Crowns & Hops Advances Racial Equity

Hunter introduced craft beer to friend Beny Ashburn, who immediately saw an opportunity. With successful careers in marketing and advertising, Ashburn and Hunter decided to launch a lifestyle brand that evolved into Crowns & Hops Brewing Co. in Inglewood, Calif. Ashburn is co-founder and CEO of Crowns & Hops, and Hunter is co-founder, chief operations officer, and head of brewery operations.

Community is integral to the brewery’s vision and mission and at the core of everything they do. “We wanted to build not only a brand but also an experience where you felt welcome as part of a community and understood what premium quality products tasted like,” says Ashburn. She says belonging and creating community are important because, for too long, that’s not how beer has been presented to the Black community.

Crowns & Hops’ beers celebrate and highlight different communities—from their local neighborhood to the Black community and beyond. We Invented the Fresh double hazy IPA is a collaboration with Hella Coastal, Brewing with Brothas, and HopBay to honor hip-hop culture and its creators. “Hip-hop came from Black and Brown people in the city,” says Hunter. “Giving attribution is important.”

Their flagship initiative is 8 Trill Pils, a Pilsner and a nonprofit of the same name, both dedicated to attaining racial equity within the craft beer industry. The initiative provides capital and resources for Black-owned businesses in and around the craft beer industry and, to date, has awarded $100,000 in grants to five breweries.

Today, Hunter’s introduction to craft beer has come full circle. The owner of Allagash Brewing Co. reached out about the 8 Trill Pils Initiative and wanted to get involved. Crowns & Hops and Allagash are collaborating on Cur-8, a blend of Pilsner and Bourbon barrel-aged tripel. A portion of the proceeds from Cur-8 sales will support the 8 Trill Pils Initiative.

Crowns & Hops’ next big community endeavor is Crowns Inglewood—a 14,000-square-foot pub that will be a full restaurant and brewhouse. Hunter emphasizes that “pub” stands for public house, and Crowns Inglewood will be a community hub—a safe and comfortable space that will belong to the community and be an extension of people’s homes.

City-State Celebrates the Best of D.C.

City-State Brewing Co. in Washington, D.C., also wants its taproom and brewery to be a place of belonging for the community and a focal point of hometown pride. Founder and CEO James Warner calls the brewery a love letter to D.C., celebrating the District’s history and culture. “It inspires everything we do and how we do it,” he says.

He wanted to build a brand to tell stories of the city, shine a light, and lift up D.C. culture beyond the monuments and tourist attractions. All the beers tie to D.C. stories.

“Everyone knows the stories that the USA tells itself,” says Warner. “We know neighborhoods in Chicago, San Francisco, New York, and Boston, but nobody outside D.C. knows the neighborhoods in D.C.—the things that have been happened here, the local civil rights struggles.”

Featherduster Hazy IPA honors the 1873 D.C. legislature protest. The U.S. Congress ended D.C.’s own government that year, and all the local legislators stripped everything from the chamber, down to the feather duster. Equal Marriage Blonde Wheat and Equal Marriage Dark Wheat showcase the District’s marriage equality across race, gender, and religion. Lost Laws Pilsner salutes the civil rights heroes who beat Jim Crow in D.C. using laws from 80 years earlier.

City-State’s Big G partnership highlights go-go music, which originated in the District. Big G’s Flavor from the Pocket is a golden ale made in partnership with go-go musician, activist, and D.C. icon Anwan “Big G” Glover, who created the beer and its label.

City-State is a family-friendly brewery that hosts a range of events, including story time for kids and dog rescue adoption parties. It also serves a venue and platform for artists and entrepreneurship, sponsoring such activities as pop-up stores with local partners like Pop of Culture, a community built for Black entrepreneurs and creatives.

Bow & Arrow Honors Native Communities

Bow & Arrow Brewing Co. founder, president, and CEO Shyla Sheppard first learned about craft beer during her undergraduate studies at Stanford. She was intrigued by the brewing process and its flavor elements. That fascination stuck with her.

After almost a decade in social impact investing, Sheppard left to establish Bow & Arrow in Albuquerque, N.M. She’s a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa & Arikara Nation) and quickly incorporated indigenous ingredients in the brewing process. “We’re giving value to what’s around us,” she says, “and where we can, we support other local businesses.” One example is Denim Tux, a blue corn American Pilsner. The New Mexican blue corn is sourced from a tribally owned business that also has its own mill.

Bow & Arrow also supports many fundraisers. Recent recipients include a PRIDE Rainbow Scholarship on the Navajo Nation and a drone project to deliver medical supplies in Ukraine. The brewery partners with local Native nonprofits on agricultural programs and hosts pop-up markets

Bow & Arrow’s signature community initiative is its Native Land campaign, which, with the help of other breweries, acknowledges and supports Native communities. Bow & Arrow develops a beer recipe, concept, and label. Other breweries are invited to brew the beer, use the label template, and commit to donating the sales proceeds to Native American nonprofits focused on ecological stewardship, access to ancestral lands, and revitalization of traditional agriculture and food ways.

“It creates awareness that Native Americans are not only an important part of this country’s history, but also we are still here,” says Sheppard. “And it generates resources for Native organizations dedicated to strengthening connections for Native people to their ancestral lands and rich agricultural histories.”

The first Native Land initiative began in November 2021, during Native American Heritage Month, with 47 breweries across 23 states and two Canadian territories participating and raising nearly $90,000. Native Land 2.0 launched in November 2022 and runs through the end of October 2023. This year’s recipe will be a Mexican-style lager with heritage corn.

Bow & Arrow recruits Native Land participants through word of mouth, social media, and its website. Participating breweries like The Alchemist in Stowe, Vt., also spread the word on their social media channels. “The Alchemist has a huge following and is very respected,” says Sheppard, “and that helped expand our network.”

Crowns & Hops, City-State, Bow & Arrow, and the breweries that partner with them represent what’s best about the craft beer community. They not only focus on quality, but they create, anchor, and support communities locally and beyond. As Warner says, “Part of being a brewery is serving your community—however you define it.”

The post Beyond the Beer: Three Breweries Serving Their Communities appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

As the dominant beer style, IPA continues to monopolize draught boards and beer coolers alike, while spawning new substyles. Meanwhile, lager styles find their way into the hearts and minds of the faithful one sip at a time through their diversity, drinkability, and adaptability.

“Lager” refers to any beer fermented with bottom-fermenting yeast, whereas IPA has a more stringent set of identifying characteristics. And while IPA shows no signs of slowing, in select spots around the U.S, a small patch of breweries has decided to place less emphasis on IPAs and their top-fermented brethren in favor of preaching the gospel of lager.

Lagering on the West Coast

Heater Allen Brewing Company was started by Rick Allen in McMinnville, Ore. in 2007 with the idea of brewing only lagers. According to his daughter Lisa Allen, who joined the brewery in 2009 as head brewer, Allen’s initial focus came about because “he wanted to see if there was actually a market for it.” Once he discovered thirsty beer drinkers eager to try his creations, he expanded from a 6-barrel brewing system to a 15-barrel system on the growth spurred by his flagship Bohemian-style Pilsner.

Heater Allen’s core beer is that same Pilsner, called Pils, that Allen initially brewed in 2007, with a few additions. “We still do our Bohemian Pilsner but for the most part our other beers are German-style lagers,” says Lisa Allen. “We have a core Munich dunkel and a schwarzbier, which is a cross between a German- and a Czech-style.” Heater Allen also has a seasonal program that follows the type of beer releases typical for Germany. “We recently released Bobtoberfest, which is our traditional Märzen-style Oktoberfest beer. We also brew a Baltic porter, a smoked bock, and a helles lager.”

One of the greatest challenges in staying lager-focused, says Lisa Allen, is keeping a tight brew schedule—and that means sometimes having to say no. “Our beer takes eight weeks from the day we brew it to the day we release it,” she said. “That’s our biggest challenge, especially during high times. I don’t have an assistant brewer right now, so it’s me doing most of the work.” Because of the nature of lagers and their commitment to giving their beer the time it needs to condition, Allen says that sometimes means not getting the beer to everyone who wants it. “I just haven’t been able to brew quite as fast as I would otherwise. You don’t want to say no to people, but one of those things with the business is that sometimes you have to say no as a smaller brewery.”

Along those same lines, staying lager-focused means making sure every beer is of the highest quality. Allen recounts, “I’ve had people complain on review sites that we only have six beers on tap [in the brewery taproom], and I’m just like ‘We’re a small brewery, sorry.’ I think most people who understand what we do and understand that stuff takes time don’t mind it. I feel like what we do, we do really well. It’s one of those things where I’m not going to half-ass anything, so I may only have six lagers on tap, but they’re all going to be high quality beers.”

An Abby Dedicated to Lager

For the Massachusetts-based Jack’s Abby Brewing Company, the focus on lagers came from founding brewer Jack Hendler’s passion. According to CEO Sam Hendler, the brewery’s lager focus started overseas. “My brother Jack had been to brewing school in Chicago and then in Munich, and he really fell in love with lager production. He had done some extensive travel to the breweries in Europe and felt that lager was underdeveloped and underexplored in the craft brewing space.”

When the brewery opened in 2011, the Hendlers were cautiously optimistic. “Looking back to 2011 when we opened, the feeling was that there were way too many breweries for us to possibly survive, which is obviously pretty comical now,” said Hendler. “The feeling was that we needed something bold to differentiate ourselves.”

Back in 2011, there was also a bit of stigma about lager in the craft beer space, recalls Hendler. “I think a lot of brewers wanted to drink lager; you just weren’t allowed to say it. And you certainly weren’t allowed to let your customers know that you wanted to drink lager because most craft brewers couldn’t make lager and wouldn’t make lager and it wouldn’t make financial sense for them to make lager.”

Lager was still considered “fizzy yellow beer” by many craft brewers and flavorful craft lagers were explored by few, similar to how canned beer was considered something only for large brewers.

“I think from a brand point of view, a lot of brewers tried to make it a story of ‘us versus them’ and ‘big versus small’—Big Beer makes lager and small craft brewers make ale,” muses Hendler. “They tried to make things super simple and easy to communicate to customer between craft and macro beer, and lager kind of got thrown into the gutter from a marketing perspective because of that.”

But the thought of lagers being relegated only to Big Beer is not accurate, Hendler said. “I can tell you our brewers always drank lager and the deep, dark secret of a lot of brewers is that there’s a lot of love for bright, golden lagers.”

That doesn’t always make for an easy sale, though. Hendler says that one of Jack’s Abby’s biggest challenges centers around the consumer’s love for IPA. “Consumer trends like the concentration of craft beer on IPA as a style is really challenging to cut through,” he laments. “If a bar puts our House Lager on tap, it’s probably not going to pull as fast as the IPA they put on next to it.”

But he also believes that the drinker benefits from diversified tap lists. “I think it’s a bad thing for craft beer if the draught lines of that bar end up with seven IPAs and a macro lager, so I think it’s really important for the industry that we do carve out more space for lager and get on board with it.”

Despite the challenges with India pale ale’s hold on the craft beer segment, the IPA drinker is still one of Jack’s Abby’s best customers.

“We see a lot of the craft beer consumer who buys a new IPA every week, but they also grab a 15-pack of House Lager once a month,” said Hendler. “That’s the fridge beer that they crush with barbecue or whatever. Those are our people.”

The Haus That Lager Built by the Bay

While brewing lager is personal for every brewery that undertakes the style, for Tampa’s BarrieHaus Beer Co., the style is in head brewer Jim Barrie’s blood. Barrie’s great-great-great grandfather, Phillip Kling, came to the United States from Germany in the 19th century and started the Ph. Kling Brewing Company in Michigan.

Kling’s daughter carried on the brewing tradition. She married Louis Schimmel, and  the couple founded a brewery in Detroit, Mich. called Tivoli Brewing. The brewery’s Altes Lager became one of the most popular beers in the state. Tivoli survived Prohibition by making near-beer, allegedly running beer to speakeasies, and shipping to Canada.

