I remember the first bar I ever frequented on a regular basis. It was our “club” on Okinawa in WWII. Well, actually, it really didn’t get going until the war was finally over and done with. We were still sitting there waiting to go home, move up to occupy Japan, or support the Marines’ move... View Article
In his charming book, Great American Eccentrics, Carl Sifakis defines his subject matter thusly: “The true eccentric follows his own rules of conduct 24 hours a day—because he knows his code is the right one and everyone else is wrong; because he does not want to compete by conventional standards; or because eccentricity seems the... View Article
Walter Scheurle is one of my favorite people. He and I became acquainted some 25 years ago when he was technical director (brew master) of brewing operations at the old Blitz-Weinhard brewery. That establishment is just now being razed to make way for a shopping mall (not completely razed, because they are going to save... View Article
Last fall I was invited to visit and judge homebrew with the Music City Brewers of Nashville. They shared beer, stories and food with me; and I was a guest at Bosco’s Brew Pub in that fair city. In that interim, I became better acquainted with Bosco’s most famous beer, Flaming Stone Beer, America’s Original... View Article
On a recent listserve exchange with Oregon Brew Crew members, someone asked our various respondents which bar might be a favorite. Not wishing to nail myself into a given space, and also not wishing to “endorse” any of the establishments in which I hang out, I answered carefully, in my usual fashion.
Jack Joyce, CEO of Rogue Brewing down in Newport, OR, called me a while back to do a chocolate and beer tasting in the small town of Issaquah, WA, population about 12,000, located about 17 miles east of Seattle across Lake Washington and Mercer Island on I-90, Washington’s main cross-state artery. Rogue had only recently... View Article
Earlier this year, while at the Chicago Real Ale Festival, I started thinking about the first time I tasted cask-conditioned beer at Bert Grant’s Yakima, WA, brewery about 1983. But then it came to me that it might have been much, much earlier than that. I might actually have tasted my first cask-conditioned beer in... View Article
Ray Daniels is the Chicago visionary responsible for the Chicago Real Ale Festival, held March 24-25 this year at Chicago’s Goose Island Brewery, Wrigleyville, across from the famous Wrigley Stadium.
