Good Beer Hunting

We're coming to you today to bring you up to speed on some things we’ve doing since our hiatus. 

One of the ways we’ve refocused our efforts is on our Sightlines.news brand. If you’re not already aware - Sightlines.news is our industry leading insights platform for the beverage alcohol and functional beverage industry. It’s a subscription-only newsletter and consultancy run by myself, and two voices I know you’re familiar with - Bryan Roth and Kate Bernot. 

You can subscribe to Sightlines at Sightlines.news, or now you can follow our weekly brief in audio form by subscribing to The Gist by Sightlines, our new podcast weekly summary, available wherever you listen to podcasts. It has its own dedicated feed - it won’t be published here. So you should probably pause and go search for that and subscribe now before you forget. It’s called The Gist, by Sightlines. Here's the link to Spotify and Apple Podcasts

We’ve been building Sightlines in the background for a couple years now, getting our product-market-fit tuned in just right. What I mean by that is - we’ve know there’s a desperate need for new perspective on the business side of alcohol and functional beverage - everything from the future of IPA to energy drinks to hydration to cannabis - it’s a wild wild world out there and not everyone is a billion dollar company with an insights and marketing department who can discern what’s happening and why. 

Well, that’s where the ingenious data analysis and insights development if Sightlines comes in - making sense of a seemingly senseless world of beverage that’s usually inundated with anecdote and narrative that doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny - and costing small companies a fortune, not to mention the opportunity costs of missing the mark time and time again. 

But how do companies sift thought all the data to make decisions about what’s next? Well, at Sightlines, we’ve found a way to level-set with our audience to provide the most critical information - often counter to the prevailing narratives - about what’s driving certain trends, categories, and value chain decisions. Some things are inherently consumer-driven, as they always have been. The pursuit of flavor, function, and feeling in peoples lives through beverage is timeliness even as it’s constantly changing. But in regulated industries, consumers don’t always get what they want - and producers have to navigate a world of legal grey areas, retailer priorities, and wholesaler consolidation that both stifles competition and creates unexpected white space. 

Sightlines is exceptionally good at helping companies navigate all that, with what we call actionable insights. It’s not research for research sake - it’s insights that help you make decisions about what’s next for you and your most important audiences. 

So, first of all, you should subscribe - there’s a monthly and yearly subscription package that gets you multiple reports a week in your inbox. And if you’re wondering if it’s for you - let me tell you, everyone from Boston Beer to Beat Box, to Martinelli’s Apple Juice, to Reyes rely on Sightlines to stay ahead of the competition. But small producers like Highland Brewing in Asehville, Allagash Brewing in Portland Maine, and 503 distilling in Portland Oregon rely on Sightlines to accelerate their growth. Wineries, distilleries, THC companies, and RTD and FMB producers all look to Sightlines for the uniquely cross-category insights we can deliver. 

Some have even brought us into their innovation process to partner on their portfolio optimization and pipeline development. 

And this week, for those of you who voraciously consumer podcasts as part of your knowledge gathering process, we’ve launch The Gist by Sightlines, a new podcast series you can find wherever you listen to podcasts (Here's the link to Spotify and Apple Podcasts) where Kate and Bryan and myself break down our recent reporting to give you a sense of what we’re working on and why. 

If you want to get the insights, you’ll need to subscribe to the newsletter on Sightlines, but if you need another way to keep up, this podcast called The Gist by Sightlines will be a great weekly listen and keep you up to speed.  Here's the link to Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Despite alarming headlines and loud proclamations that “craft beer is dead,” that’s only part of the story—and not a particularly accurate one, at that.

Industry insiders can get bogged down in the depressing details (even we’ve been guilty of it at one time or another). But reporters Kate Bernot and Beth Demmon decided to see how and where the heart of craft beer still beat, and went to the 2024 Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Festival in Paso Robles to find out.

It turns out, the craft beer industry can’t just be measured by Circana numbers or market share. Websites and social media don’t paint a full picture, and after talking to a bunch of festival attendees, they realized there’s a whole lot of love and life still left to consumers passionate about the beverage, the people, and the community. Craft beer loves to talk about how it brings people together, and based on their observations, it still can. 

