Sacramento area breweries, brewpubs, bars and restaurants opened their doors and their taps to an enthusiastic response for the first Sacramento Beer Week. Starting on February 22, 2010, Sacramento Beer Week eventually encompassed over 300 events at sites from Davis to Nevada City and almost everywhere in between.

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The Big Island of Hawaii, the island the state is named for, has long been a destination for tourists, romantics, scholars, adventurers and entrepreneurs. From the volcanoes that formed it and still call to those who seek to learn more about the Earth, to the heights of the snowcapped mountain where observatories scan the skies and look to the future, the island has...

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Alaskans are a sturdy bunch. Independent and resourceful, they are in survival mode for much of their existence in the wilds of the Last Frontier. Included in “travel gear” are water, blankets, Spam or jerky and a good supply of duct tape (called 100-mile-an-hour tape). Downtown Anchorage is a bit more civilized, with modern hotels, shops, restaurants and pubs...

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Oktoberfest has been celebrated in the capital of Germany’s Bavaria nearly every year since Crown Prince Ludwig and his Princess Therese got hitched in 1810, save for those years that were otherwise occupied with blowing up things and people. The 176th Oktoberfest started, as tradition would have it, on the third Saturday of September, making 2009’s...

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A cross-continental spin-off of the successful Mondial de la Bière Montréal held every spring, the first edition of Mondial de la Bière Strasbourg took place October 16–18 in the capital of northeastern France’s Alsace region, located near the German border. The beer festival featured over 420 craft and artisanal beers from more than 120 international breweries...

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Norway was once a country without any craft beer. Perhaps this is the main reason Kjetil Jikiun found craft beers so captivating during layovers in the U.S. while flying as a pilot for a major European airline. It certainly influenced his homebrewing hobby, to the point where he decided to open up his own brewery in 2002 under the theme of “the uncompromising brewery.”...

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Our Brewers Swimsuit Issue got its start as a gag or spoof of the titillating annual Swimsuit Edition of Sports Illustrated. Our thought was brewers in swimsuits and boots in the brewhouse, just for fun.

Our first takers included the always-exuberant Fal Allen, then at the Pike Brewery in Seattle. We had a...

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San Francisco Beer Week began as a response to our beer-loving brothers in the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia. They had set the bar high with the first Philly Beer Week, held last year in March. Hundreds of events, from pint nights to elaborate beer dinners, were held all over eastern Pennsylvania, all under the moniker “America’s Best Beer-Drinking City"...

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CRAFT BEER & KEYSTONE COPS
Tom Dalldorf

Despite a depressingly sour economic climate, a sweet spot is the continued growth of the craft beer segment of the alcoholic beverage industry. The Brewers Association in Boulder, Colorado, the trade association that keeps track of production statistics for U.S. breweries (among other things), recently released data from 2009 showing that craft brewers had a sales dollar increase of some 10.3% and a volume (production) increase of 7.2% over 2008. This continued growth amounts to 613,992 more barrels of quality craft beer (some 8.5 million cases) over the previous year! Big-guy industrial lager producers saw beer production decline by approximately 5 million barrels in 2009. Clearly, in these tough economic times, people are drinking less — but they are drinking better...

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