Good Beer Hunting

This week’s episode is a unique one for us. It brings together a bunch of voices who were in Nashville for the 2018 Craft Brewers Conference. In order to capture the feelings of that particular moment in the beer industry, we invited people into a private room at the Flying Saucer, set them up with one of our hosts (myself, Bryan Roth, and Matthew Curtis), and conducted a sort of beer version of speed dating. Each guest flipped over a card to see the topic, and then they talked to us about what was on their mind. Some cards were drawn often and some seldom, so it’s a little uneven. But in the end, we liked that so many people took part and so many perspectives were shared on topics for which those who work in, around, or just enjoy beer tend to develop very strong feelings. Thanks to Flying Saucer for generously providing both their space and their hospitality during an insanely busy week. We couldn’t have done this without them. And special thanks to the Flying Saucer’s Andrews Cope for being our point of contact, collaborator, and co-host for all that. We’re going to kick things off by getting to know Andrews a little bit, and talking about why the Flying Saucer was psyched to work with us to do this thing—of which I hope there are many more.

Welcome back to the GBH Collective, a special series of interviews where we have the chance to dive a little deeper with Good Beer Hunting contributors and friends on topics of writing, beer and the stories you read and hear from GBH. It’s been exciting to bring you the voices of those behind our stories, and if you haven’t had the chance to better know Good Beer Hunting’s Claire Bullen and Kyle Kastranec, those episodes are waiting in our podcast archives. In the meantime, we’re switching it up just a little this week as we shift from our group of writers to a friend of the program in Upstate New York. Will Cleveland is a reporter for the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, where along with coverage of breaking news, he’s the newspaper’s Man About Town when it comes to beer. He’s a native to the area and in all the time I’ve traveled back home to the Finger Lakes excited to learn more about how the beer scene has changed, Will has consistently been a great source of info from his regular coverage of New York’s rapidly evolving beer industry. When we sat down in September to chat we touched on a collection of latest news and how Upstate New York beer is changing, including what it means when the world-famous Other Half comes to town. You’ll also hear about process, storytelling, and what it means to be a reporter covering beer in an ever-expanding market.

Our resident composer for the podcast and our commercial video work, Andrew Thiboldeaux, is writing original scores devoted to beers he finds fascinating. These are interpretations of the experience of drinking them. But they're also just great tunes.

This week’s guest comes at the beer world through a unique angle—the legal lens. He’s a lawyer based in New York State whose firm works with small brewers on a variety of business issues, but his personal focus at the firm is in trademark and IP. You’ve probably come across his thoughts on Twitter, where he shares updates on major trademark disputes like the Lagunitas and Sierra Nevada battle over the term IPA and Stone’s fight with MillerCoors over the Keystone brand. Brendan’s commentary—which is shared on his blog, but mostly on Twitter—has become something of a 101 guide for brewers and beer fans on how to talk about these things.  If you’ve seen these debates, you know the beer world could really use a primer.  While it’s true that most beer fans don’t like to see lawsuits between brands they’re fans of, the business reality is that, sometimes, these things need to be handled by professionals. And that often serves to highlight how delicate some of the bonds can be among breweries who otherwise subscribe to a cooperative ideal. The reality is that there are 7,000 breweries out there, and you owe it to your employees and shareholders to protect what’s their’s, regardless of the optics. On today’s episode, we dig into Brendan’s career and his perspective on the state of craft brewing from a legal perspective. After that, he elaborates on some of the cases that have made him Twitter famous.

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.

Colin Lempfisti and Mike Murphy, co-founders of Holy Mountain Brewing, and John Barley from Solemn Oath Brewery, dive into the camaraderie that fuels craft brewing. They discuss the delicate art of low ABV styles, the importance of drinkability, and the evolution of craft beer culture in Seattle. The trio also explores the interplay between hops and innovative brewing techniques, like gin barrel-aging. Additionally, they share humorous anecdotes about the unique challenges brought by Seattle's cannabis culture and the significance of creating inviting taproom spaces.

At GABF in Denver this year, we teamed up with the folks at New Belgium to host a conversation called Within Reach to talk about exploring new markets and winning new fans for craft beer. Hosted at the Source Hotel, where New Belgium has a new, small brewery, a diverse panel of industry professionals gathered to talk about diversity and inclusion, which are central to this effort. With an industry that’s largely still white and male, it’s become increasingly clear there’s a need to invite more people to participate. We wanted to look at this effort, which is both old and new, from a variety of perspectives. We sat down with Kim Jordan, co-founder of New Belgium Brewing, which was founded in 1991 when most marketing in beer was from macro brewers, and most of it was marketed to men using women as props. Over more than 25 years, Kim has been a seminal voice in an industry that’s starving for women in leadership positions. Her experience in the beer industry sets the foundation for how far we’ve come, and how far we still have to go. Alongside her is Kimberly Clements, whose career led her into a leadership position with her family-owned Budweiser distributor in Arizona. She now runs a consulting firm called Pints that works with distributors and brewers of all sizes as they look to grow audiences and reach. Her perspective on how these companies are thinking about the diversity of markets, or not, is a compelling peek behind the scenes on the narrow way craft beer is still defining a customer base with implicit and sometimes explicit bias. Vansana Nolintha is the co-founder of Brewery Bhavana in Raleigh, North Carolina, an immigrant restauranteur alongside his sister Vanvisa and his friend Patrick Woodson, who uses hospitably to create a dialog about inclusion and belonging. How this plays out in the craft beer niche in North Carolina is fascinating: it involves hiring, training, and vision-setting for a staff that’s doing more than serving pints in a taproom, but using exceptional beer as a catalyst for change. And Dominic Cook, founder of Beer Kulture, which looks at the world of beer through the lens of a community that’s been neglected - and in some ways explicitly alienated - from the promise of craft beer. He has worked as a wholesaler rep, but also as a social influencer to bring beers to occasions and communities that either believe they don’t like beer, or for whom access to craft beer is limited. In doing so, he’s instigated a stark dialog around exclusion in craft beer, and how ignoring the problem will be at the industry’s peril. He also has some advice for craft brewers that cuts through the noise and posturing that’s so common on the topic, and which usually results in brewers explaining why they can’t really do anything about the issue. Together, this group did a phenomenal job of covering a lot of ground. And the way in which they built on each other’s experiences made this one of the most rewarding conversations we’ve been lucky enough to lead. Thanks to New Belgium for helping shape the conversation, and bringing us all together. Thanks to the Source hotel for hosting. And thanks to the audience, which engaged in a genuine, thoughtful exchange of ideas on a topic that’s in everyone’s best interest. A more inclusive craft beer industry is a better industry across the board.

