Amid the requisite IPAs, the menu offered a pilsner or a vintage 1990s 4.9% brewpub porter. But on that Wednesday, late into October, I was confused. I should have wanted the porter, because it should have been cold and wet outside. Instead, the sunny day reached the mid-70s.

If you are a right proper beer sicko, you already know the GABF announced their 2026 slate of winners yesterday. If you were doing something else and missed the news, I have all the news, with special state-by-state matchups, major category winners, and some home cooking with Oregon’s performance.

After a slow build-up, this weekend we hit the busiest time in the fresh hop beer calendar. For the intrepid fresh-hop hunters out there, here’s a handy guide about where to find ‘em.

“Bars would once have been expected to contain pool and shuffleboard tables, the stink of smoke and spilled beer. Prior to craft beer, those regular neighborhood joints were just bars. Now the exact same places are “dive bars.” In the 21st century we also have “wine bars.” See how a modifier changes everything?”

Yesterday Trap Door Brewing hosted US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson at a political rally for Republican House candidate John Braun. The reaction on social media was spicy.

The iconoclastic and widely beloved Alan Sprints of Hair of the Dog brewing died last night at 66. It is a huge loss not just for the industry, but for so many whose lives he touched. We’ll miss him so much.

The Oregon Health Authority, under the auspices of their Rethink the Drink campaign, is out with a new social media spot that equates alcohol and asbestos. For a project that claims to only be interested in promoting drinking moderation, this seems pretty immoderate.

Humphrey Smith, the patriarch of the Samuel Smith Brewery, has died. He was a man who lived in the ‘70s—the 1870s. And in his later years, his “traditional” approach, lauded in the newspaper obits yesterday, curdled into something darker and weirder.

While I do my civic duty and sit in the Multnomah County Courthouse waiting to be called to serve on a jury, I have another interesting case of civic life in America in 2026. It involves clandestine political events, a Latino brewery and Cinco de Mayo.

In the event, it’s a can of Hamm’s and something water-clear that smells of grain alcohol. (Which turned out to be a kamikaze.) Mark ordered one each for the three of us to sample on our little ethnographic exploration. Tab: $12. For all three.

Increasingly, states are hosting their own beer competitions, and the way they organize them tells us a lot about what kinds of beers people are actually drinking. And here’s a cool thing: we can discern regional preferences in them.

In the final post celebrating this blog’s 20th anniversary, I revel in the weirdest stories, happenings, and trends of the past two decades. There were a lot of them!

Czech breweries understand that we drink not just with our tongues and noses, but our eyes, too. They prize presentation, and three interlocking elements make their beers the prettiest in the world.

Today, grassroots organizers have called for a national strike in the US, asking businesses to close, and people to stay home from school or work. Breweries are using the event to speak out, with surprising force and transparency.

Increasingly, Belgian breweries are moving to cans—at least for the beers they export to the US. But this simple package change seems to have had a fairly major impact on the beer. This is an old-timey, think-out-loud rumination on the development.