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1 month ago | 
hopculture.com | Grace Lee-Weitz
Ambers are red; blueberry sours are blue. In February, we drank a lot of brews. Some from our “Best New Breweries of 2024.”Others from breweries right next door. We questioned if “Deep Fried Beer” is real. And started a new series called Varsity Brews. We paired our two favorite things—pizza and beer. And we did all of this in the shortest month of the year. So, without further ado, cheers. In February, these were our favorite beers.
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1 month ago | 
hopculture.com | Grace Lee-Weitz
Photography courtesy of Vector BrewingSomewhere over in the east side of Dallas rests one of the best brew pubs in the country: Vector Brewing. They’ve been knocking it out of the park since opening shop in 2020 with their consistent lager program and wood-aged, mix-culture offerings. All of their beers pair gloriously with what’s coming out of their scratch kitchen.
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2 months ago | 
hopculture.com | Grace Lee-Weitz
Photography courtesy of GrainbakersI pulled my hands out of the bowl and held them up in front of my face in awe. Covered tip to palm in a thick sticky paste, my fingers felt like I’d dipped them into a plaster cast. Laughing with my partner, we shaped the scraggly pile of yeast, bread flour, and the leftovers from a batch of stout into a ball of dough, setting it aside to proof. I wiped my hands off and took a swig of my Mare Island Mud Puppy brown ale.
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2 months ago | 
hopculture.com | Grace Lee-Weitz
As a kid, every year over Labor Day, my family would go to the Minnesota State Fair. The second largest of its kind in the country (bested only by Texas), “The Great Minnesota Get-Together,” as it’s nicknamed, included everything from a butter sculpting contest to whatever you can imagine on a stick—often fried. I still remember the year deep-fried Oreos hit the streets. The classic confection dipped in batter and plunged into oil was the ultimate guilty pleasure.
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2 months ago | 
hopculture.com | Grace Lee-Weitz
New year, new month, new beers. We’re approaching 2025 with a lot of drive, and it’s already kicking into overdrive. We have a slew of new adventures planned over the next twelve months, including exploring our favorite new places to travel for beer. We’re excited to keep our eyes on all our top breweries to watch and on these top trends we predicted to see if we’re right. And we have a bunch of beer festivals we’d love to attend.
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2 months ago | 
hopculture.com | Grace Lee-Weitz
Tucked away in the corner of one of the most respected lager breweries in the entire country is a tiny tank brewing some of the most exciting hoppy ales (and lagers, too). This 20-bbl ABS Commerical vessel from Pikes Peak Brewery stands tall and silent, almost like the unmoving King’s Guard at Buckingham Palace. In Bierstadt Lagerhaus’ close to 20,000 sqft taproom, you’d probably miss this small steel vessel if you weren’t looking for it. And why would you? It only takes up about 25 sqft of space.
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2 months ago | 
hopculture.com | Grace Lee-Weitz
Our two dimpled Czech mugs, one full of pale, clear gold liquid and the other a dark lager, clinked together over a sign in the middle of the wood table: “Your Czech Pronunciation Guide.”Tmavé – TMA-vehhSvĕltlé – SVYEH-tlehhLežák – Lay-zahkVýčepní – Vee-chep-neeHladinka – Hlah-dinkaŠnyt – Shh-nitMlíko – Mlee-koIn the middle of the taproom is a gleaming bar, wood-paneled and stainless steel-topped, just like at the pubs of one of the most prominent Czech bar groups.
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2 months ago | 
hopculture.com | Grace Lee-Weitz
Carrot cake, lemon pound cake, key lime pie, banana pudding, and German chocolate cake—all sound more like items in a bakery case than beers on a shelf. And you wouldn’t be wrong. But at Brown Girl’s Brew®, you can eat your cake…and drink it, too. Every year, towards the end of the year, we post on Instagram, asking our fans to tell us their favorite breweries and beers of the year.
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2 months ago | 
hopculture.com | Grace Lee-Weitz
Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie | Hop CultureI’m standing before a large blackboard with the words “Give A Beer, Take A Beer.” Tacked all across the surface are Polarids with captions like “Nurse,” “Parent’s Date Night,” “Someone Who Needs a Hug,” and my personal favorite, “Tell your dog I say ‘hi’!” The photos are a cornucopia, a rainbow of people in various poses, or beer glasses. A sign in the lower right-hand corner explains: “See yourself reflected in these photos?
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2 months ago | 
hopculture.com | Grace Lee-Weitz
We’re not surprised that we included three people involved with the Michael James Jackson Foundation for Brewing & Distilling (MJF) on our list of “The 14 Top People to Watch in Craft Beer in 2025.” Named after Michael James Jackson, one of the world’s most incredible beer and whiskey writers, the foundation strives to make the craft beer industry more diverse, just, and equitable by providing scholarship opportunities to underrepresented communities.
