I don’t have much of a preamble ahead of my beer thoughts and links article for May, just plugging away through another month in quarantine. Hope everyone is getting by and continuing to enjoy an occasional, or more than occasional, local beer. Here are some interesting links and thoughts on what is going on in […]
Very few breweries hit their stride right away, there is a learning curve as brewers work with new recipes, new equipment, and balancing all of the demands of the business. Some never improve, they just keep pumping out the same mediocre beer, while others are so far away to start that even improvement doesn’t get […]
I was following a discussion the other day on beer twitter about which beer styles seemed to be fading away due to lack of popularity. The conversation centered on usual suspects that used to be very popular with craft brewers but have lost steam in the hop-centric age of modern craft, styles like brown ale, […]
There are some regions of the state where I frequent and others I rarely visit, and this absolutely affects my ability to visit certain breweries, especially while I am in the parenting-young-kids stage of life. I live in Metrowest, work in Cambridge, and have family on the north shore, so I occasionally have a chance […]
Some small breweries practically brag that they don’t do any marketing, even though it really isn’t true. They might not have an employee in charge of marketing, and they probably don’t pay for advertising, but every brewery does some form of marketing. Social media posts, running a website, hosting tastings, having a logo, and even […]
As I’ve mentioned many times before on the blog, I am a huge geek. It extends way beyond just beer, I get geeky about many other things including science, music, video games, and fantasy novels. Another big thing I geek out about is Star Wars, ever since I watched the original trilogy when I was […]
Every spring a large number of breweries collaborate on a beer with the Pink Boots Society, a non-profit group that promotes careers for women in the beer industry. The Pink Boots Society selects a blend of hops that is used in all of the collaboration beers, and then encourages the female employees at each participating […]
The closing of taprooms has upended a major source of business for most small craft breweries, not only ending their on-site draft sales but also cutting into the to-go sales that on-site consumption inevitably generates. Some very small breweries can probably get by on their social distancing-approved curbside pickups, but for most it is more […]
Happy end of April, we survived a full month of quarantine. I hope everyone is staying healthy, safe, and relatively sane. Needless to say, most of the links this month have to do with COVID-19, and it’s effect on the brewing industry. Earlier this month I wrote some thoughts of my own on life right […]
Some breweries open up and clearly have no idea what kinds of beers they want to make, they spend the first year or so cycling through a myriad of recipes, many of which become one-off beers, until something sticks. Others have a clear plan in place, and beers that are released on week one become […]
