Deschutes Brewery has long been one of my favorites. It wasn’t the first craft beer I tried, but I can trace my craft beer epiphany back to a few pints of Black Butte Porter on nitro in Helena, MT somewhere around ’97. Several years of The Abyss feature prominently in my beer cellar. I’m still…
Black IPAs are hot. IPAs as a whole continue to be a fast growing segment of craft beer sales and these roasted malt versions are popping up all over the place. The most recent local addition is Bitter Root Brewery’s Last Cast Black IPA. On the way to working up a review, I stumbled upon…
The term “pub crawl” has a tendency to conjure images of packs of young inebriates traveling from spot to spot drinking cheap “domestics” and shots of jagermeister. Fortunately, the crowd of 40 or so beer bloggers who gathered Thursday evening to unofficially kick off the 2011 Beer Bloggers Conference in Portland has far more respect…
What do a freelance writer, an attorney, a medical practice manager, a youth director and two grad students have in common? No, that’s not the introduction to a bad lawyer joke. It’s the makeup of our first Pop That Cap night and the common thread was a love of craft beer, a desire to experience…
While enjoying a couple of pints at The Rhino in Missoula on new years eve, we came up with the idea of handing out a few 2010 Beer Awards to mark another great year in craft brewing. One of the primary purposes of this blog is to generate discussion and interest in craft beer. Whether…
I’ve been waiting for over a year to try this one I picked up in 2009. With a “best after” date of October 2010, I figured I was just about right on time. Deschutes Brewery calls Black Butte XXI a “masterpiece” and a “tribute to Black Butte Porter, the revolutionary Deschutes Brewery beer that has…
Black IPAs are all the rage. Though I don’t know quite what to call them. As this blogger notes, it is a bit odd to call something both black and pale at the same time. The Brewers Association’s style guidelines recognized this contradiction and decided to call the style “American-Style India Black Ale.” This name…