Carrie Peyton Dahlberg

Creamy foam, thick and pale brown, floats atop the dark brew Jacob Pressey sets on a comfortably cluttered bar at Humboldt Regeneration. Outside the roll-up door, rain hammers the corrugated green awning and douses the parking lot of this industrial strip behind McKinleyville’s Central Avenue. Inside, beer fans are in hoodies and knit caps, idly […]

It’s cold in the back room of Humboldt Beer Works, and steam is rising from a big metal pot. We can hear the soft clanking of metal on metal each time Josh Reed scrapes his spoon against its sides. We’re sitting in a space that looks like a cross between warehouse and test kitchen. A […]

Nobody ever told bourbon makers about zero waste. They’re a peculiar lot, holed up in Kentucky, stacking charred bourbon barrels by the millions into drafty, seven-story warehouses — and then getting rid of every single barrel. It’s a bourbon thing, and I’ll get back to what it means for Humboldt beers in a moment. First, […]

Almost every weekend for more than a year, Scott Misener’s aging pickup truck has bumped and clanged along a twisting dirt road to a metal shed high on a ridge in Fruitland. There, Misener has milled and mashed, hopped and hoped. Now he’s about to find out whether Humboldt’s beer drinkers approve. Misener is making […]

As gently as if she were easing a sleeping baby into a crib, a waitress settles 12 small glasses of beer, cupped in a wooden tray, onto our table in the beer garden outside Eel River Brewing Co.’s taproom in Fortuna. The breeze is soft, the day is warm, and the beers move with barely […]

Ari Friedman grins down at the cherries behind the bar at Dead Reckoning Tavern in Arcata. It’s a wide smile, stretching the corners of his dark mustache and crinkling his eyes. Pluck, twist, plop. Mangled, meaty cherries, freed of stems and pits, fill a wooden bowl as Theo Brown tinkers with the contraption beside them. […]

Great relationships can benefit from a little time apart. No matter how smooth, how satisfying the partnership, stepping away can be a revelation. If you’ve been drinking India pale ales, nothing may seem as beautifully matched as that sharp, hoppy tang and that higher alcohol buzz. They dance inseparably across your senses, satisfying taste and […]