Good Beer Hunting

Have we said "pivot" enough lately? What about "omnichannel," or "innovation"? These words were all thrown around with abandon in 2020, as COVID-19 changed the way we interacted with and bought beer, and dramatically impacted how our favorite breweries did business.

In this conversation, we're talking with Kelly Moritz about how Minnesota's Indeed Brewing Company has done some version of all these things, and how it impacted her as she stepped into the role of chief operating officer amidst the pivoting and innovating that was demanded of so many of us last year. Kelly has been with the brewery since 2014 and spent most of her time there coordinating and managing Indeed's marketing. She's now overseeing something of an evolution for the company, which is exploring non-beer products like CBD seltzer and hard kombucha.

Starting a new job while your company is moving in different directions—and as you're trying to figure out how to talk to new and old customers alike—feels like a rather 2020 storyline. But as 2021 unfolds, you'll hear from Kelly about how she's considering the successes of last year to help guide the Indeed team in the year to come. You'll also hear about how her background as a writer and communicator is helping her through all of this.

What's next for Indeed as it becomes as much a beverage company as a brewery? Let's find out.

This is Kelly Moritz of Indeed Brewing Company. Listen in.

As a person who makes audio, I'm fascinated by the work that goes on behind the scenes. How does an interviewer ask questions? How do two people find a flow, establish trust, and ultimately uncover special moments and stories that might otherwise never get shared?

For me, doing audio work means leaning into my deeply curious side, and that's what's reflected in my interview with Natalya Watson. Natalya is a new addition to the GBH podcast team—she interviewed Miranda Hudson and Derek Bates from Duration Brewing, and you'll see more of her work on the podcast soon. Natalya has her own show, called Beer With Nat, where she interviews women in the beer industry about their careers. The goal is to demonstrate to others that there's a clear pathway into beer, and that anything they dream of doing is achievable.

The theme of accessibility runs through all of Natalya's work. She also hosts a Virtual Beer School, which helps folks prepare for their Cicerone exams. Many of the materials Natalya makes are free, and the cost for admission to her 12-week program is intentionally set so participants of any financial situation can still take part.

In this interview, we talk about all of these topics, but we also go one step further and examine why Natalya is drawn to the work that she does. She shares her own career history and how she developed a keen interest in communicating with others, and what this says about her as a person. I think towards the end we get a little meta, both reflecting on our interviewing styles—I admit, I am a person who likes to make big connections, and who tries to create ties between who we are and what we put out into the world. This conversation is both fun and fast-paced, vulnerable and reflective—in a way, it's reflective of everything I look for in an interviewing experience. Here's Natalya.

This is Beth Demmon, and you're listening to the Good Beer Hunting podcast.

At the end of every year, it's common for publications to put together roundups of notable people who've made their mark: who you should read, who you should listen to, who you should follow on social media, and so on. And every year, while those mentioned absolutely merit recognition for their work, some people also deserving of attention inevitably get missed. Any list covering the craft beer industry that doesn't include Ren Navarro falls short (Good Beer Hunting's end-of-year Signifiers included). The Canadian beer equity advocate is prominent in conversations on Twitter and Canadian outlets, and her tireless efforts to make beer a better place unquestionably deserve the support and attention of people everywhere.

As a queer Black woman who seeks to educate, enlighten, and engage, Navarro calls herself a "reluctant advocate" as one of the only people in her immediate area to consistently work towards a more equitable beer community. By calling for actions that incorporate intersectionality in diversity efforts and demanding accountability from peers in the craft beer space, she encourages individuals and breweries to embrace uncomfortable revelations that can drive improvement, despite the challenges and feelings these types of conversations may bring up. She mostly works alone, and while the pandemic has disrupted her ability to educate face-to-face, she's grateful for the transparency and openness that virtual spaces allow for, giving people the opportunity to raise hard questions in a safe, judgment-free way.

