Clik here to view.
Will the New England IPA Continue Its Reign in 2018?
I shouldn’t have been surprised to see a massive line when my Uber dropped me off in front of New York’s Industria studios, where Juicy Brews was being held. Hazy IPAs and long lines to procure them...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Top 20 Beers of 2017
Sometimes, when it’s late at night, after I’ve had a little too much to drink, I think about quitting the writing life. Fuck it, I say to myself, I’ll just open a brewery instead. On Monday we could...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Moment Cantillon Happened
On what was supposed to be a sleepy Wednesday morning last November, the beloved Belgian brewery, Cantillon, had released that season’s bottles of Fou’Foune, Nath and Lou Pepe Framboise. Whereas in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Whiskey Geeks Are Recreating Rare Four Roses Bourbons
Travis Hill really wanted a bottle of Four Roses 2012 Limited Edition Small Batch. Unfortunately, only around 4,000 were released, and by 2014 they were selling for a good $900 on bourbon’s black...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Craft Whiskey’s New Era of Extreme Transparency
When Sugarlands Distilling’s new Roaming Man Tennessee Straight Rye Whiskey appeared on my stoop in an ornate, copper foil-embossed box, I wasn’t exactly impressed. Inside the box was a handsome,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Can America Embrace the Modern Trappist Ale?
In the Belgian countryside, in places like Gaume and Vleteren, sit centuries-old monasteries with names like Abbaye Notre-Dame d’Orval and Saint-Sixtus Abbey. There, honest-to-god monks exist. They...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tour an Oddball Collection of Midcentury Bourbon Decanters
Joshua Richholt has his doctor test him once a year for lead poisoning. Not because he’s been huffing paint or working out of an old office building, though. He simply insists on drinking bourbon from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Legend of the Taos Tree Martini
New Mexico is held in the popular imagination for its pueblos and green Hatch chiles and scorching deserts, for Georgia O’Keeffe and Breaking Bad. But journey to the Land of Enchantment’s northernmost...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Ultimate MGP Rye Whiskey Showdown
“Why do people pay more for the same whiskey distilled in Indiana from one NDP [non-distiller producer] vs another? [sic],” pondered a man on one of Facebook’s private whiskey groups. What he is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tour a Collection of Gallon-Sized Vintage Bourbon Bottles
Check TTB regulations closely and you’ll see there are only eight different bottle sizes liquor companies can legally sell to American consumers these days. That starts at the bottom with the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Westvleteren Hacker
After nearly two decades covering craft beer, there are few things geeks do to secure limited beer that surprise me anymore. They swap it through private Facebook groups and make illicit black market...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Did the Blow Job Shot Happen?
The crudest era in cocktail history begins with a man pruning his peach trees in Florida in the early ’80s. The gentleman in question is Earl LaRoe, a flavor scientist for National Distillers, a wine...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tour a Collection of Prohibition-Era “Medicinal” Whiskey
There’s an old joke in Kentucky about drinkers in the state during Prohibition—if you go on enough distillery tours, you’ll have eventually heard it so many times you can no longer even feign laughter....
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Ultimate Regional Lager Showdown
The clickbait industrial complex was ablaze in September of 2014 when it was announced that Pabst Blue Ribbon had just been sold to the Russians. “Sad, sad day. Never drinking that commy piss water...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Chasing “Dusties” with America’s Top Rare Spirits Hunter
I meet Alex Bachman Saturday morning at the corner of N. Wells and W. Division, right in front of The House of Glunz, a few blocks from where he grew up in the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago. He’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Life and Times of the Vodka Red Bull
I started my typical Saturday nights just out of college, in 2003, pregaming with my roommates. I’d watch a few episodes of “Fear Factor,” put on my best “going-out” button-up and trek to a row of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tour One of America’s Oldest Rare Liquor Stores
In 1810, Napoleon Bonaparte and Empress Joséphine divorced; one year later, Gagneur & Co. distilled some Cognac. By 1934 it was ready to bottle and, in 1935, Louis Glunz II bought a bottle of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Frozen Drink That Took Over Jackson Hole
Whatever your reason for visiting Wyoming, whether it’s to play out cowboy fantasies roping cattle, hike Grand Teton National Park or you’re Kanye West in town to record an album in secret, it’s pretty...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Rise and Fall of Mamma Mia! Pizza Beer
There’s something from Tom Seefurth’s past he can’t escape: a big, crazy dream that he turned into a reality, which eventually got away from him. He still gets random emails and phone calls nearly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In Memoriam: The Great Beer Whales of Yore
One beer was so improbably born it could never be repeated; another was a super collaboration with tricky logistics that would prevent it from coming to fruition ever again. One stout was from a...
View Article