Posted under Beer Travel, brewpubs, Oregon beer, places to drink beer, Washington Beer

By Jen Sotolongo

This summer, I found myself in Golden, CO, waiting in line to take a tour of the Coors Brewery. Given that I was staying with friends in Boulder and spending time in Denver for a friend’s wedding, I knew there’d be delicious breweries abound. Coors, however, was not on my list of places to visit. I don’t drink Coors. I don’t like Coors. Why would I want to see the brewery?

A friend who graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in Golden assured me the tour was worth it. He said the packaging room was impressive and reminisced about the Thursdays he and his friends would bypass the tour and go directly to the tasting room for the free beer samples. He assured us that some of their offerings were actually decent and many were only available in Colorado. Plus, he pushed, they invented the aluminum can and started the recycling revolution.

He finally got me with the sustainability pull.

And so, we decided to take the tour just before our flight home. I had planned to write a post about the sustainability initiatives implemented by the Big Boys, and figured this would be a perfect place to start. Read More…

Posted under beer me

By Jen Sotolongo

Posted under Beer personalities, Beer Science, Oregon beer

By Jen Sotolongo

In this seemingly everlasting recession, an industry near and dear to many of us has experienced tremendous growth. Yep, I’m talking about the craft brewing industry.  Ready for some statistics?

In 2011, there were 1,989 craft breweries in the United States, the highest number since the 1880s, accounting for just a sliver of the total share of the beer market at 5 percent. However, sales grew 15 percent in 2011, generating $8.7 billion in retail sales. Craft brewing accounts for an estimated 103,585 jobs nationwide, including wait staff at brewpubs. According to the Brewers Association, a craft brewery is one who produces fewer than 6 million barrels of beer annually ad is independently-owned. Read More…

Posted under beer me, Beer Science, beer tools, Oregon beer

By Jen Sotolongo

I love walking into the local pub in a small town and seeing everyone turns their heads in unison to the strangers who have just entered. That is when I know I have entered upon the town’s “third place.”

The term third place was coined by Ray Oldenburg in his book, The Great Good Place. According to Oldenburg, each of us needs three places. The first is our home, the second is work or school, and the third is the local hangout where individuals from the community can connect and share ideas on a neutral ground. Whether it be a brewery, coffee shop, church, or the barber, this is the place we go to break the routine of home-work-home, escape the screens of our televisions, phones, and computers and foster connections with our neighbors. Moreover, the third place serves as an information hub for newcomers, connects youth with adults, promotes strong relationships and friendships that benefit the community, and provides entertainment and comfort.

Oldenburg says the design of American suburban housing divisions since WWII hinders community. Most are people in the suburbs are not within walking distance of a communal gathering spot and neighbors no longer know one another. Americans are craving more social interactions and community, especially during these tough times we’ve been having over the past several years.

My first third place brewery was Captain Lawrence in Pleasantville, NY. My husband and I had just moved to a small town in the Hudson Valley, and were wondering what exactly there was to do in our new home. When we discovered there was a new brewery nearby, we visited right away.

Just under a year old, Captain Lawrence offered free Read More…

Posted under beer history, Beer personalities

By Jen Sotolongo

Beer production requires a lot of water. In fact, 90% of beer is water. And this figure doesn’t even include the water required for cleaning, running a brewery or brewpub, or growing hops and barley.

According to the Water Footprint Network, the Netherlands organization that pioneered measuring water footprints, one gallon of beer requires 689 gallons of water to produce. The majority of water used in the production comes from growing and fermenting barley and other grains used during the brewing process. The industry average is 6-10 gallons of water per gallon of beer produced in the brewery, according to Executive Brewmaster at Full Sail, Jamie Emmerson.

Of the top 100 water users in Portland during the FY09-FY10 year, Widmer Brothers ranked #27 and Pyramid Brewing #77. A recent study conducted by consulting firm McKinstry & Co. and the World Bank estimates that by 2030, more than one third of the world’s population will face major water shortages if we continue business as usual. This is a cause for concern in an industry whose product relies heavily on water, especially in states like Colorado and California, with abundant breweries, and severely depleted rivers.

Luckily, many breweries realize the importance of Read More…

Posted under beer me, Oregon beer, Washington Beer

By Jen Sotolongo

Although the modern brewing industry is primarily dominated by males, women were the original brewers. Credit for the creation of beer is often given to Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of beer. Inscribed on a tablet dating back to 1800 BC, the “A Hymn to Ninkasi,” a poem that describes the first-known recipe for beer. From Europe to Egypt, women dominated the brewing world. Men were not permitted to brew and women ran the beer halls and taverns.

Considered a food and form of hydration, due to poor water quality, beer was an important source of sustenance for all members of the household and beermaking was among a wife’s household duties. Brewsters, a nearly extinct term for female brewers, experimented with different spices and ingredients and brewed for special occasions and community gatherings. Additionally, brewing was a form of economic empowerment for women, as it allowed them to earn a small income through the sales of surplus beer.

Once beer became a mass-produced commodity during the Industrial Revolution, men took the Read More…

Posted under beer history, Oregon beer

By Jen Sotolongo

The story of the craft brewing industry in the United States is long and heartbreaking tale of how corporate brewing giants turned the brewing industry into a market for a cheap, tasteless drink in order to make big bucks. This ultimately reduced the industry to a paltry 80 breweries, run by 51 companies nationwide by the 1980s. It is a tale of how beer became a commodity rather than a means of social gathering, sustenance, and housewife duty and how the beer drinking community rebelled by defying law to bring back the local brewery.

In this and the following blog installment, I will highlight the unintended consequences of the Industrial Revolution, Prohibition, and tax policies that hindered the craft brewing industry, made clear to me by Chris O’Brien’s magnificent book, Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World. While I’ve read many great accounts of the history of brewing in America, none have touched upon the ramifications to society in the way that O’Brien has.

We can credit our first president for kickstarting the Read More…

Posted under beer history

By Jen Sotolongo

A recent visit to Standing Stone Brewery in Ashland inspired me to finally select a topic for the weekly blog my school, the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (BGI) requires of its students. A small school, based out of Bainbridge Island, BGI aims to create change agents through their MBA in Sustainable Systems program.

Up until this point, we had the liberty of selecting any topic of interest, so long as we discussed sustainability and business. This quarter, we were asked to pick a single topic for the entire quarter. I had no idea what to write about for three whole months.

While enjoying a pint of Standing Stone’s Oatmeal Stout, I marveled at the brewpub’s sustainability initiatives. Shiny bikes stand front and center upon arrival, waiting for the day they can go home with an employee who has put in 1,000 hours and agrees to bike commute at least 45 times within a year of receiving their new ride. Report cards detail the brewery’s use of energy, waste, and water. And, like many Oregon breweries, they support their local community events.

Experiencing Standing Stone’s commitment to people, planet, and profit led me to declare that I would write about sustainability in the brewing industry as my blog topic. I love beer and want to make this world a better place, so I thought, “why not marry the two?” Read More…

Posted under Beer Blogs, Beer personalities