Good Beer Hunting

Tristan Coulter is a coffee roaster, small business owner, and newly minted beer geek in his own right. I've know him for three years — and in that time I've come to know him as a genuine, patient, optimistic man with a tinkerer's heart. He can never leave well-enough alone, and it's serving him well as Gaslight Coffee Roasters morphs from a small coffee shop into a neighborhood cafe with an amazing chef. He's also been breaking in to the beer world with a few coffee beer collaborations — most notably with 5 Rabbit Cerveceria on the Yodo con Leche porter that took second place at the Festival of Barrel-Aged Beers this past year. Tristan and I are about to embark on a trip to Costa Rica together with 5 Rabbit founder, Andres Araya in search of their next great coffee collaboration. And with Uppers & Downers on our heels this weekend, it was a perfect time to share Tristan with you all.

Part II continues a series of conversations with brewers at The Fest, a

festival that celebrates the Shelton Brothers portfolio and guests of

Brouwerij West in San Pedro, California. My compatriot, Chris Quinn of the

Beer Temple, joins me for these interviews, including Shaun Hill of Hill

Farmstead, Tom Oliver of Oliver's Ciders and Perrys, Sebastian Gagnon and

Eloi Deit of Brasserie Dunham in Quebec, and Chase Healey of Prairie

Artisan Ales.

Chris Quinn of the Beer Temple and I travel to LA for the Festival by Shelton Brothers, the famous importers of beers like Cantillon. We both had a lot of questions about how the importing businesses really works, and how it’s going to work in the future now that those same people are starting to export American craft back across the ocean. We knew we’d be surrounded by a group of brewers who are so rarely assembled in the same room. It was a perfect chance to sit down with some of these icons, and gain a perspective on what it means to be there, in that room, with these people. In part 1, we talk Ron Extract and Jeff Stuffings of Jester King, Jonathan Marshall and Robert Merryman of Shelton Brothers, and Ron Jeffries of Jolly Pumpkin.

Matt Leff is obsessed with craft beer festivals, and he's using his experience producing some of the most popular festivals in Nashville to help build its scene. All day long, he working on logistics, building relationships with brewers, and generating buzz for the next event. And he has a few ideas of how to do it right. This week, he's hosting the 12 South Winter Warmer in Nashville, which makes it the perfect time to talk about how it all comes together.

It’s black Friday in America. The time of year when so many of our retailers hold their breath and hope their revenues turn from red to black. But for beer geeks, it’s traditionally meant something else. It’s the release of Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout. The lines are as long as the temperatures are low, and these days, the craze for Bourbon County stretches across the country — 9 different cities this year actually. It’s mostly a celebratory affair, but as BCS became harder and harder to get, it’s also been a bit of a spectacle. Mike Seigel is Goose Island’s innovation manager — he’s deeply ingrained in the process and logistics, and the creativity of these beers, so much so that it’s hard to get him to talk about anything else. Even at the bar, far away from the brewhouse, he’ll start bending you ear about something technical that’s he’s obsessed over. So with all the hoopla around BCS this year, as with any other year, I thought it would be a perfect time to sit down with Mike, and let him bend all your ears for a change. So if you’re waiting in line, and it’s cold out, and you need to take your mind off the wind and the chill, then here’s your escape. We taste though the new set of BCS for 2014, and all things production and process, in a sort of Siegel-esque way, for the next hour.

Jakob produces a podcast, about eight episodes in, called Neighbors. He tells stories in the vein of This American Life, that sort of organic, way of unfolding a story that’s part interview, part narration, and part field recording. But all of Jakob’s stories stem from the Nashville area. He’s using this podcast to bring his city, and quite literally his neighbors, to life. As a fellow storyteller, I found Jakob’s work to be endearing, challenging, and a perfect way to understand Nashville on a deeper level. But something else occurs, and it’s a credit to jakob’s skills as an interviewer. Numerous times in the conversation, I found myself talking while Jakob kicked back and listened. Mid ramble, I’d look over and he’d be sitting there, his hands over his mouth and his ball cap popped up off his head, relaxed. And that’s when i’d realize that Id been made. That’ he’d reversed the flow. That I’d have to awkwardly scramble to get him talking again, because he’s clearly more interested in asking the questions, than answering them. Either way, we talk methodology, characters in our neighborhoods, and of course, a coffee a bite and a beer in the Music city.

