Good Beer Hunting

There's an inherent tension in making art. The best art comes from a deeply personal place, but also speaks in a universal register. That's not to say all art is for every person, but when the artist can successfully weave specific, individual moments into the grand themes of life, the results can be sensational. In his column for Good Beer Hunting called " This Must Be The Place ," writer Oliver...

In this episode we're taking a trip to Des Moines, Iowa, where Whitney and Scott Selix share with us stories of their hospitality careers and what it means to create an innovative tap list at Lua Brewing. It's that latter piece that caught my eye when I first came across Lua, with a lineup that includes traditional German and English beers alongside various hazy IPAs and slushee Sours. If like me,...

Lager might be having a moment, but as a whole, craft beer drinkers don't always reach for the easiest beer on the menu. Instead, the newest, most intense, biggest beers on the block tend to get the most attention. But sometimes—often—the best beer is actually the familiar one, the favorite, the old reliable. Sometimes, it's Narragansett.  In his story " Hi, Neighbor — Narragansett Lager's Return...

It's time to talk apples. Or, at least, how apples fit into all the other flavors you might experience when you pop open a bottle or can of hard cider. To help with this journey, we're chatting with Jasmine Mason and Ashley Johnson, a pair of cider lovers and entrepreneurs behind the Cider Jawns. As to what a "jawn" is exactly we'll get into during the conversation, and along with some Merriam-Web...

Like many craft beer enthusiasts entering their late 30s and early 40s, I've found the booze real estate in my refrigerator is starting to shrink. First, I started adding cans of LaCroix knockoffs from ALDI. Then I swapped a few beers for some hard kombuchas, followed by regular kombuchas. Right now, I've got cans of fruited sparkling tea, and recently I realized that the only alcohol I have left...

This statement shouldn't come as a surprise: Beer is agriculture. With ingredients that come from the ground there are so many ways a region, climate, and growing practices can impact the flavors of our beer. And in this episode, we learn a bit about how something like craft malt can make a difference for a brewer trying to not only offer something that tastes unique, but brings story and connecti...

Around the world, the craft beer community disagrees on a lot of things, but one big schism is over what beer actually is. Is it a rigid adherence to historical methods and styles? Or could it also be over-the-top, avant-garde experiments that are as far from tradition as it's possible to be while still remaining liquid? At Omnipollo Brewing, it turns out beer can be both. In his latest piece titl...

Right now, a lot of things seem really bad. There are microplastics embedded in all of our bodies—including millions of bodies now stripped of autonomy, thanks to the Supreme Court. Wildfire season is heating up (literally), everything costs more than it used to, and it's hard to escape this pervasive feeling of existential dread permeating every corner of our lives which, unfortunately, also incl...

When we think about beer and brewing, it's easy for our minds to wander toward the person making the beer we drink. Brewers create a little bit of magic combining art and science, and because of that, are often considered the backbone to a business that makes and sells beer. Sometimes, they can even be thought of as rock stars with engaging personalities and thoughtful approaches to what it means...

Okay, maybe it's not Harry Styles or Bad Bunny, but writing about beer history is, relatively speaking, kind of hot right now. Writers at a number of publications are unearthing cool stories about the origins of beer glassware, influential breweries, and obscure beer styles. There are Twitter and Instagram accounts dedicated to beer in art, vintage beer advertisements, and other visual aspects of...

HBCUs—or Historically Black Colleges and Universities—have long been important institutions in the Black community. The first HBCUs were established before the Civil War to provide higher education opportunities to Black high school graduates, and since then have continued to grow. Today, there are 101 HBCUs in the nation.  Over the years, HBCUs have graduated many prominent leaders, including Dr....

As a writer, photographer, translator, and the first Certified Cicerone in Ukraine now living in Switzerland, Lana Svitankova wears a lot of hats. One of them is to capture moments through her photography and to share them with the world. Another is to collect memories and enshrine them through her storytelling. But one particular hat is that of an ambassador, on a mission to immortalize a beer fr...

I first learned about Montclair Brewery during Black History Month. Since opening in 2018, the brewery has honored  prominent Black figures —from Harriet Tubman with its Tubman Railroad Strawberry Pale Ale to Chadwick Boseman with its Boseman Wild Ale. I had the chance to talk with Denise Ford Sawadogo, the co-owner and founder of Montclair Brewery, for an article I was working on for the  New Bre...

