Good Beer Hunting

In food and drink we often talk about the supply chain—the line we draw between the farm and the glass. The truth is, it’s far more complicated, and far more protracted than that.  The beer world is a web containing thousands of people who work to get beer in your hands, and only a few of them brew it, still they influence which beers are brewed, how they are packaged, how they get to the bar and how they are served. Even a small scale beer scene like Britain’s is full of people you have never heard of, but who influence what you drink on a daily basis. Few of them have had as much influence as Colin Gilhespy, managing director of speciality beer importer Cave Direct. [Disclosure: I worked at Cave Direct from 2013 to 2018.] He has been in the distribution business since the early 80s, when he and his dad were among the first to bring Belgian beers across the Channel. Not just any beers either, but niche, expensive beers Trappists, Lambics and Flemish reds. At the same time that some Californian homebrewers were just waking America up to adventurous beer, Gilhespy and his family were doing the same in the U.K. I’ll leave the stories to him, but over the last 40 years he has had a huge hand in the growth of the British craft beer industry as it grew from the ashes of 1970s consolidation to one of the world’s most diverse and exciting scenes. From growing the Belgian beer category to helping new British brewers on the way up, he has laid a path for huge change and over the last decade has seen phenomenal growth.  Cave Direct is now the U.K.’s only national direct-delivery beer wholesaler, and Colin’s services to the Belgian beer industry has even won him awards from the country’s brewing guilds. Even so, it’s difficult times to be an importer with Brexit on the horizon, huge competition from macro-breweries buying taps and pushing prices down, and several buyouts of breweries that Cave had built their business on. There’s still a long way to go. I joined him and sales director Neil Kitching at the Beer Merchants Tap, Cave Direct’s bar in East London where they have just taken delivery of their first batch of spontaneous wort for a blendery project, and where in June they will host their 40th birthday party with the breweries and friends that helped them come this far. This is Colin Gilhespy and Neil Kitching of Cave direct. Listen in.

On this GBH Sightlines episode, we're visiting with several people to get their perspectives and experiences following what some are calling beer's own Fyre Festival. That event, a luxury-music-festival-turned-disaster that spawned two separate documentaries showcasing its incredible collapse, may be on another level than the inaugural Untappd Beer Festival, but it didn't stop some angry beer fans from making that connection on May 4. We’re talking with two festival-goers, a vendor pouring for a brewery, and one of the event’s organizers. The goal? To better understand what it was like on the ground and whether or not those dire comparisons are actually warranted. 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.

The world of beer is going through an identity crisis—it’s changing the self-defined language of what’s craft and what not seemingly every few years now, it’s doing battle with wine and spirits, except when it’s embracing them in the form of natural wine and barrel-aging, it’s national, regional, local, and hyperlocal, it’s taprooms and bars going to battle over the same customers, it’s exploding cans and day-fresh distribution, and festivals are dying except when they’re growing, and it’s focused on diversity even as it undermines it’s own goals by competing for the same 21-34-year-old white males in every market, it’s IPAs except when it’s Lagers, and increasingly it’s juice bombs and hard seltzers and FMBs, and coffee roasting, distilling, and wine/beer hybrids. It’s wild out there right now.  For today’s guest—I have a feeling all that seems a bit…charming. Predictable, maybe. And certainly ripe for exploitation from a manufacturing and marketing perspective. Because as much as we want to think people define themselves by what category of beverage they prefer (beer people, wine people, bourbon people), people like Jaisen Freeman of Phusion Projects has long understood drinkers as category agnostic—pursuing flavor, and brand, and functional benefits above all else. And generally preferring to have a little—sometimes too much—fun along the way.   Phusion Projects is the maker of Four Loko, a notorious, exciting brand that has an unbelievable distribution footprint in the U.S. despite having its product formulation written out of the realm of legality by the federal government after they’d already built their empire. Despite massive lawsuits related to its potential for harm and or misuse. And despite taking a massing hit in the realm of $40 million during that traumatic period for the business. Within four years, it had climbed back to its former peak. And now, with that chasm behind them, Phusion Projects is expanding a portfolio of products geared towards finding the next big thing for drinkers. In the recent past, that’s included another infamous product, at least in the small bubble of the craft beer world, with Not Your Father’s Root Beer, a fermented malt beverage that got tried and true beer geeks worked up over its root beer flavor and, in some cases, its high ABV. But it attracted a massive mainstream audience as well as it expanded from a small garage into a national footprint. And now they’re exploring the world of vodka, hard seltzer, a flavored FMB that looks like a fancy blended wine or sake, and Earthquake, which they pitch as the highest ABV Lager on the market.  None of them come anywhere close to Four Loko’s success. Like, by multiple orders of magnitude. But this is all pretty recent still as they climbed out of that crater that those four years of Four Loko left them in. And they got out of it, seemingly, all by themselves.   It’s a wild story, and for anyone struggling to understand what their next few years are going to look like in the what might be the beer businesses’ most insane time period ever in this country, it’s a story with a lot of lessons, both encouraging, and exceptionally hard.   This is Jaisen Freeman of Phusion Projects. Listen in.