Photo by Clara Rice When Dave McLean moved to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood after college, he was chasing one particular thing: the Grateful Dead. McLean was a small part of a wave of hippies, idealists, and rock mega fans who came to the city at the same time for a similar reason, but unlike many of the others, Dave actually stuck around. And then he built a business here: the Magnolia Brewing Company. With the nearly 20 years Dave was at the helm of Magnolia, he became part of the fabric of the modern Haight District. For a neighborhood that is synonymous with counterculture and the “summer of love,” turned out Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin, that’s something. Magnolia was, and is, a stalwart brewpub in a historic neighborhood of a rapidly changing city. But no one is immune from the effects of a changing economy. An investment in a difficult property in another evolving neighborhood proved too far ahead of its time, and Magnolia faltered financially. As a last resort, Dave called Kim Jordan and sold the business to New Belgium, Dick Cantwell, formerly of Elysian, and Oud Beersel of Belgium. It was a deal that was deeply personal for Dave. Ultimately, on as good as terms as possible, he left Magnolia, but not before setting out on a new venture: Admiral Maltings. The founder of another longtime brewery in San Francisco, Ron Silberstein of ThirstyBear Organic, knew Dave’s affinity for quality malts, and tapped him to help him establish a new craft malt house in Alameda —- the first of its kind in California. Brewers flocked to it because the offer was notable: local farm grown barley, sent to a local malting facility, sold to local brewery to be purchased by a local drinker. I’m not sure Dave would regard it as a renaissance for himself, but all things considered, it’s an incredible next step. And don’t count him out for any new breweries down the line. The Bay is, after all, the home to progress and reinvention.

Welcome back to another episode of the GBH Collective, a special series of interviews where we have the chance to dive a little deeper with Good Beer Hunting contributors and friends on topics of writing, beer and the stories you read and hear from GBH. This week’s conversation is with a fan favorite: Kyle Kastranec. As one of the longest-tenured writers for Good Beer Hunting, you may have become familiar with his work through a variety of feature stories he’s written over the years. But more recently, Kyle has become a star for GBH through his Banquet and Chill blog, which includes some of the most fun, original, and thoughtful personal essays on beer I find strewn across the internet. In recent months, you may have shared fond memories of open containers, airline drinks, dive bars, or your personal Mount Crushmore—all topics that went from Kyle’s brain to his blog, and quickly became a fun game for lots of people to play through social media. In a way, Kyle is GBH’s leader when it comes to viral content—however you want to classify it—and he continues to delight and surprise with peeks into mind and the way he views beer. And as you’ll find, it’s all very deliberate and thought out, too. This is Kyle Kastranec, contributor, Renaissance Man, and King of Viral Media for Good Beer Hunting. Listen in...

Everyone wants to talk about innovation in beer these days, which could mean anything from playing with a new ingredient, or piece of equipment, or working to create a whole new style of beer. With a new record number for breweries in the U.S. being achieved daily, there are conscious and constant decisions breweries make as a way to differentiate themselves. And while all brewers certainly have a hand in innovating for their respective companies, there aren’t a ton who have a job to specifically do just that. Nick Crandall is the head brewer and innovation brewer at Redhook Brewery’s Brewlab, a brewpub located in downtown Seattle where the once-national company has wildly condensed its focus with Nick amongst its epicenter. From a small brewhouse in the brewpub, he’s working to consider and concoct new recipes that are tested feet from where it’s made, providing instant feedback and hopeful gratification for a Redhook team tasked with arguably the best part of the brewing process: playing. Through trial and error, Crandall is working to see what might just come next. When I sat down with him in September, he had recently tapped a Brut IPA and the business had also been working through trials with New England IPAs. Through altering batches and finding new ways to use and approach ingredients, Crandall is hopeful that maybe, just maybe, he’ll find a hit that can go from his bar to a production brewery and into the hands of many. For a brewery like Redhook that has had a storied history in the Pacific Northwest, it’s a repurposing of talent and resources that offers a new kind of excitement for what might happen next.