Good Beer Hunting

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.

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 third episode, we look at the ways that people are evangelizing from their own small corners of the beer world to raise awareness of critical issues, processes, ingredients, and education in the industry, all of which make a difference in the way beer is perceived. For these folks, beer is agriculture, politics, economics—even history in the making.  And those efforts can sometimes result in lasting change—at the personal level, and even at the state level (in this case, a state as big as Texas). So we’re going to start there. This past year, the team at Austin Beerworks in Austin, Texas took on one of the most insurmountable legal battles in beer, facing off against a legislature that’s mostly controlled by wholesaler money—and I mean a lot of it—and which only meets once every two years, and then only for 140 days. The chance to shoot your shot, and make change, is extremely narrow. This is how Michael Graham and Will Golden, two of the four partners at the brewery, saw the risk and reward of taking on that challenge, which they ultimately won. This is Mother of Invention. Listen in.

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.

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.  This first episode explores the ways in which people are trying to expand beer’s audience. For some, that means inspiring loyalty with traditional experiences, like going to your neighborhood bar in the age of the brewery taproom. For others, it’s about sending very big, explicit signals that groups that have historically been excluded by the beer world—black people, trans people, the elderly, and beyond—belong and are welcomed into what is so often described in an over-simplified way as the “beer community.” And for others still, it’s about getting these formerly niche beers into the mainstream world, so that people who might be delighted by them have better access to them—without having to “join the club” and travel to breweries in industrial parks in the ’burbs, stand in can release lines for hours, or spend a fortune on the latest hyped-up Hazy IPA.  Each of these scenarios involves paying attention, being empathetic, and taking risks with your product, brand, or personhood. It’s a kind of innovation through vulnerability. Or innovation through humanity. And it’s resulting in people doing a lot of new things, in new ways, that benefit others.  This is Mother of Invention. Listen in.

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. 

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. 

My guest today has been in beer sales for the best part of a decade and seen how fickle and complicated the trade can be.  Edwin Methu’s first job was at the infamous London Fields Brewery, an early innovator in the scene that slowly disintegrated due to the criminal dealings of its owner. Bouncing back from that he was part of a Camden Town Brewery sales team overseeing huge growth, before becoming a sales rep for Sierra Nevada at a time when local craft was forcing U.S. imports into decline.  It could be that diverse experience that made Cloudwater founder Paul Jones approach him for a sales role in his new venture, what was then named Good Call Soda. I’ll let Methu tell the story of his introduction to the brand and the idea of hopped soft drinks, but it’s clear that he loves a challenge and takes great satisfaction in changing people’s minds. In the last year or so he’s turned those personality traits to a bigger cause. As a person of color in an almost exclusively white industry, Methu has always been self aware in his work and socializing but the experience of taking some friends to a beer festival turned that unease into a feeling that something had to be done. He has become a vocal campaigner for the beer scene to cast its net wider and bring in people of all backgrounds and to challenge prejudice in all its forms with no exceptions. He is no keyboard warrior either—as he tells me, in the wake of the Founders racism scandal he has spoken to many stockists and convinced them to stop stocking the brand at all. At the same time he loves to champion those working towards diversity and the benefits and joy it can bring everyone. This is Edwin Methu of Cloudwater Soda, listen in.

Today on GBH Out Loud, you’ll hear Besha Rodell read her House Culture story called “The Pub, the Farm, and the Forest — A Return to Narnia,” published on November 14, 2019.  Our House Culture series goes beyond beer—it’s a place where we can share stories of critical engagement, and ask readers to look closely at the parts of life that make it worth drinking. In one of our most recent House Culture pieces, we asked Besha, who is a food and culture writer (she currently works for the New York Times reporting on the dining scene in Australia) to write a piece for us. As she shares, sometimes the stories closest to us—the ones about our very identity and the way we interact with the world—are the most challenging, and rewarding, to write.  Before Besha starts reading, you’ll hear her share how this beautiful essay came together—follow along as she reads by checking out her article at GoodBeerHunting.com.  This is Besha Rodell reading her article, “The Pub, the Farm, and the Forest — A Return to Narnia.” Listen in. 

City Beer Store isn’t a store. Well, it is, but in 2020 it has evolved far beyond that narrow description. It’s a beer and natural wine bar, a restaurant, a gathering space, a patio hangout on nice days, and yeah, sure, a bottle shop too. It’s many things all at once, and the store’s mascot, a platypus, represents that duality of the business. Over the last decade or so, City Beer has joined the ranks of America’s great beer bars. And that wasn’t without a lot of hustle on the part of the owners, married couple Craig and Beth Wathen. The two originally opened City Beer Store in 2006 in San Francisco’s South of Market, or SoMa, neighborhood, inside a tiny space on Folsom Street. They were way ahead of the curve, creating the type of business that, well, confused people. The pair fielded constant questions: Is it a bar? Or is it a store? Whatever it was, it became very popular. Over the years, they came to outgrow the small room’s capacity, which was particularly clear during SF Beer Week or other major events. So when the opportunity arose to move into a bigger space, they took the leap, and in 2018 they reopened in a large restaurant space two blocks away. Turns out, it was a massive undertaking. Its new digs are several times larger than the old City Beer, and in it, the Wathens now also run a food program. They have a bigger staff, a kitchen team, a broader selection in additional fridges, and more customers walking through the door every day. While Beth handles the operations of the bar and restaurant, Craig oversees the beer selection for the taps and store. Despite the uptick in workload, he’ll often put in that face time himself with brewers, going on frequent runs to personally pick up kegs. Between the two of them, there’s quite a lot to do, which begs the question: how can a small beer bar scale up so drastically? And what does the success of this kind of operation mean for beer retailers everywhere? This is Craig and Beth Wathen of City Beer Store in San Francisco. Listen in.

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.