The Brew Basement

One of the things that happens when you spend eight months writing on a blog is that your writing tends to get a little better. It really pains me sometimes when I read my earliest writings, and one of the worse offenders in my mind is the “What’s going on here…” page on the top [...]

Sorry about the lack of updates here over the past few days.
Internet access has been a bit hard to come by in the Tucker household since I spilled a glass of water directly on my wireless router. Never fear, a trip to CompUSA tomorrow should take care of the problem!
I should resume posting tomorrow night, [...]

I recently received the following email from a somewhat despondent reader:
I’ve just read your article on bottle conditioning on Brew Basement.
I wondered if you had any advice/comments on the storage of bottle
conditioned beers.
Perhaps I’ve just been unlucky, but from the few dozen of these I’ve
drunk in the last couple of years, 40-50% [...]

Hello everyone. Hope your holidays went well!
You may have noticed that I’ve been posting a lot of tasting notes lately. If they’re not quite your thing, I’m sorry about that. Even before the holidays the time between me cellaring a beer and getting the notes online had grown to well over a month.  I’ve been trying hard to close this [...]

Hello fellow beer geeks! After digging through my Google Analytic stats for the year, I thought it would be interesting to share with everyone what the Brew Basement’s most popular pages were. I ranked the pages according to the unique number of page views that each one received. I thought the results were rather interesting!
1. 15 Strong Ales [...]

I’m trying to do a bit of catch-up here today. After posting my comparison of a cellared vintage Celebration Ale with a fresh one on Friday, I’m spending the morning writing up the formal tasting notes for both beers in my normal review format. I’m also in the middle of my research on a new series about [...]

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my fellow Americans out there! I’m in charge of cooking up a few side dishes today for our Thanksgiving at our friends house, so I’m just putting up this quick little post today.
I’ve been following a few discussions on some of the beer sites recently that I’d thought I’d share. [...]

Good things always seem to come in bunches. Late last week I stumbled upon some vintage beers at my favorite beverage store, including two vintages of George Gale’s Prize Old Ale (1997 and 2001). I’ll be sampling those VERY soon. I also picked up a case of Brooklyn’s Black Chocolate Stout, which I just saw for the [...]

Hi everyone. I’m down visiting my folks right outside of Tampa, Florida for a few days. The craft beer fad does not seem to have hit down here yet, the most interesting thing I’ve seen was a pack of Sam Adams Imperial Pilsner sitting in a Publix supermarket (Yes, I did buy it).
My postings will [...]

Hello fellow beer geeks! Today I thought I’d share a question I recently received via email:
I have a bottle of beer from Stone B.C. that was being cellared until I put it in my fridge about 3 months ago. I understand the bottle fermenting seizes or slows down once placed in the fridge.
My question is [...]