Barrie and his wife, Brittney, drew on this family history when they established BarrieHaus Brewing with the tagline “Established in 1863, reinvented in 2019.”

The duo decided to follow in the family’s footsteps and establish a brewery in Tampa— the beating heart of craft beer in the Sunshine State. While there were well over 90 breweries in the counties that call Tampa Bay home, Jim and Brittney saw plenty of opportunity for the kind of lagers they wanted to make.

Tampa Bay may be saturated in terms of breweries, but “not for someone who’s making 99 percent lagers,” believes Jim Barrie. “I feel like it’s not even close to what it will be in five years. If you look at Denver, there are three lager breweries in the city among 300 breweries.”

When BarrieHaus opened in 2019, it was Jim and Brittney’s love of lagers that was displayed on the draught board, inspired not only by Jim’s family, but the couple’s  own experience of lager culture.

“We had a really transformative trip when we went to Germany on our honeymoon,” recalls Jim Barrie. “To drink fresh German lager was a game-changer for both of us. When we came back, [lager is] all I’m doing pretty much.”

Brittney Barrie says the camaraderie among all the brewers making world-class beer helped them through their first two years in business.

“Those relationships have meant the world to us; it allows us to be who we are in the heart of Tampa,” she said. “It really has been an incredible beer community in Tampa and in St. Pete as well. Seven breweries within a mile radius. They’re all right here and they’re all making really good beer. They all have their thing and they’re all happy that our thing is lagers.”

Innovation in Lager Styles

It can be hard to convince craft beer drinkers—who are used to seeking out the newest innovations from craft brewers—to try lagers, since many of the styles are brewed with traditional methods and ingredients.

But Lisa Allen says that innovation can be found in switching up beer ingredients and challenging mindsets instead of looking for adjuncts to add.

“A lot of [innovation] has been on the hop side, using hops that are not traditional for lagers and different hopping techniques, like dry-hopping,” she said. “We did an Italian Pilsner that we actually dip-hopped—you put the hops in the fermenter and you essentially knock out into the fermenter on the hops. It was a collab with Wayfinder and Modern Times and one of them suggested it.”

While dip-hopping proved an interesting experiment, Allen says that lager, as a style, can do much more than it gets credit for. “Lager yeast is very versatile, and you can make pretty much any style with it. With lagers, it’s like thinking within the box, rather than thinking outside the box. What can I do within this realm of malt, hops, yeast, methods, and process?”

At BarrieHaus, innovation comes to the taps with twists on the lager tradition. Beers like Endless Zest—brewed with local Florida oranges—shows off some of the innovation in the lager space, using complementary ingredients in the beer. “I personally prefer the little twists, like the citrus zest in our lager,” says Brittney Barrie. “There’s fresh orange zest but it still tastes like an American lager.”

For a traditional lager brewery, BarrieHaus has shown it is open to experimentation within the lager space when it comes to adjuncts—usually, Brittney Barrie says, while working with other breweries. “We’ve done collabs before where their thing is pastry or lactose. We’re not afraid to do some fun stuff like that at their location.” For example, the brewery has collaborated with Georgia’s Pontoon Brewing. “They’re making beer that tastes like margaritas, and creamsicles, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” she said.

For Jack’s Abby, innovation comes in many forms. “We’ve played with lager in a ton of different ways,” said Hendler. “We’ve done hazy hoppy lager and we will continue to do so. We love kellerbier and something that’s a lot of fun for us is experimenting with extremely traditional techniques that aren’t commonly used in the U.S.”

Sometimes, too, innovation in the lager space comes from learning more about the brewing origins and traditions of lager.

“Jack is going to Germany every year to source ingredients,” said Hendler. “It’s not just about the next new thing and innovation. When we build a House Lager consumer, that is a more loyal consumer than the brewery who got someone to buy one four-pack of a new IPA.”

The post Spreading the Gospel of Lager appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Carson sees his return as a victory. He grew up there, along with all of his Albuquerque friends.

“You got a Black guy going back to his old neighborhood and upgrading a building,” Carson said. “You’d have to be crazy not to appreciate the fact that we’ve been able to redo an old building that’s historical to the Black community and see the faces of people within the community who used to go to that place.”

Carson owns two locations of Nexus these days: the Nexus Brewery & Restaurant and Nexus Blue Smokehouse in his former South Broadway stomping grounds. A third location, the Nexus Silver Taproom, shut down in December 2019.

Despite the closure, Nexus has thrived, but life in the food and beer business wasn’t always what Carson had envisioned for himself.

From Banking to Beer

A common thread in Carson’s life emerged years before opening Nexus: being the only Black person around.

It began in high school and followed him into the professional world when Carson worked his way through college at New Mexico State University as a federal examiner with the Comptroller of the Currency. He moved into banking locally and eventually found himself in a deputy director role, where he led the banking department for the entire state of New Mexico. He was appointed director when he was around 30.

After working his way up to bank president, he intended to retire after a successful career. But being on the wrong side of a shareholder fight meant his role as president was no longer tenable. And then came the financial crisis of 2007-08, otherwise known as the Great Recession, considered by many to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The bank began to lose money and business slowed.

“I started thinking, this bank’s gonna fail, I’m going to be unemployed,” Carson said. “During the financial crisis, an unemployed banker’s not going to get employed.”

The plan was to start another bank, but Carson thought better of it. Instead, his thoughts turned to a totally different pursuit: beer.

“I became a fan of breweries before it became popular,” Carson said. “In the 1990s, we were in Colorado a lot. It was kind of a habit and a hobby where I would go and hang out at breweries.”

At the time, Black brewery owners and brewers were rare, with Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery being the most prominent. However, Carson was not deterred. Despite an inauspicious start (his first batch as a brewer was “horrible”), he put together a business plan and knew he needed to find an experienced brewer.

While building out Nexus, Carson began to hear of a lot of other breweries trying to open. So he went against his plans and added a 10-foot kitchen hood. He wasn’t sure what it would be used for, but his first inclination was fried chicken and collard greens.

Combining food and beer became his mission.

A Soulful Beginning

“At the time I would say we were probably the only soul food brewery in the world, back in 2011,” Carson said.

A consultant tried to dissuade him from featuring fried chicken, citing the difficultly level. With a delay in construction and money running low, Carson let the kitchen advisor go. After hiring a brewer, Carson began researching what food would work best.

“I decided to do fried chicken anyway,” Carson said. He visited highly rated spots like the since-closed Gladys Knight’s Chicken and Waffles in Atlanta, Roscoe’s in L.A., and Lo-Lo’s in Phoenix. Each place was famous for chicken and waffles, and each had lines out the door.

Carson’s menu would be headlined by chicken and waffles, but he began incorporating New Mexican soul food using local red and green chiles. His mom’s greens and turnips were added to his hodgepodge menu featuring nachos, red beans, rice, gumbo, fried catfish, and fried chicken.

The eclectic menu caught the attention of Guy Fieri, who filmed an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives at Nexus.

“His comment was that he hadn’t had collard greens that good on this side of the Mississippi,” Carson recalls.

Brewing Award-Winning Beer in New Mexico

The food isn’t the only thing garnering attention for Nexus.

In 2017, the brewery was awarded a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) for its Imperial Cream Ale. In 2015, it won a silver medal at GABF for Honey Bear, a honey and chamomile wheat beer. More recently, Beam Me Up (Higher), Scotty won a silver in the Old Ale category of the 2022 World Beer Cup.

All three of Carson’s brewers have made award-winning beers. Carson said there really isn’t a method to hiring medaled brewers—it’s more of having them try to match the food quality and giving them the reins to do what they want in the brewery.

When first submitting beers to competitions, Carson looked to his customers for inspiration on what to enter from Nexus’ portfolio.

“When we won the first award, we just knew the beer was good and our customers liked it,” Carson said. “We just picked the strongest selling beers we had at the time. We were really surprised when we won an award.”

Carson thinks the bar is high for beer quality in New Mexico as well, but winning awards validates Nexus’ mission.

“We feel very appreciative,” Carson said. “It’s an acknowledgement that the quality of our beer is up there with everybody else. The staff is proud, I’m proud, our brewers are proud.”

Among the medal winners, Carson recommends the Imperial Cream Ale as it goes with just about anything on the menu.

“It’s very light, it doesn’t have a whole lot of hops or contrary flavors,” Carson said. “It just goes very smoothly with everything.”

What’s Next for Nexus?

As Carson continues to get everything dialed in for the original location, he’s also working on developing the Smokehouse, which he calls a work in progress despite sales doubling in the last five months. He has also signed a contract to serve beer in a local food hall.

When asked what advice he would give to other BIPOC looking to open a brewery, Carson said, “You just have to just keep fighting to do your best to accomplish your dream. There’s two things that I really love that I grew up with: barbecue and soul food. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

Recipe

Collard Greens

DINERS, DRIVE-INS AND DIVES

Nexus Brewery and Restaurant

Recipe author: Ken Carson

Serving Size:  8

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 4 hours

Total Time: 4 hours 30 minutes

Ingredients:

• 6 bunches collard greens
• 1/2 large onion
• 1 Tbs. chopped garlic
• 2 crushed chile pods
• 1 small smoked turkey leg
• 2 teaspoons Frank’s Hot Sauce
• 1/8 cup bacon grease
• 1/4 cup diced bacon
• 1 Tbs. salt
• 8 cups water

Method:

Wash collard greens. Start by folding collard greens in half and de-stemming each leaf. Remove the large stem in the middle. Chop leaves at about 1 inch increments.

Boil turkey leg in a large pot for about an hour. Then place greens, onions, crushed chile pods, garlic, bacon, hot sauce, and salt in the pot. Bring to a boil then simmer for about 3 hours until turkey leg and greens are tender.

The post Soul Food and Cream Ale in Albuquerque appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

To get to know a city’s beer scene, it’s important to know more than what’s in your glass. You also need to know the history. Walking to breweries lets you appreciate aspects of a city you may not notice buzzing by in a car, so I traveled to Grand Rapids, Mich. to explore what USA Today has called “Beer City USA.” You can visit 25 breweries and trek 100 miles—all without getting in a car. But the beer isn’t the only thing that captures attention.

On foot, Grand Rapids’ race-based geographic divisions are noticeable. I saw how land use decisions made decades ago affect where I can get a beer and who sits on the barstool next to me. As the craft industry’s demographics change, what can Beer City USA teach us about how history impacts beer today?

A mid-sized city of 200,000 people, Grand Rapids is the second most populous city in Michigan after Detroit. Grand Rapids is 65.5% non-Hispanic white, 18.1% Black, and 16.3% Hispanic—more diverse than Michigan as a state.

In 2015 Forbes ranked it the second-worst U.S. city for African Americans to live based on metrics such as entrepreneurship and homeownership. In May, the police shooting of a Black man sparked debates on race relations in the city. Yet the stories I heard from residents reveal more than what statistics offer.

‘Underserved and Ignored’

Tucked near the interchange of I-196 and US-131, New Holland’s Knickerbocker is the Grand Rapids outpost of Michigan’s largest independent brewery. I fantasized about spending time in the airy multi-floor taproom here on days too cold to play outside.

It is hard to imagine that in 1933 this trendy West Side neighborhood was given a “hazardous” lending rating by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). They used residents’ race, ethnicity, and religion—not actual creditworthiness—to discourage investment. Appraisers believed Black people—or in the case of the West Side, Polish immigrants—reduced real estate values. A map by Michigan State University shows redlining thwarted people from buying or financing improvements in multiracial neighborhoods.

Although redlining ended in the 1960s, its repercussions linger. Zillow and Redfin report that real estate values in redlined areas across the country can be 10 times lower than in non-redlined areas.

Doug Hoverson, a historian working on a book about Michigan breweries, said that in the 1980s and 1990s, not unlike today, breweries formed in “the cheapest industrial building they could find with a drain.”

Cross-referencing the 17 breweries within city limits with a 1940s map, I find two other breweries in the same redlined neighborhood as The Knickerbocker. Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales is across the street. Arvon Brewing and Speciation Artisan Ales are in redlined neighborhoods east of the river. That’s a disproportionate number of breweries on the 6% of the city’s land deemed “hazardous.”

