Award-winning interviews with a wide spectrum of people working in, and around, the beer industry. We balance the culture of craft beer with the businesses it supports, and examine the tenacity of its ideals.
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This is GBH Outloud, I'm Ashley Rodriguez. Today you'll hear Jonny Garret reading the very first story he ever wrote for Good Beer Hunting. It's called, "A Homebrewing Festival in the Arctic Circle," published on goodbeerhunting.com on February 28, 2018. This article is part of our GBH in Residence series, where we go beyond the brewery tour and the tasting room, and literally join the crew in their daily grind. For the Residence series, GBH spends a day or two working alongside brewers, ciderma...
Craft beer icon Phil Sexton, co-founder of Matilda Bay, shares his journey from early Australian craft brewing, through creating BridgePort IPA in the US, to founding Little Creatures, and his current focus on wine. He explains why he's re-engaging with Matilda Bay to restore its original craft spirit amidst a changing market, emphasizing financial sustainability and community. Sexton also delves into the cultural shifts, particularly regarding women in beer, that shaped the industry and his hands-on brewing philosophy.
Welcome to the Sightlines podcast from Good Beer Hunting. I'm Jonny Garrett. Yesterday we released a podcast interview with John Timothy, chief executive of the Portman Group, which is an independent regulator for advertising and marketing in the U.K. alcohol industry. If you missed it, we recommend giving that a listen before today's episode, where we're going to see how the regulatory system the Portman Group has put in place works in the real world. According to my first guest, it doesn't wor...
Welcome to the Sightlines podcast from Good Beer Hunting. I'm Jonny Garrett. If you're a beer drinker in the U.K., you've probably heard of the Portman Group: it's the independent regulator for advertising and marketing in the U.K. alcohol industry. But if that sounds a little dry, you could also refer to it as the "pantomime villain" of the industry. Funded by eight multinational drinks companies, including Heineken and Diageo, it produces an annual code of conduct through wide consultation wit...
Welcome to the third episode of Into the Wild: part of our six-city tour across the U.S. with New Belgium this year. I'm Ashley Rodriguez, and together with GBH's creative director Michael Kiser, we headed to the city of Raleigh, North Carolina for three days of great food, fantastic drinks, and unique events celebrating the specialness of sour and wild beers.
London is blessed with hundreds of great pubs. But for me one stands tall above the rest: a beacon of everything that is great about this British institution. It also happens to be my local. The Southampton Arms in Kentish Town, North London feels like it's been there forever—it's all worn wood, rickety chairs, stained walls, and sepia photos. It breaks all the perceived rules of running a pub. Up until last year it had 12 cask lines, six cider lines, and just two keg lines. It didn't take cash ...
A year ago we launched a series of stories underwritten by Guinness called Mother of Invention . The beer industry is often spurred on by the need to meet new necessity with invention. This leads to all sorts of unique evolutionary paths in the history of beer, from making to selling to drinking. These articles explore the innovations, big and small, old and new, that have transformed the beer in your hand in surprising ways. One of my favorites from this series—" A Fire Being Kindled — The Revo...
When you're a brewery that's built on a very specific intent—the way you look, the beers you make, the kind of hospitality you provide—there's a significant amount of behind-the-scenes work that's needed to bring those elements to life. And when you're regarded as one of the best in your domain, that creates an interesting tension: what does improvement mean, when you're already, in some ways, at the top? In this episode, we're posing this philosophical question (and others) to Dustin Sepkowski,...
Welcome to the Good Beer Hunting Collective podcast, the show where members of our team interview each other to get the behind-the-scenes look at some of our favorite articles. I'm Claire Bullen, and I'm the Editor-in-Chief at Good Beer Hunting. One of the greatest pleasures of my job is fielding pitches that our writers send in, which range from the bold to the brilliant to the baffling. Recently, GBH staff writer Jonny Garrett sent in an idea that was a mix of all three; as soon as it came int...
