If you look closely at your beer industry news feed, you see a lot of downsizing, consolidation, and renewed focus on core lines. The expectation of inevitable growth has given way to a new pessimism in beer—especially craft beer. But that’s probably good news.
Read MoreBlind taste a dozen and a half mass market lagers, and you learn something about this much-maligned style. They don’t all taste the same, and in fact represent a surprisingly broad range. We made a few other discoveries along the way.
Read MoreEpisode two of our Fireside Chat with Mitch Steele, Vinnie Cilurzo, and Noah Bissell is in the books, but you can still catch the recording here. It’s a great conversation!
Read MoreAmid the controversy swirling around the recent Craft Brewers Conference, one unambiguously excellent event happened: the launch of the National Black Brewers Association. I wanted to understand the goals and activities a bit better, and had the pleasure of speaking with the group’s Executive Director, Kevin Asato.
Read MoreAn off-brand website recently posted the latest in the series of supposedly quantified “best beer cities” lists. The problem with these lists—any best cities list, really—is that they haven’t decided what a good beer city looks like. Here’s a run at some better standards.
Read MoreWe are very excited to announce the next Beervana-Breakside Fireside Chat! Tune in next Wednesday to hear a murderer’s row of hoppy talent set the record straight about IPAs. Expect myths to be debunked, legends dispelled, and old bar tales summarily dispatched.
Read MoreEvery week, we get news about Bud Light’s latest performance, and every week it gets worse. The brand is in freefall, and according to most commenters, all because of a boycott by conservatives. But these numbers can’t all be from one boycott. What’s really going on?
Read MoreThe discovery of a new Maryland hop led me on a trail of discovery to the office of Dr. Nahla Bassil, at the National Clonal Germplasm Repository. What I discovered was incredibly fascinating, and went far beyond the scope of a single wild hop.
Read MoreFollowing the hailstorm of criticism that fell on the recent Craft Brewers Conference, I reached out to organizers at the Brewers Association for answers to some of the critiques.
Read MoreHazy IPAs are known for their gentle, sweet tropicality, while West Coast IPAs feature savory, garlic-to-pine notes. In Portland, some breweries have decided to blend the two together. Amazingly, it works.
Read MoreI may be an outlier here, but as a rule of thumb, I personally would never green-light a collab with any packaged meats product.
Read MoreAfter an encounter with a single-hop Talus beer, I have a better sense what this newish American hop tastes like, and I am in love. It’s tropical, but less mango and more mangosteen. In this post, I unpack its unusual but somehow familiar flavors.
Read MoreThe origins for the way John Kimmich makes hoppy ales were many, and as far away as San Diego and Portland. Yet when he canned Heady Topper, “everybody thought that I just blinked my eyes one night and made this beer.” His thoughts on hops and where his offspring have taken IPAs.
Read MoreTwo breweries joined a small wave opening in Portland in the past year, and even in a very crowded market they bring something eaters and drinkers won’t find elsewhere.
Read MoreThere’s nothing wrong with beer styles per se, but they have become so codified and calcified they’re as much a straightjacket as a tool for understanding. We won’t and shouldn’t abandon beer styles entirely, but it’s time to develop a new language.
Read MoreLess than a year ago, three Washington state breweries filed a lawsuit against Oregon to allow them to self-distribute into the state. Suits like this can take five or more years to work their way through the system, but not this one—Oregon folded like a cheap suit.
Read MoreBud Light did a great thing: the company reached out to a winsome young woman with a massive social media following. Everything since then has been a disgrace.
Read MoreOregon’s De Garde Brewing, possibly the only brewery outside Belgium exclusively making spontaneously-fermented beer, turns ten next month. That decade charts big changes in the fortunes of wild ales in the US.
Read MoreHeineken has a new product aimed at an American audience, but everything about the rollout suggests Heineken doesn’t really get Americans.
Read MoreIn the oscillating cycle of innovation and retrenchment, breweries focus on different things. People aren’t clamoring for the newest, most exotic beer anymore, and breweries will contend with this new normal by training their creativity on their business structures instead.
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