Back in the summer of 2018, Good Beer Hunting readers were introduced to a name that stuck with me for years: David Jernigan. He's one of the country's leading researchers in the area of alcohol use and policy and at the time, was acting as an expert for a government task force in Maryland looking at potential alcohol reforms. In reporting for Sightlines, his name was mentioned by sources who also said words like "prohibition" or "temperance." That connection will make better sense to you after ...
Nov 18, 2021•31 min
Buzzwords like "craft," "ethical," and "sustainable" seem to be everywhere in hospitality. But do those terms actually mean anything, and if so, how do they relate to the most important resource of all: people? Burum Collective founder and writer Helen Anne Smith explores this strange and sometimes intentionally dissonant question in their first piece for Good Beer Hunting, titled "Last Call — The Human Sustainability Crisis at the Heart of the Hospitality Industry," which was published on Septe...
Nov 17, 2021•35 min
In this episode we're going to chat about the present and look back in time. You're going to get to meet Cortni McKenzie, an aspiring beverage alcohol professional who got a taste of what it'll take to excel in the industry this past summer and continues to put in the work to establish herself this fall and beyond. Earlier this year, Cortni was part of the Many Faces Initiative, a North Carolina-based internship program that provided mentorship and immersive training for people of color interest...
Nov 06, 2021•40 min
Earlier this year, I had the honor of moderating "The Art of Storytelling: Highlighting Important Stories" at Crafted for Action, a four-day, hybrid conference for craft beer lovers. One of the members of the panel was Aaron Hosé, an Aruban-born filmmaker who has been working in the biz for over 20 years. Though the panel was virtual, I had a chance to meet some of the speakers in person at the opening event here in Atlanta. That's where I met Aaron Hosé. He was actually the first person I ran i...
Nov 02, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Over the past several months, Good Beer Hunting reporter Kate Bernot has been at the forefront of covering allegations of sexual harassment, bullying, and unsafe working conditions at Mikkeller, a Denmark-based brewery with bars and brewpubs all over the world, including a prominent location in San Diego. Kate's coverage has included stories on protests at the brewery's Copenhagen headquarters and stories from former employees who alleged instances of inappropriate workplace behavior and silence...
Nov 01, 2021•29 min
There are a lot of parallels between good music and good beer, from the similarly creative processes of conceptualizing new beers and writing new songs to the way independent makers are fighting for their place at the table in two industries that are dominated by massive corporations. Beer media and music publications have a lot in common, too. Although I mostly write about food and drink nowadays, I got my start by writing music reviews for the San Francisco Bay Guardian while playing guitar in...
Oct 23, 2021•45 min
There are more than half a million bartenders working in the United States, although it's a pretty safe bet that those numbers have changed in COVID's wake. Still, that's a heck of a lot of people mixing cocktails, pouring beers, and popping bottles for guests, all while also acting as therapists, entertainers, and occasionally bouncers for the mere privilege of serving us. But where do we form our collective expectations about the role of bartenders? In her latest piece for Good Beer Hunting, f...
Oct 20, 2021•32 min
Producing and hosting a weekly local radio show likely isn't how most beer writers get their start—but that's exactly where Emma Inch's career in beer began. With a passion for rockabilly music, which she saw as an outlet from the stress of her day job as a mental health crisis worker, Emma went from hosting club nights to approaching her local radio station with a show idea. Then a few years later—as she began noticing a change in her local beer scene in Brighton, England—she pitched an idea fo...
Oct 16, 2021•58 min
Conversations around beer often focus on what to drink: I had this great beer the other day. Here's something you might like, or a brewery worth supporting. Fewer conversations focus on what not to drink. But that's exactly what happened on a spring day in 1974, between a Teamsters union leader named Allen Baird and a gay leftist activist named Howard Wallace. Wallace ran into Baird outside a supermarket in the Castro, San Francisco's queer neighborhood, and they started talking about Coors beer...
Oct 13, 2021•1 hr 15 min
Every now and then, I get to host an episode where the conversation has very little to do with beer or other kinds of beverage alcohol. This is another one of those opportunities as we hear from Hoby Wedler, an organic chemist with a Ph.D. from UC-Davis, an entrepreneur, teacher, and genuinely positive guy. If I had my way, I'd likely put that last description first for sake of what Hoby radiates out into the world. He was recently named to Wine Enthusiast's "40 Under 40 Tastemakers" for his wor...
