A few years ago on vacation on Long Island, I stumbled across a few local beers that caught my attention - one being Toasted Lager and another being Rastafa Rye, both beers from Bluepoint, which after some searching, we found on 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 with an old school dive bar for a tap room, stuck with me.  Shortly after, I started seeing the growth of Toasted Lager as close as Michigan. And the Bluepoint story started to become regional. That little brewery on Long Island had contracted their lager in upstate New York, like so many growing brands on the east coast. And it was about this time that AB-Inbev took notice as well, acquiring the brewery in a deal that was largely ignored compared to some of the uproar that came with other acquisitions. Who was Bluepoint? And why did AB want to buy them? was the common refrain. I’ll admit, other than the regional advantage, it seemed like a curious choice to me at the time.  But watching the brand evolve since the acquisition, some themes emerge - the coastal story is more prominent, the connection to the local culinary culture, and of course, a unique lager that was already scaling up and reaching new markets. And now, they’re distributing to Chicago for the first time.  In all that change, Bluepoint brought on a new brewmaster, a guy who came up through the St Louis Budweiser brewery, a trained engineer who found his passion for beer, and when the opportunity opened up for a role in one of the AB craft breweries, he leapt at the chance.  It’s a career story that can only exist in 2017 with America’s talent pool starting to move back and forth from big and little breweries within the same ownership structure, as each seek out a particular expertise whether it be engineering or cultural and both work to define innovation for themselves, and as some talent graduates, and opportunities for scaling up, or down, your focus as a brewer become available.  Interesting times.  This is Bluepoints brewmaster, Dan Jansen, listen in.