Good Beer Hunting

2019 was a big year for us at GBH. We published more stories than ever before, our writers took home dozens of awards, and we broke our own record for the number of visits to our site. It was truly a banner year.  One of the reasons for that is Claire Bullen, our editor-in-chief. Perhaps we didn't give this occasion enough fanfare—I know I certainly would have participated in a ticker-tape parade...

My guest today has been in beer sales for the best part of a decade and seen how fickle and complicated the trade can be.  Edwin Methu's first job was at the infamous London Fields Brewery, an early innovator in the scene that slowly disintegrated due to the criminal dealings of its owner. Bouncing back from that he was part of a Camden Town Brewery sales team overseeing huge growth, before becomi...

Today on GBH Out Loud, you'll hear Besha Rodell read her House Culture story called " The Pub, the Farm, and the Forest — A Return to Narnia, " published on November 14, 2019.  Our House Culture series goes beyond beer—it's a place where we can share stories of critical engagement, and ask readers to look closely at the parts of life that make it worth drinking. In one of our most recent House Cul...

City Beer Store isn't a store. Well, it is, but in 2020 it has evolved far beyond that narrow description. It's a beer and natural wine bar, a restaurant, a gathering space, a patio hangout on nice days, and yeah, sure, a bottle shop too. It's many things all at once, and the store's mascot, a platypus, represents that duality of the business. Over the last decade or so, City Beer has joined the r...

This is GBH Out Loud, and I'm Ashley Rodriguez. Today you'll hear Michael Kiser read " Goodbye to Goose Island's Clybourn Pub for a Season, and Forever ," published on GoodBeerHunting.com on January 9, 2017. Stories about bars and pubs usually focus on the patrons—the folks who rely on their regular spots for connection, a sense of place, or simply as a go-to destination where they can grab a drin...

Hey! Did you hear we hired someone new?  We're all excited to welcome Kate Bernot to the Good Beer Hunting team. She's taking over as the lead at Sightlines, our news channel (don't worry, Bryan Roth is still around, working on new projects and definitely making charts). Kate brings years of experience to the team, which she put to good use pretty much from the moment she started. On day one of Ka...

One of the stories that I think often gets lost in 2019 craft beer is the experience of the brewpub brewer. All the noise—for better and worse—tends to come from packaging breweries, can releases, distribution, growth and expansion into new markets, and massive international invitationals. Most of that is not relevant to a brewpub brewer who's focused on things like their local market, foot traffi...

Today, you'll hear Mark Spence read the third entry of his blog, Beer is Offal, called " Squeeze, Never Pull ," published on Good Beer Hunting on October 31, 2019. This article is evocative—but not for the reason you might think. The subject matter—hunting and eating animals—is heavy, but the way Mark approaches it intentionally leaves the reader in a kind of gray area. Many of us might feel uncom...

Opening a bottle shop is many beer drinkers' ultimate dream. After all, it's hard to argue with a work day spent surrounded by delicious beers and excitable people, where passion and knowledge for a product can carry you through. Stock it and they will come.  Of course, if it were really that easy, we'd all be doing it. The beer industry is in a state of constant flux, and it seems that the retail...

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 w...

Today's conversation is one of the hardest—and most edifying—that I've been lucky to have. It reaches that level of dialogue and storytelling that I think, on occasion, puts the GBH podcast on the level of oral history. It has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with the quality of people who we're lucky enough to have share their stories on this platform. And each guest of this caliber...

Here's an odd thing that enthusiasts don't always focus on when talking about beer, or wine, or spirits, or whichever hard seltzer brand we happen to be enjoying in the moment: they're vehicles for alcohol. There may be tasting notes scribbled down or spoken aloud, and we may stop to reflect on what we just sipped, but the pure, biological impact isn't always discussed when we're quaffing somethin...

This is GBH Out Loud, and I'm Ashley Rodriguez. Today, you'll hear Bryan Roth, editor of our news section, Sightlines, read an article from our Unrated series called "If You're Not First, You're Last — Why Michelob Ultra is the Most Important American Beer Since Bud Light," published on Good Beer Hunting on October 17, 2018. This article is is one of the most popular, and still most polarizing, pi...

