Category: Front Page

The FedEx guy is my beer pimp. Unintentionally, of course, but in the past month or so, that guy has dropped off some seriously superior stuff on my narrow little front porch and, if he keeps this up, I see a fruit basket in his future.

The first was a couple of cans from a brewery about whom I’ve been crazy intrigued for several years now. Upslope Brewing, located in one of my favorite places on any map – Boulder, Colorado – has been on tap a couple of times when we’ve been in Denver, visiting our son. I first tasted their IPA and Brown at a bar in Denver’s Larimer Square, back in 2015, and was instantly a fan. They weren’t distributed in Seattle, though, and I struck out, back then, in finding anything in packages to take home. Those two stayed with me, though: the seamless, resiny, finely-malted, user-friendly character of the IPA and the malty, subtly spicy roundness of a truly fine Brown. So, when I opened the box to find two cans of their new Upslope Citra Pale Ale, I was instantly excited, both because of the brewery and my ongoing quest to find that ultimate Citra Pale or IPA that I can imagine but have not yet found.

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What’s one of the most common responses that we got?  People loving their beer too much!  Planning for expansions from the start is key… especially with how quickly the craft beer industry is growing!

Derek from 192 Brewing

I am still amazed at how fast we are growing, so I think that if I had seriously known how fast the growth was going to take place, I might have spent a little more time researching “next steps” in the growth process. I assumed I would be able to grow at a slow comfortable pace, but there is too much demand to let pass by, so the hours are much longer than expected to try our best to keep up with the next immediate needs of the business, and that tends to be the only focus for about 6 months out of the year. It can be a constant rat race to get the projects done just in time for them to be already behind production needs upon completion. This also causes a lot of stress on the team, even for those that also see the potential for the constant growth. A larger brewing system is a next step that looms over our heads at the moment, and will require a change of location for that operation.

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I’ve had to make a couple of exceptions to my iron-clad rule against reviewing any brewery that’s even obliquely affiliated with Anheuser Busch. It wasn’t prompted by any sort of softening of my stance about the heinous history of this avaricious pack of shit-weasels. They are still among the most amoral, vicious, and unprincipled thugs ever to occupy any business category in US history but I’m all for great independent breweries using them as they use so many, many people and situations and two breweries in particular have managed to sing on with AB and use their massive distribution system to their advantage, while otherwise telling the consultants and “efficiency experts” from the Brazil/Belgium mothership to go f**k themselves – politely, of course.

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Akronym Brewing Co., a new production brewery and tasting room that hopes to launch in downtown Akron this fall, is looking to be compared to the city’s brewing greats.

“We’re going to be making world-class beer like Thirsty Dog and Hoppin’ Frog,” co-founder and brewer Shawn Adams said. “Our main thing is we’re going to focus on quality.”

Thirsty Dog and Hoppin’ Frog are the city’s two established breweries that have won multiple awards at national and international beer competitions.

 

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CLEVELAND – Breweries are breathing new life into vacant, often abandoned properties throughout Northeast, Ohio. And they’re doing so in an increasing amount.

Cleveland was at the epicenter of the foreclosure housing crisis that left swaths of properties and plots of land vacant and abandoned. Tens of thousands of run-down empty buildings and lots have become permanent sights and structures in neighborhoods across the city. The Cuyahoga Land Bank documented 15,474 vacant residential lots countywide in 2017.

The region’s microbrewery industry is breathing new life into forgotten spaces that have been neglected for years.

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Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

Brown beer has an image problem.

Joe Tindall over at The Fatal Glass of Beer (host of this month’s “The Session: Beer Blogging Friday”) sums it up well: “The unglamorous brown middle ground is consistently neglected.”

I wrote about this very same topic a few years back, so rather than reinvent the wheel, I’m going to cite some of that article here. For that piece, I cobbled together a 6-pack of brown beers that are still worth your time, so check ’em out. This time around, I’m going to give you the view from Continental Europe.


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Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

Grab your favourite beer steins, folks! We’re heading to the source for a pilsener.

To many a beer drinker, the city of Plzeň (Pilsen) is virtually synonymous with its storied brewery and famous beer style. But beer in this western Bohemian town wasn’t always the kind of liquid sustenance that inspired pilgrimages.

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America’s museum of record is ready to take beer history seriously. The Smithsonian recently hired its first beer scholar to run the new Brewing History Initiative chronicling the history of American brewing.

The groundbreaking new job belongs to Theresa McCulla. It entails keeping track of current trends in the industry and telling the cultural story of “the role beer has played — and continues to play — in American history,” according to a story in Smithsonian Magazine. In short, its a job that just made every beer lover have deep seated jealousy for McCulla.

“If you look at the history of beer, you can understand stories related to immigration and industrialization and urbanization,” McCulla told Smithsonian Magazine. “You can look at advertising and the history of consumer culture and changing consumer taste. Brewing is integrated into all facets of American history.”

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