I’m forever deliberating over the impact nanobreweries can or do have on a city’s beer culture. For every Commons (nee Beetje) brewery in Portland or Hess in San Diego, there are seemingly a dozen more that think they can emulate that level of success. To find out what these nanobrewers want to get out of the brewing industry, and what they think can have to contribute, I went straight to the teensy-tiny sources in my August turn at the Mercury’s Lush Life column.
When the CBC hit Portland last year, I said, Man, I gotta write something about this for the Portland Mercury. Which I did. (Then, once the hangover waned, I recapped CBC events for 1859.) When, a year later (present date), CiderCon was heading to, uh, Cidervana, I pitched doing a bigger story and maybe we put it on the cover and really show those cider makers from other places outside the Northwest how big fermented apples are here and what a true cider city looks and reads like. They bought it. Even cooler, I somehow finagled an assignment for 1,800 words into 3,000. Clearly, there’s a lot to say about cider.
Another round-up of Merc blog posts:
Another round up of Merc beer blogs, capped by a cider blog.
That’s enough for now.
As a freelance writer, I’m basically grateful for any publisher and editor willing to suffer my pitches, edit my work, and spend the ink or kilobytes to publish it. Thusly, I bid a fond adieu to typing about beer for Portland’s other alt-weekly, Willamette Week, and merrily begin doing such for The Merc who graciously extended the role of beer blogger and, soon enough, columnist. This entails 1-2 weekly blog posts on beer news big and small, breaking or just timely, and again, sooner than later, a half-page column in the paper.
First up was a 1,700-word story about the best places local beer lovers can enjoy imported craft beers during Craft Brewers Conference.
*Then came news of advance tix for the 10th Annual FredFest.
*Oregon Public House kickstarted #Aletruism Brewing.
*Super fun breaking news that Bend’s Worthy Brewing is expanding up to the stars.
*Jacobsen Sea Salted beer in the form of Jammer Gose from Bklyn’s Sixpoint Brewery.
Brian Yaeger: Beer Writer 