Reuben's Sightglass

Chris Farmand is the Founder and CEO of Small Batch Standard, a leading brewery consulting, accounting, and financial strategy firm for the craft brewing and distilling industries. He's also our accountant. In this episode Adam and Matt speak with Chris about his views on this moment in the craft beer industry and learn some of his insights about working with breweries across the United States in all stages of development and in all stages of success.

In a live recording of Reuben’s Sightglass taped on the patio at Reuben's Brews' Taproom in Ballard during Seattle Beer Week 2021 Matt and Adam sit with Tommy Ransom and Audra Johansen to discuss the wonderful start and growth of Ravenna Brewing.

In this live recording of Reuben’s Sightglass Podcast taped on the patio at Reuben's Brews' Taproom in Ballard during Seattle Beer Week 2021, Adam, Grace, and Matt discuss the backstory of Reuben’s Brews and the business of beer. It all started with Grace and her newborn son, Reuben, buying Adam a homebrew kit. Adam would always critique the beers they bought, so Grace challenged him to “put up or shut up” and start brewing his own beer. Adam learned to make beer in a way that he wanted it to be made.. it became an obsession to make the perfect beer.

In the final episode of Season 3 of Reuben's Sightglass we're joined by James Dugan, Andy Miller, and Paul Reiter of Great Notion Brewing. These guys are our friends, our new Ballard neighbors, and the people behind the iconic Portland brewery, Great Notion. They live by the slogan “Keep Beer Fun” and have built their brewery by staying on top of and creating new beer trends.

This week on Reuben's Sightglass we sit down with Tomme Arthur, legendary brewer and co-founder of multiple breweries in San Diego including Port Brewing, The Lost Abbey, and The Hop Concept. If you've ever wanted to hear the story of how he grew his breweries and came up with some of his most iconic beers, tune in to this episode. We are joined by Reuben's Brews Director of Sales Jay MacMurray, an old acquaintance of Tomme's and partner in the distribution world.

Manny Chao is a co-founder of Georgetown Brewing, an iconic Pacific Northwest beer brand and Washington State's largest brewery. He's also the man behind some of the first American craft beers that Adam fell in love with, setting him on the path to becoming a brewer himself.

In the second episode of our third season we sit down with David Walker, a co-founder of the legendary California brewery Firestone Walker who is celebrating their 25th anniversary this year. We look back at the challenges the brewery has faced over the decades, including the last crazy year of the pandemic.

Welcome to Season 3 of Reuben's Sightglass! This season begins with a scene-setting interview with the one-and-only Bart Watson, Chief Economist for the Brewers Association. We explore the lay of the land at this point of Covid recovery and explore what you, the consumer, are telling us as breweries. What does a return to normal look like, how have breweries pivoted and been impacted, and what forward looking advice does the data give us as brewers. Stay tuned for the rest of Season 3 in the coming weeks over four more weekly episodes.

Michael Ferguson is the Director of Hop Breeding at Haas, one of the Yakima Valley's premiere hop growers. His job is to cultivate the next great hop, and that involves breeding and evaluating thousands of clones, in search of the needle in the haystack. And we may have just found it. Adam and Matt sit down with Michael to discuss HBC 1019, a brand-new varietal that Reuben's Brews is helping to sponsor, and which made it in to our recent release "Puffs of [Classified]". Learn all about this hop and Michael's work in particular on this episode of Reuben's Sightglass.

2020 can certainly be summed up in one word: Coronavirus. But as we review the year that was, we choose to explore the trends and stories in the craft beer industry behind that headline with three special guests: Jamie Bogner (Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine, Fort Collins, CO), Jeff Alworth (Beervana, Portland, OR), and Kendall Jones (Washington Beer Blog, Seattle, WA). Listen in for observations and predictions from three smart beer writers from around the nation.