Good Beer Hunting

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EP-223 Fish Scales of Nappy Roots Jun 15, 2019

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At this point in the American beer scene, a love for IPAs, Wheat Ales, Stouts, and Saisons comes from all over. Our friends and parents. Our neighbors and celebrities. When we learn that someone has an adoration for craft beer, there's not a lot of surprise left to be had, except what kind of beer we can share as part of this fun bond. This spring, I had that debate—between a Wheat Ale and IPA—with the musician and rapper, Fish Scales of Nappy Roots. Scales, whose real name is Melvin Adams Jr., isn't just accomplished in the world of music, but he and others in the Grammy-nominated group see beer as a next step in their creative journey. They've already made collaboration beers with Atlanta's Monday Night Brewing and Louisville's Against the Grain Brewery, and I sat down with Scales this spring in Boise, Idaho, where Nappy Roots was performing and releasing a new beer with the city's Woodland Empire Ale Craft. In recent years, there have been a variety of musicians, groups, actors, and athletes who have gotten into the world of beer. Scales and Nappy Roots are among that growing number, and his appreciation for the history, process, and what he sees beer to be culturally is what's propelling him toward this love while still performing about 100 times a year. As many conversations have circled around in beer lately, there is a component to this effort to bring craft beer to audiences that were long neglected. We talk about that, the cross-section of music and beer, and so much more, during the course of this conversation. So, what's the perspective on beer from one of the most successful musicians in America? This is Fish Scales, beer lover and rapper, of Nappy Roots. Listen in.

CL-026 Alyssa Pereira and Clara Rice on Resilience, craft beer's largest collaboration Jun 12, 2019

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Before I started working at Good Beer Hunting, I was a pretty avid reader, and the stories that resonated with me most were the stories that were more about people than they were about the beer themselves. Just a few weeks ago, we published one of the most ambitious and important one of these stories to date. The article is called, "A Story of Resilience—Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in Chico, Calif.," and it follows the creation of a beer by Sierra Nevada. The beer, which is called Resilience as the name of the article implies, was created in response to the Camp Fires in Northern California last year. Sierra Nevada, whose headquarters were not far from the towns affected by the fire, jumped into action almost immediately, and started giving out food and brewing Resilience to raise money for victims of the fire. We sent members of the GBH team to learn more about Resilience, and the story they told, which came out in April, was so much more than I could have ever imagined a story about a beer to be. But hey, that's why I started reading stories on GBH's website, right? We learn more from GBH contributor Alyssa Pereira and photographer Clara Rice on what it took to take tell this story.

MU-016 Hudson Valley Brewing Hiding Place Jun 11, 2019

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Our resident composer for the podcast and our commercial video work, Andrew Thiboldeaux, is writing original scores devoted to beers he finds fascinating. These are interpretations of the experience of drinking them. But they're also just great tunes.

EP-222 Colin Whitcomb of Canary Coffee Bar Jun 08, 2019

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Every year, hundreds of baristas come together for the United States Coffee Championships. The competitions are heavily anticipated, with folks preparing for months to present their routines to judges and figure out who is the best coffee brewer, roaster, or taster in the nation. The heart of the entire competition is the barista championships. You might be thinking, what could a barista competition even be? Is it who can make the best coffee? Is it who has the best beans? Is it who can make the prettiest latte art? All these things make up a portion of the competition, but it's fundamentally a test of skill, expertise, and perhaps a little bit of luck and circumstance. Competitors have 15 minutes to present four espressos, four milk drinks, and four signature drinks to a panel of sensory judges, all the while having two technical judges hovering around you, scoring your technique and technical abilities. The winner goes on to represent the United States at the World Barista Championships, which happens to be in Boston this year. The competitions are the breeding ground for new ideas in coffee. You might see competitors freeze their coffee beans or talk about new processing methods. Techniques and concepts that we accept as commonplace in the coffee industry usually come from coffee competitions, and their influence on the future of specialty coffee can't be measured. Every year, my colleague, Colin Whitcomb, and I sit on the sidelines and provide live commentary for folks watching at home. The competitions are livestreamed by the Specialty Coffee Association, who hires a professional AV team to run sound and shoot live video, and Colin and I meticulously re-read the rulebook and watch past competitions to see what's new, what trends have carried on from years past, and provide context for the decisions that competitors make. This is a task that Colin loves. He's a long time barista competitor, Executive Council member for the Barista Guild, and is currently building out his new café, Canary Coffee Bar, in Milwalkee, Wisconsin. Colin has been part of the specialty coffee community for over a decade, and competed in his first barista competition in 2008. In this interview, which we recorded on the eve of the United States Barista Championships, Colin talks about the history and ever-changing format of the competition, what trends and ideas came out of the competition sphere, and we make some spur of the moment bets on who we think will win (spoiler alert—we're 100% wrong). This is Colin Whitcomb of Canary Coffee Bar. Listen in.

EP-221 Adam Paysse of Floodland Brewing Jun 01, 2019

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It started when i went to the website. "FLOODLAND BREWING" it read in all caps at the top. "Floodland is a brewery in Seattle" below. A spot to enter your email. You want to know more? There's a text file FAQ with some basic points of info. That's it. When I first came across the homepage—if you'd dare call it that—I had no idea what to expect. The business was started by Adam Paysse, one of the original partners of the city's beloved Holy Mountain Brewing. He had decided to go on his own with this venture, taking over a modestly-sized storage space in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood and filling it with barrels, focusing on a collection of barrel-fermented and mixed-culture beers. He released his first beers in 2018 to wild fanfare, and it really hasn't stopped. What interested me in seeking out and chatting with Adam pretty much went right back to that website. He has a deep appreciation for his craft, and like the barebones appearance of his digital presence, is straight-forward in what motivates and excites him. He talks up his friends and partners, local farmers, and fellow brewers who inspire him. He worries about social media and line culture. He is wonderfully committed to the people he cares about and what he does for a living. He's a fascinating guy, and one who doesn't really talk publicly too much. It made for an incredible, wide-ranging conversation when we met in Seattle this spring. Spending an afternoon with Adam quickly introduced me to a personality I'm thankful to know, and happy to follow. In the Pacific Northwest, he's got lots of fans, and if you haven't heard of him yet, I hope this introduction puts him on your radar, too. This is Adam Paysse of Floodland Brewing. Listen in.

