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Boom in sugary pastry stouts shows craft industry forgetting what beer tastes like


Remember that Budweiser commercial that lit up craft beer a few years back?

It mocked people who dared to smell their beer. Who cared to think critically about their beer. Who created such things as pumpkin peach ale. Well, turns out Budweiser might have had a point.

After six hours wandering the aisles of the Festival of Wood and Barrel-Aged Beer last weekend, I have concluded that craft beer is betraying itself. It is forgetting what beer should taste like.

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The City of Portland v. Old Town Brewing


Have you heard the one about the big brewery that sends the little brewery a cease-and-desist letter for trademark infringement? Of course you have—it happens every month or two. It’s usually not great press for the big brewery, and sometimes it even metastasizes into a David-and-Goliath morality tale. Last Wednesday, Portlanders learned of a through-the-looking-glass variation on the story. A little brewery owned a valid, long-standing trademark, but a deep-pocketed large city refused to acknowledge it and told the little guys they planned to license the disputed image to AB InBev. And despite having no clear legal avenue to securing these rights, the city keeps dumping thousands of dollars into their effort to defeat Old Town.

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Cooking with Beer: Aged Gouda and Doppelbock Fondue

Not long ago I went on one of the more stellar culinary journeys of my life. Mortadella and bowls of tagliatelle di ragù in Bologna. Mounds of culatello and Parmigiano Reggiano in Parma. Vitello tonnato and carne cruda all’Albese in Alba. Every kind of snail dish imaginable in Cherasco, home of the Cherasco Worldwide Institute of Snail Breeding. (Bet you didn’t know there was one).

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Snoqualmie Falls Brewing “Bunghole”: The Greatest Brown You Never Heard Of

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Good Lord, the sad Brown Ale…for years, now, I’ve tasted Browns that seemed to be made as an afterthought; something the brewery decided to do mostly because they had run through the entire British Ale canon and said, “Oops, we forgot to make a Brown!” The Brown Ale, that delightful little roadside attraction between the Pale and ESB and Porter/Stout Territory, used to be something that was made with as much care as any IPA or Stout or Sour. Breweries took pride in their Browns. Rogue’s “Hazelnut Brown”, Lost Coast’s “Downtown Brown”, Big Sky “Moose Drool”, Bell’s “Best Brown”, Duck Rabbit Brown Ale, even Dogfish’s flamboyant “Palo Santo Marron”, all made a splash when they were introduced and those – along with the best of the lot, Cigar City’s epic “Maduro” core ale and its daring variations – should have pointed the way for a logical continuation of what was shaping up as a lasting evolution of the style, but then…Nothing Happened.

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A Beer Judge’s Diary: Knickerbocker 2017

Judges hard at work in the brewery. If you see the creep with the long blond hair in the back that’s me with his back facing Ms. Millie.

The winners…
Doug Schmidt 1st Place 23A: Berliner Weisse, Brett the Berliner 5
Michael Chiltern 2nd Place 16C: Tropical Stout, Branko’s Big Chocolate Stout
Forest Crawford 3rd M3B: Spice/Herb/Vegetable Mead Red Bush

For the rest please go to https://reggiebeer.com/ReggieWeb.php?Web=1000234

By Ken Carman

I’ve done this before. We’ve done this before. This is the 3rd Knickerbocker for me, second for Millie. The others were quite a few moons ago, mostly because, living in Tennessee, we’re rarely up here this late in the year; though that will change once we move back.
For many years they were at the Pump House in downtown Albany. To be honest, it was a noisy venue, but it did have some advantages. This year they had decided to have it at a hotel. When competition organizer John Lee showed up for my competition this year; dragging Michael ClarkPywar behind the car on a chain… yeah, that was a joke, Michael drove… I told him they were lucky. Music City Brewer’s first hotel experience didn’t go well. Continue reading “A Beer Judge’s Diary: Knickerbocker 2017”

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Deschutes “Jubelale”: An Autumn Revelry, Bitches

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I’ve been drinking Jubelale ever since the second edition of it was released, back in the vacuous 1990s, and it was then and remains still the beer that I would choose about 99 times out of 100 when I just want to enjoy the sensual pleasure of consuming a perfect beer idea, perfectly made. And that one time out of that 100? That’s usually a time when I can’t get Jubelale because, defying all logic and reason, Deschutes Brewing sniffily insists on not making Jubelale year-round. (the lazy bastards) I’ve amassed cases of Jubel and nursed them along until summer, many times; even into September, in 2010. Yeah, yeah, HopHead fanatics will cringe at that and whimper than my hops had receded(!), but I Do Not Care. 97% of perfection is closer than anybody else is coming.

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