Does the climate and growing conditions of hops effect the taste of a beer, like with wine?

Sort of.

There are literally dozens of different varieties of hops, in much the same way there are dozens of different breeds of dogs. Just as a Chihuaua and a Great Dane are both Canis Lupus, a Galena Hop and a Goldings Hop are bot Humulus Lupulus, separated by vastly different lineages and genetics. New hop varieties are often developed by selective crossbreeding of existing variants, to generate different flavor profiles by adjusting the acidity and oil content of the hop.

Like different breeds of dogs, different hop varieties are often the products of hundreds of years of genetic development in a particular climate -  the Pacific Northwest, especially the Yakima Valley and Cascade Mountains in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, is known for it's production of very strong, highly acidic hops that impart a very strong bitter flavor - take a sip of a Sierra Nevada IPA and you'll instantly recognize that classic blend of the 'three C's'.

By contrast, traditional hops grown in England and on the European continent tend to be more mellow and aromatic - especially the so called 'noble hops' popular in many less bitter tasting German and Czech beers. Still others, like Japans Sorachi Ace, offer a more citrus bite to the beer they're added to. While these differences are not directly a product of climate, it's doubtless true that climate has had an impact on the development of variation amongst the various hop lines that have been bred through the centuries -  and especially over the past 50 years or so.

Put another way: New World vs. Old World Hops is a meaningful distinction, but it has less to do with climate and more to do with the difference in cultivation practices and the specific varietals popular with farmers in various regions. Growing conditions may have some impact, but the specific lineage matters much, much more. The fact that those lineages tend to have significant geographic commonalities is as much an accident of history as it is of varying conditions, but it's nonetheless sufficiently meaningful that, in particular referring to hops from the Pacific Northwest evokes a very specific and comprehensible flavor profile in most educated beer drinkers.


How should I convince my mom that my beer isn't poison?

I think the first step in attempting to change a belief of another person is always to understand why they hold that view. That can even help with determining how likely you are to be successful. For example, if her concern is that you may be actively trying to poison her, you're probably not very likely to change her mind. But if instead her concern is just that you may screw up something and produce a contaminated and therefore unsafe drink, that may be easier to handle. But you would use a different argument than if her concern was that you obtained the ingredients from an untrusted source.

To address the latter two options, the simplest way may just be too brew your beer, drink in on several occasions, and then have your continued health be the evidence that it's not poisonous. This has the added benefit of checking it first to make sure it tastes reasonably good (poisonous or not if it doesn't come out well you may want to wait till next time to have her try it).

Attacking it from a more logical perspective, there are a few other arguments you can make:

Beer was, for quite some time, a product that was made more because it was safe to drink than because it was tasty. Not being able to trust their water sources, brewing beer was a way to make a drink that was not only less likely to make your sick but also an important source of nutrition.
From the research I've done, I couldn't find any instance of someone becoming dangerously sick from homebrew. Maybe the occasional upset stomach or bathroom problems but as long as you're being reasonable about cleaning and sanitizing the equipment an infected batch is almost certainly just a matter of it tasting bad, not a matter of your health.
A big part of the reason for the above points is that the alcohol produced during fermentation should be enough to inhibit the growth of any dangerous microorganisms. That should hold true for even extremely low ABV beers (<1%).

Unless you're using dirty, hand-me-down equipment and either aren't cleaning it or aren't properly sanitizing it, you shouldn't be able to end up with anything dangerous*. Even then you're more likely to just end up with something you don't like. Long story short, if it tastes and smells good, you'll be fine.

* One caveat here: bottle grenades are a serious issue and can be dangerous. Make sure you clean and sanitize your bottles well and don't bottle until your beer has reached its final gravity. That said, this is more of a physical safety issue than something that makes the beer unsafe to drink.


How to determine where your beer was really bottled?

The can/bottle is required to have country of origin listed on it.

Most US Guinness Extra Stout is brewed in either Toronto or New Brunswick, depending on the contract brewer. All of the Guinness Draught is brewed in their historic brewery in Dublin. However, debate abounds about whether the US recipe is different.


I do love a wine spritzer and cocktails, as you can take a fabulous wine, white or red, add splashes of other liquid(s) for a light and refreshing drink. I also love your questions, and would like to be your neighbor, invited over for drinks (I'll bring the hors d'oeuvres).

So, for your glorious rose-colored beverages, along with rosy images!

Tinto de Verano

1 part red wine
1 part "gaseosa" (carbonated lemon-flavored soda)
Traditional-flavored gaseosa can be replicated by mixing Sprite or 7-Up with carbonated water.

Serve over ice with a slice of lemon.

René Barbier Mediterranean Red Citrus Wine Cooler

3 oz. René Barbier Mediterranean Red
1/4 oz. orange liqueur
Juice of 1/4 lime
4 oz. lemon/lime soda

In a highball glass half-filled with ice, add orange liqueur, lime juice and red wine. Swirl gently to mix and then add soda. Garnish with orange wedge or lime twist. Serves one.

