Good Beer Hunting

The last several months have been tough for businesses and organizations across beer, as COVID-19 has forced locations to close, and as resulting financial hardships have become more serious every month. In recent weeks, U.S. beer—like much of the country—has also placed increasing emphasis on acknowledging issues of systemic racism and social injustice. We've covered a host of these stories in th...

I'm Michael Kiser, and you're listening to the Good Beer Hunting podcast. Ah, to be in the sunny mountains of Costa Rica again: travel seems like part of a future I'm not willing to get my hopes up about just yet. But surely, someday, we'll all be back at it. Like most of us, I haven't been on a plane since this past March. But just prior to the lockdown, I had one of the most intense and educatio...

Welcome to this episode of the Sightlines podcast. I'm Bryan Roth. This podcast is set up a little differently than usual. It's part of Good Beer Hunting's content for Sightlines Premium, our insights-driven professional community, and subscription newsletter that helps industry decision-makers grow their businesses. Today, we're going to hear from Andrew Emerton, specialty brand manager for New B...

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 Ashley Rodriguez, and I produce Good Beer Hunting's podcast. One of the most exciting parts of being at Good Beer Hunting is working with new authors. It's thrilling to see a new corner of the beer world, or a new perspec...

Today's guest, Joey Redner, is special to me on a variety of levels. He's a brewery founder I've long admired, having started and grown Cigar City Brewing into one of the strongest brands of the second wave of craft brewing—and having done so with very little experience. Instead, he used his instincts as a writer to navigate the business from a journalist's perspective before he ever invested in c...

Welcome to A Thousand Words, a special project by Good Beer Hunting. I'm Ashley Rodriguez. As a producer at GBH, I work with a lot of photographers and visual storytellers. And while I'm familiar with the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words," I'm not sure I've ever been challenged to consider what that 1,000 words might be like—or what it means to that visual artist. There's a piece of adv...

I'm Bryan Roth, and you're listening to the Good Beer Hunting podcast. A growing business can be a funny thing in normal times. Early years are marked by the hustle and extra effort needed just to keep up, and if you're lucky enough, knock it out of the park. There are also lots of surprises, and for many of today's entrepreneurs, COVID-19 has been the biggest one of all. In today's episode, we're...

Welcome to this episode of Sightlines. I'm Bryan Roth. So much has changed in the last few months because of COVID-19, and while many Americans across the country are returning to bars and breweries in limited numbers, sales at chain grocery, convenience, and big-box stores are still flourishing. For a variety of reasons—from efficiency to the ease or necessity of purchasing large quantities of fo...

Today's guest was one of our 2019 Signifiers: an annual list our writers compile, in which we honor people in the industry who have made a lasting impact through their work. Day Bracey is the co-founder of Fresh Fest, the first Black-culture-focused beer festival in the country. It's also one of the best beer festivals in the country—period. Hosted in Pittsburgh for the last two years, Fresh Fest...

I'm Bryan Roth, and you're listening to the Good Beer Hunting podcast. We've all made lots of adjustments to our lives because of COVID-19, from working from home and missing out on concerts and movies to just not seeing our friends in person. The beer industry has also had to make a wild pivot, taking aspects of what is very much an in-person experience and transforming it into one that's interac...

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 Ashley Rodriguez, and I produce Good Beer Hunting's podcast. Lily Waite is unstoppable. She's one of our most prolific writers at Good Beer Hunting, contributing everything from  food-driven chronicles of seaside adventur...

Today's guest has been a partner and friend to GBH for years. He's a former GM for 16 on Center, a restaurant and venue group in Chicago known for its Michelin Star restaurant, Longman & Eagle, as well as music venues like The Empty Bottle and Thalia Hall. If Thalia Hall sounds familiar, that's because it's played host to our Uppers & Downers festival basically since its inception. So much of what...

Welcome to this episode of Sightlines. I'm Bryan Roth. As cities and states start to reopen and the siren call of warmer weather encourages people to test the boundaries of self-isolation, the ramifications of the coronavirus linger. Much worry has been focused on our local and national economies, and while breweries have been a part of that, the impact of COVID-19 stretches further. In this episo...

