s reproduction 1850s barn brewery on the grounds of Carillon Historical Park, a living history museum by the banks of the Great Miami River in Dayton, OH.

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Book Review & Interview | Beer Pairing

May 21, 2018 |

To those of us who love and know beer, it’s no secret that our favorite drink is awesome with food. Beer kills it with cheese; it crushes it with chocolate, and it’s never met a meat or vegetable it didn’t like. But while we’re all aware beer can pair beautifully with just about any dish, fine-tuning those pairings can prove an elusive feat, especially since everyone’s vocabulary for food and beer pairing seems to be different.

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Rivertown Brewing | Raspberry Flicker

April 27, 2018 |

The first time I tasted Rivertown Brewing’s Raspberry Flicker in their airy Monroe, Ohio, taproom on a sunny day in late January, it reminded me of childhood. I realize that’s an odd thing to say about an alcoholic beverage, but stay with me. No, my childhood did not involve me throwing back refreshing lagers. But it did involve raspberries.

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Book Review & Interview | Brewing Local

April 16, 2018 |

For beer writer and historian Stan Hieronymus, brewing local means more than just using attention-grabbing, wild ingredients like dandelions and tree bark; it means looking at the complete agricultural picture of a region as it relates to beer. That certainly includes those aforementioned esoteric additions but also encompasses workhorse fermentables like corn and rice, which were looked down upon in craft circles until recently.  Read More

Book Review & Interview | Beer Is for Everyone

March 13, 2018 |

Beer Is for Everyone! (of Drinking Age) by Em Sauter (One Peace Books, 2017)

Em Sauter’s book Beer Is for Everyone—and the web comic Pints and Panels on which it … Read More

Christian Moerlein Brewing | Over-the-Rhine (OTR) Ale

March 1, 2018 |

Just north of downtown Cincinnati sits the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. The enclave got its name because of the high German population that settled this part of the city in the 19th century. Crossing the former Miami-Erie Canal into this neighborhood was said to be like crossing the Rhine River into Germany.

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Book Review & Interview: 50 Must-Try Craft Beers of Ohio

February 22, 2018 |

50 Must-Try Craft Beers of Ohio by Rick Armon (Ohio University Press, 2017)

I sincerely believe Ohio is among the most exciting beer states in the country right now, though I am undoubtedly biased. I’ve lived in the Buckeye state for all fifteen years of my legal drinking life, and I’ve watched Ohio’s craft scene explode along with the rest of the country’s. While many of our breweries have gained national recognition, many more truly excellent breweries remain largely unheralded outside of our state borders. To be honest, it’s one of the things I love about our beer scene here; visitors don’t expect the incredible Belgian beers of Rockmill Brewery, or the farmhouse prowess of Little Fish, or the world-class lambics of Rivertown, or the all-around brilliance of Jackie O’s.

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Blackberry Prairie Wheat | Moeller Brew Barn

January 29, 2018 |

Maria Stein, Ohio, is not the first place you expect to find a great brewery. The tiny, unincorporated town in rural Mercer County is home to only a couple hundred people, and the cattle in the area likely outnumber them. This region of west central Ohio, just north of the midline of the state, was heavily settled by German Catholics in the 1800s under the spiritual leadership of Francis de Sales Brunner, a missionary priest who established parish churches in the area. The region is now known as The Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches due to the unusually high number of Catholic worship structures in this rural area. When driving through this flat, agricultural county, you can see for miles in every direction, and no matter which way you turn, a tall steeple is silhouetted against the horizon. However, just outside of Maria Stein sits Moeller Brew Barn.
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Book Review & Interview | My Beer Year

January 22, 2018 |

My Beer Year: Adventures with Hop Farmers, Craft Brewers, Chefs, Sommeliers, & Fanatical Drinkers as a Beer Master in Training by Lucy Burningham (Roost Books, 2016)

In her book My Beer Year, Portland-based journalist Lucy Burningham chronicles her time preparing for the Certified Cicerone exam. She presents herself as a novice early on (though she clearly knew more even then than the average beer drinker), and the book covers the year or so she spent gaining more knowledge and experience.
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Brewer of Beyoncé-Inspired Beer Told to Hold Up

December 13, 2017 |

Despite a late night signal boost from Seth Meyers, production of a beer named in honor of singer Beyoncé has been forced to re-brand. Lineup Brewing, a Brooklyn-based brewery known for their clever beer names, had brewed Biëryoncé since opening in late 2016, and recently canned the beer for the first time in 16 oz cans. The small brewery received a cease and desist letter last week from Beyoncé’s legal team ordering them to stop production.

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