When we think of beer from north of the American border, classic names like Molson or Labatt may easily come to mind. But as in the U.S., there has been a long shift taking place in the Canadian beer scene. Even though the entire country has roughly the same number of breweries as the state of California, there's a burgeoning community driving an industry to crank out new flavors and styles inspired by what's taken place in the U.S. In today's episode we're talking with someone who's watched thi...
If you're a regular Sightlines reader, you may have come across a story we published on Nov. 1 called " A Show of Hands – Breweries Take Political and Business Risks Mixing Beer and Social Stances ." The idea behind that piece was to give context around the space where political opinion and the beer business collide, all while poking at the question, as it relates to breweries engaging with drinkers: "Is taking action inevitable?" As part of reporting for that story, David Faris, an associate pr...
The is GBH Out Loud, and I'm Ashley Rodriguez. Today, you'll hear Mark Spence read the second entry of his blog, Beer is Offal, called "Load of Baloney," published on Good Beer Hunting on September 27, 2019. In this article, Mark extols the virtues of an unlikely hero: baloney. Before he starts, he tells us all about his rituals surrounding the lunch meat—the exact way he likes to eat it, and the perfect ingredients for a baloney sandwich. As is the case with all of Mark's stories, we learn that...
There are so many ways you can engage with the beer world on a professional level—but few are more ambitious that attempting to become a Master Cicerone. The term "Cicerone" is still a relatively new concept in the beverage world—but you've probably heard of a Master Sommelier in the wine industry. It's not exactly the same thing—for example, the Cicerone exam focuses significantly on troubleshooting draft technology—but they're similar in that both require an intense knowledge base (both histor...
There's always more to every story you read. As a writer, I'm perpetually intrigued by the choices other writers make—what to include, what to cut—and I'm especially interested in people who are super clear about who their work is for. Part of that is selfish: I host a podcast, called Boss Barista, that I describe as a feminist coffee podcast—I like to let people know what they're in for from the get-go, and that they're probably not going to hear light coffee chatter. And for the first time eve...
Today's guest is one of the most unassuming brewery owners in Chicago: Mark Legenza of On Tour Brewing Company. On Tour is located in the brewery district that's popped up around Goose Island's Fulton Street production facility. The area is now home to half-a-dozen breweries and as many coffee roasters, and it's where the GBH Studio is located, too. So why is it that he hasn't been on the GBH Podcast before? Well, it's definitely my fault. It's one of those situations when familiarity creates a ...
Today I'm going to catch up with our Sightlines editor and lead contributor, Bryan Roth. It's been a busy couple of years for Bryan, but this past week's range of stories is evidence of all the ways Sightlines has become essential reading for our audiences. From proactive analysis of the Denver scene as Colorado retail laws shift to digging into the closure of Lagunitas' Community Room in Portland to keeping up with the shifting responses to the Founders racial discrimination case, and sensitive...
What happens to a brewery when a game-changing opportunity comes along? There have been 11 buyouts of American breweries by Anheuser-Busch InBev since 2011, and in this episode, we're getting some insight from one of them. Roseland, Virginia's Devils Backbone Brewing Company was brought into the AB InBev network—now known as the Brewer's Collective—in 2016. At the time it was producing 65,000 barrels per year, and grew to about 80,000 in 2018. When it was acquired, Devils Backbone was known for ...
If you're part of the beer world, you've probably heard folklore about our Founding Fathers—the men who signed the Constitution, the first American presidents—brewing their own beer. That's an appealing story, a fun tidbit you might tell a friend when they ask you about your own brewing adventures. And yet, how critically have we regarded this story? Think about the timeframe folks like George Washington or Thomas Jefferson were operating in. Both men, the first and third presidents of the Unite...
Welcome to the Good Beer Hunting Podcast. I'm Ashley Rodriguez. I remember the very first time I went to Temescal Brewing in Oakland, California. I had been watching the buildout for months, waiting in anticipation. You could step outside of my apartment building and see it from the corner. So when they finally opened, I was excited—and pleasantly surprised by the number of crushable, low-ABV beers they offered from the get-go. I was immediately on board. My relationship with Temescal Brewing is...