Oct 10, 2021•41 min
Every inch of the land now known as the United States of America actually belongs to someone else. Some call them Native Americans. Others prefer American Indians, First Nations, Indigenous Americans, or use other monikers to describe the multitude of tribal identities that have been used, abused, and exploited throughout the generations by (mostly) white imperialist settlers. But these invaders didn't simply erase history—they repackaged it with a new narrative, one that leverages ancient conne...
Oct 07, 2021•38 min
If you've gone job hunting in the past 15 years, you may have sought out new professional challenges, a different geography, or more money, but there's an ever-important part of the process for many that seeks out a harmonious crossover of personal and professional. I know I've looked for some semblance of that, where I don't want my job to define who I am as a person, but I do want who I am as a person to influence how I go about my job, and ultimately, how much I may enjoy it. On a hunt to fee...
Oct 02, 2021•59 min
Throughout my freelance beer-writing career, one person's name has continued to pop up as someone to pay attention to. That person is Laura Garcia, a brewer who has worked across the state of Baja California, but primarily in Baja's capital city of Mexicali, which also happens to be her hometown. But this isn't a story about how I know Laura. It's a story about why you should. Hailed by many as the best brewer in Baja, Laura worked her way from beer lover to beer judge to brewer and beyond. The ...
Sep 26, 2021•45 min
As the curator of the American Brewing History Initiative at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, Theresa McCulla has access to some of the United States' most treasured brewing artifacts. It was the uncovering of one such artifact that led her to explore the life of Patsy Young, an enslaved woman, brewer, wife, and mother who fought for her freedom (twice) and who left an indelible legacy on the narrative of American brewing. In her first piece for Good Beer Hunting, titled "P...
Sep 24, 2021•29 min
I've found myself adding some qualifiers to interview requests lately, ensuring people that while I create stories, analysis, and podcasts for Good Beer Hunting, the interests of myself and the publication extend far beyond what the name may suggest. If you click around goodbeerhunting.com or scroll through our podcast archive, you get the idea—we focus on so much more than just beer. That's the way of the beverage alcohol industry these days, and why we're talking to Vikram and Vivek Nayar in t...
Sep 18, 2021•57 min
What is an IPA? Most drinkers around the world would probably identify IPA as the flagship style of the modern craft beer movement. As its popularity has grown, it has become known for a bunch of different—and often contradictory—characteristics. A modern IPA is either bitter or not bitter; pale, white, or black; very strong, sessionable, or nonalcoholic. But while IPA in all its forms is loved around the world, relatively few drinkers would be likely to name the drink's intimate connection with...
Sep 15, 2021•51 min
The intersection between digital media and the more slow, meandering works of book authorship is one that, on its surface, might not seem to be well populated. But these days, to be a writer at all means being a lot of different things. You might work across channels, platforms, industries, styles, digital and print, freelance and newsroom, and all that mode switching is a lot. It's just, a lot. The folks I've seen handle it really well tend to think and work in big phases - blogging or freelanc...
Sep 11, 2021•1 hr 8 min
Where does inspiration end and innovation begin? When it comes to contemporary takes on established traditions, that line can seem a bit blurry at times. But in David Neimanis' piece "The Architecture of Brooklyn Amaro — What it Means to Make Amari in the New World," which was published on August 19, 2021, he expertly explores that line, its lineage, and what the future holds for American-made amari. In our conversation, Neimanis describes what led him to write about amaro, and Brooklyn-made ama...
Sep 09, 2021•27 min
There's a lot of change taking place in beer and broader beverage alcohol, but you might not notice it. It's not the form of sales shifting for hard seltzer or Mountain Dew announcing an uncaffeinated, alcoholic version of the soda, but in the quiet space of distribution. Alcohol sales are broken out into three traditional tiers—the producer (tier one) who makes it, distributors (tier two) who move it, and retailers (tier three), who sell it. These are broad brushstrokes, but are a key part of t...
Sep 08, 2021•41 min
Finding good, honest people making good, honest beer isn't as easy as craft beer has led us to believe. But every once in a while, a truly singular brewery—shielded by geography and rooted firmly to the land—reveals itself, putting forth artistry in liquid form while also providing a safe, beautiful, and intentional space for everyone who stumbles across its path. Fox Farm Brewery is one such place. In his latest piece for Good Beer Hunting, titled " Degrees of Intent — Fox Farm Brewery in Salem...
