The Ballard neighborhood’s four-square-mile footprint may be home to more breweries and brewery taprooms than any similar tract in the world.The ghost in the machine of beer is culture, and while we can’t quite explain it, places like Ballard continue to prove its power.
Read MoreThe Siebel Institute has just released a recipe celebrating their 150th anniversary that any brewer can make—including homebrewers. It looks like a fun beer.
Read MoreIn the annual tradition of year-end lists, I bring you my idiosyncratic, highly individual list of the best beers I had last year. Even writing the post made my mouth water!
Read MoreAt a recent beer dinner, a non-alcoholic stout paired with a decadent chocolate dessert produced unexpected alchemy.
Read MoreA reminder as we enter this holiday season that books make fantastic gifts—and also serve to support your local writer. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.
Read MoreIn small steps, Gigantic Brewing has evolved backward, starting as a production brewery and, this past week, opening a brewpub. It features international food, cask ale, and Japanese katanas. Stuffed fish to come.
Read MoreFor decades, Yorkshire’s Samuel Smith Brewery managed to do things their own, very weird way, seemingly flouting the rules of business, if not physics. But a three-year pandemic may have changed the calculus.
Read MoreFor obvious reasons, accomplished brewers don’t love people constantly focusing on their gender. Any brewer who manages to work their way up from keg washer to celebrated brewery owner deserves attention and respect, and yet it’s something of a watershed moment for Portland to see a woman do this.
Read MoreA holiday is almost upon us, and winter is coming. How do you plan to celebrate?
Read MoreIf you build a city around the “presence” model—transportation systems for rush hours, buildings with office space, restaurants and taverns to feed and water all those daily migrants—what happens when they stop showing up? What happens if they just don’t leave their homes?
Read MoreQatar had 12 years to settle on its World Cup alcohol policy, but decided at the last minute—yesterday—to move Budweiser’s very expensive promotional beer tents outside the venues. This is not the first time a religious city has had to decide what to do with marauding, beer-drinking heathens.
Read MoreForty percent of America’s breweries are small neighborhood affairs that, prior to 2020, were fun and rewarding little businesses. With Covid, inflation, supply-chain issues, and difficulties getting to market, how many still are? In Portland, one of them just called it quits.
Read MoreJust spitballing here, but how do you feel about velvet ale? Or maybe satin or velveteen ale, for the slightly mysterious touch? Kansas prairie ale? Caramel macchiato? Someone out there may have a great name, and who knows—it might launch the next hot style!
Read MoreIn the latest Sightglass post, I look at the modern era of American brewing, born around 2012, as hoppy ales became the ascendant craft style in America. What do a selection of breweries founded that year tell us about where we were and how far we've come?
Read MoreAfter an inexplicable two-year hiatus, Brewer Vignettes are back. Today we feature Guinness’ Stephen Kilcullen, who was cagey about an unexpected part of the process: fermentation and maturation.
Read MoreA massively over-spiced bottle of holiday ale from one of America’s grand old craft breweries, not to mention a cringey line extension at odds with the brand, have me worried.
Read MoreIt appears Elon Musk has actually acquired Twitter after all. But whether that’s good news or bad, the major social media sites are in big trouble. Now that legacy media is good and truly gutted, the troubling question is this: what comes next?
Read MoreNearly all the beer in the world is made in a professional brewery, or in small batches for home use. Once, brewing on a scale for non-commercial community consumption was much more common, and a few places still practice it.
Read MoreThe annual Norwegian farmhouse ale festival is remote (even in Norway) and tiny. But that’s what makes it a special event.
Read MoreNorway boasts three major farmhouse brewing regions, and in each place the brewers make beer like each other—but differently from the other regions. Why?
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