Craft beer was supposed to be the antithesis of the “fizzy yellow beer” doled out by big brewers, but a new round of lagers is putting that thesis to the test. My father-in-law, a longtime Seattle-area homebrewer, still has a “Life Is Too Short For Yellow Beer” bumper sticker on his truck. At one point,... View Article
If you spent even part of 2017 in line for hazy IPA or waiting for the nation’s larger brewers to make their next acquisitions, you had time to ponder what this year is going to add up to for the beer industry. We can’t know exactly what 2018 will look like for the beer business,... View Article
When Microsoft bought LinkedIn last year, the tech giant didn’t disguise itself as Pa Gates’ Craft Technology Works. When Amazon bought Whole Foods this year, it didn’t create a South Lake Union Organics holding company to do so. So why do brewers keep filtering their craft beer acquisitions through smaller, friendlier faces? That question came... View Article
Let’s pretend, for a moment, that the biggest problem small brewers face has nothing to do with upside-down bottle seals or beer festival advertisers. The 5,300-plus brewers nationwide that the Brewers Association defines as “craft” don’t need the word “independent” broken into three pieces to serve as a reverse scarlet letter differentiating their beer from... View Article
Once upon a time an ad was an ad and a story was a story. Or at least that’s the fairy tale journalists like me tell ourselves. Really, though, salespeople have made a living off telling stories for at least as long as reporters have. But over the past five, maybe 10 years, I’ve heard... View Article
One of the great privileges and perks on this job is visiting breweries around the world. It allows me to meet brewers, drink beer and see the innovations, ingredients and trends that help shape the coverage in this magazine and on our website. On a recent trip, I ordered a flight of beers from a brewery... View Article
The $20.99 750-mL bottle of barrel-aged stout to put away for sometime special and the $11.99 four-pack of Belgian-style ale that’ll go over well back home were already in my basket. I also wanted a sixer of something hop-heavy for myself. I wavered briefly between a great IPA from a regional brewery that I favor... View Article
Panty Peeler. Phat Bottom. And all the unfortunate beers that use the color of a woman’s hair that also coordinate with a beer style—Blonde, Amber—and take a large bra size to create a name. As equality fights are raging on a number of different fronts, there are still breweries and beers that are well behind... View Article
At first blush, two key areas of growth in beer these days may not operate as separately as they seem. Drinkers still can’t seem to get enough hops. They also continue to gravitate toward locally made beer. Both interests underscore freshness, encouraging more beer drinkers to think about it, value it and seek it out.... View Article
