Good Beer Hunting

Back in November, we brought you an interview with Phil McFarland of

Smallbar Division, one of Chicago’s most well-known craft beer bars. He had

made the tough decision to close Smallbar in the wake of what he felt was a

fundamental shift in Division Streets culture. He didn’t feel like

re-inventing or giving it another go, and he walked away, leaving the fate

of the space in a new generation's hands.

And since then, a lot of folks have wondered what would happen to the old

Smallbar space, a prime piece of real estate in an area of Chicago that

changes daily. 

Well, today we’re going to talk to the team that took over the Smaller

Division space, and the new concept they’re hoping will serve the

neighborhood, exceed expectations, and remind everyone that a neighborhood

is what you make of it. 

Heisler Hospitality, as Matt Eisler and Kevin Heisner are known, have

created some of the most beautiful and thoughtful bar and restaurant

concepts in Chicago, from Bangers & Lace, to Trenchermen, the Sportsman's

Club and many more. Now, they’re revealing their plans for Pub Royale, a

sort of English-style indian food joint with a great beer and cocktail

list run by former Publican beverage manager, and Virtue Cider sales Rep,

Michael McAvena. 

On today’s episode, we talk about what it takes to develop a great

hospitality concept, how they go about curating a unique beverage program,

and why Division Street might not be a lost cause after all.

Like so many indie rock bands, nano brewers tend to play in a few different bands. While they’re getting their own operation up and running, then still return to places like Pipeworks and 18th street to help out, returning the favor of a scrappy education. And they tend to collaborate and partner with each other in unique ways, sharing spaces, equipment, personnel, ingredients, whatever it takes to make sure the next batch gets made. Theses a transparency and ethos that defines a generation who grew up with ubiquitous internet and social media, where few things were owned and almost everything was shared. So while on the surface it’s easy to see a generation full of ego and self-promotion, underneath that layer is a much deeper understanding of community and co-existence than our culture has seen in a long, long time. Today, I talk to a pair of brewers in Chicago that I think exemplify this community. Steve Miller of Snapshot Brewing, and Mike Pallen of Mikerphone Brewing. Two guys who have been developing their brewery concepts independently for a few years, and who recently found the support and inspiration they sorely needed, in each other. It’s a compelling look at what makes craft beer’s nano layer so fascinating.

Petrus was one of the first sour beers I’d ever tasted, and it certainly came as a shock. It was described as a “aged pale” and I paid more attention to the “pale” part of that phrase than the "aged." So when that sharp, biting bitterness and tongue-buckling sourness first hit me, it wasn’t quite a revelation; it was more like a bucket of cold water in the face. But two, three, four sips in, the flavors started to round out and emerge on my underdeveloped palate. There were oaky white wine notes, some underlying funkiness and hay qualities from the microflora in the aging process, minerals, herbs, and a bitter grapefruit and leathery finish. This was as complex a beer as I’d ever tasted. And this was the beginning of my curiosity in aged beers, specifically Belgian, and the next few years would provide no end to my tasting of these styles. More than a decade later, Yves Benoit and Albert de Brabandere are here in Chicago, visiting the Hopleaf which is where I had my first Petrus. They’re here on the heels of a major uptick in the number of sour beers being produced and consumed in the US. No, this will never be the new IPA, far from it, but for producers like Brouwerij de Branbandere, the makers of the Petrus line of sour blends, it’s a big opportunity to share one of Belgium’s greatest beers with a newly interested audience.

// INTERVIEWS WITH - Mick Guttierez of Perro Vida Cerveza Artesenal - Ignacio Castro Cortiñas of Treintaycinco Fabrica de Cervezas - Chef Eric Saenz of El Gaff Gastropub - Alonso Brenes of Domingo 7 Cerveza Artesanal - Gustavo Arroyo of El Buho Cervecería Artesanal - Manuel Donarte of Café del Barista // OVERVIEW We were in Costa Rica with Tristan Coulter of Gaslight Coffee Roasters in Chicago, and Andres Araya of 5 Rabbit Brewery. We were there to see about some coffee. Tristan and Andres are making Yodo con Leche again, their imperial porter blended with cold brew and con leche, and this year they wanted to go to the source. I was fresh off of hosting my Uppers & Downers coffee beer festival, so this little tagalong seemed perfectly timed. We climbed high into the mountains, as high as 1,900 meters at one point, pulled fresh cherries off the coffee trees, and tasted through a myriad of impressive coffees in search of the beans for Yodo. Along the way, we met home brewers, nano-brewers, and macro brewers around the city of San Jose, and some far out in the countryside who are working to get Costa Rica’s craft brewing scene off the ground. It’s very much in its infancy with only a couple of legitimate brewers producing any meaningful amount of volume. It’s a lot like the US 30 or 40 years ago as these men and women struggle to produce a quality, consistent beer, and then sell that beer into a monopolized distribution and retail system to a customer that doesn’t know what to think of it. But there’s another important factor in Costa Rican craft beer that the US didn’t have in the 70s, namely, the US itself. Costa Rican’s are heavily influenced by what’s happening in the US right now. They see the styles we’re producing, the recipes, the beer flavors, and they’re working to get their hands on those things every chance they get. And that means that Cost Rican craft beer is in the earliest stages of Ken Grossman’s Pale Ale, combined with the 3rd wave of brewing ambitions. It’s a bizarre confluence of factors. Most of the beers I had in Costa Rica that week were far off style, begging for fresh ingredients, and simply not fairing well in a hot climate with almost zero refrigerated infrastructure in distribution or even retail. But whatever they lack in ingredients, and infrastructure, these men and women make up for in ambition.

