No period on the calendar is more anticipated in the Pacific Northwest than fresh hop season. On this Labor Day—the unofficial start date of the green season—here’s a primer to help you navigate your way to the very best pints.
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“We have a secondary yeast that is right in the background called Debaryomyces hansenii, and after the brewery yeast is knackered and has completely given up, there’s a long lag phase and then that kicks in and goes through a secondary fermentation”
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What makes an iconic brewery? I wonder if sometimes it’s the distance from a major city so many of them seem to reside. Living out on the high desert of Eastern Oregon has given Barley Brown’s the freedom to make beers with a definite identity.
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Despite some anxiety that Americans prefer beer less than they used to, the numbers tell a different story.
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Perhaps you’ve seen “West Coast pilsner” on a taplist this summer. It is starting to look like a real style, and when made well, a total delight.
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There are a lot of new products and agents and ingredients on the market that help amplify or transmute or, in some cases, replace hops. But it turns out that good, old-fashioned hops remain the key ingredient in those IPAs we love.
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It’s too hot for normal blogging—but just the right temperature for these hot takes! As you hide from the heat, I invite you to read and retort. What else can we do on a 100-degree day?
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Here’s the latest Fireside Chat audio and video. The discussion was more intimate, frank, and searching than our earlier chats, perhaps because it touched a particular soft place these breweries have. Namely, how does a brewery live, thrive, and survive selling something other than IPAs in a world that just wants hops?
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What is the state of the art in brewing West Coast IPAs? pFriem took that question as its brief and this week releases a new year-round beer that collects all the tricks, techniques, and ingredients that characterize the style. Here’s what they came up with.
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Who had “ABI will sell off seven craft properties plus its weird, lame Shock Top brand to a weed company for $85 million” on their bingo card for this fine Monday? It’s pretty big news around these parts, because two of the brands are big in Oregon.
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With the release of pFriem’s West Coast IPA this week, I’m taking the opportunity to delve into the style—if it can be called that—more deeply. Soon we’ll discuss how pFriem interpreted the style, but first, how do customers understand it?
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At the Horse Brass two nights ago, I found myself playing a deeply satisfying game. It’s simple. You just describe your dream brewery, ignoring all those pesky details like business plans, funding, or—in my case—physics.
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Join us next week for the latest Fireside Chat. Tune in live on Wednesday, August 9 at 4pm Pacific / 7pm Eastern, or look for the video afterward. The panel this time will include Dan Carey (New Glarus), Alex Ganum (Upright), and Bill Arnott (Machine House).
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What, precisely, is a hopback, and is it identical to a whirlpool? For this explanation we turn to Miles Jenner, the longtime Harvey’s brewer, who describes how the vessel works and why it was once a mainstay among traditional British breweries.
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I enjoyed a lot of wonderful beer in my visit to Oklahoma, but the IPAs Jake Keyes is making at Oklahoma City’s Skydance really stood out.
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On a recent post, a commenter wrote, “Craft beer has very few stories left to tell.” It echoed a theme in a recent newsletter from Boak and Bailey. But is beer really played out? Hardly.
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Whether or not you have been to Oklahoma or ever plan to go, it’s worth taking an ethnographic look at a young and developing beer scene that contains its own character and lessons. You’re doing fine, Oklahoma!
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An interesting data point from a company that tracks on-premise alcohol sales. In the months since the Bud Light fiasco, an unexpected beneficiary has entered the frame.
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Before hazy IPAs (TM) came along, many IPAs in the Northwest were pretty hazy. That’s no longer the case.
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Anchor was never just a brewery. The story of Fritz Maytag saving a brewery became a founding myth for American craft beer. Anchor was at once the past and the future, the proof that small breweries could exist outside an ecosystem of commodity canned lagers.
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