Good Beer Hunting

On a recent trip to Boston and the surrounding area I was keen to hit up some of the more sought-after breweries like Trillium and Lamplighter, but also a few places that were fundamental to the still-underdeveloped scene in the area, like Cambridge Brewing and the business of today's guest, Suzanne Schalow of Craft Beer Cellar.  Suzanne was the voice in the desert for awhile in Belmont, a short d...

On this week's Fervent Few bonus episode, we're going to get to know some more of our subscribers, a community we started called Fervent Few. These folks subscribe to GBH like a magazine, supporting us financially each month, and as part of there subscriber benefits, they join the GBH team in a community forum where we discuss a wide range of topics, often including professional retailers, brewers...

We're a little over two months since Wicked Weed, one of the nation's most popular and ambitious sour beer producers, was acquired by AB InBev in a sale that set the beer world on edge. Indeed, it seemed to push many people over the edge, galvanizing craft beer's hardcore base against AB while others started reconsidering the future of craft beer, from its definitions and divisions to even the fut...

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.

London's beer scene is made up of a complex tapestry of interesting folks. Like with any beer community, its people are what really makes it, and here in London, one of those people is journalist Will Hawkes. Hawkes has written about beer since 2010 for mainstream publications such as The Independent, The Washington Post, and The Financial Times as well as specialist beer mags like BeerAdvocate an...

On this week's bonus episode, we're going to get to know some of our subscribers, a community we started called the Fervent Few. These folks subscribe to GBH like a magazine, supporting us financially each month. As part of their subscriber benefits, they join the GBH team in a community forum where we discuss a wide range of topics—a forum that includes professional retailers, brewers, distributo...

Chicago's beer story is an historical one, full of the bawdiness that to this day continues the association of beer with the rougher parts of our civility. It's political - in the burbs is where the temperance movement spawned, we've had workers riots and rallies, and our alderman would use their saloons to sway the vote. As American craft brewing brings beer back to the local, and hyperlocal leve...

We've got what I consider a bucket-list interview today. In the past, I've been thrilled to sit down with people like Sam Calagione, Lauren Limbach (formerly Salazar), Jim Koch, Garrett Oliver, Bill Covaleski, and others who were so fundamental to the world of beer that we enjoy now with all its diversity, innovation, and re-invention of the model. These are people who made it all happen by practi...

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.  This episode is devoted to Trophy Brewing Co's Trophy Wife Session IPA

At this point of the American brewing industry, it's safe to say beer is many things to many different people. It can be nothing more than a drink or maybe something to be discussed, but at an increasing rate, it's also become the core of serious study. J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham is many things. She's a teacher, writer, homebrewer, community activist, and more. In many ways, beer finds itself at the...

Ask a beer lover, and there are plenty of cities whose names can be synonymous with the drink they love. San Diego, Grand Rapids, Portland, Fort Collins ... Portland again. In North Carolina, Asheville has long held that designation, gaining local and national attention, but part of the fun of watching beer's growth can be the creation and explosion of cultures in new places. In recent years, that...

In the age of hyper-local craft, we have a competing—or perhaps complementary?—narrative in the U.S., and that's heritage brands.  You may have heard my counterpart, Matthew Curtis (who's based in London), mention the UK's traditional breweries more than once. It's an interesting dynamic having young, upstart craft brands entering the market alongside these elder statesmen who are sometimes hundre...

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.  This episode is devoted to Foley Brothers Maple Brown.

For anyone who's gone brewery hopping in Denver, CO, you know how lively and enjoyable that experience can be in one of the country's pre-eminent beer towns. With generations of brewers all working alongside each other, Denver has a brewing history and status unlike any other.  But if you're like me, you've also noticed some common—maybe too common—themes in Denver breweries. Lots of IPAs, outdoor...

This week we've got Austin Ray, our Editorial Director talking about our Wicked Weed coverage pretty much as we were writing it, and his interview with Mitch Steel about his new atlanta brewpub concept.  We'll also check in with Bill Holland, one of our newest recruits who' been contributing to our b-Roll section in between his hours selling beer for MillerCoors, which lends a unique perspective t...

At this year's Craft Brewers Conference, the GBH team held a panel discussion on the topic of storytelling for breweries, how it evolves as it grows, and how the story of craft and the story of a single brewery can align and diverge.  Breweries have historically united to tell the story of "craft beer" as they work together to build the category and create an educated consumer. But in the past few...

Today's breweries come in all shapes and sizes. Different tap lineups and business models. Each has a unique ethos and purpose told through individual stories and names. Somewhere amongst all this, there is Free Range Brewing, a business based on the ideas of agriculture and locality situated in one of the largest cities in the United States. Just a couple miles from the literal downtown marker of...

The three-tier system is something that's continuously up for debate in our country, surfing on arguments about who it serves poorly and who it services well, who it protects us from and who it favors. It's a complicated value chain mandated by the federal government to exist, but also regulated by states, and increasingly getting sliced up into more unique and critical ways of bringing your favor...

Despite what some politicians may rally against, there is plenty of value of what a globalized society can bring. The different perspectives and experiences that flow from one border to the next has created a connectivity that enhance ideas the world over. It may come as no surprise, that also lends itself to how people from different countries use hops and malt, too. On assignment for GBH, I trav...

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.  This episode is devoted to Tired Hands Saison Hands.

In the age of small and local, some of the more mature craft beer brands in the US are looking to new markets to find the relevance, brand awareness and the resulting sales that they seek. For the 28 year old Brooklyn Brewery this means investing heavily in markets all over the world including The UK, Sweden, Australia and more recentlt East Asia, thanks to the recent sale of a 24% stake in the bu...

Welcome back to another episode of the GBH Collective where we bring you the stories behind the stories from our writers and photographers all over the world.   This is our third edition of this format - and if you're liking it, let us know. The team really enjoys sharing their perspectives, and I can say personally, I'm enjoying hearing more about their adventures.   And of course, this new serie...

Beer Writer is a term that gets tossed around a lot these days, but it's used to describe a wide variety of amateurs and professionals alike. Everyone from a personal blogger to a freelancer writing for magazines, to an author with half a dozen books under their belt, to people who cover the business of beer for established outlets like the Tribune or the New York Times. But each of these kinds of...

A few years ago on vacation on Long Island, I stumbled across a few local beers that caught my attention—Toasted Lager and Rastafa Rye were two of them, both beers from Blue Point. After some searching, we found the brewery a road just a short walk from the center of a sleepy town. It was closed that day, so I didn't get to visit, but the image of that building—a sort of repurposed gas station wit...

Welcome back to another episode of the GBH Collective where we bring you the stories behind the stories from our writers and photographers all over the world.  This is our second edition of this format - and if you're liking it, let us know. The team really enjoys sharing their perspectives, and I can say personally, I'm enjoying hearing more about their adventures.  And of course, this new series...