In this episode, you’ll hear from both Beth and Kate, as well as a number of attendees interviewed at the festival, on why they decided to spend their time and hard-earned money on an afternoon under the California sun. The beer itself plays a part of it, sure. But there’s so much more that keeps people coming back. This is finding joy in beer.

Beer is having a hard time these days. Category-wide, sales are down and interest just isn’t the same it used to be. But what if the enthusiasm that got us to this point—excitement that helped lead to almost 10,000 small and independent breweries scattered across the country—is still just as palpable now as it was one, two, or 10 years ago? It’s just a matter of looking.

In this special episode of the Good Beer Hunting podcast, beer enthusiasts from around the country explain why for them craft beer still means friendships, new experiences, and most of all, something cool at a time when there’s a feeling that it might be anything but.

Brewing is famously a science and an art. There are loads of technical aspects a skilled brewer should nail down to create something special, but there’s also a point where you just have to give up some autonomy. Or, at least accept it’s OK to play a little for some R&D. One of the most important things people in American craft beer have learned in recent years is how this also applies to their customers. A diverse menu that may expand beyond just beer is becoming table stakes and creativity in what kind of styles and flavor experiences you offer—in or outside of beer—can matter more than ever. You can control your taplist, but you also have to be flexible to what you hear and learn from people sitting at your bar.

In this episode, we explore this idea and what it means to grow a business and expectations with Kevin and Britt Templin of Salt Lake City, Utah’s Templin Family Brewing, also known simply as TF Brewing. Since opening in 2018, TF Brewing has become known for its lager program, including its award-winning flagship, Granary kellerbier. The brewery has also earned recognition at the World Beer Cup, where in 2024 it won gold medals for its coconut-guava berliner weisse and Squirrel Juicy IPA. There are other medals from the Great American Beer Festival and WBC, but that hasn’t stopped Britt, Kevin, and their team from expanding their menu and listening to what customers are telling them they’re interested in drinking. The science of their beers has been stellar and the art of refining what that means for drinkers continues to evolve.

You’ll hear us talk about what it takes to feel OK about making these changes—which for TF Brewing has included a new wine program and successful cocktail menu—along with what it means to be a growing brewery in 2024. The value the Templins place on their staff and how those people help the brewery succeed is high. By the time this conversation wraps, you’ll have an understanding of how “family” isn’t just in the name of the business, but how they want to make people feel. Even in that, there’s a science to running a brewery that’s a business, but an art to creating a space that promotes imagination, community, and closeness.

It’s a classic question asked first in a novel, then in music, and often as a half-joke pop culture reference: Can you go home again? People change over time, but of course, places do, too. What we’ve previously experienced in our hometowns and where we grew up can feel distant for a very good reason. Time and experience changes us all, whether we like it or not. But in this episode, we’re going to explore what it means to lean into this question and ask instead, “what does it feel like to be home, again?”

Working through this with me is Trace and Eeva Redmond, a couple who in recent years took years of experience working in beer and returned to Eeva’s home town of Petoskey, Michigan where they’ve opened Elder Piper, a brewery and cidery located along the shores of Little Traverse Bay on the upper portion of the state’s mitten shape. As brewer, Trace brings brewing experience that includes stops at Michigan’s Founders and Roak Brewing, as well as North Carolina’s Highland Brewing. Eeva has worked in a collection of hospitality and communication roles in beer as well, including positions at Roak Brewing, Sierra Nevada, and Highland.

Why open a brewery now, at a time when we hear about so many closing? That’s where we start our conversation, but it leads us to many other ideas and reflections about what it means to start a business in a city of 6,000, especially when it’s the place where you grew up. As you’ll hear, community connection has been pivotal to Eeva and Trace, and their story offers something of a roadmap of what it takes to launch a new, neighborhood-focused brewery in today’s market.

