Good Beer Hunting

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.

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.

Welcome to the Sightlines podcast from Good Beer Hunting. I’m Jonny Garrett. Yesterday we released a podcast interview with John Timothy, chief executive of the Portman Group, which is an independent regulator for advertising and marketing in the U.K. alcohol industry. If you missed it, we recommend giving that a listen before today’s episode, where we’re going to see how the regulatory system the Portman Group has put in place works in the real world. According to my first guest, it doesn’t work at all. Today you’ll hear from two breweries who have gone through the complaints process more than once. Tiny Rebel Brewing Company first went in front of the complaints panel in 2017 with its award-winning Red Ale, Cwtch. One complainant in a supermarket had written to the Portman Group saying the beer’s bright colors and bear logo appealed to under-18s. The brewery states its case in writing but the panel agreed with the complainant, and suggested several changes to the packaging to avoid the brand potentially being delisted by major stockists. Tiny Rebel was forced to redesign its best-selling beer at the cost of well over £10,000. Despite this, just a few weeks ago, the owners found themselves writing to the panel again to defend themselves after a similar complaint from a customer in a supermarket. It’s the first time in the Portman Group’s 30-year history that a product has been up against the panel twice. In theory it shouldn’t ever happen if the brewery takes the advice in the judgment. Tiny Rebel made major changes to its design, but was it enough? We spoke to Tiny Rebel cofounder Bradley Cummings about the context of the complaint, and how the ruling went. For added perspective, I also chat to Nick Dwyer, the art director at Beavertown Brewery. Nick has also had several encounters with the Portman Group during his tenure, and shares thoughts about his experiences. This is the Sightlines podcast—listen in.

Welcome to the Sightlines podcast from Good Beer Hunting. I’m Jonny Garrett. If you’re a beer drinker in the U.K., you’ve probably heard of the Portman Group: it’s the independent regulator for advertising and marketing in the U.K. alcohol industry. But if that sounds a little dry, you could also refer to it as the “pantomime villain” of the industry. Funded by eight multinational drinks companies, including Heineken and Diageo, it produces an annual code of conduct through wide consultation with the industry and consumers. The aim of the code is to encourage producers to advertise their products responsibly: guidelines cover everything from safe levels of consumption to not appealing to children and not implying sexual success as a result of drinking. Any member of the public can make a complaint to the Portman Group, and an independent panel will use the code to determine if the ad or product is in breach. As a self-regulatory body, the Portman Group is supposed to be a better alternative to further legislation from the U.K. government. However, the Portman Group comes in for a lot of criticism, and not just because it has to act as the sensible one at the bottle share. Good Beer Hunting first wrote about it in December 2017, in an article titled “Are the UK’s Largest Drinks Corporations Regulating the Brands of Their Smaller Competitors?” in relation to a complaint made against Tiny Rebel Brewing Company. Remember that name. The fact that the regulatory body is funded purely by multinational companies causes a great deal of mistrust and conspiracy among smaller producers and their fans. Despite the fact that the whole industry has a say on the code each year, there are plenty who believe many of its rules are draconian, too. The complaint process also comes under attack—breweries who choose to fight can spend thousands on legal costs, sacrifice staff time and, if they lose, create redesigns off the back of one complaint. What follows is a candid conversation with the Portman Group’s chief executive John Timothy. We talk about how the process works, as well as how he keeps the judges independent and limits impact judgments can have on small, inexperienced businesses. Shortly after recording this episode, however, we found out that Tiny Rebel had just gone up against the panel for a second time for the same product, and lost again. To find out more, we spoke to the brewery’s cofounder Bradley Cummings, who explained his great frustration at the process and what he believes is hypocrisy within it. We’ll be releasing that interview in a second episode, out tomorrow. For now though, let’s hear Timothy’s approach to regulating a fast-growing and creative industry. Listen in.

Welcome to the third episode of Into the Wild: part of our six-city tour across the U.S. with New Belgium this year. I’m Ashley Rodriguez, and together with GBH’s creative director Michael Kiser, we headed to the city of Raleigh, North Carolina for three days of great food, fantastic drinks, and unique events celebrating the specialness of sour and wild beers.

