In August 2011, Chris Harker, co-founder of Triple C Brewing Co. in Charlotte, North Carolina, walked down a platform along the city’s light rail system, a half-barrel keg of his brewery’s Light Rail Pale Ale on a green dolly as cameras clicked and well-wishers, including relatives, walked along with him. Harker was delivering the beer... View Article
I live in a part of Portland, Oregon, so riddled with breweries that three opened mere blocks apart within a span of eight days—Scout Beer, Mt Tabor Brewing and Wayfinder Beer—bringing the brewery population in a one-mile radius to 13. But la-di-da, Portland’s gotta lotta breweries. With the Brewers Association’s year-end announcement that just before... View Article
When Andy and Sean Arsenault decided to launch Brewery ARS, the 33-year-old twins were certain about two things. First, they would focus on producing distinctive, cold-conditioned saisons. Second, they would build their brew house in Philadelphia. Not the suburbs, not the “Philadelphia area,” but somewhere in the heart of the urban streetscape. “We always wanted... View Article
On a damp Monday afternoon in a bustling café in a small village deep in the Ardennes highlands of southeast Belgium, I was enjoying my first beer of the day. Houblon Chouffe, a Belgian IPA, offered an interesting interplay of noble and American hops and spicy Belgian yeast. The 9% ale, produced at Brasserie d’Achouffe,... View Article
Beercycling was founded in 2011 by Evan Cohan, a Portland, Oregon-based systems administrator and, not surprisingly, a beer and cycling devotee. Before the Beercycling concept had taken root, Cohan’s appreciation of Belgian ales had prompted a biking pilgrimage to Belgium, where “I just fell in love with the country,” explains the adventure-loving 33-year-old. “The business... View Article
Visit almost any Dutch bar and you will find on the menu a snack called bitterballen. Savory and meaty, if eaten too hot they can lay waste to your mouth like a small explosion of napalm, while if too cool they can become a gummy mess. When made from scratch in-house, they can be a... View Article
A decade ago, in the hall of the Bokbierfestival, the premier beer event in the Netherlands, held annually in Amsterdam, I was standing with one of the most prominent authorities on beer in the country. He bluntly remarked that when it came to beer, Holland was no longer worth a visit. Although largely unimpressed by... View Article
Jan-Erik Janko Svensson shook his head in near disbelief as the words came out of his mouth. The Swedish journalist and beer judge was standing outside a brick building in a commercial part of Stockholm, on break from judging a homebrew competition that grows in size each year. He once knew all the brewers in... View Article
Imagine a hot day in mid-August, high noon. You stand in a sun-baked lot gazing up at your destination: a thickly wooded hill 20 minutes drive south of Bamberg, in Bavaria’s Franconia region. That hill is the Kellerwald, and—symbolically, at least—it may represent the cradle of modern beer civilization. Two key moments here tell the... View Article
