Good Beer Hunting

In today’s episode I’m talking to James Calder, Chief Executive of the UK’s Society of Independent Brewers. SIBA, as it’s more commonly known, plays a similar role to the American Brewer’s Association, representing the interests of around 800 small British brewers who vote on how the organisation supports the industry and lobbies the government at its annual conference and trade show, BeerX. Founded in 1980, its greatest victory came in 2002, when alongside CAMRA it successfully campaigned for the introduction of Small Brewers Relief, granting brewers of less than 5,000hl a year a 50% reduction on Britain’s notoriously high alcohol duty. It was well timed, coming a few years before the craft beer revolution took off, and since the policy came into effect more than 2,000 breweries have opened from a base of barely 400. Despite this, and over forty years of fighting for the interests of small business, SIBA doesn’t have a very good reputation. Brewers are mostly split between ambivalence and active dislike of the organisation. Some saw it as a puppet for mid-sized breweries with different issues and very different agendas to small brewers, while others took exception to SIBA’s commercial side – a wholesaling business called Beerflex. While it was founded to give small breweries better access to large pub chains, it also meant the body was actively competing with those not part of the scheme. When Calder was promoted from head of public affairs to chief executive in 2019 he was all too aware of SIBA’s issues, as well as the fact that SIBA membership was shrinking as a result. But before he could test, finalise, and enact his plan to revitalise the organisation he was hit by a triple whammy to crises – the prospect of a no deal Brexit, COVID-19 and finally, a part-reversal on SIBA’s finest hour – Small Brewers Relief. Instead of turning the ship around, Calder has spent the last 18 months fighting fires that refuse to go out. But during this time he’s made sure that SIBA is more transparent in its dealings – regularly updating people outside its membership about the work being done. As a result, its day-to-day work in fighting for more freedom and financial support during lockdown has impressed many in the industry of late. There’s a lot of work for Calder and his team still to do in building SIBA’s reputation and supporting its members through Brexit, SBR reform and COVID – but in this wide ranging conversation he’s keen to point out that there’s a bigger vision yet to come.  

This week’s guest is a duo from Chicago who this past year, despite a pandemic, launched one of the city’s most exciting Mexican-inspired brewery concepts: Casa Humilde Cervenceria. Chicago is perhaps uniquely focused on Mexican culture when it comes to beer. We’re the city that launched 5 Rabbit Cerveceria—the first Latin-inspired craft brewery in the U.S. who despite many early, and seemingly ongoing challenges, is still in operation on the far Southwest side. Cruz Blanca, a brewpub on Randolph Street originally launched in collaboration with Rick Bayless , the famous chef from Frontera, coco, and Topolobampo and others is known for it’s incredible food, cocktails, and increasingly getting the recognition it deserves for its beers, especially their wild and barrel-aged offerings. But even in a mix like that, Casa Humilde has a unique point of view of what it means to be Mexican-inspired, and indeed Mexican, in craft beer in 2021. They make fantastic lagers, both a corn lager and an amber. As well as beers that feature Mexican coffees, chocolate, and of course, the beers Javier and Jose themselves came of age with in the context of in Chicago, like haze pale ales and double IPAs. Javier and Jose Lopez are two young founders focused on the intersection between the American craft scene they grew up in, and their culinary experiences stemming from an early age in Mexican families from which they take so much of their inspiration to explore beer, and far beyond. There’s a big, winding conversation going on in the food world right now about what is, and isn’t considered “authentic” when it comes to the cuisine we would previously have called “ethnic” — and part of the conversation focuses on who benefits from, and who is held back by this idea of “authenticity.” Does the demand for authenticity protect those who have the primary experience with a cuisine? Or does it place an unfair burden on them as innovators, entrepreneurs, and ultimately box them in while white people are more free to explore ideas free of the tyranny of this so-called authenticity? What Javier and Jose are doing with Casa Humilde highlights this tension for me—and the answers they’re producing in terms of their beers, where and how they’re sold, even a Micheleda, speak volumes for me about what’s at stake. They’re also just really charming, ambitious, hard-working, and true to their name, humble brewers who represent the city of Chicago exceptionally well.

