“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Einstein may or may not have said these words——it’s one of many unsourced attributions that clog up inspirational quote sites around the web——but their sentiment offers an acute abstract of the creative psyche; that lateral thinkers create solutions by seeing problems differently to others. Pablo Pardo is one of those people. News & Coffee Francesc Macià. Originally from Argentina, Pablo arrived in Barcelona at the beginning of the 21st century, falling by default into the world of hospitality. Learning o ..read more

Chapter One: Nostalgia. Germans have all the best words. Registering on the mainstream scale we’ve got schadenfreude, which sits snugly inside English dictionaries as a loanword, then for the German language hipsters, we have: fremdschämen. A real treat, this one; an untranslatable word that describes the sensation of feeling ashamed about something somebody else has done. (Think of it as the title for a German-dubbed version of Curb Your Enthusiasm.) And on the romanticists’ side of the spectrum is fernweh: literally ‘farsickness’, a kind of counter to homesickness that defines a longing for ..read more

A new decade. A new era of craft beer. And the beer world has never looked so good. Last year we announced that ‘beer cans are the new record sleeve’, and the past 12 months have seen beer’s hit parade packed with show-stopping chart toppers, underground gems and critically acclaimed debuts. The success of our Medium-based roundup of 2018’s best craft beer label designs was the impetus we needed to take Caña online whilst we continue to cook up our print edition plans. Last year’s Medium-based roundup of the best beer label design proved to be the impetus we needed to take the Caña concept ..read more

Hugo Freijanes and Zak Elfman meet in a bar in Vigo, a city in Galicia on Spain’s northwestern coast. It’s a ‘blind date’, set up by their girlfriends who work together in the fashion industry. The latter duo had discovered that the former duo have a shared interest in talking ‘fermentation’, and thus a friendship was born. Zak is a North American making small-batch natural wine in the obscenely beautiful Ribeira Sacra; a region with winemaking tradition that goes back to the Romans, yet one that has not been overly exploited. Under the name Mission, Elfman is committed to a minimal interventi ..read more

If you thought things got weird in the 2010s, just you wait. It’s felt a little bit like the human race has been at a sort of tipping point in its relationship with technology over the last half of this decade. A commonplace ubiquity for artificial intelligence and both virtual and augmented reality (including a hybrid of the two, mixed-reality) is just in view on the horizon. Blitzed frighteningly with a loosening grip on our own personal data; Big Tech’s extinguishing of democracy; and increasing power among a lessening few, this living, breathing hyper-tech could be set to eclipse the atten ..read more

The barrel room at Purpose Brewing & Cellars in Fort Collins, Colorado, is compact, yet every inch within it is made available for the storage of steadily maturing beer. It’s the first thing to catch your attention when you enter the brewery’s taproom. Once you do, it’s difficult to turn your attention away from the collection of various oak casks, as you sit and enjoy a flight of beers within comfortable surrounds.  It’s a certainty that many of these barrels have a storied history, most having contained wine or whiskey for many years beforehand. However, one of these barrels——which appea ..read more

Beer Culture is a series of craft beer guides that embrace the Caña spirit of looking toward beer’s wider culture. They are city guides rooted, but not exclusive, to beer; guides that offer a concise overview of drinking, eating and experiencing the very best that a destination has to offer. From craft beer to coffee, and absolutely everything in between, this is a Barcelona craft beer guide with culture at heart. Barcelona, hey? There’s few cities where both historical and contemporary cultures are revered in such equal measure. There’s Gaudí, Miró and Antoni Tàpies. Dalí born close by. A you ..read more

A name synonymous with the nomadic essence of ‘gypsy brewing’, Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø’s Evil Twin brand has at last laid physical roots in an——at present——off-the-beaten-track area of Queens; the twin of Mikkel[ler] and his wife and business partner, Maria, opening the doors of their first permanent brewery and taproom last week. Building on the collaborative nature that Jarnit-Bjergsø has fostered with Evil Twin, the duo’s impressive Ridgewood home serves as a coming together for creative minds; New York City-based architecture firm, Kushner Studios (the same designers behind the Dane’s m ..read more

Known to many as ‘America’s favorite drive’, the Blue Ridge Parkway meanders majestically through 469 miles of some of the country’s most arresting natural beauty. Traversing the Appalachian Mountains; spanning 29 Virginia and North Carolina counties; linking up Shenandoah National Park with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Linn Cove Viaduct, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Photo by Wes Hicks The hundreds of thousands of young men who helped build it and other major environmental conservation projects of the 1930s and ‘40s did so as members of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC); an initia ..read more

In a dark and smoky bar down a small and pokey street in Copenhagen is where my heart lies. It is a bar where the smell of cigarettes and beer lingers ever so faintly; some days more than others. It is a bar full of memories. Of laughter, and wonderful evenings. Of tears, and sadness. It is the place where my heart soared the very first moment I met the boy with the kind brown eyes and tweed flat cap. Where, more than a year later, he broke it irrevocably. After I bought him a beer, no less. But, it is also the place where my heart has started to heal. A place that has seen both the best of ti ..read more