Good Beer Hunting

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.  *** What’s the correct rate for dry hopping with graham crackers? We learn that in part three of our Hāpi Festival and Symposium podcast series.  The Bruery, from Placentia, California is not a brewery that I had ever associated with hop-forward beers, so I was curious to know why they were at a hop symposium. It turns out, however, that The Bruery recently launched a side project focused on hoppy beers called Offshoot Beer Co., and its innovation manager Andrew Bell was on hand to tell us all about it.  As it is The Bruery, we also got to talking about Imperial Stouts. After our conversation, I tasted Share This: Mole Imperial Stout—if I’m honest, it may have been one of the best beers I tried all day. Listen in.

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.  *** I was happy to talk to J.C. Hill from Alvarado Street Brewery, based in Monterey, California, as part of our Hāpi Festival and Symposium podcast series. I’d heard exciting things about his beers and loved the artwork on the labels. In our conversation, and in the following interviews, I really wanted to get an understanding of how the experience of visiting New Zealand hop fields would influence brewers when they got back into the brewhouse.  We also talk a bit about Cryo Hops, Italian Pilsners, and how good New Zealand tomatoes taste. Listen in.

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.

Like all of the U.K., Wales has a long, rich history of brewing. The Welsh brewing industry has pretty much had the same fortunes, too—peaking in the late 1800s then declining thanks to temperance, World Wars, and consolidation throughout the 20th century. But at some point in the early 2000s, the countries’ paths diverged. While Scotland got Harviestoun and then BrewDog, and England gained Dark Star, Rooster’s, Thornbridge, and others, Wales didn’t catch on to modern craft beer as quickly. In fact, it still only has a handful of well regarded craft breweries, of which my guests today are easily the best known. Founded in 2012 in a garage in South Wales, Tiny Rebel has had a meteoric rise to fame, buoyed by some incredible and unlikely successes. In 2013, the brewery won gold, silver and bronze in CAMRA’s Champion Beer of Wales competition, and its flagship Red Ale, Cwtch, went on to win Champion Beer of Britain in 2015, making Tiny Rebel the youngest brewery ever to take the prize. That triumph, which caught the brewers completely by surprise, was a watershed moment, and put them on course for where they are now—a towering brewery and taproom that looks like it’s straight out of San Diego but is actually in an industrial park in Rogerstone, just outside Newport. There Tiny Rebel brews 17,000bbl (20,000hl) a year, with Cwtch and juicy pale ale Club Tropicana taking up most of the tanks. It has become a local landmark, welcoming hundreds of drinkers every day who get through around 1,100bbls a year. They’ve just broken ground across the road too, where they will build a £3-million sour facility and distillery. Like all fast-growing and successful businesses, Tiny Rebel has had its controversies along the way. Such success breeds suspicion, and recently there were wild rumors of a sale to Molson Coors that proved completely unfounded. Tiny Rebel’s nostalgic branding has also gotten them in trouble with industry watchdog The Portman Group, and the brewery’s heavy use of adjuncts has earned them ire from less well humored beer geeks. We talk through all that and more when I sit down with founders Bradley Cummings and Gareth Williams. But what is most remarkable is the humor, and sense of fun, that pervades the conversation. Some may be uneasy with what they do, but they are very easy in themselves, and rightly proud of what they have achieved.  This is Brad and Gazz of Tiny Rebel Brewing. Listen in.

Barrel aging beer is like stepping back in time. But over the last few years, more and more breweries are turning to the historic practice, using it as a way to impart new flavors, expand their beer portfolios, and give a nod back to traditional brewing practices. But how did barrels make a comeback? Our Sightlines editor, Bryan Roth, who we sometimes joke is the man with all the charts, decided to find out. As our Sightlines editor, you’ll usually find Bryan’s name on breaking news stories and analysis industry trends. So it was exciting to see Bryan take on a topic like the rise of barrel aging because I knew I’d read something comprehensive and learn a ton about something I didn’t know much about. This was a fun conversation because it was such a change from the way we normally talk to each other—usually we go back and forth on things like deadlines, or where in the latest episode of our Sightlines podcast I need him to clarify something or cut down content, and it was refreshing to dive deep on a story and learn more about how Bryan approached this topic.