West Virginians take a lot of pride in their state. As well they should—it’s one of the most stunningly gorgeous destinations in the United States, albeit one that can be hard to get to, thanks to the same mountainous spectacle that draws people there in the first place. 

Matt Kwasniewski is a West Virginia native, as well as the owner and head brewer of Big Timber Brewing in Elkins, West Virginia. It’s the largest craft brewery in the state, with an annual output of around 6,000 barrels last year, positioning them solidly in the “microbrewery” category. He says that West Virginia’s rural location, small population, and generally blue collar workforce makes it an unlikely place for craft beer to thrive. But the state is much more than how it’s defined by outsiders. Kwasniewski has seen the craft beer industry grow from 10 to around 32 breweries in the past 10 years, and for residents, that’s a lot. 

In this episode, Kwasniewski walks us through the state of West Virginia, both as a local and as a brewer, and what he wishes more people knew about the relatively undiscovered Mountain State. For instance, they have some of the purest water anywhere in the country—ideal for brewing Big Timber beers like lagers, IPAs, and their award-winning porter that took gold at the 2024 World Beer Cup. He’s not interested in expanding much further than his home state, and why should he? He wants to be the beer of West Virginia, and you can hear him explain why and how he plans to do that.

# On Becoming Hawk

Hi there - this is Michael Kiser, founder and publisher of Good Beer Hunting. I’m coming to you today with a difficult message—but a simple one. 

Good Beer Hunting—after nearly 15 years, and at least 10 of that that I would consider serious years—is going on a platform-wide sabbatical. It’ll be indefinite. It might be permanent.

We have some ideas for what the future of Good Beer Hunting might look like—and soon I’ll be working on that vision with the counsel of my colleagues to see where it takes us. But the earliest vision is so drastically different than what GBH currently is, that the only way to get to the other side is to make a clean break. We’ve got to clear out the cache. We’ve got to quiet everything down for a bit and see what it all sounds like on the other side of that silence.

We’re shutting down our various content streams—the podcast, the website, social—ending a sort of always-on feed of content that’s been, for many of us writers, editors, and artists, our life’s work. And for most of us, our best work.

This thing that started as my personal blog would go on to be published in the annual Best American Food Writing, and win multiple Saveur blog awards before I had the courage to start publishing other voices beyond my own. It began as a way to pursue my curiosity for beer, combining the beauty I saw in it with the strategic implications of a new wave of culture and industry the world over. Good Beer Hunting came from a simple idea and simpler execution of a blog and grew into an international publication covering unique stories from countries all over.

With every major shift, from one editor in chief to another, it would morph into something that felt beyond any reasonable ambition. Eventually winning awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Imbibe Magazine, more than 100 awards from the North American Guild of Beer Writers, and most recently nominated for 6 James Beard Awards and winning 3 of them. If I consider what it would mean for us to achieve something beyond all that, I’d have to believe in a truly insane fantasy.

In the many years of running a beer publication that took us to the top echelon of all publications —literally taking podiums next to the New York Times, Washington Post, and The New Yorker—we’ve had to build and sustain an organization that simply doesn’t have a roadmap for survival in 2024’s media landscape. And to be clear, it never did. 

From day one, I vowed to not try and make GBH profitable, because the media world already showed that to achieve profitability was to welcome a certain kind of death—and often a shameful one. Chasing advertisers and clicks with listicles and promotions—and as a result, never creating anything of real value to anyone but the advertisers. It was a fool's errand, and one we didn’t follow. By not hunting down ad revenue and declining offers over the years, Good Beer Hunting was able to remain a personal project in a way, even as our ambitions continually grew and results showed what an impact our stories and contributors made on the world of beer and beyond.

Instead of trying to manage our costs with advertising, we’ve been able to form longstanding partnerships with companies like Guinness, which has helped mitigate at least some of financial losses we took on every year. We also launched an experimental subscriber community called the Fervent Few, which took a meaningful chunk out of the debt and paid its dividends by connecting readers and fans from all over the world during the loneliest parts of the pandemic. But in reality, even these things combined didn’t cover the gaps as we continued growing. 

