History of the India Pale Ale
By Mark Bowers The IPA as a style is nearing 200 years old and its origin is caught up in controversy. The short and oft repeated story of its beginning is that George Hodgson and his Bow Brewery in London invented the highly hopped IPA in the mid 1700s because the typical beers sent to […]
How Aeronaut uses molecular epidemiological tools to prevent bad beer
By: Steve Reilly Now that every news article includes the words ‘testing’ and ‘infections’, we’re all looking for distraction from this health crisis. Over here at Aeronaut, we thought we’d explain how we use similar science to check on the health of all our yeast. If you can’t escape stories about nasty microbes, why not […]
Meet the AeroBrew: (Into The) Citra Galaxy
By: Mike Smith (Into The) Citra Galaxy Style: NE-style Session IPA ABV: 4.6% Color: Hazy Gold Malts: European Pale Ale Malt, Flaked (Unmalted) Oats Hops: American Citra and Australian Galaxy Yeast: London Ale III (Wyeast 1318) Short Description: Soft, hoppy ale. Notes of tangerine, hints of peach. (Into the) Citra Galaxy, while not a fruit […]
The New (Safety) Standard
By: Julia Piper The line of customers stretches all the way to the entrance of the store, each pushing a cart piled high with pantry staples ranging from pasta to toilet paper, and eager to check out as quickly as possible. At the register, a young woman carefully wipes down the conveyor belt before beginning […]
Yeast Shepherding Part 3: The taming of the brew
Welcome back for the thrilling conclusion of “Yeast Shepherding”. In parts 1 and 2, we’ve taken you on a philosophical journey explaining our impetus for and approach to collecting wild yeasts. Here, I’ll explain precisely how we get these yeasts and bend them to our will (or not). This is the story of how we take […]
Yeast Shepherding Part 2: Beer from thin air
In our never-ending quest for interesting and new beers, we’ve set out on a path that takes us in a very biological direction, focusing on yeasts and other microbes that contribute to beer flavor. This is a path that we’re betting will lead us to a Shangri-La of beer, where new and untold sensations greet […]
Yeast Shepherding Part 1: Why we search for yeast
How many beer styles are there? Well, the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP), which is widely considered to be the authority on beer style guidelines, lists around 114 subcategories for beer styles. To a neophyte craft beer enthusiast, this may seem like a lot to learn, but to any one of the 4000+ breweries in this […]
Aeronaut lets its beaker flag fly
Those of you who frequent the Aeronaut establishment will astutely notice (it is assumed that Aeronaut customers are both astute and highly sophisticated) the dynamic nature of the space–from the art on the walls that changes monthly, to the ever-changing beer menu. You’ve probably also noticed that we put up a new fermenter every few months. […]
Fermentation Fest 2015 Part 2: Fear and loathing at the fermentation festival
A panoply of smells, at once full, fragrant and fetid filled the air. There was a general churning as attendees slipped to and fro past one another. It started off with the demonstrators setting up in the early Sunday morning hours and rather swiftly built to a climax at mid-day with thousands of individuals acting […]
Fermentation Fest 2015 Part 1: The appeal of the fermented
For those of you who aren’t in “the know”, the Third Annual Boston Fermentation Festival is happening this Sunday, October 4 (and it’s free!). Aeronaut will be there pouring beer samples, demonstrating sour beers and fermentation science in the “Science Corner”, and sharing knowledge at the “Fermentation Help Desk”. We are also excited to be […]
Autumn tidings from winter squash
Is it just me, or was today shorter than yesterday? The first hints of an autumn zephyr are in the air. The leaves of the deciduous trees can no longer deny reality: their chlorophyll reserves are running low. Soon, we will be greeted with the smells and flavors of Fall–an old friend that can be […]
Sumac’s Back
The ‘nautiest among you will recall last year’s sumac beer, which featured freshly harvested sumac from the fields surrounding Four Star Farms. The beer, dubbed “Field Day”, turned out delightfully tart and refreshing. It has since become a subject of discussion among taproom patrons who often ask when we’ll have it again. As August draws […]
Butternut miss this one!
Gather close, dear reader, and let me tell you a tale of our latest saga: the makings of our first ever production batch of Lagerfeuer, a smoked butternut squash rauchbier. Though we brewed this beer in September of this year, the story really starts back in September 2013. Construction hadn’t even begun on Aeronaut Brewing Co., […]
Sumac Attack
O brave new world that has such berries in it! Our beer experimentation has taken us to strange new places. This weekend, we are introducing our sumac beer, which we’ve named “Field Day” for reasons that should become apparent. The concept for sumac beer came about around a year ago, back when we were still prototyping beers […]
Co-hoperation
Making a fresh-hopped beer is in many ways like performing an organ transplant (except lower stakes). It’s all about timing and coordination. The whole object is to get the hops harvested and into a beer in as short a time as possible, while handling them ever so gently. We decided to make an IPA featuring […]
Myrcene’s in the air
It’s that time of year! Hops are getting heavy on the bine and need to be cut loose. Hops are widely known to be one of the four classic beer ingredients (along with yeast, barley malt and water), but are still probably the most mysterious to many beer drinkers. I believe the reason is that hops do […]
Building Aeronaut: Cold box-mounted draft lines
To serve our beer in its freshest state, we decided to put our draft lines right into the side of our cold storage box. It ended up being a fun project for us, which we’ve now done twice–one for each set of draft lines. Here are some photos of the process.
Building Aeronaut: Our mobile beer dispenser
As many new breweries are wont to do, we at Aeronaut have taken a page from the homebrewing world and incorporated it into our brewery. I’m talking about a movable draft fridge that had its beginnings as a sort of kegerator (or ‘keezer’ as they are sometimes called). Back when we were prototyping around 12 recipes […]
Make your own beer line cleaner!
As a brewery with a taproom, we have lots of draft lines and they need to stay clean for the beer to taste right. We have spent some time putting together a simple line cleaning system and we figured we’d share our efforts for the homebrewers among you who are wishing to maintain a similar […]
A collaborative Somerville maple beer
As maple season draws to a close, Aeronaut has teamed up with Groundwork Somerville to make a hyper-local beer using maple sap! We have been tapping trees for a few years now, and are very excited to have a beer to share with our community. A few years ago, we started tapping trees in our […]