Fourteen local breweries will be on display Saturday at the Petaluma River Craft Beer Festival, from 1-6 p.m. on Water Street in downtown Petaluma. There will be food from a variety of area restaurants, and music by The Fossils, joined by some other local favorites. Tickets are $30 in advance [...]
Looking for some beery fun this weekend? Napa's annual Blues, Brews & BBQ festival returns Saturday from 1-6 p.m. They close down several blocks of downtown and set up food booths and music stages here and there. The highlight, beer-ish-ly speaking, is the beer garden, a row of tents from [...]
Our report earlier this week on the extreme supply crunch at Russian River Brewing provoked a lively debate in our comment section and at other sites. Some beer fans applauded the position by owners Vinnie and Natalie Cilurzo that there are some things more important than expansion, things like quality [...]
He's still months away from opening his new brewery in Chicago, but Lagunitas founder Tony Magee is already emerging as a power player in the Second City's thriving food and beverage scene. The website NewCityResto acknowledged Magee's growing significance this week by naming him to their list "The Big Heat: [...]
I once had a conversation with a senior guy in the Napa Valley Vintners about contract production, meaning small winemakers who rent equipment and space, and even staff, from larger wineries to make their product rather than building their own production facilities. There are lots of boutique and high-end producers [...]
It does seem like you can hardly turn around without bumping into a good craft brew festival these days, but what a problem to have. A couple of events are looming for Beer Country fans, starting this week with Davis Beer Week, starting on Saturday. That involves a bunch of [...]
Last I checked, the thing in the package was the point, not the packaging itself. But of course, certain beer manufacturers disagree. Observe MillerCoors, which has been out front in creating and marketing fancy packaging: ink that changes color to tell you when your beer is cold (saving you the [...]
TheDailyMeal.com continues its ongoing look into the world of craft brew this week with a list of the "Top 15 craft breweries in the USA." Anyone surprised that Sonoma County stands out? Me either. The only surprise is that the numbers aren't a little higher. Lagunitas weighs in at #7, [...]
Draft magazine has an article this week that has generated a lot of beer chatter. It asks of America's beer boom: "Will it fall?" This is not an idle question. The industry's first boom, in the early 1990s, hit the skids pretty hard in less than a decade, leaving lots [...]
Beer Advocates-in-Chief Jason and Todd Alstrom, founders of Beer Advocate magazine and website, will be hitting some locations in Sonoma County on Wednesday, part of a West Coast tour that started with a session at Sierra Nevada's annual Beer Camp in Chico. The brothers will be hitting Bear Republic from [...]
The financial website The Street gives Petaluma, and the rest of Sonoma County, some beery love in its list of five hidden gems for a beer vacation (which my wife has dubbed brewcations), following on a similar list they posted in June: So why are we dumping beer lovers into [...]
Our friends at the North Bay Business Journal (owned by the same people, located across the hall from the PD) have an interesting list this week: the region's breweries ranked by size. They list the 14 craft breweries they could identify and get information out of and the results give [...]
I'm not sure that Craft Brew's most popular style really needs a day of commemoration, but it has one anyway. And that's today - IPA Day. Ashley Routson, also known as The Beer Wench (@TheBeerWench for you Twitterheads), explains that today is a day to share your stories, pictures and [...]
Is there any craft beer list left in the universe that doesn't rank Lagunitas and Russian River somewhere near the top? Anyone? I didn't think so. Website The Daily Meal recently quizzed its readers on the best American craft brew outfits and, perhaps unsurprisingly, our two locals showed up on [...]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H8Cz9woC2A Hey, Pot People - kind of a cheap shot here, don't you think? The Marijuana Policy Project has rolled out (rolled up?) a new ad campaign, debuting at the Brickyard 400 NASCAR event in Indianapolis last weekend touting the virtues of pot and calling for its legalization. All fine [...]
A resident of Santa Rosa for most of his life, Peter Lopez Jr., 34, has taken over the duties of beer blogger for the Press Democrat. He has been a part of the beer and wine industry for almost his entire adult life and brings a wealth of knowledge. Currently Peter is a partner at the Healdsburg Emporium where he does the beer and wine purchasing. He is also the wine 
buyer at Fircrest Market in Sebastopol and the administrator of the NorCal Beer Geeks group on Facebook.
Beer is a big business in this part of the world, with some of the best and most sought-after brews made right in our own back yard. But too often that beer culture is hidden behind the iconic wine industry that defines the region. The Beer Country blog will bring you news and notes about our local brew scene, and maybe a little about cider while we’re at it. Have news, ideas, or questions that need answering? Drop a line in the comments section of the blog or email us at info@pressdemocrat.com