How did the Pacific Northwest develop such a robust brewing scene so early? How was it practically born with a taste for hops? And where was the first craft-era IPA brewed? The answers all lead to Yakima and one of the great characters in craft brewing.
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A video clip of John Keeling discussing Fuller’s Vintage Ale—a lost fragment discovered this morning.
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Over the weekend, protests broke out across America, ostensibly over the murder of George Floyd. But amid a collapsing economy and growing death toll, there’s so much to protest.
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At Brouwerij t’Verzet, the young men may look like craft brewers, but they’re not interested in “innovation.” Here in West Flanders they plan a kind of restoration—making oud bruin, the regional specialty, a beer as broadly available as it was in the 1970s and ‘80s.
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Some brewers call their dry-hopped lagers “Italian pilsners,” but there’s more to it than that. Let’s check in with Agostino Arioli, the man who invented the style at Birrificio Italiano.
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In places that are reopening, tensions abound. “I know some folks who aren’t willing to wear masks have the cavalier attitude: ‘well, I’m not worried about getting sick.’ And that’s fine, but I’m worried about me and my staff, so I’ll keep this mask on and sanitize your picnic table when you leave!”
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Among the unloved styles, which is the most unloved? And for those of you who love them anyway, is there hope?
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Pilsner Urquell’s ubiquity obscures its importance—and also its general weirdness. Yet this is easily the most influential beer ever made, and one with a history deeply scarred by the darkness of empire and war. It is also, for those who taste carefully, a totally bizarre beer that is quite different from those it inspired.
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Last Thursday afternoon, Oregon Governor Kate Brown gave the green light for counties in Oregon to reopen businesses in most of the state. Below are accounts from a few breweries about the decisions they made about reopening and why they chose their present course.
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It’s been two months to the day since I had a pint of beer in a pub. In that time, alternately feeling like ten years or ten minutes, we’ve inherited a new world.
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So much in life has become politicized that it’s hard for any domain to resist being pulled into the culture wars. Craft beer seems to be an exception.
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Anchor Steam forms the connective tissue binding the older American tradition of European brewing and the inventive era of craft brewing that followed. The processes used to make Steam Beer cast backward, but the formulation created the blueprint craft breweries would use when they emerged a decade later.
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In the latest edition of the Coronavirus Diaries, Old Town’s Adam Milne tells us how big banks let him down—but a little, local brewery came to the rescue. Meanwhile, Van Havig offers a typically trenchant take on the current situation, along with an update about the second taproom in planning when the virus hit.
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In the latest edition of the Coronavirus Diaries, Lisa Allen updates us on Heater Allen (and offers a touching personal aside), Ben Parsons gives great analysis of the Baerlic’s actions of late, and Matt Van Wyk describes the challenges and opportunities at Alesong.
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A story Fritz Maytag told in 2010 would seem to complicate the narrative about the “first American IPA.”
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When things are dire, seek safety and comfort of the familiar, which salves our frazzled temperaments. That classic flagship reaches a different part of our consciousness, the place hankering some reassurance amid a world with too much change.
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Even though many of us are cooped up inside our little pockets of stasis, the world continues to move forward. Here are a few interesting things underway.
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During this time of pandemic, when we have more time for reading than exploring new beers, I thought it would be a great time to explore some classic, much imitated (but rarely equaled) beers and what makes them tick.
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I’ve been joking that it’s been slightly deflating to learn that your site is less a place of intrinsic interest than one where bored workers rest their eyes as they avoid work, but this pandemic has brought hard truths to us all.
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