Chris Isbell probably never thought rice farming would put his name on the international map.  Uninspired by college courses in the 1980s, the fourth-generation farmer returned to the family business in Arkansas, his calling to the combine harvester stronger than to the confines of a traditional college classroom. “I’m not super educated, but I’m not stupid,” says Isbell with a chuckle. “I’ve always been real curious. I never quit trying to learn.” While Isbell never picked a major, he was always interested in the sciences, and his insatiable curiosity would eventually be the catalyst for ..read more

Once upon a time, not so long ago, two somewhat twinny-looking chaps with beards opened a brewpub in a former QQ Asian Restaurant in the sleepy Phoenix suburb of Gilbert, Arizona. Within eight months, RateBeer awarded them Brewery of the Year, they were interviewed by Esquire Magazine, and they started collaborating with pretty much every craft beer superstar brewer around the world.  You might think you’ve heard this one before—that world domination followed, huge production facilities were built and you can now buy their beers at corner stores across America. But for Jonathan Buford an ..read more

Saturday, March 2, was a dismal day in Portland, Oregon. It drizzled on and off, only rising out of the 30s for a few hours in the afternoon. Yet, it was rocking in Northwest Wilson, an otherwise sleepy, industrial street hidden behind Highway 30. People spilled out of a nondescript warehouse building and huddled under tents that dotted the pavement. Up a flight of stairs, a blackened taproom squirmed with bodies. Grim reapers greeted guests entering what owner Sam Zermeño calls his “scorched church.” He was opening the doors to his new brewery, Brujos Brewing, and casual fans might have been ..read more

We’re voracious consumers of culture. And each week, a member of our team shares the words, images, and beers that inspired them.   “The Paper Dolls of Zelda Fitzgerald” Read.// With “The Great Gatsby” on Broadway this spring, it may be time for a reread. If you are hesitant to bust out your yellowing high school copy, though, critic Wesley Morris makes a compelling case for returning (again and again) to this deserving classic. In his foreword to the Modern Library’s 2021 edition of the book, Morris considers the downright luxuriousness of Fitzgerald's prose and how that polished langu ..read more

By just about any standard, Tony Magee should be considered one of the most successful Americans to have ever worked in beer. The soon-to-be 64-year old entrepreneur started California's Lagunitas Brewing Company in 1993, grew its IPA-focused portfolio into one of the largest breweries in the country, and sold to Heineken—one of the largest brewing companies on Earth—in a two-part deal valued at a reported $1 billion. He has been a featured speaker at industry and private events all over the world and has long been cited for his prescient takes on a growing, maturing, and eventually challenged ..read more

It’s a cold December morning, and Great Yarmouth is slowly dragging itself out of bed.  This seaside resort town, located on the easternmost edge of England’s coastline, is a place built for summer. It’s in the high season when the Pleasure Beach Ghost Train clunks into action; when families and couples flock to the promenade, unwittingly dripping melted ice cream onto the concrete; when seafront arcades swarm with kids stuffing grubby two-penny pieces into the machines. But the week before Christmas is a different story. Only a handful of Great Yarmouth’s high-street shops are open, and ..read more

“It’s a whole hidden world,” my husband says as we ricochet along the increasingly steep and rocky dirt road that leads through the Davis Mountain Resort (DMR), a private residential community stretching over 8,000 acres across West Texas’ Davis Mountains.  Our woefully inadequate two-wheel-drive RAV4 stutters and stumbles behind Molly Cummings’ older, but far more sturdy, mother-of-pearl Land Rover as we ascend through tall piles of ochre boulders, patches of shrub, long grass, and prickly pear cacti. I’m mesmerized by the raw beauty of the mountains, the blue-gray clouds sitting low ove ..read more

We’re voracious consumers of culture. And each week, a member of our team shares the words, images, and beers that inspired them.   Austin Kleon's In Newspaper Blackout Read.// Because I'm always plugging short fiction, I'm often asked just what story is my all-time favorite. This is the kind of question that causes me to lose sleep at night. How on earth could I pick a single short story to crown out of all the ones I've read and loved over the years? Rather than selecting just one, though, I've come up with a list of rotating titles that I have at the ready when this question arises ..read more

On paper, it makes no sense.  Then again, nothing is quite what it seems at Hildegard Ferments and Botanicals.  The labor hours for Rosa Vissers’ elderberry syrup are more than she and her husband, Howard Kuo, can count. First, someone hand-harvests the berries. Next, Vissers manually strips the berries from the branches for the long process in which she prepares three separate infusions—with honey, alcohol, and water—that she later combines. Despite the extra effort and local, organic ingredients, Hildegard charges half the price commanded by commercial syrups. That’s because here ..read more

In most French cities the size of Hochfelden, the trains don’t bother stopping anymore. Here in the countryside not far from the German border, weeds often cover the tracks, while stations are mostly left unattended, decaying slowly. Yet this small Alsatian town of 4,000 souls is an easy, 20-minute train trip from Strasbourg, the biggest city in northeastern France, with connections running every half hour, every day of the week. In rural France, this is quite rare. Without this crucial rail link, the trajectory of Hochfelden’s Brasserie Meteor might not have been the same. When the Paris-Str ..read more