All About Beer

History

All About Beer was founded in Los Angeles in 1979 by printing executive Mike Bosak and six colleagues from the print and publishing world. The first issue appeared in March of that year. None of the original founders was a beer expert.

In 1982, ownership of All About Beer passed to MacMullen Publishing of Anaheim, CA, though Bosak and fellow founders Kenneth Yee and Terry Bratcher remained involved. By its third volume, the publication had adopted a conventional four-color magazine format. In 1988, Mike Bosak and his wife Bunny re-acquired the magazine.

When Bosak retired in 1992, he sold All About Beer to Daniel Bradford, one of the founders and the first general director of the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, and an occasional contributor to the magazine.

Bradford moved the magazine to Durham, NC. Julie Johnson served as editor from 2000 to 2011, with Bradford as publisher. The magazine is co-owned today by Bradford and Johnson.

In 1995, All About Beer Magazine entered into an agreement with the Beverage Testing Institute (BTI, later Tastings.com) of Chicago to publish the results of the institute’s regular sampling of beers, grouped by style family. Each issue of All About Beer publishes a survey article on the most recent tasting results, a guide to what readers should expect from each style, and tasting notes on various beers.

On-line Presence

All About Beer’s companion website, allaboutbeer.com, was launched in 1997. The sites contains regular beer news, two blogs, on-line-only beer reviews, and an archive of over 2,500 magazine articles and posts dating back to 2002.

Notable Writers

English beer authority Michael Jackson began writing for All About Beer in 1984, and contributed “Jackson’s Journal” to the magazine for 23 years, until his death in 2007. This was Jackson’s longest regular association with any publication.

Fred Eckhardt first wrote for the magazine in 1986, and began his regular column, “The Beer Enthusiast,” the following year.

Regular contributors include Jeff Evans, Charlie Papazian, and Roger Protz,

Festivals and Community Activities

Beginning in 1995, All About Beer has a hosted World Beer Festival in Durham, North Carolina, as well as similar festivals in North Carolina, in 2006, in Columbia in 2009, Richmond, VA, in 2010, and in Cleveland and Tampa. Each festival is hosted as a fundraiser for a local non-profit organization.

In 2009, All About Beer Magazine established the annual Denver Rare Beer Tasting, a limited-ticket tasting fund-raiser at which American craft brewers are invited to present hard-to-find beers. These events have raised over $45,000 for Pints for Prostates, a men’s health organization.

Awards

All About Beer Magazine was voted best beer publication four years running by Ale and Lager Examiner. All About Beer Magazine feature articles won the Michael Jackson Award for Beer Journalism from Brewers Association four out of the five years the awards existed, and earned more than 30 Quill and Tankard Awards for writing from the North American Guild of Beer Writers.

The World Beer Festival was ranked in top 10 American beer festivals of USA Today, and the festival was given as one of four reasons by Wired Magazine to move to Raleigh, NC.

Publication information

The early years of the magazine were not always published regularly. Volume 1 comprised eight issues (1.1-1.8); Volume 2 had only five. Volume 3 comprised six issues, but the final broadsheet issue and the first issue in magazine form were both labeled 3.4. Volume 4 consisted of seven issues, before the magazine settled down to six issues per year in volumes 5 through 7. Volume 8 dropped again to five issues, and Volume 9 to four before the publication returned to the six regular issues per year that have been printed since then.