Good Beer Hunting

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Into The Wild: Bay Area Aug 10, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to the second episode of Into the Wild—part of our six-city tour across the U.S. with New Belgium Brewing this year.

This episode comes out of our experiences in the Bay Area, San Francisco and the East Bay, where we partnered with a few restaurants, bars, and special people therein to produce some of the best and most unique experiences I've ever had around food and beverages. And that's the whole idea here—to put wild and sour beer into a context that's either entirely unprecedented or, if it's familiar (like a beer dinner), to take it to a level that's rarely seen.

First, you'll hear from New Belgium's Lauren Limbach, who brings people together at City Beer Store in San Francisco for a sensory tasting—which we jokingly called a "sensory deprivation tasting"—because her goal was to expose how much precondition we bring to every sip we take.

In this podcast, we follow Lauren and other folks we met along the way, chronicling our weekend of eating, drinking, and learning. But first, I wanted to let you know about our next stop in Austin, Texas on August 14th through 16th, which will feature a fermentation-forward dinner, beer, and art experience at The Brewer's Table called Sacred & Profane with Jason White (who's formerly of the Noma Fermentation Lab in Copenhagen). Then we're heading over to the Brew & Brew for a dance party with Wild Ale, so if you're more interested in the fun side of things, that's certainly for you. Finally, we're bringing Wild Ale to the people with a food truck dinner at Draft House. It's three days and three entirely unique events in Austin, and if you're in the area or want to be, we hope you join us for that leg of the tour.

This is Good Beer Hunting's Into the Wild podcast. Listen in.

CL-030 Stan Hieronymus has a lot of bottle openers to tell you about Aug 08, 2019

Show notes

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 Bryan Roth, and I'm the Sightlines editor for Good Beer Hunting.

Whether you're a beer drinker or an industry pro, chances are you may have heard someone talking about "innovation" in beer. Usually, that means a brewery is releasing a new beer, sometimes a new style it hasn't made before, or using a novel technique, or ingredient. It's a word that gets thrown around a lot for a product that's existed for, well, thousands of years. That's not to take away from all the incredible changes, old and new, that take place in beer—but in today's Collective podcast, we're talking about literal invention.

In his latest piece for Good Beer Hunting, Stan Hieronymus shares the story, "There's a Beer Patent for That — A Brief History of Curious Beer Ideas." It's his second story for Good Beer Hunting's Mother of Invention series, which is told in collaboration with Guinness. In his story on patents, Stan looks at the history of beer, and the variety of people who have applied to get their creations protected through a longstanding government process. It's a way to ensure that a creator's ideas and intellectual property stay with them.

Stan pored over a treasure trove of beer patents to find the examples he shares in his story. Many were tracked down thanks to fellow writer Jay Brooks, who maintains a running collection of beer-related patents on his blog. Along with discussions with GBH editorial director Austin L. Ray (which also led to a previous piece on hop oils), it was Jay's digital cache that set Stan on his way in telling this story.

This is the Good Beer Hunting Collective podcast. Listen in.

SL-012 Under The Influencers Aug 07, 2019

Show notes

Craft beer has always had an uncomfortable relationship with marketing, Instagram and social media, and things like hype, status, and influencers. It's also long had an issue with women. Not just sexuality, but of course, also that. Not just gender and inclusion, but also that. Not just diversity and equality, but also that. In the most general, broad sense, craft beer (and beer in general), both culturally and as an industry, has long been a walled garden for men in the U.S. And over the past couple weeks, we saw that play out in a pretty specific, explicit fashion. Here's how it went down.

Links to the folks we spoke to:

Zach Johnston, Senior Writer-at-Large for Uproxx Caitlin Johnson, beer blogger and content creator, @bigworldsmallgirl Megan Stone, brewer for Duclaw Brewing Co., @isbeeracar Alyssa Thorpe, head brewer for Jagged Mountain Craft Brewery, @southernbeergirl

EP-230 Adam Warrington of O'Douls Aug 03, 2019

Show notes

Today's conversation is another deep dive into a product that fits into the emerging "Better For You" category of low calorie beer and non-alcoholic beer, hard seltzers, kombucha, and whatnot that grocer stores are starting to organize their shelves around as drinkers start looking for options that satisfy that itch for a beer or a drink, but doesn't interrupt their flow.

