During a recent episode of the television series “Mad Men” newcomer Faye Miller told the iconic Don Draper, “I don’t know how people drink the way you do around here. I’d fall asleep.” Miller serves as a proxy for those of us in the twenty-first century who are astonished at the amount of alcohol consumed [...]

If you followed Ray Daniels’ tweets earlier today you know that a presentation by Symphony IRI to members of the Brewers Association confirmed that “craft beer” sales are kicking butt, that mainstream beer sales are in the dumps and that IPAs seem destined to rule the world. You also know that Blue Moon Belgian White [...]

Here’s what the beginning of brewery consolidation looks like. Last week I dug up a bunch of figures about the number of breweries and how much beer they made more than 100 years ago. Mike asked for a little perspective. So this chart starts in 1870 (the number of breweries peaked in 1873) and includes [...]

The Beer Babe has announced the topic of The Session #43 (Sept. 3) and “Welcoming The New Kids” challenges bloggers “to seek out a new brewery and think about ways in which they could be welcomed into the existing beer community.” How does their beer compare to the craft beer scene in your area? Are [...]

I was tempted to type the headline, add (eom) and see what happened . . . I understand the concept of nano brewery (or nanobrewery). But if we are going to have a rule about when a brewery is too big to be called micro shouldn’t there be one for nano? I ask because the [...]

The Christian Science Monitor’s feature “5 famous pork projects: Beer museum and more” includes, as you might have guessed, funding for the National Brewery Museum in Potosi, Wis. In 2004, The Potosi Brewery Complex restoration project received a $449,574 grant from the Federal Highway Administration’s National Scenic Byways Program to help renovate the building in [...]

So MillerCoors has launched a separate company to manage its portfolio of (existential warning) craft beers and imports, calling it “Tenth and Blake Beer Company.” Is this different than what America’s megabreweries breweries tried in the mid 1990s? On the surface, but maybe not that different. Will Tenth & Blake prove more successful? We’d be [...]

A couple of times recently I’ve read stories — or, yikes, tweets — that mentioned how many brewing companies remained in operation in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, then reported the current number of breweries. That’s not exactly apples to apples. Many brewing concerns operate multiple breweries, and the proper comparison would [...]

Or beer and roots music. Or beer and alt.country (“whatever that is,” at the late, great No Depression magazine said on its cove). Truth is we like wine in our family. We like all manner of jazz. Still I was surprised to see Wine and Jazz magazine today at the book store. Turns out it [...]

So the story behind the taster tray and the Bent Nail IPA at Red Lodge Ales in the Montana town of the same name is the same. The beer was named as a tribute to the construction workers who were among the brewery’s first customers. “They said it (the beer) made for a lot of [...]