Brandon Fields may be the National Football League’s number one zythophile.

He was drafted in 2007 by the Miami Dolphins, around the same time he also tried his first craft beer, Stone’s Arrogant Bastard ale. Shortly after, he started making his own.

“I first started homebrewing about six years ago, maybe a little more, six or seven,” Fields said. “My wife got me the typical starter kit of the two buckets and all the ingredients, so I started doing it by getting the little clone kits and other half-and-half kits where I’d have some specialty grains but primarily liquid malt – boil it over the stove, throw it in a bucket and add some yeast. Two weeks later you bottle it and see what you get after a couple weeks of conditioning.”

Once he learned the basics, he began to experiment.

“I started getting more creative with it,” Fields said. “I’d make a few of my own recipes, or I’d order a kit and manipulate it, and then about a year ago I switched to an all-grain system.”

Scotland-based BrewDog has settled on a location for its first American brewery: Columbus, Ohio. Though the exact location has not yet been announced, BrewDog has agreed to purchase 42 acres of Great Lakes land with plans to build a 100-barrel, 100,000 square foot brewing facility, taproom, restaurant and offices. The new facility will create around 100 new jobs.

The project will be at least partially funded by BrewDog’s Equity for Punks crowdfunding campaign, which aims to raise $25 million, with $4.6 million allocated to the American brewery.

Columbus won out over other cities due to its location, financial incentives and its citizens, according to a statement on BrewDog’s website:

“We considered so many potential locations in the U.S., but eventually it was how much we loved the people of Columbus and how welcome they made us feel on our visits that put Columbus firmly at the top of our list.”

As a vibrant and centrally located craft beer community, Columbus boasts a market somewhat less rooted in East or West Coast beer ideology.

“The interesting thing with Columbus is that it is a major test market,” said Tim Powell of Think Marketing, an Ohio-based restaurant and beverage consulting firm.  “We have a pretty diversified consumer base of people. The craft-beer markets are really both coasts, but here there isn’t as much competition.”

In advance of the season 6 premiere of Game of Thrones, we sit back on our non-iron thrones and ponder what beers some of the major characters on HBO’s perennial powerhouse would enjoy.

(Disclaimer: I tried to only include characters found in season five of the show, but The Hound is just too awesome. Also, mild spoilers follow.)

(Second Disclaimer: This was written prior to the final episode of season 5, so events from that episode are not mentioned.)

Jon Snow – Snow Blind Doppelbock – Jon Snow, Eddard Stark’s bastard son, has turned into one of the most recognizable and popular characters on the show. Played to perfection by Kit Harington, Jon Snow is one of the few characters who consistently has to do a lot of fighting. Whether it be against white walkers, wights, wildlings or ornery Crows, Jon has been forced to slay many men (some of them undead).

I was fascinated by the new American craft malting industry when I first heard it existed— craft malting presents even more opportunity for consumers to experience the regionality of their beer, and it supports the uber-local trend in craft brewing in the U.S. I felt compelled to reach out to the Craft Maltsters Guild and several of its members to learn more. I discovered that, much like craft brewing, craft malting is deeply rooted in homebrew.

First I reached out to Colorado Malting Company (CMC) in Alamosa, Colorado. CMC got its start delivering small batches of barley to homebrewers doorsteps before it expanded its client base to include many of the state’s homebrew shops. The company even has homebrew systems on site where employees brew with all of the different malts (including 2-row barley, pilsner malt, pale malt, crystal malt, chocolate malt, and wheat, as well as gluten-free grains like millet, buckwheat, and malted sunflowers) on their product list. There were also a lot of local homebrewers involved in testing some of CMC’s first products when the company launched in 2008.