The Rumbling Red Horse

50 ml fresh lemon juice
100 ml Red wine – Tall Horse Merlot or Cabernet
Lemonade (to your liking)
1 teaspoon superfine sugar

Add sugar, lemon juice to you preferred glass and muddle until sugar dissolves. Add ice, wine and the lemonade to fill. Garnish with lemon slice or cherry.

Kir and Kir Royale

1/5 Crème de Cassis to
4/5 chilled dry white wine
(or chilled dry Champagne for Royale)

Add the room-temperature Crème de Cassis to the glass first, followed by the wine (otherwise, they do not mix very well or uniformly).

Pretty in Pink Wine Cocktail

12 oz Gallo Family Pink Moscato
2 oz cherry brandy
¼ cup chopped, pitted cherries
4-6 strawberries, hulled and sliced (plus more for garnish)
2 stems of fresh mint leaves

Add the cherries to the bottom of an 8-oz glass, followed by 1-oz cherry brandy. Divide the moscato into each glass, and drop the sliced strawberries and mint on top. Garnish with a fresh strawberry on the side of the glass and serve chilled. Makes 2 cocktails.

Strawberry Peach Sangria

1 bottle of dry white wine
6 oz. of orange muscat wine
4 oz. of peach schnapps
8 oz. of strawberries cut into slices
3 peaches cut into slices
1 lemon cut into slices

Combine all the ingredients together in one pitcher. Pour over ice.

And, just in case you want a full-on killer cocktail: Maria McClaire

1 1/2 oz. Irish whiskey
1 oz. Fonseca Siroco White Port
1/2 oz. Campari
2 dashes Peychaud's Bitters

Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and twist a thin-cut swatch of orange peel over the top.


The short answer is no.  While they're both styles of dark beer nowadays Mild is very low ABV with a lot of malty/nutty flavors and fruity sweetness.  Stouts are stronger than milds with no fruitiness and a lot of roasted and burnt flavors instead of malts.  Most will probably be more bitter and have less residual sweetness than milds.

The long answer is:

Historically stout and mild were completely unrelated terms that referred to completely different things than they wound up being known for.  Both started being used in the 18th century.  Stout originally just meant strong and Mild was used as the opposite of Keeping (or Stale), which basically just meant the beer was fresh rather than being aged in a barrel for any length of time.

Mild turned into a strength descriptor in the early 19th century when brewers started using the X, XX, XXX system to classify their ales, which referred to both the ABV and pounds of hops per barrel.  But Mild was still a pale beer.  As the 20th century progressed Milds started becoming more amber colored and playing more as malty and sweet.

All beers until this point were actually much stronger than we're used to today.  Barclay Perkins X Ale in 1839 was actually close to 8% ABV.

Grain shortages and government restrictions towards the end of WWI dropped Mild to close to 2%, and brewers also added dark sugars and mixed in amber and brown malt to keep some measure of flavor.  After the war ended ABVs bounced back up but new taxes in the 30s pushed them back down, close to the modern range for Mild.  Dark mild being the standard and Pale mild being a variant didn't really happen until the 1950s.

The history of stout is quite a bit muddier, though the general consensus seems to be that it evolved out of Stout Brown Porter and has been largely interchangeable with Porter for most of its history.

The differentiation probably started with in the invention of Black Patent Malt in 1817.  In the late 1700s new technology had been invented that allowed brewers to track their efficiency and they realized the roasty brown malt they used for porters was really expensive compared to how much fermentable sugar it produced. So they started making porters out of mostly pale malt with brown malt and burnt sugars among other ingredients for color and flavor.

Britain had banned the use of anything besides malted barley in brewing in 1816 which really kindof screwed porter brewers over.  With Black Patent they had something which was absurdly dark enough that they could finally make up the color difference using pale malt.  Though most brewers in England continued to use some portion of brown malt, brewers in Ireland switched completely to pale and black malts only.  Irish beer was also less hoppy than English beer in general since hops didn't grow as well in Ireland.

Guinness renamed its XX Porter to Extra Stout Porter in ~1820 and the popularity and marketing gradually dropped "Porter" from the name, which is probably where Stout began to evolve as a style separate from Porter.  But it's in a bit of grey area, people in 2015 are still debating Porter vs Stout.

Short version of the long story

Mild originally just meant Fresh and as a style evolved from the weakest pale beer a brewery made, and only really became what we think of it as today in the last 60 years.  Stout originally just meant Strong and was a synonym for Porter for a very long time until marketing tried to differentiate it maybe 150 years ago.

Sorry about the wall, but I fell down a rabbit hole of interesting beer history.


My recommendation would be to ask your local specialty store if they know which distributor makes Tromba Tequila. The gentleman who first distilled Don Julio is the distiller and part-owner of the brand I believe, and their Anejo might be similar to 1942.

It's tough to recommend particular tequilas as we don't know where you are and tequila brands are very regional as far as U.S. availability goes.


What styles of beer pair well with white fish?

