Good Riddance (2025 in Review)

The annual year-end wrap-up post is a tradition for newspapers and bloggers alike— including me. I have been noodling on this post for a couple weeks, but it has continued to stymie me. By really any measure, it has been the worst year in my lifetime. In terms of beer, it has been especially disastrous here in Oregon—and I’m not really sure what to make of that, either.

It might be easiest to start with a timeline, which at least has the virtue of brevity, to remind us of how crap 2025 has been:

Jan 20: Donald Trump takes office and kicks off the most corrupt, anti-democratic presidency in American history, one affecting all Americans, including US breweries.
Feb 2: Portland’s Culmination brewing closes.
April 2: Trump carries through on his “liberation day” tariffs, part of a rolling series of on-again, off-again, on-again taxes that wreak havoc on American business, very much including breweries.
May 6: Assembly, Portland’s sole Black-owned brewery (and best source for Detroit-style pizza), announces its closure.
June 1: Martyn Cornell dies. Although his name isn’t broadly known, Martyn corrected scores of romantic facts about brewing history and completely changed the way we understand its evolution.
July 23: The Brewers Association reports sales were down 5% over the first half of the year.
August 30: Berlin’s only dedicated Berliner weisse brewery, Schneeeule, announces its closure.
September 30: Donald Trump announces he’s sending federal troops into “war-ravaged Portland,” where a handful of protesters, some dressed in fanciful animal suits, gather in front of an ICE building.

October 1: Portland’s Upright Brewing announces it will close at the end of the year. Upright was one of the best breweries not just in Oregon or the U.S., but the world, and offered a delightful alternative to IPA-focused approaches in town.
Nov 14: Oregon’s Rogue Ales abruptly closes. A craft brewing pioneer, it was one of the country’s largest craft breweries at the time of its closure.
Nov 24: Chicago’s Siebel Institute, the country’s oldest brewing school at 157 years, announced it was moving to Montreal, in part because of U.S./Trump administration antagonism toward foreign students.
Dec 8: FH Steinbart, the country’s oldest homebrew shop and a key player in Oregon’s craft brewing renaissance, closes after 108 years.
December: The Brewers Association releases a statement saying that the second half of the year was worse than the first half, which was down 5%, and that for the second year in a row, brewery closures were outpacing openings.

😱

Of course, the year wasn’t entirely, unremittingly terrible. Despite the closures and lost sales, many breweries are actually doing fine. Once again, I was impressed with the beer I sampled, and I think we can all agree that this remains a golden age for good beer.

As one example, UPP Liquids debuted over the summer. Comprised of the award-winning 10 Barrel team Tilray fired in 2024, they came out of the gate like a rocket, winning five medals at the GABF (!) and brewery of the year. It’s an example of the knife’s edge in Oregon, which has maxed-out its percentage of local-beer drinkers: there are so many good brewers and breweries that there’s no margin for error or give in the market.

During the COVID years, we saw a brewery retrenchment in terms of innovation and product diversity, but last year we began to see some renewed growth and change in the kinds of beers breweries were making. The West Coast has reasserted itself post-hazies as the land of hops, and we’re seeing interesting evolution in that nexus between WC pilsners and WC IPAs. After thirty years, hoppy ales haven’t stopped evolving out West.

We’ve been reading about the predicted “year of the lager” for the past decade, and in 2025, it had quietly arrived. Taken as a category, lagers have now elbowed their way into second place in the craft market. Most breweries offer at least one lager, and it is a common trend to see breweries offer a whole family. Whereas hoppy ales once drove customer interest, by 2025, it was different flavors of lagers. Go into a brewery or restaurant, and you’ll see not just pilsners and Oktoberfests, but Italian-style pilsners and Czech-style dark lagers. Many places now advertise their Czech-style side-pull taps.

A Strata-hopped, prickly pear ale and part of the Oregon Homegrown project.

That’s an interesting development on its own, but I have been closely watching how brewers are beginning to craft distinctive American versions of lagers as another hallmark development. These beers may lean toward IPAs (like WC pilsners) or traditional European lagers, but increasingly they’re made with American ingredients and include characteristic (if unmentioned) American practices of whirlpool and dry-hopping. The next five years are going to be a lot of fun for drinkers as an American lager-brewing tradition comes into focus.

Many publications include their most-read articles/posts of the year, but I’ll spare you my list. Still, beer writing is an important proxy for industry health, and 2025 was the best year since Covid for good writing. I can tell even in my own writing how much interest I’m having at any given moment, and I enjoyed writing about: Baltic porter (with a follow-up later this week), that West Coast IPA/pilsner convergence, quick lagers, the new, mundane status in which craft beer finds itself, romantic facts, the newly-named Dolcita hop and the new methods behind its breeding, and the evolution of Fresh-Squeezed IPA. Each year, I wonder if the subject of beer will serve up opportunities for new, original writing and thinking, and every year, it does. Last year was above-average in that capacity.

The blog has been relatively healthy as well. Thanks to AI, online media sites are in real trouble. Google’s new AI summary means people don’t click through to websites, and traffic at some sites has fallen up to 50%. Traffic here, thanks to a strong finish to the year, has been basically flat—which is a lot better than I expected. Moreover, comments on the blog are way up, and it feels a lot more interactive these days. Thanks so much for contributing to the site!

Finally, I spent the year working on my other job at Celebrate Oregon Beer. When I started that project, I hoped it would not overly impinge on either the time I had for my regular writing, nor on the subjects I covered. You are the final judge of that, but after a bit more than a year, it seems like I’ve found a nice balance. Indeed, the two halves of my professional life form a Venn diagram, with some beneficial overlap. I ended up working on a couple projects that brought me closer to Oregon beer than I have been solely as a writer, and one of them, the research Celebrate Oregon Beer did in conjunction with Oregon State, will materially improve the way we understand fresh hops. I have really tried to only mention Celebrate Oregon Beer over here when I thought you’d actually be interested, so let me know how that worked out.

As the new year dawns, I have to admit that I’m not especially hopeful. Whatever your political leanings, you can probably agree that the American political system is in crisis—one we will not exit in 2026. The economy is not healthy and there are a bunch of shoes left to fall on that score that will worsen matters for individual Americans. A weak economy isn’t good for the beer industry, either, so I don’t expect a rebound to a period of growth. That said, I do have a couple interesting projects in the works, including a new podcast. We are just going to have to create meaning in a world, even when it is not particularly healthy on its own. We may not be able to fix entire national economies, but we can try to make progress in our own little spheres. One great thing about the beer industry is its resilience and general good spirits. Even if sales sag, folks are going to be doing fun stuff, and I hope to participate in those. Stay tuned.

So goodbye 2025; don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Let’s hope for some improvement in 2026.