You’ve probably heard about this: Today is the 75th anniversary of when breweries could resume selling beer, although it was months later until Prohibition officially ended and full strength beer returned. I mentioned Maureen Ogle’s excellent daily countdown a while back, and suggest you stop by if you haven’t been. Also read her opinion piece, [...]

The countdown to April 7 has begun. A good place to follow along is Maureen Ogle’s blog. It will be 75 years ago April 7 that breweries resumed shipping beer, albeit lower strength (3.2% alcohol) until Prohibition was repealed later in 1933. Thus the Brewers Association, Beer Institute and National Beer Wholesalers Association are promoting [...]

The question I get asked second most often — after “What’s your favorite beer?” — runs something like, “What book about beer would you recommend?” Then I ask a question of my own: Is this for somebody who wants to learn about beer in general, for a homebrewer, a history buff, a breweriana collector, or [...]

As you might be able to tell from the full title of “To Cork or Not To Cork: Tradition, Romance, Science, and the Battle for the Wine Bottle,” author George Taber is a wine guy. He happens to have been the Time magazine correspondent who attended the 1976 event that turned out to be known [...]

In the preface to Land of Amber Waters: The History of Brewing in Minnesota author Doug Hoverson writes how he came to decide that there might be something he could add to the literature on Minnesota’s breweries: “Without making this sound like a research grant proposal, I think it is easy to demonstrate that the [...]

In the introduction of Beer (Eyewitness Companions) we are reminded why there will never be another beer writer like Michael Jackson: “When one thirsts for a glass of wine or a pint of beer, the brain gradually registers the order as a half-heard whisper. The volume is slowly turned up, creating a gentle, purring, reverberation [...]

Patrick Emerson has been kind enough to the work of Vic and Carol Tremblay in analyzing the merge of Widmer Brothers Brewing and Redhook Ale Brewery, giving me an excuse to mention that and also offer something of a review of their book, The U.S. Brewing Industry: Data and Economic Analysis . Please start by [...]

Would you trust a philosopher with your beer? Is that in itself a philosophical question? To tell the truth, even though I was careful to bite off portions of the book in small chunks, after reading Beer and Philosophy: The Unexamined Beer Isn’t Worth Drinking I’m not exactly sure about either. I seem to have [...]

Once a good ol’ beer person, always a good ol’ beer person. Lucy Saunders can’t help herself. She’s a beer person, and that shows up on every page of The Best of American Beer & Food: Pairing & Cooking with Craft Beer. (Disclaimer: Lucy has been a friend of my wife and I for 15 [...]

What if the American beer clock had stopped in 1962? (It’s a silly notion, because there’s that time marches on thing always happening. But stick with me.) Anheuser-Busch was the largest brewing company in the country, but not by much (it commanded less than 10% of the market). Next were Jos. Schlitz Brewing, Falstaff Brewing, [...]