Good Beer Hunting

You’ll sometimes hear people describe craft beer as a sort of zeitgeist all its own, coming out of nowhere to upend a century-old domination of the big corporate brewers, rising like punk rock to legendary status by following its own rules, and changing people's expectations for what beer can be in the process.  And a lot of that’s true, though it didn’t happen in a vacuum. Way back in episode 18 with Gary Fish of Deschutes, you hear a much more contextual perspective. Which is to say: craft beer, at least in its current form, is part of something much bigger that’s changing about the way we eat and drink. The slow food movement that has transformed so many of the world’s dining experiences from city to city, bringing things like "farm to table" into our common vernacular. Phrases like "know your farmer," which sounds a lot like "know your brewer." And "locavore," which sounds a lot like "drink local." All these things were setting a stage that craft beer now dances on. It just happens to be a part in the play where beer is stealing the show a bit.  And that brings us to today’s guest, Rick Muschiana. I first met Rick when he was working at Brewery Vivant in Grand Rapids. Back in episode 10, we talked to founders Jason and Kristen Spaulding about their unique community and sustainability-focused brewpub. Rick helped them grow that operation, playing roles in marketing, sales, and operations.  He then went on to lead Michigan sales for Virtue Cider in Fenville, Michigan.  And then he took the plunge into his own concept, focused on a sort of Nordic style of cuisine alongside great beer, wine, and more in a restaurant and garden concept called Sovengard in Grand Rapids. It's there you’ll find the culmination of Rick’s former professional experiences, but also something more fundamental—the influence his parents had on his perspective on food, beverage, and hospitality. They remain an influence to this day.  The result is a place in Grand Rapids unlike any other.

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.

As much as we talk about the acquisitions of craft brands, it’s not often we get to hear directly from the people involved, and how they think about and manage these acquisitions.  How do breweries transition to their new realities? How do they get integrated into a portfolio? How do they enable growth, but also look to safety, quality, and sales with a critical eye? It’s a lot to handle, and a lot of big questions remain.  For AB InBev's High End, things seem to move really, really fast. For MillerCoors and its Tenth & Blake team, which is in charge of its craft acquisitions and imports, things seem to move much, much slower. Leinenkugels, for example, was a craft acquisition back in the 1980s, and they’re still working patiently by comparison to most. Terrapin is another, still operating mostly regionally despite having partial MillerCoors ownership since 2012 (more recently, they took the majority).  Compare that to the now-international presence of a brand like Goose Island under ABI's ownership, and the national move being made by specific beers like Elysian Space Dust and others, and you start to see a very different strategy at play between these two corporate brewers. But what is that difference, and what’s it inspired by?  Today we’re going to talk to Pete Marino, who’s taking on a new leadership position at Tenth & Blake and we’re going to try to explore this very subjective question.  Also in the room will be Lisa Zimmer, a guest you might remember from way back in episode 79 when she was working in the Tenth & Blake group. She’s since move up to MillerCoors proper, but her perspective on the legacy of Tenth & Blake combined with Pete’s more recent point of view is productive.

There are so many paths people take to follow their passion, often surrounded by the support of friends and family. No matter what excites us enough to go pro for the thing that we love, there's still a shared experience in the fact that entrepreneurship is intimate. It's not uncommon to find partners in business to also be partners in life. Friends, spouses, parents, and siblings are all taking risks—every day and together—to create something they deeply care about. From a surprisingly early age, Chris and John Trogner assumed this would be their lot in life. A duo served well by their love of brainstorming and invention, teamwork between this pair has led to youthful mischief (a homemade cannon), practicality (a skateboard ramp), and what they're now best known for—beer. This summer marked 20 years in business for Troegs Brewing Company, now one of the 50 largest breweries in the United States. Behind a quickly growing production limit and expanding staff are these two brothers, overseeing an evolving company that is adapting to the industry through new additions at their Hershey, Pennsylvania headquarters and their lineup of beers, which offer new experiences and inspiration through their beloved Scratch series of experimental batches. Stories of how people came to start a business in beer are plentiful, each with their unique anecdotes and nuance. Sitting down this summer with the founders of Troegs provided an opportunity to not only talk shop, but learn more about the personal and familial ties that have helped them become so successful. Behind all the company has accomplished, it’s still about two brothers who care deeply about beer and the people who help them share it with the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Fervent Few podcast. Every two weeks we present you with this bonus episode of the GBH podcast where we chat with members of our subscriber community. The Fervent Few subscribe to GBH like a magazine making a monthly contribution via Patreon. Members join us in a forum to talk about a wide range of topics that doesn’t just stop at beer. And every week we pick one of these topics and present the community’s answers to readers in the form of an article posted to Good Beer Hunting. You can find out more information by visiting patreon.com/goodbeerhunting On this episode we play Where in the World is Michael Kiser and we talk to James Raynon who just moved to Chicago from Souther California. We’ll talk to him about the differences in locales and his time in the Fervent Few. But first we find out where Michael Kiser is hiding.

