Good Beer Hunting

The landscape of the British beer industry has seen a seismic shift over the last few years as the influence of American craft beer culture has become ever more pervasive. But what we’re seeing now is breweries that were influenced by U.S. beer culture when they were young are now shaping this to form their own ideal. A new, brighter, and more energetic British beer community.  One of these breweries is Beavertown, of Tottenham, North London, which was founded by Logan Plant—son of none other than Led Zeppelin frontman Robert—in 2012. After finding inspiration in the beer and food culture he discovered in Brooklyn, Plant returned to London and opened a restaurant called Duke’s Brew and Que in a little pocket of East London called De Beauvoir town—"Beavertown" to the locals. In less than four years, Plant has gone from brewing by himself on a six-barrel kit in the kitchen of his restaurant, to employing a 40-strong team at a state of the art 30-barrel facility. In part, this has been thanks to the great beer his brewery produces, but much of Beavertown’s success is also due to the strength of its brand and its great design. Creative director Nick Dwyer joined Beavertown part time shortly after they opened, even pulling a few shifts at Duke’s Brew and Que while the brewery got on its feet. His unique design work, featuring signature skulls and spacemen, has rapidly ensured that Beavertown has become one of the most instantly recognizable beer brands in the UK. And the brewery is already gaining traction in the U.S.—they were the only UK brewery invited to pour at the Firestone Walker invitational last month. Nick’s story of how he accidentally found his way into the beer industry after graduating from art school is a fascinating one. Working in beer might never have been his intention, but now, through his artwork, he’s helping to drive and inspire the UK’s new breed of craft brewers.

One of the amazing things about the beer industry diversifying like it has is that there are so many unique roles that simply didn’t exist before. And today’s guest has one of them.  Dave Kahle, one of the rare Master Cicerones in the world is a specialist at Breakthru Beverage, formerly Wirtz beverage, in Chicago. A few years back, they decided to branch out from wine and spirits, and take on a role as a craft beer distributor. To do that, they knew their sales force needed a serious education, and when they went looking for someone to lead that effort, Dave answered the call.  He works on the sales side, but his primary role is helping his salesforce understand the ingredients, processes, and context of beer. He does this in a variety of ways, both big and small, which you’ll hear about.  But he’s also one of the first people you’ll meet at Breakthru if you’re a new brewery looking for a distribution partner. And that’s where Dave puts both his palate and his former life as the owner of a popular bar to work. He has a broad vision, and deep skepticism of many things he sees in the beer industry today. And he tries his best to put that to work to benefit the many partners he interacts with.  I like to remind listeners that when you’re talking to someone from the distribution tier, they often can seem a bit vague sometimes — there’s good reason for that. They answer to many different people. And it’s not easy for them to keep everyone happy when there’s so many perspectives at work in the industry. So don’t be too hard on him — rather, try to glean something from the insights he’s so generously laying out there for us. There’s plenty to go around.

For anyone who’s been following GBH since the very beginning, today’s guest will seem like a blast from the past. One of the first interviews I ever transcribe wasn’t with a beer guysat all — it was with the owner of a wine shop.  Perman Wine Selections in Chicago’s West Loop is one of the city’s gems. It’s an unassuming storefront with a well-edited selection. But the real story of the place and its impact on Chicago food and beverage is its owner, Craig Perman. He conducts a lot of his business over email, through his newsletter, and he travels the world looking for niche producers that he can bring in to the US, and sometimes only to his own store as an exclusive retailer. He works with many Chicago restaurants to build their lists and supply great wines. And he’s long been an interesting follow for me given his proclivity for the written word. His newsletters are fantastic. So he’s in a bit of a hustle, like so many of us who work in the beverage industry, piecing together his skills in a variety of ways.  But the real reason I like following Craig, and occasionally picking his brain, is because so much of what’s happening for wine geeks right now indicates a possible future for some of the country’s best beer makers. Resources, agriculture, fermentation, and limited intervention (essentially wild wines). But also market factors like pricing, distribution, and trends. There’s a lot more I want to get in to with Craig, and I’ll likely have to have him back again soon to do it. But this chat got us off to a great start.

