Our Peregrine Falcon blogs are always popular. This year, one of them nailed the #5 spot in our top 10 posts of 2018.

It seems technical tips related to malt and brewing and anything fun are two of your favorite topics in our Brewing With Briess blog.

When we ran the list, a number of the blogs that made into our “Top 10 in 2018” didn’t surprise us. We know brewers are always looking to expand their knowledge of their craft, and our technical team of pro brewers and scientists are always happy to oblige. Technical and “good to know” blogs make up half of our top 10.

But when you’re not improving your brewing skills, you’re probably looking for something entertaining or informative to do or read. The other half of our top 10 fits that category.

Technical blogs tend to generate the most interest, so we weren’t expecting it when David Richter’s “Abandoned! A Visit to Olympia Brewing” received the most pageviews of any blog in 2018. It’s a great blog with almost double the number of pageviews of number two “Kilned vs. Roasted – Same Color, Different Outcome”. And that received a huge number of pageviews.

Thanks for being part of our Brewing With Briess blog audience! We hope we continue to inform, educate and entertain you and, if there’s a technical topic or fun ‘n’ interesting topic you’d like to see us blog about, let us know. Cheers!

#1. Abandoned! – A Visit to Olympia Brewing. Who isn’t interested in the history of brewing in the United States, especially when it includes a cool picture of “Oly” like this? Dave Richter toured this while in Olympia, Wash., for a conference and wrote this interesting piece.

Olympia Brewing as it stands today, the fireproof keg house is the building on the left—fireproof as they were originally lining the kegs with pitch.

#2. Kilned vs. Roasted – Same Color, Different Outcome. Dave Richter’s presentation of the same name at the BA’s Craft Brewers Conference and American Homebrewers Conference several years ago turned out to be equally popular as a blog. If you haven’t read it yet, this is a super informative piece.

Cross-cuts of Aromatic Munich 20L (left and mealy) and Caramel 20L (right and glassy)

3. Endosperm  Mashing to Improve Your Helles/Pilsner. This is just the type of techy information you like. Our Tech Svcs brewing guru Dan Bies doesn’t disappoint when he’s asked to share some brewing tips with our blog mob. Yes, this is Dan practicing his tapping skills in our Manitowoc Rathskeller 🙂

4. 10 Things You Might Not Know About Briess. It seems a lot of you are interested in trivia. Maybe I’ll post 10 more this year…

5. Welcoming the “New” Falcon Parents. We always look forward to reporting on activities in the Peregrine Falcon nest at the top the 224′ tall Manitowoc Elevator. The birds start coming back typically in March.

6. 9-5 grind. Tech Svcs Jordon Geurts discusses the finer points of milling malt in this popular blog.

7. New Pack Size for Flakes!. This definitely falls into the category of “good to know” technical information…regarding packaging! Mike Killelea who’s usually busy meeting with brewers and attending East Coast brewing events, took time to provide this info about packaging – and uses – for our flaked products. They’re all made fresh at our plant in Wisconsin.

8. Malt storage solutions – what configurations works best for you? We all know the benefits of properly storing malt. Dan Burick, who takes care of our Mountain-region customers, helps sort it out for you in this blog.

9. A Tale of 3 R&D Brews…with our New Dark Munich 30L! New malts are always fun. This one is turning out to be very popular! Dave Richter tells us all about it and offers some inspiring recipes to get you started with it.

Dark Munich 30L beer color 1 – control. 100% Synergy Select Pils 2 – 85% Synergy/15% Dark Munich 30L 3 – 70% Synergy/30% Dark Munich 30L 4 – 50% Synergy/50% Dark Munich 30L

10. Welcoming Greg Niemann to the Briess Family. How exciting to see so many of you check out a new member of our staff! This month marks Greg’s first anniversary with Briess.