When Speciation Ale’s Mitch Ermatinger moved to the area as a resident in 2008, he was unfamiliar with the history, but fell in love with its progressive culture. Still, he recognized that “many parts of Grand Rapids are still underserved and ignored.” When the brewery relocated in 2019, the choice of community was “100% intentional.” In its former industrial location, Speciation had mainly attracted white men. For the brewery’s new taproom, he wanted something different.

How Redlining Impacted Beer Drinking

Even though descendants of redlined residents live near and drink at Grand Rapids taprooms, they still aren’t the owners of the breweries. Black Calder Brewing, founded by Grand Rapids native Terry Rostic and Michigan native Jamaal Ewing, is one of just two Black-owned breweries in the state.

“I went to different breweries in the area and I never saw anyone like me. I was always the outsider,” Rostic said. With Black Calder, he and Ewing are challenging that narrative.

Rostic said there’s a precedent for how representation can change who drinks craft beer. “I saw this play out in the liquor industry. Rappers drinking vodka and grape juice and talking about Hpnotiq [made from fruit juice, vodka, and cognac]. The culture was like, ‘Oh, somebody drinking that looks like us?’ Before you know it, these things take off.”

In a city saturated with breweries, Black Calder faces unique challenges. Though established in 2020, it is still looking for a brick-and-mortar taproom.

“How property was divided and shifted within Grand Rapids impacts how we operate and try to find a location today,” Rostic said. “A lot of property [in Grand Rapids], at least commercial property, is not owned by African Americans.” For now, Black Calder releases beer through collaborations with Speciation Artisan Ales and other breweries.

A history of redlining impacts fundraising, too: A quarter of new businesses rely on family money to start, and women and minorities are disproportionately impacted by systemic issues that hindered generational wealth. “I have buddies who started breweries and were able to draw hundreds of thousands of dollars from family,” Rostic said.

“Home values in the neighborhoods where my grandparents weren’t allowed to live were maybe $10,000 in the 1970s and now [they’re] worth $600,000,” Rostic said. “Where my grandparents were able to buy a house, overpay for that house, get very high interest loans, finally pay it off—it’s still in a place where their home values are not a quarter of others in the city.”

In Grand Rapids, highway construction for I-196 and US-131 uprooted 4,000 Black families. Those displaced moved in with relatives or rented, which reduced intergenerational wealth. That scenario impacts traditional bank financing, too. Nationwide, inequality in homeownership has contributed to Black Americans holding only 10% of the assets of white Americans.

Without home equity, entrepreneurs can’t come up with collateral. “Since we didn’t have these opportunities, redlining absolutely makes an impact today on business and entrepreneurship in Grand Rapids,” Rostic said.

While all breweries need financing, it’s harder for entrepreneurs of color.

The Federal Reserve reports Black and Hispanic-owned businesses face disparity in funding. “These things are amplified 100 times in the craft beer industry because of all the regulations, no matter what you look like,” Rostic said. “When you add in generational and historical impacts, there’s no reason not to understand why in Grand Rapids, Mich. you’ve never had a Black-owned brewery until 2020. These are all by design.”

In a brewery-dense city, the two-mile walk across southeast Grand Rapids was my longest stretch between taprooms. If I had been in a car, the trek from Brass Ring Brewing to ELK Brewing would have gone by in a blink. On foot, it’s easy to see these neighborhoods have the highest density of Black and Hispanic people.

That’s why Rostic wants Grand Rapids’ 49507 ZIP code to be the future home of Black Calder, “to show minority entrepreneurship—someone from this area—can be a catalyst, the building that invites other businesses to come.”

Funding Diverse Beer

From the city center, I head north on the bike trail for half a mile to City Built Brewing, on the east bank of the Grand River. City Built is the only Hispanic-owned brewery in Grand Rapids. Owner Edwin Collazo’s parents are from Puerto Rico. The brewery reflects his culture in the menu and beer names, like Hola, Mi Nombre Es, a fruited lactose sour.

Before starting City Built, Collazo was a financial planner with a 15-year homebrew hobby. He started getting serious after joining an online national beer exchange group. “I guess they needed someone who could get Michigan beers,” he jokes.

While he wasn’t seeing local beer enthusiasts who looked like him, he found others online “who were leaders, decision makers at different breweries who had developed clout or respect for their skill set.” Collazo saw what could be possible in Michigan. “If you go to places where lots of minorities live, they like good beer. It’s working because of their decision makers—they’re marketing to other brown people.”

When it came time to raise money, networking skills from his prior job were a bonus. Collazo pitched City Built as a culturally diverse business that would add something unique to the city. “We did that, because 10 years ago, I don’t think Grand Rapids was ready, where now it’s almost cool and in vogue to seek out a cultural experience,” he said.

Still, convincing investors was a challenge. “When we talk about a guy who looks like me, trying to open a business in this town, it’s really hard to get past the old guard,” Collazo said. As a financial adviser, he’d seen the advantages that come to “blond, blue-eyed guys.”

“I had a white counterpart and he was seen as the credibility. I was referred to as ‘that brown guy who spoke well,’ which is funny for a guy from Ohio,” Collazo said.” He jokes, but Collazo and his parents were born in the U.S. and he has two degrees from American universities.

As with Black Calder, Collazo sees City Built as a conduit to serve his community and “give Hispanic people an upscale place where they can find familiar food and familiar flavor.”

On my brewery walk, taproom staff often recommended competitors’ beers to me. Collazo says other breweries tell tourists, “‘If you go to one more place [in town], you have to go to City Built.’ I think that happens because it’s so different. You can’t find this anywhere else.”

Education Can Change Who Brews

Hidden in the Applied Technology Center at Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC), Fountain Hill Brewery is the public-serving side of the school’s craft beer program.

Molly Daniels, an adjunct professor in the craft brewing program, said that knowing beer production science is the gateway to the changing beer industry: “If you can have a conversation about beer and brewing, that opens the door to so many things.”

Daniels is a graduate of the program herself. Now she’s a brewer at Railtown Brewing, in the greater metro area.

A full-time student can achieve a certificate in a year, though most students take two years to work part-time in the industry. The program, which has been around since 2016, expects 18 students next fall.

Allison Hoekstra, a professor who teaches beer sensory classes, said that a majority of graduates end up working in beer across a variety of jobs.

While GRCC’s program has yet to attract many people of color, it has provided a path for female brewers. Daniels was one of the first two women to receive a certificate in brewing. Now, 20% of her students are women, compared to 7.5% of working brewers nationwide.

Hoekstra, who also is on the education committee at Grand Rapids’ Beer City Brewers Guild, said that costs can be a barrier to learning. That’s one reason Rostic wants to develop a GRCC Black Brewer’s scholarship, in the footsteps of similar programs elsewhere in the country.

Stepping Up to the Challenge

“People are starting to see that inclusion is real,” Rostic said. “Some people do it because it makes business sense. Some people do it because they want more people to drink good beer.”

How can the industry use its resources to support nontraditional brewers?

Rostic references the difference between equity and equality. “I don’t want a handout. I want an opportunity. I want to compete.” He recognizes that redlining harmed intergenerational wealth in Grand Rapids. That’s why for him, equity looks like financing: “Low interest loans, banks not asking for so much collateral.”

There’s a precedent for the beer community providing access to capital. A program run by Sam Adams and the Accion Opportunity Fund provides loans and business mentoring for women and BIPOC.

“If you want to diversify, you want to be inclusive, you recognize things haven’t been right, you’re going to have to do things that you’ve never done before,” Rostic said.

As I walk through Grand Rapids, I imagine what it would be like if seven of Grand Rapids 40 breweries were Black-owned and six were Hispanic-owned, reflecting demographics.

Rostic says that won’t happen without dedication. “We really need a heart-to-heart and some soul searching as a community of business leaders, banks, and institutions to say, ‘If we want to make this happen, then we’re going to help you by any means necessary.’ That’s what’s needed in Michigan and everywhere across the country.”

The post A Walk through History and Race in Beer City USA appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

The Los Angeles County Brewers Guild counts 95 breweries around greater Los Angeles. Seventy-two of them opened in 2015 or after, most notably in neighborhoods and parts of L.A. historically and culturally associated with blue collar workers, immigrants, and people of color. This includes new businesses in the San Gabriel Valley (44.7% Latino, 25.7% Asian) and in the Inland Empire counties of Riverside (51.6% Latino, 8% Asian-Pacific Islander, 7.5% Black) and San Bernardino (55.8% Latino, 9.4% Black, 9% Asian-Pacific Islander), where the growth of breweries reflects their potential as community-builders and creative centers.

Boomtown Brewery in Downtown L.A., Brewyard Beer Company in Glendale, and Dragon’s Tale Brewery in Montclair are three greater Los Angeles breweries that represent this post-2015 craft beer surge. Open for less than a decade and with strong local followings, each brewery has established itself as a part of their respective neighborhood and the diverse communities they represent and serve. Together, these breweries unlock new ways of understanding the diversity found in local histories, cultures, ingredients, and values that influence craft beer production in greater Los Angeles.

Boomtown Brewing: Creating Space for Beer, Art, and History in Downtown L.A.

Every Wednesday night, Boomtown Brewery hosts Vegan Playground, a street-style food and craft festival that draws Boomtown’s largest weekly crowds. And during L.A.’s professional baseball, soccer, and football seasons, Boomtown becomes a supporters’ heaven, complete with fan camaraderie and games.

“We get the downtown city and federal workers stopping in for a post-work beer, Eastsiders hanging out, and that big vegan crowd on Wednesdays,” says Samuel “Chewy” Chawinga, Boomtown’s co-owner and head brewer. “Our Wednesday night is like a good Friday night. We regularly get 450 to 600 people throughout the evening.”

But the big parties happen when Boomtown drops a new can in its popular Artist Series. Every other month, Chawinga and staff brew between 30 and 60 barrels of a unique hazy double IPA inspired by a featured artist whose work decorates the collectible cans. One beer, Brighter Days Hazy DIPA, was made in collaboration with Russian-Polish artist Bunnie Reiss and featured fruity and herbaceous flavors to reflect the bold, colorful nature of her installation work and paintings. The release parties come alive with music, dancing, and beer flowing in the name of art by local and international street artists, DJs, tattooists, and muralists.

Another “Graffiti” series beer, featuring DJ Neff, remains Boomtown’s bestselling Artist Series can,  and the most-attended party to date honored L.A. graffiti artist Rick Ordonez, AKA “Atlas,” famous for his kitty-cat tags around the city.

The Artist Series is one reminder of Boomtown’s place at the geographical crossroads of urban development, local ancient histories, and the creation of sustainable artist- and community- driven spaces in downtown L.A.

Boomtown opened in August 2015 in a century-old building in a part of downtown hemmed in by railway lines, freeways, and the Los Angeles River. Its front entrance lies several hundred feet from the spot where an ancient sycamore tree grew for over four centuries, when it served as sacred meeting point for the Kizh-Gabrieleño tribe until early Spanish colonizers named it El Aliso. The tree remained an important landmark through L.A.’s Indigenous, Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. statehood eras—until two German immigrants chopped it down in 1895 to expand their brewery.

“It’s the first thing that comes to mind when I think about Boomtown and its location,” said lead brewer Amber Sawicki. “The Aliso Belgian Dark Strong ale names this history of the famous El Aliso tree. We get to know a place through beer.”

Boomtown’s brewery manager, Benjamin Turkel, mentioned the vineyards that once covered the land. “Vignes started wine cultivation right over there,” he said, pointing to the brewery’s main cross-street named for the Frenchman who made wine here in 1831. “We pay homage to these places and stories.” Whether through beers like Aliso Ale, their wine barrel aged saison, or Mic Czech, cleverly named to evoke the microphone as a versatile tool of artistic expression, Boomtown remains committed to its community- and place-based mission.

Sawicki and Turkel said their flagship Bad Hombre Mexican Lager best reflects Boomtown’s community identity. “Bad hombre” re-appropriates a term former president Donald Trump used to describe Mexican immigrants in 2016. The brewery joined many taqueros, bartenders, and others who turned Trump’s words against him in gleeful protest.