Sep 01, 2021•31 min
Every once in awhile I like to have someone on the podcast who I've been talking to or working with for awhile. It's not always easy to know when the right time is — I have to keep my eagerness in check. Often for a long time. Whether it's the state of their business, or a major transition, or as market factors shift around it — I try to look for a sweet spot where the guest has learned enough about who they are and what business they're in, but also started to develop their own vision for what ...
Aug 28, 2021•1 hr 7 min
The last few months in the British beer industry have been tumultuous. Inspired by the brave work of Brienne Allan, Britshbeergirl – real name Siobhan Buchanan – used her instagram platform for British beer people to tell stories of sexism, sexual harassment and exploitation in the industry. Scandals rocked several much loved small breweries as well as some of the UK's biggest – including BrewDog. My guest today, Charlotte Cook, started her career there, and while she left nearly seven years ago...
Aug 21, 2021•52 min
As much as craft beer places value on authenticity and artistry, it's not always an industry that likes looking backwards. Instead, the search for innovation—innovation in beer styles, in brewing techniques, and in the raw materials of beer—is what propels it forward. That means many older ways of doing things have been left by the wayside. On the malt side, with technological and agricultural advancements continuously improving crop yield and efficiency, are old-school brewing methods like deco...
Aug 19, 2021•27 min
Today's guest is a rare revisit action with a previous guest - Phil McFarland from episode 25 - when he was on the even of shutting down what had been one of Chicago's premier craft beer bars. The advertising career that gave way to his life as a craft beer bar operator was about to give way to something new - as he took on the sales director role at one of Chicago's premier craft breweries, Half Acre, just as it was making a step change in its growth and ambition. That was then. Now, we're meet...
Aug 14, 2021•57 min
What's in beer today? Unless you're a brewer, do you know? I mean, do you really know? Usually, Western beer is made up of water, hops, a malted grain like barley, and yeast. That's the standard answer you'll get from books, articles, even podcasts. There's even a famous law in German history, called the Reinheitsgebot, which decreed that proper beer could only contain those four ingredients. But few brewers outside Germany stick to that rule 100% of the time. When we want to get a little techni...
Aug 10, 2021•46 min
What is art? Throughout the course of human existence, critics, academics, and common people have all attempted to unpack the meaning and value of art as part of society, as well as its role as a reflection of the current discourse. Art can be political. It can be reflective. It can be a weapon. And it can be history in itself. In her latest piece for Good Beer Hunting, titled " Gin Lane vs. Beer Street — How One Artist Captured a Pivotal Century in Our Drinking History ," published on July 1, 2...
Aug 04, 2021•31 min
What happens when politics and public health intermix? We've spent the last year learning all too well that, unfortunately, just about anything can happen. And that's always been the case. In the mid-1800s, when lager beer was still pretty new to the United States, Americans had to figure it out where it fit into a society that wasn't much newer. The country was growing, it was urbanizing, it was incorporating new ethnicities and communities, and it was redefining morality almost by the day. All...
Jul 24, 2021•28 min
Holly Regan believes that we are all surrounded by opportunities to have transcendent experiences. As humans, we're often prone to looking inward, thanks both to our egos as well as our desire to seek solace from the chaos and noise of the world. But when we're able to tap into the beyond, through whatever means available, we have the potential to commune with each other, ourselves, and all creation beyond our sometimes-limited scope of perception. If this sounds a little woo-woo, that's okay. H...
Jul 21, 2021•42 min
While I cover the beer and beverage alcohol industries, I started from a simple place as an enthusiast. I was excited to drink different beers, then it was fun to homebrew, and eventually write about all those experiences. But for many people - perhaps most - beer is just beer. I can't tell you how many times I've had discussions with friends and family who ask about "beer flavored beer," and they're in the majority. So, what does it mean if we get the chance to share that passion and educate ot...
Jul 17, 2021•1 hr 4 min
The overlaps between beer and whiskey are plentiful. Both rely on craftsmanship and quality ingredients, and share certain production methods in common. Modern makers in either category have the luxury of looking at tradition while pushing the boundaries of innovation for the future. But it's the differences between the two that keep things interesting. Single malt whiskey producer Stranahan's in Denver, Colorado is one such modern maker, one that's helping to define the budding American single ...
Jul 15, 2021•27 min
