Episodes
Published 03/23/24
Fluffernutter and Oreo Marshmallow pastry stouts. Kettle sours brewed with "obscene amounts" of fruit. A cream cheese rangoon gose. Depending on your level of curiosity and adventurousness, these beers may sound exciting or challenging, but they also have two things in common: They’ve been made by Colorado’s WeldWerks Brewing and they’re fun beers made with serious intent. In this episode, we get into some of the technical ideas, philosophies, and search for dialed-in joy with Skip Schwartz,...
Published 03/23/24
Some people nerd out about beer in general. Others go wild for water profiles, hop varieties, or yeast strains, but in Don Tse’s experience, not enough people are paying attention to malted barley. It’s something he’s been passionate about for a decade, and a topic he finally gets to explore in-depth in his first piece for Good Beer Hunting. In that Critical Drinking op-ed, titled “Fight the Power — How Craft Malt Is Central to Taking On Beer’s Industrial Complex,” Don explains how the...
Published 03/20/24
The story of homebrewing and craft beer is intertwined. Ask many craft brewery owners how they got their start, and you’ll probably hear about their homebrewing days—how it sparked their love of beer and eventually led them to turn their hobby into a career. However, homebrewing is only one part of going pro, and there are many more skills needed to open and run a brewery. Ryan Lavery, owner of Widowmaker Brewing, got his start brewing beer in his garage. A series of serendipitous moments,...
Published 03/16/24
Modelo Especial continues to absolutely dominate as a lager, but is it so successful that we can call it the new domestic lager of choice? On this episode of The Gist, I’m joined as always by Lead Sightlines reporter Kate Bernot, along with special guest, freelance writer, and Good Beer Hunting contributor Jerard Fagerberg to talk about how Constellation Brands has grown Modelo to a 200 million case brand and what that means for the domestic beer category at large. Plus, we look at the latest...
Published 03/13/24
Next up in our series of interviews from the 2023 Foeder for Thought festival, Kate Bernot is talking to Matt Manthe from Odd Breed Brewing in Pompano Beach, Florida. Most of the locations of the brewers we speak to at Foeder for Thought come from far and wide, and usually from places with more mild climates than Florida has to offer. So Matt and Odd Breed adapt their process and expectations to that reality, working with yeast strains and styles that provide the nuanced results they’re...
Published 03/05/24
In this episode of the 2023 Foeder for Thought festival, I’m talking to Aaron Kleidon of catch Brewing in Ave, Illinois, one of the country’s most obscure and isolated brewers, that also happens to be one of the most welcoming and casual visits among the class of brewers you might consider a destination brewery. Tucked away in far southern Illinois, Scratch has made a name for itself with foraged ingredients, ancient methods of brewing, such as hot stone and campfire heating, as well as a...
Published 03/05/24
In this episode of the 2023 Foeder for Thought festival, Kate Bernot is talking to Trevor Rogers from de Grade Brewing, a geographical outlier like many of these producers, based in Tilamook, Oregon. de Garde was part of the avant garde in American wild ales, founded in 2012 with his partner Linsey, considered by many to be one of, if not THE first producer of these styles of beer in the US. Part of the legend of de Garde comes from its methods of collecting wild yeast along multiple...
Published 03/05/24
After taking a short break for a St. Pete-style rain to pass through, the crowd at Foeder for Thought gathered in the courtyard at Green Bench again, dried off some seats and got a beer to listen to our second chat featuring Brandon Boldt from Primitive Beer in Colorado. A well-respected and novel producer of wild ales, Primitive is perhaps more widely known for their packaging style, putting uncarbonated wild ales into a bag and box serving package. These still beers provide a profoundly...
Published 03/05/24
We’re kicking off our 2023 Foeder for Thought episodes with Zach Adams of Fox Farm in Salem, Connecticut. Like many craft brewers, Zach was a home brewer, but unlike most home brewers, he competed at the top of the game in the Boston Beer Longshot challenge and won. Riding that boost of confidence, he and his partner bought a 1960s dairy barn and renovated it to create a humble but beautiful destination for what would quickly become one of the ties premier beer destinations. That confidence...
Published 03/05/24
Unless you’ve been listening to older episode of the GBH Podcast, you may not have heard my voice in awhile. I’ve been working on some new projects this past year or so that I’m excited about, but if there’s one thing that pulls me out of semi-retirement each year, it’s the Foeder for Thought festival in St Petersburgh Florida every March with Green Bench Brewing Company, and here we are again on the cusp of that annual gathering of wild and spontaneous beer producers gathering. This year...
Published 03/05/24
This episode is one of a three-part series recorded as part of the Rare & Vintage Beer Tasting, an annual event held in Durham, North Carolina that brings brewers and beer lovers together from all over the country. Along with a beer festival, Rare & Vintage also hosts beer industry professional development conversations each January. The combo acts as a fundraising and awareness effort for the Michael James Jackson Foundation, which funds education and career advancement for Black,...
