In today's episode I'm talking to James Calder, Chief Executive of the UK's Society of Independent Brewers. SIBA, as it's more commonly known, plays a similar role to the American Brewer's Association, representing the interests of around 800 small British brewers who vote on how the organisation supports the industry and lobbies the government at its annual conference and trade show, BeerX. Founded in 1980, its greatest victory came in 2002, when alongside CAMRA it successfully campaigned for t...
Feb 27, 2021•1 hr 3 min
This week's guest is a duo from Chicago who this past year, despite a pandemic, launched one of the city's most exciting Mexican-inspired brewery concepts: Casa Humilde Cervenceria. Chicago is perhaps uniquely focused on Mexican culture when it comes to beer. We're the city that launched 5 Rabbit Cerveceria—the first Latin-inspired craft brewery in the U.S. who despite many early, and seemingly ongoing challenges, is still in operation on the far Southwest side. Cruz Blanca, a brewpub on Randolp...
Feb 20, 2021•1 hr
Stephanie Grant has an infectious positivity. You can't help but enjoy watching her cook amazing meals on her Instagram stories; or celebrating Black women in beer in her newsletter, The Share; or scrolling through her vibrant photographs. Her projects and pursuits all seem to radiate joy. But Stephanie's not afraid of getting real—far from it. In her latest story for Good Beer Hunting titled "Beyond the Beer — Colorism, Black Pride, and the Black Is Beautiful Initiative", which was published on...
Feb 17, 2021•38 min
This week's guest invented one of the most impactful things in American beer history —but it's not a beer style, or a recipe, or a festival, or a piece of equipment—it's an app. Untappd grew from a side project for Greg Avola and his partner Tim Mather—one that they moonlighted for on weekends—to a leading social experience for beer geeks in a very short amount of time. Basically you try a beer, you log the experience, and it keeps track of your history. You can share that experience with others...
Feb 13, 2021•1 hr 6 min
Kristen Foster has been a part of Good Beer Hunting's Fervent Few community, as well as a contributor, since 2017. Since then, she's written a number of pieces and published a lot of great photographs — especially her poignant and candid photos of people in and around beer. Some of her recent Signifiers for Good Beer Hunting about Athletic Brewing Company and Notch Brewing also manage to capture that same candid honesty from people who've built two very different breweries. Athletic's approach t...
Feb 10, 2021•29 min
Depending on who you are and your connection to alcohol and storytelling, this interview can be different things to different people. It's about a book, which is about bourbon (sort of), but also family and marketing and trying to find things that feel real. If you're a beer enthusiast, you may connect with stories of people geeking out on bourbon and the niche communities that exist. If you work in beverage alcohol, there may be ideas of storytelling and branding that sound familiar. Or maybe y...
Feb 06, 2021•50 min
As someone who was born in the '80s and thus is not a digital native, I've enjoyed making Internet friends since my parents first got a computer when I was in the fifth or sixth grade. I've spent countless hours in dial-up chat rooms, writing bad poetry on LiveJournal, carefully crafting my away messages on AOL Instant Messenger, and eventually networking on Twitter and Facebook, connecting with people from all over the world. When I first "met" Ruvani de Silva in 2019, it was online. In fact, d...
Feb 03, 2021•33 min
The word "community" is often overused in our industry. There's our local community, the communities we've created around ourselves on our favorite social media platforms, or the craft beer community as a whole. But, these days, the more I hear the word, the less meaning I find in it. Are we actually choosing to connect, or do we simply happen to be in the same place at the same time? Lucy Do found herself asking that same question earlier this year. The purpose of Lucy's business is—in her own ...
Jan 30, 2021•46 min
In this episode, I'm chatting with Will Hawkes, a London-based journalist who's been writing about beer since 2010. Over the past decade, Will has regularly contributed to publications like The Washington Post and The Daily Telegraph , but it was only last year when he wrote his first piece for Good Beer Hunting. Part of our Mother of Invention series, made in partnership with Guinness, " On the Wagon — The Innovations Behind the Non-Alcoholic Renaissance in British Brewing ," was published on o...
Jan 28, 2021•32 min
Have we said "pivot" enough lately? What about "omnichannel," or "innovation"? These words were all thrown around with abandon in 2020, as COVID-19 changed the way we interacted with and bought beer, and dramatically impacted how our favorite breweries did business. In this conversation, we're talking with Kelly Moritz about how Minnesota's Indeed Brewing Company has done some version of all these things, and how it impacted her as she stepped into the role of chief operating officer amidst the ...
