Did you ever wonder if the art on a beer can might have been generated by AI? Increasingly, the answer is likely to be yes. Let’s look examples from two breweries to see where this is all headed.
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On Monday night, Cascade Brewing announced it was closing, effective immediately. It was one of the most indelible of the golden-age sour breweries, and its beers were truly unlike any others on the market. A remembrance.
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How many tanks are sitting empty in the brewing industry? Excess capacity is one way to assess the health of a market, and looking at figures from the Brewers Association, things don’t look good.
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No top ten breweries list this year. But I can’t leave you entirely in the lurch, so here’s Portland’s brewery of the year. As a fun factoid, it has never appeared on one of my top-ten lists, either. Who says beer isn’t exciting anymore?
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Cask ale is on life support in its home country, and it’s not because the beer isn’t delightful. When fresh, it is. The problem is that old orthodoxies have defended an indefensible method of serving, one that guarantees the beer goes stale very quickly. It never had to be this way.
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High school smoking and drinking is down sharply from highs a half-century ago. This is excellent news.
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In an ambitious new enterprise of Beervana Amalgamated Sentences, researchers have been assembled to identify the superlatives of the beer world. In today’s inaugural edition, they list the finest hops in the world.
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Chobani owner Hamdi Ulukaya has purchased Anchor Brewing, including the building, brewhouse, and brand. Who is Ulukaya and why did he buy the brewery?
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When a brewer tweaks the formula and gives a name to their new creation, we tend to want to use the lens of “style” to understand what’s happening. That’s not always the best way to think about things, though.
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Art Larrance, the founder of Portland Brewing and the Oregon Brewers Festival in the 1980s and the Raccoon Lodge and Cascade Brewing in the 1990s and 2000s, died over the weekend. He left a large legacy and helped create the culture that defines the state.
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Is May the season of our discontent, or is there just something in the air? Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of grumbling about hazy IPAs, a sense of lost fun, and a generalized mood of dyspepsia. But I think things are pretty good.
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What’s the best German pilsner? Only a fool would dare answer such a question. But important?—that might be easier to answer. In a field of beers with descending punchiness, one pilsner has managed to remind us that this is a bitter style of beer.
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Winning awards and accolades isn’t enough to make a beer a classic, like Harvey’s Sussex Best or Saison Dupont or Schneider Weisse or Pliny the Elder. It takes decades of time, thought, and refinement. pFriem’s Pilsner is a case study in that unfolding process, and why it’s such a long journey.
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I relate strongly to the idea that it’s harder to find anything new in beer, and that so much seems repetitious. But as an old I often find myself coming up short and asking: is the beer world really less interesting, or am I?
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I lost my internet this week. I did not enjoy the experience.
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Does it matter where a company makes its beer? In Bury St Edmunds, Greene King is abandoning their grand 225-year-old brewery for a squat, soulless plant. While that may pencil out in the ledgers, will they lose something essential along the way?
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Nine years ago, almost to the day, we recorded our first episode of the Beervana Podcast. All things must end, and it is with deep gratitude and appreciation that we announce the release of our last show. We have a few words going out.
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A wonderful little trend has been building in Portland for years, but I’ve been hesitant to draw attention, lest the harsh sunlight prove fatal to the delicate shoots. But now it seems safe: cask ale has become a real thing.
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Books have been the main way we collected and stored knowledge for hundreds of years. In the past decade, while no one noticed, that changed, and books are quickly becoming obsolete.
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Adam Milne started Old Town Brewing in 2011, but it stood on the shoulders of a Portland institution, Old Town Pizza. This month the downtown landmark turns 50, giving us a chance to reflect on a half-century of life.
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