Today's post kicks off Portland Travel Week. To get things started, I’ll offer an overview of the Rose City, a bit of beer-centric history, and some of the key features of the local drinking culture. Craft breweries follow a familiar model, and if you just go from one to the next, you might miss some of the character behind all that steel.

“Old Portland” is dead. Long live Old Portland!

Americans are increasingly aware of kveik yeast, which comes from the Western fjords of Norway. Too few are aware of the surviving tradition that preserved those yeasts, or how it’s so much more than just about brewing. I hope my description, along with a short film, offer more context.

Standing in front of the taplist at Brygg in Oslo, you might mistake it for a pub in Ohio. After a few days in Norway, one brewery tour, and three sessions at the Oslo Craft Beer Festival, I can tell you we’re not in Ohio anymore.

Ukrainian writer Lana Svitankova recently brought a Ukrainian specialty to the world’s attention: a strong, sweet golden ale that has become popular in recent years. She’s hoping it will receive international recognition—and it should!—but it really doesn’t need it so long as locals drink up.

With one exception, Portland has long been one of the best places in the world for any type of beer you’d happen to fancy. The lacuna has always been cask ale, somewhat curious given that the craft era began with British styles. Now, after forty years, something has changed—cask is surging.

A Lviv brewery shifted production from beer to Molotov cocktails over the weekend, as columns of Russian soldiers marched toward Ukraine’s cities. War, in an instant, changes everything. 

“I love these beers and this tradition,” Ben told me (I didn’t take notes and I’m paraphrasing.) “But it feels a bit strange to be making a perfect recreation of a German beer. I wonder what an American lager would look like if we developed a tradition as rich as Franconia’s.”

I was pleased to see his eyebrows shoot up during his first sip, and I caught him murmur “this is good” as he placed the glass back on the bar.

I spent more than a month on the road, passing through several regions in the US, including stops at something like 44 breweries. Here are some notes on what I found in common in the US, and how regions differed.

Writers and brewers have identified most of the useful frameworks we use to understand beer. An important one, often hinted at but never fully explored, is national tradition. It’s never been more important to understand, though—especially now amid the birth of the American tradition.

We now accept the fairly rigid classification of beer styles offered by groups like the GABF and Cicerone program. Where did they come from, and who decided how they should be organized? The short answer is Michael Jackson, but the longer answer is more intriguing.