Stephanie Grant has an infectious positivity. You can’t help but enjoy watching her cook amazing meals on her Instagram stories; or celebrating Black women in beer in her newsletter, The Share; or scrolling through her vibrant photographs. Her projects and pursuits all seem to radiate joy. But Stephanie’s not afraid of getting real—far from it. In her latest story for Good Beer Hunting titled “Beyond the Beer — Colorism, Black Pride, and the Black Is Beautiful Initiative”, which was published on January 27, 2021, she weaves together her personal experiences as a Black woman with the history and evolution of the Black is Beautiful movement. The result is a deeply affecting, personal, and informative story that readers of any background can appreciate. As Stephanie points out in her piece, however, no white person will ever be able to fully understand the gravity of the phrase “Black is Beautiful,” and what it represents. So in this conversation, Stephanie tells us in her own words what that phrase means to her as a Black woman. She wants people to understand just how deeply racism is embedded in American culture, how early messages of racist inequality start for children, and how the concept of colorism continues to divide communities from within as a holdover from slavery. Despite the heavy nature of the conversation, she still relishes the strength she can draw upon from other Black women, and how she’s been able to find joy, even during a tumultuous year and while writing this raw account of her own journey to self-love. During this conversation, we talk about the evolution and importance of language, how accountability is everyone’s responsibility, and why Black is Beautiful is so much more than just beer. Stephanie is optimistic, yet realistic. But above all, she’s ready to keep doing the work.

This week’s guest invented one of the most impactful things in American beer history —but it’s not a beer style, or a recipe, or a festival, or a piece of equipment—it’s an app. Untappd grew from a side project for Greg Avola and his partner Tim Mather—one that they moonlighted for on weekends—to a leading social experience for beer geeks in a very short amount of time. Basically you try a beer, you log the experience, and it keeps track of your history. You can share that experience with others, rate it, post pics, tag bars and breweries where you enjoyed it—each little interaction creates a massive web of crowd data over time. Some producers find it fascinating and valuable. Others are haunted by it and think it’s ruining beer. Or maybe already has. But it’s surely, like any software, largely what we make of it. But what is Untappd itself made of? This interview follows on co-founder Greg Avola’s recent exit from his role at the company—after it was acquired by Next Glass a few years ago, Greg’s role became less of a product engineer and tweaker, and more of a creative director, working across a lot of other roles, outlining new strategies, and integrating with the ecosystem of follow-on acquisitions like Beer Advocate, and most recently Hop Culture. With the intent to build a B2B and B2C ecosystem that enabled the rating, tracking, promotion and purchasing of the beers people find most interesting. Basically leveraging content to create a new sort of tier in the 3-tier system. But it’s not without its challenges, both personal and professional. In this conversation Greg talks a lot about what it’s like to be a founder of a small tech project that goes big. The burden that places on the individual, and how evolving in an acquisition environment is fraught with personal challenges. But it also outlines how the scope of Untappd is shifting. Their numbers are down in the U.S. but growing rapidly abroad. Not unlike what happened with one of its predecessors, Ratebeer. And the other acquisitions, like Beer Advocate, haven’t really panned out the way it was imagined, leaving most of the creative and strategic onus on Untappd itself, a challenge it seems to have met with some renewed focus on content, events, and overall community-building in the past year. In Greg’s open letter about his decision to step down, he was uncommonly transparent about his rationale, experiences, and hopes. And that’s the catalyst for us talking today—from one start-up founder to another. I think it’s critical that more people openly share the nature of the sacrifices people like Greg make to see their idea grow.

