Even though they’re only a couple of years old, The Bruery in Southern California is the current darling of the Brewinati (did I just make up that word?), and everyone online was raving about their 2 Turtle Doves over the holidays—the second in their ambitious “12 Days (Beers) of Christmas” series, w

25 Dodici is another beer I’d featured on last year’s Advent Calendar: a strong Winter Warmer from Birra del Borgo in Italy, which I speculated had not been actually brewed since 2008. I must have been wrong about that, because imagine my surprise when this beer popped up at Whole Foods this past winter! Yes, [.

This past holiday season was the first year I remember seeing Goose Island Christmas Ale available here in Bend, and was also the first beer I picked for last year’s Advent Calendar—needless to say, it was one I knew I had to try (and had been wanting to for a while). Goose Island is old-school [...]

Portland’s MacTarnahan’s holiday offering is Hum Bug’r: an easy-drinking Porter wrapped up in packaging reminiscent of something you’d see in an indie graphic novel. The “hum bug” part of the name naturally makes you think of Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol—though MacTarnaha

It’s the last full week of the month so that means it’s time for Theme Week here at The Brew Site! This week I’m being a little rebellious (and a bit lazy) and declaring it Christmas in July Week: all week I’ll be writing up reviews of Christmas beers—yes, some of which I’ve backlogged. I

It seems like I always forget to mention when a Theme Week is coming up and what the actual theme will be… with that in mind, this next final week in July, starting on Monday the 26th, will be Theme Week here at The Brew Site, and I have decided that this month’s theme is [...]

I’ve pretty much ignored the PR stunts of Scotland’s BrewDog because, well, they’re just that—stunts. But this is just offensively crude, in my opinion. I will never drink beer (or anything, really) from a bottle packaged in taxidermy roadkill.

Sadly I’m not going to make it to the Oregon Brewers Festival this year, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about it: my last two posts on Hop Press were “field guide” articles, including my annual beer picks. So while this year is no good for me, next year should be a thumbs up: [..

I’ve been remiss in writing about this earlier, but this week Roots Organic Brewing in Portland closed its doors suddenly; John Foyston has the story. [Craig] Nicholls had been trying to sell the pub and brewery for a reported $450,000, but a couple of deals fell through and he said Tuesday that every day [...]

Last weekend (on the 5th, actually), I brewed my first all-grain batch of homebrew, effectively taking my new mash tun setup on a test drive. Overall, I have to say it was fairly successful and ridiculously easy. I brewed a Porter, basing the recipe on a Black Butte Porter clone I found in an old Brew [...]

I realized it had been awhile since I received the PR bottle of Parabola, Firestone Walker’s barrel-aged Imperial Stout (the first time bottled, no less), and while I knew I was behind on a review (at least, in my mind I was behind), I will admit that the thought of drinking a 13%, 22-ounce bottle [...]

Next month’s Session is being hosted by Ramblings of a Beer Runner and the topic is location: A Special Place, A Special Beer. Two of the best ways I’ve found to explore a new place are to run around in it, and to sample the beer from it. And like many in the craft beer [...]

This is the first Session where I didn’t have a post ready on the actual day of the Session (otherwise known as “Beer Blogging Friday”), which is a little disappointing (I was on a streak) but in the end I’m going with the words of Charlie Papazian: “Relax. Don’t worry. Have a homebrew.&#

Welcome to the first day of Oregon Craft Beer Month; as someone said on Twitter, we have so much beer in Oregon we need more than just a week! It’s our month-long celebration of Oregon’s craft beer, culminating in the Oregon Brewers Festival from the 22nd through the 25th. You can check out the giant list [...]

