Homebrewing is the brewing of beer or other alcoholic beverages on a small scale for personal, non-commercial purposes. Supplies, such as kits and fermentation tanks, can be purchased locally at specialty stores or online. Beer was brewed domestically for thousands of years before its commercial production, although its legality has varied according to local regulation. Homebrewing is closely related to the hobby of home distillation, the production of alcoholic spirits for personal consumption; however home distillation is generally more tightly regulated.
The Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) is a non-profit organization formed in 1985 to recognize beer tasting and evaluation skills. The BJCP certifies and ranks beer judges through an examination and monitoring process.
A sommelier, or wine steward, is a trained and knowledgeable wine professional, normally working in fine restaurants, who specializes in all aspects of wine service as well as wine and food pairing. The role of the sommelier in fine dining today is much more specialized and informed than that of a wine waiter. Sommeliers Australia states that the role is strategically on par with that of the chef de cuisine.
AleSmith Brewing Company is an American craft brewery located in San Diego, California. It specializes in handcrafted ales in a variety of styles. As of 2015 it produces about 25,000 barrels of beer a year.
Beer styles differentiate and categorise beers by colour, flavour, strength, ingredients, production method, recipe, history, or origin.
Blinded wine tasting is wine tasting undertaken in circumstances in which the tasters are kept unaware of the wines' identities. The blind approach is routine for wine professionals who wish to ensure impartiality in the judgment of the quality of wine during wine competitions or in the evaluation of a sommelier for professional certification. More recently wine scientists have used blinded tastings to explore the objective parameters of the human olfactory system as they apply to the ability of wine drinkers to identify and characterize the extraordinary variety of compounds that contribute to a wine’s aroma. Similarly, economists testing hypotheses relating to the wine market have used the technique in their research. Some blinded trials among wine consumers have indicated that people can find nothing in a wine's aroma or taste to distinguish between ordinary and pricey brands. Academic research on blinded wine tastings have also cast doubt on the ability of professional tasters to judge wines consistently.
Andrea Robinson is an American sommelier, chef, television personality, and author. She is one of thirty-two women Master Sommeliers in the world and was the first woman to be named by the Sommelier Society of America as the best sommelier in the United States, which occurred in 1997. She has been the recipient of three James Beard Awards.
The Beverage Testing Institute (BTI) is a marketing service company that provides reviews for spirits, wines, and beers. It uses numerical scores and publishes books of its test results.
Kentucky common beer is a once-popular style of ale from the area in and around Louisville, Kentucky from the 1850s until Prohibition. This style is rarely brewed commercially today. It was also locally known as dark cream common beer, cream beer or common beer. The beer was top-fermented and was krausened up to 10% making it quite highly carbonated. Like cream ale, it was consumed fresh, usually as draught beer. In 1913 it was estimated that 80% of the beer consumed in Louisville was of this type. Many local breweries made only this style of beer.
Ziegenbock is a German amber lager brewed by Anheuser-Busch. It is billed as "for Texans by Texans," and distributed in Texas and nearby states. Ziegenbock is the German word for a billy goat.
Food or drink competitions reward products primarily for their "gustative worth" in the form of an award or a medal. These competitions can be classified into different categories, and most awards are product-specific, such as for wines, beers, and cheeses. Others focus on local, regional and/or national products. Finally, the international competitions test all kinds of foods and drinks available to consumers on a retail basis. Wine is probably the most tested drink, followed by beer and spirits.
Gregory "Greg" John Noonan was an American brewing expert who wrote several published books on brewing. His writing credits include Brewing Lager Beer: The Most Comprehensive Book for Home - And Microbrewers (1986) which he updated in 1996 and changed the title to New Brewing Lager Beer: The Most Comprehensive Book for Home - And Microbrewers. He also wrote Scotch Ale (1993) for the Classic Beer Styles Series from Brewers Publications. He co-authored Seven Barrel Brewery Brewers Handbook (1997) with Mikel Redman and Scott Russell.
Matt Simpson, also known as "The Beer Sommelier", is an Atlanta-based expert on craft beer and brewing. Simpson appeared on several national news networks after President Obama's "Beer Summit" to provide a beer geek's perspective on the events. Simpson is also active in the local craft brewing industry through his organization of beer festivals and the "Beer 101" course he taught at Emory University. Simpson is a certified beer judge through the Beer Judge Certification Program, a national hands-on program to train beer judges.
The Court of Master Sommeliers (CMS) is an educational organisation established in 1977 to encourage improved standards of beverage service by sommeliers, particularly in wine and food pairing. From the court's inception through 2018, a worldwide total of 274 people have earned its Master Sommelier diploma, the highest level.
Mirella Amato is a trilingual beer consultant, beer sommelier, and author based in Toronto, Ontario, a foremost specialist on Beer in Canada. She was the first woman in Canada to become a Certified Cicerone and, in 2012, became the first non-US resident to earn the Master Cicerone® certification. Amato is one of very few judges in the Beer Judge Certification Program in Canada to have reached the National Level of certification. She is also the recipient of the 2012 Ontario Craft Brewers Centre of Excellence Industry Choice Award in Food & Beer Matching Development and in 2018 she was inducted into the Belgian brewers' Guild as an Honorary Knight of the Brewer's Paddle.
Italian Sommelier Association, 'AIS' is an Italian non-profit organization founded in Milan on July 7, 1965, officially recognised and legally acknowledged by the Italian government on April 6, 1973, with formal President of the Republic decree #539 in 1973. Its founding members were Prof. Gianfranco Botti, Jean Valenti, Leonardo Guerra and Italian sommelier Ernesto Rossi. Italian Sommelier Association is part and founding member of the Worldwide Sommelier Association (WSA), which is officially recognized across the world, wherever it is present with an affiliate. AIS is one of the oldest and actually the largest sommelier association in the world.
Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela is a South African brewmaster. Nxusani-Mawela is the first person from South Africa to earn a National Diploma in clear fermented beverages. She is also the first black woman in South Africa to found a microbrewery. Her company, Brewsters Craft, introduces students to the science of beer making through training and provides professional breweries a service through beer quality testing. She helped organize International Women's Collaboration Brew Day (IWCBD) events in South Africa.
A barrel-aged beer is a beer that has been aged for a period of time in a wooden barrel. Typically, these barrels once housed bourbon, whisky, wine, or, to a lesser extent, brandy, sherry, or port. There is a particular tradition of barrel ageing beer in Belgium, notably of lambic beers. The first bourbon barrel-aged beers were produced in the United States in the early 1990s.
The 2018 Master Sommelier exam cheating scandal was disclosed in early October when the board of the Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas (CMSA) voted unanimously to suspend indefinitely the Master Sommelier credential awarded to all but one of an unprecedented 24 candidates who had passed its stringent annual membership exam a month previously at the Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis. The decision was taken after the CMSA's board learned that one of its own members, Reggie Narito, had passed advance information about two of the six wines candidates had to identify during the blind tasting section, considered the most challenging of the three portions of the exam. Two of the successful candidates, to whom the information was known to have been passed, unsolicited, were barred from retaking the exam for three years. All the others were allowed to make up the exam in December at no charge; six passed. Narito was expelled from the organization and lost his Master Sommelier title.