Take your cue from recipes for fish cooked in beer/ale.  "Ale" (not usually specified further) and "amber beer" (example) seem to be the most common, and I can say from personal experience that these work well both for poaching fish and drinking alongside baked, broiled, or grilled whitefish.1  Of course, how your fish is flavored may affect your beer choice, but that might be a question for Seasoned Advice.  If the dominant flavor isn't the fish but, say, curry or habenero, that's a different matter.

Anecdote: In the context of a renaissance-themed event I once cooked from a 15th-century recipe for whitefish poached in ale.  I consulted my local brewing experts and together we made the ale (recipe and documentation).  They told me that the key difference in that time period was that ale didn't use hops.  There were no leftovers.  Based on that experience, I usually reach for a low-hops medium-strength beer to go with whitefish.

1 I don't eat a lot of deep-fried fish so can't advise there, sorry.  @Hunse suggests in another answer a sturdier beer for deep-fried fish.


When the Trappist foundation was founded in 1997, were there breweries which didn't get the label although they succeeded to the conditions?

The explication to your question is multi-faceted and not so easy to understand if one is neither Roman Catholic nor understanding of the nuances of religious life (Trappist).

The Trappists were founded in 1664 as a branch of the Benedictine Order at the La Trappe Abbey. The abbot of La Trappe has a greater authority of jurisdiction than the other trappist abbots. Under canon law this is permitted because La Trappe is the motherhouse of the Trappist Order.

The history of the Trappist Foundation in 1997 is of a totally different perspective. Originally only La Trappe Abbey could grant the title of the label to those Trappist breweries which could safeguard the integrity of the Order. All other monasteries which could not or would not abide to the conditions to be met, would not be granted the Trappist Label.

Since 2012, four other Trappist monasteries have been added to the list, including St. Joseph's Abbey in Massachusetts, United States.

The three basic rules for granting the label are:

The beer must be brewed within the monastery, by the monks or at least under the supervision of the monks.
The making of ales should be of a secondary importance to the monastery and should be seen as a witness of monastic life.
Any profits from the brewery are to be use to help sustain the monks in their life of prayer. Any extra income is to be given to some sort of charity.

There seems to be no other Trappist Abbeys that were producing beer at the time the label was founded. Since abbeys are independent of one another, sources of revenue are not limited to the brewing of ales. Some abbeys made vestments, while other distilled products such as kirsch, as was the case at Fontgombault Abbey from 1849-1905. Fontgombault Abbey (Wikipedia)


Is there a widely-accepted procedure for saying one beer is definitively "better" than another?

What it really sounds like you're getting at is that the beer you drink at a brewery is better than the beer you buy off the shelf at a store.  I'd believe that.  Beer from a brewery's tap is likely incredibly fresh, which most people would agree for most styles is better.  Especially with how popular hoppy beers are in the San Diego scene, hops fade quickly...fresher will be way more aromatic.  The beer you buy in the store may have been filtered or pasteurized, has been bottled and then sat in a warehouse for a while before being trucked around the county and then sitting on a shelf for a while before you hauled it back home.

However, is there an objective way to express "Fresher is better"?  Dunno, probably not.  You could run lab analysis and try to point at alpha and beta acid numbers, volatile organic oils or something...but it almost seems like trying to cobble together a theory after having made the conclusions already.

The BJCP was mentioned in another answer.  What BJCP is, is an attempt to apply objective qualitative judgment to taste, which is inherently subjective, by asking folks to compare what they're sensing to an ideal example.  Basically "How closely does this beer I'm tasting now adhere to description of the style of beer it's supposed to be?"  They'll generally look at

Head: color, density, how long it lasts.
Aroma: malty? hoppy? spicy? grassy? sulphury?
Visual: color, clarity
Feel: thickness on the tongue, fizziness, acidity...
Taste: malty, hoppy, spicy... balanced?

What you COULD theoretically do is drink the beer at the brewery, and then describe as if it was a BJCP description, then drink the beer from the store and grade it according to how close it resembles the brewery beer in those categories.

Outside of that, everything is subjective.  What you feel like drinking, right now.  The beer best suited to the weather will change with each season, beers best suited to the evening will change with what you're having for dinner.  Hell, if you happen to be playing Skyrim maybe the beer with the dragon on the label will be better than anything else regardless what it tastes like.


If buying a distillery, what would you focus on?

Having owned and run a winery for 15 years (as well as making the wine, it was a small operation), you should concentrate on Sales, Marketing and Distribution about 90% of your effort. You could bottle paint thinner and with the right sales team and marketing you could make tons of money. I've seen it in the wine industry many times. People will say "if you make a quality product, people will buy it" is not true. Branding, marketing and sales make or break almost any product. Look at the Pet Rock for gods sake!


How long does an opened bottle of wine last in the fridge?

The Life of Wine (after opening)

The short answer is approximately 3-5 days, but it all depends on the type of wine. There are a number of factors at play when it comes to the life of wine, after it has been opened.

These include acetic acid bacteria that consumes the alcohol in wine and metabolizes it into acetic acid and acetaldehyde. This causes the wine to have a sharp, vinegar-like smell.  Additionally, the alcohol can oxidize, causing a nutty, bruised fruit taste, that robs the wine of fresh, fruity flavors. These are both chemical reactions, and so the lower the temperature you keep a wine at, the slower this will happen.

