Sam and Sara Kazmer brought great craft beer to a market they felt was underserved - Atlanta, Georgia when they flipped on the lights at Elsewhere Brewing in 2020. They wanted to produce award-winning beer in a unique, community-event driven taproom. They wanted to create space, community and memories for themselves and every customer that shared in their dream. And, as we’ll hear in the 4th segment, they were successful. The whole project was an amalgamation of the experiences they had research...
May 08, 2025•1 hr 29 min
Kiernan May is a cool guy. He transitioned from a corporate career to open a brewery in New York with big dreams and a bigger bag of passion. His brewery was built on Kiernan’s analytic and logical understanding of the world that surrounded him. He put the pieces and plans together in a way that was structured and strategic. He grew sensibly, understanding his limitations and how to operate within them. He leveraged his contact brewing model and the flexibility that it gave him to utilize other ...
Mar 21, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Season 7Ep. 6
You’re about to hear the story of Matt Swan and the late Tumbledown Brewery from Farmington, Maine. Opened in 2014 and closed late 2025, Matt’s experience is varied and truly interesting. His is the first brewery we’ve talked to from Maine and the only one with a red ale as it’s flagship. We cover a lot of ground from distribution, burnout, capitalization and contract brewing. One of my favorite parts of this story is that he opened as the only brewery around for miles and the only brewery in Fa...
Dec 05, 2024•1 hr 18 min
Tanglefoot made some solid lagers in an unlikely place. Temple, TX is a town of about 90K people about an hour to Austin. A huge segment of that population has Czech blood in their veins and a thirst for beer from the Old Country. But as Andy Martinec found out the hard way, that didn’t necessarily mean they would support a local business making great examples of Czech lagers. You’re about to hear his story of struggling to make beer into a business for a few years before having to announce a fi...
Oct 29, 2024•1 hr 30 min•Season 7Ep. 10
Pono Brewing of Portland Oregon was conceived as a lifestyle as much if not more than a beer brand. The beers were lively, fun, inventive and everything a craft brewery should be. Larry Clouser and his partners grew from humble beginnings as a contract brewery to statewide distribution to opening a brewpub/restaurant before finally closing the doors in 2023. Larry’s story covers contract brewing in a market that wasn’t sure how it felt about it. And partners that struggled to decide how they fel...
Sep 25, 2024•1 hr 55 min•Season 7Ep. 9
Blue Cat Brewpub was an Illinois icon. One of the state’s first brewpubs, they made award-winning beer for 23 years. After the owners sold and the brewery was rebranded unsuccessfully, the new owners were looking for a way to save the dream. That’s where Charlie Cole came marching into the picture. After working at most of the Quad-city’s breweries, hosting a beer-centric radio show and snagging more brewing education than I think anyone on this show has, Charlie decided to parter up with the ne...
Aug 15, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Season 8Ep. 5
And now for something a little different. I came across an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, thanks to my sister-in-law, that cited the struggles of the California wine industry. I found the similarities to the struggles that the people behind their beer businesses face to be truly compelling and undeniably relevant. So I reached out to Megan Bell from Margins Wine because her quotes in the article were honest in ways I see few entrepreneurs able or willing to be. The path of her winery an...
Jul 24, 2024•1 hr 33 min•Season 8Ep. 5
In the span of a decade, Michigan saw a major craft beer boom, going from around 100 craft breweries to upwards of 400. In the middle of that marketplace Kevin DeGrood opened Michigan’s North Center Brewing way back in 2015. He watched a fairly virgin market become deflowered with nearly 30 breweries just during the time he was finalizing his business plan. His start up was methodical, specific and, by many accounts, the right way to do it. Unfortunately through a mix of employment issues, chang...
Jun 24, 2024•1 hr 44 min•Season 7Ep. 6
The focus of this show has always been to tell the stories of beer operations that one day turned off the lights for the last time. I’ve chosen to be very selective when considering interviewing breweries that are still stirring their mashes. To date, I’ve only shared 5. There are a lot of reasons why but based on listener feedback, I’ve decided to look for opportunities to do it where it makes sense to the message of the podcast. So I am excited, pleased and even a little proud to share the sto...
May 28, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Season 7Ep. 5
A few seasons back I realized that to truly tell the story of the business of craft beer, we needed input from other countries. So I reached out to Canadian, Australian, Norwegian, UK and South African breweries. Some of those interviews have already been released. But the very first international guest I tried to get was Nick Law. He not only had a beer brand but he’d started a podcast and a consulting company so I knew he brought a perspective we needed to hear from. And he and his businesses ...
