Old Town Brewing invited Huck Bales and I to do a collaboration beer with them to celebrate the city's agreement to quit challenging their leaping stag trademark. We made a a classic Belgian style with a twist. Or is it a modern American style with a twist? You'll have to taste it to find out.
Read MoreAn open invitation to tell your story here at Beervana, plus two other program notes.
Read MoreThe results of the first-ever reader survey are here, and they reveal some predictable patterns (a lot of you are dudes!) as well as some surprises.
Read More"Constructive Criticism" is an irregular feature in which I speak frankly about an example of a brewery not meeting their own highest standards. Today I turn my attention to Full Sail and the way in which the brewery's constantly expanding list of bottled products offer variety without much interest.
Read MoreWelcome to my first-ever reader survey. This short, seven-question, two-minute questionnaire will help me understand you and which topics interest you on the blog, so please please please consider taking a moment to fill it out.
Read MoreModern 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.
Read MoreNote: 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.
Read MoreToday 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.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreFor 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.
Read MoreJason 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.
Read MoreKona 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.
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreIn 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."
Read MoreHeineken 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.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreHere’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.
Read MoreThere 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?
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreYou 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.
Read More
