OVERCUP BLOG — related-the-field-guide-to-drinking-in-america

                                                          July means beer month here in Oregon, and the Oregon Brewers Festival is the  highlight and culmination of it all. Craft beer has  become not only a highly sought libation, with craft  brewers selling an estimated 24,076,864 barrels of  beer in 2015, but also a huge industry all over  America, creating over 424,000 jobs and  contributing $55.7 billion to the US economy in  2014. Nowhere in the state is this more evident...

It’s a well-known fact that Catholicism has a patron saint for everything: there’s a patron saint for beekeepers, another for clowns, and yet another for STDs. But the patron saint that we and The Field Guide to Drinking in America want to celebrate is perhaps the greatest of them all—St. Arnold, patron saint of brewers and beer.  Like any saint, Arnold has an interesting history. Born circa 580 AD, Arnold became bishop of Metz, in France, in 612. He was an adviser to the king, he was responsible for influential edicts that decreed that hereditary lands were not permanent and that bishops were to be appointed...

At the recent launch party for Matt Wagner’s Tall Trees of Paris at Gigantic Brewing (a great success, by the way!) we were honored by not one but TWO of Portland’s premier champagne sabreurs: Michael Ecker and Christopher Graham. Champagne sabering, or sabrage, is a delightfully ostentatious technique for opening a bottle of champagne with—you guessed it—a saber! Sabering dates back to Napoleonic times, but artisans like Michael and Christopher are carrying on the legacy with panache. You can see a snippet of Michael in action here.Michael embarked on the path to mastery at his wedding, where an official champagne...

It’s the most popular alcoholic beverage in the US, and the second most popular in the world. It’s also one of the oldest—first discovered during the Neolithic era, around 9,500 BCE. This beverage was an integral part of societies from Mesopotamia to medieval Europe. And despite its widespread popularity, and initial inclusivity to women, its production has become a real boy’s club—excluding women not only from its ranks, but largely from its customer base as well. In fact, in the US, women make up only twenty-five percent of its consumers and ten percent of its industry jobs. Any ideas as...