With a virus making workplaces potential sites of infection, this isn’t a great time to be a working person. For those of you who make, deliver, and serve the beer I drink, many thanks.
Read More
People have been talking about “independence” in the beer industry for decades. A recent push by the Brewers Association to make this case seems to be gaining traction. One would therefore assume member breweries are happy. So why aren’t they?
Read More
It is almost September, which means fresh-hop season is upon us. But as with everything Covid touches, there are a few changes in 2020.
Read More
Oktoberfests, a daring person might argue, are the finest of all lagers, so rich and yet so balanced. Even a timid one must agree they’re the most underrated. So let us now delight in their annual return.
Read More
The OLCC released numbers for the first half of 2020. Here’s what they tell us about the effect of COVID-19 on the industry so far.
Read More
Who are you? The results from a recent reader survey reveal all.
Read More
When the pandemic hit, breweries had to scramble. They needed to figure out questions like furloughs, federal relief, and home delivery, and they turned to their local brewers guilds. I wanted to see where things stand now, five months into the crisis, so I spoke to a group of guild heads.
Read More
I need your help! It’s time to do another reader survey to learn a bit more about who you are and how I can better cater to your interests. Please take this seven-question, two-minute survey and make this a better site.
Read More
Time travel is a timeless subject of pub chat. How many wonderful discussions have begun with the words, If you could travel back in time…?” I encourage you to continue—but please, get the rules of quantum behavior straight first.
Read More
For breweries hanging by their fingernails, what are the ramifications in knowing we haven’t even hit the halfway point on the COVID pandemic—and that the economy, barring an unlikely intervention by Congress, is likely to get worse before it gets better?
Read More
It’s a clumsy shape, droopy and inelegant. There’s something of a melted-candle quality to it.
Read More
At the height of a beer style’s popularity, it’s difficult to imagine it ever falling from favor. We know from history that no matter how popular they are, most styles eventually fade. Even now, time is busy tarnishing our ardor for once-loved beers.
Read More
A lot of breweries make weissbiers, and some are served worldwide. Yet if we go looking for the classic example, the ur-weiss of the modern era, all roads lead to Kelheim.
Read More
To finish up the series, a discussion of all the other stuff that fills a writer’s time and inbox.
Read More
Book publishing is the other major component of my life as a writer, but that world is changing as well.
Read More
How does a writer make a life when sponsorship money dries up, teaching opportunities are canceled, and magazines and newspapers cut back on writing budgets? That’s not a rhetorical question. Tell me, please!
Read More
We have passed the period of most exaggerated experimentation and now seem to be fine-tuning IPAs rather than remaking them entirely. A few notes on the current state of affairs.
Read More
The president and head of the Department of Homeland Security have called Portland a “war zone” under "siege" by local terrorists. That’s one story. Here’s the real story.
Read More
Things are hard right now—one might even say grim and bleak. But what a tonic it is to poke one’s nose into a pouch of unfamiliar hops and inhale deeply.
Read More
Four months ago, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the U.S. to its knees. But while Europe has managed to stand up again, we are seeing a second wave. What comes next?
Read More