What’s more fun than posting about a topic on our blog that just about everyone loves? Well, sure, it would be more fun to just sit back, relax, and actually drink a beer, but we can only do so much in writing. So let’s get on with it and talk about beer!

A Growing Market

Microbreweries have been popping up all over the U.S., and craft beers as well as home-brew kits have become increasingly popular in the last few years. Year after year, beer beats wine and liquor in the polls as America’s preferred alcoholic drink, and last year, the Brewer’s Association released a report on U.S. Beer Sales in 2013 with some pretty incredible statistics.

Brewers Association Beer Sales 2013, craft news, craft beer

Craft beer earned 7.8% share of the overall beer market from producing a whopping 15,302,838 bbls. We did the math, and that’s about 474,387,978 gallons of craft beer!

After that shocking number, you might be wondering how many gallons of beer were produced overall in 2013. The answer: 6,083,480,951 gallons. Whoa ‘Merica!

And it doesn’t stop there. Starbucks rolled out a beer-flavored latte, Jelly Belly introduced a Draft Beer Bean, and what else but Beer infused Ice Cream from Shark Tank’s Brewer’s Cow Ice Cream.

draft beer jelly belly, craft beer

So basically, without all that extra jibber jabber, Americans like their beer. BIG time.

Savor the Flavor

With the growth of the craft beer market, a variety of unique flavors are becoming more readily available.

You might find flavors like Key Lime Pie, Bacon & Maple Syrup Ale, Prickly Pear Lager, Chocolate Milk Stout, Banana Bread Beer, Chipotle Ale, Oatmeal Stout….thirsty yet?

Key lime pie beer, craft beer, microbreweries

There’s quite a bit of science behind these recipes, or shall we say, unique concoctions, to put it mildly, so if you’re planning on striking out to create the next best beer, there’s a lot you need to learn first.

We’ll get into those details in posts to follow, but today we’re focused on the finished product. Can you blame us?

Crisp, Dull, or Sour

Here’s something you probably haven’t thought about while enjoying a cold brewski: the pH of finished beer.

craft beer, microbreweries, sour beerBeer is acidic, meaning it has a pH below 7. A finished beer typically has a pH of 4.5 or less.

Beer with a lower pH reportedly has a livelier, crisper flavor, unlike beer with a higher pH, which reportedly has a dull flavor. However, below pH of about 4.0, beer can start to taste sour.

We’re certainly not beer experts, or Cicerones, so when we hear sour beer, we think, Yuck. Right?

Wrong! To beer geeks everywhere, sour beer is becoming all the rage.

But this doesn’t mean you can do no wrong when brewing up a batch of the next best beer. Mash is the stage where testing pH is crucial, and adjusting it is a whole different ball game.

But that’s for another day. With all this talk of beer, we need to quench our thirst after a long day’s work. Time for some booze, food and bad dance moves.