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
The lexicon of beerspeak is rich with descriptive names. Stylistic terms can denote any number of beer characteristics, including origin (pilsner, Dortmunder), appearance (pale ale, witbier), and strength (barley wine, tripel), among others.
In a country where you can buy beer from vending machines, it’s seldom difficult to find a cold brew when you want one. And if you’re content with well-made, but fairly uniform mass-market lagers, you’ll have no trouble quenching your thirst in Japan.
Nineteen-ninety-five was a bad year for cask ale. The summer’s unexpected, prolonged period of hot weather undermined all the good work of the previous five years. Following changes in legislation in 1990, which opened up the pub market to small brewers, dozens of microbreweries had thrown open their mash tuns and hundreds of exciting new... 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
You may find quicker ways to sample the delightful beers of Britain’s regional breweries than to head to their brewery-run pubs in the English countryside, but none better. You may find easier ways to visit these pubs than by exploring an entire county or two on foot, but none as satisfying.
One segment of breweriana collecting that has seen tremendous growth is items from the British Isles. The demand for glassware, pub towels, bar mats (coasters), ashtrays and draft equipment is on the increase. I attribute the interest and demand to the increasing number of British beer imports into the United States and the number of... View Article
I recently had the pleasure of acquiring what was described to me as a “300 year-old beer bottle,” unearthed from beneath a 17th century cottage in Cerne Abbas, Dorset, England. It is thick and heavy, holding somewhere between a pint and a quart, off-round, and with a lopsided neck.
Pub food in England was for years the butt of comedians who told jokes about pub-goers singing “happy birthday” to a 10-year-old cheese sandwich. But there’s been a revolution in pub food in recent years, with even top London chefs accepting the challenge of cooking for a demanding pub audience. Writer Susan Nowak checks out... View Article