“Bad Hombre says the most about Boomtown,” says Sawicki. Beers like Aliso, Bad Hombre, and Chavez Ravine IPA, a reference to Dodger Stadium and its controversial beginnings, “get people talking” about place, time, and these not so past histories.

For Chawinga and crew, these local histories and cultural awareness remain key ingredients for their inspired beers and the diverse communities that enjoy them.

Ube Wan to the Rescue: Nothing Common about Glendale’s Brewyard Beer Company

Brewyard Beer Company sits under the Western Avenue bridge along the San Fernando Road “Craft Beer Corridor,” a 17-mile stretch of breweries north of Griffith Park, just east of the Hollywood Hills and a stone’s throw from Burbank’s famous Warner Bros., NBC, and Walt Disney studios. A restored 1936 Ford flatbed truck greets visitors to the taproom, its chrome grille the inspiration for Brewyard’s logo, a nod to head brewer and co-owner Sherwin Antonio’s former life as a master mechanic.

“He’s the mad scientist around here,” said co-owner and brewery manager Kirk Nishikawa of his childhood friend and partner in beer. When the pair opened Brewyard seven years ago, it was Glendale’s first craft brewery.

They specialize in California Common, or “steam” beers, a unique style with roots in the state’s Gold Rush days before refrigeration, when Germans from the East Coast realized they couldn’t properly cold-ferment lagers in the warm weather. “So they forced the lager yeast to ferment at higher temperatures more suited to ales,” said Nishikawa.

Their flagship, Jewel City California Common, is Brewyard’s most popular and awarded beer. But it was the Ube Wan IPA, made with the sweet purple Filipino yam, that saved the fledgling brewery from the coronavirus pandemic shutdowns of 2020.

“I grew up eating ube in meals and desserts, but I only thought to brew beer with it during the pandemic,” said Antonio.

“What is hard to relay is the overall excitement after we released that first batch of Ube Wan,” said Nishikawa. “Cans flew out the door at a pace that we never saw before. We were being tagged left and right on social media with images of our beer. I was able to catch up on a lot of bills that were stacking up.”

Ube Wan sold twice as much as Kalinga Pilsner, their second best-selling beer made with calamansi, a Filipino lime-orange citrus fruit. The two beers together comprise about 15 to 18 percent of beer sales in Brewyard’s taproom and about half their total distribution sales. “Keep in mind we brewed and sold 25 different beers throughout that year,” said Nishikawa, “so Ube Wan and Kalinga were pulling more than twice their weight in sales.”

With the pandemic success of Ube Wan IPA, Antonio made other beers that reflected the flavors he and Nishikawa grew up with as L.A. kids from Filipino and Japanese-American families. Enter Ube Macapuno Delight, inspired by an ube-coconut dessert and seltzers made with lychee and calamansi, all available at Seafood City, a Filipino grocery chain, and other Asian markets around the county.

“We weren’t prepared for the response to the ube beer,” said Nishikawa. “It seemed like the entire Filipino community in L.A. found us and wiped us out of all our cans. We learned how strong our communities would support us if we ‘went there’ culturally.”

In turn, Brewyard found ways to give back. The U.S. Census shows that Los Angeles County is home to 1.5 million Asians and over a half-million Filipinos, the largest Filipino population in the country. As one of the few Filipino co-owned and operated breweries in L.A. County, they understand the importance of reciprocity.

Antonio and Nishikawa have made beers to benefit organizations such as SIPA, a Pilipino American nonprofit, the Little Tokyo Community Council, and the Glendale YWCA. Their benefit brews are a testament to craft breweries’ valued presence in their communities and the possibilities of meaningful exchange through beer.

Five Years of Blue Beer and Dragon Tales at Montclair’s First Brewery

To celebrate Dragon’s Tale Brewery’s anniversary each year, head brewer Nikki Paternoster makes a beer she calls Errant Ale. She adds butterfly pea tea flowers to a Belgian wit-style ale, turning it blue. For interactive fun, customers can add citrus juice from local Bearss limes to turn it purple—a nod to the signature color of the dragon-themed brewery she co-owns and operates in Montclair with business partner Sousan D. Elias.

Errant Ale exemplifies Paternoster’s playful and creative approach to brewing unique and unexpected beers that pay homage to the region’s agricultural history as a citrus-growing hub, while harkening to a time when women were the primary brewers of styles that pre-existed industrialization.

“Women were the first ones to make beer, and a lot of changes to beermaking through the years were made by women,” said Elias. “It was a natural fit for us to open an all-woman owned and operated brewery,” added Paternoster.

They opened Dragon’s Tale Brewery in 2016, Montclair’s first microbrewery that paved the way for two more breweries to open since then in the relatively small (pop. 38,061) Inland Empire city just over the L.A. County line. Montclair borders the cities of Claremont, Upland, Ontario, Pomona, and Chino—areas most associated with private colleges, suburban sprawl, shopping malls, and a billion square feet of warehouses staffed by armies of workers.

Each of these cities also has at least one brewery, which means Montclair beer drinkers had to drive elsewhere. As longtime residents of Montclair, Paternoster and Elias often wondered why their hometown didn’t have its own microbrewery, so they did something about it.

Paternoster’s connection to the city goes back to the late 1970s, when she was around eight years old and her family moved to Montclair from Monterey Park, just east of downtown L.A. “Back then, it was a small town—just stop signs and citrus groves out here,” she said. Before developers turned it into shopping malls and subdivisions after World War II, Montclair was a 19th-century citrus settlement called Monte Vista.

Paternoster honors her hometown’s citrus heritage with her unique beers. She uses locally grown fruits and other natural ingredients like ruby red grapefruit, Valencia oranges, and wildflower honey. She’ll frequent area farmers markets for organic berries to use in her Mediev-ale Brut Gruit, a hop-less beer brewed with tea. And she’ll often make use of regulars’ abundant harvests from backyard fruit trees, a truly homegrown touch that connects Dragon’s Tale customers to the brews they love.

“Someone will come in with tons of lemons or kumquats and ask if we can use it,” said Paternoster. “It gives customers a chance to be part of the beer making process.”

Grapefruit Wit, Bloody Beerdless Wheat Ale, and Cal -52 Blonde are just a handful of beers on Dragon’s Tale menu that reflect the local terroir, whether it’s a neighbor’s jar of preserves, a basket of blood oranges, or herbs plucked from a home garden. Paternoster, who attended Serrano Junior High School in Montclair, also plans to make a beer using serrano peppers, widely grown and eaten in this area once home to the Maara’yam people who spoke the Serrano language. Through her use of ingredients, Paternoster’s beers become mini portals to another time and place.

“Breweries add something special to the community,” said Paternoster. “It’s really cool that we have people who come out and say they’re comfortable here. It’s a way for people to gather and be themselves.”

L.A. Brews Diversity

Brewyard, Boomtown, and Dragon’s Tale are just three examples of the growing diversity in the relatively new Los Angeles craft beer scene that in some ways has been there since its inception, when Ting Su and Jeremy Raub opened Eagle Rock Brewery in 2009. Because it’s newer—compared to the decades-old craft brewery cultures that go back to the 1980s and 1990s in northern California and San Diego—greater L.A.’s craft beer culture shows that diversity is already part of the brewing landscape, from the people who make the beer and drink it, to the ingredients, methods, and perspectives that inform each brewery’s mission. They not only check all the race-gender “diversity” boxes, but push L.A. craft beer drinkers to also think about diversity in terms of history, space, place, community, ingredients, styles, and other meaningful ways.

L.A.’s newest breweries, many of which opened during or after the pandemic lockdowns, continue to reflect the region’s demographic diversity through ingredients, styles, and products. Locally popular fermented drinks like tepache, kombucha, and natural wines dot brewery menus around L.A. Breweries like these and others in Los Angeles help to reshape expectations of who can make, drink, and enjoy craft beer. Dragon’s Tale, Brewyard, and Boomtown are part of the colorful beer landscape of Los Angeles, where beer speaks to locals and reminds us of our connections to time, space, and place.

The post Ube Yams and Dragon Tales: Finding Diversity in a New Generation of L.A. Breweries appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

When envisioning a beer that’s been aged in a barrel or inspired by another non-beer beverage, initial thoughts usually turn to bourbon or whiskey. But there are plenty of beers on the market that have been carefully aged in rum barrels, brewed with the addition of wine grape must, boosted from spending time in a tequila barrel, or even inspired by the ancient Japanese beverage sake.

Wine

Dialed-In IPA (with wine-grape must) | Trillium Victor | Allagash Brewing Temptation | Russian River Mixed Media | Dogfish Head Craft Brewery Golden Canary | Block 15 Brewing Co. The Road Less Traveled | Two Roads Brewing

For Vinnie Cilurzo, owner and brewer at Russian River Brewing Company, wine barrels have always been his first choice when it comes to aging beer because of a drive to use local resources. That means partnering with nearby business owners in the bustling Sonoma County, Calif. wine scene.

Cilurzo believes that in general, wine barrels have a more subtle contribution to beer than spirit barrels such as bourbon or whiskey. “It is more finesse driven, which I like,” he says. “When using wine barrels, there typically is not too much of a rise in ABV like you’d see with spirit barrels.”

Along with imparting some subtle wine flavor, the wood acts as a home for the secondary yeast and bacteria the brewery uses for these special beers. “Aging beer in wine barrels is a process that typically takes longer than spirits barrels. This is also because it takes some time for the Brettanomyces yeast and bacteria to do their work,” Cilurzo explains.

For his first barrel-aged beer, Temptation, Cilurzo opted for Chardonnay barrels for an understated influence on the blonde ale. The brewery’s Consecration, a sour dark ale with black currants, is aged in bolder Cabernet Sauvignon barrels.

At Trillium Brewing in Canton, Mass., wine grape must is added at the end of fermentation for all versions of Dialed-In Double IPA. “This step allows for the retainment of complex vinous aromas and flavors that accentuate and complement the different hop varieties in each iteration while also providing for a lighter, drier DIPA experience,” explained Matt Garstka, communications manager.

The concept for Dialed-In began in 2016 to celebrate Trillium’s third anniversary. “Having previously experimented with the integration of wildflower honey in another one of our hoppy offerings, we recognized the huge potential for innovation and flavor impact in the wide variety of wine grapes available,” says Garstka. One of their all-time favorite aromatic hop varieties is Nelson Sauvin, grown in New Zealand and named after the unique Sauvignon Blanc-like white grape character imparted during brewing. “Naturally, we saw this undeniable connection and landed on our first iteration of Dialed-In to feature Sauvignon Blanc grape juice in a heavily dry-hopped Nelson Sauvin DIPA.”

Sauvignon Blanc grapes enhance the depth of tropical, fruity aromas and flavors the brewery aims for in this version of Dialed-In. Additionally, simple sugars in the wine must are fully fermented out, providing for a crisper finish. Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer, Moscato, and Riesling have also provided unique flavor profiles in some of the brewery’s favorite recipes to date.

Rum

Imperial Dark ‘n Stormy Ale | Great Divide Brewing Co. Rum Barrel Aged Porter | pFriem Dragon’s Milk Rum Barrel-Aged Stout | New Holland Black Tuesday | The Bruery Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout | Cigar City Imperial Awakening | Angry Chair Death by Coconut | Oskar Blues

At pFriem Family Brewers in Hood River, Ore., casks for their rum-aged beers are sourced from Barbados, Puerto Rico, and St. Croix. “Rums from these locations tend to be more neutral and provide a consistent and classic rum flavor profile,” believes Kyle Krause, pFriem R&D brewer and lead blender. The oldest barrel they’ve ever encountered was from 1955.

Rum barrels present a unique challenge in that they are generally old and in rough condition by the time they are received at the brewery, Krause says. “Rum distillers most often use ex-bourbon casks that, once filled, spend the entirety of their lives in open-air rickhouses in a tropical climate,” Krause says. Rum distillers aren’t bound by labeling laws to use new oak, so casks are reused over and over, he explains.