Sometimes it feels like every small craft brewery is in constant expansion—and the numbers back up that general sentiment. More capacity, bigger brewhouses, contracting out, and bringing canning lines in—there’s an endless number of dependencies when you’re building out an expanded space in the hopes of meeting demand or chasing a growing market. And on the surface, these expansions seem obvious, almost simple. Afterthoughts in a market where success still seems inevitable for many.  But behind those expansions are a thousand tiny decisions, and a few really big ones, that add up to hope and anxiety, victories and defeats, self-doubt and over-confidence. But somehow, through all those ups and downs that any small business owner is all too familiar with, you have to have the unwavering faith that it’ll all work out.  Today’s guest is John Barley of Solemn Oath. I was there when they first fired up the brewhouse in 2012. I’ve been there alongside their many phases of growth over the subsequent few years. And today, I want to bring you a story about the project that pushed them, the entire team really, to their limits. Over the past year, they’ve replaced the brewhouse, their cold storage, brought in a canning line, and even mundane things like the boiler, condenser, all the behind-the-scenes infrastructure that makes the expansion possible—an expansion that, for a while, looked like it might be too much.  But here he is, on the other side. Not unscathed, but perhaps appropriately scathed. And better off for it.

We’re 84 episodes in, and that means that some of the breweries we profiled when we first started this thing are a year or two old by now. And that’s a year or two of hindsight and lessons learned that anyone in the industry would benefit from.  Why kind of problems has a two-year-old brewery had to solve? What kind of assumptions did they make that were completely off-base? And how did they adapt to the always-evolving nature of the market for beer? Today, I’m going to bring you the perspective of Gary Gulley of Alarmist Brewing in Chicago [from Episode 35]. It’s a small operation that hasn’t found its stride yet, though they’ve certainly found a way to solve some unique problems.  And despite the hardships of running your own start-up manufacturing business, all the stress and long-term doubts and insane cash flow issues, the effect it can have on an individual and their family is still a net positive. The power of entrepreneurialism lies in that counterintuitive result—with all the incredible burden you take on, you also gain all that reward.

Hosted by our London Contributor, Matthew Curtis—For my first episode, I invited one of my best friends in the UK beer industry up to my apartment, here in North London, to record an interview. These days, Chris Hall works for a cool little brewery in South London called Brew By Numbers as their sales and media guy. I’ll be bringing the full story of Brew by Numbers to GBH soon, but before then I wanted to talk to Chris about how he worked his way into the beer industry   His job encompasses everything from running the brewery’s Twitter account to writing artful blog posts about forthcoming beer releases as well as developing and hosting events. On top of this he’ll often be out visiting accounts and selling beer, and on really busy days you might even see him on the back of a forklift truck moving pallets around the warehouse. Such is the way of a small business.   But Chris’ journey into the brewing industry was an unconventional one. Like me, he started out as a beer blogger, which is how we met and became friends. From there he became a professional beer writer, which eventually led to his position at Brew By Numbers. This is something we’re seeing more and more of in the beer industry, people starting out as enthusiasts who are eventually turning pro. And like Chris, they’re not just succeeding—they're thriving.

So I’m just going to start by saying this might have been my favorite interview ever. Maybe it’s the Pennsylvania connection, or maybe it’s just Bill’s way of giving zero fucks while also being a strong competitor in the market, or maybe it’s just the lame-duck ease with which he’s handling himself after the sale and partnership with a private equity group and Southern Tier Brewing, but yeah, I think this is the one. It summarizes everything I love about doing the podcast. People sit in that chair across from me, either ready to do battle, or ready to dance, and I have the utmost appreciation for how open they are about their lives and business with me for an hour. And then letting me share it with you all.  I’ve said many times that this podcast isn’t an issues-driven show — and by that I mean that I’m not looking for a hot take or new trend thinkpiece fart, or recent acquisition gossip. I’m trying to document an oral history for an industry that’s changing faster than I could possibly record. It’s guaranteed to fail in the sense that I’ll always miss more opportunities than I get. But if I thought about that, I’d probably have a panic attack. Instead, I just get what I can and hope for the best.  Bill was in town for an event at the Hopleaf alongside Sam Calagione of Dogfishead and Greg Koch of Stone Brewing when this recording took place. And while I was about to hit the road, the only timeslot I had was late on a Sunday night after putting the kids to bed and Bill was happy to oblige. I’m thankful for that.  Victory Brewing, man, I don’t think there’s a brewery that better defines that first wave resilience of craft beer, but still adapts and riffs on its own success to remain relevant and pioneering here in 2016.  And I think you’l understand why after hearing this conversation.

