Beervana Podcast

Today I offer three beers that really impressed me. But they also made me aware of the trajectory their breweries are traveling. With Squeezy Rider, Neon Lights, and Bird-Day #1, we have liquid metaphors for where Deschutes, Ommegang, and Pelican are heading.

Guinness is treated as a beer as often as a brewery, as if it is a single, immutable force. Like Pacifico or Heineken, naming the company names the beer. Yet the beer we think of when we name the brewery doesn't date to 1759, but two hundred years later.

Brief Podcast/Show Programing Note by Jeff Alworth & Patrick Emerson

They’re fruity, expressive, and fun to drink, yet thanks to poor style-branding, people avoid them. A modest proposal: just call saisons IPAs. Okay, maybe “farmhouse” IPAs.

With the release of two new stouts, Breakside debuts a new approach to barrel-aging. Borrowing a page from the wild ale playbook, they blend not just different vintages, but different beers to create more integrated, subtle beers than the standard approach of single-batch blends.

We learned over the weekend that the proposed beer tax hike in Oregon, the one that would have given us a tax twice as expensive as any other state’s, has been pulled. Now backers want to set up a task force, but there are many reasons to think they’re not acting in good faith.

Today we speak to David Walker of Firestone Walker. The California brewery turns 25 this year, and its own evolution, from a brewery specializing in an English pale ale made on a modified Burton union system, to one purchased by a multinational brewery in the great consolidation phase of the middle-teens now featuring multiple product lines and locations, closely mirrors that of craft brewing itself. In our conversation, we use Firestone Walker’s experience to refract the lessons of the past 25 years of American brewing.

Oh my, do we have some fun for you today. We’re breathless with excitement over today’s topic: taxes. A new bill arrived in the Oregon legislature to tax breweries at twice the level of the next highest state, and we thought it was a good moment to step back and look at taxes and the way they function in our economy as well as the way they’ve helped shape and guide the development of beer. Despite the dry subject, stick with us—this should actually be an entertaining hour.

Every now and again, an explorer will follow a path deep into a thicket before finally tracing their way back out. The Sherpa has lately been following American-brewed Czech tmavés deep into the underbrush, and today’s edition reveals what he found.

Following last week's discussion about the way craft beer has changed since the first major acquisition, of Goose Island in 2011, we started thinking about the grander scope of craft brewing. How did we go from brewpubs serving amber ales and porters to milkshake IPAs. As two old guys who saw most of it, we spend the show charting that dizzying course.

Yesterday Bend’s Deschutes Brewery announced it was buying in-town rival Boneyard. Beware hot takes about how happy the marriage will be: the devil in these kinds of deals involves details we can’t see.

One of the more remarkable stories in the beer world is the incredibly long process of developing a viable commercial hop variety, and the long odds any single seed has of becoming a winner. In the first of the Sightglass articles, we examine HBC 1019 to see how it all works.

Oregon legislators have introduced a new beer tax that would make the state the most-taxed in the country—at a level nearly twice as high as the next state, and more than ten times the national median. Worse, the rhetoric suggests an explicit goal is to cripple Oregon breweries.

Chicago Tribune reporter Josh Noel joins us for today's show. Josh has been writing about beer for the Tribune since 2009, and in 2018 published one of the most deeply-reported books ever written on the beer industry, Barrel Aged Stout and Selling Out. We’ll talk about that book and get an update on what’s happening with its subject, AB InBev-owned Goose Island, as well as discussing beer more generally, as well as what it’s like to be one of the few working newspaper reporters covering the beer beat.

I am bad at predicting future events—often spectacularly, hilariously so. What’s a good anniversary without a good roasting? To that end, I have a looked back to see what what I predicted about glitter beer, hazy IPAs, and hard seltzer.

This week Beervana turns fifteen. Throughout the week I’ll be posting some lighthearted material looking back, and today we kick things off with a quick look back. It turns out this blog almost perfectly corresponds to the modern era of brewing in the US.

Mass market lagers aren’t, let’s be honest, especially interesting beers. They are often made by giant corporations in equally giant plants. But drinking them—in that act we might locate some pleasure.

So many forces are now scrambling the beer industry—including Covid, which may change it forever—that the very meaning of “craft beer” is up for grabs. It may help to consider the era through different lenses to take its full measure.

In May, Pelican Brewery turns 25. For the whole of its life, it has reflected the vision of its longtime brewer, Darron Welch. Yet unlike so many legacy breweries, Pelican is growing and thriving. There’s an important lesson here.

Today we continue our exploration of graphic design and branding with Jordan Wilson. In today's show, Jordan uses examples of his own work with Old Town, 54-40, and Foreland to illustrate how brands are built or recast, and what they should accomplish.