Welcome to the Good Beer Hunting Collective podcast, the show where members of our team interview each other to get a behind-the-scenes look at our favorite articles. I'm Jonny Garrett, and I'm a staff writer and podcaster here at Good Beer Hunting. In our Mother of Invention series with Guinness, we've been looking at the great innovations in beer—ideas that have changed or could change the course of the industry. In the context of brewing, invention can mean a lot of different things. Usually ...
I remember the first London Craft Beer Festival like it was yesterday. It was actually six years ago, but I distinctly recall the excited atmosphere, revelatory flavor of Pressure Drop's new foraged Hefeweizen, and the look on my friend's face as he tried his first Saison. It's easy to recall because it felt like the start of something—not just for the festival itself, but the beer industry. It was just one small room, a few hundred people, and a handful of volunteers, but many of the young brew...
This is GBH Out Loud, a new series where we invite authors and staff members to read their favorite articles out loud, and provide tidbits and secret stories about the work that went into producing them. I'm Ashley Rodriguez. Today you'll hear Mark Spence read the first entry in his new blog, Beer is Offal called, "Fuck it, Let's Go," published on Good Beer Hunting on September 13, 2019. Beer is Offal is a food blog—treating life like four burners and a hot oven. And it goes beyond just talking ...
Take it from me: Journalism, as a career, is a difficult one to hold in 2019's socio, political, and economic climate. For some though, like today's guest, LA-area writer and editor Sarah Bennett, it's way more than a job. It's how to support her community and the underrepresented voices within it. It's a way to elevate those who really keep Los Angeles great. Sarah was formerly a beer and arts contributor to LA Weekly, the premiere Southern California alt weekly publication. But that was before...
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 ...
Hard seltzer aside, conversations around the alcohol industry still tend to circle the trio of beer, wine, and spirits. Flavored malt beverages, like those seltzers, have recently entered our lexicon, but what about cider? It feels like discussions about cider as the next big step in booze happened far in the past—it might only have been a few years ago, but that timeframe can feel far extended in beer years. While major cider labels like Angry Orchard, Crispin, Woodchuck, and others have slowly...
For this Collective episode, I'm talking to writer Evan Rail. Evan is based in Prague, and has become more active with Good Beer Hunting as we increasingly look beyond the U.S. beer market and bring you stories from around the world. Evan has a unique perspective, having grown up in Fresno, California, and later relocated to the Czech Republic. For us he's an essential voice: both because he has an endless curiosity about European beer history, but also because his work ethic motivates him beyon...
What does beer have to do with politics? It's a simple enough question. And some would argue that beer has nothing to do with politics—the two should remain totally separate. Here at Good Beer Hunting, that idea has never really sat well with us. So instead of staying away from politics, we invited it in. After a particularly low day—the 2016 election, GBH founder Michael Kiser was talking to his neighbor, David Faris. David lived just above the GBH studios, then in Logan Square in Chicago, and ...
Today's episode is a bit of an ensemble cast. With the limited time I had in Austin, Texas, I wanted to get some quick and clear perspective on the city's scene, both past and present. To that end, I collected a few fast friends along the way, and gathered them all at Pinthouse Pizza, one of the city's more contemporary craft brewers. A recent legislative session saw some massive changes to Texas' beer laws make it through intact, much to the shock of some Guild members and beer fans. With a cou...
I live in Chicago, and there's this liquor—maybe some of you have heard of it—called Malort, which is made from wormwood. If you ask anyone in Chicago what their local spirit is, they'd point to Malort, perhaps tricking their own of town friends to take a straight shot of it when they come to visit the city. And everyone knows how hard it is to drink Malort. Even the founder, Carl Jeppson, was known to be quoted saying, "'My Malort is produced for that unique group of drinkers who disdain light ...
Today's guest was a must-see during our time in Austin, Texas. Josh Hare is the lone founder of Hops and Grain Brewing. He's an avid cyclist, and a massive Lager advocate. He's long been one of those Twitter handles that I was attracted to—his rational, skeptical voice stands out within an industry that can sometimes be an irrational, cynical place. He's a breath of fresh air. And back in 2017, he became a member of our subscriber community, The Fervent Few. In fact, he was the very first pro-ti...