Freddy Bensch and Steve Farace of Sweetwater Brewing Company in Atlanta came to Chicago with a launch team this week to open up what they hope will be a n exciting new market for the brewery. These guys have quietly built a massive operation, currently in the top 20 largest in the country and they’re working hard to make a strong first impression. For a lot of folks, the beer speaks for itself — well crafted hop-forward ales inspired by the founder’s time in Colorado more than 18 years ago. But in far-away markets, markets you maybe never thought you’d be sending beer to some day, sometimes your story gets away from you. Sweetwater is known in some places as a brewery that took on private equity to grow, made some bad decisions with beer labels, and made a deal they with Turner Field that other Atlanta breweries wondering if they got shut out as a result. Those are the headlines anyways. But at GBH, we like to go to the source and get the whole story, and that’s what we had an opportunity to do with Freddy and Steve this week. For what it’s worth, I found them to be straight-shooters, passionate beer guys, and maybe a bit exhausted from their launch week. But they have miles to go before they sleep, and they seem to have a second, third, maybe even a fourth wind in them.

I get emails from people all the time that are looking to break into the brewing busiess, and they’re concerned they don’t have any experience that’ll get them in the door at one of the 3,000 plus brewery sin he country. And they’re right, they don’t. Which makes today's episode so valuable. A couple weeks ago, we introduced you to Mike Sardina, a new San Diego-based writer for Good Beer Hunting. But did you know that he's also an employee at Societe Brewing, and VP of the San Diego Brewers Guild? He did all this after he decided to give up being an intellectual property lawyer and followed his passion for beer. Today you're going to learn how he did it. This past week, Mike also took a little vacation to Chicago — it’s been a few years for him—- and while I was leaving town for Hunahpu’s Day at Cigar City Brewing, I wanted to make sure he had the best possible time. And it sounds like he did. Bonus: a short interview with Caitlin Grey of The Rebuilding Exchange in Chicago, one of our parters on the New Belgium Slow Ride Sessions.

This week we announced the Slow Ride Sessions collaboration with New

Belgium Brewing. We put together an event series in Chicago to celebrate

their new session IPA, aptly named Slow Ride, and bring together the kind

of artists and artisans who can benefit from a low abv IPA while they do

their thing all day, weather it’s screenrpinting, or baking, or

woodworking. We’re offering classes with these folks, Slow Ride Session as

we call them, for the next couple of months. Super limited seating to check

it out right away. And all the ticket revenue goes to benefit the

rebuilding exchange in Chicago, a non-profit dedicated to reclaiming

salvaged building materials and getting them back into circulation in the

form of materials, furniture, anything you can think of. It’s a rad

mission. 

John Clarke is a New Belgium brand manager here in Chicago. Former Goose

Island guy, he's from the world of sales and marketing, but he has to do

all that far away from the mothership in Fort Collins, Co. So how’s he do

it? What’s it like day-to-day? Breweries are hiring on more and more sales

folks across the country, and figuring out how to maintain a culture far

beyond the walls of the brewery is critical to their success. 

And following that, a short conversation with Derek Lewis, the bike room

operations manager for Heritage Bicycles here in Chicago. It’s a sort of

hybrid coffee shop/bike shop that’s really taking off with a children’s

store concept, a new uptown cafe location, and Nashville is on the horizon

for this crew. Pretty exciting stuff. We’re going to talk to Derek about

the bike side of things a bit because he’s the first stop on our Slow Ride

Session series. 

Learn more about the Slow Ride Sessions >>

Every once in awhile, we’ve been able to follow a brewer’s journey from the beginning, and I mean waaaaay back when you first see the idea of opening a brewery as a glimmer in their eye. My time with Gary Gulley goes back pretty far, maybe not all the way back, but far enough that I’ve been able to witness that crazy first year when he was still convincing himself it was all possible, that he could have his own brewery. Back when he was making test batches for his pale ale, and writing his business plan, all 12 versions of it. Then there was finding a space, building it out, installing the brewhouse, and firing it up for the first brewday. This week I ran into Gary again at Fountainhead during their “It might get Dark event” and it made my heart sing to see Gary standing gather with a beer in his hand, exhausted, bleary eyed, wearing his overalls and rubber boots and covered in paint and dirt. He’s never looked happier. It’s finally all coming to a head because the system is on, his distribution is in order, and some time in March he’s going to be sending his first beer into market. I’m not worried about it living up the hype — there really hasn’t been any. But it’s going to be a rock-solid english-style pale ale if it kills him.

This week’s episode is pretty special. It’s the first time we’ve successfully recorded a live session in front of an audience at the GBH studio in Chicago. Our guest was Joshua Bernstein, one of my favorite beer writers, and a classically good conversationalist. He’s a journalist for outlets like Bon Appetite, and an author of a few great books, most recently the Complete Beer Course, which is a stunning guide to beer styles. And everything Joshua writes has his unique voice embedded in it, that idiosyncratic way of peppering you with information, and subtlly undercutting the entire pursuit with a mischievous sense of humor.

We talk a lot about the culture of collaboration and commradery in craft beer, and that’s a real thing. But it might not exist it all if there weren't people like Wes Phillips and his crew in the dogfight every day trying to win over bar owners, beer buyers, and increasingly buyers at big box retailers like Costco and Walmart. Craft beer is playing at a very high level right now, and that puts pressure on the entire system, but nowhere is that pressure felt more than on a sales force that’s in the street everyday trying to sell another tap handle or six pack. For them, all the collaboration in the world can’t offset the hustle and competition that’s got the system in a vice right now.