The Harpoon Brewery is pleased to announce that your backpack will be a little easier to carry on hiking trips this summer; introducing Harpoon IPA and Harpoon Summer Beer in cans. Just in time for Memorial Day weekend, the Harpoon Brewery will offer its flagship India Pale Ale and seasonal Summer Beer in 12-ounce aluminum cans. The beer, which was brewed at Harpoon’s Windsor, VT brewery, is being canned at FX Matt in Utica, NY today. The new cans will enable New England craft beer lovers to enjoy Harpoon beers during summer activities and at locales where glass bottles are not convenient.
Balsamic Vinegar
I just tried adding balsamic vinegar to a beer. Sam Adams Noble Pils, specifically. Not anything like what I expected. About 4-5 drops of vinegar to the beer gave it a mild taste. The second flavor I normally taste in the Noble Pils is the bitterness from the hops, but the vinegar tones it down a lot. There’s still a hoppy aftertaste, but that big hit of the hops is mostly gone.
I wonder how the chemical reaction works. I wonder if it’s just a pH thing. Vinegar is acidic, so that might react with the hop oils somehow. I doubt that it’s just a sweetness thing, where the flavor of the balsamic vinegar evens out the bitter. 5 drops of sugar water wouldn’t affect a whole beer. Would this work with regular vinegar? Any chemists in the audience?
Beer sales dropped by 5 million barrels last year, but small brewers fared the best: Craft beer sales grew 7.2% by volume over 2008, according to an analysis released this week by the Brewers Association. The number of small breweries in the U.S. also rose past 1,500 — the highest total since before Prohibition
