For many decades I’ve loved the vibrancy of beer community. Kibitzing on a conversation about beer flavors at a World Beer Festival, buying a round of the newest at Tyler’s Taproom, leaning across a rough wooden table at Bull McCabe’s armed with a Fuller’s London Porter and a lot of opinions, standing up against the... View Article
When we were making plans for this themed issue focused on the people of the craft beer business, we came to an interesting conclusion. It would be too easy turn this into a celebrity-watcher issue, especially given all the “rock stars” now in our craft brewing industry. Some are so popular they get mobbed at festivals.... View Article
A few years into my job working for Charlie Papazian, I had become a convert to the complexity, beauty, variety and excitement of beer. My predisposition towards crusading defined my career choices going forward. For nearly three decades I’ve been an advocate of better beer, craft beer, specialty beer—whatever you want to call our oldest... View Article
Craft beer lovers are constantly faced with the world of wine. From aesthetics to bragging rights, we, in some fashion or another, have to come to grips with the other beverage’s role in the universe. It even goes gender with a pretty fun book pitting a celebrated brewer against a wine activist: He Said Beer,... View Article
A series of recent beer bar experiences challenged, in my mind, any idea of “trends” for the craft beer industry. I dropped by a pretty cool beer bar, the Busy Bee, for its 2nd anniversary celebration. The rare beer on that night was something made by Spike at Terrapin, which included maple syrup—Spike only agreed to work... View Article
For the longest of time, the exclusive provenance craft beer movement lay with the adventuresome Americans.
I’m old enough to have a firm grasp on the former monoculture of beer.
As with virtually every consumable good, the monolithic world of beer has exploded into a culture focused on variety, diversity, ingenuity, creativity and unbridled excitement.
This year’s World Beer Festival – Durham has a few surprises for Triangle beer lovers. To begin with, we’re making some changes for the North Carolina breweries. We’ve set up a special tent just for our state’s own breweries with the help of Anna Lockhart, the President of the North Carolina Brewers Guild. Also, we... View Article