Additionally, these casks are often stored upright, drying out one of the heads, potentially for decades. Krause says it takes a good amount of effort to coax these barrels back into shape before they are safe to hold clean beer. “Even then, the percentage of casks lost to leakage is significantly higher than other brands,” he says.

New Holland brewer Mark Erickson echoes Krause in lamenting that the rum barrels themselves are a little challenging to work with since they are often warped and prone to leakage. “Sometimes the rum producers try to get extra life out of a barrel, so they add wood chips to it,” he says. There are special pumps with screens on the inlet for those barrels.

Erickson believes there are certain beer styles that pair nicely with rum barrels.

“I do think the Belgian and saison-type styles are better in rum than bourbon because they tend to have a little banana flavor from the yeast, and more tropical flavors work better with rum,” says Erickson, who leads the barrel program at New Holland.

Sake

For the Sake of Ale | Angel City Brewery Banryu Ichi | Cambridge Brewing Company Stillwater Extra Dry Sake Style Saison | Stillwater Artisanal Sunset Kura | Five Boroughs Brewing Co.

Banryu Ichi from Cambridge Brewing Company is a hybrid of beer and sake, brewed in collaboration with the brewery’s friend Todd Bellomy, founder and Toji (brewmaster) of Farthest Star Sake in Medfield, Mass..

“Our idea was to create a true hybridization of sake and beer, both in technique and ingredients,” says Will Meyers, brewmaster at Cambridge Brewing Company.

They began by brewing a 500-liter batch of sake—washing, soaking, steaming, and cooling the rice in batches over several days, adding koji, water, and sake yeast. “We fermented for about two weeks, then transferred 300-plus liters to a CCV [cylindroconical vessel] and added that day’s wort, which was about 6 barrels of high OG [original gravity] wort.” The beer wort was comprised of malted barley and rice that were mashed at very high temperatures so that regular brewer’s yeast would be unable to ferment it properly.

From there, more koji was added to the fermentation tank to break down the complex starches from a high conversion temperature. Fermentation took several weeks, followed by a month of maturation, then clarification. Banryu Ichi is served with low carbonation in a five-ounce glass set inside a small wooden box called a Masu.

Tequila

Uber La Luna Margarita Gose | Cheluna Brewing Magarita Gose | Great Divide Brewing Benny Tequila Barrel-Aged Mexican Lager | Broken Bat Brewing Metzli | Dos Luces Brewery

Great Divide’s Margarita Gose is partially aged in tequila barrels and gets an extra kick from Makrut lime leaf, lime puree, and Himalayan pink salt.

Director of operations Jeff Martin explains that the process for aging in tequila barrels is the same as whiskey, but the timeline is different. “The biggest difference we see is the extraction of flavor,” Martin says. While Great Divide ages its Barrel Aged Yeti Imperial Stout for a minimum of one year in whiskey barrels, it can reduce tequila aging to one month on oak.

“Since we are aging a more delicate beer in tequila barrels, we also reduce aging and oxygen ingress—thus preserving the flavor of the final product,” Martin added.

The post Beyond Bourbon: Wine- and Spirit-Inspired Beers appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Nearly 10 years ago, Scratch Brewing Company set out to make beer with ingredients from the land in a way that modern American craft brewing hadn’t seen much of before: locally sourced not as a limited offering, but as principle. “Carrying on the heritage of ancient traditions brings us closer to the long life cycle of the plants we briefly live with side by side,” the Scratch team declared in The Homebrewer’s Almanac.

Since then, more craft breweries have launched with a similar daily mantra of creating consciously and locally. For these brewers, “local” isn’t a seasonal trend—it’s a culture. So why do they bother foraging in the forest, purchasing fresh produce, or growing their own? Here’s a look at how six Northern California breweries are crafting conscious, sustainable beers, and why they do it.

The Good Wolf Brewing Company

Truckee, Calif. teeters on the edge of the snowy Sierra Nevada mountains and Nevada’s high desert. Conifers crowd one side, shrubs speckle the other. Moving from the outdoors into The Good Wolf Brewing’s flora-filled taproom is like crossing a seamless threshold from one space into another.

It’s not just for show. The Good Wolf’s Forest Beer program combines locally sourced and ethically foraged ingredients with grain from nearby maltster 40 Mile Malt “to represent the unique terroir of the Tahoe National Forest,” explains brewer Neil Moroney. Each glass attempts to offer the full sensory experience of hiking through the forest and every forage is an opportunity to be curious and responsible stewards of the land.

Take Needle & Resin, for example: a black lager with fresh pine tips. Or Dirt Candy, a springtime ale brewed with foraged and locally cultivated mushrooms. Forest Beers combine seasonality with creative flavor combinations for a final product that’s unique to the rugged Reno-Tahoe terroir.

“Forest Beer is a love letter to our moment in place and time,” owner Matt Petyo says—a way to explore the transitory experience of being alive. He hopes to share this experience with his community by using “the universal language of flavor to inspire a joyful connection with the world around us.”

Mindscape Fermentations

Consciously creating is the foundation of what Lauren Price, Charlotte Crott, and Lauren Houston do at Mindscape Fermentations in Rocklin, Calif. These three women decided to put a spin on the craft beer industry by focusing on sustainability and health consciousness with an emphasis on probiotics.

Much like how every individual’s gut microbe is unique to what that person consumes, Mindscape’s makeup is fueled by its surrounding environment—and Rocklin’s Mediterranean climate (and proximity to farms and orchards) is ripe for hyper-local brews.

“When peaches are in season, you might see a fermented peach hot sauce, a peach chutney on our charcuterie plates, peach kombucha on tap, and maybe even a peach sour beer fermenting in the tanks,” Lauren Houston proposes. “Consuming seasonal, local ingredients dates back centuries and is really what your body thrives on and craves.”

“We want to have intention with everything we touch, feel, taste, and put out into the world,” Houston continues. Tangibly, Mindscape accomplishes this by showcasing its region’s soft and clean water profile, producing food fermentations with only the natural yeast and bacteria found on fresh ingredients, and using the bokashi method of composting.

By “having beneficial microbes as the core of our creations,” Houston says, “we hope to perpetuate well-being in our community and in the environment.”

Ruhstaller Farm

“Farming is hard work,” a heartfelt manifesto explains on Ruhstaller’s website, “but we haven’t found anything to replace how it makes us feel.”

The team was determined to grow hops in tribute to Ruhstaller’s namesake, the foreman of a turn-of-the-century brewery when Sacramento was one of the largest hop-growing regions in the world.

“People are excited about different varieties of hops, but no one ever talks about where those hops grow,” general manager Jan-Erik Paino laments. Ruhstaller, based in Dixon, Calif., even crafted a beer with homegrown hops called “Does It Matter?” Of course, it matters.

Beyond hops, the brewery takes advantage of its surrounding agricultural abundance by keeping track of when crops go into production. One example is a beer brewed with lavender from nearby Araceli Farms. Historically, “beer being local was always about where the factory was, not the ingredients,” which Paino believes is a missed opportunity.

Ultimately, Ruhstaller’s mission is to leave things better than they were found with as little intervention as possible. “Nurturing and taking care of the land is more about what you don’t do than what you do,” Paino says. “We have three rules: explore, respect, and hug your mother.” That’s how to make the world a better place—along with keeping chickens out of the brewery.

Fox Tale Fermentation Project

Before the tech campuses and STEM graduates of Silicon Valley, there were the orchards and cannery workers of The Valley of Heart’s Delight. Some of those workers included the Mexican grandparents of Felipe Bravo, cofounder of San Jose’s Fox Tale Fermentation Project with Wendy Neff.

“This is not my history,” Bravo says of Silicon Valley. Rather, Bravo and Neff intend to “look past the current landscape of buildings and tech, and reach back out to the farmers, growers, and local community that still embrace local and sustainable food” in an effort to merge culinary concepts with beer brewing.

Collaboration is the key ingredient here; Fox Tale is first and foremost a community space. Its main inspiration is the Bay Area’s cultural diversity, and Bravo and Neff aim “to create products that reflect the real face of this area,” ranging from specialty fermented foods to projects with nearby breweries.

One example is a mixed fermentation saison conditioned on San Jose-grown Japanese ume plums, brewed in collaboration with Salinas-based brewery Yeast of Eden. Another is a beer made with Admiral Maltings malt and beets from a neighboring farm.

“There is a special relationship and flavor we experience when using local ingredients that wouldn’t be the same if sourced elsewhere. It feels powerful to support farmers and maltsters in our area,” Bravo says.

Mad Fritz Brewing Company

Upon first glance at Mad Fritz Brewing’s whimsical bottles and origin story, one might expect a focus on grape-based liquids. Heavily influenced by their region’s wine industry, cofounders Whitney Fisher and Nile Zacherle make beer from scratch through the lens of a winery—as a reflection of the ingredients, not the recipe. “Grains are the grapes of beer,” Zacherle muses.

The St. Helena brewery’s Terroir Series is an expression of how beer is grown rather than produced. Napa Ale, brewed with 100 percent Napa Valley barley, hops, and spring water, “is a testament to the many people it takes to grow truly local beer,” Zacherle says—from growing and harvesting to malting, brewing, and fermenting.

“We have plenty of commodity-derived beers, and while they are good and enjoyable, they do not help promote local/young farmers or take beer as a product to the next level,” he continues. Mad Fritz’s main goal is to show how ingredients drive flavor, and Napa Valley farmers are an integral part of that mission.

Zacherle argues that locally grown really is the best trend. “We need space and opportunity for farming in our local communities. The more we can build infrastructure in communities to assist each other in the goal of growing local, the further we can go.”

Humboldt Regeneration Brewery & Farm

As the owner and brewmaster of the first California brewery to make a 100 percent house-grown and -malted beer since Prohibition, Jacob Pressey knows a thing or two about growing beer.

The idea for Humboldt Regeneration was an “educational, sustainable farm that happens to have a brewery on it,” Pressey says in a clip on the website. Even the distribution of its beer aligns with local farming—instead of a CSA, regulars can participate in its Community Supported Brewery growler program for fresh weekly refills.

In a mission to “raise awareness about the importance of re-localization of our food system and to promote regenerative agriculture,” Humboldt Regeneration grows hops (including regional heirloom varietals that trace back to the 1800s), malts homegrown barley, and ferments non-traditional Belgian sours with wild-sourced and harvested bacteria (alongside a few non-wild ales). Pressey has also been blending in-house barrel-aged malt vinegar since 2012.

Having studied soil science and alternative agriculture at Humboldt State University, Pressey is passionate about sustainable food systems. “Supporting a diverse local food system is one of the best ways an average person can help us move toward a post-carbon world,” he says. “The more types of foods and products that are produced in a bioregion, the more resilient that community will become.”

Localization, Nationally

From social responsibility to superior flavor, these Northern California breweries have various motivations for localizing ingredients. The one thing they have in common, however, is that they don’t see any reason not to.

Todd Boera, cofounder of Fonta Flora Brewery in North Carolina, puts it plainly: “Craft beer is not fast food. A beer brewed in North Carolina should not be made with the same ingredients as a beer brewed in California.”

Furthermore, while he recognizes that breweries operate for many different reasons, he agrees that it’s hyper-local or bust. “Why wouldn’t a business choose local over everything? If not made with local ingredients, I really don’t see the point in doing it at all.”

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This inaugural semester of EEB offers classes in brewing history as well as tasting and evaluating beer (and the necessary vocabulary). More than half the class load covers how to make beer—breaking down styles, basic chemistry and safety, and procedures to begin brewing at home. Each student even gets their own 5-gallon kit to practice with.

For Apollon, who’s been homebrewing for the past decade and who opened Four City Brewing just footsteps from the Orange Transit station right before the pandemic, it wasn’t until three years into running his brewery, that, as a Black man, he realized there weren’t many others like him in the industry. With EEB, he hopes to extend the same kind of access he was lucky enough to have to everyone else.

