Good Beer Hunting

At this year's Craft Brewers Conference, the GBH team held a panel discussion on the topic of storytelling for breweries, how it evolves as it grows, and how the story of craft and the story of a single brewery can align and diverge.  Breweries have historically united to tell the story of "craft beer" as they work together to build the category and create an educated consumer. But in the past few years, the emphasis has shifted to the uniqueness of the individual journey, and how one brewery differs from another as they both collaborate and compete for the same customers. So we put our thoughts into a short presentation and panel discussion with GBH's storytellers and representatives from breweries as we discuss the similarities and differences between these approaches, all the while trying to determine what's at stake for the next generation of storytelling in American beer.  Panelists: Michael Kiser, GBH Founder + Creative Director Erin Jones, Marketing Director, Burial Beer Co. Josh Hambright, Central State Brewing, co-founder Matthew Curtis, GBH storyteller, podcast host Kyle Kastranec, GBH designer and storyteller Special thanks to our friends at Bluejacket for generously hosting us. Photo by Oliver Gray

Today’s breweries come in all shapes and sizes. Different tap lineups and business models. Each has a unique ethos and purpose told through individual stories and names. Somewhere amongst all this, there is Free Range Brewing, a business based on the ideas of agriculture and locality situated in one of the largest cities in the United States. Just a couple miles from the literal downtown marker of Charlotte, North Carolina, the almost-two-year-old brewery has found its niche with a constantly changing, eclectic lineup of farmed and foraged beers that includes Saisons with pine and juniper tips, IPA made with a 200-year old sourdough culture, and a rotating collection of Carolina Common—an in-state twist on the California Common. Those kinds of beers may not be wholly unique in a country with more than 5,000 breweries, but they do stake a claim for a special niche in Charlotte, a city often overlooked for its beer because of its proximity to well-known Asheville, just a 90-minute drive away. The story of how brothers Jeff and Jason Alexander decided to get to this point in their personal and professional lives details how powerful the pull of good food and drink can be, especially as a way to bring together family, friends and, ultimately, drinkers. With no professional experience, little training, and on something of a whim, Jason Alexander has transferred a once-budding appreciation for ideas of fresh and local into a tangible business plan. And he’s making a kind of beer-based, farmers-market mentality work amongst one of the fastest growing areas of Charlotte.

The three-tier system is something that’s continuously up for debate in our country, surfing on arguments about who it serves poorly and who it services well, who it protects us from and who it favors. It’s a complicated value chain mandated by the federal government to exist, but also regulated by states, and increasingly getting sliced up into more unique and critical ways of bringing your favorite breweries to market.  One part of that value chain that’s been quietly evolving is the role of the importer. They work between the brewer and distributor, and traditionally bring you beers from oversees from places like Belgium, the UK, and Germany. You may have heard our interviews from Shelton Fest two years ago when we interviewed two of their operators to demystify this part of the business, and shine a light on the value that importers bring even when they’re working with domestic instead of foreign breweries. For its part, Shelton Brothers just announced their next festival will be in Atlanta on August 18-19.  Then there's the domestic side of the import business, sometimes even called a domestic importer. It's really a convoluted way of describing an importer who moves products domestically through their existing infrastructure, state-to-state instead of country-to-county.  As more and more small local breweries are finding ways to grow sustainably and gain access to market when the shelves are tight and tap handles are scarce, the role of the domestic importer is helping some of these niche breweries find niche audiences wherever they might be.  Today’s guests are excited to talk about a very unique scenario in this vein. Artisanal Imports, known for importing brands like Sunner Kolsch, St Feuillen, and De Proef, are now partnering with U.S. brands. They’ve been working in U.S. cider for some time now with Farnhum Hill and EZ Orchards, which are among the best in the world. But niche, hyperlocal breweries is a new step towards diversifying their business and finding new territory to explore. In Chicago, they’ve partnered with Dovetail and Whiner Beer, two newcomers with unique portfolios.  Today we’re going to hear about what’s behind that move, and why it might be a new model for small brands going forward. It’s a full room on this one, so I do my best to keep it all straight. We’ve got Hagen Dost and Bill Wesselink from Dovetail Brewery, Brian Taylor of Whiner Beer Company, and Lanny Hoff of Artisanal Imports. Listen in.