Jan 23, 2021•1 hr 5 min
As a person who makes audio, I'm fascinated by the work that goes on behind the scenes. How does an interviewer ask questions? How do two people find a flow, establish trust, and ultimately uncover special moments and stories that might otherwise never get shared? For me, doing audio work means leaning into my deeply curious side, and that's what's reflected in my interview with Natalya Watson. Natalya is a new addition to the GBH podcast team—she interviewed Miranda Hudson and Derek Bates from ...
Jan 22, 2021•37 min
This is Beth Demmon, and you're listening to the Good Beer Hunting podcast. At the end of every year, it's common for publications to put together roundups of notable people who've made their mark: who you should read, who you should listen to, who you should follow on social media, and so on. And every year, while those mentioned absolutely merit recognition for their work, some people also deserving of attention inevitably get missed. Any list covering the craft beer industry that doesn't incl...
Jan 16, 2021•48 min
Over the past year, Good Beer Hunting has maintained an ongoing, weekly newsletter and expert community under our Sightlines Premium banner. As an extension of our newsy Sightlines coverage—anchored by Kate Bernot and myself, Bryan Roth—the goal of Sightlines Premium is to combine objective data and real-world anecdotes to help industry pros from across beer and beverage alcohol make informed decisions about managing a portfolio, how and where they should focus their access to market, and more. ...
Jan 14, 2021•54 min
What does it mean to be an outlier? Who are the people in beer taking small steps and hoping to make big changes? We're excited and thrilled to announce the relaunch of the AltBrau Podcast, now part of the Good Beer Hunting network of shows. AltBrau is a show that explores the outliers in the world of beer. Join host and GBH contributor Tim Decker, a homebrewer and wild ale collaborator, as he talks with folks from various backgrounds who look at the food and beverage industry through a unique s...
Jan 09, 2021•56 min
Some of my favorite stories start small. Usually with a question, perhaps something you ponder passively before it takes you down a rabbit hole full of wild twists and turns, unexpected stories and delights. David Neimanis had just such an inkling. He's a food and beverage writer, and wanted to know more about the surprising comeback of amaro, or bitter Italian liqueur, which, for decades, had fallen out of favor. Most of our parents probably didn't drink amaro, but our grandparents might well h...
Jan 08, 2021•28 min
You've probably read some version of this article or headline over the past several months: "Here's a lesson we learned during the 1918 flu that we can apply to the current coronavirus pandemic!" It makes sense that we want to look to history for answers to present-day problems—"history repeats itself" is an old chestnut for a reason. But for some, the inclination to look backwards extends well beyond the 20th century. Courtney Iseman is a self-described history nerd, and noticed not just simila...
Dec 31, 2020•33 min
News flash: 2020 has been a tough one. And yet despite the intense challenges, this year has seen several positive developments, even—and maybe especially—in the world of beer. For example, a couple of truly great books on brewing came out in 2020. The beer world has, slowly but surely, continued to address issues of equity, fairness, and representation. And, on a more personal note, quality Lager has continued its renaissance, despite the crucial issues of the past 11 months. Andreas Krennmair ...
Dec 26, 2020•55 min
COVID-19 has changed a lot in our lives, including when and how we choose to consume alcohol. But there continue to be misconceptions about our beer-buying habits this year—and the beer styles that we've been gravitating to. Low-alcohol beer has been a hot topic recently, but does the narrative around those products—one of crescendoing interest and growth—translate to reality? Over the last couple years on Good Beer Hunting, we've explored how sales have changed for higher-ABV beers, too, and in...
Dec 23, 2020•47 min
In this series of the GBH podcast, we ask members of our team to enter the realm of audio storytelling. Most of us are familiar with the phrase, "A picture is worth a thousand words," right? But now, we're challenging our contributors to actually write down those words, and to create pictures of the world around them as told in their own voices. With that in mind, you're about to hear different stories read aloud by members of our editorial team. Think of each brief narrative as a snapshot of a ...
Dec 19, 2020•30 min
Welcome to the Sightlines podcast. I'm Jonny Garrett. On July 21, barely three weeks after the U.K.'s hospitality industry and pubs came out of lockdown, the government announced it would be raising the amount of alcohol tax paid by small breweries. The backlash was immediate and furious, but it wasn't only against the government. The anger was also aimed at a group of larger breweries that had campaigned for the tax rise. Let that sink in for a moment: A group of businesses successfully campaig...
