Good Beer Hunting (Good Beer Hunting)

When you’re a brewery that’s built on a very specific intent—the way you look, the beers you make, the kind of hospitality you provide—there’s a significant amount of behind-the-scenes work that’s needed to bring those elements to life. And when you’re regarded as one of the best in your domain, that creates an interesting tension: what does improvement mean, when you’re already, in some ways, at the top?

In this episode, we’re posing this philosophical question (and others) to Dustin Sepkowski, operations manager at Vancouver’s 33 Acres Brewing Company, which has won a host of British Columbia beer awards—including the nod for 2018 Brewery of the Year, as named by the BC Craft Brewers Guild.

Among its many accolades, the brewery is a two-time silver medalist at the World Beer Cup, finishing second overall in 2016 and 2018 for 33 Acres of Euphoria, its Belgian-Style Tripel. Dustin and I talk about this achievement, and how it’s impacted the brand, the brewery, and the other beers they make. When you’re brewing—objectively speaking, in terms of awards judging—the second-best Tripel in the world, what’s to fix? Apparently, quite a bit. And the reverberations are also felt by other beers in the 33 Acres portfolio. If you’ve ever wondered what breweries do with notes from these competitions, this conversation provides some insight into the resulting work and tweaks that happen behind the scenes—regardless of how high you finish.

We’ll also talk a bit about functioning within the British Columbia beer scene, and the story behind 33 Acres’ distinctive positioning—from its open white spaces to its unique flavor experiences, and even its self-published zine. All are designed to give visitors a better idea of the people behind the company, and what they want to offer those who drink their beer.

In a place, and within a scene, that’s sometime perceived as being behind the times, this is just one example of a business working to change that perception.

This is Dustin Sepkowski of 33 Acres. Listen in.

Today's guest is historian Omar Foda, author of the book Egypt's Beer: Stella, Identity, and the Modern State. In this book, he traces the country's history through one iconic national beer brand: Stella (not to be confused with Stella Artois). Recently, Omar wrote an article for GBH called, "You Cannot Hate These People — Heineken, Nasser, and the Fight to Decolonize Beer in Egypt," similarly using a specific incident to highlight how decolonization changed everything for one Heineken-owned brewery.

What struck me about this article was how urgent the issues felt, which is noteworthy, since Omar wrote a historical account of an incident that happened over half a century ago. I felt like I was reading about something that was happening right now—and that's partially intentional on Omar's part. In this piece, he deftly bridges the gap between what's happened in the past and why we should care now. And in this conversation, we talk about how to make history relevant (Omar has done AMAs on Reddit before), how the lens through which we view history is always marked by our own experiences and interests, and why a disagreement at a brewery in Egypt over 50 years ago can shine a light on what's happening in our society today.

Here's Omar Foda. Listen in.

Today’s guest is one of the most unassuming brewery owners in Chicago: Mark Legenza of On Tour Brewing Company. On Tour is located in the brewery district that’s popped up around Goose Island’s Fulton Street production facility. The area is now home to half-a-dozen breweries and as many coffee roasters, and it’s where the GBH Studio is located, too.

So why is it that he hasn’t been on the GBH Podcast before? Well, it’s definitely my fault. It’s one of those situations when familiarity creates a sort of blindness. On Tour is where our team goes for many of our end-of-week happy hours. We’ve said goodbye to colleagues there, and welcomed new ones. It’s even where I temporarily recorded a podcast episode while our Studio was being built out down the street. On Tour is an automatic destination for me. And so much of this podcast is an exercise in seeking out what I don’t already know. 

But today I’m happy to remedy that with Mark. On Tour previously won the Very Small Brewing Company award, only 10 months after opening, at the Great American Beer Festival. And this year it finally launched into packaging for the first time, with a Pilsner and a Pale Ale. They’re two releases that define what this place is so damn good at: making classic beers that taste quintessential. In today’s craft beer world, tasting a Pale Ale or a Brown Ale of exceptional quality is almost the exotic thing. 

So I’m pleased to sit down with our neighbor, and owner of On Tour Brewing Co. in Chicago, Mark Legenza. Listen in. 

This is part one of a two-part feature from New York City Beer Week. This was recorded at The Well in Brooklyn, just a week or so before the city announced a state of emergency because of COVID-19. We’re now releasing these episodes in an entirely new context—keep that in mind as you listen. But many of the topics are timeless and will continue to be valuable long after this pandemic has passed and New York City comes back to life.

This is our second year hosting these talks at The Well—and it’s a great opportunity to take stock of things as local NYC brewers, brewers from upstate, and some from far away all come together for an increasingly exciting series of events, special releases, and festivals for the week.

This year, NYC Beer Week fell at the exact same time as GBH’s annual Uppers & Downers festival in February, so I wasn’t personally able to make the trip and host the panels. But I’m glad to say we got a couple of local hosts we greatly admire in my stead.

The first session is hosted by the prolific and chatty Joshua Bernstein, an author that’s been published on Good Beer Hunting. He’s one of my personal favorite voices in beer—Josh is a phenomenal conversationalist and endlessly curious. He hosts a panel with friends from Civil Society in Florida, Interboro in Brooklyn, Dancing Gnomeout of Pittsburgh, Modist from Minneapolis, and Rockwell out of St. Louis.

This our first recording from New York City Beer Week, hosted by Joshua Bernstein. Listen in.

Today’s episode is a bit of an ensemble cast. With the limited time I had in Austin, Texas, I wanted to get some quick and clear perspective on the city’s scene, both past and present. To that end, I collected a few fast friends along the way, and gathered them all at Pinthouse Pizza, one of the city’s more contemporary craft brewers.

A recent legislative session saw some massive changes to Texas’ beer laws make it through intact, much to the shock of some Guild members and beer fans. With a couple weeks to go before the beer-to-go laws go into effect, it was the perfect time to host this roundtable of sorts.

We have John Gross of the Alamo Drafthouse; Jordan Rail, director of sales for Lake Austin Ales; Grant Weckerly, head of marketing at Pinthouse Pizza; and Jacob Passey, head brewer of Pinthouse Pizza.

We grabbed a picnic table and some mics—all hand-held by me for the duration, so forgive a little of my shuffling and the background noise on this one. Special thanks to our sound engineer Jordan Stalling for making this a decent listen.

This is the Good Beer Hunting podcast. Listen in.

My guest needs little introduction. Averie Swanson is well-known in the craft beer industry for her work at Jester King Brewery—a brewery in Austin, Texas renowned for their farmhouse ales. She’s also one of 19 Master Cicerones in the world, and the founder and beer maker behind Keeping Together.

Averie is here to talk about one of the most romantic beer styles in craft beer—Saisons. Though IPAs have long reigned in the American craft beer scene, many of us share a deep love for this rustic farmhouse ale, its origins, and the beer’s ability to express a vast range of nuanced flavors.

In our conversation, you'll hear Averie share her Saison philosophy. She also touches on the history of Saisons and how that history connects to some of the style's characteristics. Averie talks about why she prefers stainless steel over oak, and we discuss the idea of keeping the “farm” in farmhouse ales. We also share our favorite food and beer pairing experiences, and finally, Averie gives us an update on what we can expect from Keeping Together in the next year.

COVID-19 has changed a lot in our lives, including when and how we choose to consume alcohol. But there continue to be misconceptions about our beer-buying habits this year—and the beer styles that we’ve been gravitating to.

Low-alcohol beer has been a hot topic recently, but does the narrative around those products—one of crescendoing interest and growth—translate to reality? Over the last couple years on Good Beer Hunting, we’ve explored how sales have changed for higher-ABV beers, too, and in this episode we’re going to dig a bit deeper into how the mixed fortunes of these market segments are playing out during the pandemic.

Coffee starts its life as the seed of a cherry. You wouldn’t think that when you look at a bag of beans, but there’s a whole process that coffee goes through before it gets to you. It’s picked, it’s washed, it’s milled, it’s shipped, it travels across the globe—and that’s all before it’s roasted, packaged, and brewed by your favorite barista. Somewhere in the middle of all that, coffee hangs out with a bunch of yeast.

Lucia Solis is a coffee fermentation expert—probably not a job you dreamed about in school or even knew existed, but her job can make a coffee go from just OK to excellent. She started her career studying viticulture at the University of California, Davis, and was a winemaker before jumping into the world of coffee. She was able to use her training to explore a big gap in the coffee industry.  

Solis is interested in “processing,” which refers to how the layers around a coffee seed are removed, and how the sugars and starches surrounding the bean interact with yeasts and other bacteria. She visits coffee farms around the world and helps producers control consistency and cup quality through understanding what’s happening on the micro level—and investigating how yeasts can transform the flavor of coffee.

It’s a scary topic, thinking about yeasts in your coffee, but there are a lot of similarities between the role of yeasts in both beer and coffee. Solis was one of my main sources in an article I wrote for our Uppers and Downers series on lactic acid fermentation, a series that explores big topics relevant to both the beer and coffee industries, and her insights helped elucidate just how important microbiology is to the future of coffee.

Solis is continuing to expand her scope, and recently gave a talk called “Worms and Germs,” which discussed how soil health can improve fermentation. We sat down to chat after one of these talks, and in our conversation, we dive deep into chemistry, the fundamentals of coffee farming, and how we’re constantly interacting with the microscopic world around us.

This is Lucia Solis, coffee fermentation expert. Listen in. 

Non-alcoholic spirits, beer, wine, and beyond have finally graduated from punchlines to premium products in their own right, filling up store shelves and restaurant menus in greater numbers than ever before. But as writer David Neimanis explains in his latest piece for Good Beer Hunting, there’s still a long way to go for many of these products—non-alcoholic spirits in particular—to achieve their potential as legitimate and valuable alternatives to the status quo.

That piece, titled “Spirited Away — The Brands, Bartenders, and Bottle Shops Paving the Way for Non-Alcoholic Spirits,” which was published on February 4, 2023, looks as some of the pioneers of the industry, including makers who aim to create an entirely new space for their fresh takes on alcohol-free spirits, as well as those attempting to recreate signature spirits, such as gin or tequila, for drinkers who seek a familiar burn without the backfire. 

Both approaches have their benefits, but in today’s conversation, you’ll hear David unpack his own fascination with botanicals, who he sees as leading the NA charge, and why these developments are something to be excited about. He’ll explain some of the regulatory differences between standard spirits versus their non-alcoholic counterparts, and how he hopes that one day, consumers will perceive the value of each with equal respect. Today’s discussion is the first of what we hope will be several conversations around the rise of non-alcoholic options across beverage alcohol, so stay tuned for more discussions with other writers and explorers of the NA space.

I’m Jonny Garrett, and you’re listening to the Good Beer Hunting podcast.

Listeners in California may remember a brewery called Toolbox Brewing, which for a brief period around 2015 and 2016 was making waves with some delicious, mixed-fermentation beers. Sadly the brewery closed in 2018, about a year after the departure of its head brewer, Ehren Schmidt, who is my guest today.

Schmidt gained plenty of critical acclaim for the beers he was making at Toolbox, but in 2017, he got an offer he couldn’t refuse. That job offer came from Mikkel Borg Bjergsø, founder and owner of Mikkeller, who wanted him to move to Copenhagen to help him start a wild brewery arm of his global cuckoo brewing empire.

We talk a bit about his decision to move halfway around the world, and it’s clear that that risky choice has paid off. Schmidt has complete creative freedom at Mikkeller Baghaven, and has used it to build a brewery that takes a scientific approach to deeply traditional brewing. The medieval lettering and cork-and-cage presentation belie the hands-on way that Schmidt goes about sourcing his yeasts and nurturing the fermentations in barrels and foeders.

We recorded in his office between the Saturday sessions of the first-ever Mikkeller Baghaven Wild Ale Celebration, an exclusively wild- and mixed-fermentation festival where the participating breweries were handpicked by Schmidt. Given his history, the roster featured a predictably heavy U.S. focus, but some exciting European and South American breweries were also represented. Most of our conversation is spent musing on the level of understanding in the wild brewing community about the concept of terroir in beer, and how it isn’t just the ingredients, or even the place, that dictate it. It’s the people—their stories, tastes, and biases.

This is Ehren Schmidt of Mikkeller Baghaven. Listen in.

Communities can be built through mutual joy just as easily as through shared struggle, and in the rugged landscape of the American frontier, it can also be built through necessity of survival. Along the banks of the Salmon River, the small town of Stanley, Idaho, embodies these ideals of wonder and respect for nature, but residents’ way of life is changing, in sometimes unexpected and unwelcome ways.

In her piece titled “Dancing In The Dust — Idaho’s River Runners Navigate a Changing American West,” a story published as part of our Olly Olly series in collaboration with Oskar Blues, freelance writer and environmental advocate Claire Barber takes us on a journey down the river and through the town, capturing the heart and spirit inextricably tied to the rushing waters that literally keep the region alive. 

In this episode, Claire describes when she first heard about Stanley and what drew her there to document the spirits of adventure, as well as isolation, in the nearly off-the-grid utopia. She also talks about the changes she witnessed first-hand and what gave her hope in spite of the challenges Stanley faces. People come and go, but the river will always remain, and her ride down the rapids provides a glimpse both into the past and towards the future. Let’s take a ride with her, right now. 

One of the stories that I think often gets lost in 2019 craft beer is the experience of the brewpub brewer. All the noise—for better and worse—tends to come from packaging breweries, can releases, distribution, growth and expansion into new markets, and massive international invitationals. Most of that is not relevant to a brewpub brewer who’s focused on things like their local market, foot traffic, keeping serving tanks turning over, and serving restaurant guests a great beer.

Brewpubs are, in many ways, the backbone of the modern craft renaissance both in the ‘90s as well as the early oughts. So many people cut their teeth on brewpub systems. It’s where so many have their first craft beers. It’s the gateway for so much of the growth the craft sector has seen over the years. It’s also much more resilient to the ups and downs of that sector. Instead, its vulnerability comes from real estate prices and shifting demographics in their immediate radius—and the staff turnover that frequently plagues restaurants.

Brewpubs are another world.

And for today’s guest, that’s kind of the point.

Joel Kodner is the brewer at West Palm Brewery in West Palm Beach, Florida. It’s been a good shift for him away from the package-distribution-production-brewery part of the industry. He likes where it fits into his life, and the life it enables. But it’s also a weird seat to have at the craft beer shit show of 2019. It can feel isolating and a bit irrelevant to the larger conversation sometimes.

That tension has made Joel a prolific presence on Twitter and Instagram—where he shares a lot of his criticism, frustration, and hope for the industry. Sometimes with a sense of humor, sometimes with a sense of dread. But for me personally, it always feels entirely rational. He brings to light so many of the issues that haunt me and others in craft beer, and the way in which he articulates it all usually sums up those feelings in stark terms.

Beer is having a hard time these days. Category-wide, sales are down and interest just isn’t the same it used to be. But what if the enthusiasm that got us to this point—excitement that helped lead to almost 10,000 small and independent breweries scattered across the country—is still just as palpable now as it was one, two, or 10 years ago? It’s just a matter of looking.

In this special episode of the Good Beer Hunting podcast, beer enthusiasts from around the country explain why for them craft beer still means friendships, new experiences, and most of all, something cool at a time when there’s a feeling that it might be anything but.

Producer’s note: we’re going to continue bringing you timeless stories and important interviews, some of which have newfound relevance because of COVID-19, and some that are explicitly unrelated. This episode you’re about to hear was recorded on February 19th, so the context is removed a bit from what’s happening in the world right now, but the information is still valuable, and we want to share it with you.

Here’s a scenario for today’s beer-loving entrepreneur: you want to start a brewery? There’s a hypothetical situation in which your new business can build its brand by lifting the likeness of celebrities, or imitating famous movies and TV shows, and pretty much take the original ideas of others and slap them on a label or menu board.

Of course, this isn’t entirely hypothetical. Breweries all over the country do some version of this every day, and there are even social media accounts created to track companies that steal the intellectual property of others. In this episode, we’re talking about this and more—and how some companies can legally end up in these odd scenarios, and flirt with basing their entire business models on this kind of intellectual property theft. Or even sell cans full of beer and fruit that could explode.

John Szymankiewicz is a beer attorney. Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, he specializes in a host of practical areas, including contracts and dispute resolution, but also has expertise in trademark and licensing, label approval, and more.