I wish that were a headline I was making up for an April Fool’s Day joke, but it’s not: it’s official. Here’s the word from Gary Fish on the Deschutes Brewery blog: The much anticipated release of Deschutes Brewery’s Black Butte XXII is being canceled this year. The Imperial version of the brewer

Ironically enough, I’ve reviewed Dogfish Head’s Festina Pêche before—during another Theme Week. Two years ago this month, actually, during Wheat Beer Week. But I couldn’t help it: when I saw it on the shelf at the store, I had to pick up a bottle. Like yesterday’s Gose, this beer isn’t i

Here’s a Summer Beer Week curve ball you may not have thought of: a German Gose style of beer. Gose is a light, tart wheat ale spiced with coriander and salt, and is enjoying a small revival with some American craft brewers lately. I didn’t get a hold of any of those, but I was [...]

At the beginning of the week I wrote, “Style? There is no style, other than the loose guidelines I laid out above.” This isn’t exactly true; it depends on what style guidelines you follow (if indeed you follow any). If you go looking among the BJCP styles, you won’t find a “Summer Ale” a

This year Widmer debuted a new seasonal summer beer: Sunburn. It’s a true session beer at 4.3% alcohol by volume, and they’ve loaded it up with Citra hops: the relatively new variety that’s all about the tropical fruit. Here’s their summary description: Sunburn Summer Brew is a very smooth, refreshin

When we visited the Pelican Pub & Brewery back during Memorial Day, I picked up a couple of bottles to bring home: the 2010 Saison du Pelican, and (thinking ahead to this week, actually) the Surfer’s Summer Ale. Here’s their description: The Summer Ales of England inspire our well-loved seasonal beer, Surfe

Today is the first official day of summer, and though this year’s weather has not exactly gone according to schedule (it’s been particularly chilly and damp here all this spring) I still decided I’d commemorate the start of the season by having Summer Beer Week here at The Brew Site. Summer beer is simple:

The good folks over at the excellent blog Brewpublic have been in Bend recently: not only did they publish a blog post about Bend Brewing yesterday, but they completely scooped me today’s posts about Boneyard Beer (I’ve been drinking through a growler of their “Black 13″ beer the last couple of days)

Jeff over at Beervana (one of the best of the Oregon beer blogs) has a great three-part series he wrote last week on reviewing beer that I think should be required reading for those of us in the beer blogging world, or the beer rating sites, or, well, anyone interested in tasting and reviewing their [...]

The topic for the July Session has been posted, and is being hosted by the “virtual brewery,” Lug Wrench Brewing Company: Craft Beers Inspired by Homebrewing. How has homebrewing had an affect on the commercial beer we have all come to love?  Feel free to take the topic in any direction your imagination lea

The final full week of June is the 21st through the 25th, and for this month’s Theme Week here at The Brew Site I’m going to be drinking and writing about Summer Ales to welcome in the first (official) week of summer. Of course, many breweries have already released their seasonal summer beers (some earlier [...]

My article on Hop Press is up today, and the topic is the Bend Ale Trail: Starting on June 1st, you can use the Bend Ale Trail Map and Passport available in the latest Discovery Map of Central Oregon to discover Bend’s 7 breweries – and for extra credit, head to our neighboring [...]

You may recall a while back I was calling for a Beer Bloggers Conference that sparked some good commentary including some info from the organizer of the Wine Bloggers Conference, indicating they were looking to get a BBC started. Good news! Beernews.org broke the story earlier this month that the Conference is a go! It̵

I popped open the bottle of Hop in the Dark this evening, the one that Deschutes Brewery sent me. I’ll pretty much get straight to the review; I’ve already ruminated about the beer at length over a month ago, during CDA Week. It’s 6.5% alcohol by volume. Although one interesting tidbit: apparently the Brew

My Hop Press article today is titled, “Good beer in unlikely places: Pacific City, Oregon” and reviews a bit of our Memorial Day trip to the Oregon Coast last weekend: specifically, a visit to the Pelican Pub & Brewery. Long-time readers will remember that I’ve reviewed the Pelican before—way bac

First Friday of the month means, for beer bloggers, that it’s time for another session of The Session! Each month’s Session is hosted by a fellow blogger who gets to pick the theme and then compiles all of the various blog postings for everyone’s reading enjoyment. This month’s Session is being hoste