Category: Front Page

One of the lesser known facts about yours truly is that, for several years, I worked as an ad agency creative director back in North and South Carolina (I have an online portfolio, if anyone’s curious…and, if you are, seek professional help) doing primarily copy but also a LOT of design. I don’t do it much anymore and I don’t broadcast the fact but I still do the occasional piece of design, mostly for Washington wineries. But that experience has forever made me a HUGE fan of great design work and I’ve been known to be nosy enough to drop am email to a winery or brewery that’s suffering from an especially bad label and say, “Uh, dude, your graphics need some help.”

Graphics say a lot about a business – any business. And one that’s primarily centered on aesthetics, like beverage makers, has a real NEED for some design that speaks about the products and the people. Last week, I got a beautiful box from my pals at Full Sail Brewing. It was simultaneously a glimpse at their all new, gorgeous packages and a retake on the line of their core beers.

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Brewery Ommegang, the Belgian-style beer company in Cooperstown, had a huge night Friday as the 2016 World Beer Cup awards were announced in Philadelphia.

Ommegang took home the title of World Champion in the category of “mid-sized brewery,” along with three medals for individual beers. World Champions were also honored in the categories of very small, small and large breweries, and large and small brewpubs.

The World Beer Cup contest was presented in conjunction with the annual Craft Brewers Conference and BrewersExpo America, held this week in Philadelphia. The competition attracted 6,596 different beer entries from 1,907 breweries representing 55 countries. That was a 38.5 percent increase in the number of entries from the 2014 World Beer Cup.

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Almost two years ago to the day, I posted this rabble-rousing little beer bomb, here in the brand new ThePourFool website and instantly got a mini-flood of emails from disgruntled Euro-Snots who wrote things like – quoting now –

“Have you even actually tasted a Flanders ale? If you had, there’s no goddamned way you’d ever write something like this…”

“So, let’s get this straight: American ‘craft brewing’ is not real brewing. It’s more like a hobby that’s been taken up by way too many people who don’t actually understand beer. This ‘Crux’ bunch (stupid name) should stick to making the kind of moron-level beers that all their other slacker pals are cranking out, all the British crap that only mouth-breathers drink.”

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It wasn’t too long ago that the Pale Ale, in either authentic English or nouveau American Pale Ale (“APA”) version, was little more than an afterthought. I went a period of almost five years before I could amass more than five or six Pales that got me excited enough to write about them. It’s becoming, Thank God, hard to remember how thoroughly the disease of IPA Obsession was upon us but the headlong scramble to make the Next Big Deal in India Pale Ales trumped everything in brewing, including common sense and good judgment.

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Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

When you think of beer destinations in Central Europe, certain cities and regions stand out as iconic.

Rauchbier from Bamberg. Budweiser from Budweis. Kölsch from Cologne. Pilsener from Pilsen. Altbier from Düsseldorf. Berliner Weisse. Gose from Leipzig. Light and dark lagers from Munich. And the beer riches of Bavaria in general.

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Portland seems to have skipped the rainy spring season and gone straight to the sun-filled patio, day-drinking spring season. Blame global warming, or maybe just our mercurial weather patterns (it’s probably going to go back to rainy at any point), but whatever the case, it’s the perfect excuse to try a seasonal beer or two from one of our many breweries.

Oddly, not every brewery has released their spring beers yet, but from the ones that have, here are our favorites.

Ecliptic Brewing Zenith Grapefruit Gose

Gose, 5.2% ABV
Mississippi (district)

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These are beers you’re going to see at picnics and softball games and rafting trips and bicycle races and around campfires for years to come, because they speak to everyone in the Pacific Northwest who really loves our epic brewing tradition…

There have been a few notable dissenters who’ve roped me into long and pointless email exchanges about my ongoing love for Deschutes beers. The very things that I love about them are the things that seem to set a lot of folks off. One guy, who has now mercifully moved onto to ragging somebody else in the Beerniverse, spent two solid months trying to argue me off Deschutes, back in 2009-2010. “Their beers are flabby!” he wrote, “They talk about hops but then they don’t deliver. It’s all just marketing. They know that Northwest beer lovers want hops and yet they crap up every beer with malts that blunt the bitterness! They claim to love hops but they know that newbie drinkers won’t touch a properly bitter ale, so they mute everything! When are you and they going to get a clue?”

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An Alabama craft brewery will observe the state’s new growler law by debuting a limited-release peach beer inspired by the ongoing Gov. Robert Bentley scandal.

Salty Nut Brewery of Huntsville said its new Unimpeachable Pale Ale will celebrate the “unimpeachable leadership shown by Bentley,” who came under fire in March after he admitted to making sexually inappropriate comments to his former political adviser, Rebekah Caldwell Mason, who has since resigned.

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Hops Canada founder Joey Bedard (left) and TIB Coun. Howard Campbell on the farm beside the North Thompson River. The band is two-thirds owner of the brokerage and farm now under development. (Cam Fortems/KTW)

Standing amid a barren forest of poles laid out in a grid and topped by cables, Joey Bedard interrupts a tour of his farm to take a call.

It’s Sanjay, from India. He wants hops, the cones used for centuries both to preserve beer and give it complex taste.

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Whether Op uw gezondheid! – or – À vôtre santé!, it’s meant for she who bought the beer.

Belgian Craft Beers – there are so many, it can be hard to determine which ones are maybe even worth travelling to Belgium for. There are a thousand lists out there but as a Belgian myself, already looking forward to having some Abbey cheese and beer in a pub garden in the West of Flanders during the Summer, here are the 9 ultimate brew gems…

Karmeliet

Even the Belgian’s themselves think of this beer as something very special. Famous for its heavy and strong taste, impeccable foam and dark colours, Karmeliet is the kind of beer you order one of and simply indulge. Its fame is rare for a beer that’s only been around for about 20 years, however the monk-crafted recipe itself dates all the way back to 1679. Its popularity ran particularly high when it won the World’s Best Ale prize in 2008.

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