I’m off on a grand adventure—some programming notes before I go, and a request for any hot tips you might have.
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Defunct companies are almost never resurrected—but that’s exactly what happened this morning when All About Beer came back on line. Veteran writers Andy Crouch and John Holl performed the miracle.
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Elon Musk’s potential purchase of Twitter (pending approval) gives me a good opportunity to talk about speech, public squares, and the curious way in which regulation encourages more participation.
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Finally, the Beervana Blog delivers exactly what you want in 2022—a 1997 feature! Get out those AOL addresses, friends, because today the blog offers new email subscriptions. Sign up today!
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All the world wants the next IPA. The trouble is that, while they’re churning out scores of new versions every year, too few breweries have the time to dial in their beers.
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The 1926 warehouse at southeast 7th and Morrison has housed two breweries—the Commons and more recently Modern Times—and in July it will get a third. Called Living Haüs Beer Company, it is the project of three established brewers and will focus on lager.
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Molson Coors-owned Hop Valley announced they were reviving Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve. But they did so on April 1. A week later, Molson Coors wrote a blog post expanding on the news. Was it real? A joke? And if it’s real, does it make any sense?
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The Oregon Beer Awards, always curious about new ways to evaluate excellence, this year debuted a new method designed to limit the inevitable randomness of a beer competition. The results showed judging isn’t so random—but can be improved.
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Among living beer styles, rare is the is the case where a single beer accounts for the survival of a whole tradition, but it’s mostly true in the case of saison. Well, a single beer, an English writer, and an American importer.
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The Brewers Association released preliminary numbers on how breweries did in 2021 today. It includes some good news, some surprises, and very little bad news. I have the highlight findings, and a nice list of how this year’s top-50 breweries fared over the past year.
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Last week on Twitter, I posed a question. If you were to tell the story of American brewing post-1980 in six breweries, which would you choose? The answers people gave were so much more interesting than my question.
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As surely as the warmth returns to the earth, lagers return to the hands of drinkers. But please, for the love of god, quit calling those delicious pilsners “crispy.” That’s just wrong.
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"We humans are very sensory-driven and start making assumptions as soon as we see something. The beer business is closer to being in the entertainment business." Josh Pfriem, describing the newly-designed cans that replace the brewery’s 500 ml bottles.
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Trying to describe hop aromas, dizzying in their diversity, has long bedeviled writers and brewers. Global hops company BarthHaas has been developing a tool that may finally help solve the problem.
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Ukrainian writer Lana Svitankova recently brought a Ukrainian specialty to the world’s attention: a strong, sweet golden ale that has become popular in recent years. She’s hoping it will receive international recognition—and it should!—but it really doesn’t need it so long as locals drink up.
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This is the second part of a Sightglass article in appreciation of Hair of the Dog. Founder Alan Sprints recently announced he was retiring, and in this part we hear from others about what Alan and his beers meant to them.
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We expect the sun to rise in the east and our car to be parked where we left it and our favorite pub to be open when we arrive after work. Two years ago, the Covid-19 pandemic arrived, and forced us to confront a world that didn’t match our expectations.
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After 29 years, Alan Sprints is shutting down Hair of the Dog and settling into a well-deserved retirement. For the first Sightglass post of 2022, I met with Alan to discuss his life, his legacy, and what what comes next.
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Auction number one brought in $150 for Ukraine. Today I launch auction number two, with a five year old Bourbon County Stout and two eleven-year-old beers: Deschutes Abyss and Hair of the Dog Fred.
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With one exception, Portland has long been one of the best places in the world for any type of beer you’d happen to fancy. The lacuna has always been cask ale, somewhat curious given that the craft era began with British styles. Now, after forty years, something has changed—cask is surging.
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