Apollon has been a part of the craft beer world since creating the Brew Council, a tasting club run out of his living room, over a decade ago. “It was a once-a-month gathering that started with five guys and grew to 30. The idea was not only to drink beer, but also get educated,” says Apollon. Guests like Thomas Maroulakos, owner of Skopos Hospitality Group in New Jersey, as well as Garrett Brown, regional sales manager for Firestone Walker, came to drop their knowledge on the group. “We even made polos and wore them to a beer fest (Essex County Turtle Back’s Brew at the Zoo). Someone came up to me and asked where my brewery was, and that’s when I started drawing up the Four City business plan,” said Apollon.

While Mettle, a burgeoning entrepreneur, is admittedly a spirits guy first, his first foray into craft beer was through drinking with Apollon. Four City’s The Keg Stand is his current go-to beverage, an American-style lager brewed with Heidelberg malt, flaked rice and corn, New Zealand Hallertau hops, and a house lager yeast that is designed for session drinking at 5.5 percent ABV.

If Apollon is the builder, then Mettle is the architect behind EEB. “The aha moment came at the height of Covid-19 when everything was shut down and we quarantined at home,” says Mettle. It all started with a conversation by the fire pit in Apollon’s backyard. “It was the day before Thanksgiving 2020, and we were talking about the lack of access to information for Black and brown people/minorities (in craft brewing).”

“We’re creating this (EEB) out of necessity; there was no model,” emphasizes Apollon. “People from all over the country are reaching out to us with similar ideas. There wasn’t enough diverse talent in the industry when we looked around, so we had to grow it.” They found their instructor, Michael Simone, at the brewery. When Covid-19 first emerged, Apollon lost his head brewer, and Simone, an avid homebrewer and frequent customer at Four City, stepped in to help—first brewing on the big system for six months, then turning his attention to educating others.

Mettle’s longtime colleague and mentor, Dennis Thomas, is a seasoned corporate professional in marketing and sales, and an endless entrepreneur. He too offered his business expertise, beginning with developing a mission statement, as well as a marketing plan and budget proposals. Andrew Regenstreich, who’s part of HANDS, Inc., a non-profit organization in Orange that supports local community development, is blocks away from the brewery and gives EEB space to hold their classes. “Ultimately, we’d love to have our own hands-on campus,” says Apollon.

They’ve partnered with other brains in their community, but the guidance of Other Half Brewing in Brooklyn, N.Y., has really opened up the world of craft brewing to EEB. When Apollon worked at Pave Academy, a charter school in Red Hook, Brooklyn, he befriended Other Half owners Matt Monahan and Sam Richardson over beers during after-school happy hours, eventually dropping off homebrews for feedback. Even though Monahan and Richardson are not minorities, it was this shared sense of community that Apollon is trying to cultivate in New Jersey, and across cultures.

The inaugural class participants of EEB range from artists to healthcare professionals, all with varying interests in craft beer. Some just want to learn how to brew at home, while others are more than entertaining the idea of opening their own business. However, you don’t have to pursue a path in beer to be a part of EEB. “I’ve learned a ton myself,” says Mettle, who’s now training to be a Certified Cicerone. “I’ve been studying for my certification, all self-paced and online, but being in front of Mike [Simone] and learning all the different details of beer has been extremely helpful, supplementing everything I’ve already been learning.”

When it comes down to it, it’s all about access. “Access to information,” Mettle reiterates. “We’re very familiar with being shut out just because of how we look, so we would never deny it to anyone.” The initial aim for EEB was for BIPOC individuals, but it’s not exclusive. “Discrimination or exclusion is bad,” asserts Apollon. “We would never ask about how you identify,” adding that the diverse cast of EEB students has added value to everyone’s experience.

“Craft beer can be a way out, a freedom thing,” Apollon preaches. “We’re hoping the BIPOC population will find this as a great way to enter the industry. What we can do is open the doors.”

The post EEB: Opening Doors to a More Inclusive Brewing Community appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Hops, perhaps the key flavor component of most brews, grow throughout the U.S. Dozens of small craft growers supply small breweries with local, high-quality hops. These farms are often family-run, community-centered, and count their acreage in double-digits vs. thousands.

As with craft brewers and drinkers, the relationship between farmer and customer is key. Craft breweries support buying local because they want flexibility and uniqueness in what they put in their beers. Chris Basso, brewmaster at Newburgh Brewing in Newburgh, N.Y., explains, “We have the ability to really know the producer and be able to talk with them on a personal level as well as discuss any brewing-related topics that might arise in regard to the hops.”

Basso buys from Crooked Creek Hops Farm in Addison, N.Y. Crooked Creek owner Chris Holden believes that some of the biggest advantages of being a craft farmer are loyalty and relationships. “I think that from a farmer’s standpoint, we want to look at it from the German model: we have a customer base who we work with from year to year and we have people who rely on us for generations.”

He also appreciates the independence of having a small farm. Crooked Creek grows eight acres of primarily Cashmere, Michigan Copper, Triumph, and Cascade. Smaller growers have the ability to focus on a few varieties that thrive on their unique plot of land versus being expected to grow every variety a brewer desires. “If we can plant a single variety per plot, that’s what we want,” says Holden.

Holden is also the director of sales and marketing for the New York Hop Guild. The guild is critical in supporting a variety-focused farming approach. It consolidates hops from smaller New York growers and distributes to craft breweries. Brewers get the convenience of buying from one distributor, while farmers can focus on what they do best.

Craft Connections

Chris DellaBianca of Billy Goat Hop Farm in Montrose, Colo., also values his craft connections. “The relationship with the brewers is why we got into it,” he says. “I was working for a brewery before I got into hop farming and it’s still nice to be involved.” He currently distributes directly to about 75 breweries in the southwest U.S., as Colorado lacks the same grower support network as New York.

At 32 acres, Billy Goat is the largest hop farm in the Southwest. DellaBianca takes pride in growing several varieties of Neomexicanus, a hop native to Colorado and New Mexico, along with more traditional varieties.

The farm’s small scale means DellaBianca gets direct feedback and sees the fruits of his labor first-hand. “I know exactly where my hops are going because I’m the one bringing them there. I know exactly which beers my hops are going into.”

Its size also means Billy Goat can be flexible with customers. If a brewer needs a hop ASAP for a brew, DellaBianca can help. “With our proximity, we can get it out in the mail that day. You call and you’re talking to me or [DellaBianca’s partner] Audrey— there’s no middleman.” On the growing side, he adds, “It’s easier to keep track of 30 acres and what’s going on in the field.”

Stewards of the Land

Bridging the gap between very small craft farms and larger growers, Gooding Farms in Parma, Idaho, has a family farming history going back to 1895. Acreage has fluctuated with brewing demand, but hops have always been in the ground. Today, three sisters—Diane, Michelle, and Andrea—run the farm along with their father, Mike.

Local connections motivate the sisters in the same way as other craft growers. “We really enjoy the spirit of craft brewing and being part of that community,” says Diane Gooding. “Because we’re a little smaller and family-oriented, it lends itself well to that culture.”

Like many farmers, the sisters enjoy their connection with the land. In recent years, they’ve undertaken environmentally friendly initiatives to help keep the land healthier by moving to a regenerative model. Among other things, it involves growing seed to plant cover crops and raising livestock to eat those crops and fertilize the soil. “We’re really trying to get off the chemical-based fertilizers. We’re trying to have a lighter footprint and be better stewards for the environment and locally,” says Gooding.

The Gooding sisters have also built up the farm’s research and development capacity and now sell their own proprietary strain of hops called Idaho Gem.

It’s hard to understate the Goodings’ passion for hands-on farming. “It’s a unique process. Hops have a vibe. Experiencing that in person—you can’t replace that,” said Gooding.

A Labor of Love

Craft farming naturally presents challenges not faced by larger operations. From financing, staffing, economies of scale, and limited recovery ability from pests and weather, craft hop growers are always on their toes. “You end up wearing a lot of different hats as a smaller producer,” says Gooding.

The bottom line, however, is that it’s about the bottom line. Economics are the number one challenge for any craft producer, whether brewer or farmer. “We can’t grow all the different varieties. We’re trying to preach to brewers that we have to have a certain scale to make the economics work,” says Crooked Creek’s Holden. Fortunately, he and his fellow growers have the support of the New York Hop Guild. “It frees the farmers to focus on the varieties that thrive on their terroir.”

Working small simply dictates a different cost structure. “Whenever you do stuff in a big way you can just do it cheaper per pound or per acre. It costs us a little more money per acre to raise a crop,” explains Billy Goat’s DellaBianca. Growers must pass this along to breweries, which face similar struggles with economics.

DellaBianca also contends that breweries have an incentive to purchase from larger brokers because they can buy all their hops from a single place under one invoice. Using various craft growers to source different varieties creates extra work for the brewery.

But despite the added work or cost, many breweries choose craft hops. Some do it altruistically out of community solidarity, but most do it for practical reasons; uniqueness, quality, and service.

Holden defines the draw for brewers. “They want to differentiate their beer, so they’ll work with us on selection of hops. They want to make those one-offs or seasonal beers special.” Billy Goat’s customers buy for similar reasons. “With our hop,s you know what you’re going to get. You can create a recipe around it and it brings consistency to your brewing,” says DellaBianca.

Fresher and Faster

When trying to make the next great beer, brewers thrive on predictability and quality. According to Michael Thomas, brewer at Colorado Boy Pizzeria & Brewery in Montrose, Colo., “Even though Billy Goat grows some common varieties like Nugget, Crystal, and Cascade, they have much better aroma and flavor profiles than what I can get from the national market.”

DellaBianca attributes some of this to his small operation’s faster processing ability. “We can get hops from the field and into a pellet and vacuum sealed Mylar bag within weeks as opposed to months,” he said. “I think it stays fresher. It remains more vibrant and has more pop to it. There’s less oxidation.”

Colorado Boy uses Billy Goat hops in every one of its beers. Says Thomas, “I’m always trying to make a better beer and source more locally. I’m happy to support another local business that supplies a great product and aligns with our brand’s goals.

“My goal is to eventually make all of my beers 10-mile beers, where all my ingredients are sourced as local as possible.”

Service is also a big part of why brewers go with craft providers. Being small gives hop growers a certain edge. Gooding describes her farm’s approach as “focusing on what our customers are wanting. How can we improve our processes to improve quality?” Holden feels similarly. “Our customer service is a little better. We have it more in tune with our customer base.”

In the end, being a craft hop grower is much like being a craft brewer. Both face challenges posed by economies of scale and larger competitors. However, their small size allows them to develop relationships with their customers, focus on quality, and be an integral part of their local communities.

Perhaps Billy Goat’s website best sums up what craft hop growers do. “The definition of craft is ‘an activity that involves making things skillfully by hand, often in a traditional way.’ Our hands are dirty every step of the way—every new shoot, every cone, every moisture reading, every pellet, we’re there with care and honesty creating an authentic product.”

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Summer is here, y’all! I don’t know about you, but I plan to raise my fair share of pints wherever I go, including some of the most unique ways to celebrate the craft. From hiking and biking to balloons and tunes, I’m hitting the road in search of my new favorite festivals, not to mention great patios worth sitting a spell. The water’s plenty warm, and the suds plenty cold. So, come on out and toast to summer with me!

Chicago, Ill.: Friday Night Flights

May–September

Produced by the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild in partnership with Choose Chicago, Friday Night Flights began celebrating its sixth year with the first of a four-part series on May 27. Chicago reportedly has more breweries than any other city in America, with more than 160. Each month a different neighborhood will be showcased: Gallagher Way in Wrigleyville (which took place on May 27), Bridgeport (June 24), Chicago Brewing District (August 26), and Ravenswood (September 16). Within each neighborhood, the beer lineup will vary, and different cuisine and music each week highlight this inclusive way to explore the unofficial craft beer capital of the United States.

 Yakima, Wash.: Ales for ALS at Bale Breaker

June 25

Responsible for over 75 percent of the nation’s hops, Yakima’s prized crop can be found in beer glasses all across America. It’s hard to beat an outdoor brewery setting on one of those working hop farms, B.T. Loftus Ranches, at the peak of growing season. Bale Breaker Brewing Company just completed an expansion of its patio to include fire pits and great places to hang out just in time for Ales for ALS on June 25. The family, who has a history of ALS, has embraced this cause, donating a blend of experimental hops every year to more than 130 breweries around the U.S. who create a signature brew and donate at least $1 per pint to the cause, collectively raising more than $4 million since 2013 toward ALS research. As part of the Ales for ALS festivities, Bale Breaker brews an annual release of Bubba’s Brew in honor of the uncle of co-owners Meghann Smith Quinn and Kevin Smith.

