It is commonly assumed by beer snobs, such as myself, that rice is a no-no in beer. Well, that may be changing. Check this out from the LA Times:

"Rice is considered by many brewers what the nasty industrial brewers use to water down their beer," says Maureen Ogle, author of "Ambitious Brew," a book exploring the history of brewing in the U.S. "Craft brewers treat rice almost as if it's rat poison."

But recently, a handful of craft brewers in California, Colorado and Washington are challenging that blanket disdain for the grain by introducing complex, full-flavored rice beers. They say rice can lend subtle tropical notes and a bright finish to their lagers and ales....

Rice hasn't always had such a sullied reputation among craft brewers.

According to Ogle, the anti-rice sentiment is traceable to the early craft brewing revival in the 1980s. "It was all about, 'We're only using four ingredients, we're not like those industrial brewers making watered-down, cheap beer by using adjuncts like rice.'

"The mythology is that these giant beer makers began adding rice and corn to their beer after World War II to water it down, but that's simply not true," she adds.

The American brewing industry was built in the late 19th century by first-generation German American immigrants such as Adolphus Busch, Adolph Coors and Frederick Miller. Although these men, craft brewers themselves, initially re-created the full-bodied beers of their homeland, many Americans had not developed a taste for the malt-heavy style.

"They needed a domestic ingredient that would make the beers more effervescent, bubbly and lighter," Ogle says. "Rice and corn did that -- it was a desired flavor, not inexpensive filler."

Read the whole thing here.

I Am a Craft Brewer

I Am a Home Brewer

Happy birthday to the most perfect beverage on earth: Guinness. That's right, today marks the 250th birthday of that delicious beverage. Here are a few ways to celebrate the 1759 birthdate of this glorious elixir.

Check out this new book about Guinness.

See my original blurb about Guinness.

Here is a fuller description of Guinness 'round the world.

Did you know that Guinness can make a delicious ice cream float?

Here are some other ways to make your Guinness enjoyment more interesting.

I've been thumbing through Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, otherwise known as Pope Benedict XVI. I found this delicious quote about the democracy of the dead.

In speaking of the "we" of the bishops, however, it is necessary to add yet a further plane: this "we" extends not only synchronically but also diachronically. It follows that in the Church no generation is isolated. In the Body of Christ, death no longer works as a limit; in this Body, past, present, and future interpenetrate. The bishop never represents himself alone, and he does not proclaim his own ideas; he is an emissary and, as such, is the messenger of Jesus Christ. He is guided into the heart of the message by the "we" of the Church, by which I mean the "we" of the Church of all times. A majority that formed at some juncture against the faith of the Church of ll times would be no majority: the true majority in the Church reaches diachronically across the ages, and only when one listens to this plenary majority does one remain in the apostolic "we". Faith explodes the self-absolutization of individual presents; by opening them to the faith of all times, it liberates them from ideological delusion and at the same time holds open the future. To be the spokesman of this diachronic majority, of the voice of the Church that unites all epochs, is one of the chief roles of the bishop that follows the "we"-character of his office.