Professor Good Ales

Please forgive me, Joel VandenBrink, but this beer got lost in my review shuffle a LONG time ago. I meant to sing LOUD praises of it – God, how long ago WAS that? Eight years? Ten?!? – and just…fumbled at the one yard line. But let me do it now – in NO uncertain terms…

I had two breweries in Seattle (or, as we hip NW types say, sometimes, if not prevented, “Sea-patch”) that I constantly confused and I have no idea why, as their names are not even remotely similar: Two Beers Brewing and Schooner Exact Brewing. See? Just as I confuse Christine Baranksi with Wendy Malick and Christine Lahti, for no rational reason, I got these two intertwined in my twisty brain practically ever since they came on the PNW brewing scene. This was complicated by the fact that both started in 2007 and both started as nano-breweries which struck a nerve in the Seattle-area IPA culture and blossomed. Joel VandenBrink was a home brewer who eventually decided that, “…if we all take some time, we can see things a bit more clearly. The daily grind will become less, the pace of life will slow, and friendships will be enjoyed.” This was his hippy-dippy rationale for the perilous financial risk of opening a brewery. If this sounds a bit, well, Lollipops ‘N’ Unicorns for ya, rest assured that here, in this soggy corner of America, second only to Parisian attic apartments as fertile growth medium for belly-button gazers, it resounded with a LOT of folks.

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Hale’s long-running pub — a restaurant serving hamburgers, pizzas and sandwiches — has closed, and it will turn into a taproom serving a shortened menu in the new year.

The announcement was posted on Hale’s door. “Keep your eyes open for more information on our new hours and a new concept as we bring in the new year,” it explains.

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Sometime this summer…when our world is warm and sunny and optimism is easy and maybe even a little cheap, many of us who have reveled and participated in the American and Pacific Northwest craft beer cultures will experience a brief (well, we can hope it’s brief) cold front of the type that occurs inside us; the kind that blankets and heaters and long underwear cannot touch: the chill of Loss. Of the expected but still jarring departure of something, someone, in which we have invested heavily, emotionally, for what seems like a very long time but has been, in retrospect, far too short.

Sometime this summer, Hair of The Dog Brewing will close down and an Era, an epoch, will be only memories.

But, ooooh, what memories…

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Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

OF LEMONS AND LEMONADE

It was almost two years ago to the day that I wrote an upbeat post about what 2020 had in store. I was starting work on a book project, and had a number of other writing ideas on the go.

And then the pandemic hit. I shelved the search for an agent and publisher. Who’d even be interested in a beer travel book in the midst of all this uncertainty, I thought? — And then wondered, in those early months of the pandemic, whether it was even a little perverse to write about travel. There was so much more at stake.

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Written By Stephen Body

There has been a…uh…problem with Non-alcoholic beers…

Ever since the first fumbling attempts, back in the Buckler and Beck’s Blue and O-Doul’s and Kaliber days, the same problem afflicted every single beer made with no octane involved:

They all sucked.

Not that they were all undrinkable. I used to down a Buckler, once in a while, such as the two years in the mid-90s when I went dry, and I liked Buckler. But it was NOT, by any definition, beer. It didn’t taste much of anything like real beer unless you took a watery domestic Pilsner like Coors Light and cut it by half with club soda. But it was crisp and refreshing and you could taste some hops, if very little malt, and on a hot summer day, it would do. Unless you wanted a beer and then it would not.

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Written by Franz Hofer

OF LEMONS AND LEMONADE
It was almost two years ago to the day that I wrote an upbeat post about what 2020 had in store. I was starting work on a book project, and had a number of other writing ideas on the go.

And then the pandemic hit. I shelved the search for an agent and publisher. Who’d even be interested in a beer travel book in the midst of all this uncertainty, I thought? — And then wondered, in those early months of the pandemic, whether it was even a little perverse to write about travel. There was so much more at stake.

Want to read more? Please click… HERE!!!

Long-forgotten yeast strains are being sought out from shipwrecks, abandoned breweries and other locations in the hope they could be put to good use if resurrected.

As we head towards the end of another extraordinary year, BBC Future is taking a look back at some of our favourite stories for our “Best of 2021” collection. Discover more of our picks here.

As the diver gently eased himself through a hatch into the sunken hold, he could see the shipwreck’s treasure lying in wait for him. It had been down there for more than 100 years. But now some of it was about to be freed from its resting place.

The explorer in question, Steve Hickman, a dive technician and amateur diver, carried a small, netted bag with him. The treasure he was after was beer. Preserved in the hold of this vessel were row upon row of glass beer bottles, partly buried in silt.

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