Today’s guest is one of those chance encounters in the beer world where an online voice becomes a smile and and a handshake in person.  Andrew Nations of Great Raft Brewing in Shreveport, Louisiana is a guy on Twitter to some. One of those lone rational voices in a literal wilderness of craft beer zealously run amok.  And not long ago, he ventured to Chicago, and subsequently to the GBH Studio for a live podcast taping. That’s when he and his wife stepped out of the virtual and into the physical realm for me. And we had a great time.  A few months later, and a dozen or so DMs, we realized we’d both be hanging out at the Craft Brewers Conference this year. I was keen to hear a lot more detail on Andrew’s backstory, the beers he was making, and certainly about his market, which I know almost nothing about. The south is a weird place for craft beer in terms of sales, legal issues, and styles. And this was a great opportunity to dig in to the details with a guy who seems to have his head wrapped around it all.  He also brought a case of Prima Pils for no reason other than Pennsylvania won’t let you buy beer in more convenient ways.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American transcendentalist, has an interesting way of describing what progress looks like — he paints a picture of a boat, tacking back and forth with the wind, as it makes its way across the ocean. From a distance, it appears to go in a straight arching line towards its pre-determined destination. But of course, up close, it’s a thousand little zigs and zags, working with the momentum of the wind in order to propel itself forward. The final destination may be determined — but it’s place on the horizon is only ever approximate until those final moments when it comes closer and closer upon hitting the far shore.  For me, this is the metaphor of the emergent business strategy. And for today’s small brewers, it represents a way to plot a vision for the future, while also admitting that the prevailing winds of change will be something you have to grapple with, as elegantly as possible, on your way across the sea.  And he summarizes all this, all these little decisions that composite big decisions by saying,  “The force of character is cumulative.” Today’s guests are a pair that have done a good job of doing just that. Eric Hobbs and Tom Korder of Penrose Brewing Company in Geneva, Illinois, about an hour west of the city of Chicago along the metro train line, set out on the Belgian-inspired journey that began in their days together at Anheuser-Busch and Goose Island, and went forward into a future all their own.  They learned some lessons early on that they adapted to quickly and with grace. Such as hitting the market early with a Belgian single and hearing “where’s your IPA” a hundred times a week. And running a bottling line for the first time, and having some yeast management issues. And hosting bottle releases for their sours, and realizing just how intense that kind of crowd can be when they don’t get what they want, how they want it.  Through all of this — these two have tacked back and forth on their way to the brewery they always imagined. And in my opinion, they’re loosening up the sails, and picking up speed.

Welcome to the second GBHypecast, an episode devoted to helping a brewery share an important story that deserves to be told. This episode is about Goose Island’s ongoing research into the off flavors in Bourbon County Stout this year, something that’s been on a lot of people’s minds since January. It’s an ongoing situation, but the good news is that the science is in—and there’s a lot of detailed insight to share.  Sometimes when we’re working with our clients in a creative or strategic capacity, we have access to situations that no journalist ever would. For example, we creative directed the Goose Island BCS documentary, Grit & Grain, this year, which brings this issue a little close to our hearts. And when we witness something that we think is unique or unprecedented in our work, we often encourage our clients to consider sharing a story that, on its face, doesn’t seem like something a brewery would typically share. Maybe it’s complicated, or really far off in the weeds and hard to articulate, or maybe the media tends to chew things up and spit out clickbait headlines at a business’ expense. So many of those stories, regardless of how badly our audience would want to hear them, or how important they might be for others in the industry to hear, never see the light of day. And that’s just not good enough for me. So we conceived of GBHype as a way to solve that problem. We work with the brewery to outline what we think is the real story, figure out what a real beer audience wants and should understand, and then help them bring it to life in a post on GBHype, or here—a special GBHypecast. It’s a way of creating unprecedented transparency between a brewery and its fans. And we’re proud to offer our platform and expertise to serve that need.  GBHype is not unbiased. Like I said, these are our clients. I care deeply about their business, and I work with them in a strategic and creative capacity from time to time. Having said that, this interview is unscripted. My only goal is to get an important story straight and into the hands of the GBH audience as directly and truthfully as possible.