In our conversation, we'll talk about her role in craft beer, how Canada compares—and contrasts—with the United States when it comes to its beer scene, and how social justice movements took off last year and then stagnated. We'll also discuss the importance of people speaking from within their communities rather than on behalf of a community, how one can earn the title of ally rather than bestow it upon themselves, how concepts like accessibility and inclusion remain closely related, and who she looks to as changemakers of the future. Keep an ear out for numerous new initiatives she has planned for 2021. Navarro knows that we can all do better and be better—now, it's time to find out how. Listen in.

Over the past year, Good Beer Hunting has maintained an ongoing, weekly newsletter and expert community under our Sightlines Premium banner. As an extension of our newsy Sightlines coverage—anchored by Kate Bernot and myself, Bryan Roth—the goal of Sightlines Premium is to combine objective data and real-world anecdotes to help industry pros from across beer and beverage alcohol make informed decisions about managing a portfolio, how and where they should focus their access to market, and more.

In this episode, you'll hear myself, editor of Sightlines and Sightlines Premium; GBH founder Michael Kiser; and Sightlines lead reporter Kate Bernot. In our roundtable discussion, we're focusing on six key storylines from 2020 that we see as impactful in 2021. This kind of analysis is an example of the work we're doing on Sightlines Premium, but our back-and-forth also hits on the kinds of discussions even casual fans of beer may have heard in the last 12 months.

If you're leading a company in the beer or alcohol space, Sightlines Premium is for you. Listen out for the kind of direct advice and consultation we offer in our weekly newsletter and online community. For more information, visit goodbeerhunting.com/sightlines-premium.

This is the GBH Sightlines team of myself, Bryan Roth, Kate Bernot, and Michael Kiser. Listen in.

What does it mean to be an outlier? Who are the people in beer taking small steps and hoping to make big changes? We're excited and thrilled to announce the relaunch of the AltBrau Podcast, now part of the Good Beer Hunting network of shows.

AltBrau is a show that explores the outliers in the world of beer. Join host and GBH contributor Tim Decker, a homebrewer and wild ale collaborator, as he talks with folks from various backgrounds who look at the food and beverage industry through a unique set of eyes. As an aspiring entrepreneur, Tim is always excited to explore various points of view and hopes you join along as he interviews people whose work and passions might indicate a more interesting future. Here's a sneak peek of the first episode with Mike Cruz of Tioga Sequoia Brewery. The AltBrau podcast will release new episodes every Tuesday starting January 12th! Find episodes of the AltBrau podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Some of my favorite stories start small. Usually with a question, perhaps something you ponder passively before it takes you down a rabbit hole full of wild twists and turns, unexpected stories and delights.

David Neimanis had just such an inkling. He's a food and beverage writer, and wanted to know more about the surprising comeback of amaro, or bitter Italian liqueur, which, for decades, had fallen out of favor. Most of our parents probably didn't drink amaro, but our grandparents might well have. David decided to pull on the thread, and try to figure out why something like amaro would have skipped a generation.

A simple question ended up unfolding into an entire piece. David wrote about such generational drinking habits in his article, "The Rise of 'Grandpa Drinks' — Exploring the Old-Fashioned Roots of Modern Drinking Trends," published on our website on December 1, 2020. As part of the story, David delves into his own history with obscure, bitter, European liqueurs—recently, he found himself ordering Riga Black Balsam, which hails from Latvia, and which was a drink favored by his grandfather.

In this conversation, we talk about the nature of curiosity, and how simple questions often unfold in interesting and compelling ways. David didn't necessarily have a grandiose idea or theory about the new popularity of these drinks—he simply asked a question and followed the answers where they took them. His piece is highly inquisitive and honest, and isn't afraid to take a pit stop to explore an interesting tidbit along the way. The resulting story feels like following a winding road full of surprises. Here's David.

You've probably read some version of this article or headline over the past several months: "Here's a lesson we learned during the 1918 flu that we can apply to the current coronavirus pandemic!"

It makes sense that we want to look to history for answers to present-day problems—"history repeats itself" is an old chestnut for a reason. But for some, the inclination to look backwards extends well beyond the 20th century.

Courtney Iseman is a self-described history nerd, and noticed not just similarities between this current moment and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, but also the 14th-century bubonic plague, which killed over half of the European population. Just like now, medieval responses to the black death were largely dependent on social standing—there were those who couldn't afford to not work, those who never left their homes, and those who got the hell out of Dodge, abandoning their homes for less-populated areas.

