An update 25% into Pub January, with an eye-opening range of activities breweries are offering.
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Today we travel to a time where cars sail overhead and money has lost all meaning as we luxuriate in worlds of leisure. And beer? The year is 2050, and if you want to know what beer looks like, click on through.
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Responding to a recent overproduction of hops, U.S. growers scaled back the acres they cultivated in 2024 in dramatic fashion. Here’s a summary of how that affected the states and individual varieties—with graphs and tables.
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2024 was a year of mixed signals and confusing trends. In this year-end post, I review the major themes, positive, negative, and just weird. And then I finish with a flourish of almost certainly bad predictions!
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In recent years, many people have decided, post-holidays, to spend the first month of the year on an alcohol hiatus. That’s not great for breweries—and honestly, holing up isn’t great for people, either. So this year, whether you’re drinking or not, try #PubJanuary instead.
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In the 18th and 19th century, Brits started using “merry” as a synonym for “drunk.” The state of merriment was considered base and vulgar by the upper classes. So as a matter of cultural conditioning, the King, beginning with George V in 1932, started wishing his subjects “Happy Christmas.”
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In lieu of a year-end best-photos post, today I’m mixing it up. Here are nine photographs from 2024 with a mini-essay describing why I chose it. Maybe a picture with a hundred words is worth more than a picture with none at all.
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Unexpected news—real, hard news—broke this week. Each one of three items was interesting, but they seem to have an even greater force when lined up together. Perhaps, if we look at them in just the right way, we can even discern a lesson.
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They start filling up before five and buzz with the chatter of conversation, the clack of cue balls, and the clink of glassware until long after my bed time. Brewery taprooms are struggling, but my local dive bars are flourishing. Why is this?
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Our little science elves here at Beervana Amalgamated Sentences have been busy crunching the numbers to determine the very best winter beers. Consult now to make yours a happy holiday!
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Molson Coors recently purchased a small Chicago brewpub called Cruz Blanca. This is a little counter-intuitive, since they have been getting out of the craft beer market. But to understand the move, look at a (domestic) Spanish lager killing it in Britain.
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You are no doubt aware of how listicles and other clickbait articles degrade the internet. But you might not be aware of services that generate these stories AND sneak paid advertising into them. A cautionary tale.
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Yesterday, Fintech and the National Beer Wholesalers Association presented numbers of beer’s sales performance for 2024 to date, and things were actually not terrible. Here is an overview, along with the key findings.
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One of the most interesting historical figures in all of brewing history is Antoine Joseph Santerre, a Parisian brewer in the latter decades of the 18th century. He came from a line of brewers, married a brewer’s daughter, and bought a brewery with his brother. He is far more famous for his politics, however.
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A Thanksgiving Day tale stuffed, roasted, and served piping hot.
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The magazine for which I write, Craft Beer & Brewing, has an annual round-up of writers discussing the best beers and experiences they had that year. I didn’t submit one to the mag, which means you can only find it here.
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For a long time, the beer industry has been focused on newness, on finding the next big thing. But a big part of beer’s attraction has always been its stability and continuity. Maybe we’re do for a reset in which we honor tradition as well as innovation.
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Small breweries inhabit an entirely different business reality, one this is largely incompatible with the manufacturing model of an ABI. The latest news tells the story: the divorce is final, and all that remains is dividing the assets.
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I’m not really sure how to characterize today’s post—you just have to click through and read it for yourself.
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The beer world is full of characters, including many who lived long ago. Imagine being able to sit down with ten of them for a few hours over a beer. Whom from among these vivid characters would you select?
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