Brandon works at the local TV station, for now, and some years ago he

started writing about beer. He was a homebrewer, and like so many home

brewers, he became hungry for knowledge. He started reaching out to

professional brewers, asking hard questions about yeast strains and

fermentation techniques, and eventually he started a blog, mostly as a safe

place to put all this information. It was called Embrace the Funk, and his

blog has since gone on to inspire a number of new, young brewers who are

specifically interested in sour and funky beers. 

Two years ago, Brandon found himself helping Yazoo Brewery in Nashville

start a fledgling sour program. With no commercial brewing experience to

speak of, he simply worked his way through trial and error, towards

something he was proud of. And this year, he took home a bronze medal at

GABF, beating out so many of the brewers he was inspired by over the years.

And from the sounds of it, they couldn’t have been happier for him. He’s

the kind of guy that inspires joy in others. He’s modest, curious beyond

belief, and he works as hard as anyone to improve. His bronze medal was

almost an industry success as much as it was personal to Brandon. 

One of the people he’s inspired over the years is Ryan Brei, one of the

newer brewing hires at Goose Island in Chicago. Ryan and I were in

Nasvhille together for Goose’s Migration Week, and when he heard that I was

going to get up early in the morning and catch Brandon Jones at Yazoo

before his shift, well, he essentially invited himself along. And judging

by the glimmer in his eye, I knew he was serious.

So after an unreasonably early Hop Project IPA #80, fresh off the line at

Yazoo, we gathered around a table int he taproom and dove right in. This is

Brandon Jones of Yazoo, and Embrace the Funk, alongside my travel

companion, Ryan Brei of Goose Island, listen in.

For the past decade, Phil McFarland has grown Smallbar Division St. from a neighborhood bar, to one of the best craft beer accounts in the city with a killer kitchen. But Division St, where it calls home, has transformed around him even faster, as new concept bars and restaurants move in, the housing structures changed dramatically, and crowds that once flocked to his humble craft beer bar now parade past on their way to huge sports bars and party spots, each with a decent craft selection themselves. It’s the end of an era for Phil. But is it an end of an era for the craft bar, the specialty retailer? Times have changed, and you can get a decent selection at a BW3. Or you can go to a number of brewery taprooms, arguably the coolest places to drink these days. So who needs the craft bar anymore? For Phil, it’s a bittersweet goodbye, but it was also inevitable. Here are his thoughts on the future.

There’s been a lot of news in the industry of late regarding claims on the labels of spirits producers, and the truth behind where it’s produced, how it’s made, and the claims of "hand-crafted.” Tito’s Vodka is a recent example, caught in a class-action lawsuit by consumers who felt duped. But no one has generated the amount of attention that Templeton Rye has, with its claims of being made in Templeton, Iowa, but also it’s authentic as a prohibition-era recipe. It’s a bit of a mess really. But on this episode, Bryce T. Bauer, and author and researcher, takes us much further back to the time of Joe Irlbeck, a contemporary, and competitor, to Al Capone. It’s a story farm more rich and fascinating than the marketing stories told by the distiller and bottler of the same name today. It’s real history.

GBH Travel logs are recordings from our adventures around the world. We’ll meet interesting people, go to interesting places, and stitch it all together into a series of moments that try to put your in our shoes. This episode takes us to two Czech breweries in the country side, including Koute na Šumavě and Pivovar Zhůřák, with Czech beer export, Evan Rail. You’ll also hear commentary from British beer writer, Mark Dredge, and Oregon-based writer Jeff Alworth.