Please see link for full reference and detailed breakdown of How long wine lasts after opening: How Long Does an Open Bottle of Wine Last?


Fig liqueur completed after 4 weeks.  Here are notes:

A lot more work than I expected it would be to strain out the liquid.
Next time I'll use a food processor instead of making the base puree
by hand.
It's much darker than I expected
The taste is nice, a little tannic on the finish.
I've successfully used it in a Collins-type cocktail - in a rocks glass, add:

2 ounces fig liqueur, chilled
1.5 tbsp simple syrup
juice of 1 lime wedge
sparkling water to top


Is overcarbonated IPA an IPA or a different style?

I would argue that an overcarbonated IPA is still an IPA. IPAs are characterized by the intense hoppy aroma, a malt backbone, and color. The carbonation level isn't referred to in style guides, generally.

Beer Advocate's IPA Style Guide
Ratebeer's IPA Style Guide

What I believe you're doing is creating a slightly more sour IPA. With more dissolved CO2 in the beer, you're creating slight amounts of carbonic acid, and acids make things a bit more sour. Seems like a pretty cool variant of an IPA, actually.


These beers are made with non-gluten containing grains such as millet, rice, corn, or buckwheat as opposed to glutenous grains like rye, barley, or wheat.

As a side note, I recommend your friend give Omission Beer a try. I had it once on accident at a social event. I couldn't tell the difference between it and the real thing until I got home and looked it up online.


How can different ingredients be replaced in the Singapore Sling recipe?

I adjusted the recipe to be:

120ml Generic brand pineapple Juice
7,5ml Cointreau
7,5ml DOM Benedectine
10ml Generic brand lime juice
15ml Bols cherry brandy
30ml Beefeater gin
10ml Monin Grenadine
Dash of Angostura bitter

Plus I bought a shaker and shook the whole thing with 4 cubes of ice.

I got a very good flavour with a slightly creamy texture, which is very near to what I drank in Singapore. The color is not pink as wanted, but it is a very good cocktail :)


Should lighter red wines be served chilled?

"Wine experts advise that white wines be served at 45 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit, light reds at about 60 degrees and more complex reds at "room temperature" or 65 to 70 degrees. [Remember, the phrase "room temperature" predates the days of central heat and air conditioning, so it generally refers to the "cellar" temperature of an earlier era.]

Chilling helps preserve and highlight fresh, fruity flavors of varieties like Riesling, Pinot Gris and Gewürztraminer. Chardonnay, on the other hand, though white, is more complex, is fermented and aged in oak barrels and thus is usually served at the upper end of the 'white' scale.

Full-bodied Cabernets should be served in the 70 degree range. The warmer temperature allows the complexity of intense reds to come through as they are swirled, sipped and savored. Lighter reds like chambourcin or merlot are less complex, so are best appreciated just slightly chilled.
Full-bodied Cabernets should be served in the 70 degree range. The warmer temperature allows the complexity of intense reds to come through as they are swirled, sipped and savored.

In planning a festive gathering, consider several ways to attain the "correct" wine temperature. Refrigeration will decrease a bottle's temperature 4 to 5 degrees each half hour in the first 60-90 minutes. After that, temperatures will drop 2-3 degrees per half hour. Riesling should be chilled for 4 or 5 hours, a chardonnay for 1-2 hours, merlot for an hour and cabernets for a half hour or less. If time is short, a freezer will drop the temperature about 6-8 degrees every fifteen minutes. However, it is best to set a kitchen timer in the event the party is so festive that you forget and find a broken bottle of very fine wine in your freezer the next morning."

Sweet Moscato and Moscato d'Asti wines are very good served chilled on their own as a refreshing summertime wine.


How are double and triple casks whiskies matured?

The answer is of course: both

Lets take some popular examples...

Balvenie Double Wood
Matured in Ex-Bourbon casks and finished in Ex-Oloroso Sherry Casks, so (2)

Auchentoshan Three Wood
Matured in Ex-Bourbon casks for 10 years, then finished for two years in Ex-Oloroso Sherry casks and then finished for six month in Ex-PX Sherry casks, so (2)

Laphroaig Four Oak
A vatting of whisky matured in four different types of casks: Ex-Bourbon barrels, Quarter casks, Virgin oak barrels and European oak hogsheads, so (1)


How hard is to brew beer in a hot climate?

Generally - yes.

A large part of the flavour of the beer comes from esters produced by the yeast during fermentation.  There are many different varieties of yeast, and each has a differing set of esters it produces.

The problem arises in that as temperatures increase the yeast ferments and grows much more rapidly, and can produce different and/or too many esters, in addition to fusel alcohols.

Most packs of brewer's ale yeasts will have a temperature range on the back, say something like 18-25°C{1}.  However, unless one is brewing a beer style that warrants it (like a "Saison") the general rule is to keep the beer fermenting below 20°C.  Ideally, 18-19°C is best.  (You don't want to go too low either, at < 15°C, ale yeast may go dormant - but that's another answer.)

