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Modern Times landed in Portland with an intense amount of hype. I’ve heard reports of twee decorations, mobs of millennials, over-hyped and over-priced beer, and I have been a little anxious to visit. But you know what? It’s both more and less than I expected, in all the right ways.
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Note: post updated 4/12, 11am. Two months ago, Stone Brewing sued MillerCoors over their use of the word 'Stones to sell Keystone Light beer. Today MillerCoors responded to the lawsuit with their own account of events--and they would seem to badly damage Stone's original claims of harm.
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Today would have marked the final day in the eight-day Feast of the Holy Father celebration in Bavaria. While the festival's religious observation ended long ago, one aspect of the celebration, a famous monastic beer, has lived a long and healthy life. Here's the full story of Salvator, which you know today as doppelbock.
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The words of the day are "hazy" and "juicy," used with abandon to describe hoppy American ales. But what do they actually mean? How is juicy any different than "fruity," and just how opaque must a beer be to be called "hazy?" Let's dig deeper.
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For thirty years, you could find a pile of Celebrator “brewspapers” near the door of every brewpub on the West Coast. But this week Celebrator’s publisher, Tom Dalldorf, announced that he was ending the print edition.
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Jason Kahler is the co-owner and brewer at tiny Solera Brewery in even tinier Parkdale, OR, which sits in the shadow of Mt. Hood. Jason has a special love and affinity for wild ales--truly wild--and he shared his philosophy with me.
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Kona Beer is a brand in a larger company's portfolio, and is brewed in large quantities at the Widmer Brewery. The beer consumed on the island is brewed there, at the original 25-barrel brewpub in Kona, though, and it turns out that brewing beer in a state in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 2,500 miles from the nearest hop field, is a fascinating challenge.
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In recent weeks I have sampled three very tasty beers that fit along the continuum of "hazy," but illustrate the ways in which this catch-all category is fracturing and spreading as different breweries reinterpret it to their own ends.
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In an excellent article about Goose Island, Chicago Tribune reporter Josh Noel demonstrates not just how former craft breweries get the big beer treatment, but how folks at the company seem to think they're still embodying the ethos of "craft."
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Heineken has had to pull an ad many, including Chance the Rapper, have called racist. (It is.) How does an ad like this make it all the way to television screens? Maybe the global giant should have more rappers on its marketing team.
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The mysteries of hazy IPAs continue to confound. In yesterday's post, I argued that this style is particularly ill-suited for shelf stability, and two brewers immediately challenged my assumption. That, plus the history of hazies and their increasingly confusing parameters.
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Here’s the central conundrum of our time. Hazy IPAs are wildly popular but made in such a way that, like ice sculptures, they begin losing definition moments after their birth. The 90-day hazy IPA is therefore the unicorn breweries are trying hard to breed.
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There are over 6,300 breweries operating in the United States today. Just five years ago, that number was 2,475, and a chart of the growth looks like the dreaded hockey stick. Have we reached peak breweries?
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The optimism about craft beer's growth fueled aggressive brewery expansions--leading to what many think is an overcapacity right now. That is mirrored in a giant glut of hops now sitting in warehouses. For growers and hop merchants, the consequences could be dire.
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You feeling good today? Calm, happy, relaxed? Well, I've got a little stress test for your Thursday mood. Two pieces of news out this week may leave you unsettled: steel tariffs are already affecting the beer industry, and scientists have engineered a yeast that produces hop flavors.
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In case you missed it, glittery beer has arrived. You may have seen these strange, wondrous beers on social media and wondered how they're made and what they taste like. I spent a couple hours with two brewers who made recent examples and I have your full report on this truly beguiling new beer style.
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Something remarkable and largely unnoticed just went down in Liverpool. That was the site of the annual meeting of the trade group representing the UK's small brewers. At issue was whether to raise the barrel limit for member breweries and allow some very large players to join the club.
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In appearance and flavor, sake resembles wine--which is what it's frequently called. It's right there in the first sentence of the Wikipedia entry. "Sake, also referred to as a Japanese rice wine, is made by..." If you stick around for the full paragraph, though, you'll learn what it really is: beer.
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Today the Brewers Association put out its annual list of largest breweries, and as usual, there were interesting findings about breweries growing, shrinking, and changing form altogether. A brief review of the highlights.
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