Kristen Foster has been a part of Good Beer Hunting’s Fervent Few community, as well as a contributor, since 2017. Since then, she’s written a number of pieces and published a lot of great photographs — especially her poignant and candid photos of people in and around beer. Some of her recent Signifiers for Good Beer Hunting about Athletic Brewing Company and Notch Brewing also manage to capture that same candid honesty from people who’ve built two very different breweries. Athletic’s approach to non-alcoholic beer is literally redefining what beer is and what it can be, while Notch focuses on constantly perfecting classic styles that reach deep into European beer history. In our conversation, Kristen talks about the differences between the two breweries and how she approached both stories, illuminating her process, personal experience, and how the beer industry itself continues to evolve. We also talk about her first experience doing Dry January, what she foresees developing in the non-alcoholic beer scene, and what NA beers she liked during her month-long foray into intentional sobriety. (Hint: it’s Athletic.) Of course, as a seasoned travel writer and photographer as well, she shares her insight into what trips she had to put on hold due to COVID-19, how her local spots in Boston have weathered the last year, and where she wants to visit next. Finally, we talk cocktails — or at least, she does, while I try to keep up. Maybe if we’re lucky, one of these days we’ll be sipping tequila together in real life.

Depending on who you are and your connection to alcohol and storytelling, this interview can be different things to different people. It’s about a book, which is about bourbon (sort of), but also family and marketing and trying to find things that feel real. If you’re a beer enthusiast, you may connect with stories of people geeking out on bourbon and the niche communities that exist. If you work in beverage alcohol, there may be ideas of storytelling and branding that sound familiar. Or maybe you’d rather just listen as a complicated human like we all are, and follow along these threads and more, which trace the story of how Wright Thompson came to write a book about Pappy Van Winkle, the most desired bourbon on the planet. Thompson is a familiar name if you’re a sports fan—he’s won awards for his coverage and written beloved profiles of Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan—but a common theme of many of the things he reports on is one of family and the depths of what that means in relation to history and culture. We’re chatting because his new book, “Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last,” has brought all these things together to tell the story of Julian Van Winkle III and bourbon in America. You’ll hear us reference Julian often, and the important thing to know is that as a Van Winkle working in spirits, he’s on what Wright calls a quest to recapture the memories from his own past, of his family, and the bourbon they made. In the book and in this interview, these things get intertwined with ideas behind today’s bourbon, its marketing, and what it says about the human condition. So, whoever you are, and however you find yourself connecting to bourbon, rare items like Pappy Van Winkle, Wright Thompson, or the deeper role booze can play in our lives, I hope there’s something that keeps you thinking about the memory quest we’re all on, just like Julian.

As someone who was born in the ’80s and thus is not a digital native, I’ve enjoyed making Internet friends since my parents first got a computer when I was in the fifth or sixth grade. I’ve spent countless hours in dial-up chat rooms, writing bad poetry on LiveJournal, carefully crafting my away messages on AOL Instant Messenger, and eventually networking on Twitter and Facebook, connecting with people from all over the world.  When I first “met” Ruvani de Silva in 2019, it was online. In fact, despite having talked numerous times for stories, as writing colleagues, and as Instagram friends, we’ve never met in real life. But chatting with her about her first piece for Good Beer Hunting—titled “A Rare Gem or a Llama in a Suit? — South Asian Women on Navigating (and Advancing) the Craft Beer Industry”, which was published on January 20, 2021—was the first time our conversation focused solely on Ruvani’s experiences as a South Asian woman in craft beer.  The idea to pursue this story coalesced for Ruvani during the pandemic, as it allowed her to finally have the time and space to ask the question: Where are all the other people in beer who look like me? As she took to social media to find other South Asian women who publicly enjoyed craft beer, she found that, although their numbers were small, their experiences in the industry united them in a way she’d never experienced before.  In the piece, the women she meets share a palpable sense of relief at having found one another. The story feels like it’s following a community and a camaraderie as they form in real time, thanks to Ruvani’s quest. And even though the members might be far from one another, their shared experience now binds them together, and allows them to claim and relish in their own space in beer.  In this interview, we discuss Ruvani’s upbringing in London and now, what it’s like being a Brown Brit in Texas. We talk about her entry into both beer and writing, as well as the catalyst for her piece. She also examines the difference between feeling overtly welcome in beer spaces and how that’s not necessarily the same thing as feeling unwelcome, and the challenges—and opportunities—she’s experienced as one of the only South Asian women in a given taproom.  This piece is joyful. It’s optimistic, it’s full of surprises, and it’s illuminating. Most of all, it’s honest—an unflinching, open look at what it’s like to be her. 