May 18, 2024•1 hr 43 min•Season 7Ep. 6
Scott Hedeen was the quintessential beer fan. Back in the days when it was still cool to run all over Hell’s left testicle and cellar beers that don’t distribute to your state so you can trade them with other nerds of similar or increased nerdocity. The only thing he may have been more into than beer was (maybe is) music. But Scott’s on this podcast not because he sold his collection of rare beer to open a record label. No, he most likely would have been fabulously rich if he had done that. Inst...
May 01, 2024•1 hr 55 min•Season 7Ep. 2
Rachel Rappa didn’t make beer. She imagined into life what grew into a large-scale kombucha brewery on Long Island in New York. But the similarities between what she experienced growing her fermented sweet tea business to the craft beer industry are startling. She dealt with distributors, retailers, employees, seasonality, limited access to growth capital and packaging issues, just like we do. She started as an artistic homebrewer and ended up owning 20BBL tanks and brewing primarily core styles...
Mar 27, 2024•1 hr 25 min•Season 7Ep. 2
When Dennis Espinosa partnered with his mom to open Main and 6 in Jacksonville Florida he had the highest of hopes. In 2017, like pretty much everyone in craft beer, he only saw victory ahead. Most people would agree that he was set up for success. He started with award-winning beers, bought the building and hired an designer to make it special. He won more awards for his beer, actually a ton of them from 2019/2020. In the brewery’s 5th year, he won the coveted GABF Brewery of the Year. And was ...
Mar 03, 2024•1 hr 37 min•Season 7Ep. 1
In 2023, the Australian Beer market was shocked by the announcement that a beloved brewery that had been awarded close to 40 medals for their beer was shutting down. After 9 years blazing the path of Australia’s craft beer scene, Exit Brewing was planning to exit the brewing industry. Around 2010, Grum & Frase had been inspired to start a brewery after spending time in Europe immersed in their beer culture. 4 years later they released their first beer, a saison. As their company grew, they e...
Feb 20, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Season 6Ep. 12
When Jason and Heather decided to open their brewery in Indiana they, like most of us, decided to do it their way. They looked at what existed and targeted providing their community with something new. Jason made beer styles that he respected in traditional ways. That meant lower abv beers with flavor and consistency. The couple decided to specialize in their food offerings and target an underserved demographic in their market. That meant building one of the only vegan breweries I’ve ever heard ...
Feb 05, 2024•1 hr 29 min•Season 6Ep. 11
When Doug Appeldoorn got the inspiration to open his brewery, he wasn’t just any old home brewer. He and co-founder Pietro first started a brewing collective that hosted events to champion creativity, inclusivity and the homebrew community of Toronto, Canada. They followed virtually every home brewer’s dream and found a permanent space to create a brewery with the dream of taking their homebrew community with them on their journey to go pro. They hosted events for them, maintained taps for their...
Jan 21, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Season 6Ep. 9
That may have been the moment that solidified the future of Oregon’s Flat Tail Brewery. But the story of success, failure, embezzlement, money laundering and rebirth on the timeline of Dave Marliave’s craft beer career has so much more to teach us. So I sat down with Dave to discuss what he’s felt, what he’s learned and how you can protect yourself from thieving partners and monopolistic distributors. While the public demise of Flat Tail still swings in the breeze as one of craft beer’s bloodies...
Dec 29, 2023•2 hr 5 min•Season 6Ep. 8
I think most of you would think that if I gave you 2300 shareholders that would invest 2.2 million dollars in your brewery that you could make it work. If I said you could secure another 400 grand from a state loan and 600K the SBA that your 3.2 million dollars would give your brewery a runway to space travel. And if I said you could go back in time to when there were only a few hundred US microbreweries you’d think I was crazy. Remember that with inflation, that’s like having 10 million dollars...
Dec 15, 2023•1 hr 32 min•Season 6Ep. 7
It’s important to me to dig deep and wide into the US craft beer scene. And while I plan to maintain at least 80% of my content domestically, we can’t solve the problems of the business of craft beer with a US based myopia. So I’ve been searching the globe for stories of craft beer closures in other countries. That’s how I found myself in Steve Dunkley’s orbit listening to his story and the story of Manchester’s Brewery Nouveaux. Steve started small as Hell because in the UK you can open a brewe...
Dec 09, 2023•1 hr 48 min•Season 6Ep. 6
Hedgehog Brewing was founded by Jonathan Harris and his brother Chris in April 2019 just outside of Austin, TX. After home brewing voraciously for years they’d honed their recipes, harvested their own yeast and set about making their unique mark on craft beer. They focused on fermenting beers with wild Hill Country yeast with a core of the business in farmhouse beers. They also did well with their IPA Jonathan echos the sentiment we hear a lot on this show: “Imagining recipes and brewing beer is...