In this conversation, we’ll first learn how someone arrives at this profession in the first place, and why more lawyers could be headed toward similar specialization in beer or elsewhere. But we’ll also get a better grasp about what is legally possible in today’s industry when breweries are constantly looking to stand out. Decisions to toe the line of copyright or trademark infringement may start to appear a bit more black and white, even if the ethics of those decisions can be rather gray.

This is attorney John Szymankiewicz. Listen in.

# On Becoming Hawk

Hi there - this is Michael Kiser, founder and publisher of Good Beer Hunting. I’m coming to you today with a difficult message—but a simple one. 

Good Beer Hunting—after nearly 15 years, and at least 10 of that that I would consider serious years—is going on a platform-wide sabbatical. It’ll be indefinite. It might be permanent.

We have some ideas for what the future of Good Beer Hunting might look like—and soon I’ll be working on that vision with the counsel of my colleagues to see where it takes us. But the earliest vision is so drastically different than what GBH currently is, that the only way to get to the other side is to make a clean break. We’ve got to clear out the cache. We’ve got to quiet everything down for a bit and see what it all sounds like on the other side of that silence.

We’re shutting down our various content streams—the podcast, the website, social—ending a sort of always-on feed of content that’s been, for many of us writers, editors, and artists, our life’s work. And for most of us, our best work.

This thing that started as my personal blog would go on to be published in the annual Best American Food Writing, and win multiple Saveur blog awards before I had the courage to start publishing other voices beyond my own. It began as a way to pursue my curiosity for beer, combining the beauty I saw in it with the strategic implications of a new wave of culture and industry the world over. Good Beer Hunting came from a simple idea and simpler execution of a blog and grew into an international publication covering unique stories from countries all over.

With every major shift, from one editor in chief to another, it would morph into something that felt beyond any reasonable ambition. Eventually winning awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Imbibe Magazine, more than 100 awards from the North American Guild of Beer Writers, and most recently nominated for 6 James Beard Awards and winning 3 of them. If I consider what it would mean for us to achieve something beyond all that, I’d have to believe in a truly insane fantasy.

In the many years of running a beer publication that took us to the top echelon of all publications —literally taking podiums next to the New York Times, Washington Post, and The New Yorker—we’ve had to build and sustain an organization that simply doesn’t have a roadmap for survival in 2024’s media landscape. And to be clear, it never did. 

From day one, I vowed to not try and make GBH profitable, because the media world already showed that to achieve profitability was to welcome a certain kind of death—and often a shameful one. Chasing advertisers and clicks with listicles and promotions—and as a result, never creating anything of real value to anyone but the advertisers. It was a fool's errand, and one we didn’t follow. By not hunting down ad revenue and declining offers over the years, Good Beer Hunting was able to remain a personal project in a way, even as our ambitions continually grew and results showed what an impact our stories and contributors made on the world of beer and beyond.

Instead of trying to manage our costs with advertising, we’ve been able to form longstanding partnerships with companies like Guinness, which has helped mitigate at least some of financial losses we took on every year. We also launched an experimental subscriber community called the Fervent Few, which took a meaningful chunk out of the debt and paid its dividends by connecting readers and fans from all over the world during the loneliest parts of the pandemic. But in reality, even these things combined didn’t cover the gaps as we continued growing. 

The challenge of expanding GBH during its rapid growth phase came from my own pocket, which kept our editorial team independent and in control. But it also guided us to this moment. Paying for writers, designers, and editors was a budget pulled from my own strategic consultancy called Feel Goods Company, which was no small thing. Each year, the costs sometimes crested over $100,000 that weren’t covered by underwriting partners like Guinness or subscribers from the Fervent Few. And in the last couple years, costs went far beyond that. For years, I put other important things in my family’s life on hold to continue supporting GBH’s growth and ambitions. 

As a father of three kids—and sometimes the only one working—that decision wasn’t made lightly. I exhausted myself making the consulting business uncommonly successful in order to keep both things afloat and growing. And as costly as that was in a financial sense, I’ve never regretted the decision to do it—and I never took a dime. In fact, there was one year when we more or less broke even, and with the small amount left over we gave the editorial team, including our freelancers, a surprise end-of-year bonus. More like a tip really. 

Good Beer Hunting is the longest I’ve ever done anything, and it’s also the best thing I’ve ever done. And it existed entirely because I wanted it to.

But outside of anything I wanted it to become—my own pride and ambitions for GBH don’t really compare to the awe I feel when I look at what people like Austin Ray, Claire Bullen, and Bryan Roth helped it become. Our three successive Editors in Chief over those 10 years—each of whom shaped a new generation of Good Beer Hunting into an image that only they could have. Each of whom provided the shoulders for the next to stand on. And the countless writers and artists who were drawn to their leadership and the level of execution in our collective work—who gave us some of their own best work. 

I’m thinking of Kyle Kastranec from Ohio, the first writer other than myself, who wrote a feature for GBH, setting a high bar. I’m thinking of Charleston’s own Jamaal Lemon who won a James Beard award for GBH alongside other winners and nominees like Stephanie Grant, Teresa McCullough, Chelsea Carrick, and Mark Dredge. 

I’m thinking of people like Matthew Curtis, our first editor in the UK who turned the lights on in an entirely new country for us, and Evan Rail who kept turning on lights in dozens of countries since as our first International editor. Emma Jansen, and Ren Laforme who joined our editors team in the last iteration, rounding out some of the most ambitions and wide sweeping storytelling we’ve ever produced. Kate Bernot, who leveled up our news reporting to create an unmatched source of access to explain to readers why things matter in beer and beverage alcohol, which is now a growing stand-alone business unit in Sightlines.

What felt like a fluke at first, has become something I can confidently own. We produced industry-changing, internationally-recognized, and James Beard Award winning material…consistently.

I’m also often reminded of the smaller things we’ve done—like the blogs and short stories we wrote—about the politics and personal traumas of the way we eat, drink, and relate to each other in our families, in our communities, and against the injustices so many people face in an industry that’s ancient and profoundly immature at the same time. It’s an unlikely place for a beer publication to have a voice —but GBH has always built its scope around the perspectives of the individual souls who occupy space within it rather than narrowing down a profitable and popular slice of the beer conversation and reduced them to it. 

Mark Spence unpacked his Midwestern anxieties around family and food, Lily Waite and Holly Regan opened a door to discuss non-binary and transgender issues,  Jerard Fagerberg and Mark LaFaro took big risks to focus us all on the dangers and costs of alcoholism, David Jesudason and many others captured our attention with stories of harassment, racism, labor abuse, and more that so many readers told us were critical and prescient and more importantly, helped. These stories helped people.

Over the years, we’ve had readers cry as they recounted what a story meant to them. We’ve had others scream and curse at us for the same. Some even went on the record as sources to ensure our reporting had the substance it needed to make an impact. Careers were started and ended because of the stories we wrote. Those stories had the same effect on ourselves. We’ve had writers put something heartbreaking or inspiring into the world only to have it wake something up in them and want to do more—take even bigger swings —and find a voice within them that carried them far beyond Good Beer Hunting.

And ultimately, that’s where my heart is today.

This week, I was struggling to find the words to describe what I was going to do with Good Beer Hunting—what comes next. I knew what the move was, and why, and I knew it was time—but I didn’t have the poetry for it—so I couldn’t quite feel it yet. 

On a long drive to rural Michigan to pick up my son from summer camp, I was listening to an episode of my favorite podcast, On Being. And I heard Azita Ardakani and Janine Benyus, two biomimicry specialists who have a way of describing the natural world with a stunning relevance. They said:

 “Life is just so full of vitality and so much ON and being alive and then it’s not.”

“…What is the difference between something that’s alive and something that’s not? It seems that with the holding on to life —there’s also a feeling of once it’s gone, the letting go—like a body breaking down—but it doesn’t really. I mean, not for long. What happens is a tree falls and eventually becomes a log. Eventually grows a fungus and you think of it as breaking down—it is no longer a tree. But then a mouse comes along and it's the end of the fungus. And that material—thats’ where the reincarnation comes in —that fungus becomes mouse. 

“And then a hawk comes along and the material—that material of that mouse becomes hawk. There’s this circulation—called metabolism. It’s catabolism—then it gets anabolized up into a new form. The grief is brief because transformation happens almost right away—it gets transformed.”

Now, GBH isn’t dying and it’s not wasting away. The truth is it’s still sort of thriving in its own manner of being. It’s a tree taller than I ever imagined. But success can kill an organization—I’ve seen it a hundred times in the companies I’ve worked for, companies I’ve consulted on—big and small. It’s all proportionate. How far away from the roots does that beautiful canopy get before it surprises itself with its own extended weight? How much life force does it expend trying to prop itself up at the expense of something new? 

There’s never an objectively right time—but there is a good time. A time not informed by reactionary fear and loathing - but by guts, love, and ambition for something new. 

So I’ve decided it’s time to take the tree down. 

If I look back over the past few years I can see that Good Beer Hunting will be that fallen tree for many. It’ll be a source of nutrients for many a mouse that becomes hawk.

But the truth is, GBH has been the start of a kind of upward anabolism for some time now. Jamaal Lemon recently took a dream editors job at the Institute of Justice. Stephanie Grant has launched her own community project called The Share. Before that, Matthew Curtis started Pellicle Mag in the U.K. Lily Waite opened a brewery. So many GBH writers have gone on to write books, start podcasts, and create platforms of their own, it’s astounding. And what I’m describing right now isn’t something that started with GBH—indeed, GBH has been a recipient their upward anabolism from the lives they’ve lived—each bringing their own energy and nutrients here and nourished us with lifetimes full of curiosity, learning, and love for their craft.

The risks in starting something like Good Beer Hunting are myriad. Financial risk is everywhere—but I’ve happily and defiantly borne the brunt of it for many years. There’s personal risk—in media, everything you put out into the world has a way of coming back to you in unexpected, and often dangerous ways. And it does. There’s opportunity risk—if this thing fails, and if it takes a long time to fail, what opportunities might you have missed out on in the meantime? But to me, the biggest risk of all is it just not mattering. Not being relevant. Missing the mark.
Today, I feel satisfied that Good Beer Hunting matters.

I have so many people to thank—and so many feelings to share that are best relayed one-on-one. It’ll take me many months and years to pass along those sentiments to individuals who took that risk with me and succeeded.

I’m not going to the final word on all this. 

My experience of GBH is singular—being the sole source of continuity over those 15 years. But so much of what’s defined GBH have been the perspectives and voices of those who’ve invested their talents in it over the years. So before our final sign-off this summer, you’ll hear reflections from leaders, contributors, partners and friends of Good Beer Hunting as well. This is part of the grieving and metabolizing process. 

There are a few more episodes of the podcast to share still, and a few remaining stories we’ve been working on that you’ll see this month and maybe into August. If you want to stay up to date on future plans, sign up for the newsletter. 

This episode—along with all podcast episodes over these many years—was edited by Jordan Stalling. And it was scored by my friend, soulmate, and composer, Andrew Thioboldeax, who himself has been along for the ride for over a decade.

Aim true, pour liberal folks—have a great rest of the year. 

Welcome to this special series of the GBH Collective podcast, where we’ll be checking in with members of our global team to keep you updated on unfolding events surrounding COVID-19. I’m Michael Kiser.

Today's guests are special to me—both of them are media peers who I’ve often measured myself against. They’re also just delightful humans who are always accessible and open to inquiry. Over the years, they’ve helped me think about Good Beer Hunting’s business model, our audiences, and the ways in which we all develop our voices.

As the world started turning upside down this past month, I wanted to check in with them to see how they were handling things—both personally and as part of a larger organization. How did they process the world-changing news? How did they work with their teams to adapt? And how do they expect to evolve going forward? These conversations go far beyond beer and media.

First up in Eno Sarris of The Athletic. The Athletic is a phenomenon in the sports-writing world. It has a subscription-based readership, much like our own Fervent Few member community. And it serves as a platform for people who want both exceptional narratives and deep dives into data. In that way, it covers a spread much like GBH does.

I first got to know Eno when he put his role at the FanGraphs and BeerGraphs sites on hiatus to join the October project we started with Conde Nast. After that, he went on to join The Athletic, and I’ve been glued to his progress ever since.

Next, we’re going to talk to Peter Frost of Molson Coors. I knew Peter back when he was a reporter at Crain’s Chicago, one of our city's business magazines. Peter developed a keen interest in the beer industry while he was there, but his investigative reporting made him a key voice in Chicago business before he left to join what was then MillerCoors to launch their blog devoted to beer industry analysis and insights.

This conversation immediately gets a reframe as he reminds us that, not only are they dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, but this is coming on the heels of a devastating mass shooting that happened on their campus just a few weeks prior.

Honesty, I was stunned when he brought that up because as shocking as that was—this pandemic has made anything that happened before it feel like a lifetime ago. But for Peter and the Molson Coors team, it’s been a long, blurry timeline of tragedy.

Both of these guys are holed up in their homes and were generous enough to share some time with me while still doing their jobs and taking care of their families.

This is Eno Sarris of The Athletic and Peter Frost of Molson Coors. Listen in.

What happens when a guy with your exact name invites you to brew a beer with him? In this special episode of the GBH podcast, Sightlines editor Bryan Roth drives from Durham, North Carolina, to meet up with Brian Roth of Southern Brewing Co. in Athens, Georgia, to engage in a friendly competition over who can brew the best beer: Bryan or Brian? More than just a story about a beer-brewing challenge, this episode explores the ways we’re all connected—either by name or otherwise—and how sometimes, all you have to do is say yes.

In this episode, we’re talking about process. And it’s not just in context of the brewing of beer, but everything that leads up to it, what happens during, and how a brewer can get better after. Helping us get into the detail of it all is Julia Astrid Davis, the head brewer and zygurmatrix at Burke-Gilman Brewing Company in Seattle.

And if you're going to talk to a brewer about all these intimate aspects of their job, Julia is a great example of someone you should listen to. Over the course of her career she's brewed at companies small and large, from Denmark to Chicago and now Seattle. Her stops include Goose Island, Lagunitas, and Empirical Brewery, all in the Windy City, and has now been at Burke-Gilman for three years. That’s a who’s who list of barrel-aging and hop-forward breweries and in this conversation you’ll hear how Julia’s time at each place has helped build an understanding and appreciation for the process of brewing, experimentation, and constant improvement to dial-in recipes and drinking experiences.

We’ll also talk about inspiration, collaboration, and why it’s important for a brewer to always think about how to get better. Through it all, is the idea of process.

When we think about beer and brewing, it’s easy for our minds to wander toward the person making the beer we drink. Brewers create a little bit of magic combining art and science, and because of that, are often considered the backbone to a business that makes and sells beer. Sometimes, they can even be thought of as rock stars with engaging personalities and thoughtful approaches to what it means to make beer.

But there are so many more people we may miss when we think about beer as an industry.

In this conversation, we’re chatting with Kindsey Bernhard, director of hospitality for Austin Beerworks, and also a background of all sorts of skills and expertise. Kindsey has worked as a bartender and before her role with Austin Beerworks, was taproom manager for Hi-Wire Brewing's location in Louisville, Kentucky. She's also a peer in media, having written for Porch Drinking and hosting her own podcast, Boys Are From Marzen, which showcases women and non-binary people who work in beer.

When we connected, Kindsey had just recently moved to Austin to begin her latest job, so you’ll hear about what it’s like to transplant as part of pursuing new career goals and what’s caught her eye as a new resident of Austin, Texas. We’ll also talk about the variety of skills she’s learned and displayed as a person working in beer and how her passion for the industry has driven her to better understand career goals and finding balance in her life.

Kindsey is one of many amazing people working for a brewery who doesn’t make the beer, and I hope you’ll come away from this chat with an appreciation for her and the behind-the-scenes effort she embodies.

Garage Project’s Hāpi Festival and Symposium was held earlier this year in the lead-up to New Zealand’s hop harvest.

The symposium and festival form the public-facing side of a hop-breeding initiative Garage Project has undertaken with New Zealand’s Freestyle Farms, and with backing from the country’s Ministry for Primary Industries. Over the course of a day in Wellington’s famous Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, speakers such as Alexandra Nowell from Three Weavers Brewing Company, Matt Brynildson from Firestone Walker Brewing Company, and Paul Jones from Cloudwater Brew Co. gave talks with a focus on hops. Good Beer Hunting was there to capture a slice of the discussion.  