One of my favorite aspects of hosting the chats you hear on the Good Beer Hunting podcast is the real-time accumulation of stories and insight from industry professionals. On a very basic level, many of these conversations become a time capsule: we're capturing the thoughts, ideas, and experiences of those living in and changing the beer industry. It's the personal side of what makes beer special....

Witches are having a moment in the current cultural zeitgeist. It's impossible to ignore. And, as Beth Demmon mentions, the resurgence of witchcraft and wizardry have a sort of nostalgic feel that appeals to us older millennials.  Beth is a freelance writer, and published her first piece for Good Beer Hunting called, "Witch (Craft) Beer — How a New Wave of Brewers are Incorporating Magic into Beer...

This is GBH Outloud, I'm Ashley Rodriguez. Today you'll hear Jonny Garret reading the very first story he ever wrote for Good Beer Hunting. It's called, "A Homebrewing Festival in the Arctic Circle," published on goodbeerhunting.com on February 28, 2018. This article is part of our GBH in Residence series, where we go beyond the brewery tour and the tasting room, and literally join the crew in the...

This is Luke Robertson, and you're listening to the Good Beer Hunting podcast. When it was announced in October of this year that Phil Sexton would be opening a Matilda Bay Brewing Company brewpub, the entire Australian beer industry did a double-take. If we were in a cartoon, we would've removed a hip-flask from under our coats and sworn off drinking. To say it was a surprise is underselling it....

Welcome to the Sightlines podcast from Good Beer Hunting. I'm Jonny Garrett. Yesterday we released a podcast interview with John Timothy, chief executive of the Portman Group, which is an independent regulator for advertising and marketing in the U.K. alcohol industry. If you missed it, we recommend giving that a listen before today's episode, where we're going to see how the regulatory system the...

Welcome to the Sightlines podcast from Good Beer Hunting. I'm Jonny Garrett. If you're a beer drinker in the U.K., you've probably heard of the Portman Group: it's the independent regulator for advertising and marketing in the U.K. alcohol industry. But if that sounds a little dry, you could also refer to it as the "pantomime villain" of the industry. Funded by eight multinational drinks companies...

Welcome to the third episode of Into the Wild: part of our six-city tour across the U.S. with New Belgium this year. I'm Ashley Rodriguez, and together with GBH's creative director Michael Kiser, we headed to the city of Raleigh, North Carolina for three days of great food, fantastic drinks, and unique events celebrating the specialness of sour and wild beers.

London is blessed with hundreds of great pubs. But for me one stands tall above the rest: a beacon of everything that is great about this British institution. It also happens to be my local. The Southampton Arms in Kentish Town, North London feels like it's been there forever—it's all worn wood, rickety chairs, stained walls, and sepia photos. It breaks all the perceived rules of running a pub. Up...

A year ago we launched a series of stories underwritten by Guinness called Mother of Invention . The beer industry is often spurred on by the need to meet new necessity with invention. This leads to all sorts of unique evolutionary paths in the history of beer, from making to selling to drinking. These articles explore the innovations, big and small, old and new, that have transformed the beer in...

When you're a brewery that's built on a very specific intent—the way you look, the beers you make, the kind of hospitality you provide—there's a significant amount of behind-the-scenes work that's needed to bring those elements to life. And when you're regarded as one of the best in your domain, that creates an interesting tension: what does improvement mean, when you're already, in some ways, at...

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 Claire Bullen, and I'm the Editor-in-Chief at Good Beer Hunting. One of the greatest pleasures of my job is fielding pitches that our writers send in, which range from the bold to the brilliant to the baffling. Recently...

When we think of beer from north of the American border, classic names like Molson or Labatt may easily come to mind. But as in the U.S., there has been a long shift taking place in the Canadian beer scene. Even though the entire country has roughly the same number of breweries as the state of California, there's a burgeoning community driving an industry to crank out new flavors and styles inspir...