Nov 21, 2023•1 hr 25 min•Season 6Ep. 5
Zach Rabun opened Mockery Brewing in Denver’s ubiquitous RiNO district long before it was cool. Most of you know that it's now become one of the best-known beer destination in the states. After working at Coors and Denver area brewpubs, he set a concise theme for his brewery: First, take a detailed, educated look at traditional beer styles and rules. And then make a Mockery of them. This kind of contrarian thinking creates great art and great experiences for the consumer. But, as we hear on this...
Nov 12, 2023•1 hr 32 min•Season 6Ep. 4
Fractal Brewing Project opened in 2019 and closed in 2023 in Huntsville, Alabama. Maybe it isn't a song as old as time but the story is one we hear alot. There's this money guy who loves beer, befriends a brewer and gives that brewer a percentage of his new brewery. The money guy overbuilds his vanity project and creates a truly beautiful space with all the toys, the bells and even some whistles. But without the proper guards in place, the business itself flies off the rails and hurtles towards ...
Nov 01, 2023•1 hr 45 min•Season 6Ep. 3
Steven Henderson is a craft beer rockstar. He goes by the moniker Hendo and he’s one of the best-known personalities in the Australian craft beer industry. Well-loved and well-respected. And, from what I can tell, well-deserved. He started a contract, or gypsy, brewing brewery called Brewcult. He pushed the boundaries of what people in Australia considered craft beer. He won awards for great beer, expanded distribution and travelled the country living the life of a National beer celebrity. And t...
Oct 18, 2023•2 hr 10 min•Season 6Ep. 2
Hey guys, today I have a story for you that’s very special to me. Lost Abbey is a brewery out of San Diego that needs no introduction. Tomme and the team over there have inspired breweries all over the world to push beyond the ordinary and intentionally create new and exciting beers of circumstance. They were a fundamental part of what created my perception of the expectations I wanted my brewery to live up to and I know I’m not alone in that. We’ve talked repeatedly on this show about how speci...
Oct 05, 2023•1 hr 28 min•Season 6Ep. 1
My wife and I finally sold our brewery on Sept 3, 2021. My book and this podcast give deep insights into what happened and why. But I recorded this video available on Spotify and YouTude at DamnBrewery to explain exactly why we sold the damn thing.
Sep 27, 2023•15 min
If you stab Michael Amann, he’ll bleed craft beer. He started in this industry as a fan, landed an entry level distribution job, worked his way to sales and then decided to open a brewery. Maybe lucky for him that didn’t work out but instead, he went where most brewery owners think all the money in the craft beer industry is hiding. The middle tier. He opened Adena Distributing and set about being the grease that lubed the route from a brewery’s fermenter to the customer’s face. Adena distributi...
Sep 17, 2023•1 hr 35 min•Season 5Ep. 9
James Moriarty and the tale of his brewery should be a cautionary one. So many breweries start up with operators that know far less than James did. He brewed in multiple facilities for over a decade, went to the Siebel Institute, worked as an engineer assembling and starting up breweries and only then did he leverage that experience to open Urban Brew Labs in Chicago. But even that resume wasn’t enough to take his brewery into profitability. But James wouldn’t go down without a fight. He pivoted...
Sep 08, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Season 5Ep. 9
Judd Belstock and his co-founder, Sam Alcaine, started the first chicha and pulque brewery in the US. They built a beautiful brewery in the heart of one of the beer-y-est cities in America - Denver. The market was large, the customers curious and everywhere you looked, the future for craft beer in 2018 looked as bright as a Rocky Mountain sunrise. And for a few years, Dos Luces did grow. They expanded their product lines, their distribution and their fanbase. But like the story of many of the br...
Aug 30, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 5Ep. 8
Today I’m bringing you something different. This is the story Ted Mack and his brewery, Peoples Beer in Wisconsin. Mr. Mack passed away in 2019 so I’m interviewing Clint Lanier, whose new book, Ted Mack And America’s First Black Owned Brewery hit the market a few months ago. This is a fascinating story of guts and activism that has inspired generations of modern brewers to pick up their mash paddles and make their mark on beer history. As the first brewery in America that was 100% black owned, i...
Aug 18, 2023•1 hr 24 min•Season 5Ep. 7
Jason Santamaria and his partner Chris Doyle started a brewery in Atlanta back in 2014. They called it Second Self and they ran it that way. The brewery was a creative expression of the flavors and experiences that shaped their lives. What you’ll hear is how as the market grew and evolved, so did Second Self. Pivoting to find new puddles of profitability, struggling against changing consumer preferences and finally ending up as a primarily contract facility. I sat down with Jason a week or so be...
Aug 09, 2023•1 hr 25 min•Season 5Ep. 6
