In relatively short order cans have gone from a package customers will grudgingly accept to something entirely unexpected. Now, for certain breweries and certain types of beer, they signal freshness and trendiness.
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Today at around nine in the morning, I will be sipping my coffee under what I hope are clear skies in the Path of Totality (TM) just south of Portland, Oregon.
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Yesterday Patrick and I sat down for a marathon of tasting, assessing, and discussing this phenomenon. We walked through their history, mentioned all the different ways breweries are making them, trotted through a list of characteristic features, and then, importantly, tasted them.
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Each era is characterized by certain indelible images. Circa 1967, hippies in flower-pattern dresses, cut-off shorts, dancing in mud. Circa 1992, skinny kids slouching around in flannel shirts. And circa 2017, people in Red Sox t-shirts standing in line to buy cans of New England IPA.
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Van Havig first learned about Alfas when he was a teenager and read a story in Road and Track about the ten best cars under $5,000. “We are known as ‘Alfisti,’” he would later explain of the underground tribe devoted to Alfas.
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Last week, I carved out time to visit the old city brewery down on the harborside where, as founder Dan Kenary joked, "Whitey Bulger used to dump bodies." And by city brewery I mean, of course, Harpoon--not that other one that has "Boston" in the title but which has never been brewed in Red Sox nation.
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There are a few public spaces out there where this might happen, but honestly, there aren't many where you're going to come into meaningful contact with people with whom you disagree. In most bars in America, you'll find liberals and conservatives drinking amicably next to each other.
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Yesterday two large concerns announced two very different acquisitions. The first was routine: Constellation Brands, who stunned the beer world by paying a cool billion dollars for Ballast Point two years ago, announced the purchase of Florida's Funky Buddha.
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I will not bore you with the details except to say that an incredibly ambitious employee of East Coast Towing managed to spy our Virginia-plated rental and remove it within the 15 minutes we were in the store.
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Don't buy the hype. In an increasingly confused marketplace with thousands of breweries and tens of thousands of beers, groupthink has identified certain winners. They're almost certainly good, but there are so many more out there that are also good--and possibly even better, or at least more suited to your preferences.
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We have this very specific number, international bitterness unit, that is invaluable to brewers. It expresses the amount of bittering compounds in a beer. A brewer understands its utility and limitations. All hopped beers have a certain amount of bitterness, and brewers want to be able to measure it. But it has several notable limits.
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Wayfinder Brewing, the intriguing lager-focused project from ex-Double Mountain founder Charlie Devereux, opened its doors on October 1, 2016. Thereafter followed a gaping chasm of time before the brewery produced a batch of beer made on the house system. Finally, their first beer appeared on June 27.
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First up is a brewery, and one I have long adored: the Lucky Lab. Launched twenty-three years ago in a vast hall that, from 1922 to the Lab's opening in '94 served as a roofing and sheet metal warehouse, it pulled together several threads of Portland culture and instantly became an icon.
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Chestnuts are a big deal in Italy; a major crop, they find their way into dozens of recipes. Milled into flour and used something like wheat, they can be made into cakes. And, as Italian craft brewers soon discovered, beer.
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How do you relate to twenty-five dollar six packs? If I were a brewery with a very hot brand, I'd be very keen to find out what the answer was before I started asking my most loyal fans to pony up six dollars for a can of my beer.
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There are 91 regular beers at this year's Oregon Brewers Festival and another ninety-odd in the specialty tent. How on earth will you navigate this surfeit of choice? By listening to the Beervana Podcast, of course, in which Patrick and I--Certified Beer Authorities*--give you the short list of the beers you'll love.**
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Thirty years is not a terribly long time, really. But in the life of beer, this interval marks a period of radical change. Tomorrow the Oregon Brewers Fest (OBF) will open its doors for the thirtieth time, and looking back allows us to see the distance we’ve come, and remember why the fest has always had a special place in Beervana.
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There it is on the calendar, a holiday as sturdy and reliable as Thanksgiving or New Year's, and one as given to celebration--the Oregon Brewers Festival. This is the 30th running of the beers in Waterfront Park, and I offer a tradition now entering its second decade, the annual OBF by the numbers.
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The American Homebrewers Association launched an interesting project yesterday. They selected one beer from one brewery in each state and did a Secrets of Master Brewers thing: a full recipe and formulation. Where possible, the AHA has tried to track down a classic beer.
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Three descendants of famous corporate families decided the world needed another brewery. This is their powerful story.
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