The Session for May has been announced, and to be more specific than my title, it’s actually on local brewery history. Our host, Reuben Gray of The Tale of the Ale, writes:

In Session 87, I want you to give your readers a history lesson about a local brewery. That’s a physical brewery and not brewing company by the way. The brewery doesn’t need to still exist today, perhaps you had a local brewery that closed down before you were even born. Or you could pick one that has been producing beer on the same site for centuries.

Stipulations?
The only thing I ask is that the brewery existed for at least 20 years so don’t pick the local craft brewery that opened two or three years ago. This will exclude most small craft breweries but not all. The reason? There’s not much history in a brewery that has only existed for a few years.

Also, when I say local, I mean within about 8 hours’ drive from where you live. That should cover most bases for the average blogger and in many, allow you to pick one further away if you don’t want to talk about a closer one.

For someone (like me!) who happens to be writing a book about beer and brewing history, with specifics covering certain breweries, this would seem to be a no-brainer. However, obviously I don’t want to write about one of the breweries that will be in the book—I have to keep something for the book, after all—plus the fact that Reuben wants the brewery to have existed for at least 20 years puts a damper on that somewhat. There are only two breweries in Central Oregon that qualify—and they’re going into the book.

But, we have the “within eight hours’ drive limit.” That’s actually kind of silly to me because I wouldn’t consider anywhere I can drive to in eight hours as “local.” For perspective, from Bend (Oregon) that would cover all of Oregon, pretty much all of Washington, most of Idaho, and much of Northern California and Nevada. So, pretty much all of the Pacific Northwest and then some. Though I suppose it could be fair to say “local” to the PNW…

Anyway, write up your local history on Friday, May 2 and post a link to Reuben’s Session post that day, or shoot him an email.