Jim Wells is a freelance beer writer in Boston. When he’s not scouring the globe for the next scoop, Jim’s investigating local brew fests to find the next great beer.
Craft brewers reach double-digit volume share; The Alchemist granted permit for new brewery; New Belgium gives $1 million to Colorado State University; and Boston area breweries to share equipment.
Longmont, Colo., canned-beer pioneer Oskar Blues Brewery has acquired Perrin Brewing Company in Comstock Park, Mich. While the exact terms of the deal were not specified, Perrin will remain locally owned and operated.
Georgia’s Senate Bill 63, more commonly known as the Beer Jobs Bill, passed the state Senate in early April. Meanwhile, Kentucky has banned breweries from self-distributing throughout the state, reversing a 1978 court decision permitting Anheuser-Busch to purchase a Louisville distributorship.
An archaeological excavation on a construction site in central Tel Aviv, Israel, has unearthed what may have been an ancient Egyptian brewery. The dig revealed fragments of large ceramic basins used by Egyptians to make beer approximately 5,000 years ago.
Ninkasi opens in-house recording studio; Flying Dog wins free speech battle; US canned beer sales grew in 2014; and Brewers Association makes an appeal to eBay.
The increasing number of US breweries establishing themselves in Europe indicates American beer’s surging popularity overseas. In Copenhagen, White Labs will share a space with WarPigs brewpub, the joint venture between Mikkeller and 3 Floyds, in the city’s meatpacking district.
Two breweries with self-distribution arms, Stone Brewing of San Diego and Harpoon Brewery of Boston, have begun distributing other craft brands in addition to their own in states where the practice is legal.
Mikkel Borg Bjergso, the founder, owner and CEO of Denmark’s Mikkeller brewery, and a self-proclaimed “gypsy brewer” who has always used another brewery’s facilities has finally decided to establish not one, but two brewing locations of his own.
Finding a food truck parked outside your favorite brewery used to be a pleasant surprise. Now, breweries are taking the notion a step further by opening up their own food trucks.
White Labs to open East Coast location; Carlsberg stops production of Draught Burton Ale; individual beer sales now legal in Missouri; and New York seeks federally backed crop insurance.
Flying Dog plans to establish Farmworks, a brewery focusing on unique, small-batch brews, in Lucketts, Va. The brewhouse will include a coolship, a barrel aging and souring facility, a cellar and a tasting room and hospitality area.
A fire at Hof ten Dormaal brewery in Tildonk, Belgium, destroyed the company’s warming chamber, bottling line and product stock. No one was injured, but the damages halted operations at the farmhouse brewery, which the Janssens family has run since founding it in 2009.
Loosened governmental restrictions and reduced tax burdens have encouraged entrepreneurship in South Korea’s beer industry, leading to a series of small brewery launches. The changes also allow the country’s preexisting brewpubs and microbreweries to sell their products to outside vendors.
The Canadian government has recently updated the country’s “Beer Standards of Identity,” the definition used to determine if a beverage can be labeled and sold as beer.
According to new regulations from the FDA, chain restaurants must now provide further nutritional information for food and drink they serve, including beer.
Two new hop processing operations—one in Washington’s Yakima Valley and another facility-in-planning in Virginia—seek to provide brewers with a quality product and a shorter turnaround time.
The Georgia Craft Brewer’s Guild has teamed up with several in-state breweries to launch Citizens for Georgia Beer Jobs, an initiative to make the state a friendlier place for craft brewers to do business.
Firestone Walker to contract brew Pliny the Elder; AB InBev enters distribution market; Stone selects Richmond, Va., for East Coast facility; and a beer-forward restaurant earns a Michelin star.
Two Whole Foods Market locations are set to premiere new in-store breweries before the end of the year. Each location’s beers will eventually be available for draft pours in Whole Foods taprooms throughout their regional markets, not necessarily just at the breweries themselves.
Scattered across the country, a few enterprising brewers have begun working with an unusual ingredient: kombucha, a mildly alcoholic fermented tea. Wild fermenting organisms in the tea help lend uniquely funky and tart flavors to their beers, driving curiosity among consumers.
Bruges’ De Halve Maan brewery will soon build an underground pipeline to move beer. Once operational, the pipeline will transport over 4 million liters (roughly 34,000 barrels) of beer per year to a nearby bottling plant.
