I'm sick today, so you get this refried news story--though it is a good one.  In one case, a New Jersey bar allegedly mixed rubbing alcohol with caramel food coloring and served it as scotch.

A little birdie just sent me t

A few months back, Laurelwood made

Yesterday Portlander Adrienne So penned a provocative piece i

Yesterday I was fooling around with Brewers Almanac statistics and came across three data points I think are critical if you want to understand the beer market in the United States.  I have put them into visual form for your consumptio

The Brewers Almanac is quite a lot of fun if you love arcane statistics.  (Excise taxes broken down by state and by beer strength?  Check.  Percentage of beer sold in cans in 1962?  Check.)  This one was especially

It has been five years since BridgePort first released Stumptown Tart, and in that time they've changed brewers and much of their line has turned over.  I therefore assume that Stumptown Tart is popular enough that they've brought it back for a sixth iteration.  Originally, the idea was to create an actual tart fr

I once said offhandedly to another beer fan (who may out himself if he wishes) that hops had the most influence on a beer. He contended the point, I believe arguing for malt instead. The issue came back into my consciousness last night as I tried a beer I was certain would be dominated by the malt flavors.  Instead, th

Washington's No-Li Brewhouse recently made news by successfully winning federal approval for the designation of "Spokane-style" beer.  The definition of this "style" is that it must be brewed and bottled in Spoka

Below is an astounding tak

The mass market is definitionally the thing people buy the most of.  Wonder was the king of breads once; now its parent company is bankrupt.  Since prohibition, very light, sweetish lagers have been the mass market style, but they're slipping.  One of the ways big beer companies have responded (aside from the

At long last, I have had a chance to swab the decks on this garbage scow of a blog.  In a radical move, I've dumped the blogroll over in the left-hand column.  This was how we did things back in the early 2000s, when the internet was still run on a telegraph-based electronic chassis.  It was a stupid way to l

Let us review: long ago, beer was a local pr

I'm in lounging mode, so expect blogging to continue to limp along lamely for a few more days.  In the meantime, here are a couple of things that caught my eye.  First up, from Yahoo, an article on "dying careers" young people should avoid and the new, glamorous jobs you should pursue that are taking their place.&

Yes, it's that long. 

Man, this stuff really raises my dander.  In almost no case would I post a private email sent to me, but this--which obviously Dave also got (a follow up email apologized for the cut-and-paste error)--deserves a little disinfecting light. What the emailer is requestin

Yesterday afternoon, in a fascinating location at the far northern end of Mississippi Avenue, John Harris (who? oh, come on, John Harris) unveiled the name of his new brewery--Ecliptic.  If you're looking south by southwest,

This topic is now bubbling up (see here, here, and

I somehow missed this:Over the past decade, the alcohol levels of many beers has edged toward — or well into — the double digits. But a couple of new Bay Area brewing companies are betti

My survey of mass market lagers continued last night (part on

In response to my mass market tasting, part one, Jack writes:re: lightstuck Stella and Beck'sFor fairness, you should seek non-abused beers for comparison. Eg, a bottle from the middle of a light blockin

I have always intended to do a survey of mass market lagers,

Note: Post has been updated.

There were a few things I didn't anticipate about the main Anheuser-Busch brewery in St Louis.  I've never seen a 15 million barrel brewery, and somehow in my imagination, it was appropriately scaled up--mash tuns as big as city blocks, fermenters that could do double-duty as oil tankers.  That was silly and naive

It is exactly 24 days until the manuscript for the Beer Bible is due (current length, 211k words), which means blogging is going to get extremely bad for a period closely corresponding to that period.  Yes, yes, I know: how will you be able to tell?  Badda boom!  If there is any blogging to be don

No one doubts that Wisconsin is America's Dairyland (except in Tillamook County), nor that Georgia is for peaches in much the way Idaho is for russets and Maine for lobsters.  But will Oregon be known for microbes if state representative Mark Johnson

I have long been fascinated by American culture.  I grew up in the Mountain West, a flinty, hardscrabble region where life is as spare as the high desert, and the people are as tenacious as sagebrush.  When people say the "Pacific Northwest," they often include Idaho, my birthplace.  It's absurd--Boise is

I don't follow the papacy too closely, but it's been a high-profile two weeks for the new pontiff, from his casual manner to washing the feet of Muslim girls.  But now he's gone too far.In his first message to monastic communities across Europe, F