These kinds of drinks used to be seen as alternatives. Something you drank as a compromise when you really wanted something else. But as you'll hear today, these drinks are increasingly being seen as a primary option—something that's desirable and perfectly designed to fit what you want from a moment or an occasions.

There have been dozens of articles written lately, published in places like the New York Times, about the increasingly popular sober lifestyle.

What's behind that trend, and how big it is is entirely up for debate. In this conversation with Adam Warrington of AB InBev, who recently launched a new project with an old standby NA brand called O'Doul's, we try to get at the heart of the matter from a variety of directions. Health consciousness, designated driving and moderation in general, but also some of the newer social conventions that give NA beer new relevance, like social media, and our increasing desire to always be in control and well-presented to an imaginary audience. Think about it. If you got a little drunk 10 years ago and did something lame, maybe five of your friends were there to see it. But now, you could wind up being viewed by tens of thousands. Which has implications for everything we do—from how we decorate our apartments to the things we eat and drink, to the freedom we feel to let loose, or not, based on how vulnerable we feel

This winds up being a very small part of the conversation today—this observation anxiety society we're all living in—but it was by far the biggest takeaway for me, and I can't stop thinking about it.

How does the anxiety of being observed and exposed outside of our control play in to the decisions we make around food and beverage? There's a lot going on there, and non-alcoholic beer is perhaps a small sliver of that. But it's growing at an impressive rate. Are we ready for more emphasis on a sober lifestyle amongst the next generation? Are we ready for a more sober society in general?

O'Douls and other emerging NA brands are getting ready. In fact, AB InBev and others think non-alcoholic and ver low alcoholic beer could be as big as 20% of their worldwide sales in the next 5 years. That's a very big bet they're all making. And most of us still think beers like O'douls are just that beer that sits low on the shelf in the back of the liquor store. How wrong we might be.

This is Adam Warrington of AB InBev, listen in.

FF-024 Jim Plachy is so farm team he can't get into the beer cave Jul 31, 2019

Show notes

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 and experiences that GBH produces, you should join.

Your monthly subscription gets you access to the community, special events, and exclusive gear deigned just for members.

I joined, and now I manage it all. Plus, it's my favorite place on the Beer Internet.

Visit goodbeerhunting.com/ferventfew to strike up a conversation in beer.

EP-229 Caitlin Landesberg of Sufferfest Jul 27, 2019

Show notes

If you haven't noticed, the world is starting to think about the role that craft beer plays in a healthy lifestyle. Is this a reaction to the Pastry Stouts and high ABVs of contemporary craft beer? Or is it part of a larger trend where drinkers want to know more about what's going into their bodies and how it impacts their lives?

Anyone in the business of selling beer right now is talking about an emerging category known as "better for you," which covers everything from low-calorie craft beer and kombucha to hard seltzers and gluten-free or gluten-reduced beer.

You've probably seen GBH reporting on Michelob Ultra, the low-calorie, low-carb front-runner, which is the fastest growing brand in beer history. Mich Ultra is sort of the tip of the spear for the category, giving corporate and craft brewers alike the confidence they need to explore some of these new directions for beer.

But while most brands are focused on the functional components of these beers—touting low-calorie, low-ABV, and other benefits—very few of them have tried to build a community around their brands and lifestyles the way today's guest has. Caitlin Landesberg is the founder and CEO of Sufferfest, based in San Francisco.

Her brand was born out of, and still lives in, athlete culture. As a former marketing executive in the fitness tech start-up world, Caitlin had a front-row seat to athletes' needs and motivations. And she was one herself.

As a result of these interests, her homebrewing hobby took a radically different approach to beer making. She brewed for flavor, and fitness, and for a reduced-gluten profile. She used healthful ingredients and considered athletic occasions as prime beer-drinking moments. She should know—she loves to celebrate a win with a beer. A moment that she has dubbed "sufferfest"—hence the company name.

This year, Caitlin and her team are making a massive transition, as they recently earned the attention of Sierra Nevada, who will now brew their beers. Sierra is also working to expand the distribution footprint of Sufferfest as a major new portfolio play.

I've been working in and thinking about this "better-for-you" space for the last year on our studio side, helping our clients pivot and expand to new audiences interested in these beers. That plays into this conversation, and one way it shows up is that you'll mistakingly hear me refer to Sufferfest as part of the non-alcoholic, or NA, trend. It's not, though—Sufferfest's beers definitely have alcohol, and that mistake is just part of my brain blurring a few conversations I was having that day. So for clarity, Sufferfest beers are gluten-reduced, and offer a host of other benefits.

