Good Beer Hunting

Like most of my beer friends, I first met Chantel Columna on Instagram. Our online conversations eventually led to an in-person meeting when a work trip brought Chantel to Atlanta in 2021. We enjoyed beers while diving into a conversation about the beer industry and life at large. Last year, my husband and I traveled to Denver. I knew I couldn't leave the city without visiting Novel Strand Brewing...

Family recipes, passed down through generations, are one of life's greatest blessings. In my house, it's a salsa recipe, started in earnest by my mother, fiddled with endlessly by me, and one that I plan to pass down to my son. For Good Beer Hunting community editor and cooking enthusiast Stephanie Grant, it's her grandmother's recipe for red rice, an evolved version of the West African staple jol...

For many of us, beer is a passion. It's something that tastes great, brings us together with loved ones, and provides small details we can fret over in an endless quest to best understand everything that goes into the beverage. It can also be a lifeline. In this episode, you'll learn why a job in beer became so pivotal for Tony Rahí Jaquez Moreno, who came to the U.S. at 19 to study at the Univers...

The phrase "sober curious" is picking up steam in beverage alcohol circles—perhaps most notably in the craft beer industry. More non-alcoholic products, sober events, and shared conversations regarding our collective consumption habits are taking place than ever before, but a stigma remains. If you're not drinking, why are you even in a beer space to begin with? That's exactly what today's convers...

Over the last decade, one of the aspects of beer and brewing I've admired the most has been an increased attention from the world of academics. Wine has long been a centerpiece for research, but it feels like college faculty are now catching up thanks to a better understanding of the social, cultural, and community side of beer. There is a ton to be learned beyond the science of making beer and in...

Back in 2019, my husband and I traveled to Cuba, and as part of our entry into the country, we had to book a cultural experience. We chose a tour around the city of Havana, visiting different local spots while learning about the history and present day struggles of the country. Our tour ended at our guide's grandmother's house, where she served us rum and coffee. It was a beautiful experience that...

As a former resident of Richmond, Virginia, and with family and friends still there, I visit the city fairly frequently. But seeing it through the eyes of someone else and hearing them describe places like the James River, Ardent Craft Ales, or Mekong made me long to go back. But the story you'll hear about today isn't a typical travel piece: Rather, it's a bittersweet exploration of the city, an...

Whether food or drink, there's so much that goes into process. That could mean how a brewer combines hops, malt, water, and yeast to get the flavor of a beer just right, or how a chef takes even more ingredients to build a dish with cascading tastes on every bite. In this episode, process and place come together in a unique way from a brewery in Ohio. Little Fish Brewing Company doesn't just have...

Many of the people who work in the craft beer industry got their start because they were passionate about the liquid in their glass. Eric Pham, head brewer and innovation brewer at Prison City Brewing in Auburn, New York, is one of those people. After feeling unfulfilled at his desk job, Eric's fiancé suggested he look for a job in the beer industry since they spent many of their weekends visiting...

For years, spirits have taken up a larger share of alcohol consumption across the U.S. Almost exclusively stealing sales from beer, this trend has been boosted by increased interest in cocktails. Whether making them at home, buying them canned and ready to drink, or going out to a bar or restaurant, America's cocktail culture is thriving as drinkers search for new flavor experiences. In this episo...

Beer has never been "just beer." It can divide as well as it can unite. Some efforts to use beer as a force for good have resulted in initiatives that call for an end to sexual violence, raise money for lifesaving medical research, and even promote literacy.  Among those leading the charge to use beer as a force for good are the duo behind Hana Koa Brewing Company in Honolulu, Hawai'i. Head brewer...

I recently learned that California has 461 recorded Bigfoot sightings. That's second only to Washington State, but far more than the mythical creature's presumed home turf in British Columbia, which counts a mere 134 sightings since 1924. But how many sightings can be credited to the power of suggestion? Or were they all real instances that just so happened to occur to true believers? We may never...

