A Londoner—born, bred, and educated—Terry Foster has lived in Connecticut for the last 20 years. He is fluent in both English and American and will sometimes use both in the same sentence—usually when led astray by someone forcing beer upon him. He holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of London. He currently is an Associate Research Fellow for the world’s major producer of mineral processing chemicals. More specifically, he runs the global technical service function of the company in the application of water-soluble polymers to the processing of bauxite into alumina, the precursor of aluminum. It is a job that requires a good deal of travel around the world and forces him to taste locally produced beers in some unlikely places. Normally an upstanding citizen, he did once get arrested in Poland for having parked under a no parking sign in front of a police station while heading to the local pub.
Foster has been brewing for almost 40 years and isn’t tired of doing so. Indeed, he finds one of the worst parts of his job is that the traveling interferes with his brewing. He was privileged to have been present at the renaissance of homebrewing in both England and America—although the memory of those early days sometimes keeps him awake at night, wondering about the poor quality of the ingredients he was occasionally forced to use. He has written extensively on many aspects of brewing in virtually all of the major brewing and beer magazines in England and in America. He also can occasionally be persuaded to give talks on the subject to interested groups. His first book, Dr. Foster’s Book of Beer, was published in England in 1978. This was followed by Pale Ale, the first in Brewers Publications’ Classic Beer Style Series, and later by Porter in the same series.
He loves Young’s Special, Fuller’s London Pride, Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, and Anchor Liberty Ale—and New England seafood, especially lobster. He used to like the Red Sox, until baseball prostituted itself to money and he could no longer tell from day to day which players were on which team! He hates both the name and lack of taste of “lite” beers and has been known to stay completely sober at parties where the host served only industrial beers. He thinks life is far too short to waste time on drinking bland beer.