This is Caitlin Landesberg of Sufferfest—listen in.

CL-029 Evan Rail hopes, after all, that the beer is really good Jul 24, 2019

Show notes

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 Michael Kiser, and I'm the founder and director of Good Beer Hunting.

And for today's conversation, I was also the photographer. I recently shot a unique story assignment in a remote corner of the Czech Republic, called South Moravia. South Moravia, as you'll hear, is a famous wine-producing region. And now, it's also home to one of the country's most wine-inspired brewers—Jitka Ilčíková of Wild Creatures.

I was especially keen to go on this assignment because it meant rejoining my friend and colleague, Evan Rail, who lives in Prague. I've joined Evan on a few journeys, starting way back around 2013 in Prague and Pilsen, when he first took me to Pilsner Urquell, Kout na Šumavě, and beyond. On this trip we met in Budapest for a conference and hitched a ride from some brewers to Mikulov, where we planned to visit what might be the country's only wild ale producer. Listen in.

EP-228 Rob and Keely Landerman of Woodland Empire Jul 20, 2019

Show notes

What's the balance between being a bit "punk" and also being a responsible business owner? You can probably find examples from a variety of companies in beer that straddle this line. In this podcast, you're hearing from the owners of one of them.

At Boise, Idaho's Woodland Empire Ale Craft, founders Rob and Keely Landerman have long been said to produce some of the best beer in town. Online references started popping up not long after the brewery opened in 2014 ,and have picked up steam in recent years. But for this husband-and-wife duo, the focus behind the scenes hasn't been about chasing trends or finding ways to get high scores on rating platforms. As you'll hear in this conversation, a lot of it has to do with finding balance between pursuing their own passions and appreciations for beer alongside ways to address what drinkers are into at a certain moment.

In one example, these factors can be seen by way of their Ada County Stout, a barrel-aged Imperial Stout created to specifically mimic Goose Island's Bourbon County Brand Stout in name and visuals. You'll hear the reasoning behind these decisions—and a variety of legal considerations that came along the way. There's also talk about how and why a need for certain hazy kinds of IPA came to be, and finding the right balance between brewing what you want and giving customers what they want, too.

The pair share their path toward beer, which winds through the country's music scene, and how they ended up choosing Idaho as a place to base their entrepreneurial project. Their company hasn't been around for a long time, but it has played a part in helping to shape the next wave of Boise beer.

This is Rob and Keely Landerman of Woodland Empire Ale Craft. Listen in.

FF-023 Jim Plachy is too expensive and stabs himself in the hand Jul 17, 2019

Show notes

Your monthly subscription gets you access to the community, special events, and exclusive gear deigned just for members.

I joined, and now I manage it all. Plus, it's my favorite place on the Beer Internet.

Visit goodbeerhunting.com/ferventfew to strike up a conversation in beer.

EP-227 Obadiah Poundage with Mike Siegel and Ron Pattinson Jul 15, 2019

Show notes

Today's episode is the second we've done with this duo of Mike Siegel of Goose Island and Ron Pattinson, beer historian, writer, and a collaborator on a recipe revival project of sorts. Way back in 2016 we invited these two over to the studio to discuss their Brewery Yard Stock Pale Ale, a barrel-aged brett pale reminiscent of what a beer brewed in England over a century ago may have been like according to their research.

Today's conversation is about a new beer called Obadiah Poundage, which isn't trying to replicate a recipe so much as try to approximate what a porter might have tasted like if it were brewed in London in 1840.

These beers have both been fascinating, not only for their history and story, but the final product itself. They taste and feel familiar, but with an edge that's entirely foreign. Like a bizarro world version of a beer you think you know. Sometimes that's an ingredient choice, or a process decision, or in some cases, a fermentation character that's just slightly outside the norm. All of it adding up to a wholly enjoyable, yet intriguing version of, in this case, a porter.

I love getting these two guys together—you can see the child-like excitement that comes out of their shared passion for these collaborations. It's a great reminder of how genuinely fun beer, brewing, and history can be when it all comes together in a project like this.

This is Ron Pattinson and Mike Siegel, listen in.

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