Afterwards, the invited breweries poured for a small festival of 1,000 people. It was a surreal situation: seeing world-renowned breweries like Trillium, Other Half, Hill Farmstead. Tired Hands and Cellarmaker serving beer in New Zealand’s national museum. 

***

Out of Wellington, New Zealand, Garage Project was launched in 2011 by brothers Ian and Pete Gillespie and their friend Jos Ruffell. The trio first made their presence known with the brewery’s “24/24” series: 24 beers released in 24 weeks to an eager Wellington public. 

Since then, Garage Project has made its name by continuing to push boundaries with unusual creations and projects, such as layered beer designed to imitate a flat white, making beers for the Royal New Zealand Ballet, and even releasing a series of natural wines spiked with Lactobacillus or aged on unusual oak. Over the next seven years, they will also be working on the Hāpi project for the benefit of New Zealand’s hop growing industry.

I had the chance to take Jos aside, as the festival was in full swing, so he could share just what it was all about. Listen in.

In summer 2021, Jamaal Lemon, Brian Alberts, Mike Stein, and Peter Jones worked together to publish Tek Cyear uh de Root, an article series that explored the way beer history and culture merged with systems of racial oppression in the 19th-century Charleston Schützenfest. In that series we mentioned an even earlier example of the same phenomenon, a brewery owned by Edmund Egan in the 1770s.

Egan’s brewery ran on the labor of six brewers, two coopers, and seven other Black workers, all enslaved, but most historical representations of Egan minimized this fact so much that bringing it up again started some conversations. One of the biggest breweries in both Charleston and South Carolina is Edmund’s Oast Brewing Company which, you guessed it, is named after Edmund Egan.

“For the past two years, the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) has conducted an awareness and advocacy campaign to combat human trafficking, an initiative whose focus and scale are unprecedented in the organization’s history.”

That’s from the start of Kate Bernot’s story on Good Beer Hunting about a worthwhile cause to fight a global problem of trafficking here in the United States. But as you’ll read and as you’ll hear in this conversation, there’s far more understanding to what it all means. And that’s before we get to the many unknowns, which include unanswered questions about why the Association and some of its supporting organizations can’t or won’t provide details of how this effort came to be, and how they’re quantifying success. Human trafficking is not a cause directly related to the beer industry. But industry professionals and elected officials say beer distributors have the ability to be on-the-street “eyes and ears” and are uniquely positioned to help.

So what does this all mean, exactly, when one of the largest trade organizations in beverage alcohol makes human trafficking a priority? And what are the questions we still want to learn more about? That’s in this conversation.

As a total percentage of the beverage alcohol industry, cider hasn’t really changed much in recent years. It amounts to about 1% and has been successfully static. I know a lack of growth doesn’t really sound like a success, and 1% doesn’t sound like a lot, but trust me on this one.

Or, rather, trust Michelle McGrath. She’s the executive director of the American Cider Association and while it’s certainly her job to speak highly of the category and the success of her members, she’s bringing the data to back it up in this conversation about a category that often gets overlooked in a country more interested in narratives of hard seltzers, ready-to-drink, canned cocktails, spirits, or Hazy IPAs. But the maturation of cider as a category and industry is fascinating, especially as a drink that’s holding its own as so many other options have entered the market. Again, that 1% doesn’t sound thrilling, but wait until we put it in context of how hard things are for beer right now.

Aside from the story of cider as a pure agricultural product, there’s also another area worth our attention, and that’s the outsized role that small cider producers are playing. The largest, national brands are lagging, and these small and independent businesses have picked up the slack—which might sound familiar to the stories of the beer world we hear so often. 1% is a small number, but it feels a bit bigger when you learn about how it’s maintained.

When Michelle and I recently spoke, she just finished hosting the industry’s annual conference, CiderCon, so a lot of these things were fresh on our minds, and her’s was full of stories to give context to a category that may be just 1%, but according to Nielsen, has grown 10 times its size over the last decade.

Over the last decade, one of the aspects of beer and brewing I've admired the most has been an increased attention from the world of academics. Wine has long been a centerpiece for research, but it feels like college faculty are now catching up thanks to a better understanding of the social, cultural, and community side of beer. There is a ton to be learned beyond the science of making beer and in this conversation, we'll get insight on how space and place inspire one professor. It may be summer, but we're heading back to campus with Josh Merced.

Josh is a geographer by education, with a Ph.D from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and teaching experience at Florida State University, UNC-Greensboro, Middle Tennessee State University, and come this fall, he'll be newly appointed at Northern Arizona University. At each stop, his research has had important crossover with craft beer, most recently teaching the class “Geographies of Craft Beer and Breweries” in Tennessee. If you’ve ever sat in a brewery or thought about how cities and landscapes impact who drinks craft beer and why, Josh will clue you in on valuable findings throughout our chat. From locations to music to our own lived experiences, it may come as no surprise that these all impact the way we come to interact with beer—or not at all. Josh will explain why this is particularly important for us to understand and change.

You don’t need to have a stack of highlighters or visit a bookstore to benefit from this educational opportunity. I hope that getting to know Josh and his work puts him on your map as someone to follow that will help you form deeper understandings and new questions about what craft beer offers and how we can consider what might change to offer more to more people.

Living overseas can give you an interesting perspective on American beer culture. Although I’m originally from California, I’ve lived in the Czech Republic for almost 20 years now. While I miss many of the beers and breweries from back home, I really fell in love with Czech beer, dedicating a lot of my time to researching, writing about, and drinking it.

In recent years I’ve been glad to see North American beer lovers develop much more interest in Czech beer. Since then, many U.S. and Canadian brewers have reached out to me with questions about recipes, equipment, and processes. I can tell that for a lot of people back home, Czech brewing is still rather weird and unknown, whether it’s the “black magic” of a triple-decoction mash, or the strange pours like the šnyt and mlíko, or our rarely spotted “yeast beer,” Kvasnicové Pivo.

One of the standout U.S. brewers who actually gets Czech beer is Chris Lohring of Notch Brewing in Salem, Massachusetts. Chris came through Prague himself, in 2012, doing research on how Czech beers are brewed, served, and drunk. I met up with Chris during that trip, and so did my friend and colleague Max Bahnson, who writes under the name Pivní Filosof. Chris got to visit Czech breweries; drink Czech beers; and observe the Czech process, approach, and culture.

Since then, Notch Brewing has emerged as one of the leading proponents of Czech-style beers in North America. Not only does Notch make a Czech-inspired Světlý Ležák, or Pale Lager (aka Pilsner), but it also makes Tmavé Pivo, or Dark Lager, and Polotmavé Pivo, which means “half-dark beer,” or Amber Lager. At the Notch taproom in Salem, those beers are served from a Czech side-pour (or side-pull) faucet, into a Czech dimpled, half-liter mug. My Czech friends who have visited the Notch taproom said it’s the closest thing to a Czech beer experience you can get in the U.S.

In this episode, I catch up with Chris Lohring when on his return to Prague, along with Notch Brewing’s production manager, Brienne Allan. They were both on a trip that included several hands-on brew days at different Czech breweries. I wanted to ask Chris and Brienne about the differences between Czech beer culture and American beer culture, as well as the differences in Prague since Chris’ last visit seven-plus years ago. I wanted to find out what beer drinkers in the States understood about Czech beer, brewing, and how we drink, and I wanted to know if there were any common misconceptions.

Our meeting takes place over a few beers in a busy Prague café around the corner from my apartment, so there’s a fair amount of background noise—sorry about that. It was recorded in mid-February, 2020, about three weeks before the coronavirus closed off the Czech Republic and made travel here impossible, at least for now. The observations about Czech brewing and beer drinking made by Chris and Brienne, however, feel pretty timeless.

Here’s Chris Lohring and Brienne Allan of Notch Brewing in Salem. Listen in.

New York City is, in almost all respects, on the cutting edge, the vanguard of the very cultures we consume through fashion, art, music, and food. But when it comes to the craft beer scene, the city that never sleeps seems to have done just that—slept on the industry’s development and growth, until, of course, they joined the party, which is still going strong.  

In her latest love letter to New York, titled “Vagabond Shoes Longing to Stray — Through Years and Boroughs, for the Beer Bars of New York,” writer Courtney Iseman pens more than an ode to the people (and places) that shaped the city’s craft beer bar scene. It’s an encyclopedia of knowledge, punctuated with first-person accounts, recollections, and memories, all seen through a haze of looming nostalgia from her impending move away from the area for the very first time. She taps a dozen or more voices, each lending unique insight into the city’s growth, evolution, and future as part of the country’s overall craft beer scene. 

It’s a long but fascinating read, which lends itself to today’s conversation about her process, motives, emotions, and future plans as they relate to her relationship with the city and beer itself. We discuss that though there’s plenty about beer to feel discouraged about, sometimes it’s looking to the past that helps us rediscover how we got here and why we came in the first place.

GBH Co-Founder and Creative Director, Michael Kiser returns with of one of our favorite festivals with Greenbench Brewing in St Pete, Florida, and a new kind of fundraising that helps you invest in the future of GBH and our industry.

When people think of South Dakota, beer doesn’t likely come to mind. Maybe Mount Rushmore. Probably agriculture. But in this episode, we’re exploring what it means to be a part of building a culture and knowledge for beer in a state where that’s still sort of new.

We’re chatting with Nicki Werner, director of brewing at Jefferson Beer Supply in Jefferson, South Dakota, a city with a small population and until just recently, a lack of exposure to homegrown beer. Nicki opened the business with her partner and Jefferson native, Anthony Roark, and together the pair are showing how a commitment to education and community can grow something unique in places where the idea of “craft beer” is still new. Light Lager may dominate the minds and taste buds of local residents, but Nicki’s skill in the brewhouse is working to introduce customers to pastry Sours, Imperial Stouts, and Hazy IPAs.

As you’ll hear from Nicki, it takes a holistic effort to pull it off, and it helps to also find inspiration from peers that show how connecting to the place where you live and work can be translated to the way you make and sell beer.

I first heard about Keyatta Mincey-Parker from Donnie, a wine buyer at my local bottle shop. As Donnie rang up my purchases, she told me how Keyatta had created a community garden for bartenders during the summer of 2020, aptly named A Sip of Paradise Garden. The garden’s mission is to provide a healthy and safe space for bartenders to recharge, and during the height of the pandemic, the space quickly became popular.

My interest was piqued, and I found myself diving into Keyatta’s story. I learned that she fled Liberia with her family when she was 12 years old, and how she adapted to her new home in the U.S. while holding her culture close to her heart. I was impressed by how Keyatta wove her love of family into her work, and how her desire to improve her community shined through all her accomplishments, whether it was giving bartenders a space for a respite during an incredibly tough year or providing young women in Liberia with alternatives to sex work.

In this episode, we discuss Keyatta’s love for family, and the incredible strength her mother showed as they fled Liberia in the ’90s. We also talk about the complicated feelings of receiving recognition and accomplishments as a Black woman. She shares how she came up with the idea for A Sip of Paradise Garden and how everything came together magically in the midst of a pandemic. But if there’s one thing you need to know about Keyatta, it’s that she’s committed to thriving no matter what life throws at her.

From talking frogs to Bud Light loving dogs and Will Ferrell unexpectedly shilling Old Milwaukee, there's a long history of beer advertisements that have found cultural relevance. Viewers across the country see these commercials every week during sporting events and reality TV shows. But as fewer people drink beer and more cut the cable cord, what's next for this segment of advertising?

That's the question at the core of Kate Bernot's story on Good Beer Hunting that explores what happens when overall minutes of beer ad airtime decline and all kinds of entertainment fills up our days. And in this conversation, Kate and I explore the ins and outs of why beer brands advertise on TV today and the reason big beer companies still see this avenue as an important way to connect with people, whether customers or distributors or retailers.

What if beer commercials are no longer just about trying to sell more beer in a literal way? And how can you measure cultural impact if it doesn't show up in sales? Saying "Dilly Dilly" can only take you so far.

There are easy topics brewery owners love to talk about to promote themselves: interesting beer releases, charity work, GABF awards, or cheeky packaging. 

And then there are other, much stickier issues most avoid addressing: gentrification, racism and sexism in the industry; labor; and a brewery’s moral responsibility to its community and the people within it. 

Sam Gilbert, who co-founded Oakland’s Temescal Brewing about three years ago in the neighborhood with which it shares a name, doesn’t shy away from such difficult conversations. Oakland’s changing, and it’s well past time to talk about it. 

Temescal Brewing came into existence in great part because of the community it now counts as patrons. A successful crowdfunding campaign helped the brewery get off the ground, and Gilbert hasn’t forgotten the significance of that. Since then, Temescal has prioritized hiring hyperlocal residents, hosting regular LGBT-focused bashes, and proactively reaching out to communities less frequently seen in your standard brewery taproom.

But the vibes aren’t always positive. Sometimes, being a good neighbor can be much less fun, as when AB InBev announced an intention to open a Golden Road taproom not far from Temescal’s brewhouse. Gilbert, like others in the Oakland craft beer scene, was outspoken against the idea. Ultimately, the plan was quashed, and some believe it was in large part due to vocal critics like Gilbert, and to Oakland’s anti-corporate ideologies.

All of this is to say nothing of the beer. Temescal is frequently cited as one of Bay Area drinkers’ favorite breweries, and its focus on soft, nuanced, and low-ABV styles (and in particular Pilsners) has made fans out of the pickiest consumers. It’s becoming increasingly common to see the brewery’s brightly colored cans in fridges around the Bay.

There’s a reason Temescal’s reputation is as colorful as its approachable, pastel-splashed taproom. It aims for inclusion. And it lives by the motto: “No jerks.”

This is Sam Gilbert of Temescal Brewing. Listen in.

In this episode, we’re talking about dads. Their influence on us, the things they taught or didn’t teach us, and how we do or don’t follow in their footsteps. That’s actually a small part of this conversation with Dave Infante, but perhaps the most surprising and fun piece of it all. Come for the dad talk, stick around for a reflection on alcoholic milk, labor relations, journalism, and more.

It’s an eclectic lineup of topics, but if you’re familiar with Dave, it may not be surprising. As a two-time James Beard Foundation award winner, he’s earned one of the highest recognitions for journalists covering food and beverage. He’s currently a writer-at-large for VinePair and the reporter behind Fingers, an alcohol-focused newsletter that covers the space where booze and culture connect. Dave’s archive of stories spans clickbait on Thrillist about hating IPAs to investigative pieces uncovering the crowdfunding finances of BrewDog.

If there’s something culturally-relevant that’s taken place in beverage alcohol, Dave has likely been on it, and you’ll get the chance to better understand his work and motivations in this conversation. You’ll also get to learn about his dad.

Nearly all of the stories you read and interviews you hear from Good Beer Hunting include professionals in beer. But one of the wonderful things about this beverage is you don’t have to be a working pro to make and enjoy it. And like other areas of the industry, there’s a growing collection of people who’ve embraced homebrewing that bring demographics and backgrounds historically underrepresented in beer. That’s a space we’re exploring in this episode thanks to Ray Ricky Rivera, the journalist behind one of Good Beer Hunting's Next Germination stories—a series produced in partnership with Guinness—that focused on the SoCal Cerveceros, the largest Latino homebrew club in the country that’s also been dubbed “one of the most important homebrew clubs in the world.”

As a member of the group, Ray brings a unique perspective to his story you can find on goodbeerhunting.com and one you’ll get a sense of here. Instead of recapping what was written, however, we’re going to share with you three acts to represent growth and change in homebrewing, with a highlight of what’s next. First, you’ll hear from Julia Herz, executive director of the American Homebrewers Association, to learn about the hobby and priorities for the organization. Then, Ray will take us to a SoCal hangout, where we’ll meet a couple members, learn about their involvement, and listen in during their brew day. Lastly, we’ll catch up with Ray to hear about the ongoing impact SoCal Cerveceros has on its members and local beer lovers in California.

This is the audio companion to “‘I See You’ — The Evolution of SoCal Cerveceros,” stories for our Next Germination series, produced in partnership with Guinness. First, we visit with Julia Herz of the American Homebrewers Association.

Welcome to Mother of Invention—a special series of the GBH Podcast made in partnership with Guinness devoted to innovation in the brewing world, both historical and contemporary. In this series, we ask the question: if necessity is the mother of invention, what is the necessity that’s driving people to solve a problem, meet a challenge, or explore a new opportunity—and what are they doing about it?