The challenge of expanding GBH during its rapid growth phase came from my own pocket, which kept our editorial team independent and in control. But it also guided us to this moment. Paying for writers, designers, and editors was a budget pulled from my own strategic consultancy called Feel Goods Company, which was no small thing. Each year, the costs sometimes crested over $100,000 that weren’t covered by underwriting partners like Guinness or subscribers from the Fervent Few. And in the last couple years, costs went far beyond that. For years, I put other important things in my family’s life on hold to continue supporting GBH’s growth and ambitions. 

As a father of three kids—and sometimes the only one working—that decision wasn’t made lightly. I exhausted myself making the consulting business uncommonly successful in order to keep both things afloat and growing. And as costly as that was in a financial sense, I’ve never regretted the decision to do it—and I never took a dime. In fact, there was one year when we more or less broke even, and with the small amount left over we gave the editorial team, including our freelancers, a surprise end-of-year bonus. More like a tip really. 

Good Beer Hunting is the longest I’ve ever done anything, and it’s also the best thing I’ve ever done. And it existed entirely because I wanted it to.

But outside of anything I wanted it to become—my own pride and ambitions for GBH don’t really compare to the awe I feel when I look at what people like Austin Ray, Claire Bullen, and Bryan Roth helped it become. Our three successive Editors in Chief over those 10 years—each of whom shaped a new generation of Good Beer Hunting into an image that only they could have. Each of whom provided the shoulders for the next to stand on. And the countless writers and artists who were drawn to their leadership and the level of execution in our collective work—who gave us some of their own best work. 

I’m thinking of Kyle Kastranec from Ohio, the first writer other than myself, who wrote a feature for GBH, setting a high bar. I’m thinking of Charleston’s own Jamaal Lemon who won a James Beard award for GBH alongside other winners and nominees like Stephanie Grant, Teresa McCullough, Chelsea Carrick, and Mark Dredge. 

I’m thinking of people like Matthew Curtis, our first editor in the UK who turned the lights on in an entirely new country for us, and Evan Rail who kept turning on lights in dozens of countries since as our first International editor. Emma Jansen, and Ren Laforme who joined our editors team in the last iteration, rounding out some of the most ambitions and wide sweeping storytelling we’ve ever produced. Kate Bernot, who leveled up our news reporting to create an unmatched source of access to explain to readers why things matter in beer and beverage alcohol, which is now a growing stand-alone business unit in Sightlines.

What felt like a fluke at first, has become something I can confidently own. We produced industry-changing, internationally-recognized, and James Beard Award winning material…consistently.

I’m also often reminded of the smaller things we’ve done—like the blogs and short stories we wrote—about the politics and personal traumas of the way we eat, drink, and relate to each other in our families, in our communities, and against the injustices so many people face in an industry that’s ancient and profoundly immature at the same time. It’s an unlikely place for a beer publication to have a voice —but GBH has always built its scope around the perspectives of the individual souls who occupy space within it rather than narrowing down a profitable and popular slice of the beer conversation and reduced them to it. 

Mark Spence unpacked his Midwestern anxieties around family and food, Lily Waite and Holly Regan opened a door to discuss non-binary and transgender issues,  Jerard Fagerberg and Mark LaFaro took big risks to focus us all on the dangers and costs of alcoholism, David Jesudason and many others captured our attention with stories of harassment, racism, labor abuse, and more that so many readers told us were critical and prescient and more importantly, helped. These stories helped people.

Over the years, we’ve had readers cry as they recounted what a story meant to them. We’ve had others scream and curse at us for the same. Some even went on the record as sources to ensure our reporting had the substance it needed to make an impact. Careers were started and ended because of the stories we wrote. Those stories had the same effect on ourselves. We’ve had writers put something heartbreaking or inspiring into the world only to have it wake something up in them and want to do more—take even bigger swings —and find a voice within them that carried them far beyond Good Beer Hunting.

And ultimately, that’s where my heart is today.

