Books have been the main way we collected and stored knowledge for hundreds of years. In the past decade, while no one noticed, that changed, and books are quickly becoming obsolete.
Read More
People typically talk about “American” or “Pacific Northwest” hops as if they’re a monolith. Yet Oregon’s Willamette Valley, on the wet side of the Cascades, is vastly different than the arid Yakima Valley. The hops grown there are different, too.
Read More
Nothing in our living memory could prepare us for what was to come, and human brains aren’t wired to understand events as huge and transformational as what we confronted.
Read More
I’ve written about beer over the course of something like three million words and 27 years. Almost never in that time have I considered the role beer has played in my own life. Yet there it was, from adolescence forward, through periods when it never seemed to be center frame.
Read More
Two years ago, I was so impressed with an obscure technology called GPT-3 that I thought it merited mention on a beer blog. Last year, AI had become such a big deal I wrote a three-post series. We may have come to the final chapter: mundanity. In my possibly final post, I review the situation.
Read More
It’s only looking back that we realize lives hinge on the smallest decisions.
Read More
Are hazy IPAs the most transformational style in the craft era? A comment on Bluesky—yes Bluesky!—got me thinking, and whether the answer is yes or no, the choices for the title are few.
Read More
I distinctly remember saying the words “people like what they like” and feeling something click. At the time, it was more in resignation: “People like what they like, so what can you do?” But having said it out loud, it became a challenge and then an affirmation. “People like what they like, and isn’t that fascinating?”
Read More
This week, the UK-based Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) announced they were creating a professional certification for beer. But with the preexisting Cicerone Program, is there enough interest in beer education to support it?
Read More
Stray facts don’t help us understand the world. Meaning comes when they are woven together with themes, personality, and drama. A recent biography has got me thinking about how we tell stories and understand the world.
Read More
I have a hot alternate take for you on this fine Wednesday before the GABF. Yes, it’s a decades-old competition, but its value isn’t static—and now it may be as valuable as it’s ever been.
Read More
At the Horse Brass two nights ago, I found myself playing a deeply satisfying game. It’s simple. You just describe your dream brewery, ignoring all those pesky details like business plans, funding, or—in my case—physics.
Read More
Anchor was never just a brewery. The story of Fritz Maytag saving a brewery became a founding myth for American craft beer. Anchor was at once the past and the future, the proof that small breweries could exist outside an ecosystem of commodity canned lagers.
Read MoreAn off-brand website recently posted the latest in the series of supposedly quantified “best beer cities” lists. The problem with these lists—any best cities list, really—is that they haven’t decided what a good beer city looks like. Here’s a run at some better standards.
Read More
Humans, at base, are no more independent than an individual tuna in its shoal. But good luck trying to figure out which direction the school will turn. I think there’s a lesson in there for sellers of malt beverages.
Read More
Today I wrap up AI week with a consideration of the nightmare scenarios—as well as the lesser examples that might be just as bad. What happens, for example, when a distributor replaces its sales team with AI?
Read More
Users can plug the name of living artists into AI generators to get art that looks like Banksy or Jeff Koons or Em Sauter. But should they?
Read More
We kick off AI week with an update. A year ago I first explored AI, but the advances since then are startling. In this post, I discuss the ways it can research a beer style for a new release, name your beer, write a press release for it, and create a label. But the real advantage is the way it will make the creative work we already do a lot faster.
Read More
I’m not a beer geek. I am a beer nerd—there’s a difference.
Read More
Pew Research just released a report on journalists’ attitudes about their profession. There’s just one problem: Pew apparently thinks we all write about politics.
Read More