This series started in collaboration with Guinness, an underwriter for GBH for three years running. Guinness has a reputation for being a technical innovator—whether it’s draft technology, the invention of the nitro widget in the can, training the world how to pour a proper pint, or achieving unprecedented consistency in their breweries around the world. But necessity and innovation come in all sorts of forms for breweries big and small, and are reflected in the cultural influences around them. 

So this year we decided to go to Denver during the Great American Beer Festival, when we knew we’d have a critical mass of influential and hard-working people from across the industry in one place. We set up shop and conducted two full days of interviews. And while the resulting conversations vary widely in terms of topics and experiences, some patterns began to emerge.

In this second episode, we’re going to look at the ways companies are attempting to connect with new audiences through product innovation. 

How are breweries like Brooklyn Brewery, Sufferfest Beer Company, Firestone Walker Brewing Company, and others shaking up their portfolios to appeal to the expanding idea of who a beer drinker is? This is a critical question at this point in the evolution of the beer industry and it’s become increasingly difficult to define who drinks what. Most people are modal—meaning they partake in cocktails, wine, spirits, macro and craft beer, hard seltzer, and cannabis—and few of us are loyal to any one category, let alone a particular subset or specific brewery. 

So what connects all these things? And how does a brewery stretch its vision to account for how the world, and the beer drinker, is changing?

This is Mother of Invention. Listen in.

Genuinely nice people seem to be harder than ever to come by. But Chris Leguizamon, otherwise known as “Chris The Beer Educator” on Instagram, is one of them. As the education program manager at Pure Project in San Diego, California, Chris is in charge of teaching both his coworkers and consumers about the joys of craft beer, coffee, and mead—a role he takes very seriously, but always manages to do with his trademark ear-to-ear smile. 

Chris has been a fixture in San Diego’s craft beer scene since 2014, and as one of only two Advanced Cicerones in the county as well as a Certified BJCP judge (with his eye on a National ranking), he’s easily one of the most knowledgeable folks in the local industry. But where he stands out goes beyond his positive attitude and almost inescapable enthusiasm for the beverage. It’s his absolute willingness to share everything he knows with anyone who wants to hear it. 

In our conversation today, you’ll hear from Chris — his journey into beer, his identity as a first generation Colombian-American, why he does what he does, and the value of formal beer education, as well as where those programs need to evolve to engage with the next generation of aspiring beer experts from all backgrounds. The conversation wraps up with both of our takes on the global collaboration, Brave Noise: how we feel about it, what we hope comes from it, and the urgency of listening to the voices who so desperately need to be heard. 

I first learned about Montclair Brewery during Black History Month. Since opening in 2018, the brewery has honored prominent Black figures—from Harriet Tubman with its Tubman Railroad Strawberry Pale Ale to Chadwick Boseman with its Boseman Wild Ale.

I had the chance to talk with Denise Ford Sawadogo, the co-owner and founder of Montclair Brewery, for an article I was working on for the New Brewer. While speaking to her, I was amazed at how much the couple’s backgrounds showed up in their work at Montclair Brewery—Denise’s family is from Jamaica and her husband, Leo, is from West Africa. Their culture appears in the music, programming, and of course, the beers they brew. It’s a great reminder of the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and how exposure to other cultures can increase our knowledge of the world around us while also teaching us something about ourselves.

In our conversation, we talk about how the brewery’s story began in Montclair, New Jersey, and the beautiful neighborhood which it’s named after. Denise also shares how the couples bring their culture into the brewery, including the inspiration behind their Black History Series. We also talk about our moms, their entrepreneurial spirit, and how we learned never to give up on our dreams.

Welcome to Mother of Invention—a special series of the GBH Podcast made in partnership with Guinness devoted to innovation in the brewing world, both historical and contemporary. In this series, we ask the question: if necessity is the mother of invention, what is the necessity that’s driving people to solve a problem, meet a challenge, or explore a new opportunity—and what are they doing about it?

This series started in collaboration with Guinness, an underwriter for GBH for three years running. Guinness has a reputation for being a technical innovator—whether it’s draft technology, the invention of the nitro widget in the can, training the world how to pour a proper pint, or achieving unprecedented consistency in their breweries around the world. But necessity and innovation come in all sorts of forms for breweries big and small, and are reflected in the cultural influences around them. 

So this year we decided to go to Denver during the Great American Beer Festival, when we knew we’d have a critical mass of influential and hard-working people from across the industry in one place. We set up shop and conducted two full days of interviews. And while the resulting conversations vary widely in terms of topics and experiences, some patterns began to emerge.

In our fourth and final episode, we’re going to take everything we’ve learned and apply it to the experience of the end consumer: the beer drinker. 

With so much newfound permission in beer—whether we’re talking about legal constraints being lifted, new spaces for selling and drinking beer being made available, the uniting of manufacturing and hospitality operations, or the contexts in which beer education is taking place—there are plenty of opportunities to talk about the people doing something new and often unprecedented.

We’ll begin in an unexpected place: a small-town Connecticut library.

This is Mother of Invention. Listen in.

Who wants to talk about money? We’re going to. I’m joined today by Jerard Fagerberg to talk about his piece titled “Pour Clean, Like the Source — CA Draft Tech in Oakland, California,” which was published on Good Beer Hunting on February 18, 2022. 

In this piece, he outlines the creation, evolution, and expansion of CA Draft Tech, a sanitation service for taprooms, bars, and restaurants across the Bay Area. With the help of SMBX, an alternative financing company that allows consumers to invest directly in local businesses, CA Draft Tech was able to grow their business outside a bank’s traditional loan structure. 

It was Jerard’s first time exploring the niche world of hospitality financing, but it’s probably not the last. He describes the research and writing process as a challenge, but a necessary one in order to demystify finances and introduce a level of transparency not often seen when discussing that big elephant in the room—money.  You’ll hear from Jerard about how the story took shape, how to best discuss the business of beer without ignoring the very real human element, just what bonds are, how SMBX taps into communities in order to elevate businesses, and why this model is well-suited to the high-capital, low-margin world of hospitality. 

One note for listeners: This story was published as part of Good Beer Hunting’s Compound Interest series, underwritten by SMBX, which highlights different ways small businesses can get the funding they need; all of the businesses profiled in this series have worked with SMBX to achieve part or even all of their funding. And on that note, we have our own bond offering on the platform for anyone interested in investing in Good Beer Hunting’s future.

Today’s podcast was inspired by a single tweet, or more accurately a reply to tweet, from Bissell Brothers cofounder Pete Bissell. It came in response to a post about a new Good Beer Hunting article entitled Making it to a Million — How Allagash Helped Grow Maine’s Grain Economy.

It was a story about the remarkable fortunes of a handful of grain farmers and maltsters in Maine, who have benefitted from Allagash’s drive to include more local grains in their beer. It’s a wonderful example of a brewery doing something not because it’s easy, but because it’s right – something the myth of craft was built on. But as the article made clear, Allagash were not the only Maine brewery pursuing the strategy. Bissell Brothers were also name checked, and Pete’s brother Noah actually quoted. Still, Pete wanted to make it clear that local grain wasn’t little aside for the brewery, or some kind of corporate responsibility box ticked. It was a passion of theirs, and their contribution to Maine grain’s rise is perhaps as big as Allagash’s.

That fact, coupled with Pete’s little moment of Twitter defiance, gets to the heart of Bissell Brothers. On the surface they seem like another haze-focused brewery – complete with a world-famous double IPA, a killer brand identity and lines around the block every other weekend. While that’s all a source of pride to Pete and Noah, it’s only the start of the Bissell story – something the brewery struggles get across.

In this podcast I sit down with Pete and Noah to talk about the brilliant fact that their flagship beer, Substance, is 97% Maine grain, but more so about everything that surrounds that choice – the positives such as the impact on sustainability and local business, but also the negatives such as higher costs and accepting the fact that many customers simply won’t know or care. We reflect on the beer industry as a whole in the light of COVID and widespread condemnation of its working culture, and consider how marketing has become so reductive that doing the wrong thing is getting easier, while explaining how you do the right thing is only getting harder.

The long-awaited return and continuation of Foeder for Thought - GBH’s collaboration with Green Bench Brewing Company in St Petersburg Florida. GBH’s Founder, Michael Kiser, hosts a series of talks with wile ale producers from around the world in front of a live audience.

Episodes from 2022:

FFT-013 Khris Johnson of Green Bench Brewing Company

FFT-014 Tim Adams of Oxbow Brewing Company

FFT-015 Jeffery Stuffings of Jester King Brewery

FFT-016 Christian Gregory of 3 Fonteinen

FFT-017 Pierre Tilquin of Gueuzerie Tilquin

FFT-018 Jason Perkins of Allagash Brewing Company

FFT-019 Tomme Arthur of The Lost Abbey

One of my favorite things about hosting this podcast is the chance to meet people and discuss who they are, not just what they do in the world of beer or beverage alcohol. It’s really important for me to showcase the humans who make up these industries, what makes them think, and what makes them special.

In this conversation, our two guests do the heavy lifting to introduce themselves. Their voices and experiences will help guide you to consider what it means to be a black man in beer, an entrepreneur and visionary, and each a better half of a dynamic duo. There’s Joe Mettle, an author and educator, and Roger Apollon Jr., a musician, educator, and co-founder of Four City Brewing Company. Located in New Jersey, both are also the minds behind an educational startup that is helping to launch new ideas and careers.

Together, Joe and Roger started Entrepreneurship and Equity in Brewing, a training program that offers Black, Indigenous, people of color, and other underrepresented people an opportunity to learn the business of beer. Their program was launched with the hope of helping others find greater appreciation for beer, the potential for a new career, and most important, advancement in the beer industry.

In recent years, many organizations, events, and efforts across beer have worked to lift up people long underserved and less seen, and Entrepreneurship and Equity in Brewing—which you’ll also hear referred to as “EEB” in our chat—is another example of grassroots work creating change. I’ll let Joe and Roger take it from here so you can learn what makes them tick and why their work deserves our attention and admiration.

I’m Ashley Rodriguez, and you’re listening to the Good Beer Hunting podcast.

A few months ago—right after the pandemic started changing our lives, and businesses across the United States began closing their doors—I wrote an article about some of my favorite local places. I wanted to know how they were adjusting to the unprecedented circumstances. Things felt so serious at the time, just days after shelter-in-place orders were announced, and before the word “quarantine” was an everyday part of our collective vocabulary. But here we are. It’s July 2020, and it doesn’t look like this situation has an end in the immediate future.

One of the places I visited was Middle Brow Beer Co., which is in my neighborhood of Logan Square, Chicago. I talked to one of the co-owners, Pete Ternes. And I remember him mentioning something about the coronavirus, and knowing that this would radically change the way we operate in the world. It seems almost prophetic, looking back at that conversation four months later. And it’s been fascinating seeing how Middle Brow, which is a small neighborhood brewery and pizza shop, has also evolved and adapted during that time.

Today I’m sitting with two of the partners at Middle Brow, Pete, who I mentioned above, and Polly Nevins. Middle Brow opened its brick-and-mortar retail space in January 2019, but has been brewing wild ales in Chicago for almost a decade. In a way, both its newness and experience are helping the business weather this tumultuous time. Because the space is new, the owners have also been able to change their business, shifting almost seamlessly from a vibrant restaurant and brewpub to a few different iterations of a to-go pizza place and community grocery store. The model evolves in real-time in response to the needs of the neighborhood.

The owners’ experience has also given them the confidence to brew wild and weird beers during a pandemic—beers that maybe benefit from having a bartender tell you more about them. Part of that is the trust they’ve instilled in their staff, and part of that comes from the trust they’ve built with their neighbors. Middle Brow doesn’t feel like a destination brewery—you wouldn’t see people lining up for the next hype can release. But what you will see is a business that takes its responsibility as a leader in the community seriously. They’ve recently announced a no-tipping policy to create wage equity among their front- and back-of-house staff, and have been clear on their political beliefs, including supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, donating food, implementing a “buy a loaf, give a loaf” bread program, and supporting local organizations working within their community.

This is Polly Nevins and Pete Ternes of Middle Brow Beer Co. Listen in.

At some point in your life, you’ve probably been told that you’re not supposed to talk about religion or politics in certain settings. Especially when you meet someone for the first time. In this episode, we’re breaking that rule. As much as it may be one, at least.

This conversation combines the secularness of beer with values of Judaism as our guest walks us through why this is a balance that will bring something new and exciting to the industry. Jesse Epstein is a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion and the new owner of Shmaltz Brewing. The brand was founded in 1996, retired in 2021, and right at the end of 2022 came back to life after Epstein bought the rights to one of the longer-tenured craft beer brands in the country. While Judaism has always been a part of  Shmaltz’ schtick, Epstein plans to deepen that connection even more through his own education and work and commitment to caring for others and social justice.

A homebrewer-turned-owner, Epstein is brand new to the professional world of beer, but his vision for what he wants Shmaltz to become is rooted in who he is, the values he’s learned from family and his synagogue, and an interest for exploring what a Jewish beer brand can accomplish in 2023 and beyond. His hope is that one pint at a time, he can provide a reason for drinkers to consider how they can be a part of repairing the world through human connection. Join me in getting to know Jesse over the first 15 minutes of our conversation, which will give lots of context for why religion and politics becomes center to the rest of what we talk about, and what he wants to do with beer.

I recently learned that California has 461 recorded Bigfoot sightings. That’s second only to Washington State, but far more than the mythical creature’s presumed home turf in British Columbia, which counts a mere 134 sightings since 1924. But how many sightings can be credited to the power of suggestion? Or were they all real instances that just so happened to occur to true believers? We may never know, but that’s not really the point. You can believe, or not believe, but staying open-minded to the possibility of unexplained mysteries is something humans should all strive for, according to freelance writer Jacqueline Kehoe. 

In her piece titled “Our Wilder Selves — The Hunt for Sasquatch in Middle America,” a story published as part of our Olly Olly series in collaboration with Oskar Blues, Jacqueline documents her own quest to find the creature known as Sasquatch and Bigfoot in the woods of Iowa. You’ll hear about what she finds, what she didn’t, and what she hoped to discover in the first place. We talk about cryptids and aliens and mythical monster folklore, but also about the magic behind humanity’s connection with nature and how to find catharsis in the wilderness. 

Society has tamed itself, pulling further away from what was once an untamed landscape. But there are pockets still out there, if only we look outside our own perceptions.

When we think of beer from north of the American border, classic names like Molson or Labatt may easily come to mind. But as in the U.S., there has been a long shift taking place in the Canadian beer scene. Even though the entire country has roughly the same number of breweries as the state of California, there's a burgeoning community driving an industry to crank out new flavors and styles inspired by what's taken place in the U.S.

In today's episode we're talking with someone who's watched this change with great interest. Mike Willis runs West Craft Specialty Imports, which brings a variety of beverages into British Columbia. His portfolio—focused almost entirely on barrel-aged beers and other releases in the sour or tart wheelhouse—creates a unique situation for West Craft. At a time when those types of beers may seem a bit intimidating or odd for BC beer drinkers, he's leaning in hard, hoping the market is just on the cusp of opening up.

It's a novel business strategy in terms of getting ahead of the game, but the intent isn't new. Mike is used to taking risks. He organized Vancouver’s Hopwired Festival, based off Good Beer Hunting's own Uppers & Downers, which brings together coffee and beer. There's also his Fruit Beer Fest and Wild Night Out, the latter of which showcases world-renowned producers like Cantillon, Hill Farmstead, and more.

The start of this conversation hits on all of these elements, from determining a market in advance of consumers and pushing discovery of funky beers to the exciting combination of beer and coffee. The second half of our chat was particularly telling, in terms of digging into what Willis wants to accomplish in the future.

After talking about the challenges of selling beer, we get to the core of what he's trying to do: foster community and forge relationships in a way that brings him happiness. It's a bit of a cliché—talking about how beer brings people together—but as you'll hear, there is a deep personal connection running underneath everything Willis does. This isn't just moving product—it's finding meaning. Let's grab our passports and head to Vancouver.

This is Mike Willis of West Craft Specialty Imports. Listen in.

From the moment I stepped into Good Word Brewing in Duluth, I was impressed. The space is a take on old-world style with warm wood and plush booths—it's comfortable, cozy, and looks like it’s been there for decades even though it's fairly new. It's a place where you can settle in for a long while, and you'll want to because the food and beer are so exceptional that lingering is a pleasure.