So, what can you do?

Brew only in winter.
Find a spot in your house, a cave, whatever that maintains this temperature.
Immerse your fermenter in a larger vessel of water:

Find a vessel significantly larger than your fermenter.  Bathtub, laundry sink, plastic barrel, etc.
Put your fermenter inside this, fill the space with water.  Drape a cloth, towel, t-shirt, over the fermenter such that it wicks-up the water.  This cools by evaporation.
Add blocks of ice a few times a day, as necessary.

Modify an old freezer (or 'fridge) with a temperature controller:

A device like an STC-1000 allows one to simply set the temperature wanted inside the 'fridge and it monitors and adjusts the temperature by turning the electricity on and off.
Some variants of these have the controller mounted in a box with a pair of domestic sockets, so the 'fridge doesn't need to be modified, just plugged in. (the temperature probe still has to go inside though).

I personally brew in a hot climate (some Autumn & Spring, and most Summer days are > 30°C), and have used all these methods with varying levels of success.  They are ordered from least-successful to most-successful.

{1} Just because the yeast pack says it's OK at 25°C, doesn't mean it produces good beer at this temperature.  I expect some people will disagree with me on this. Ultimately it's a matter of preference, and I think keeping fermentation temperatures < 20°C is good advice for a beginner.


The fact that both Humulus lupulus (hops) and Cannabis sativa (marijuana) have similar organoleptic properties (taste and smell) could indicate a common ancestry--but it isn't proof. Lots of plants make similar aroma molecules, known as terpenes and terpenoid compounds, including lemons (which make limonene), lavender (linalool) and conifers (pinene) -- but none of them are closely related to cannabis or hops.

Full article here


Does real ale make you fart more than lager?

Technically, yes.

The actual answer has more to do with yeast content than carbonation.  Unfiltered beers like real ale have much more yeast in suspension, and yeast has a tendency to make you gassy when digested.  Lager in general has very little yeast due to the long, cold, aging process.  I believe commercial examples are filtered as well.  In general most commercial beers are filtered, or at least have had the yeast killed off somehow, which mitigates the effect.  Real ale's major selling points are that it's unpasteurized and unfiltered, and is refermented in the cask...so it's basically got way more yeast and way more active yeast than other kinds of beer.  And then cask ales are served from a tap at the front near the bottom...near the yeast.  Basically the perfect storm of fart-induction.


Is the country of origin for a beer always the same as the brewers country of origin?

It is not that common, but brewers may open subsidiaries.

In 2016, Stone Brewing Co. from US opened a new plant in Germany (I suspect they wanted to expand in the European market). Where would your application locate those beers? (Plant was recently sold to Scottish Brewdog).

I suggest you locate beers where they are brewed.


Beer is banned in my state. How can I make beer at my home?

I suggest you read this thread in Reddit on a guy in Kyrgyzstan trying to make beer from basic ingredients and malting his own barley at home. This is what it might take to make beer from scratch. https://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/comments/ag67o4/kyrgyzstan_primitive_brew_full_write_up_and/


All of them may be had straight, as they often are in the places from where they originate.
Having said that, some people find cheaper spirits more palatable when mixed:

Vodka + orange juice
Whisk(e)y + Coca Cola (or Ginger Ale) + perhaps some squeezed lime
Rum + Coca Cola + squeezed lime

How much mixer to use, is up to individual taste. Some might prefer to camouflage the spirit entirely, while others times want the spirit to 'bleed through' the drink.


I believe they're referring to stacks of boxes. Now, seeing as how bottles of whiskey can vary widely in price and stacks of boxes can be of any height, the phrase doesn't really mean anything at all. My conjecture is that, if it is a fictional series, this is one of the many instances in which a line sounds cool enough that no viewers catch on to the fact that it means nothing. You can see this all the time when science or technology terms are thrown around on tv.

Just for fun let's make some assumptions. If a stack is 6 boxes high and you use something cheap like cases of Jim Beam two or three stacks would be between 2150 and 3240 dollars. That's a pretty wide range of numbers but not an unheard of price for a bottle of liquor.

You can keep the expensive bottle though, I'll be hiding in the corner with my 200 bottles of whiskey.


Porters and Stouts were similar but different... in the beginning. I'm going to try my best to paraphrase this wonderful article, some of the BJCP Guidelines, and this article.

  Porters (have #s) Stouts (have bullet points)

  1) A substantial, malty dark ale with a complex and flavorful roasty character.

  A very dark, roasty, bitter, creamy ale.

These are the BJCP definitions - note... they're fairly similar

  2) Originally, just your "common" brown beer.

  Originally, just a "stout" (or stronger) brown beer.

Already... you can probably see why people use them interchangeably

  3) Origin for Porters are credited to London.

  Stouts are credited with originating in Ireland.

Apparently, water (which, as odd as it seems, is the most unique thing to beers!) and science played a large part in London's success in creating Porters instead of porter being a generic brown beer. Science revealed that the efficiency of the brown grains was 2/3 of pale malt. Even though brown malt was cheaper than pale, the horrible grain efficiency made it more expensive. Therefore the Porter soon had a mixed grain bill using a brown malt base and substituted pale malt for profit. This was made even more apparent when the English Governement/Parliment/forgive my idiocy on the verbage here started taxing beer.