Despite what some politicians may rally against, there is plenty of value of what a globalized society can bring. The different perspectives and experiences that flow from one border to the next has created a connectivity that enhance ideas the world over. It may come as no surprise, that also lends itself to how people from different countries use hops and malt, too. On assignment for GBH, I traveled in February to Reykjavik, Iceland with the goal of learning more about what that country’s beer scene is and what it offers drinkers a world apart from my bubble stateside. It’s easy to get caught up in an almost orthodox point of view of the global beer industry, where the Old World - countries like England, Belgium or Germany - and the New World - the United States - are the areas we most believe are worth our attention. But the flip side of that is the influence and cultural cache these places have, and how they’re helping to shape the way others think about and make beer. At KEX Hostel in downtown Reykjavik, I met with Hinrik Carl Ellertsson and Steinn Stefansson to talk about their small-time gypsy brewing operation and popular interests in the Iceland beer scene, which, no surprise, seem to be trending toward the hoppy side of things as Scandinavians look to the U.S. for inspiration. With visitors from around the world coming to Iceland for an annual beer festival, we found a spot in the shared space of the hostel where Hinrik and Steinn described what it’s like to work in a young industry seeking inspiration from today’s biggest names in beer. Some that will sound awfully familiar to American beer lovers.

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 episode is devoted to Tired Hands Saison Hands.

In the age of small and local, some of the more mature craft beer brands in the US are looking to new markets to find the relevance, brand awareness and the resulting sales that they seek. For the 28 year old Brooklyn Brewery this means investing heavily in markets all over the world including The UK, Sweden, Australia and more recentlt East Asia, thanks to the recent sale of a 24% stake in the business to Japan’s Kirin. But finding that relevance isn’t as simple as just shipping over a few containers worth of beer, throwing a launch party and hoping it sells. Building relevance requires the careful investment of time and resources and Brooklyn, who’ve been exporting to beer to the UK for over a decade, should know more about this than most. In fact, such is the success of their export market that 45% the beer it produces is now sold overseas.  Rachael Weseloh has been Brooklyn’s UK brand ambassador for just over two years now. As well as being the brewery’s eyes and ears on the ground, she’s also throwing events like Brooklyn’s popular Beer Mansion and annual Mash party, which are creating a deep sense of engagement with consumers, while behind the scenes it’s endearing the brand to wholesalers and retailers alike.  Weseloh originally hails from Humboldt County in the North of California and it was here she began her beer journey, working for Fortuna’s Eel River Brewing Company. She eventually made her way to Paris, where she worked in the French capitals vibrant Cocktail scene, before she eventually landed her gig with Brooklyn and made London her home.  Over the next hour or so Weseloh and I chat about this continuing search for relevance by beer brands and just how important markets like the UK are to Brooklyn as the brewery continues to increases the impetus behind its export program. We also chat about Brooklyn’s sister breweries, Swedens New Carnigie and Norway’s E. C. Dahl’s as well as the brewery’s relationships with its distributor, Carlsberg and it’s new partner, Kirin.

Welcome back to another episode of the GBH Collective where we bring you the stories behind the stories from our writers and photographers all over the world.   This is our third edition of this format - and if you’re liking it, let us know. The team really enjoys sharing their perspectives, and I can say personally, I’m enjoying hearing more about their adventures.   And of course, this new series of episodes is made possible by our Patreon subscribers. Patron is a way that our readers and listeners can subscribe to GBH with a monthly contribution, just like subscribing to a magazine. We give back to our subscribers, which we call the Fervent few through events, discounts, exclusive gear and art, and a host of other perks. Because tot us, being a Fervent Few member makes you part of the team - and you’ll see that come true when we launch the community section of the website in the next month. So to all those who signed up already, thanks so much - you’re already enjoying the fruits of that subscription.   If you want to join, visit patreon.com/goodbeerhunting, or click on the link on our show notes.   This week we’ve got Matthew Curtis from London talking about stories underway with Wild Beer Co. and Lost & Grounded and others, but also the recent news cycles about BrewDog, which are troubling. And his recent trip to New Zealand.   We’ll also be checking in with Steph Byce based here in Chicago. She’ll be in the studio with her homemade ciders, as she prepares for a Vermont Trip to visit Shacksbury for a grafting workshop. And she’ll share her experience up in Michigan at Dark Horse as well.   An incredibly diverse range of topics from some great storytellers. 