Published 03/02/24
This episode is one of a three-part series recorded as part of the Rare & Vintage Beer Tasting, an annual event held in Durham, North Carolina that brings brewers and beer lovers together from all over the country. Along with a beer festival, Rare & Vintage also hosts beer industry professional development conversations each January. The combo acts as a fundraising and awareness effort for the Michael James Jackson Foundation, which funds education and career advancement for Black,...
Published 03/02/24
This episode is one of a three-part series recorded as part of the Rare & Vintage Beer Tasting, an annual event held in Durham, North Carolina that brings brewers and beer lovers together from all over the country. Along with a beer festival, Rare & Vintage also hosts beer industry professional development conversations each January. The combo acts as a fundraising and awareness effort for the Michael James Jackson Foundation, which funds education and career advancement for Black,...
Published 03/02/24
If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times—beverage companies are going to have to expand their offerings not just to grow, but to survive at all. In this episode of The Gist, lead Sightlines reporter Kate Bernot joins me, Beth Demmon, to take a big look at 2023 and what the numbers mean for 2024, why diversification is the word of the year, and what a brewery buying into CBD could signal to the rest of the industry. This is the Gist.  
Published 02/28/24
In my time in and around the beer industry, I’ve heard too many people underestimate the Cicerone Certification Program, a worldwide standard for recognizing people who are experts in  beer sales and service. While I haven’t taken it myself, I understand the rigorous studying that’s required to pass the written and tasting exam to become a Certified Cicerone, just the second level of a four-part process to become a Master Cicerone. And even those who take the test seriously aren’t guaranteed...
Published 02/24/24
In this episode, we’re talking about process. And it’s not just in context of the brewing of beer, but everything that leads up to it, what happens during, and how a brewer can get better after. Helping us get into the detail of it all is Julia Astrid Davis, the head brewer and zygurmatrix at Burke-Gilman Brewing Company in Seattle. And if you're going to talk to a brewer about all these intimate aspects of their job, Julia is a great example of someone you should listen to. Over the course...
Published 02/17/24
It’s only February, but beverage companies are already setting the stage for the rest of 2024 with new products, big investments, and… TV ads? Today, Kate Bernot and me, Beth Demmon, recap the best and most blah Super Bowl commercials, discuss the potential of high and low ABV products, and you’ll hear from Drinkways Editor Emma Janzen about the economic outlook for spirits this year. This is the Gist.   
Published 02/14/24
When it comes to careers, longevity is hard to come by. Most surveys and job-focused websites will tell you Americans find a new job roughly every three-to-five years. The average American worker changes some aspect of their career—if not their entire professional focus—multiple times over their life. So, when you find someone who’s really committed to the people they work with and those they work for, you know something must be going right. Such is the case for Jess Griego, now the chief...
Published 02/10/24
Sometimes when dreams get put on hold for too long, they can fade away and become nostalgia for what never was. But in the case of Sarah Real, her dream of starting a brewery was never far from her mind, and when she was finally able to open Hot Plate Brewing Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts earlier this year with her husband and co-founder Mike Dell'Aquila, it had been many years in the making. As one of the few Latina-owned brewpubs amongst the nearly 10,000 total breweries in the...
Published 02/03/24
American craft beer is old enough to have “good old days,” which means it's no stranger to retirements or its best and brightest moving on to new careers. In October 2023, Theresa McCulla announced she’d conclude seven years of work with the American Brewing History Initiative at the Smithsonian Institution, wrapping up an effort that saw her collect artifacts, design exhibits, interview nearly 100 icons of American brewing, award-winning stories, and more. Theresa’s departure leaves a...
Published 01/27/24
It’s a new week with new news, but you already knew that. In this week's episode of The Gist, Sightlines reporter Kate Bernot talks with me, Beth Demmon, about Drizly’s billion-dollar bust, cider’s rising star, and… beads? BEES! Hat tip to Arrested Development for that one. This is the Gist. 
Published 01/23/24
People who work in beer arrive from all kinds of professional backgrounds and even different career trajectories. But once they’re in beer, it’s less common to find examples of those who will be true chameleons, working across businesses that make, move, or sell beer, or even for companies that just handle the raw ingredients that go into making it. That’s what makes this conversation particularly special. Shanleigh Thomson has been a food scientist, brewer, and sales rep for distributors...
Published 01/20/24
Football and beer tend to go together without much thought. But in places like Pope County, Arkansas, alcohol is noticeably absent from tailgate coolers, plastic Solo cups, and concession stands. That’s because the area, which is home to Arkansas Tech University, is also one of the state’s 29 dry counties, where access to alcohol is restricted thanks to political influence, conservative mindsets, and tradition left from the time of Prohibition.  In his first piece for Good Beer Hunting...
Published 01/17/24
When I tell people that I’m really into beer, a quarter of the time someone mentions cider despite the two being vastly different. These interactions have always left me feeling helpless because I lacked the knowledge to educate them about the differences, and I certainly couldn’t guide them to a beer style that would be similar to cider. The extent of my cider knowledge was extremely limited—until I read fellow GBH contributor and podcast host Beth Demmon's book “The Beer Lover's Guide to...
Published 01/13/24