Every large brewery in the world is attempting to adjust to the disruption caused by craft beer. The challenge is moving into new categories without damaging the currency of the flagship brand. Guinness is trying an entirely novel approach in the United States.
Read MoreSomething slightly different today—a book that touches only tangentially on beer, but which may leave you feeling better about the country: Our Towns by James and Deborah Fallows.
Read MoreBaltimore’s Union Collective is another example of the way breweries can inject life and community into neighborhoods waiting to blossom.
Read MoreOn June 21, Oregon will become the first state offering breweries refillable beer bottles. The not-for-profit cooperative that oversees Oregon’s bottle bill will run the project, collecting and redistributing bottles for refilling. If the program succeeds, it could become a model for the nation.
Read MoreTwo of the world’s leading beer writers have new books out. Here are reviews of Joshua Bernstein’s Homebrew World and Stephen Beaumont’s Will Travel for Beer.
Read MoreOne of the best new breweries in the Pacific Northwest isn’t in Portland or Seattle, but way down the Columbia Gorge in Goldendale, WA. To get a full sense of the range of the beers on offer, you may have to go visit yourself.
Read MorePortland’s drinking culture is female-friendly, and when you walk into a pub in the city, you see what the numbers reflect--a crowd evenly split between men and women. In Portland, women are becoming increasingly visible as authorities here--as brewers, business owners, and writers.
Read MoreOregon is home to around 250 breweries, and rare is a town of any size without at least one. Here are twenty of the best, geographically dispersed so you're never far from a tasty pint of beer.
Read MoreWhere can you find a brewer with a “lambic farm” who makes his own invert sugar? In the second post in my pre-Homebrew Con series about homebrewers, I profile Portland’s own Bill Schneller, who champions traditional styles.
Read MoreCities grow and change. Density arrives to fill in empty lots, take over under-used developments, and creep toward desolate regions. The old is tilled under to make way for the new. Except sometimes, when the old parts of the city manage to hang on.
Read MoreLast week I traveled to Baltimore to learn more about the new Guinness brewery project unfolding there. I wanted to be one of the first to delve deeply into the thinking behind the project, its scope, and its goals. Today we'll get into the brewery project itself, which is breathtaking in its ambition.
Read MoreI intended to go on a brewery tour when I visited Baltimore, but an experience at my first stop, The Brewer’s Art, sent my evening on a different trajectory.
Read MoreIn this guest post, trademark attorney Brendan Palfreyman explains how breweries can get into legal trouble with their cultural appropriations—even when trademark infringement may not be at issue.
Read MoreNatty Boh is not bad; it is nonexistent. It is carbonated water flavored by the subtlest essence of toasty malt. If you’re thinking about Natty Boh at all, you’re thinking about it too much.
Read MoreA few notes for your Memorial Day morning.
Read MoreA recent kerfuffle between a reporter and his brewery-owner interview subject reveals something important about journalism. The goals of the reporter are not the same as the interview subject. And for readers everywhere, that’s a good thing.
Read MoreFrank Boon started learning the craft of lambic-making in the 1960s, and has become the leading maker of lambics in Belgium. I visited him at his brewery in Lembeek in 2011.
Read MoreOne should never age most beers, and the beers one ages should never be aged very long. Leave a bottle in your cellar that dates to the Clinton administration and it’s going to suck. Unless something very rare and special happens instead.
Read MoreVeteran Chicago Tribune reporter Josh Noel has spent seven years working on a complex and spiky narrative: the transition of Goose Island from indie champion to corporate hood ornament. What he delivers is the most interesting industry book I can remember reading.
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