This week, I was struggling to find the words to describe what I was going to do with Good Beer Hunting—what comes next. I knew what the move was, and why, and I knew it was time—but I didn’t have the poetry for it—so I couldn’t quite feel it yet. 

On a long drive to rural Michigan to pick up my son from summer camp, I was listening to an episode of my favorite podcast, On Being. And I heard Azita Ardakani and Janine Benyus, two biomimicry specialists who have a way of describing the natural world with a stunning relevance. They said:

 “Life is just so full of vitality and so much ON and being alive and then it’s not.”

“…What is the difference between something that’s alive and something that’s not? It seems that with the holding on to life —there’s also a feeling of once it’s gone, the letting go—like a body breaking down—but it doesn’t really. I mean, not for long. What happens is a tree falls and eventually becomes a log. Eventually grows a fungus and you think of it as breaking down—it is no longer a tree. But then a mouse comes along and it's the end of the fungus. And that material—thats’ where the reincarnation comes in —that fungus becomes mouse. 

“And then a hawk comes along and the material—that material of that mouse becomes hawk. There’s this circulation—called metabolism. It’s catabolism—then it gets anabolized up into a new form. The grief is brief because transformation happens almost right away—it gets transformed.”

Now, GBH isn’t dying and it’s not wasting away. The truth is it’s still sort of thriving in its own manner of being. It’s a tree taller than I ever imagined. But success can kill an organization—I’ve seen it a hundred times in the companies I’ve worked for, companies I’ve consulted on—big and small. It’s all proportionate. How far away from the roots does that beautiful canopy get before it surprises itself with its own extended weight? How much life force does it expend trying to prop itself up at the expense of something new? 

There’s never an objectively right time—but there is a good time. A time not informed by reactionary fear and loathing - but by guts, love, and ambition for something new. 

So I’ve decided it’s time to take the tree down.  
If I look back over the past few years I can see that Good Beer Hunting will be that fallen tree for many. It’ll be a source of nutrients for many a mouse that becomes hawk.

But the truth is, GBH has been the start of a kind of upward anabolism for some time now. Jamaal Lemon recently took a dream editors job at the Institute of Justice. Stephanie Grant has launched her own community project called The Share. Before that, Matthew Curtis started Pellicle Mag in the U.K. Lily Waite opened a brewery. So many GBH writers have gone on to write books, start podcasts, and create platforms of their own, it’s astounding. And what I’m describing right now isn’t something that started with GBH—indeed, GBH has been a recipient their upward anabolism from the lives they’ve lived—each bringing their own energy and nutrients here and nourished us with lifetimes full of curiosity, learning, and love for their craft.

The risks in starting something like Good Beer Hunting are myriad. Financial risk is everywhere—but I’ve happily and defiantly borne the brunt of it for many years. There’s personal risk—in media, everything you put out into the world has a way of coming back to you in unexpected, and often dangerous ways. And it does. There’s opportunity risk—if this thing fails, and if it takes a long time to fail, what opportunities might you have missed out on in the meantime? But to me, the biggest risk of all is it just not mattering. Not being relevant. Missing the mark. Today, I feel satisfied that Good Beer Hunting matters.

I have so many people to thank—and so many feelings to share that are best relayed one-on-one. It’ll take me many months and years to pass along those sentiments to individuals who took that risk with me and succeeded.

I’m not going to the final word on all this. 

My experience of GBH is singular—being the sole source of continuity over those 15 years. But so much of what’s defined GBH have been the perspectives and voices of those who’ve invested their talents in it over the years. So before our final sign-off this summer, you’ll hear reflections from leaders, contributors, partners and friends of Good Beer Hunting as well. This is part of the grieving and metabolizing process. 

There are a few more episodes of the podcast to share still, and a few remaining stories we’ve been working on that you’ll see this month and maybe into August. If you want to stay up to date on future plans, sign up for the newsletter.  
This episode—along with all podcast episodes over these many years—was edited by Jordan Stalling. And it was scored by my friend, soulmate, and composer, Andrew Thioboldeax, who himself has been along for the ride for over a decade.
 Aim true, pour liberal folks—have a great rest of the year. 

