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Gigantic’s Van Havig offers the most insightful look at the beer industry you’ll find, five years after Covid. “It was life or death for Americans five years ago, but it’s kind of life or death for the small brewing industry right now.”
“Instead of going to their local brewery they’re headed to the store where they can pick up a 6-pack of whatever IPA is on sale. American society has changed for the worse at a time when we need collaboration and community the most.“ Heater Allen’s Lisa Allen, writing five years after Covid.
Five years ago I collected reports from several Oregon breweries as they struggled to navigate the Covid crisis. This week I will have some follow-ups from the same breweries on what has happened since. We’re starting with Alesong because it’s a happy story.
Our coping mechanism was to get through Covid, not come to terms with it. We treated the pandemic like a really bad flu; turns out It was more like cancer or AIDS. Five years later, it’s time to take stock of where Covid brought the world (both the beer world and the world world).
A couple weeks ago, we learned that Portland’s Breakside would be buying a winery and opening two new taprooms, increasing their growing empire to eight locations. But it was their new membership, the Breakside Collective, that caught my eye.
Alesong just released Single Origin, a beer where the barley, hops, and Riesling grapes were all grown on the same farm in Oregon. And the beer was fermented with the yeast and bacteria resident on those grapes.
How well is alcohol doing? Well, not great, but you knew that. Two new reports take a granular look at the nature of that “not great” and reveal some interesting findings.
Last week, a new nonprofit announced the inductees into the American Craft Beer Hall of Fame. They will be familiar to anyone who reads this site, and left me feeling ambivalent. In overlooking less-heralded names, the Hall missed the opportunity to reshape the narrative of American brewing.
Let’s say the cost of aluminum cans rises to the equivalent of five cents a pint. Does the brewer simply raise prices five cents a pint and pass this cost along? Brewer and onetime economist Van Havig has the answer.
In the event, the snow did come, and a bit early. By the time I was strolling back across still-deserted Burnside an hour later, the wind was whipping pinprick flakes in my face, and white whorls were forming on the asphalt. The snow had arrived, more or less on schedule, and the city held its breath.
A lot of news to kick off this February, including two very exciting reincarnations, some eye-popping figures on beer’s economic impact, and the announcement of new tariffs on aluminum and steel.
Herein lies one of the more interesting ironies of our times: there is a distinctive New England school of IPA. It is characterized by strength, sweetness, lack of bitterness, and high residual sugar. But maybe the haze is negotiable.
On Saturday, President Trump authorized 25% tariffs on our neighbors and close allies Mexico and Canada. This was just one move in a hurricane of activity that has destabilized the US economy and federal government.
Culmination Brewing, one of those little-breweries-that-could, finally couldn’t. A reminiscence, along with a consideration of Culmination’s place in Portland’s history.
The best thing about beer always relates to people, so of course that’s where our gaze settles in this revival of the blog-discussion group called “The Session.”
Last week the American Homebrewers Association announced it was becoming an independent nonprofit. In this post I explain how the AHA became part of the Brewers Association and why this change should lead to quick revitalization of an important hobby.
Guinness is treated as if it is one beer, not a brewery. Like Pacifico or Heineken, naming the company names the beer. Yet the beer we think of when we name the brewery doesn't date to 1759, but two hundred years later. Here's its story:
Tillamook’s de Garde Brewing is throwing a huge party with some amazing breweries (local, national, and international) for their 12th anniversary. Info on that, plus how you can score two free VIP tickets.
This Saturday is the annual Baltic Porter Day, a celebration that has spread from its roots in Poland all the way to Oregon, and Threshold Brewing will be hosting a fest for the style. Since it’s become a major beer in Poland, it seemed time to do a big ‘ol post about Baltic porters.
Most of those old “great” fires had burn areas measured in blocks. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the nation’s worst, burned a staggering 3.3 miles of the city. Los Angeles has already massively outpaced that figure, however, with around sixty square miles burned.
I’ve been an infrequent user of Midjourney, an AI image generator. Yesterday writer Eoghan Walsh kicked off a discussion about whether this is a good thing, and nearly everyone agreed it’s not. The discussion definitely shifted my own thinking.
An update 25% into Pub January, with an eye-opening range of activities breweries are offering.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.”
“If we could collectively turn the stoke up a bit, then maybe we'd be the party that everyone would want to go to again. Come on folks, louder, more punk rock!“