Later- London started using a method known as "parti-gyling"... per the first link:

  Parti-gyling isn’t what you think it is. Almost all modern descriptions get it badly wrong. It isn’t—after 1800 at least—using the first runnings to make one beer and the second and third for others.  It’s much more sophisticated than that.

  Porter brewers mashed several times. The worts from each mash were hopped and boiled separately, then blended to produce whatever beers were required. Two, three or even four beers were assembled from blends of each of the worts.

  It’s a very efficient way of making not just huge volumes of a beer, but also relatively small amounts of stronger beers. Or any amount of any strength beer. With their brew lengths of hundreds of barrels, London’s porter brewers couldn’t brew the strongest Stouts single-gyle. The amount they could sell would barely have covered the false bottoms of their massive mash tuns.

  That’s why they often parti-gyled their stouts with porter. You can probably see where this is going. The recipes for porter and stout were, by definition, identical, as they were brewed together.
  (Sorry I couldn't paraphrase this part... it all seemed relevant.)

So... it seems that all Stouts are Porters; but, not all Porters are Stouts (think squares and rectangles).

As far as Schwarzbier goes - this is a LAGER where Porters and Stouts are ALES.  I also differentiate between ales and lagers in this post. In the homebrewing world, there was a fad of black-lagers/ales a few years ago. The grain used in brewing was more or less burnt in order to give the pale ale a dark appearance but taste/feel like a pale ale/lager.

Dark beer is just a classification of all of these types.

Here is a link to the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) that has links to what each beer type should taste/look like.


When some one uses "sweet" to describe Blanc de Noir Brut Champagne, what does it really mean?

When some one uses “sweet” to describe Blanc de Noir Brut Champagne, what does it really mean?
Sweetness is a way to express the amount of residual sugars to alcohol levels in a wine or champagne.

Rough rules of thumb say if a wine's alcohol content is 10% or less it will have sweet characteristics.  Wines that are even lower (especially down around 8 or 9 percent) will definitely be sweet. Wines in the 11% to 12.5% ABV range are considered 'off-dry' meaning that there is some notable residual sugar.  If it’s 12.5 percent or higher, the wine will will be 'dry' and have little to no perceptible sweetness.
Most wines under 10% ABV will be sweet. Typically, wines such as German Riesling and Italian Moscato fall in this category. Wines in the range of 10.5% to 12.5% include Riesling's from Austria, Australia and the U.S., Sauvignon Blanc, and Pinot Grigio (a.k.a. Pinot Gris).  Then, in the 12.5% to 15.5% range you find Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Sangiovese, Syrah, Grenache and Zinfandel.
But, as previously pointed out, a grape that starts with low sugar levels, and ferments to the point where all the sugar is consumed by the yeast, will result in a wine with lower alcohol levels and little to no residual sugar. So, this is why alcohol levels are not a dependable way of determining a wine's sweetness.
So, while there’s definitely a loose relationship between a wine’s residual sugar and its alcohol level, it’s not a simple relationship.  But you can use the percent alcohol printed on the label as a first indication. - Is There a Relationship Between a Wine's Sweetness and Its Alcohol Level?


What do they judge on at beer competitions?

There are SO many different subcategories now. You can download the full judging guidelines and registration into the different styles.

Main categories include:

Beer
Mead
Cider

Some of the sub-categories of beer include:

LIGHT LAGER
PILSNER
EUROPEAN AMBER LAGER
DARK LAGER
BOCK
LIGHT HYBRID BEER
AMBER HYBRID BEER
ENGLISH PALE ALE
SCOTTISH AND IRISH ALE
AMERICAN ALE
ENGLISH BROWN ALE
PORTER
STOUT
INDIA PALE ALE (IPA)
GERMAN WHEAT AND RYE BEER
BELGIAN AND FRENCH ALE
SOUR ALE
BELGIAN STRONG ALE
STRONG ALE
FRUIT BEER
SPICE / HERB / VEGETABLE BEER
SMOKE-FLAVORED AND WOOD-AGED BEER
SPECIALTY BEER

I think winning an award at any sanctioned competition would be huge. I do see the World Beer Awards, the US Open Beer Championships, Great American Beer Festival, and North American Beer Awards, just to name a few. There are also Homebrewing awards that are very competitive.


Due its high alcohol content, you will still be able to drink the sake without worrying about your health.

However, the recommended consumption period is usually one year after bottling. After that, the maker cannot guarantee the flavor of the sake. Whatever the flavor of your sake is right now, whether it aged well or went plain ugly, is not the flavor of the sake as advertised by the sake maker. Oh, and if the bottle is open, like wine, sake will oxidize rapidly.

Sake may or may not age well, depending on the sake. I don't have enough knowledge to say what those differences are, though from my experience, old sake can become either a tad acidic or more rich in its original flavor.

