An update on the brewer compensation survey and an appeal for 180 more responses. The data are rich and interesting, and I think this will be something valuable to those of you who work in a brewery. Please fill out the survey if you havent.
Read MoreTwo centuries ago, Americans drank all day long. Two generations ago, they toasted each other with three-martini lunches. Today the median drinker sips just a couple drinks a week. What happens if these trends continue?
Read MoreAs workers, one of the strongest tools you have in bargaining is information, and knowing what your peers make is valuable info. In advance of Labor Day, I’m surveying brewers about what they earn—and I hope you will spend a few minutes helping me out.
Read MoreWe do so much of our living online that we sometimes forget that our physical environment colors what we think and feel. It has been the hottest summer on record in Portland, and that has a whole city freaked out.
Read MoreFriends, Americans, countrymen, loan me your eyeballs. I come to bury Two Hats, not to condemn it. Actually, I do condemn it. But more, I observe how its tombstone stands as a sentinel of warning—and not just to big, industrial breweries.
Read MoreOver the weekend, I was visiting Brewery Ommegang for an annual event I found unusual and intriguing. On Saturday, I had a moment to sit down and reflect on what I was seeing.
Read MoreA few interesting things happening in and around my life. Well, I think they’re interesting. More travel, book updates, plus a new project.
Read MoreA troubling case in Iowa illustrates the power imbalance between owners and workers. Customers, though, have the final say.
Read MoreDuluth, Minnesota’s new breweries have been credited with helping spark a revival in this lovely town at the tip of Lake Superior. I discovered on a recent visit that this wasn’t the first time a brewery had helped the town get back on its feet.
Read MoreAs the 31st Oregon Brewers Fest arrives this year, it is shadowed by an existential question. What is the role of the beer festival in a city with 75 breweries within a country that has 6,500? More pointedly, is the model of the beer fest itself obsolete?
Read MoreDos Equis is planning to launch a Mexican-inflected pale ale in September. Mexican imports have been in a serious growth cycle for years, so this new beer allows us to test the market. Do people like anything that’s Mexican, or do they like lagers?
Read MoreIn the final installment on my report about Guinness’s new $80 million Baltimore brewery, I look at the brewers and their approach in creating “American Guinness”—and how reproducing the way beer used to be made at St. James Gate might point one path to the future.
Read MoreThe brewers who formed the vanguard of what would one day be called “craft brewing” did so as a way of returning beer to its traditional, no-additives roots. Let’s check in on where it is today.
Read MoreHow many breweries are there out there, further than an hour and a half from a major population center, that have beer that would be buzz-worthy in a large city? My visit to Astoria, Oregon and Reach Break Brewing made me wonder how many others we’re missing.
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Friday marked the anniversary of the biggest deal in the history of beer—InBev’s purchase of Anheuser-Busch. But in terms of impact, a different acquisition caused a bigger earthquake.
Read MoreOne of the best guide books on any subject, and even in its eighth edition and featuring a new co-writer, it hasn’t lost a step.
Read MoreConstellation Brands has purchased its third American craft brewery yesterday. The distance between the purchase of Four Corners and the initial acquisition of Ballast Point, however, illustrates just how much beer has changed in two and a half years.
Read MoreHistorian and archaeologist Alexander Langlands has a new book called Cræft, the purpose of which is to reclaim the meaning of "craft" as it existed before it became a marketing slogan or an expensive item available at boutiques. How might this apply to beer?
Read MoreOregon has perhaps the most robust local market for cider in the country. A large amount of the credit goes to Bushwhackers, the first ciderhouse in Portland, which closes tomorrow. A few words on how important the pub has been.
Read MoreThe headwinds blowing at independents in terms of structural disadvantage, long hours, modest profits, and generational change make their long-term existences tenuous. So to those scrappy, determined, offbeat, and traditional independent breweries out there, I salute you.
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