The word “community” is often overused in our industry. There’s our local community, the communities we’ve created around ourselves on our favorite social media platforms, or the craft beer community as a whole. But, these days, the more I hear the word, the less meaning I find in it. Are we actually choosing to connect, or do we simply happen to be in the same place at the same time? Lucy Do found herself asking that same question earlier this year. The purpose of Lucy’s business is—in her own words—“community and human connection.” And she provided that in spades at her West London micropub, The Dodo. She beams as she recalls a typical Friday night at The Dodo, poetically describing the sense of electricity in the air as conversation bubbled, cask beers were consumed, and new friendships formed. But when COVID-19 forced her to close her doors back in March, she wondered if the community she’d built would survive without her venue as its hub. From her initial panic in March, Lucy talks us through how she redesigned the business by creating opportunities anywhere and everywhere—from offering takeaway and local delivery of cask beer to designing at-home beer-and-food pairing kits, launching her own gin brand, and even working with the local council to open a pop-up in a large outdoor venue nearby. Beyond the visible changes to the business as a result of the pandemic, you’ll also hear Lucy discuss the struggles that are less visible: her concerns for staff and customer safety, the challenge of navigating her team through such uncertainty, and above all, the mental health impact of these last few months. Ever open and honest, Lucy’s desire to create meaningful connections with others has kept her going through these trying times. And, as you’ll hear, her community is stronger than ever.

In this episode, I’m chatting with Will Hawkes, a London-based journalist who’s been writing about beer since 2010. Over the past decade, Will has regularly contributed to publications like The Washington Post and The Daily Telegraph, but it was only last year when he wrote his first piece for Good Beer Hunting. Part of our Mother of Invention series, made in partnership with Guinness, “On the Wagon — The Innovations Behind the Non-Alcoholic Renaissance in British Brewing,” was published on our website on October 22, 2020. Although this is his first time writing for the site, Will previously featured as a guest on the Good Beer Hunting podcast way back in 2017. For those of you who may have missed that episode, we start our conversation with a brief discussion of Will’s background in journalism, before turning our attention to his article. Initially a skeptic of non-alcoholic beer, Will talks about how—when he pushed past his own prejudice and tried these beers—he noted a vast improvement in their quality in a very short period of time. That ultimately led him to write this piece on how they’re produced, detailing the three most common production methods used in no- and low-alcohol brewing in Britain today. In our conversation, we discuss how these different production methods can impact the flavor of no- and low-alcohol beer, whether this sort of production information is of interest to consumers, and how accessible this information is—or isn’t—from each brewer. We also explore the expectations around these products, from things like pricing and availability to who’s consuming them now and who’s likely to in the future. Here’s Will.

Have we said “pivot” enough lately? What about “omnichannel,” or “innovation”? These words were all thrown around with abandon in 2020, as COVID-19 changed the way we interacted with and bought beer, and dramatically impacted how our favorite breweries did business. In this conversation, we’re talking with Kelly Moritz about how Minnesota’s Indeed Brewing Company has done some version of all these things, and how it impacted her as she stepped into the role of chief operating officer amidst the pivoting and innovating that was demanded of so many of us last year. Kelly has been with the brewery since 2014 and spent most of her time there coordinating and managing Indeed’s marketing. She’s now overseeing something of an evolution for the company, which is exploring non-beer products like CBD seltzer and hard kombucha. Starting a new job while your company is moving in different directions—and as you’re trying to figure out how to talk to new and old customers alike—feels like a rather 2020 storyline. But as 2021 unfolds, you’ll hear from Kelly about how she’s considering the successes of last year to help guide the Indeed team in the year to come. You’ll also hear about how her background as a writer and communicator is helping her through all of this. What’s next for Indeed as it becomes as much a beverage company as a brewery? Let’s find out. This is Kelly Moritz of Indeed Brewing Company. Listen in.