Sour Ales, Wheat Ales

1. I'm pretty amazed by the poll results on the sour ales. Apparently there are a lot more sour ale fans than I knew. Either that, or there's an especially high correlation of sour ale fandom and blog reading. (Let's hope it's the former.)

2. Stan Hieronymus' latest book, brewing with wheat, is at the printer. It will be available later this month:

“Tracking those old beers—German, Belgian, whatever—makes one realize that the key to the old styles, probably even more than the recipes themselves, was to be found in the local microflora of each brewery. (Jean-Baptiste) Vrancken reports eighteenth and nineteenth century trials, in which brewmasters were sent from a brewery to another similar one, with all their equipment, raw material, and techniques. Sometimes the grains were even crushed in the first brewery to mimic the process perfectly. They never succeeded in making the same beer in the next village!”

Cool.