Beer Writer is a term that gets tossed around a lot these days, but it’s used to describe a wide variety of amateurs and professionals alike. Everyone from a personal blogger to a freelancer writing for magazines, to an author with half a dozen books under their belt, to people who cover the business of beer for established outlets like the Tribune or the New York Times. But each of these kinds of beer writers has their own audience and their own angle on the beer world, which of course is also incredibly diverse in terms of the types of beers being made, business models they support, and the markets those brands are active in. Everything is changing all the time.  One of the writers I like the most here in Chicago is Peter Frost who writes for Crain’s, a business focused publication that  has increasingly written about smaller breweries over the years as they collectively started to occupy a sizable portion of the market, which makes them a factor in the lives of investors and entrepreneurs - the heart of a business publication’s audience.  But there’s also clearly a personal interest being expressed by Peter as some of the writing he’s produced around smaller breweries isn’t about the business angle at all — at times it’s been a bit personal and review-like. Something quite uncommon for a publication like Crain’s.  I wanted to sit down with Peter and get the wider view on how he ended up writing about beer for a place like Crain’s and how a reporter like him thinks about the industry at large. But also, what motivates him and his publication to keep doing it at all.  Peter is a beer writer, but also a business and food industry writer. Before that he wrote about healthcare and a host of other things. He’s one more fascinating part of our world.

A few years ago on vacation on Long Island, I stumbled across a few local beers that caught my attention—Toasted Lager and Rastafa Rye were two of them, both beers from Blue Point. After some searching, we found the brewery a road just a short walk from the center of a sleepy town. It was closed that day, so I didn’t get to visit, but the image of that building—a sort of repurposed gas station with an old school dive bar for a tap room—stuck with me.  Shortly after, I started seeing the growth of Toasted Lager as close as Michigan, and the Bluepoint story started to become regional. That little brewery on Long Island had contracted their Lager in upstate New York, like so many growing brands on the east coast. And it was about this time that AB InBev took notice as well, acquiring the brewery in a deal that was largely ignored compared to the uproar that came with some of their other acquisitions. Who was Blue Point? And why did AB want to buy them? Those questions were the common refrain. I’ll admit, other than the regional advantage, it seemed like a curious choice to me at the time, too.  But watching the brand evolve since the acquisition, some themes emerge. The coastal story is more prominent. The connection to the local culinary culture is there. And of course, they had a unique Lager that was already scaling up and reaching new markets. Now? They’re distributing to Chicago for the first time.  In all that change, Blue Point brought on a new brewmaster, a guy who came up through the St. Louis Budweiser brewery, a trained engineer who found his passion for beer. When the opportunity opened up for a role in one of AB's craft breweries, he leapt at the chance.  It’s a career story that can only exist in 2017 with America’s talent pool starting to move back and forth from big and little breweries within the same ownership structure, as each seek out a particular expertise. Whether it be engineering or cultural, both work to define innovation for themselves, and as some talent graduates, along with opportunities for scaling up or down, your focus as a brewer becomes valuable. Interesting times.

Welcome back to another episode of the GBH Collective where we bring you the stories behind the stories from our writers and photographers all over the world.  This is our second edition of this format - and if you’re liking it, let us know. The team really enjoys sharing their perspectives, and I can say personally, I’m enjoying hearing more about their adventures.  And of course, this new series of episodes is made possible by our Patreon subscribers. Patron is a way that our readers and listeners can subscribe to GBH with a monthly contribution, just like subscribing to a magazine. We give back to our subscribers, which we call the Fervent few through events, discounts, exclusive gear and art, and a host of other perks. Because tot us, being a Fervent Few member makes you part of the team - and you’ll see that come true when we launch the community section of the website in the next month. So to all those who signed up already, thanks so much - you’re already enjoying the fruits of that subscription.  If you want to join, visit patreon.com/goodbeerhunting, or click on the link on our show notes.  This week we’ve got our new Australian writer, Luke Robertson who lives in Melbourne. He’ll be sharing his experience of documenting the Mountain Goat story, and talking about some of his upcoming work for GBH.  We’ll also check in with Oliver Gray, one of our newest recruits who recently published a great interview with Chris White from White labs.  And finally, Cory Smith, our storyteller out of Brooklyn talking about his recent travels through Spain and the southwest where he connected with the guys from Arizona Wilderness.  An incredibly diverse range of topics from some great storytellers.