Three Nashville brewers sipped beer from small plastic cups in the backroom of Bootleg Biology, Tennessee’s only yeast lab. The lab’s garage door, framed by an old red, white, and blue brewers’ conference banner, was open despite the early February cold. The beer they were sampling was brewed with a wild yeast collected from a sunflower. Surrounded by brewing and lab equipment, they compared tasting notes. They pronounced it “Belgian saison-y,” with flavors of bubblegum and banana.  Chad Mueller, head brewer at TennFold—who, with his colleagues, had begun their hunt for this yeast six mon ..read more

The early, early morning hours of Oct. 2, 2021, should’ve been quiet. In most of Albany, they were. But if you hung a left off of New York State Route 5 onto Walker Way, you couldn’t miss the line of cars—more than 100 long—that extended well beyond the shuttered garage door emblazoned with a script font reading “Fidens.” The occasion was the brewery’s second anniversary. Even in the cold morning with a note-quite-yet 50-degree temperature, people seemed content to wait for hours, huddled in front of their car heaters, aimlessly scrolling through apps on their phones until that garage door rol ..read more

In a city known for its spectacular array of Mexican cuisine, it’s fitting that one of its best-known cocktails is modeled after barbacoa, a slow-cook method of preparing meat meant to create a tender, juicy, and extra-flavorful final result. Made with mezcal, lemon, lime, ginger syrup, and chipotles, with red bell pepper and beef jerky for garnish, Julian Cox’s breakout cocktail, invented in 2008, is the superlative example of a drink born of the Angel City. The ginger syrup is evocative of the Moscow Mule, which was invented here, and its mezcal and chipotle pepper purée from Mexico are embl ..read more

The fox is barely visible. At first it is just a rustle in the tall grass. Twilight has dyed the winter landscape deep blue, and sound works faster than sight. When it does emerge, the fox moves swiftly through the open, a spark running down a length of wire.  Though darkness has nearly closed in over the woods, they still flare with gestures of life. Crows crowd the corridor of old oaks, the trees’ self-appointed guardians and defenders against the rasping magpies. Oyster mushrooms unfurl from the bark of a decaying tree. Small rain fills the air more than it falls, and the smell of the ..read more

When a loved one dies, we tell stories and drink in their honor.   An Irish wake is a celebration of the life of the departed, with memories shared over a whiskey or a pint of beer while the deceased lies in the same room. In Mexico, there’s Día de Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, where it’s believed that spirits walk among the living, prompting family members to build colorful altars called “ofrendas,” which are decorated with photos, food, and beverages to toast the spirits. Imbibing to commemorate the dead is a tradition that crosses generations and cultures.  If you were a ..read more

We’re voracious consumers of culture. And each week, a member of our team shares the words, images, and beers that inspired them.   Finger Lake Wine Country Read.// Summer is for music. And no one writes about music like Hanif Abdurraquib. His collection “They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us” is a moving meditation about … well, everything. Abdurraquib's prodigious skills as a poet lace all of his essays about music, mortality, and life in modern America with an energy and an elegiac beauty that stays with a reader long after finishing the final page. With essays about punk, rap, emo ..read more

In some ways, Brasserie de la Mule resembles other new breweries in Brussels. Its home is a 19th-century, brick-and-stone building in the Belgian capital’s lively, multicultural Schaerbeek area, once used as a stable for the horses that pulled the city’s first trams, hence the name. Its taproom is an elemental space of bare brick walls: air ducts running the length of the ceiling, wooden cable drums on their sides acting as tables, battered but comfortable-looking sofas in one corner, and a general air of decorative disarray. At first glance, it looks like a generic craft taproom, whose aesthe ..read more

In one corner of a hospital wing, there’s a snowboarder with her eye impaled by a stick. In another, a skier with a swollen, misshapen wrist that’s bruising fast. A pale, sweaty, middle-aged snowshoer slumps on a chair, struggling to remember her name. A man still in ski boots moans and writhes on the ground with his leg twisted sideways. Amid the chaos, 23-year-old Meghan Doremus strolls past the examination rooms with a serene smile. She stops to touch up the red paint on one patient’s third-degree burn. She sprays a little more glycerin on the heart-attack victim’s pale-painted face to rese ..read more

In the lead-up to the winter holidays, the founders of Provost Farm in New Iberia, Louisiana, always bring their Papa Noël statue out for his seasonal appearance. The “Cajun Santa,” who uses alligators to get around on Christmas Eve instead of reindeer, grips a thin stalk of sugarcane in one hand and, in the other, a three-pound box of Richard’s Krazy Cajun Sausage—a treat traditionally gifted to employees in southern Louisiana during the holiday season.  Owners Angie and June Provost set up the 3-foot tall figure in the middle of the farm’s event space, in between the mini-museum and a l ..read more

I’m surrounded by hundreds of people—maybe 600, maybe more—who are all drinking great mugs of foamy lager. Some struggle to hold the liter glasses; others wrap a big hand around theirs and gulp. With a deep blast of a tuba, followed by an accordion’s bright wheeze, the brass band starts into another round of songs, and the drinkers seem to lift their glasses in time to its cadence.  I’ve been to Munich’s Hofbräuhaus dozens of times, but I never quite get used to it. It’s so vast, so loud, so busy, so storied. Hustling waiters, carrying four full mugs of lager in one hand and hoisting tray ..read more