Todd DiMatteo, the owner of Good Word, has been at the helm since its opening in 2017. We first met in 2019 when I was working on a story highlighting the city of Duluth, and over the years, I continue to be impressed by his dedication to quality, community, and hospitality. It shows up in every aspect of the business, but especially his Lagers, which are clean and crisp and have enough flavor to keep your palate engaged without overdoing it. 

With their sixth anniversary approaching, I thought it would be a good time to catch up with Todd and reflect on everything he's been able to accomplish over the years. You'll hear him share some of his stumbles along the way and how he keeps himself engaged as a brewer. We also talk about why so many of the beers on his menu are decocted, how he balances his beer descriptions for beer geeks and novices, and his approach to beer events.

We’ve all heard the stories of homebrewers following their passion into professional brewing. There’s an engineer or a lawyer who homebrewed for years and after lots of encouragement, decided it was time to give it a go. But how many Wall Street investment bankers turn down lucrative salaries to open a brewery? There’s at least one in San Diego, and it’s Doug Constantiner from Societe Brewing Company.

Doug is one of those people that is accomplished and humble, always ready with a smile, a pint, and a listening ear. Being a part of the San Diego craft beer community is to be a part of a world-class industry, and sometimes egos or ambition can sour the experience. That’s not what you’ll hear today. Instead, Doug describes the steps he and the other leaders at Societe take to keep their mission simple: treat others how you’d like to be treated, and focus on the beer.

Of course, it’s never just beer. We also talk about how he tries to lead by quiet example by building bridges and open lines of communication that he believes may be a key to improving the world. Later on, we’ll discuss the split Societe faced when co-founder Travis Smith left the company in 2019, and how that difficult separation changed the future of the brewery just before the pandemic changed the world’s entire way of life. There have been ups and downs, highs and lows, but some things remain the same: Doug’s commitment to quality in beer, joy in life, acceptance of people, and love of family. Let’s hear from the banker turned brewer, right now.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if French women scream at the top of their lungs for acceptance, respect, and change, does anyone listen? That’s the question freelance writer Anaïs Lecoq set out to answer in her piece for Good Beer Hunting titled “Pas Encore — French Women Are Sick of Waiting for Their Beer Revolution,” which was published on October 20, 2022.

In the piece, Anaïs describes the pervasive avoidance the French beer scene has towards conversations about sexual harrassment, violence, and assault when such conversations are initiated by women. When they do occur, they almost always end in litigation, ensuring that the current culture of fear, trauma, and repression continues to be the status quo. In fact, in our conversation today, she says the entire reason she wrote the piece is due to the fact that despite publishing an open letter signed by hundreds of women working in the French beer scene, they were met with virtual silence and apathy. What will actually get people to listen and make change, she wonders? I find myself wondering the same thing.

You’re about to hear what she thinks it will take, as well as a recent bombshell she hopes might trigger a #MeToo movement similar to the one Brienne Allan instigated in the United States in 2021. However, Anaïs’ hope is clouded by pessimism when we discuss how even those efforts, once promising, have fizzled. Actions may start with words, but they shouldn’t end there, and she describes what actions need to be taken in order for the fledgling French beer scene to grow in such a way that everyone is valued. Let’s listen to what has happened, what’s happening, and what she thinks is about to happen. 

Today’s guest comes to us from far northern Vermont. Eleanor is a cider maker, first known for her ice ciders, made using a process of distillation that profits from natural swings in seasonal temperatures to produce a concentrated, sweet, and acid-balanced cider. Ice cider is often thought of as a dessert wine in the U.S., but so easily replaces a bourbon or whiskey.

In her region, just south of the Canadian border (and Quebec’s concentration of ice cider makers), Eleanor’s operation is a rare and special thing. But as climate change continues to alter seasonal norms, she’s becoming increasingly known for the wide range of specialty ciders she makes, some of which count among the best in the country.

She’s an active proponent of the specialty cider category, working with others in the industry to help educate makers, drinkers, and people like me. As you’ll hear in this conversation, there is no shortage of challenges in the cider industry at the moment. But with people like Eleanor leading the way, it’s encouraging to see the progress being made.

This is Eleanor Léger of Eden Specialty Ciders. Listen in.

I live in Chicago, and there’s this liquor—maybe some of you have heard of it—called Malort, which is made from wormwood. If you ask anyone in Chicago what their local spirit is, they’d point to Malort, perhaps tricking their own of town friends to take a straight shot of it when they come to visit the city. And everyone knows how hard it is to drink Malort. Even the founder, Carl Jeppson, was known to be quoted saying, “'My Malort is produced for that unique group of drinkers who disdain light flavor or neutral spirits.' It is not possible to forget our two-fisted liquor. The taste just lingers and lasts – seemingly forever. The first shot is hard to swallow! Perservere [sic]. Make it past two 'shock-glasses' and with the third you could be ours... forever.” 

Some would say that this—this sentiment—is a perfect encapsulation of the people of Chicago. Perhaps not for everyone on the first sip, but they grow on you with time. Other might find that comparison silly, but it’s interesting to figure out what a city’s chosen liquor says about the city’s history and spirit.

In this episode of the GBH Collective, I interview Gray Chapman, a freelance writer and frequent GBH contributor. She’s launching a new series for us called, “beer and a shot,” profiling the relationship between bartenders, spirits, and their relationships to the cities they inhabit. In this six part series, made in partnership with Miller High Life, Gray will write about a different city and a different bartender, and we’ll learn about a city’s culture through its choice of spirit a couple ounces at a time.

This is Gray Chapman, GBH contributor. Listen in.

Brewing is famously a science and an art. There are loads of technical aspects a skilled brewer should nail down to create something special, but there’s also a point where you just have to give up some autonomy. Or, at least accept it’s OK to play a little for some R&D. One of the most important things people in American craft beer have learned in recent years is how this also applies to their customers. A diverse menu that may expand beyond just beer is becoming table stakes and creativity in what kind of styles and flavor experiences you offer—in or outside of beer—can matter more than ever. You can control your taplist, but you also have to be flexible to what you hear and learn from people sitting at your bar.

In this episode, we explore this idea and what it means to grow a business and expectations with Kevin and Britt Templin of Salt Lake City, Utah’s Templin Family Brewing, also known simply as TF Brewing. Since opening in 2018, TF Brewing has become known for its lager program, including its award-winning flagship, Granary kellerbier. The brewery has also earned recognition at the World Beer Cup, where in 2024 it won gold medals for its coconut-guava berliner weisse and Squirrel Juicy IPA. There are other medals from the Great American Beer Festival and WBC, but that hasn’t stopped Britt, Kevin, and their team from expanding their menu and listening to what customers are telling them they’re interested in drinking. The science of their beers has been stellar and the art of refining what that means for drinkers continues to evolve.

You’ll hear us talk about what it takes to feel OK about making these changes—which for TF Brewing has included a new wine program and successful cocktail menu—along with what it means to be a growing brewery in 2024. The value the Templins place on their staff and how those people help the brewery succeed is high. By the time this conversation wraps, you’ll have an understanding of how “family” isn’t just in the name of the business, but how they want to make people feel. Even in that, there’s a science to running a brewery that’s a business, but an art to creating a space that promotes imagination, community, and closeness.

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times—beverage companies are going to have to expand their offerings not just to grow, but to survive at all. In this episode of The Gist, lead Sightlines reporter Kate Bernot joins me, Beth Demmon, to take a big look at 2023 and what the numbers mean for 2024, why diversification is the word of the year, and what a brewery buying into CBD could signal to the rest of the industry. This is the Gist.

You’re used to hearing about beer, but in this conversation, we’re pairing that topic with food. Brewpubs and beer-focused bars and restaurants across the country all have their particular takes on menus that incorporate the two. What you’ll hear momentarily shares philosophy and strategy around what people can expect from California’s Fort Point Beer Company, which features full-time culinary director Cecile Macasero.

Cecile has worked at prestigious restaurants recognized with James Beard awards and Michelin stars. He’s organized menus for staff at Google. And as you’ll hear, the things he’s learned elsewhere have helped him conceptualize what food can provide to beer lovers when they visit Fort Point and what it means to create dishes that try to capture the spirit of San Francisco.

Along with Cecile, we’re joined by Dina Dobkin, co-owner and chief brand officer at Fort Point, who sheds additional light on the ideas and processes to create a special on-premise experience for people who visit the brewery to drink and eat.

Together, Cecile and Dina explain why it’s important to have a component of food at a taproom, how their family histories from outside the United States have shaped their own appreciation for food, and how beer and food can find a fun middle ground between what’s interesting and what’s easy to love.

Expertise is an easy thing to pin down … or is it? There’s the oft-cited 10,000 hours that it takes to become an expert. Or there’s a dictionary we could pull from a book shelf or mobile device to look up a definition. Or maybe we just know it when we see it in action. There are all sorts of experts who share all sorts of expertise with the world, and whether they know it, like it, or claim it, it’s inspiring. We could turn to Google any time we want, but there’s something special—and perhaps necessarily human—about not relying on a manual or book and finding expertise from another person.

In this conversation, we hear from Sarah Flora, a homebrewer with a large following across social media and YouTube, an award-winning podcast, and by all means, an expert. She connects people across the globe with tips and insights on the homebrewing process, beer reviews, and light-hearted reflections on what it means to exist in the beer and homebrewing worlds. Throughout this chat, we connect these things to how Sarah approaches educating herself and others, the value of taking risks, and why it’s valuable to have loved ones giving you a little push when you need it.

Sarah was part of Good Beer Hunting’s 2021 Signifiers—an annual collection of people GBH celebrates who shape the future of the beer industry. It’s Sarah’s expertise that puts her in that position, and a drive to learn and improve that will help you understand the “how” and “why” she inspires others. The thousands of interactions Sarah gets on Instagram posts or YouTube videos every week are basic measurements of her impact, but as you learn more about her as a person as we talk, you’ll likely find an even greater appreciation for how she uses her skills to make being an expert delightfully human.

Even if you barely dip your toe in the shark-infested waters of Beer Twitter, there’s a chance you’ve heard of Pilot Beer. You don’t even have to follow the brewery for it to regularly hit your timeline, as its pithy, satirical, and self-deprecating posts are retweeted and liked hundreds of times.

So you’d be forgiven for thinking that Pilot is much bigger than it is. It’s still a five-man operation and its Twitter account is more an extension of one of the founder’s personalities than any attempt at a social-media strategy. In fact, cofounder Patrick Jones is as surprised and delighted as anyone about the success they have found online by tweeting things like: “We're only stuck with this stupid brewery because of a typo when we tried selling a load of artisan bees.”

The irony is the brewery still sells almost all of its beer in its hometown of Leith, a port suburb of Edinburgh. Despite being part of the inner Twitter bubble, its beer doesn’t reach many markets, and the dry, session styles it brews certainly don’t cater to them either.

We caught up at the London Craft Beer Festival, an event Patrick freely admits he and Pilot wouldn’t have been invited to if it weren’t for their social presence. The party hasn’t started yet and they’re still setting up—so excuse the old bang or rumble—but it was heartening to see how Pilot’s session beers were loved by the public later on, despite their stall being opposite some of the buzzy American brewers. It turns out if you talk honestly and with humor, session beer and open conversation are all you really need.

This is Patrick Jones of Pilot Beer. Listen in.

It’s a new week with new news, but you already knew that. In this week's episode of The Gist, Sightlines reporter Kate Bernot talks with me, Beth Demmon, about Drizly’s billion-dollar bust, cider’s rising star, and… beads? BEES! Hat tip to Arrested Development for that one. This is the Gist. 

Today’s episode is the second we’ve done with this duo of Mike Siegel of Goose Island and Ron Pattinson, beer historian, writer, and a collaborator on a recipe revival project of sorts. Way back in 2016 we invited these two over to the studio to discuss their Brewery Yard Stock Pale Ale, a barrel-aged brett pale reminiscent of what a beer brewed in England over a century ago may have been like according to their research. 

Today’s conversation is about a new beer called Obadiah Poundage, which isn’t trying to replicate a recipe so much as try to approximate what a porter might have tasted like if it were brewed in London in 1840. 

These beers have both been fascinating, not only for their history and story, but the final product itself. They taste and feel familiar, but with an edge that’s entirely foreign. Like a bizarro world version of a beer you think you know. Sometimes that’s an ingredient choice, or a process decision, or in some cases, a fermentation character that’s just slightly outside the norm. All of it adding up to a wholly enjoyable, yet intriguing  version of, in this case, a porter. 

I love getting these two guys together—you can see the child-like excitement that comes out of their shared passion for these collaborations. It’s a great reminder of how genuinely fun beer, brewing, and history can be when it all comes together in a project like this. 

This is Ron Pattinson and Mike Siegel, listen in.

From a declaration of maturity to mergers and acquisitions, cannabis, craft share, and beyond, it’s been a big week in beer. Let’s get the heart of what’s going on right now on The Gist, with Kate Bernot and me, Beth Demmon. 

This is Beth Demmon, and you’re listening to the Good Beer Hunting podcast.

At the end of every year, it’s common for publications to put together roundups of notable people who’ve made their mark: who you should read, who you should listen to, who you should follow on social media, and so on. And every year, while those mentioned absolutely merit recognition for their work, some people also deserving of attention inevitably get missed. Any list covering the craft beer industry that doesn’t include Ren Navarro falls short (Good Beer Hunting’s end-of-year Signifiers included). The Canadian beer equity advocate is prominent in conversations on Twitter and Canadian outlets, and her tireless efforts to make beer a better place unquestionably deserve the support and attention of people everywhere.

As a queer Black woman who seeks to educate, enlighten, and engage, Navarro calls herself a “reluctant advocate” as one of the only people in her immediate area to consistently work towards a more equitable beer community. By calling for actions that incorporate intersectionality in diversity efforts and demanding accountability from peers in the craft beer space, she encourages individuals and breweries to embrace uncomfortable revelations that can drive improvement, despite the challenges and feelings these types of conversations may bring up. She mostly works alone, and while the pandemic has disrupted her ability to educate face-to-face, she’s grateful for the transparency and openness that virtual spaces allow for, giving people the opportunity to raise hard questions in a safe, judgment-free way.

In our conversation, we’ll talk about her role in craft beer, how Canada compares—and contrasts—with the United States when it comes to its beer scene, and how social justice movements took off last year and then stagnated. We’ll also discuss the importance of people speaking from within their communities rather than on behalf of a community, how one can earn the title of ally rather than bestow it upon themselves, how concepts like accessibility and inclusion remain closely related, and who she looks to as changemakers of the future. Keep an ear out for numerous new initiatives she has planned for 2021. Navarro knows that we can all do better and be better—now, it’s time to find out how. Listen in.

Over the past several months, Good Beer Hunting reporter Kate Bernot has been at the forefront of covering allegations of sexual harassment, bullying, and unsafe working conditions at Mikkeller, a Denmark-based brewery with bars and brewpubs all over the world, including a prominent location in San Diego. Kate’s coverage has included stories on protests at the brewery’s Copenhagen headquarters and stories from former employees who alleged instances of inappropriate workplace behavior and silence from leadership. Most recently, Kate has written about how these previous storylines came together ahead of the company’s Mikkeller Beer Celebration Copenhagen, one of the most prestigious beer festivals in the world, from which dozens of breweries withdrew in opposition, and eventually garnered an apology from Mikkeller.

In this conversation, Kate will recap all this and more, and give you insight into what it’s been like to report on an evolving story. This is an opportunity to better understand what it takes to write about all of what’s happened to, with, and toward Mikkeller since this summer, and get a better understanding of the context behind it all.

Sometimes when dreams get put on hold for too long, they can fade away and become nostalgia for what never was. But in the case of Sarah Real, her dream of starting a brewery was never far from her mind, and when she was finally able to open Hot Plate Brewing Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts earlier this year with her husband and co-founder Mike Dell'Aquila, it had been many years in the making.