You may be able to sell the bottle so someone interested, but I don't think there is a giant market for it outside of Japan (though I may be wrong about that). In Japan, there would be plenty demand for old sake there.

By law, there should be a date on the bottle (not sure if they print that on the box) which indicates the "month of bottling". Although, that law may not have existed 50 years back...

Note there is a chance it will go bad in the case it is nama (fresh) sake, which you can tell if you see 生 somewhere on the label. Nama sake is sake that does not undergo the two pasteurization processes after being made, so the yeast is still alive. Taste guarantee is only about a half a year, and something 50 years old will probably taste yogurty or cheesy.


What are the effects of draught beer pushing medium on beer's taste and quality?

There are disposable kegs  that work the way you describe - with a inner pouch that is filled with beer and gas pressure is applied to the outside of that.

For draught systems that directly push the beer, there are these gasses in common use:

air - such as with a hand-pump
CO2 - homebrewers and short runs
N2 - for creamflow beers or where the beer line is longer than 50'.
A mix of N2 and CO2

Using air to push the beer doesn't have any immediate affect on taste. However, after a few hours the oxygen in the air will start to stale the beer, causing staling flavors, and a muted hop aroma.

Using CO2 to push the beer can cause the beer to have more "fizz" and in extreme cases more carbonic bite.

For long beer lines, N2 is used to overcome the carbonation problem with CO2.

A combination of N2 and CO2, typically in the ratio 75%/25% is used for Guinness and creamflow beers. When used in conjunction with a stout or creamer faucet, this has a definite affect on the flavor and appearance of the beer - bitterness is rounded out and the beer has a thicker mouthfeel. When the beer is poured, the faucet and gas pressure cascades of bubbles to form when poured in the glass, which produce a lovely thick dense head of foam on top of the glass. With this type of serving, it's key to have a relatively low amount of dissolved CO2, or the glass will be filled with foam only.


tl;dr—We don't know (via science, at least).

Letting alone ethanol, which triggers innumerable biochemical pathways in our bodies, hops itself may affect potency and sexual desire, in males at least, but there appears to be few clinical studies supporting this claim directly. Many articles online appear to have chained together several studies (or played news-telephone) to publish indirect conclusions, many of which oversimplify the effects of estrogen. For example, contrary to popular belief, it isn't testosterone (alone) which masculinizes the male brain and behavior, but rather its interaction with estrogen, produced from testosterone through a process known as aromatization.1 So it's not as simple as more-estrogen-less-sex-drive.

I'm certainly not qualified to deliver conclusions myself, but I can at least point to some of the important studies from which current (mis)conceptions have derived.

1: Wu, M. V. et al. Estrogen Masculinizes Neural Pathways and Sex-Specific Behaviors. 2009. [PDF]

Why some claim that hops decreases sex drive...

Hops contains phytoestrogens,

  substances that promote estrogenic actions in mammals and structurally are similar to mammalian estrogen 17β-estradiol (E2) [...]

Ososki, A. L. and Kennelly, E. J. Phytoestrogens: a Review of the Present State of Research. 2003. [PDF]

Specifically,

  a recurring suggestion has been that hops have a powerful estrogenic activity and that beer may also be estrogenic. [...] We have identified a potent phytoestrogen in hops, 8-prenylnaringenin, which has an activity greater than other established plant estrogens.

Milligan, S. R. et al. Identification of a potent phytoestrogen in hops (Humulus lupulus L.) and beer. 1999. [PDF]

However, it's worth noting that the same paper concludes,

  [...] despite the high estrogenic activity of 8-prenylnarigenin, the total estrogenic activity of beer made using whole hops is still low [...] and no detrimental health effects due to "estrogens in beer" are to be expected.

Anyway, another study led by the same researcher delved into the mechanism of action:

  8-Prenylnaringenin alone competed strongly with 17β-estradiol for binding to both the α- and β-estrogen receptors.

Milligan, S. R. et al. The endocrine activities of 8-prenylnargingenin and related hop (Humulus lupulus L.) flavonoids. 2000. [PDF]

(In case one is unfamiliar with how receptors work, receptors "catch" freestanding compounds in a medium such as the bloodstream, thereby reducing their effects. The phytoestrogen in hops appears to get itself "caught" by estrogen receptors, thereby blocking those receptors from catching estrogen it'd normally catch, thereby leaving higher levels of estrogen in the bloodstream.)

...but it's not that simple!

Again, from these findings alone, conclusions about male potency and sex drive can't be so easily drawn. Hormone interactions are sufficiently complex that researchers are still trying to untangle, isolate, and explain ever-more-specific biochemical pathways. Certainly the average Joe (or journalist) wouldn't be capable of appreciating the magnitude (or triviality) of the effects of biochemical pathways described in researchers' findings, much less draw definitive conclusions about physiological effects like "potency," "sex drive," and how it all affects, say, muscle-building. Not to mention all the other chemicals in play!