The definition of “local” can be quite different when the nearest urban regions are hundreds of miles away. That’s certainly the case in Jackson, Wyoming, where (quote-unquote) neighboring cities like Boise, Idaho; Denver, Colorado; and Bozeman, Montana all require a few hours in the car, if not on a plane, to get there.

But it’s precisely that sense of remote grandeur that attracts millions of visitors to the Jackson Hole region every year. Where do they go when they want a good, local, craft brew? To Snake River Brewing Company, of course, which is the oldest operating brewery in the state and celebrates 30 years in business in 2024. In this episode, Snake River’s director of sales and marketing, Luke Bauer, describes what brought him to Wyoming nearly 20 years ago, and what kept him coming back after working in Texas, Alaska, and Colorado. In addition to his role at Snake River, he’s also on the board of the Wyoming Craft Brewers Guild, and shares a first-hand account of how the state’s craft beer industry has grown, changed, and evolved, especially post-pandemic.

By his account, Wyoming is a unique place, but also one that’s full of surprises. He believes there’s a lot more experimentation than outsiders might initially expect from the local beer scene, and explains the big differences in style from one side of the state to the other. (Hint: one side sticks more to traditional or maltier beers, while the other embraces trendier styles like IPAs.) Snake River Brewing has managed to rack up awards at the World Beer Cup, including their most recent Bronze medal for Zonker Stout, as well as at the Great American Beer Festival, and many more over its 30-year tenure. It goes back to their mission statement: “The world doesn’t need another beer, but a better beer.” Let’s hear about the beer and beyond.

We’re squarely in the midst of political season—presidential debates have begun, campaigning has kicked into high gear, and November elections are closer than we think. Amongst it all, there’s an adage this episode’s guest once shared that likely sounds true, whether your a deep-in-the-weeds politico or fair-weather voter: If you want to make the biggest impact in politics, you go into business.

Well over a decade ago, Jon Renthrope did just that, opening up Cajun Fire Brewing in his hometown of New Orleans. Enticed by what he found in the world of homebrewing, Jon took a degree in politics from the University of Florida and spun it into a career in beer, which led to the launch of his brewery 12 years ago. And it’s through his company he’s working to marry the ideas of community impact with work through local organizations like The 100 Black Men of Metro New Orleans, as a cultural ambassador, and by working with the National Black Brewers Association.

In this conversation, you’ll hear Jon talk about what it means to start Cajun Fire in the place he grew up and deepen already strong roots. He’ll share how he’s been influenced by family—notably his grandmother—and how that history lingers today. We also discuss his brewery’s lineup of beer and why you won’t find an IPA leading the way among Cajun Fire customers. Jon didn’t go into politics, exactly, but he is using his business in all kinds of ways to connect and impact people around him.

It's easy to find examples of what success in entrepreneurship looks like. There are dozens of TV shows, thousands of books, and millions of blog posts that are meant to share tips, secrets, and let us into the minds of people who've made it in all kinds of business. But the fact of the matter is that the only ones who can truly understand what it's like—the many failures that typically come with a breakout win—are the people who've taken a leap of faith without any idea of how their attempt to launch a product or start a business will turn out. You're as likely to be built up as broken down on this journey.

In this episode, we spend a lot of time talking about entrepreneurship with my friend, Kristen Sumpter, who co-founded bar and bottleshop Red’s Beer Garden with her husband, Ed. We’ve gotten to know each other through a group she co-founded with past podcast guest Sara Kazmer, which includes several women entrepreneurs who live in the Atlanta area. For almost two years, I've listened as Kristen has shared the waves of triumphs and tribulations of building a beloved local hangout.

In our conversation, we explore Kristen's journey from that initial spark of inspiration to the day-to-day realities of running a successful business. You’ll hear her talk about the importance of community, embracing vulnerability, and prioritizing self-care amidst the entrepreneurial hustle. Kristen also shares how she’s able to show up as her authentic self on Instagram and how long she’s been obsessed with hot dogs, a staple of the food menu at Red’s.