Southern Border of Yosemite National Park, Calif.: Ales and Trails

July 13–17

Beginning and ending at Bass Lake, this five-day, pack-supported backpacking trip is an experience of a lifetime featuring stunning mountain scenery and craft beers. Spend your days exploring the Ansel Adams Wilderness on the southern border of Yosemite National Park, where you’ll find sweeping granite ridges with gorgeous views of the mountains and wildflower-strewn meadows along with sparkling high-mountain lakes offering a lifetime of fishing possibilities. There will even be an option for an ascent of one of the 10,000+ foot peaks. Come nightfall, enjoy craft beers from South Gate Brewing Company including a signature brew made specially for the trip. During happy hour, brewmaster Rick Boucke will be on the ready for tips and tricks for crafting your own special brews. “Hopportunity is knocking” for you to head to the hills on this one!

Portland, Ore.: Oregon Brewers Festival

July 28–30

Held the last full weekend of July for more than 30 years, the Oregon Brewers Festival brings more than 80 craft brews to Portland for a four-day brewfest, the largest gathering of its kind in North America. One of the country’s longest-running and best-loved craft beer festivals, the event is situated in downtown Waterfront Park on the banks of the Willamette River and attracts award-winning beers, live music, food vendors, beer memorabilia, and homebrewing demonstrations every year.

Franklin, Tenn.: Pilgrimage Music and Cultural Festival

September 24–25

If you’ve ever spent any time in the South on a hot September day, you’d say, “Hell yeah, it’s still summer!” Headliners this year at the Pilgrimage Music and Cultural Festival at the Park at Harlinsdale Farm include Chris Stapleton and Brandi Carlile. But the craft beer hall is a top act for festival goers, too. Located under a giant tent and featuring eight of Asheville, N.C.-based Wicked Weed Brewing’s most popular and seasonal beers, the beer hall will also offer local and regional brews on draught. It’s a big weekend for football, too, so the brew hall will show NCAA and NFL programming on LED screens the entire weekend.

If patio sipping is more your thing, here are some unique locales to check out this summer.

Arnaudville, La.: Bayou Teche Brewing

“What happens in the swamp ought to be in your cooler” is this Cajun Country favorite’s mantra. Acadiana’s first brewery has grown into a full experience, complete with live music, jam sessions, trivia, movie nights, annual events such as burning of the crawfish, onsite pizza place Cajun Saucer Pizza, and an arcade for the kids with vintage games. You’ll enjoy bayou views from the brewery’s patio and other outdoor seating.

Lake Charles, La.: Rikenjaks Brewing Company

One of the most prized craft beer experiences in Lake Charles, Rikenjaks Brewing Company offers 16 beers on tap with family-friendly entertainment and activities such as live music, karaoke, and giant-sized games like Connect 4 and Jenga. The fully restored Midtown Lake Charles 70-year-old bungalow features a 300-person capacity beer garden fit for low country fun year-round.

Fort Worth, Texas: Second Rodeo Brewing

Recently opened in Fort Worth’s Mule Alley (the revitalized horse and mule barns in the city’s Stockyards District), Second Rodeo Brewing is an outdoor beer garden, brewery, and live entertainment venue that resembles an eccentric Texan artist’s junkyard studio. True to Fort Worth’s “Funkytown” persona, there are quirky details around every corner, including a giant swing, cowboy boots hanging from chandeliers, colorful chairs made from repurposed beer barrels, and a paint-splattered standing piano on the performance stage. Under a retractable roof, guests can enjoy handcrafted beers, Western-inspired cocktails, and a unique menu of dressed-up comfort food while playing a variety of lawn games or jamming out to authentic Texas music.

Nashville, Tenn.: Tennessee Brew Works

Tennessee Brew Works’ two patios are dog-friendly and family friendly, and the brewery’s State Park Blonde Ale benefits the 56 Tennessee state parks. The brewery also offers beers made with 100-percent all-Tennessee grain. Each quarter, the brewery selects a local charity, with each Sunday’s pint sales going toward the effort. Also, you can’t visit Music City without savoring the copious opportunities to hear music. Tennessee Brew Works features amazing live music on the regular with a mouth-watering menu and some of the best brown water produced in these parts by George Dickel and Uncle Nearest.

Ocean Springs, Miss.: Lost Springs Brewing Company

Offering an ever-evolving selection of small batch, locally-inspired in-house brews with names like Porter Porter (named after Porter Ave.) and 1699 Pale Ale (named after the year OS was founded), Lost Springs also has timely brews to commemorate events, such as Betty Wit, a Belgian-style witbier brewed in celebration of the one and only Betty White. With comfy lounge areas and locally made bar tables, the covered patio is situated in the heart of downtown Ocean Springs. It’s the perfect place to spend an afternoon people-watching and soaking in the lively downtown atmosphere.

Wilmington, N.C.: aView Rooftop Bistro

On the seventh floor of the new Aloft, offering scenic views of the Cape Fear River along with seasonal outdoor seating areas with firepits, aView is committed to serving local Wilmington craft brews including offerings from Edward Teach Brewery, Wilmington Brewing Company, Wrightsville Beach Brewery, and Flying Machine Brewing Company. The property is connected to the 100-year-old historic Coastline Center, which was constructed for the Atlantic Coastline Railroad and was used as its headquarters from the early 1900s to the 1960s. Here’s to enjoying the craft among those who’ve gone before us!

The post A Toast to Summer: Festivals, Patios, and Benefits appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Enter Fibonacci Brewing in Mount Healthy, Ohio, whose owners not only recognized that their corner of the world has several food-insecure residents but also have been taking action to help the community. In 2019, the brewery opened a farmers market and a year later, introduced two programs that make buying fruits and vegetables more affordable.

Why a farmers market at a brewery?

A brewery might sound like an unusual place to host a farmers market. Until, that is, you remember that beer is an agricultural product, its ingredients sourced straight from the land.

That’s exactly what Betty Bollas thought, too, and ironically, she had always hoped that somebody would open a farmers market in Mount Healthy. Yet when she and her husband Bob opened Fibonacci, she concluded that somebody was her. “I realized with the acre-and-a-half urban farm and a large beer garden we have, we were in a position to do more,” she says. On its urban farm, Fibonacci produces eggs, honey, and mushrooms and is home to three goats and 10 chickens. It even offers Airbnb accommodations in its farmhouse.

She was also aware that Mount Healthy has numerous areas that are food insecure, including just a few blocks from the brewery, and it hit home. “My husband and I grew up with single mothers, and he was on the school lunch program so we know what it’s like to struggle,” she says.

By hosting a farmers market that could tackle food insecurity, Fibonacci would also be helping its community, one of the reasons the couple opened the brewery in Mount Healthy where they also live. “We wanted to be a community centerpiece,” she says. That community spirit, in fact, is felt every time somebody orders a pint of its Oberhausen Kolsch. Fibonacci has a Charitable Giving Program which gives 10 percent of pint sales (after taxes) from this beer to a different local organization every month.

Helping individuals in need buy healthier food

Saying that you want to start a farmers market is one thing, but a market can’t run without vendors. Fortunately, Fibonacci had already established relationships with numerous growers, namely because it strives to use at least one local ingredient in all of its products. Bollas also spent countless hours contacting farmers and vendors, going after small businesses who were growing as sustainably as possible.

While most of the responses were positive, one vendor said it wouldn’t be worth his time to be in her neighborhood. “He told me that people here don’t have the money to spend at the market,” she said. That only emboldened her to make the market a success, and during its inaugural year in 2019, she ran the market from May through November with 14 vendors. The response from vendors? “You know you’re doing well as a market host when vendors are inviting other vendors to participate,” she says.

Yet operating a farmers market doesn’t automatically equate with aiding food insecure individuals, and for that, Bollas had to get creative. In 2020, she did a massive amount of legwork before introducing two ways for these individuals to access healthy food at an affordable price.

First, Bollas set it up so that the market could accept Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) dollars. SNAP is a USDA program that aids income-eligible families in buying healthy foods.

She then brought Produce Perks to the market. The program, which is available to anybody receiving SNAP in Ohio, makes it more affordable for individuals to buy fruits and vegetables by matching SNAP dollars. For every $1 that an individual spends with SNAP, Produce Perks matches up to $25 by offering free Produce Perks tokens that can be spent on fruits and vegetables at the market. “Produce can be a little more costly at markets, but this makes it more affordable,” Bollas says.

Spreading the word to those who need it most

Getting the word out about these programs, though, takes time, and in 2020 when Bollas introduced them at the farmers market, the pandemic had just hit, and attendance was understandably low. Yet in 2021, there was an uptick in attendees, and feedback about these initiatives has been positive. “People are happy when they find out we have that option,” she says.

To get the word out, she’s been partnering with local organizations like the food pantries and a community health care facility, but she realizes this may take time. “It may be several years until this comes to full fruition, but we’ll keep building relationships and getting the world out as best as we can.”

Fibonacci runs the Mount Healthy Farmers market on the first Sunday of each month from May to November. There, you’ll find not only about 15 vendors but also live music and a food truck. And of course, there’s always beer, including an option that does good so you can, too.

The post How This Nanobrewery Is Fighting Food Insecurity in its Corner of the World appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

An Array of Flavors

Just as the speech pattern that turns words like “beer” into “beah” is a dominant trait in New Englanders, so too is a true affinity for seafood. Jeremy Sewall, chef/owner of the nearly decade-old Row 34, a series of oyster bars in and around Boston, has a long history with fish, and beer, in Beantown. Located in South Boston’s Fort Point neighborhood, the restaurant is home to the city’s best lobster rolls and an area called the Cooler Room, a private dining room adjacent to the walk-in beer refrigerator boasting dozens of domestic kegs and hundreds of cans and bottles.

Sewall, an avid fisherman and IPA drinker, thinks of beer as revolving around a time and a place—a floral DIPA is a go-to for a happy hour with friends, but between casts on a boat, he’s more likely to reach for a crisp Pilsner or a session pale ale for the same reason they are often found on restaurant menus: their fresh and clean quality allows you to easily eat a dozen plump, briny North Atlantic oysters and be ready for more.

Sewall takes this same perspective in the kitchen. “Seafood, in general, is a lighter style of cooking—from sushi to fish tacos, to grilled or roasted fish. Obviously, there are heavier propositions like chowders, but when [I’m working with] seafood, I think of how to introduce acid and not overwhelm your palate.” He loves a mignonette with oysters and doesn’t shy away from serving a lemon or lime wedge on the side of most fish dishes. Beer should serve a similar purpose of accompanying without stealing the show, he believes, adding that while he’s not really a sour guy, that style’s tangy vibrancy goes incredibly well with seafood (just like a squeeze of lemon), much more so than something dark or with a high ABV.

Suzanne Hays-Bailey, Row 34’s global beer director and GM at the Boston location, spends a lot of time thinking through which beers will go best with which oysters; she’s a pro at it. Sewall’s most recent cookbook, “The Row 34 Cookbook: Stories and Recipes from a Neighborhood Oyster Bar,” includes a hardworking beer and oyster pairing guide from Hays-Bailey. She suggests juicy New England IPAs with most eastern (Virginica) oysters, and sours with “super-briny Wellfleets—the beer’s tart citrus will balance out the oyster’s salinity,” according to Hays-Bailey. She also likes having melon-forward West Coast Hama Hama and Kumamoto oysters with wild ales, such as those from Berkeley, Calif.’s The Rare Barrel and Portland, Maine’s Allagash Brewing. And if you’re going totally wild and trying to match the “copper-like intensity of a Belon,” an effervescent and bready saison can stand up to strong flavors. Hays-Bailey suggests Garden Beer from Plan Bee Farm Brewery in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., made with coriander and Paradigm hops and aged in oak; or Extra Dry, a super dry, biscuity, sake-inspired beer from Stillwater, a nomadic beer project currently in Connecticut.