As one of the few Latina-owned brewpubs amongst the nearly 10,000 total breweries in the United States, the pair is acutely aware of what representation means and what responsibilities they feel come along with it. According to a 2021 survey by the Brewers Association, just 2.2% of brewery owners across the country identify as “Hispanic, Latina -o, or of Spanish Origin.” In this episode, Mike talks about how they try to offer multiple access points for consumers through the beers they make and how Hot Plate cultivates a safe, welcoming community for anyone who may not feel represented or seen in the current craft beer industry. A storyteller by trade, Mike crafts the narratives and Sarah brews the beer in a unique partnership that seems to suit them both. 

However, Sarah and Mike both admit that while it was, at times, a struggle to start the brewery, now that it’s open, they’re ready to welcome everyone through the front door. They talk about their backgrounds, their passions, and the future they’re already building together—the dream finally realized.

Over the past year, Good Beer Hunting has maintained an ongoing, weekly newsletter and expert community under our Sightlines Premium banner. As an extension of our newsy Sightlines coverage—anchored by Kate Bernot and myself, Bryan Roth—the goal of Sightlines Premium is to combine objective data and real-world anecdotes to help industry pros from across beer and beverage alcohol make informed decisions about managing a portfolio, how and where they should focus their access to market, and more.

In this episode, you’ll hear myself, editor of Sightlines and Sightlines Premium; GBH founder Michael Kiser; and Sightlines lead reporter Kate Bernot. In our roundtable discussion, we’re focusing on six key storylines from 2020 that we see as impactful in 2021. This kind of analysis is an example of the work we’re doing on Sightlines Premium, but our back-and-forth also hits on the kinds of discussions even casual fans of beer may have heard in the last 12 months.

If you’re leading a company in the beer or alcohol space, Sightlines Premium is for you. Listen out for the kind of direct advice and consultation we offer in our weekly newsletter and online community. For more information, visit goodbeerhunting.com/sightlines-premium.

This is the GBH Sightlines team of myself, Bryan Roth, Kate Bernot, and Michael Kiser. Listen in.

Today’s guest has been a bit of a ghost int he GBH machine for more than a decade - since our founding really - and he’s someone I think about every time someone asks me how GBH got started - and as you’ll discover shortly, he had no idea. 

Greg Browne was the brewer at a brewpub in Chicago’s NW suburbs - a place called Mickey Finn’s. He was known for brewing a hefeweizen - a recipe he inherited from his predecessor when he took over as head brewer. 

More importantly, for me, he was the host of a weekly Beer School at The Map Room in Chicago - a midday gathering on Saturday’s where guests would enjoy some bread and cheese and learn about beers in a thematic way - and the themes were whatever happened to be on Greg’s mind that week. 

It’s an incredible memory for me - from a time when I’d only had a smattering of craft beer experiences to rely on - and I hardly considered myself a fan of beer in any particular way. It was just causal and sometimes interesting fun. Most of my bar experiencers a the time involved $1 off specials of Blue Moon and some Golden Tee. Not exactly sophisticated stuff - but it was kind of the Chicago way. 

Map Room - and Greg Browne’s beer school painted an entirely different picture however. And I’m forever indebted to that moment when he served me my first Saison Dupont. That’s the beer that inspired GBH - and Greg is the one who created that moment, unbeknownst to him. 

But that’s not the real reason we’re talking today - that’s a story we could have shared at any point in in past decade really. Today I’m talking to Greg because for the first time in a long time, I saw his name pop up as part of a new brewing project called Art History, and it recently started supplying two fantastic beers to Chicago’s Hopleaf Bar. As far as I know the sis the first time Hopleaf has ever had a house beer. The venerated tap list there is a target for anyone trying to make a name for themselves in Chicago’s beer scene. Brewers host parties just to celebrate getting on tao there for the first time if they’re lucky enough to make the list at all. So for Greg to have a new gig - and so quickly become a mainstay on that list as a pair of house beers - is an unprecedented achievement. 

And for this episode, I reached out to Michael Roper of Hopleaf for his perspective on all that. 

It was a sign for me that it was finally time to get Greg on the podcast, share this story with him, and hear so much more about his own. It takes us deep into Chicago’s craft brewing past - and paints pa picture of the future that I’m very excited about. 

This is GBH Out Loud, and I’m Ashley Rodriguez. Today you’ll hear Michael Kiser read “Goodbye to Goose Island's Clybourn Pub for a Season, and Forever,” published on GoodBeerHunting.com on January 9, 2017.

Stories about bars and pubs usually focus on the patrons—the folks who rely on their regular spots for connection, a sense of place, or simply as a go-to destination where they can grab a drink with friends. But this article is different. It’s a snapshot of the last moments of Goose Island’s Clybourn Brew Pub in Chicago, and its biggest mourners—the folks who work there and have called this space their home for years.  

The closing of Clybourn Pub—not forever but for renovations—was a moment that inspired GBH’s founder Michael to write a tribute. The Clybourn Pub was symbolic of many things for Michael. Sure, it would open again, but as a changed entity: looking new, different, perhaps more modern. Beyond that, its closing and renovation meant something more. It’s not quite clear what, and, as Michael states, he needed a moment to figure it all out. 

This is Michael Kiser reading his article, “Goodbye to Goose Island’s Clybourn Pub for a Season, and Forever.” Listen in.

Intangible, hard-to-define terms like “local,” “craft,” and even “ethical” remain debatable within beer spheres, but they’re far from limited to one industry. Longtime beer writer and more recent bean-to-bar chocolate expert David Nilsen touches on these topics and more in his newest piece for Good Beer Hunting, titled “Cacao, Brewing, and the Price of Nostalgia — Toward a Better Future for Chocolate Beer,” which was published on June 8, 2021. 

In this episode, David and I discuss the preconceived notions Western consumers tend to have about chocolate, including where it comes from, how it should taste, and the often unknown—or at least overlooked—human cost behind each exquisite bite. Chocolate is far from just a one-dimensional snack found at supermarket checkout lines and in Halloween buckets. Instead, it can be as varied, complex, and multifaceted as malt or hops to beer drinkers, and the many cultural overlaps between beer and chocolate may surprise you. They certainly surprised me, as did the often-invisible, but pervasive human rights violations that exist in the cacao supply chain. 

In our conversation, David explains the hard truths behind what it takes to transport goods from the global South to the U.S. and how we can all be more informed, more ethical, and more responsible consumers. He defines what “bean-to-bar” really means, and how his personal interest in beer dovetailed into exploring the world of chocolate. He also discusses how the chocolate industry was literally built on the backs of enslaved people, how those human rights abuses continue today, and how a small group of global producers are shaping the future of the industry in response to that. And in addition to those in-depth topics, we’ll hear David talk about what makes him happy, and how the shared flavors of chocolate and beer can spark the imagination.

If you’re a beer fan, the world of cannabis probably intersects with your world in the most casual of ways. You might enjoy both occasionally, or even in a single sitting. You might be attracted to IPAs that exhibit some of your favorite cannabis characteristics—“dank” and “sticky” describe both in equal measure these days. You might float back and forth effortlessly between these two categories of recreational drugs.

But if you work in the beer industry, the conversation couldn’t be more different. Professional beer marketers and pundits have been scrambling to understand the potential impact cannabis could have on the beer industry, specifically craft beer—and many worry that it threatens to steal more dollars from the same consumers. 

If you work in recreational cannabis, on the other hand, chances are you’ve learned a lot from the growth of craft beer as to how to build a customer base and establish a craft-oriented experience around your product—particularly as the cannabis market shifts its focus from medial to recreational. Cannabis is slowly becoming a brand, a lifestyle lead category. And it’s moving even faster than the most recent generation of craft brewers did to establish a new niche. 

These intersections are fascinating from both a cultural and business lens, and the GBH Studio happens to be just down the street from one of the nation’s largest cannabis organizations: Grassroots Cannabis. As the legalization of recreational cannabis in Illinois was underway, Grassroots entered into a potential merger with an even larger company to the tune of $875M. That’s now pending approval by the feds, which is a funny idea in and of itself—that the federal government is involved in approving the merger of two companies whose products have not even been legalized at the national level yet. But that’s exactly how wild these times are for cannabis. 

This conversation took place right at the end of the year, before recreational cannabis legalization went into effect in the state of Illinois. Some of this is a conversation about what’s to be expected, both long-term, but also, in a very real sense, the very next week. 

This is Matt Darin, founder and chief operating officer, and Andrew Zens, vice president of talent acquisition and development, at Grassroots Cannabis. Listen in. 

The long-awaited return and continuation of Foeder for Thought - GBH’s collaboration with Green Bench Brewing Company in St Petersburg Florida. GBH’s Founder, Michael Kiser, hosts a series of talks with wile ale producers from around the world in front of a live audience.

Episodes from 2022:

FFT-013 Khris Johnson of Green Bench Brewing Company

FFT-014 Tim Adams of Oxbow Brewing Company

FFT-015 Jeffery Stuffings of Jester King Brewery

FFT-016 Christian Gregory of 3 Fonteinen

FFT-017 Pierre Tilquin of Gueuzerie Tilquin

FFT-018 Jason Perkins of Allagash Brewing Company

FFT-019 Tomme Arthur of The Lost Abbey

In her exuberant and extremely thorough piece titled “Spill It — Twisted Tea’s Unpredictable, Unparalleled 21-Year Success Story” journalist Kate Bernot unpacks everything there is to know about the cult favorite: its experimental origins, its shockingly consistent sales numbers, and the brand’s plans for future expansion in order to bring the gospel of boozy tea nationwide. Not that it needs to sell itself too hard—Kate describes Twisted Tea’s unusually fervent consumers, who’ve remained loyal for two decades and are showing no signs of straying. 

In today’s conversation, we share stories about our own experiences with the brand and how craft beer’s tunnel vision can sometimes make us unaware of successes outside our own spheres. She also shares some of her insight into the when, where, why, and how of Twisted Tea’s origin—and wonders why it’s so hard to get the full story from its creators. If there’s one thing to take away from our discussion, it’s to have an open mind when it comes to what you drink. You may be surprised at what you’re missing.

Some people know early on they’re destined to be their own boss. Rachael Hudson is one of these people. She’s the co-owner and head brewer at Pilot Brewing Company in Charlotte, North Carolina, a small brewery that’s made big waves in her local scene and beyond since opening in 2018. Since then, the business has racked up accolades at the Great American Beer Festival, the US Open Beer Championship, and the North Carolina Brewers Cup Competition, including being named North Carolina Brewery of the Year for 2023.

But for as nice as the awards are, Rachael says opening a brewery isn’t about fame (and it’s definitely not about money). It’s more about being an outlet for her ability and desire to teach curious consumers about what it is they’re consuming. She’s an Advanced Cicerone who plans to take the Master exam again later this year, as well as a national and international beer judge and co-host of the False Bottomed Girls podcast with Master Cicerone Jen Blair. Needless to say, she knows what she’s talking about, and she’s passionate about sharing her knowledge with absolutely anyone who will listen.

In this episode, Rachael shares when and how she knew she had to go into business for herself and why education is such a critical part of what Pilot offers to the community. She also talks about her “less is more” mentality when it comes to recipe development, and how their ESB tends to outshine even their IPAs. Pilot probably isn’t going to get much bigger, but that’s not what Rachael wants anyway. She’d rather focus on perfecting what they put out and keep figuring out ways to show other people that they too can turn their passion into a profession.

Look around beer today and it’s easy to find lots … beyond it. Breweries are making hard seltzer, canned cocktails, wine, or opening up restaurant extensions. Whether it's over the counter at a taproom or in a store, the challenges to sell beer have never been more unique and plentiful as people can now choose to drink just about whatever they want in a variety of formats, flavors, and experiences.

Which is part of the reason why the growth of New York City’s Grimm Artisanal Ales shouldn’t come as a surprise. The company was started a decade ago focused on beer, but the curiosity of its founders, Lauren and Joe Grimm, has helped it expand beyond it. Just over a year ago they launched Physica Wines, a wine-making spinoff focused on low-tech, spontaneous fermentations with regionally-sourced grapes and other fruit. Then more recently, it was Lala’s, a New Haven-style pizzeria. All three businesses and their products share a similar passion and purpose and represent what Lauren and Joe see as natural extensions of their past decade of work.

If you’re a beer fan, you may know Grimm as a once-nomadic brewery making beers beloved by enthusiasts, whether IPAs for Wild Ales. But in this conversation, we’ll get into what drives Lauren and Joe’s interest in doing more beyond beer and how they go from experimenting with food and beverage at home to serving their creations for customers.

This is GBH Out Loud, and I’m Ashley Rodriguez. Today, you’ll hear Mark Spence read the sixth entry of his blog, Beer is Offal, called “Stage Three Anger,” published on Good Beer Hunting on February 21, 2020.

There’s a shift in this entry of Beer is Offal. It’s an abrupt reminder that there is a person behind this blog, living this life in real-time. In this piece, Mark reflects on the death of his cousin, and the factors that contributed to his early death. This isn’t a collection of lessons learned, or a neat summary of an experience with a nicely-tied bow to punctuate it. It’s a journey in motion, a particular moment in Mark’s life where grief and fury mix.

This is Mark Spence reading an entry of his blog, Beer is Offal, called “Stage Three Anger.” Listen in.

Listeners of The Gist know we’re all about the stats. But today, we’re dishing out numbers with narrative, from Anchor Brewing's out-of-nowhere yogurt angel to speculation about a potential Boston Beer Company sale and wine’s latest numbers and what they really mean. I’m Beth Demmon with Kate Bernot, and this is The Gist. 

Producing and hosting a weekly local radio show likely isn’t how most beer writers get their start—but that’s exactly where Emma Inch’s career in beer began.

With a passion for rockabilly music, which she saw as an outlet from the stress of her day job as a mental health crisis worker, Emma went from hosting club nights to approaching her local radio station with a show idea. Then a few years later—as she began noticing a change in her local beer scene in Brighton, England—she pitched an idea for a new show, and in late 2015 Fermentation Beer and Brewing Radio began.

Initially a live monthly radio show with a local focus on the beer scene in and around Brighton, Emma later decided to continue producing the show as a podcast instead. As she puts it, with most podcasts sought out rather than stumbled upon, as radio programs often are, this enabled her to not only broaden her geographical scope (from Brighton to the rest of Britain and beyond), but to narrow her focus and take a deeper dive with the stories she was telling.

And in 2018, Emma’s storytelling skills won her the U.K.’s highest accolade for a beer writer: the Michael Jackson Gold Tankard for Beer Writer of the Year. When I ask her to take us back to that moment, her memories are a bit fuzzy. Not from alcohol, but from the rather tough bout of sinusitis she was battling at the time. But when I ask her to reflect on how the win has impacted her career since, she rapturously reels off a list of the incredible opportunities it brought her way.

We also discuss the impact of her win on the industry more broadly, and what it means to be a queer woman taking home the top award in a space still dominated by straight white men. And with Emma’s recent election as Chair of the British Guild of Beer Writers, the organization behind the awards that recognized her work, she tells us how she’s keen to bring further focus to issues of diversity, representation, and equity within the beer writing community.

From looking forward to her newest role, we then take a look back at her longest-standing one. Alongside her current career as a drinks writer, audio maker, and podcast consultant, Emma is a part-time university lecturer in social work. We explore how that role—then and now—has influenced her perspective on the beer world, her approach to her work, and the stories she chooses to tell.

I’ve known one of today’s guests for a good few years. Susanna Forbes and I first met as drinks journalists at countless events around London. Back then, she was known as one of the hardest-working journalists out there, with plenty of awards and respect as evidence. So I had no idea that all along she had been planning to give up journalism for good. In this episode you’ll hear the full story of how she and husband James upped sticks and moved to Hereford in pursuit of their passion—cider making.

Under the name of Little Pomona Cider, they’ve quickly established themselves as one of the best producers in the country, making beautifully balanced ciders, perries, and other exciting fruit ferments using only wild yeasts and juice. That’s led to investment that bought them a huge new site on the same land as hop grower Brook House, where they hope to grow organically but with ambition—as long as nature and opportunity allow.

Along the way we look at the challenges of being a journalist-turned-producer, the battle that cider fights to be taken seriously and as independent from the beer scene, and the fact that cider really has a lot more in common with wine, and should be treated as such. We also go into the history of some of the culture, methods, and ingredients that make Hereford such a special cider region—a story that Susanna is very well equipped to tell, thanks to her former profession.

This is Susanna and James Forbes of Little Pomona Cider. Listen in.

Welcome to the Sightlines podcast from Good Beer Hunting. I’m Bryan Roth. 