Dec 17, 2020•39 min
This week's guest is a long-time industry friend of mine from back when he and I worked tougher to help launch Stony Creek Brewery in Branford, Connecticut. He had just left his sales gig at Blue Point Brewing, and I was only a couple of years into launching Good Beer Hunting's studio and strategy practice. With his energy and insight, we became fast friends. Jamal Robinson is the sales director for a fast-growing powerhouse called New England Brewing Co. , or NEBCO as you'll hear him call it. A...
Dec 12, 2020•58 min
We hear it all the time: Craft beer is a "community" where folks can come together to socialize, grab a beer, and let loose. But what happens when that "community" isn't as inclusive as it sounds—and when you're stuck watching the industry you love tout its openness while you encounter barrier after barrier to entry? Holly Regan is a longtime writer, and in their first story for Good Beer Hunting—a critical, two-part piece called " All In the (Chosen) Family "—they ask the question: "Why are que...
Dec 10, 2020•44 min
Julia Herz has been a notable figure in craft beer for nearly two decades. Much of that time was spent as the face of the Craft Beer Program at the Brewers Association. Her diminutive stature contrasts with her comparatively monumental influence in the industry: in that role, she was a familiar face at beer festivals and conferences like the Craft Brewers Conference and BeerNow Conference; she helped helm online publications like CraftBeer.com; and even wrote a 2015 book with Gwen Conley titled ...
Dec 05, 2020•46 min
Who are you without work? If you went to a party and introduced yourself to someone new, what would you talk about if you couldn't ask them about their job? Work is a tricky subject. We find so much validation in—and center so much of our identities around—the jobs we hold, but what happens when those jobs go away? Good Beer Hunting staff writer Beth Demmon explored this question and more in her latest piece, "Work, Worth, and Wreckage — When Your Job Is Your Life, What Happens When You Lose It?...
Dec 03, 2020•37 min
I'm not making a radical statement here, as we enter the final weeks of 2020, when I say it's been hard . Both for individuals and as a collective society. January always offers hopeful promises of new experiences and excitement, but by February of this year, things had already gone downhill thanks to COVID-19's ill-fated arrival. That was before Americans had also rightfully turned their attention toward issues of social injustice this summer. Time and time again, these themes and topics are ad...
Nov 28, 2020•1 hr 2 min
Our Beer and a Shot series, made in partnership with Miller High Life, asks our contributors to get to know a city. Each piece brings together a bartender and a spirit to tell the story of a particular locale—and uses the relationship between the two to characterize residents' unique drinking styles and preferences. As a result, the reader gets to see into the heart of a place through an intimate lens—and discover a perspective that's otherwise the province of locals and longtime residents. Free...
Nov 25, 2020•27 min
I've known one of today's guests for a good few years. Susanna Forbes and I first met as drinks journalists at countless events around London. Back then, she was known as one of the hardest-working journalists out there, with plenty of awards and respect as evidence. So I had no idea that all along she had been planning to give up journalism for good. In this episode you'll hear the full story of how she and husband James upped sticks and moved to Hereford in pursuit of their passion—cider makin...
Nov 21, 2020•49 min
It's hard to tell a story about yourself. And yet, I find I'm most moved by personal narratives—articles that provide a sneak peek into the life of the author. That's one of the things I loved about Samer Khudairi's first long-form piece for Good Beer Hunting. It's called, "(Un)Holy Water — The Middle Eastern Voices Shaping the Global Beer Narrative," and was published on November 12, 2020. I saw an early draft of this piece, weeks ago, when Samer had just turned it in. It was distinctly differe...
Nov 19, 2020•35 min
Today's conversation is another one of those times when I feel profoundly grateful that I get to close the loop with someone that takes me back ten years or more—to when a seed got planted, or a relationship got established, and a decade later we're able to look back and connect the dots on a story that would have been impossible to imagine playing out the way it did. It's a reminder for me that I get every so often of the importance of doing good, human, connective things with our work even, an...
Nov 14, 2020•1 hr 11 min
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 some of our favorite articles. I'm Claire Bullen, editor-in-chief here at Good Beer Hunting. I spent the early days of this year's lockdown subscribing to a flurry of new and thrilling food-and drink newsletters, from Jonathan Nunn's Vittles and Dave Infante's Fingers to Rachel Hendry's J'adore Le Plonk and Katie Mather's The Gulp . My inbox has been ful...
Nov 12, 2020•34 min
