Beervana Blog

This website originated on the free platform Blogger during a time when social media wasn't as prevalent. For nearly ten years, I focused on writing about beer, but at that moment, my main focus was on politics. Beervana became a delightful side venture that allowed me to explore a topic that brought me genuine happiness. After three years, the strain of political writing led me to shift my focus entirely to this site. In 2011, I made the leap to write about beer professionally, and Beervana has consistently been the foundation of my writing, providing a space to connect with the beer and cider community, regardless of the projects I'm involved in.

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Martyn Cornell, 1952-2025 — Beervana

3 weeks ago | beervanablog.com | Jeff Alworth

Martyn emphasized that history’s value lies not in getting facts straight, or at least not only in that. Does it really matter that Brits were already sending oceans of strong, hoppy porter to India when IPAs finally came along? Who really cares if it was this beer or that beer that came first? Martyn showed us why the details matter.
The AI / Web Search Time Bomb — Beervana

4 weeks ago | beervanablog.com | Jeff Alworth

As a writer, I am alarmed by any system that anonymizes my work, appropriates it without payment (I believe attorneys refer to this as “stealing anything that is not nailed down”), and spits out a less nuanced, more inaccurate, and more boringly-written version of it. If people are no longer visiting this site for information, what’s my incentive to write it? Why would I agree be the unpaid intern for a voraciously greedy software company that is busily working to put me out of business?
Court Rules All “Liberation Day” Tariffs Unlawful — Beervana

1 month ago | beervanablog.com | Jeff Alworth

Welcome to another issue of “Tariff Talk” here on the Beeronomics blog. How’s your legalese? “The court holds for the foregoing reasons that IEEPA does not authorize any of the Worldwide, Retaliatory, or Trafficking Tariff Orders. The Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff Orders exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs. The Trafficking Tariffs fail because they do not deal with the threats set forth in those orders.
Some Travel Errata, Briefly — Beervana

1 month ago | beervanablog.com | Jeff Alworth

Note: I founded Celebrate Oregon Beer and serve as its part-time Executive Director. A component of our mission involves promoting travel to the state, and we hope to work with Travel Oregon and its regional and local DMOs to sing Oregon’s praises. The other part of my work is writing about the beer industry, and today they crash into each other; this post is in part an effort at transparency.
Is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale an ESB? — Beervana

1 month ago | beervanablog.com | Jeff Alworth

Let’s zoom back to the late 1970s, when Americans were opening the first little breweries. They largely looked to the UK for inspiration, making a range of styles that closely mirrored the tradition of English ales. I think people forget that there was no stylistic difference between bitters and pales in the UK; they were synonyms for the same beer. The words “pale ale” were more often used on bottled products, while punters called these beers “bitters” at the pub.
Stratacasters on Display — Beervana

1 month ago | beervanablog.com | Jeff Alworth

I am not good with puns, as the almost-certainly confusing title to this post attests. In the following paragraphs I will not be talking guitars, however, but Oregon’s home-bred, home-grown hop and the breweries who use it: Strata. Next Friday, May 23rd, a large, statewide collaboration kicks off at Roscoe’s here in Portland. It is a huge project that involves two dozen breweries, nine hop farms, four taprooms, one hop breeder, and a yeast lab all located right here in Oregon.
Beer’s Secret Ingredient: Ink — Beervana

1 month ago | beervanablog.com | Jeff Alworth

Three months ago, the English writer Pete Brown announced that he had been hired to write a column in the Sunday Times. Pete is the most visible beer writer in the UK, so this didn’t strike me as especially surprising until he explained that until very recently, and for decades, none of the 23 national papers had a regular writer covering beer. “Our new generation tried and tried to get more beer coverage in the mainstream press. You’d get responses like ‘We did an article on beer last year.
Assembly Brewing, 2019-2025 — Beervana

1 month ago | beervanablog.com | Jeff Alworth

In terms of beer, Johnson wasn’t aiming to set the world on fire. He started homebrewing 32 years ago, and you could see the effect of classic American brewpubs on his beers. He liked porters and stouts; he liked malt. “My philosophy is to brew balanced and accessible ales for the people,” he said. But that fit in with his vision for Assembly, which was serving the people. His beer was the right fit for the neighborhood, and so was his spacious, welcoming pub.
A Brief Personal Update — Beervana

1 month ago | beervanablog.com | Jeff Alworth

Content warning: the existence of potentially uncomfortable political issues acknowledged below. No surprise, looking closely revealed that the repressed trauma of watching my country devolve into a failed state has taken a big toll. That’s a loaded sentence, and if you want to know more about what I mean, you can explore/subscribe to my political writing. I don’t need to turn this into an op-ed, but I think the way those politics affect me—and my work here—is very much in-bounds.
The Wallpaper Phase For Craft Beer — Beervana

1 month ago | beervanablog.com | Jeff Alworth

Don’t focus too much on the dates—one could easily move those around without argument from me (part of the challenge is that different parts of the country went through these phases at different times). The real point is that we’ve entered a new phase. For the first couple decades, small breweries commanded a very committed, niche audience. These were the early-adopters who were excited to discover a new craft they could help birth.