My latest article for The Bulletin is out in time for the holiday weekend: Celebrate hard working beer makers this Labor Day. The Labor Day holiday seems like one many of us take for granted, so I wanted to honor the “labor” and highlight the hard work that goes into putting beer in our glasses.

The holiday was created to celebrate the achievements and contributions of American workers to the development of the United States. It was born out of the Industrial Revolution and the dismal working conditions of the late 19th century. Labor unions grew more prominent during this period, agitating for change, and the idea of a workingmen’s holiday to celebrate labor sprung from the labor movement.

Oregon became the first state in the union to make Labor Day an official public holiday in 1887, ahead of it becoming a federal holiday in 1894.

What does this have to do with beer? Everything! Brewing beer is hard, sweaty, mostly unglamorous work, often occupying long hours. Countless hours are spent hauling bags of grain, cleaning, scrubbing, moving kegs, shoveling spent grain, and cleaning some more. It’s often said that the job of brewing is 90 percent cleaning.

All in all, this is labor that goes largely unreported and underappreciated, even by beer writers. When you read about beer, the focus is on the glamorous part of the process — the exciting and sometimes exotic recipes, the new trends, the special releases and events. Rarely do we as writers focus on the hard work behind the scenes.

You can toast the brewers by picking up some of their locally-brewed beer, and I highlighted many of the region’s flagship and core beers in the article—the beers that pay the bills and keep the lights on, even if they’re not sexy enough to warrant big media releases.

To all the brewers, cellarmen, packaging operators, keg cleaners, and everything else—thank you!