As a very example of the latter, one site [link] (which, unfortunately, ranks high among Google search results) is clearly biased, grasping for evidence to "prove" that beer has detrimental effects on testosterone activity. I'm not saying beer doesn't, but their article states that Xanthohumol, another compound found in hops, "blocks testosterone," when in fact the very paper it cites says (in its abstract nonetheless),

  Although hops is commonly linked with phytoestrogenic effects, we identified XN [Xanthohumol] as a pure estrogen antogonist. Interestingly, XN may also reduce the generation of estrogens by inhibition of the enzymatic activity of aromatase, which converts testosterone to estrogen. Anti-estrogenic effects of XN [...] were confirmed in vivo in an uterotrophy assay with prepubertal rats.

Strathmann, J. et al. Xanthohumol from Hops Prevents Hormone-Dependent Tumourigenesis In Vitro and In Vivo. 2008. [PDF]

On top of all this, ethanol affects so many parts of the brain via so many chemical pathways—what's even the significance of 8-prenylnarigenin or Xanthohumol when stacked against ethanol? Do you know?—I sure don't—and probably no one does—else it'd have been stated by researchers themselves, without the "help" of attention-seeking bloggers and headline-hunting journalists.

In conclusion,

I'm not saying these blogs, articles, and threads are necessarily wrong—they might be right, whether right-by-chance, or right-by-empiricism (observation). What I am saying is that they can't be right-by-science, as currently available research seems extremely domain-specific, incomplete in larger perspectives, and therefore not generalizable.

Addendum

The study by Ososki and Kennelly also states

  As potential endocrine disrupters, phytoestrogens may act as antiestrogens and harm the reproductive health of males (Sharpe and Skakkebaek, 1993; Santti et al., 1998). Reduced sperm quality, undescended testes and urogenital tract abnormalities were increased in the sons of mothers taking DES compared with those who did not take the miscarriage preventative drug [...]

This statement is initially misleading as it says "males" instead of "developing males"—a fact not made clear until the following sentence. From the studies it cites (emphasis mine),

  We argue that the increasing incidence of reproductive abnormalities in the human male may be related to increased oestrogen exposure in utero, and identify mechanisms by which this exposure could occur.

Sharpe, R. M. and Skakkebaek, N. E. Are oestrogens involved in falling sperm counts and disorders of the male reproductive tract? 1993. [URL]

  Exposure to diethylstilbestrol (DES) induces persistent structural and functional alterations in the developing reproductive tract of males.

Santti R. et al. Phytoestrogens: Potential Endocrine Disruptors in Males. [URL]

So, more potential sources of misunderstanding and misreporting.


Can I drink Dogfish Head Sixty One four years after the expiry date?

There should be no danger to your health, it just probably won't taste very good depending on how well it's sealed.  61 is 6+% ABV which should be more than enough to prevent most if not all harmful pathogens from growing.  It's also absurdly hoppy which increased the antimicrobial properties even more.

If there's anything fuzzy or slimy floating around you may want to avoid it since the experience may be unpleasant but there shouldn't be anything in there that will actually make you sick.  There's a very specific reason alcoholic beverages in general are given a lot of credit for allowing human civilization to survive until we figured out germ theory and sanitary practices, and that's that alcoholic drinks became much safer than ground water after we invented the city.


When was non alcoholic wine first invented?

I'm sure the "Ancients" drank grape juice. It was probably a delicious treat when it was in season when the grapes were ripe in the Fall. I love drinking the juice from my wine grapes, it's very good! But, without filtration or sulfites, there was no way to store grape juice without spontaneous fermentation, even after boiling it. Eventually something would turn it into wine or vinegar. So, you always ended up with wine whether they wanted it or not. So, yes, they probably drank grape juice, but only for a short period after harvest time.


Egg whites are used in wine and other beverages to precipitate the solids. I'm not sure how this would be done for a bloody mary, but in wine you basically whip up some egg whites until foamy then put them in the wine barrel and let setting for for several weeks. Most of the action takes place right away. You can also use Gelatin for the same purpose. I use it in my homebrew all the time.


Cause of seasonal difference in beer production

One thing you should take into consideration is that this chart certainly represents macro breweries production, once they still have the vast majority of the market-share, as opposite to craft breweries. So, we are talking here mainly about light lagers, known to be consumed as a refreshing beverage.

So, to me, it's pretty clear that the production increases as the weather warms up, peaking at the summer, and then falls down again towards chiller seasons. Considering distribution and other delaying factors, the peak at June would match the peak consumption at mid-July through mid-August.

PS: I don't live in USA, and this is merely a theory I came up with, but which seems feasible to me.


What does Single Turn, Double Turn and Triple Turn mean in brewing?

As far as I understand a "turn" is a term from Contract Brewing.  Though it seems like it's slightly ambiguous term with different meanings depending on context.  In this case it refers to a "turn" using the brewery and includes time in a fermentation vessel.  Which is to say for $5000 you can use the facilities to brew 30 barrels of beer from start to finish, plus extra charges for ingredients and packaging (canning/bottling/kegging).

Internally brewers will also use "turn" as shorthand for "turnaround time" which only refers to how quickly a batch of beer can go from the grain mill to the fermentation vessel and is used for planning how many different batches of beer can be produced in a day.