I'm Jonny Garrett, and you're listening to the Good Beer Hunting podcast. Today's guest is Paul Jones, founder and sole owner of Cloudwater Brew Co. in Manchester, England. Since founding Cloudwater just five years ago Jones has, perhaps knowingly, become a spokesperson for the British beer industry. To be fair, he has plenty of right to that job. Cloudwater was previously voted the fifth-best bre...

I'm Evan Rail, and you're listening to the Good Beer Hunting podcast. Today we're doing things a little differently: I'm taking you along with me on a reporting trip to Germany's Hop Research Center, where I am trying to find out more about what the institute does—and especially, to find out more about the exciting new hops, like Mandarina Bavaria and Hallertau Blanc, that have recently been devel...

I'm Claire Bullen, and you're listening to the Good Beer Hunting podcast. When I first met up with Helena Fitzgerald to record this podcast episode, the world was a different place. It was the third week of February, and Helena—a freelance writer based in New York, who has contributed to publications like The Atlantic, Hazlitt, Catapult, and Electric Literature—was visiting London on a long-term,...

This is GBH Out Loud, and I'm Ashley Rodriguez. Today, you'll hear Mark Spence read the sixth entry of his blog, Beer is Offal, called  "Stage Three Anger,"  published on Good Beer Hunting on February 21, 2020. There's a shift in this entry of Beer is Offal. It's an abrupt reminder that there is a person behind this blog, living this life in real-time. In this piece, Mark reflects on the death of...

This is part two of a two-part feature from New York City Beer Week. This was recorded at The Well in Brooklyn, just a week or so before the city announced a state of emergency because of COVID-19. We're now releasing these episodes in an entirely new context—keep that in mind as you listen. Many of the topics are timeless and will continue to be valuable long after this pandemic has passed and Ne...

This is part one of a two-part feature from New York City Beer Week. This was recorded at The Well in Brooklyn, just a week or so before the city announced a state of emergency because of COVID-19. We're now releasing these episodes in an entirely new context—keep that in mind as you listen. But many of the topics are timeless and will continue to be valuable long after this pandemic has passed an...

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 Jonny Garrett, and I'm a staff writer for GBH. Today, I'm catching up with Anthony Gladman, a new writer at GBH. With the U.K. on lockdown, I thought this would be a great opportunity to transcend the physical distances a...

Living overseas can give you an interesting perspective on American beer culture. Although I'm originally from California, I've lived in the Czech Republic for almost 20 years now. While I miss many of the beers and breweries from back home, I really fell in love with Czech beer, dedicating a lot of my time to researching, writing about, and drinking it. In recent years I've been glad to see North...

This is GBH Out Loud, and I'm Ashley Rodriguez. Today, you'll hear Mark Spence read an entry of his blog, Beer is Offal, called  "Winner Winner Chicken Dinner"  published on Good Beer Hunting on January 16, 2020. What do love and chicken have to do with one another? You might not think a lot, but as Mark illustrates, what we love most about food—making new things, tweaking a recipe, making a small...

Today's guest comes to us from far northern Vermont. Eleanor is a cider maker, first known for her ice ciders, made using a process of distillation that profits from natural swings in seasonal temperatures to produce a concentrated, sweet, and acid-balanced cider. Ice cider is often thought of as a dessert wine in the U.S., but so easily replaces a bourbon or whiskey. In her region, just south of...

Welcome to this special series of the GBH Collective podcast, where we'll be checking in with members of our global team to keep you updated on unfolding events surrounding COVID-19. I'm Michael Kiser. Today's guests are special to me—both of them are media peers who I've often measured myself against. They're also just delightful humans who are always accessible and open to inquiry. Over the year...

Producer's Note: we're going to continue bringing you timeless stories and important interviews, some of which have newfound relevance because of COVID-19, and some that are explicitly unrelated. This episode you're about to hear was recorded during San Francisco's Beer Week in February 2020, so the context is removed a bit from what's happening in the world right now, but the information is still...