London is blessed with hundreds of great pubs. But for me one stands tall above the rest: a beacon of everything that is great about this British institution. It also happens to be my local. The Southampton Arms in Kentish Town, North London feels like it’s been there forever—it’s all worn wood, rickety chairs, stained walls, and sepia photos. It breaks all the perceived rules of running a pub. Up until last year it had 12 cask lines, six cider lines, and just two keg lines. It didn’t take cash and only served a few bar snacks. It had a one-page website and an almost untouched Twitter account. On paper it shouldn’t work, and yet the perfectly kept casks flowed constantly. Things have changed a little since then, but not by much. On a Monday night, during the live piano performances, you can hardly move; on Tuesday, during the pub quiz, the same drunk man screams questions over the top of people’s heads at the bar. Even at the height of winter, Friday and Saturday crowds spill out into the tiny backyard area, blocking the way to the outhouse toilet. It’s the most effortlessly welcoming, cozy pub I have ever been to, and it quickly became my favorite pub in the world. Amazingly, it only celebrated its 10-year anniversary in November. Its cofounder, Pete Holt, is a soft-spoken guy who has that enviable skill of seeming to like exactly what everyone else likes. Despite the rise of keg beer and gastropubs he wanted to open a simple real ale boozer, and it seems everyone in North London approved.  He did the same with the Cock Tavern in Hackney, when he opened the borough’s first brewpub in 2011. Howling Hops started in the basement but just a few years later expanded to its own brewery and taproom site in Hackney Wick, where it now pours a wide range of beers straight from the tanks. Its beers are staunchly modern and usually hop-forward, but you’ll still see lots of Howling Hops casks at the Southampton sat next to breweries that have been stocked for the full decade—breweries like Marble, Thornbridge, Moor, and Oakham. In my conversation with Pete, we talk about the inspiration behind his three sites; the unique challenges of running a business that spans production, logistics and serving; and what it’s been like to watch London change over a decade through the lens of beer. This is Pete Holt of Howling Hops. Listen in.

A year ago we launched a series of stories underwritten by Guinness called Mother of Invention. The beer industry is often spurred on by the need to meet new necessity with invention. This leads to all sorts of unique evolutionary paths in the history of beer, from making to selling to drinking. These articles explore the innovations, big and small, old and new, that have transformed the beer in your hand in surprising ways. One of my favorites from this series—“A Fire Being Kindled — The Revolutionary Story of Kveik, Norway’s Extraordinary Farmhouse Yeast”—was written by Claire Bullen, our editor-in-chief. She was interested in digging in to the origin of the kveik family of yeast, which first earned international acclaim thanks to articles published by Norwegian writer and beer enthusiast Lars Marius Garshol on his blog, Larsblog. His discoveries and writings have since inspired thousands of homebrewers to reimagine the craft of farmhouse-style brewing, using a category of yeast that had been preserved by traditional brewers in western Norway. But how has this new experimentation and investigation influenced commercial breweries? And what are the benefits and opportunities kveik affords those who are willing to take the risks? Talking to Claire about the content of the story, but also the process of the reporting itself, reveals a lot of the questions and excitement behind kveik’s meteoric rise. This is Claire Bullen, GBH’s editor-in-chief. Listen in.

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.

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 Claire Bullen, and I’m the Editor-in-Chief at Good Beer Hunting. One of the greatest pleasures of my job is fielding pitches that our writers send in, which range from the bold to the brilliant to the baffling. Recently, GBH staff writer Jonny Garrett sent in an idea that was a mix of all three; as soon as it came into my inbox, I remember thinking—“this is something we have to publish.” That pitch evolved into his recent piece, “TL;DR – Tracing the Origins of Beer Language, from Michael Jackson to Emojis,” which is part of our Mother of Invention series, underwritten by Guinness. With this article, Jonny set himself an almost impossibly expansive task: examine the history and evolution of modern beer writing, from the groundbreaking author and beer personality Michael Jackson, who helped codify a formal language around beer in the ’70s and ’80s, all the way up to today’s frenzy of Twitter timelines, Instagram captions, and Untappd reviews. As the article’s title suggests, Jonny even digs into the role that emojis play in beer writing. In researching his article, Jonny spoke to linguists and delved into the history books. He also examined how wine-tasting notes came to be, talked to one of Beer Twitter’s most infamous wordsmiths, and spent more than a little time scrolling through his various social media feeds. The result is an up-to-the-minute piece with a unique, metacritical scope. In the space of just a few thousand words, he manages to touch on everything from the debate around the term “craft beer” and the way that specialized vocabulary functions within niche communities to “crispy bois” and dank memes. It’s a remarkable piece of writing, and it may well change the way you think about and describe beer forever. If you haven’t yet read his article, you can find that on GoodBeerHunting.com. For now, tune in and listen as Jonny describes how the idea for this article first came about.

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.