It’s one thing to call a two hundred year-old brewery that makes the exemplar of a certain beer style a “world classic.” But what does it mean to call a ten year-old brewery that?
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The Schehrer Award honors a brewer’s lifetime achievements.
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Technology is disrupting not just how but what we pay, and has the whole enterprise of tipping teetering near collapse. Perhaps it’s time to say good riddance.
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Organizers announced the winners of the annual Oregon Beer Awards last night. A few bites on the winners.
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A team of Irish researchers just published a paper about their project to recreate a 16th-century Irish ale using period ingredients, equipment, and processes. Along the way, they surfaced quite a few things I didn’t know about beer made nearly 500 years ago.
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Humans, at base, are no more independent than an individual tuna in its shoal. But good luck trying to figure out which direction the school will turn. I think there’s a lesson in there for sellers of malt beverages.
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Craft beer is suffering a real identity crisis as consumers move on to other beverages. But is it also an existential crisis or something more cyclical? Here’s a reason to think it may be the latter.
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For years and years, you could count on the craft segment to grow. Light beer, FMBs, cider—they might bounce around, but craft beer was sure and steady. That is, until the past year. Now craft looks like the anchor dragging down the industry.
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For such a simple little beer, helles lager is a challenge to make—or at least make very well. Josh pFriem has been honing his example for decades, and it gets its big debut this month as the latest six-pack offering from pFriem.
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Don’t tell me the curse of cheater pints (glasses containing fewer than 16 fluid ounces) is back?!
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We had a wonderful discussion about lager with Lisa Allen (Heater Allen), Ashleigh Carter (Bierstadt), Jack Handler (Jack’s Abby), and Will Jaquiss (Meanwhile). I know very few of you got to see it live due to “technical glitches,” so here’s the video.
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Next Friday, March 24th, Reverend Nat’s will debut a new taproom in Southeast Portland, alongside a new cart pod with ten food trucks. The new location marks a shift in focus from the cidery Reverend Nat’s was planning to be at the start of the pandemic, but one that will look a lot more like the funky, experimental operation Nat started back in 2011.
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Coming March 15 (free! and open to the public!): the first Breakside/Beervana Fireside Chat. We will be joined by Heater Allen’s Lisa Allen, Jack Hendler from Jack’s Abby, and Ashleigh Carter from Bierstadt—plus possibly one more special guest. The discussion: how popular is craft lager, really? Click through for details.
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The start of the Covid pandemic turns three today. It has affected beer in large and small ways that would have been, absent a disruption as profound as a pandemic, unthinkable three years ago.
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Anheuser-Busch has been in the news lately. In one of those “how it started/how it’s going” posts, I check in with the world’s largest malt beverage company.
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Just six months since it launched, Living Häus is making some of Portland’s best beer. In this post, I talk to Mat Sandoval and Conrad Andrus to see what makes it tick.
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Some clever breweries look back when they’re seeking to move forward, recognizing that history may contain a hidden gem that, dusted off and repurposed, might delight a modern audience. Here’s a technique that’s ripe for experimentation.
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Portland’s all-women showcase, SheBrew, is back for an eighth year. But even if you live far from the Rose City, there’s a reason to tune into what this represents.
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Coming March 15 (free! and open to the public!): the first Breakside/Beervana Fireside Chat. We will be joined by Heater Allen’s Lisa Allen, Jack Hendler from Jack’s Abby, and Ashleigh Carter from Bierstadt—plus possibly one more special guest. The discussion: how popular is craft lager, really? Click through for details.
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Why are some fests dying or dead, while the Festival of Dark Arts was the hottest ticket around? A week after the event, I look at what makes a successful fest—and how others might use it as a blueprint for success.
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