The first time I connected with Emma Janzen off social media happened last year when she, very graciously, offered to help guide me in the early stages of my book proposal. Since then, she's continued to mentor me through the harrowing process of actually writing a book. She's also made big career moves; recently published her latest book, "The Bartender's Manifesto" with Toby Maloney and the bart...

Today's episode is a preview of a festival coming up in Pittsburgh on July 30th called Mixed Culture . GBH is intimately involved as partners on the branding and content side of the festival—and that's in large part because the people behind it are both clients and long-time friends of ours at Cinderlands Beer Co. This festival is a sort of "coming of age" moment for their whole crew. On the back...

Expertise is an easy thing to pin down … or is it? There's the oft-cited 10,000 hours that it takes to become an expert. Or there's a dictionary we could pull from a book shelf or mobile device to look up a definition. Or maybe we just know it when we see it in action. There are all sorts of experts who share all sorts of expertise with the world, and whether they know it, like it, or claim it, it...

Sometimes, we can make the mistake of thinking history only applies to things that happened long ago. But as Wisconsin-based beer historian and writer John Harry reminds us, events that happened in our lifetime can still resonate and help inform our collective understanding of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. In his piece titled " Racism in a Can' — How One Beer Epitomized the Native American Strug...

Welcome to the first episode in our Next Germination series, produced in partnership with Guinness. For those of you that have been reading and listening to Good Beer Hunting for years, you know how important the underwriting we receive is. Alongside hundreds of paying subscribers, whom we call the Fervent Few, our underwriters enable us to pursue big, ambitious projects. And no one has been more...

Does the world really need another craft brewery? Honestly, no—but Daniel Muñoz and Jeremy Grinkey think the world just might need  their  brewery, which is coming very soon to the city of Orange in Orange County, California. It's called Everywhere Beer, but they're not just stopping at beer. The two co-founders, along with their partners Stefan Weber and Keith Pumilia, hope to create a space that...

Some people call it boring brown beer, but others think of it as liquid from heaven. In a love letter to what's arguably the most British of beer styles, writer Anthony Gladman covers the history, meaning, and future of Best Bitter in his piece titled " Don't Call It a Comeback — Taking Stock of Best Bitter's Moment in the Spotlight ," which was published on April 6, 2022. In today's conversation,...

Breweries love to talk about what they bring into the world. In other words, their beer. Breweries tend to talk less about what they leave behind. Their focus is on the next batch of beer, not the last one. In a lot of ways that makes perfect sense...but if you want to keep track of your business, your favorite brands, or the industry as a whole, a forward focus can also leave a blindspot. Breweri...

While beer is in the name of this podcast, we explore all kinds of beverage alcohol with our guests. In recent episodes, we've talked about alcohol-infused coffee, agriculture, filmmaking, and more. If you follow alcohol industry news—or just stroll through your local grocery or liquor store—you know hard seltzer and canned cocktails increasingly take up space on shelves and in conversations. All...

What were you drinking in the early 2000s? When we look back on trends and data, there's a good chance it was a flavored malt beverage along the lines of Zima, Mike's Hard Lemonade, or the star of today's story: Twisted Tea from Boston Beer Company.   In her exuberant and extremely thorough piece titled " Spill It — Twisted Tea's Unpredictable, Unparalleled 21-Year Success Story " journalist Kate...

Today's guest has been a bit of a ghost int he GBH machine for more than a decade - since our founding really - and he's someone I think about every time someone asks me how GBH got started - and as you'll discover shortly, he had no idea.  Greg Browne was the brewer at a brewpub in Chicago's NW suburbs - a place called Mickey Finn's. He was known for brewing a hefeweizen - a recipe he inherited f...

The color bar may be Britain's most shameful secret—even though it's not so secret after all. In journalist David Jesudason's intensely researched and deeply personal new piece titled " Breaking the Color Bar — How One Man Helped Desegregate Britain's Pubs (and Fought for an Anti-Racist Future) ," which was published on March 16, 2022, David shares the story of Avtar Singh Jouhl, a British Indian...