EP-251 Joel Kodner of West Palm Brewery

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.