It’s no longer a surprise these days when a brewery announces it’s opening another location. Secondary production facilities and taprooms aren’t ubiquitous, but they are becoming more common for companies who quickly outgrow modest homes and expectations. In 2018, the largest brewer in Idaho came from California. Brewing a little over 10,000 barrels at its Nampa facility just outside of Boise, Mother Earth Brew Company has quickly become a mainstay in the state after opening its second space in 2016. The output from Idaho was about a quarter of all beer the business made last year, with its original facility still cranking out beer in Vista, California. So, what does it take to pull this off? While traveling through Idaho this spring, I sat down with Mother Earth’s president and CEO, Dan Love, and Chris Baker, director of brewing operations, to get an idea. In this conversation, they reveal that it’s not just a matter of time and money, but relationships and community-building can play a big role. And that’s before you even get to making and shipping the beer. With rapid expansion thanks to the popularity of beers like Boo Koo Mosaic IPA and Cali Creamin' Vanilla Cream Ale, there’s a lot to navigate on the march toward 100,000 barrels. In addition to selling beer, that also includes a unique situation—Idaho’s Mother Earth Brew Company happens to share an eerily close name to North Carolina’s Mother Earth Brewing. For a company coming east and entering many locations around the Tar Heel State, it creates a wild and interesting backstory you’ll hear in this interview. Dan and Chris share a lot on running a modern brewery over this hour, and it’s definitely representative of the variety of challenges owners and brewers have to consider today. This is Dan Love and Chris Baker of Mother Earth Brew Company. Listen in.

Steph Byce was one of the first people I met when I started hanging out with the folks at Good Beer Hunting. I was judging an Irish Coffee Competition, as part of yearly celebration of coffee and beer called Uppers and Downers, and Steph was hovering around me, taking photos. Steph is GBH’s resident photographer—she’s based in Chicago, and at any Good Beer Hunting event, you’ll usually find her snapping photos. There’s one of me in particular that she captured at our annual get together called Olly Olly, where I’m looking longingly at a burrito—it’s pretty perfect. But she’s also a longtime contributor, and went to Durago, Colorado to report on Ska Brewing’s 23rd anniversary party. The article was published in May on our website, and I got to talk to Steph in our studio about how this story came to be.

To outsiders, the cannabis industry might seem like a mysterious machine. The myriad regulatory rules, the constantly changing legalities, and the complicated distribution practices make this business confusing and a bit unwieldy. And yet, in California’s fledgling legal market, cannabis is flourishing. With more than eleven hundred acres of permitted cannabis farms in the state, some expect to see California cannabis become a $5 billion industry this year or next. It’s a notable statistic, considering sales of the plant for recreational use only became legal here in 2018. For brewers, cannabis’ rapid growth has become potential cause for concern. Some fear the expanding use and social acceptance of recreational weed — be it in vape, flower, edible or concentrated form — could one day soon cut into beer’s market share. It’s a topic Teagan Thompson is well acquainted with. Thompson spent 7 years in marketing for Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco before making the jump to a concentrated cannabis start-up called Space Coyote several months ago. After working through the most recent craft beer boom, she’s now poised to experience cannabis as it explodes in popularity too. Zack Ruskin, a freelance cannabis journalist in San Francisco, stands ready to document that growth. He spends days conversing with new cannabis companies and testing strains for the curious consumer. He also highlights the growing pains of a blossoming industry. Will cannabis become a threat to beer? Or can they work together? Let’s hash it out. This is Teagan Thompson, Chief of Marketing for Space Coyote, and cannabis journalist Zack Ruskin. Listen in.

Welcome to another Fervent Few episode of the Good Beer Hunting podcast where myself, Jim Plachy, and GBH’s strategic director, Michael Kiser, catch up. We’ll talk about the topics and discussions that took place in our membership community in the last couple weeks. Our 500 or so subscribers are scattered all over the world. Sometimes we meet up with them when we’re on the road, or they hang out with each other, but it all comes together in our community forum on Slack. If you value the content and experiences that GBH produces, you should join. Your monthly subscription gets you access to the community, special events, and exclusive gear deigned just for members. I joined, and now I manage it all. Plus, it’s my favorite place on the Beer Internet. Visit goodbeerhunting.com/ferventfew to strike up a conversation in beer.

At this point in the American beer scene, a love for IPAs, Wheat Ales, Stouts, and Saisons comes from all over. Our friends and parents. Our neighbors and celebrities. When we learn that someone has an adoration for craft beer, there’s not a lot of surprise left to be had, except what kind of beer we can share as part of this fun bond. This spring, I had that debate—between a Wheat Ale and IPA—with the musician and rapper, Fish Scales of Nappy Roots. Scales, whose real name is Melvin Adams Jr., isn’t just accomplished in the world of music, but he and others in the Grammy-nominated group see beer as a next step in their creative journey. They’ve already made collaboration beers with Atlanta’s Monday Night Brewing and Louisville’s Against the Grain Brewery, and I sat down with Scales this spring in Boise, Idaho, where Nappy Roots was performing and releasing a new beer with the city’s Woodland Empire Ale Craft. In recent years, there have been a variety of musicians, groups, actors, and athletes who have gotten into the world of beer. Scales and Nappy Roots are among that growing number, and his appreciation for the history, process, and what he sees beer to be culturally is what’s propelling him toward this love while still performing about 100 times a year. As many conversations have circled around in beer lately, there is a component to this effort to bring craft beer to audiences that were long neglected. We talk about that, the cross-section of music and beer, and so much more, during the course of this conversation.  So, what’s the perspective on beer from one of the most successful musicians in America? This is Fish Scales, beer lover and rapper, of Nappy Roots. Listen in.