A couple weeks ago Carla Jean Lautner (@beerbabe) started a twitter discussion on the importance of every brewery having a functional and informative website. Lots of great points were made and it led me to think about all of the pieces that go into a brewery’s presence online. While I agree that a website full […]
Category: Opinion
Can mid- and larger sized craft brewers find success with NEIPA?
The buzz around cloudy, juicy New England style IPAs keeps growing, and while many beer snobs (and quite a few brewers) continue to dismiss the style as a fad there is no denying that a huge market has developed for this sub-style. Follow a bunch of local beer geeks on Instagram or Untappd and it will […]
Cross-blog: Short Brews Question #1
This is a new type of article for Hoppy Boston, where I’ll pose a question and provide my answer as well as the answer of another beer writer. For the first question I’ve enlisted the help of beer blogger Thomas Short from ShortBrews.com. We are planning to make this a series, so feel free to […]
Should Beer Writers be Critics or Cheerleaders?
I recently read an interesting article by Jeff Alworth on the beervana blog, he has decided to make a conscientious effort to write about beer and breweries that have disappointed him. He isn’t talking about being a critic for critics sake (or being one of the yahoos who love to write negative reviews of Bud […]
Thoughts on the changes at Geary’s
Over the last few weeks there have been a number of articles chronicling the ongoing changes at Geary’s Brewing Company, the oldest brewery in Maine. First it was announced that founder David Geary was selling the brewery to Freeport businessman Alan Lapoint. Jason Notte noted that Geary’s had to lay off some long time employees […]
Every Beek Geek Should Do Blind Tastings
On a Saturday afternoon in late March I gathered in the tasting room at Craft Beer Cellar in Belmont with a group of local beer enthusiasts to do a blind tasting of local stouts. This tasting was organized by the Mass Brew Brothers, and was the second in a series of tastings sampling a particular […]
A beer to stock for everyone at your Super Bowl party, 2017 edition
My article today is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek rundown of the beers you should stock to please all of the characters at your Super Bowl party this weekend. I wrote a similar article two years ago, and then this happened: //giphy.com/embed/t4UZdTUjayOPK via GIPHY I am not a superstitious person per se, but there was a 100% chance I would write […]
Best of Hoppy Boston 2016
Now that the calendar has turned to 2017 I thought it would be fun to do a recap of some of my favorite and/or most popular articles of the year, along with a rundown of some of the best beers I reviewed this year. It was a crazy year personally with buying a house, changing jobs and […]
Random Beer Thoughts: December 2016
There have been a couple more important articles released since I published my thoughts on the Craft Beer Cellar Blacklist (if you are sick of talking/reading/thinking about this topic I understand, feel free to skip ahead, but there is clearly a lot of interest). BostInno published an in depth and very well researched article with thoughts from the owners of […]
The Craft Beer Cellar Blacklist
This last Friday and Saturday were an interesting time for people who follow the Boston area beer scene on Twitter. It started with a back-and-forth between Hopsters owner, Lee Cooper and Craft Beer Cellar owner, Suzanne Schalow. Lee made a number of accusations including trashing the CBC business model, and Suzanne responded by trashing Hopsters. […]
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