It helps to look to data and science when dealing with such a unique and scary moment as our current crisis, but it's also helpful to look to stories. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote The Decameron in what is now known as Italy during the height of the plague. The book is a collection of stories that reflected what local life was like at the time, told from the perspective of a group of friends who had fled Florence to escape the disease's devastation. As Courtney points out, you could replace these characters with any number of celebrities or influencers who escaped to their country homes following the spread of COVID-19—just think of today's "private island, all tested negative" memes.

In this conversation, we talk about Courtney's investigation into the subject in her recent piece, "The Plague Mirror — Recognizing Ourselves in Black Death-Era Italy Through The Decameron." Courtney uses The Decameron to show that history presents certain inescapable themes—but that past lessons can also provide a helpful blueprint for navigating contemporary crises. We also talk a little about her background as a writer before jumping in, but then we get right into it, tunneling our way through Boccaccio's illuminating book and then asking each other: What happens when this is all over?"

News flash: 2020 has been a tough one. And yet despite the intense challenges, this year has seen several positive developments, even—and maybe especially—in the world of beer. For example, a couple of truly great books on brewing came out in 2020. The beer world has, slowly but surely, continued to address issues of equity, fairness, and representation. And, on a more personal note, quality Lager has continued its renaissance, despite the crucial issues of the past 11 months.

Andreas Krennmair is the author of one of the best beer books of the year, Vienna Lager, a fantastic history of the most famous beer style to originate in his home country of Austria. He also wrote an earlier book, Historic German and Austrian Beers for the Home Brewer, which introduced obscure, often extinct Old World beer styles like Mannheimer Braunbier, Merseburger Bier, and Horner Bier to English-speaking readers, along with recipes for how to brew them.

In this episode, I'm talking with Andreas about the history of Vienna Lager, which includes legendary names from European brewing like Gabriel Sedlmayr of the Spaten brewery in Munich, as well as Anton Dreher of the Klein-Schwechat brewery in Vienna, the inventor of Vienna Lager. (A side note: At one point I misidentify Andreas as being from Vienna himself, when he's actually from Linz, Austria, as you'll hear him explain. Apologies to Andreas for the mistake.) For this conversation I'm calling in from my home in Prague, Czech Republic, and Andreas is speaking from where he lives in Berlin, Germany.

Here's Andreas Krennmair, author of Vienna Lager. Listen in.

COVID-19 has changed a lot in our lives, including when and how we choose to consume alcohol. But there continue to be misconceptions about our beer-buying habits this year—and the beer styles that we've been gravitating to.

Low-alcohol beer has been a hot topic recently, but does the narrative around those products—one of crescendoing interest and growth—translate to reality? Over the last couple years on Good Beer Hunting, we've explored how sales have changed for higher-ABV beers, too, and in this episode we're going to dig a bit deeper into how the mixed fortunes of these market segments are playing out during the pandemic.

In this series of the GBH podcast, we ask members of our team to enter the realm of audio storytelling. Most of us are familiar with the phrase, "A picture is worth a thousand words," right? But now, we're challenging our contributors to actually write down those words, and to create pictures of the world around them as told in their own voices. With that in mind, you're about to hear different stories read aloud by members of our editorial team. Think of each brief narrative as a snapshot of a moment, like an audio version of the b-Roll series on our website.

In this installment of A Thousand Words, we wanted to talk about home. In some way, everyone's definition of home has changed this year. We asked our writers to share their thoughts on what their new normal looks like—and how their relationship to the spaces they inhabit and the places they love has morphed. From total lockdowns to recent moves, from newfound stillness to a house full of dogs, home has no one definition, no one spot you can pinpoint on a map. Instead, home is a relationship between yourself and the places and people that have made you who you are.

Each storyteller will introduce themselves before jumping into their own anecdote. We hope you can visualize every vignette, and immerse yourself in the pictures they're painting for you.

This is A Thousand Words, a collection of audio stories. Listen in.