At this year's Foeder for Thought, the festival of wild and sour beers hosted by Green Bench Brewing Co. in St. Petersburg, Florida, the GBH team co-hosted panels and discussions that help us all dig in to the future of this loosely-defined, but highly-sought-after category of beers.  Watch the video series here This podcast series includes: FFT-007: Thinking Inside of the Package, featuring: Andrew Emerton, New Belgium Brewing Patrick Woodson, Brewery Bhavana FFT-008: Interview/Audience Q&A Mitch Ermatinger, Speciation Artisan Ales FFT-009: The Wild Side of the Apple, featuring: Ryan Burk, Angry Orchard Brian Wing, Green Bench Mead & Cider FFT-010: Interview/Audience Q&A Tim Clifford, Sainte Adairius FFT-011: Climate Spontaneity, featuring: Harrison McCabe, Beachwood Blendery Jeffery Stuffings, Jester King Brewery Levi Funk, Funk Factory Geuzeria FFT-012: Interview/Audience Q&A Walt Dickinson, Wicked Weed Brewing

At this year's Foeder for Thought, the festival of wild and sour beers hosted by Green Bench Brewing Co. in St. Petersburg, Florida, the GBH team co-hosted panels and discussions that help us all dig in to the future of this loosely-defined, but highly-sought-after category of beers.  Watch the video series here This podcast series includes: FFT-007: Thinking Inside of the Package, featuring: Andrew Emerton, New Belgium Brewing Patrick Woodson, Brewery Bhavana FFT-008: Interview/Audience Q&A Mitch Ermatinger, Speciation Artisan Ales FFT-009: The Wild Side of the Apple, featuring: Ryan Burk, Angry Orchard Brian Wing, Green Bench Mead & Cider FFT-010: Interview/Audience Q&A Tim Clifford, Sainte Adairius FFT-011: Climate Spontaneity, featuring: Harrison McCabe, Beachwood Blendery Jeffery Stuffings, Jester King Brewery Levi Funk, Funk Factory Geuzeria FFT-012: Interview/Audience Q&A Walt Dickinson, Wicked Weed Brewing

At this year's Foeder for Thought, the festival of wild and sour beers hosted by Green Bench Brewing Co. in St. Petersburg, Florida, the GBH team co-hosted panels and discussions that help us all dig in to the future of this loosely-defined, but highly-sought-after category of beers.  Watch the video series here This podcast series includes: FFT-007: Thinking Inside of the Package, featuring: Andrew Emerton, New Belgium Brewing Patrick Woodson, Brewery Bhavana FFT-008: Interview/Audience Q&A Mitch Ermatinger, Speciation Artisan Ales FFT-009: The Wild Side of the Apple, featuring: Ryan Burk, Angry Orchard Brian Wing, Green Bench Mead & Cider FFT-010: Interview/Audience Q&A Tim Clifford, Sainte Adairius FFT-011: Climate Spontaneity, featuring: Harrison McCabe, Beachwood Blendery Jeffery Stuffings, Jester King Brewery Levi Funk, Funk Factory Geuzeria FFT-012: Interview/Audience Q&A Walt Dickinson, Wicked Weed Brewing

At this year's Foeder for Thought, the festival of wild and sour beers hosted by Green Bench Brewing Co. in St. Petersburg, Florida, the GBH team co-hosted panels and discussions that help us all dig in to the future of this loosely-defined, but highly-sought-after category of beers.  Watch the video series here This podcast series includes: FFT-007: Thinking Inside of the Package, featuring: Andrew Emerton, New Belgium Brewing Patrick Woodson, Brewery Bhavana FFT-008: Interview/Audience Q&A Mitch Ermatinger, Speciation Artisan Ales FFT-009: The Wild Side of the Apple, featuring: Ryan Burk, Angry Orchard Brian Wing, Green Bench Mead & Cider FFT-010: Interview/Audience Q&A Tim Clifford, Sainte Adairius FFT-011: Climate Spontaneity, featuring: Harrison McCabe, Beachwood Blendery Jeffery Stuffings, Jester King Brewery Levi Funk, Funk Factory Geuzeria FFT-012: Interview/Audience Q&A Walt Dickinson, Wicked Weed Brewing

At this year's Foeder for Thought, the festival of wild and sour beers hosted by Green Bench Brewing Co. in St. Petersburg, Florida, the GBH team co-hosted panels and discussions that help us all dig in to the future of this loosely-defined, but highly-sought-after category of beers.  Watch the video series here This podcast series includes: FFT-007: Thinking Inside of the Package, featuring: Andrew Emerton, New Belgium Brewing Patrick Woodson, Brewery Bhavana FFT-008: Interview/Audience Q&A Mitch Ermatinger, Speciation Artisan Ales FFT-009: The Wild Side of the Apple, featuring: Ryan Burk, Angry Orchard Brian Wing, Green Bench Mead & Cider FFT-010: Interview/Audience Q&A Tim Clifford, Sainte Adairius FFT-011: Climate Spontaneity, featuring: Harrison McCabe, Beachwood Blendery Jeffery Stuffings, Jester King Brewery Levi Funk, Funk Factory Geuzeria FFT-012: Interview/Audience Q&A Walt Dickinson, Wicked Weed Brewing

At this year's Foeder for Thought, the festival of wild and sour beers hosted by Green Bench Brewing Co. in St. Petersburg, Florida, the GBH team co-hosted panels and discussions that help us all dig in to the future of this loosely-defined, but highly-sought-after category of beers.  Watch the video series here This podcast series includes: FFT-007: Thinking Inside of the Package, featuring: Andrew Emerton, New Belgium Brewing Patrick Woodson, Brewery Bhavana FFT-008: Interview/Audience Q&A Mitch Ermatinger, Speciation Artisan Ales FFT-009: The Wild Side of the Apple, featuring: Ryan Burk, Angry Orchard Brian Wing, Green Bench Mead & Cider FFT-010: Interview/Audience Q&A Tim Clifford, Sainte Adairius FFT-011: Climate Spontaneity, featuring: Harrison McCabe, Beachwood Blendery Jeffery Stuffings, Jester King Brewery Levi Funk, Funk Factory Geuzeria FFT-012: Interview/Audience Q&A Walt Dickinson, Wicked Weed Brewing