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BrewDog has been sold, and for the astounding, low, low price of $40 million. Once again, Tilray was the buyer. Increasingly beer industry’s buyer of last resort, the erstwhile cannabis company now owns 15 breweries, most bought on the cheap.
This blog turns 20 years old today—almost old enough to drink legally! I reflect on what an immense presence it has had in my life.
On Thursday, I’ll be telling the very interesting story about American beer culture in a webinar for WSET. It’s a multigenerational epic and describes the birth of a new national brewing tradition—the first we’ve seen in nearly 200 years. Details herein.
Collectives aren’t a new thing in the beer industry, but they usually involve larger breweries. Two newly-born collectives show how it might be even more valuable for smaller players.
In the first celebratory post of my 20 years blogging, I offer a list of the 17 most transformational developments in beer in the past two decades. Which items made the list: Glitter beer? Brut IPA? The vortex bottle? I offer the definitive list.
Czech breweries understand that we drink not just with our tongues and noses, but our eyes, too. They prize presentation, and three interlocking elements make their beers the prettiest in the world.
Over the past year, pFriem Family Brewers and Rahr Malting have been working on a pilsner malt specifically suited for a brewery making full-flavored lagers and lean IPAs. It could serve as a model for craft breweries and maltsters going forward.
Recent research and analysis reveals the way young adults are using AI to avoid scary social encounters. What effect is this going to have on pubs?
Today, grassroots organizers have called for a national strike in the US, asking businesses to close, and people to stay home from school or work. Breweries are using the event to speak out, with surprising force and transparency.
Brewery acquisitions rarely warrant celebration. But the news that Schneider, the famous Bavarian weissbier brewery, had acquired a nearby monastery brewery with a thousand-year brewing lineage, was certainly one of them
Columbia Distributing announced it has acquired Portland’s Point Blank, a distributor founded in 2003 to serve the metro area’s craft breweries.
The Michael James Jackson Foundation recently awarded scholarships to seven working brewers and distillers. Two of them are brewing in Oregon, and here’s their stories.
Some exciting announcements and updates as the new year begins, including a new podcast, a free webinar, and an important milestone.
Increasingly, Belgian breweries are moving to cans—at least for the beers they export to the US. But this simple package change seems to have had a fairly major impact on the beer. This is an old-timey, think-out-loud rumination on the development.
As the beer industry hits a rough patch, one brand stands apart as a huge success story, with healthy sales and its own social media craze. How do Guinness do it?
Hops have changed a lot in the past dozen years, and this cool visualizer gives a dynamic look at how the industry has changed.
The USDA released its annual National Hops Report a couple weeks ago, and it suggests that things may becoming back into equilibrium. I have the numbers, some analysis by experts, and a few comments about current trends.
It is January 2nd, and you have shaken off that New Year’s Eve hangover and find yourself surveying a gray winter landscape. Night falls at 4:30 pm, but now there are no more holidays to anticipate, just two more months of yuck. This is the moment to get down to your local pub.
The latest pFriem-Beervana collaboration is pouring now (in Czech-style side taps at pFriem’s taprooms), and it is awesome. Here are all the details.
Well, that sucked. As the final sands run out on 2025, I have a look at the carnage—and believe it or not, I managed to find a shaft of light or two as well.
Through war and peace, rich times and financial calamity, Anheuser-Busch has maintained the most impressive system for making beer in the world. In the US, it starts with the dozen separate breweries scattered across the US. So it was very big news to learn that they’re shutting 25% of them down.
Even in a brewery with a self-consciously European presentation, an obscure Belgian-style ale can’t hide where it’s really from.
A number of months ago, I chanced upon a pint of Deschutes Fresh Squeezed IPA. It had been years since I’d tasted the beer, and I didn’t find the thick, cakey ale of my memory, but a pretty awesome banger. Was I just misremembering it, or had Deschutes quietly reformulated their flagship?
In 2016, the very coolest thing to do was scoot down to your local brewery taproom, with its minimalist, industrial chic. You could pick up a four-pack of milkshake IPA in bright labels and impress your friends during the Packer game. That … is no longer the case.
The oldest homebrew shop in America is closing. FH Steinbart was not just a small business, though—it was a critical part of the connective tissue that helped make Portland Beervana.
A reader writes with a question about legacy breweries and their aging flagships. It is an opportunity to delve into an issue I’ve thought about a lot over the years.
In the final post celebrating this blog’s 20th anniversary, I revel in the weirdest stories, happenings, and trends of the past two decades. There were a lot of them!