Way back in 1994, in Burlington, Vermont, a little brewery named Magic Hat sprung to life making what for many of its customers was the first “craft beer” they’d ever taste. One of its co-founders was Alan Newman, who became not only the entrepreneurial force behind the company, but the whimsical, hippie, bearded face of the brand itself.  By the time he’d gotten Magic Hat off the ground, he was already well on his way to being a serial entrepreneur, and after his frustrated departure from the brewery in 2010, as part of a private equity deal, he went on to be the strategic, creative and, again, somewhat-of-a-face for brands like Coney Island, Concrete Beach, the Traveler Shandy company, and Angel City Brewery. At the latter, he was working as part of the Alchemy & Science portfolio owned by Boston Beer. Indeed, he was working directly with Jim Koch. I worked alongside Alan and his team for a couple years as they built and re-positioned these brands, so part of today’s conversation will include a look back at some of the challenges and opportunities in that work from Alan’s perspective.  Now? He’s done. He’s walking away from the beer industry. Or so he says. I don’t exactly believe it. Alan has a funny way of always reeling himself back into the business. Alan and beer just can’t quite quit each other. And regardless of whether he comes back, or new ventures await, his perspective on what’s happening in our industry now is always fascinating and instructive for me because he was there in the room when so many decisions were made. Decisions like who will be defined as a “craft brewer” in the first place. And what’s the value of that definition? And then, of course, how so many of the challenges he faced with Magic Hat in the '90s are timeless for small brewers today. The more things change, the more they stay the same, as it were.

This weeks guests are from Brussels, Belgium. It's there that they own a very American-inspired brewery called Brussels Beer Project.  I first visited their spot a couple years ago when they'd just established themselves after contract brewing. It was a space defined by a new urban aesthetic that you find the world over, with bright colors, cafe-style furniture, and an open floor plan. Not to mention beer styles ranging from hoppy IPAs to big, sweet Stouts, Saison, and everything in between—a bit of a universal vibe that you might associate more with cities in general than Brussels specifically.  Indeed, their project is very much defined by its young community audience, folks who have helped them raise funds and decide on beer styles. That dynamic creates a very different approach and vision for what a brewery means to its fans and customers. And it's a big step away from tradition in a historical brewing county like Belgium.  As you saw with last week’s guest, there are strong opinions in Belgian beer about things such as contract brewing, techniques, and traditions. But what I find, taking a step back, aren’t oppositional forces but, rather, differing visions for what a brewery can and should be. And I think a big part of what you’ll hear in this interview is that maybe the word “should” can be left out of the conversation, as every generation defines these things for themselves. And rather, focus on “could,” that magical word that makes it possible to consider other ways of doing things, with a different purpose, but valuable and interesting all the same.  Running these interviews back-to-back is coincidental. I happened to meet the founders of Brussels Beer Project in Chicago recently at a taproom opening and invited them over to record. But I’m happy for this overlap as they are highly relevant to each other in both location and subject matter.

GBH founder—and one of the co-hosts of this podcast—Michael Kiser has previously described some episodes of this podcast as being "bucket-list" interviews. Folks like Brooklyn Brewery’s Garrett Oliver and Allagash’s Rob Todd, for example: folks who’ve played huge roles in shaping the industry as we know it and still continue to do so. Now, it’s my turn. Today, I sit down for a conversation with Yvan de Baets, head brewer and co-founder of Brasserie de la Senne in Brussels, Belgium. You’re more than likely already familiar with the beers that de la Senne produces. Despite only being in existence since 2003, its beers, such as the dry and bitter Taras Boulba and the balanced, rounded Zinnebir, could easily be described as timeless and iconic. These aren’t words to be thrown around lightly, but try asking a brewer what his or her favorite beer is and more often than not, it’ll be one of them. It’s no surprise, either, as we’ll learn from de Baets later in this episode that Taras Boulba is a beer made for brewers. De Baets was in town for a string of events centered around a new specialty Belgian beer festival here in London called Ales Tales. The night before we met for this interview we had hosted an event with him at The Prince in Wood Green, North London and our conversation picks up from the points we discussed that evening. This includes the origins of de la Senne and how their first beer was brewed in a Brussels squat, to just how intrinsic the Belgian capital is to everything this brewery does. Yvan pulls no punches when discussing what he calls "fake brewers," or what most of us know as contract, or so-called "gypsy brewers." He even goes as far as to call some of them a disease within the industry. He even weighs in on the use of Belgian beer terminology, such as Lambic and Gueuze, around the world—including the recent fracas between Jester King and HORAL .

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.  Central State happens to be a client of GBH's studio team. However, Andrew chooses the beers he wants to score of his own volition.

So many breweries in start-up mode have a crystal clear vision for their future. But as they mature, and as the market shifts, and as those early days start to feel farther and farther away, we find out what a brewery is really made of. Do they stick with that adolescent firebrand kind of rhetoric? Or do they adopt a more practical outlook on what’s possible—and even desirable—for a craft brewery? For most, it’s somewhere in between.  In today’s market, a more diverse set of business models are available than ever before. Factor in changing state laws and consumer demand, and that vision for what a craft brewer can be is evolving quickly. What previously seemed counter to craft now seems perfectly permissible—encouraged, even. Just look at how the conversation around contract brewing—now oftentimes referred to as "gypsy" brewing—has shifted over time.  That’s an easy one, but what about things like cold storage? Staying local? And the recent interest in employee ownership and what they says about succession planing? Are we open to our ideas on those opinions changing too? We better be.  Today’s guest is Clay Robinson of Sun King, a guy who’s gone on the record early and often about what he would and wouldn’t do. And today, most of that, in hindsight, was short-sighted. But he’s not letting it hold him back. Instead, he’s casting off the burden of his former outlook and working hard to embrace a future where he thinks practically about his business, adopts a never-say-never attitude, and starts looking at things like grocery chains, conventional distribution, ESOP and acquisitions pros and cons, even distilling, as his potential growth plan going forward.  This conversation is a wild ride through so many of the issues small breweries are wrestling with today, and Clay handles it with an uncanny transparency. I’m thankful I got a chance to sit down with him and hash out the details.