CL-025 Kristen Foster drinks a beer with one hand, chops down a tree with the other May 29, 2019

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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 Ashley Rodriguez, and I'm GBH's podcast producer. One of my jobs at Good Beer Hunting is to post all the articles that come through our website. Usually that means lots of cutting and pasting, checking links, setting up their website page, and figuring out where photos go. It also means I get real intimate with some of these articles—I'm working with them for hours at a time. One article that recently caught my attention was about Tilted Barn Brewery in Exeter, Rhode Island. And the reason it caught my attention wasn't because of the beer, but because of the way the author wrote about Tilted Barn. Kristen, whose day job involves working in people development (what we might traditionally know as human resources), illuminates the people she talks about. You don't just want to visit Tilted Barn, you want to engage with the owners, Kara and Matt Richardson—and their family. They live just 100 yards away from the brewery with their four kids, and Kristen's story captures the ups and downs of integrating your everyday life with your work. In this episode, we talk to Kristen about what it was like to visit and share the story of Tilted Barn, and what attracts her to the folks she depicts in her stories.

Into The Wild: Seattle May 28, 2019

Show notes

This week, we're bringing you a special episode from our Into the Wild tour with New Belgium Brewing. This is a tour focused on wild, sour, and otherwise aged and blended beers in the vein of what New Belgium Brewing has been making for longer and more continuously than any brewer in America. This tour is visiting at least a half a dozen cities this year and we kicked it off in Seattle with a series of sensory-driven events. We did a sour beer and cheese pairing at The Pine Box with chef Angelica Garza, featuring some funky and surprising cheeses alongside New Belgium's Wood Cellar beers. We held a smoked and fermented event at Central Smoke where they made a cocktail with a Transatlantique Kriek float. (It was delicious.) And we finished at The Masonry with chef Matt Storm, where we explored the relationship between acid and fat. It was a wild week. These two conversations you're about to hear came out of my experiences there. First up, we'll talk to Ian Roberts, one of the owners of The Pine Box, about the bar's role in the city's beer scene, and how customers have changed over time when it comes to sour beer. Then we'll catch up with Chef Matt to talk about The Masonry, pizza, and other things. And if you want more, we have a great little article on the website from chef Angelica Garza about how she constructed the cheese pairings and how you can think about that the next time you want to host some of your friends around cheese and sour beer. As specific as these flavors and aromas can be, there's some pretty good principles at play that will help you do it yourself.

EP-220 Oscar Wong and Leah Wong Ashburn of Highland Brewing Co. May 25, 2019

Show notes

The life of an American brewery feels like it exists on a scale like one of our pets. In the same way cat and dog years move at a factor faster than humans, the quick pace of the U.S. industry can make these businesses age rapidly in a variety of ways. If you're not new, or at least keeping up with the latest styles and trends, life can come at you fast. So when a brewery starts hitting milestones — not just its first few anniversaries, but long-tenured ones — it's kind of a big deal. That's what brought me to Asheville, North Carolina recently, where one of the state's largest and most important breweries hit its silver anniversary, marking 25 years in business. There's a bunch of special history for Highland Brewing Company. It was the first brewery to open in Asheville's city limits since Prohibition and third in the state. And if you want to get a good idea of how Highland came to be, check out my 2017 story on Good Beer Hunting. You'll hear several references to it in this interview with founder Oscar Wong and family owner and president Leah Wong Ashburn. It's not required reading to enjoy this conversation by any means, but you will get some fun, additional context. But let's get back to this talk. When I sat down with Oscar and Leah, the goal was to look across Highland's history. Past, present and future. There may be almost 7,500 breweries scattered across the country, but there aren't a lot with the kind of longevity and point of view of business like this one. After building its success in Old World styles like an English-inspired Pale Ale and Porter, the last few years have been about rapid evolution. This is an old company in beer years, but that doesn't mean the Highland team hasn't learned some new tricks. So let's hear it: how does a brewery last and change over a quarter-century? This is Oscar Wong and Leah Wong Ashburn of Highland Brewing. Listen in.

SL-011 What does growth look like in a slowing beer industry? May 23, 2019

Show notes

As of right now—May 2019—there are about 7,500 breweries in the United States. From 2016-2018, the Brewers Association counted about two new breweries opening every day, and in that time, the size, scope, and potential of what those businesses could become has quickly changed. Year-to-year volume growth for Brewers Association-defined craft beer dropped to 4% last year, a decline of 1% from 2017 and the lowest growth rate in a decade. Industry conversations now focus on going a "mile deep," not a "mile wide." In other words, staying small and local—while embracing close-to-home and taproom sales—is becoming a safer and more secure way to grow, albeit slower and with greater intent. As the beer category slows and more companies focus on staying small and local, the idea of "growth" as a business concept is changing. To better get a sense of what this change means, GBH connected with Bart Watson, the economist from the Brewers Association, and Tom Madden, co-founder of Lone Pine Brewing Company in Portland, Maine. With a mix of industry stats and real-life case study, we hope to get to the bottom of what growth looks like in a slowing beer industry. Listen in.

MU-015 Brewery Bhavana Grove May 21, 2019

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