If there were ever a defining slogan to sum up the past decade in American craft beer, “hops rule everything around me” may be a good fit. Pale Ales begat IPAs in all their bitter, then fruity, then juicy, then hazy glory, pushing sales and success for many businesses. IPAs, quite frankly, are driving key growth, but they’re also just one style—or collection of styles, depending on how you think about them—among so many other possibilities.

So as beer lovers, industry professionals, or members of the media, we talk a lot about hops … but what about everything else? Other ingredients are just as essential in bringing a beer to life, and in a world of hoppiness, there are some who are trying to find ways to bring attention back to these lesser-appreciated pieces of the fermented puzzle.

In this episode, we’re talking with two people who spend a lot of time thinking about “not hops.” They’re trying to redefine how drinkers may learn about beer, as well as bring new appreciation for the locality and specialness of the other ingredients that act as the backbone and soul of every pint.

This is the Sightlines podcast. Listen in.

In this episode we’re taking a trip to Des Moines, Iowa, where Whitney and Scott Selix share with us stories of their hospitality careers and what it means to create an innovative tap list at Lua Brewing. It’s that latter piece that caught my eye when I first came across Lua, with a lineup that includes traditional German and English beers alongside various hazy IPAs and slushee Sours.

If like me, you may not know a lot about the brewing scene in Iowa, and Whitney and Scott offer context of being part of a growing beer culture where you can introduce a drinker to new styles with something like an English Mild, but you also have to provide access to something fun and different—like a “Blue Razz Electrolyte Sour” that as it turns out, wasn’t the first take in Des Moines on that collection of flavors and ideas.

As partners at Lua and in life, let’s get to know a little more about this brewery and what it means for Whitney and Scott to make something special in a burgeoning market.

This is Lua Brewing’s Whitney Selix, president and co-founder, and Scott Selix, director of operations and co-founder.

In this episode of the 2023 Foeder for Thought festival, I’m talking to Aaron Kleidon of catch Brewing in Ave, Illinois, one of the country’s most obscure and isolated brewers, that also happens to be one of the most welcoming and casual visits among the class of brewers you might consider a destination brewery.

Tucked away in far southern Illinois, Scratch has made a name for itself with foraged ingredients, ancient methods of brewing, such as hot stone and campfire heating, as well as a culinary program at the brewpub that delivers a similarly-minded approach to cooking.

We talk a lot more these days about the connection between agriculture and brewing, but in this conversation with Aaron, you’ll hear something more akin to a naturalist or a conservationist obsessed with his land and the surrounding forests, and how he makes world class beers from those unlikely resources.

What’s the balance between being a bit “punk” and also being a responsible business owner? You can probably find examples from a variety of companies in beer that straddle this line. In this podcast, you’re hearing from the owners of one of them.

At Boise, Idaho’s Woodland Empire Ale Craft, founders Rob and Keely Landerman have long been said to produce some of the best beer in town. Online references started popping up not long after the brewery opened in 2014 ,and have picked up steam in recent years. But for this husband-and-wife duo, the focus behind the scenes hasn’t been about chasing trends or finding ways to get high scores on rating platforms. As you’ll hear in this conversation, a lot of it has to do with finding balance between pursuing their own passions and appreciations for beer alongside ways to address what drinkers are into at a certain moment.

In one example, these factors can be seen by way of their Ada County Stout, a barrel-aged Imperial Stout created to specifically mimic Goose Island's Bourbon County Brand Stout in name and visuals. You'll hear the reasoning behind these decisions—and a variety of legal considerations that came along the way. There’s also talk about how and why a need for certain hazy kinds of IPA came to be, and finding the right balance between brewing what you want and giving customers what they want, too.

The pair share their path toward beer, which winds through the country’s music scene, and how they ended up choosing Idaho as a place to base their entrepreneurial project. Their company hasn’t been around for a long time, but it has played a part in helping to shape the next wave of Boise beer.

This is Rob and Keely Landerman of Woodland Empire Ale Craft. Listen in.

We're coming to you today to bring you up to speed on some things we’ve doing since our hiatus. 

One of the ways we’ve refocused our efforts is on our Sightlines.news brand. If you’re not already aware - Sightlines.news is our industry leading insights platform for the beverage alcohol and functional beverage industry. It’s a subscription-only newsletter and consultancy run by myself, and two voices I know you’re familiar with - Bryan Roth and Kate Bernot. 

You can subscribe to Sightlines at Sightlines.news, or now you can follow our weekly brief in audio form by subscribing to The Gist by Sightlines, our new podcast weekly summary, available wherever you listen to podcasts. It has its own dedicated feed - it won’t be published here. So you should probably pause and go search for that and subscribe now before you forget. It’s called The Gist, by Sightlines. Here's the link to Spotify and Apple Podcasts

We’ve been building Sightlines in the background for a couple years now, getting our product-market-fit tuned in just right. What I mean by that is - we’ve know there’s a desperate need for new perspective on the business side of alcohol and functional beverage - everything from the future of IPA to energy drinks to hydration to cannabis - it’s a wild wild world out there and not everyone is a billion dollar company with an insights and marketing department who can discern what’s happening and why. 

Well, that’s where the ingenious data analysis and insights development if Sightlines comes in - making sense of a seemingly senseless world of beverage that’s usually inundated with anecdote and narrative that doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny - and costing small companies a fortune, not to mention the opportunity costs of missing the mark time and time again. 

But how do companies sift thought all the data to make decisions about what’s next? Well, at Sightlines, we’ve found a way to level-set with our audience to provide the most critical information - often counter to the prevailing narratives - about what’s driving certain trends, categories, and value chain decisions. Some things are inherently consumer-driven, as they always have been. The pursuit of flavor, function, and feeling in peoples lives through beverage is timeliness even as it’s constantly changing. But in regulated industries, consumers don’t always get what they want - and producers have to navigate a world of legal grey areas, retailer priorities, and wholesaler consolidation that both stifles competition and creates unexpected white space. 

Sightlines is exceptionally good at helping companies navigate all that, with what we call actionable insights. It’s not research for research sake - it’s insights that help you make decisions about what’s next for you and your most important audiences. 

So, first of all, you should subscribe - there’s a monthly and yearly subscription package that gets you multiple reports a week in your inbox. And if you’re wondering if it’s for you - let me tell you, everyone from Boston Beer to Beat Box, to Martinelli’s Apple Juice, to Reyes rely on Sightlines to stay ahead of the competition. But small producers like Highland Brewing in Asehville, Allagash Brewing in Portland Maine, and 503 distilling in Portland Oregon rely on Sightlines to accelerate their growth. Wineries, distilleries, THC companies, and RTD and FMB producers all look to Sightlines for the uniquely cross-category insights we can deliver. 

Some have even brought us into their innovation process to partner on their portfolio optimization and pipeline development. 

And this week, for those of you who voraciously consumer podcasts as part of your knowledge gathering process, we’ve launch The Gist by Sightlines, a new podcast series you can find wherever you listen to podcasts (Here's the link to Spotify and Apple Podcasts) where Kate and Bryan and myself break down our recent reporting to give you a sense of what we’re working on and why. 

If you want to get the insights, you’ll need to subscribe to the newsletter on Sightlines, but if you need another way to keep up, this podcast called The Gist by Sightlines will be a great weekly listen and keep you up to speed. 

Here's the link to Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Founders' All Day IPA. Firestone Walker's 805 Blonde Ale. Victory’s Golden Monkey Tripel.

These are all examples of brands that have shaped bottom lines and shifted futures for some of the country’s biggest breweries. For most of them, that runaway success and influence came about serendipitously. These are business-altering beers that now steer the course of their respective companies—and there are plenty of other examples of similar players scattered across the country.

In today’s podcast, we’re going to hear about one of those—and how in 2014, an IPA from a 9,000-barrel brewery in Charlotte, North Carolina, completely changed the trajectory of the personal and professional life of its head brewer, Chad Henderson.

That beer is NoDa Brewing Company’s Hop, Drop 'n Roll, the 2014 World Beer Cup gold medal winner in the American-Style IPA category. It’s a West Coast IPA that continues to move fast to this day, even in an era of hazy, juicy counterparts. Five years ago, when some kind of monumental success at the bi-annual, global competition was the last thing Chad was expecting, his world got turned upside down. In this conversation, we follow this path of how a single beer changed so much for Chad, NoDa’s co-owners Todd and Suzie Ford, and the brewery itself. From sales, to quality control, to management of the NoDa beer portfolio, Hop, Drop 'n Roll is a continuous thread that runs through it all. It helped push the brewery to almost 16,000 BBLs' of production last year.

And, perhaps unsurprisingly, we’ll also mention a little about making hard seltzer, too. After all, if you’re talking IPA, you might as well hit on one of the other most important categories impacting beer and breweries in 2019. For now, let’s shift to hops.

This is Chad Henderson, head brewer and co-owner of NoDa Brewing Company. Listen in.

Despite alarming headlines and loud proclamations that “craft beer is dead,” that’s only part of the story—and not a particularly accurate one, at that.

Industry insiders can get bogged down in the depressing details (even we’ve been guilty of it at one time or another). But reporters Kate Bernot and Beth Demmon decided to see how and where the heart of craft beer still beat, and went to the 2024 Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Festival in Paso Robles to find out.

It turns out, the craft beer industry can’t just be measured by Circana numbers or market share. Websites and social media don’t paint a full picture, and after talking to a bunch of festival attendees, they realized there’s a whole lot of love and life still left to consumers passionate about the beverage, the people, and the community. Craft beer loves to talk about how it brings people together, and based on their observations, it still can. 

In this episode, you’ll hear from both Beth and Kate, as well as a number of attendees interviewed at the festival, on why they decided to spend their time and hard-earned money on an afternoon under the California sun. The beer itself plays a part of it, sure. But there’s so much more that keeps people coming back. This is finding joy in beer.

2019 was a big year for us at GBH. We published more stories than ever before, our writers took home dozens of awards, and we broke our own record for the number of visits to our site. It was truly a banner year. 

One of the reasons for that is Claire Bullen, our editor-in-chief. Perhaps we didn’t give this occasion enough fanfare—I know I certainly would have participated in a ticker-tape parade to celebrate, but this is our time to do so. 

Claire took over the role of editor in June, but has been on the editorial team since mid-2018. Claire is responsible for two of our 10 most popular stories of the year; she published a book in March; and shone like the beer beacon she is at this year’s North American Guild of Beer Writers Awards and British Guild of Beer Writers Awards, winning nods including Best Book, Best Technical Writing, and Best Travel Writing. It’s an understatement to say that we’re lucky to have her on the team. 

One of the pleasures of my job is seeing Claire at work. Articles come in from our writers, and I get to watch Claire work with folks to produce some of the best beer writing on the internet. Every editor has a different approach to how they coach and guide writers, making small edits and suggestions as to how to really punch up an article. I saw this at work especially in a recent House Culture article we published by Helena Fitzgerald. Helena is a freelance writer who shared a beautiful story about stepping back from drinking while maintaining her love of bars, and it was lovely to see the touch points in the piece—the moments I knew Claire helped shape. I get to know Helena in this piece, but I also see Claire in there as well. 

It’s funny writing this (and now saying it out loud), because I know Claire has to edit it—and I can imagine her brain working through this introduction that’s about her. It’s kind of a mind trip, but Claire makes us all better. I benefit so much from having her as editorial teammate, and I hope you see the flashes of her on our website like I do. They’re quiet and subtle, but when you find them, they shine brilliantly. 

This is GBH Outloud, I’m Ashley Rodriguez. Today you’ll hear Jonny Garret reading the very first story he ever wrote for Good Beer Hunting. It’s called, “A Homebrewing Festival in the Arctic Circle,” published on goodbeerhunting.com on February 28, 2018.

This article is part of our GBH in Residence series, where we go beyond the brewery tour and the tasting room, and literally join the crew in their daily grind. For the Residence series, GBH spends a day or two working alongside brewers, cidermakers, cellarmen and delivery drivers. It's what the craft industry looks like on its own terms. And in this case, Jonny goes all the way to the Arctic Circle to follow a homebrewing festival and taste perhaps some of the wildest, weirdest, and most interesting beers you can imagine. 

As you can imagine, getting to the Arctic circle isn’t easy. Before Jonny starts reading, you’ll hear him share his experiences about what it takes to actually get there—follow along as he reads and shares stories of this adventure by checking out his article at goodbeerhunting.com. 

This is Jonny Garrett reading his article, “A Homebrewing Festival in the Arctic Circle.” Listen in.

So … what did you do over your summer vacation? It’s a classic question so many of us would answer whenever returning to school each fall, and if Reggie Duvalsaint was sitting in a circle with peers to recap, he’d have a hell of a story.

This summer, Reggie crisscrossed the country to work at baseball stadiums in every corner of the U.S. As a ballpark vendor, he sold beer and food to fans. And as an astute social being and with a good business mindset, he also took note of what people became excited about and why ideas of “local” can drive sales.

So, in this conversation you’ll meet Reggie, hear about his one-of-kind journey to visit 30 ballparks, and pick up some inside tips of what people were eating and drinking while out to a ballgame. It’s a fun snapshot to a moment in time with a tour guide who spent months compiling experiences and knowledge. With that, he hopes to inspire others to find excitement with whatever they may want to accomplish, whether that’s with travel, meeting new people, or just finding an excuse to do something new and different.

Craft beer has always had an uncomfortable relationship with marketing, Instagram and social media, and things like hype, status, and influencers. It’s also long had an issue with women. Not just sexuality, but of course, also that. Not just gender and inclusion, but also that. Not just diversity and equality, but also that. In the most general, broad sense, craft beer (and beer in general), both culturally and as an industry, has long been a walled garden for men in the U.S. And over the past couple weeks, we saw that play out in a pretty specific, explicit fashion.

Here’s how it went down.

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Links to the folks we spoke to: 

Zach Johnston, Senior Writer-at-Large for Uproxx
Caitlin Johnson, beer blogger and content creator, @bigworldsmallgirl
Megan Stone, brewer for Duclaw Brewing Co., @isbeeracar
Alyssa Thorpe, head brewer for Jagged Mountain Craft Brewery, @southernbeergirl

This is Luke Robertson, and you’re listening to the Good Beer Hunting podcast.

When it was announced in October of this year that Phil Sexton would be opening a Matilda Bay Brewing Company brewpub, the entire Australian beer industry did a double-take. If we were in a cartoon, we would’ve removed a hip-flask from under our coats and sworn off drinking. To say it was a surprise is underselling it.

Sexton cofounded Matilda Bay in the early ’80s. He left in the early ’90s after the publicly listed company was taken over by Carlton United Breweries (CUB). From there he went to the States to become brewmaster at the now-shuttered BridgePort Brewing Company, where he created BridgePort IPA, one of the early West Coast IPAs.

Then, back in West Australia, he teamed up with the old Matilda Bay crew to open a new brewery called Little Creatures. Its flagship Pale Ale played a big part in the next wave of craft beer in Australia, and the Fremantle brewpub is still a pilgrimage for Australian beer lovers 20 years later.

Like Matilda Bay, Little Creatures was publicly listed on the Australian Stock Exchange and was eventually taken over—this time by the Kirin-subsidiary, Lion. From there, Sexton focused on his other passion: wine. He launched two brands in the Yarra Valley, just outside of Melbourne, and for a while it looked like he was done with beer.

In his absence, Matilda Bay has been increasingly driven by marketers. The popular Fat Yak Pale Ale was spun off into its own brand, called Yak Brewing, and old favorites from the Matilda Bay range such as Redback Wheat Beer and Dogbolter Dark Lager were found in fewer and fewer places. Matilda Bay’s only recent launch is a beer called Frothy. Followers of Australian beer immediately pointed out its similarity to Lion Breweries’ Furphy, a Kölsch-influenced easy drinker. Frothy has the same-colored packaging, is a similar style, and even the names look and sound the same. While CUB says it was designed independently, the imitation is obvious and disappointing. For longterm Matilda Bay fans, it was a death knell for an old favorite … or so we thought.

Much has changed since Sexton left the beer world, especially with his old brands. Only in the past year, it was announced that Matilda Bay owner CUB would be sold by AB InBev to Asahi. Lion is also buying New Belgium Brewing, while BridgePort was a casualty of the competitive market.

Now that Sexton in joining forces with his old brand again, however, I wanted to find out why—and hear his thoughts on the chaos that is beer in 2019.

