It’s hard to imagine a time before bourbon-y imperial stouts were our trusty winter fortification, and yet it’s a relatively recent development. Here’s the story.
Read More
A report on the book tour launch (a full house, many smiles, great performances by Ben and Van), and a note about upcoming stops.
Read More
In the latest Sightglass article, I explore the remarkable ways barley varieties affect the flavor of beer and how craft malthouses, producing malt in small batches, are transforming American brewing.
Read More
The Beer Bible 2nd Edition will be available a week from today. Here’s the skinny on everything that’s new. It’s a lot!
Read More
You may have noticed that the site has been less active than usual around here lately. There’s a reason for that, and now that things are beginning to look more normal going forward, I wanted to comment on it.
Read More
Writers and brewers have identified most of the useful frameworks we use to understand beer. An important one, often hinted at but never fully explored, is national tradition. It’s never been more important to understand, though—especially now amid the birth of the American tradition.
Read More
The Brewers Association announced the winners of the GABF last night, and here’s a brief, Pac NW-centric recap.
Read More
The 20-stop national Beer Bible book tour begins on Sept 23, and we’ve planned events every beer fan will enjoy. Have a look at the schedule and save the date.
Read More
An exceptional new brewery opened in Bellingham a year ago, and they specialize in rustic styles, including Franconian lager. But my fave was a Polish lager.
Read More
We now accept the fairly rigid classification of beer styles offered by groups like the GABF and Cicerone program. Where did they come from, and who decided how they should be organized? The short answer is Michael Jackson, but the longer answer is more intriguing.
Read More
Beer styles are an agreement, shorthand to describe something we think we all understand. But scratch the surface even a little bit, and you fall into an epistemological void. Three examples this week illustrate their paradoxes and predicaments.
Read More
A quintuple IPA arrived in my mailbox and promised to answer a question I’ve long wondered about: is there a point of diminishing return on IPAs, where hop intensity can no longer increase with the strength of a beer? The answer lay within.
Read More
As the pandemic launches into its fifth and potentially most-virulent wave, politicians are stepping back. Private retail businesses are left to make decisions about how to police their customers, and the fallout might last years. It’s a bad situation.
Read More
Pliny was a bright light in the fog. Despite its hurricane of flavors, it was more focused, refined, and elegant than other IPAs of the day. With the benefit of time, we can see that it reset expectations about what was possible, pointing to the future we now inhabit.
Read More
Workman Publishing is being sold. The Publisher of The Beer Bible also owns Storey, an imprint with a number of excellent beer titles. It’s probably not good news.
Read More
For people like me devoted to the culture, craft, and history of good beer, mass market products are like clouds passing through a blue sky. Once the new products were dry beer and wine coolers and now they’re alcoholic sodas and seltzers. They will be passing overhead forever because people like them.
Read More
Of all the interesting stuff that has appeared at this site over the past 15 years, nothing was more important than the forty-odd posts from brewers and one cidermaker that constitute the Coronavirus Diaries series that ran on the site from March 2020 to this May. They’re now available as a book.
Read More
Molson Coors announced it was ceasing production of a bunch of minor brands it owned, including one that hurts Oregonians’ hearts: Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve. It was a beer that helped make the city Beervana, but also a remnant of a dying era.
Read More
Three months ago, we were all excited to be entering a time when life could go back to something approaching normal following 15 months of a pandemic. But now cases are spiking again, and it’s time to take drastic action to prevent a return to shutdowns and death.
Read More
This annual list began as a way of giving visitors to Portland a place to land when they were searching for breweries to visit. It includes the best breweries working in a number of different styles, so any beer fan will find at least one or two recommendations for breweries they’ll love.
Read More