I see you reaching for that four pack of IPAs with the geometric pop-art labels. Are you choosing it because the beer is good, or because you are aware it’s what all the cool people are drinking? Status in beer is a small thing, but it's still a thing.
Read MoreJohn Holl is coming to the Pacific Northwest, and I invite you to come to one of the five stops he’s making between Bellingham and Portland—including two next week in the Rose City.
Read MoreNo period on the calendar is more anticipated in the Pacific Northwest than fresh hop season. Fresh hops are delightful and unusual—and fleeting. Here’s how to make the most of them.
Read MoreThe languors of summer have ravaged my schedule.
Read More“Cold IPA” is, aside from everything else, a fantastic name. Kevin Davey discusses the important function of communication.
Read MoreThis is the latest chapter in an ongoing collaboration between the Beervana Blog and Reuben's Brews. In today's post, I address a couple questions involving the hottest beer in the taproom: cold IPA. It is often presented as a new style, but is it really new—and is it really a style? All will be revealed below!
Read MoreToday marks the 15th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death. Yet 2022 would only be his 80th year. What might he have written had he had this past decade and a half to document the ever-evolving world of beer?
Read MoreThere’s a real danger that the constant chemical invention that makes beers taste more vivid is also changing the way we think about them. We know that a chemist can synthesize flavors with a magician’s skill, but the reason we once liked beer was because we admired how a brewer could make beer taste.
Read MoreI’m interested in whether “legend” is a final stage of brewery evolution, a beery transcendence that can’t be revoked once achieved. Can a brewery become a legend and then survive even while backsliding into something un-legendary?
Read MoreIt’s the competition time of the year, when beer writers send their best work off to peers at the North American Guild of Beer Writers. I had to dig through the archives for the pieces I was most proud. Here they are.
Read MoreGavin Lord, one-third of the ownership team that recently launched Living Haus, has a new side project. The news that the former pFriem head brewer is opening his own brewery is perhaps less interesting, however, than his journey getting there.
Read MoreWriters are, more than anything else, the deities of small worlds—they feel compelled to create these universes of imagination. The stabbing of Salman Rushdie illustrates just how real those imaginary worlds can become.
Read MoreFor recent brewery openings highlight a trend that is increasingly common in brewing: new companies taking over the breweries of departing ones.
Read MoreHop terroir is real, as a new paper from Oregon State University documents. But you don’t have to tell brewers that—they already know that hop selection is at least as important as variety, given the different expression state-to-state and even farm-to-farm.
Read MoreAs a periodic reminder, regular beer people basically have no idea what the words on a beer label mean. (It’s one reason they grab the IPA.)
Read MoreTechnology like the internet didn’t really change beer. The evolution we’ve seen in styles, processes, and ingredients looks totally normal by historic standards. But the way we interact with beer is radically different.
Read MoreAn old document on my hard drive from the Oregon Brewers Guild contains a list of all the breweries active in Oregon around the turn of the 21st century. Slightly less than half are still around—but compared to regular US businesses, that’s really good.
Read MoreThree Washington-state breweries have sued Oregon over the right to self-distribute to the Beaver State as well as ship beer to Oregon consumers directly. They have a really good case.
Read MoreA stroll through a forested gorge festooned with ten waterfalls followed by a cold one poured literally in the middle of the trellised fields from which its hops were harvested? That’s called Saturday here in Oregon.
Read MoreOn July 1, New Jersey’s alcohol regulatory issued rules limiting what breweries could do in their own taprooms. They were comically draconian, and outraged New Jerseyans have been filling the internet with disgusted memes. Is it really the case that NJ wants these taprooms to fail, and if so, who benefits? I spoke to one man with some answers.
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