This is Phil Sexton of Giant Steps Winery and Matilda Bay Brewing. Listen in.

Today I’m talking to Eoghan Walsh, who just had his first article for Good Beer Hunting published. Entitled, “The Last Crusade — Rich Soriano Wants to Talk to You About Lambic,” it’s essentially the story of a day with one of Belgium’s most beloved beer characters, Rich Soriano. And by a day with, I really mean a bar crawl with.

Eoghan’s piece manages to make it feel like the reader is right there with them, and over the course of a few thousands words, we travel to a number of special Lambic producers and pubs, slowly learning how an American has ended up being one of the faces of Brussel’s traditional brewing scene. We start, though, by addressing the fact that that’s the last way that Soriano would want to be described.

This is the Good Beer Hunting Collective podcast. Listen in.

Creativity of all kinds fascinates me. I love seeing artists work and watching their final products take form. But most of all, I love to hear them talk about their processes, their frustrations, their joys. No matter the medium—design, food, or in this case beer—I like to glimpse the way their minds influence their work. Those moments of visibility bring a level of understanding of the creative process that I couldn’t get to on my own. 

When I worked at Monday Night Brewing here in Atlanta, I had the pleasure of spending time with several creatives. Among them was Peter Kiley, the brewery’s brewmaster. On several occasions, a conversation about the latest beer release would turn into a deep dive into topics about life, creativity (or “producing,” as you’ll hear Peter call it), and beer culture.

Earlier this year, Monday Night dropped a spirit line, including gin, vodka, bourbon, rye, and an agave spirit. Hearing about this new venture, I wanted to talk to Kiley to hear his thoughts on this new realm. How did this transition differ from when he left the wine world to pursue brewing? In our conversation, we dive into his 16-year career making alcohol, why he likes to use the word “passion” sparingly, and his views of people who think they know it all.

If you follow me on Instagram, you know my love for beer is only rivaled by my love for cooking. Cooking is not only a therapeutic experience but a creative outlet . When I'm not in the kitchen, I'm probably watching cooking shows. Without a doubt, MasterChef is my favorite, and I've been hooked since its first season.

I was delighted this year when two people from the beer industry impressed the judges enough to earn white aprons and compete for the title of MasterChef. I was beyond ecstatic when Grant Gillon, a sales rep from Kinship Brewing Co, made it to the finals and eventually won the competition. He rose above his competition by showcasing his Italian heritage and his passion for beer.  

Grant and I share a love for cooking and beer, and we both believe that craft beer has a place in the world of fine dining. In this episode, we delve into  what meal or menu prep looks like when beer is involved. You'll hear Grant share two of the most significant lessons he learned from cooking in the MasterChef kitchen. He also provides tips for learning how to cook with beer and offers advice on getting your kids involved in the kitchen. But the common thread in our conversation? His love for Iowa.

People who work in beer arrive from all kinds of professional backgrounds and even different career trajectories. But once they’re in beer, it’s less common to find examples of those who will be true chameleons, working across businesses that make, move, or sell beer, or even for companies that just handle the raw ingredients that go into making it. That’s what makes this conversation particularly special.

Shanleigh Thomson has been a food scientist, brewer, and sales rep for distributors and companies that provide malt and hops. She's worked as a consultant and analyst. She's also a beer fan, which means that this wide range of roles and expertise gives her a unique vantage point for how she does her job, shares well-informed points of view, and applies a variety of education that ranges from advanced degrees in food science to business and brewing. She splits her time between Canada and the U.S., which means the scope of her understanding and work offers us a good perspective, too, all of which she’s combined in the last two years to run her own consultancy business, Shan.Ferments.

In this episode, we’ll talk about all this and how we can learn from what Shanleigh has picked up over the years. But in addition to hearing how her professional life has brought this together, there’s also time in our chat to reflect on the personal impact a changing industry has left on her. Beer in Canada is facing many of the same challenges as the U.S., as prices and competition increase and a camaraderie that was easy to find 10 years ago is harder to come by. For someone who’s spent a career focused on so many different aspects of the business of beer, what happens when the shine wears off? And what’s at stake for us should we lose professionals with an array of ideas and expertise like Shanleigh? Let’s find out.

The practices of writing and editing, while similar, each require very specific skill sets that nudge against one another, but remain deeply individual in practice. The greatest writers rely on talented editors to shape their voice, and the best editors are those who can spy potential within a story and help tease it out as part of a collaborative effort. The results are mostly enjoyed by readers and listeners, but the creators themselves have to enjoy the process of putting something into the world that did not exist before. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Emma Janzen has known for a long time that her path pointed towards editing, by way of writing for many years. Now, she has the chance as the new drinkways editor for Good Beer Hunting. Her role, in her words, is to develop, assign, and edit stories that are not about beer, which may strike some listeners as odd. After all, it’s called Good Beer Hunting. But those who know, know that we’ve always been much more than “just beer.” Emma is going to help nurture that spark of curiosity and—hopefully—fan the flames of discovery through storytelling and exploration. 

In this conversation, Emma reveals what initially drew her to Good Beer Hunting and why what she witnessed as a reader cultivated her desire to be an official part of the team. You’ll hear about the stories she’s worked on, the ideas she has, and the discussions she hopes take root in future features. We also talk about what it’s like to be a freelancer at this particular moment in time and how the pandemic’s isolation helped her realize the importance of in-person connection, for both personal and professional growth. It’s not our first conversation on the podcast, and I don’t think it’ll be our last.  

Welcome to the Good Beer Hunting Collective podcast, the show where members of our team interview each other to get the behind the scenes look at some of our favorite articles. I’m Michael Kiser, and I’m the founder and director of Good Beer Hunting.

And for today’s conversation, I was also the photographer. I recently shot a unique story assignment in a remote corner of the Czech Republic, called South Moravia. South Moravia, as you’ll hear, is a famous wine-producing region. And now, it’s also home to one of the country’s most wine-inspired brewers—Jitka Ilčíková of Wild Creatures. 

I was especially keen to go on this assignment because it meant rejoining my friend and colleague, Evan Rail, who lives in Prague. I’ve joined Evan on a few journeys, starting way back around 2013 in Prague and Pilsen, when he first took me to Pilsner Urquell, Kout na Šumavě, and beyond. On this trip we met in Budapest for a conference and hitched a ride from some brewers to Mikulov, where we planned to visit what might be the country’s only wild ale producer. Listen in.

The concept of “beer-flavored beer” doesn’t actually exist—at least not universally. One person’s disgusting is another person’s delicious, and a lot of it has to do with your upbringing, culture, and culinary traditions. With this in mind, writer Lana Svitankova calls beer an opportunity to experience “liquid nostalgia,” a concept that she explores in-depth in her latest piece titled “Sour, Salty, Umami — The Ukrainian Brewers Transforming Pickling Traditions Into Beer,” which was published on October 12, 2022 as part of Good Beer Hunting’s Critical Drinking series. 

In the piece, Lana delves into the relatively young beer industry in Ukraine, which has experimented with pickle beers and other culinary-inspired styles in ways places like the United States have only begun to explore. From tomato beers to those inspired by gazpacho or borscht, these beverages have the ability to connect drinkers with the past as well as the very land around them, a land that remains under threat to this day.

We’ll talk about that ongoing conflict, as well as Lana’s ability to find joy not just in beer itself, but in the strength, courage, and resilience of the beer community as it grapples with survival as well as the human need to experience comfort and cheer. She describes her favorite anecdote she’s told thus far, which involves oysters and a personal redefinition of what beer is, as well as the very specific food-inspired beer she’s holding out for an intrepid brewer to make. Finally, Lana breaks down individual preferences not just in what we eat or drink, but the music we listen to, the art we love, and the way we experience the world around us. Chaos can be as gorgeous as a symphony, and with an open mind, the possibilities for new sensations are endless.

Italy is definitely not what anyone would consider part of Europe’s traditional brewing heartland: In terms of beverages, the Southern European country is mostly known for its amazing wines, which complement its world-class cuisine. But since the mid-90s, Italy has developed a relatively small but dynamic brewing scene, which originally started in the country’s north, before spreading throughout the Italian peninsula. Brewers like Agostino Arioli at Birrificio Italiano—not far from Lake Como, north of Milan—have inspired beer makers in the U.S. and the U.K. to make their own Italian-style Pilsners, after Birrificio Italiano’s Tipopils. Other Italian brewers have experimented with the country’s native wine grapes, resulting in Italian Grape Ale, one of Italy’s first “native” beer styles to gain international attention.

In this episode, I talk to Maurizio Maestrelli, one of Italy’s leading drinks writers and the author of a recent article, “Grape News — How a New Generation of Italian Brewers Created Italian Grape Ale,” that ran in our Mother of Invention series, created in partnership with Guinness. We discuss the history of Italian Grape Ale and the origins of the Italian craft beer boom, including some of the leading figures of Italy’s beer renaissance, like Teo Musso at Birra Baladin and Nicola Perra at Birrificio Barley. We also talk about Italy’s other “indigenous” beer style, Chestnut Ale, and the rich relationship Italians have with food of all kinds. As Maurizio notes, Italians don’t just think of “citrus” as a flavor. Instead, they’ll say they’re identifying the aroma of lemon or chinotto, citron or bergamot. Italian brewers who make Italian Grape Ales will say that beers using the same type of grape can have very different grape flavors, if those grapes were merely grown on different parts of the same island.

While recording this podcast, we did experience some technical difficulties with a bit of noise that comes in and out—we apologize for that. If you’re interested in how Italy has embraced good beer—and created several good beer styles of its own—I think you’ll find the discussion worth your while.

Many of the people who work in the craft beer industry got their start because they were passionate about the liquid in their glass. Eric Pham, head brewer and innovation brewer at Prison City Brewing in Auburn, New York, is one of those people.

After feeling unfulfilled at his desk job, Eric's fiancé suggested he look for a job in the beer industry since they spent many of their weekends visiting breweries. Eric found his way into beer in 2018 as a warehouse assistant at Lamplighter Brewing Company, with roles at Trillium Brewing Company, Tree House Brewing Company, and Other Half Brewing Company. Each role would eventually prepare him for a leadership position at Prison City. 

In our conversation, he’ll describe this journey from his early days at the company to becoming a head brewer. One of the valuable lessons he learned along the way is that there's no magic in big breweries like Trillium or Tree House, but simply a team of people working hard to get a pint in your hands. We also talk about his Michael Jackson Fund Scholarship and what he hopes to learn, but more importantly, how he hopes his moment in the spotlight will help him encourage other BIPOCs to join the beer industry. 

When I tell people that I’m really into beer, a quarter of the time someone mentions cider despite the two being vastly different. These interactions have always left me feeling helpless because I lacked the knowledge to educate them about the differences, and I certainly couldn’t guide them to a beer style that would be similar to cider. The extent of my cider knowledge was extremely limited—until I read fellow GBH contributor and podcast host Beth Demmon's book “The Beer Lover's Guide to Cider.”

In fact, she addresses this common mixup in the first line of her book “Cider is not beer.” Cider is more like wine than beer because it’s created from fruit whereas beer is a combination of malt, hops, and yeast. Despite their differences, Beth is able to draw a connection between beer and cider to show us how vast the world of cider really is, encouraging us to look beyond what we might find in our local grocery store. Much like many of us had to do in the early days of craft beer when shelves were stocked with domestic Lager and other mass-produced beers.   

In our conversation, we talk about Beth’s inspiration for the book, which includes a trip to CiderCon, an annual conference organized by the American Cider Association. Beth also shares how she approached writing the book and how she was able to lean on her community for help. But what I love most about our conversation is how she draws parallels between those initial days of craft beer and the current state of cider here in the United States. For those of us who have explored all corners of craft beer, cider offers a new landscape of flavors, producers, and techniques to dive into, so let’s jump right in.

How does one survive in a place where temperatures regularly hit negative 30 degrees Fahrenheit, if not below that? A toasty Barleywine might hit the spot, but in the 49th state of the Union, residents are just as likely to pick up a classic IPA or Vienna Lager as they are an Imperial Stout. How, why, and when did Alaska, of all places, become a beer destination?

In Bailey Berg’s first piece for Good Beer Hunting, titled “Way Up North — Exploring the Growing Beer Scene in Fairbanks, Alaska,” which was published on April 27, 2021, the Anchorage resident explores the rise and embrace of local craft beer in one of the vastest frontiers on Earth. There are fewer than a million people across the entire state, but the amount of independent breweries continues to rise, thanks to a streak of independence, ingenuity, and adventure that tends to define those who call the severe, but beautiful, landscape their home.

In our first podcast conversation together, Berg enlightens me to the spirit of entrepreneurship required to thrive in the burgeoning beer scene in Fairbanks, why being the first to accomplish something specific holds such sway when you’re on the edge of the world, how unique obstacles—like the mere access to ingredients like water—force brewers to squeeze every last bit of use out of what they have available, and why Alaskans are going to do what they like to do relatively free of outside influence. She’ll also tell me how much a pint of beer costs at the literal end of the road, and how common it is to see wild moose wandering around the streets. (It’s apparently a lot more common than I realized.) I strongly encourage listeners to scroll through her photographs within the article during this conversation: She captures snowpacks and sled dogs, the pints and the people, all framed beneath the mystical emerald serpent of the aurora borealis twinkling across the night sky. Let’s travel together to the Land of the Midnight Sun with Bailey Berg.

As many of you know, we’re in the midst of Uppers & Downers week here in Chicago, celebrating more than five years of our coffee and beer culture collaboration between myself, Michael Kiser, and world barista champion Stephen Morrissey. This year’s festival promises to be our best yet, with about 25 different coffee beer collaborations, a dozen different roasters pulling their best espresso shots from all over the country and showcasing the breadth of their lineup beyond espresso. So yes, you’ll have incredible espresso brewed on our professional consumer machines courtesy of La Marzocco Home, but each of our dozen roasters has been invited to prepare any drink they want – brewed coffee, cold brew, nitro, cortado’s, romano’s, etc.

We’re also working with the folks at Cruz Blanca, Guinness, Goose Island, and Powers Whiskey to produce Case Studies, a series of tasting experiences where brewers and roasters work together to push the boundaries of what possible. Every year, our Case Study partners come up with wild and exciting ideas, sensory explorations that bring you beyond just beer and coffee. When we think these folks can’t do anything more, they continue to raise the bar.

To give you an idea of what’s in store this weekend, here’s a sneak peek episode. You can learn more here.

This is GBH Out Loud, and I’m Ashley Rodriguez. Today, you’ll hear Bryan Roth, editor of our news section, Sightlines, read an article from our Unrated series called “If You’re Not First, You’re Last — Why Michelob Ultra is the Most Important American Beer Since Bud Light,” published on Good Beer Hunting on October 17, 2018.

This article is is one of the most popular, and still most polarizing, pieces we’ve ever published on our website. And a lot of that has to do with the subject, Michelob Ultra. But the beer’s growth is undeniable, and on closer examination, Bryan discovers that this beer took off in a way that nobody ever expected. 

This is Bryan Roth reading “If You’re Not First, You’re Last — Why Michelob Ultra is the Most Important American Beer Since Bud Light.” Listen in.

What’s new is old and what’s old is precious in a small corner of southern England, where writer and journalist Jacopo Mazzeo takes us on a tour of the wild and sprawling New Forest National Park. In his latest piece for Good Beer Hunting titled “Curiouser and Curiouser — In Search of Brewing Novelty In England’s Ancient New Forest,” which was published on October 13, 2022, he explores the ancient landscape with a local’s eye, sharing the natural beauty and growing beer scene through personal experience, community connection, and research into the nearly thousand-year history of the region. 

In today’s conversation with Jacopo, he shares how the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to look closer to home for travel inspiration, which led to fortuitous results. Growing up in Italy, the countryside wasn’t as accessible to him as it is in the United Kingdom, the country he’s made his home over the past 11 years. That’s why he treasures the nearby New Forest, a historical area he continues to be drawn to time and time again. He talks about that draw of nature, as well as why he keeps coming back to experience the growing craft beer scene first-hand. 

He’ll also share a few insider tidbits that didn’t quite make it into his final piece, as well as where he’s headed next as the world slowly continues to reopen. (I’ll just say his upcoming trips to Lebanon and the Seychelles sound deliciously libatious.) Let’s start our journey into this rustic wonderland, right now.