Today's guest, if we're speaking in beer years, is a lifelong friend. But what feels like a lifetime really only started around 2011 in Chicago when Good Beer Hunting, at the time just a personal hobby of mine, was basically unknown outside of a small community in Chicago. At the time, Paul Schneider was still a history teacher in the burbs homebrewing and volunteering at small start-up breweries...

In the runup to the American Civil War, the number one political issue on everyone's minds was…slavery. Of course it was. But it's easy to forget that the number two issue was alcohol. Back then, like today, debates over drinking boiled down to a few key points: who should drink what—and in particular what kind of liquor—how much, when, and what that drinking said about a person's character. When...

New York City is, in almost all respects, on the cutting edge, the vanguard of the very cultures we consume through fashion, art, music, and food. But when it comes to the craft beer scene, the city that never sleeps seems to have done just that—slept on the industry's development and growth, until, of course, they joined the party, which is still going strong.   In her latest love letter to New Y...

Creativity of all kinds fascinates me. I love seeing artists work and watching their final products take form. But most of all, I love to hear them talk about their processes, their frustrations, their joys. No matter the medium—design, food, or in this case beer—I like to glimpse the way their minds influence their work. Those moments of visibility bring a level of understanding of the creative p...

Sometimes, hidden gems remain hidden for a reason. Those in-the-know may jealously limit access to outsiders; other times, it's simply because surprises can blossom in the most unexpected places. When it comes to craft beer, our hidden gems tend to be places like old-school beer bars or hyper-local destinations that remain off the radar of tourists. But occasionally, entire subcultures have been b...

What if I told you one of the best places in the country to find the coolest, freshest craft beer is in Pasadena, California? That probably wouldn't surprise. But what if I also told you that when you go to find the latest releases from Humble Sea or Trillium, or even a bottle of Cantillon, you could also fill up your gas tank a few dozen feet from that refrigerator door? In this episode, you're g...

Science has always been intimidating to me. I was never good at memorizing the periodic table or combining an array of chemical compounds to get a desired—and safe—mixture. Despite the challenges that lasted from middle into high school, I still found it all fascinating, the act of testing and discovery and using specialized equipment that can provide meaningful answers to all kinds of questions....

Non-alcoholic spirits, beer, wine, and beyond have finally graduated from punchlines to premium products in their own right, filling up store shelves and restaurant menus in greater numbers than ever before. But as writer David Neimanis explains in his latest piece for Good Beer Hunting, there's still a long way to go for many of these products—non-alcoholic spirits in particular—to achieve their...

The question at the center of this episode is simple: Does hard cider have a problem or an opportunity? The answer may be a little bit of both, with your own perspective making the glass of Angry Orchard or 2 Towns or Hudson North slightly more than half empty or half full. So, while we may not have clear-cut answers by the end of the episode, you will hear from a few different perspectives about...

When you think about beer or wine or spirits or any alcoholic beverage "beyond" these categories, what do you think of? Is it flavor? Friends? Or maybe just a  vibe ? It's that last thing that I got stuck on recently thinking about cider and its place amongst all these options. For years, cider has been a steady 1(ish)% of the beer category in the U.S., where it's classified. But at a time when so...

Spring is a time of emerging, reawakening, and growing beer sales after the category's typical winter lull—at least for most breweries. But Ohio's largest brewery, Great Lakes Brewing Company, goes against that seasonal wisdom: Its slow season happens in the warmer months, while winter is its annual highpoint. What gives? That's just one of the questions writer and photographer David Nilsen attemp...

Experiencing the uninterrupted beauty of nature should be easy, and in theory it is—for some. As writer Stephanie Grant explores in a new story, going camping can feel like an insurmountable barrier reserved for the wealthy and white. But she hopes that's changing, thanks to organizations like Outdoor Gear and Beer, which are building a more inclusive beer community for people of color and Black c...

At some point in your life, you've probably been told that you're not supposed to talk about religion or politics in certain settings. Especially when you meet someone for the first time. In this episode, we're breaking that rule. As much as it may be one, at least. This conversation combines the secularness of beer with values of Judaism as our guest walks us through why this is a balance that wi...