Sewall highlights other shellfish too, like local littlenecks steamed with Saison du Row, the restaurant’s collaboration with Boston’s Trillium Brewing. The beer offers a bright, hazy carbonation, lightly spiced notes of clove and lemon on the nose, and a delicate hop profile from woodsy Czech Saaz. The beer is soft, round, and freshening, attributes that carry through the cooking process to elevate the inherently sweet meat of clams and bring out their earthiness. “They do grow in mud after all,” says Sewall. Bailey adds that Amory’s Tomb Brewing Co. out of Maynard, Mass. offers a nice saison swap-in for the aforementioned steamed clams.

Though Hays-Bailey thinks there’s a place for the robust roastiness of bock bier with seafood, often pouring Harmony Park—a collaboration between Schilling Beer Co. in Littleton, N.H., and Oxbow Brewing in Newcastle, Maine—she thinks it’s often confined to fried oysters and clams, calling on the beechwood smoked malt and mesquite blossom honey to balance out the salt and fat of a good fry.

When it comes to beer battering, Sewall’s go-to is Jack’s Abby Post Shift Pilsner from Framingham, Mass.—a lower ABV beer with a light body and crisp, refreshing flavor, so the color won’t get too dark when golden-fried. Sewall serves his fish with malt vinegar aioli to amp up the grain, and gravitates toward Lunch IPA from Freeport, Maine’s Maine Beer Company, or Substance IPA from Portland, Maine’s Bissell Brothers, to match the diverse and powerful flavors and textures of the dish (e.g., crispy fry, zingy vinegar, creamy fat), but also scrub the palate of any residual oil. They’re also great with baked mollusks, like angels on horseback, or bacon-wrapped oysters. Alongside a small bowl of grain mustard aioli to contrast the salty, smoky pork, dipping sauce and beer have a similar effect. In contrast to Sewall’s angels on horseback IPA choice, Hays-Bailey loves the Sap Haus smoked lager from Oxbow as well, which plays up sweet and smoky notes through the addition of maple syrup in the brewing process. “It’s really food friendly and adds extra depth, plus it’s a nice way to introduce smoked beers like Schlenkerla onto the menu,” says Hays-Bailey.

Untraditional Pairings

In New York City, local sustainable fish may not seem as ubiquitous as it is in New England, but at Rosella, an American sushi bar in the East Village that opened in 2020, Chef Jeff Miller and managing partner TJ Provenzano consider the understated nature of fish when selecting a beer.

“We do love serving fatty cuts of sashimi with sours like those from Peekskill Brewery (in Peekskill, N.Y.). Those beers add fruit and acidity, and rely less on the nose,” says Provenzano, who prefers not to go too heady or aromatic when it comes to pairing sushi and beer.

“I prefer pale ales, like Sierra Nevada Pale and SweetWater 420,” says Miller. “They’re versatile,” he added, explaining that the raw flavor of fish, like fluke, is so subtle in sushi that “texture is probably more distinguishing feature,” except for the iron-like qualities of bluefin tuna.  “We’re trying not to overpower the fish,” says Provenzano, who tends to avoid super hoppy and bitter beers, pointing toward Brooklyn’s Coney Island Brewery’s Mermaid Pilsner. “Whitefish, porgy, and tautog all have more minerality and are sweeter meat from their diet of shellfish,” says Miller, who notes they’re fattiest during the spring and summer and are best served raw then. “Flavor and texture combine with [elevated] fat content and end up lingering in your mouth longer,” Miller notes. “Really fatty tuna can be hit with soy sauce (because it can stand up to strong flavors). Things like mackerel are oily, and are best cured with salt and vinegar, because in the sea of subtly flavored fish, mackerel really smacks you in the face otherwise.”

Rosella’s omakase menu starts light and bright: acidic and sweet at the beginning, then moving into smoky and spicy flavors, separated by comforting broths. Provenzano believes these crescendos allow room to be untraditional in his pairings. Rather than going from sparkling to white to rose to red, he can go with a gose for raw preparations, then add some carbonation, then something hoppier or even Belgian, which he likes to pair with their signature laksa, a brothy Malaysian-style curry made with chicken broth, shrimp paste, coconut, and lime that Miller learned during his time as an exchange student in Australia.

Then there’s the quintessential list of sushi rolls. Arctic char and avocado riff on the omnipresent salmon roll. It utilizes their spicy homemade fermented Fresno chili paste as a piquant seasoning, and a single shiso leaf as an herbaceous cooling aid. A “Bagels-on-Hudson” roll is reminiscent of a Philadelphia roll, except with smoked steelhead trout, dill cream cheese, tamago (a sweet Japanese omelet), and cucumber. Provenzano pairs the latter with something super crisp to cut through the fatty creaminess, offering an Easy Blonde Ale from Alphabet City Brewing Company in New York City.

Provenzano touts Kings County Brewers Collective (Brooklyn, N.Y.) and its Polkageist Helles Lager, which he believes is multifaceted with sushi—it’s a bit higher alcohol and can go across courses. Also in Brooklyn is Other Half and its Ivy City Lager, with a maltier flavor profile than most other selections, but Provenzano loves to pair it with their tempura soft shell crab roll. Provenzano also likes Mother’s Milk from Keegan Ales in Kingston, N.Y. “It’s a little more vegetal and savory—not at all coffee and chocolate—so it’s more like having a nigori sake.” 

All the Salt in the Sea 

Mike Lata’s FIG restaurant in Charleston, S.C. has been serving southeastern Atlantic fish since 2003. Bistro classics like slow baked black bass and Lowcountry bourride (shrimp stew) paved the way for Lata to open The Ordinary, a Southern seafood brasserie that celebrates the “merroir” of the coast, in 2012. Local oysters like Sea Clouds, Caper Blades, and Steamboat Creeks are constants on the menu—their earthiness comes from South Carolina’s characteristic pluff mud. “The salinity here sets us apart—it’s near 2,900 parts,” more than any other ocean, says Lata. The Ordinary shucks about 7,000 oysters a week, and they’re often served alongside Westbrook Brewing’s White Thai, a Belgian-style wheat beer with ginger and lemongrass brewed in Mt. Pleasant, S.C. The beer is a great accompaniment to FIG’s fancy seafood tower in full, which also features similar Southeast Asian flavors in their Pickled Lil’ Neck Clams: lemongrass, coconut, and lime.

Lata’s seafood and beer approach is succinct and sustainable. “I don’t see why I should spend one nickel out of our community,” he preaches. Miss Paula and the Carolina Breeze come from the Wando Dock on Shem Creek, and their P&E (peel & eat) Tarvin shrimp are a stalwart. Instead of the classic “cocktail” preparation (poached, shocked, chilled), Lata gets these in fresh, pulls off the heads (which he uses for sauce), poaches them with the shells on, and then tosses them with a proprietary blend of spices. They’re chilled and meant to be eaten with your fingers. “They taste like the ocean,” says Lata, who says this dish screams for a nice cold beer.

“With our seafood palate, and the way we cook, we try to focus on freshness,” proclaims Lata. “Not a lot of cream and butter, but we do use it—it’s impossible not to, as fish goes great with it.”  For wine, Lata usually goes for high acid, so Edmund’s Oast Sour Cranberry Lime from Charleston, S.C. is a superb companion.

Another local gem is crab. “There are only two places we can get crab in the country—North Carolina or Alabama—so we go local first, regional second, and no farther than domestic; we don’t import any seafood,” says Lata, echoing the mission statement that he built his reputation on. The crab’s distinct and delicious, musty, super sweet, and firm meat, which Lata highlights in an okra gumbo and a lump crab rice with ginger sofrito, sunchokes, and a farm egg, goes great with the pronounced flavors of Coast Brewing Co.’s Hop Art IPA. Lata’s best advice, though, is to “start with a dozen shucked oysters and a Pils, like one from Munkle Brewing Co., and go from there … so long as food and drink aren’t really competing with each other.”

The Ordinary’s draught lines aren’t specifically South Carolinian—sometimes a nostalgic beer like Genesee Cream Ale or Point Beer (Lata’s business partner is from Wisconsin) are on the menu—but local beers complement Lata’s concept and highlight the prolific microbrewery scene in town. Sometimes you’ll even find Freehouse Brewery’s oyster stout, More the Merroir, on the menu, providing hints of brine and enough richness to take on all the salt in the sea.

RECIPES

Angels on Horseback

By Jeremy Sewall, Row 34, Boston, MA

Makes 18 oysters

4-6 servings

• 9 slices bacon
• 18 medium to large oysters, shucked
• ¼ cup grain mustard aïoli, or your favorite mustard mixed with mayonnaise

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Place the bacon slices flat on a baking sheet with about 1/2 inch between them. Bake until slightly crispy but still pliable enough to wrap around the oysters, 15 to 18 minutes. Remove the bacon from the oven and turn up the oven to 425°F.

Let the bacon cool slightly, then cut the slices in half crosswise. Wrap each shucked oyster with a bacon slice and secure by pushing a toothpick through the oyster. Place on a clean baking sheet.

Bake the wrapped oysters until bacon is crisp and oysters are warmed through, about 6 minutes. Serve with lemon wedges and aïoli on the side.

Saison-Steamed Littlenecks with Parsley Butter and Grilled Sourdough

By Jeremy Sewall, Row 34, Boston, MA 

Serves 4 as an appetizer

• 3 tablespoons canola oil
• 1 tablespoon minced shallot
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 4 whole scallions, thinly sliced, white and green parts separated
• 40 littleneck clams, cleaned
• 1 cup Trillium Brewery’s Saison Du Row, or your favorite saison
• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 3 tablespoons parsley butter, or plain butter
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 4 slices grilled or toasted sourdough bread

In a large pot with a tight-fitting lid, heat the canola oil over medium heat. Add the shallot, garlic, and white parts of the scallions and sauté until they begin to color lightly, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the clams and the beer, cover, and steam until the clams start to open, about 8 minutes.

As the clams open, use a slotted spoon to transfer them from the pot to a serving bowl. Repeat until all the clams are open and in the serving bowl, leaving most of the cooking liquid in the pot. Add the lemon juice and parsley butter to the liquid and whisk until the butter has melted. Taste the sauce—it should be salty. Season with salt and pepper as needed, then pour the sauce over the clams. Garnish with the scallion greens and serve sourdough on the side.

Beer-Battered Fish and Chips with Malt Vinegar Aïoli

By Jeremy Sewall, Row 34, Boston, MA

Serves 4 as an entrée

• 4 cups canola oil
• 2 cups Beer Batter (recipe below)
• 1 1/2 pounds pollock or other white fish, cut into 4 pieces
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 lemon, cut into wedges
• 1 batch 242 Fries, or your favorite French fries
• 1 cup malt vinegar aïoli, or malt vinegar mixed in mayonnaise

Line a plate with paper towels. In a Dutch oven, heat the oil to 350°F.

Use a paper towel to thoroughly pat dry each piece of fish, then place the fish pieces in the batter, coating all sides well. Using tongs, carefully place a piece of fish in the frying oil by holding one corner of the piece until it’s three-quarters submerged. Count to 10, then let the entire piece drop down into the oil. (This will prevent the fish from sticking to the bottom of the pan.) Repeat this process with each piece of fish. Fry for 2 minutes, then flip the fish over and fry for another 2 minutes. The fish should be golden brown on both sides; do this in batches if necessary.

Remove the fish from the frying oil and transfer to the prepared plate to drain. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with lemon wedges, fries, and aïoli for dipping.

For the beer batter:

Makes about 2 cups

• 3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup rice flour
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 6 ounces beer
• 3 ounces soda or sparkling water

In a large bowl, mix all of the dry ingredients. Whisk in the beer and soda water until smooth. Refrigerate until ready to use.

The post Salinity & Suds: Pairing Beer with Seafood appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Abandon Brewing Company | Penn Yan, N.Y.

Let’s start by going back two centuries to an abandoned barn in Penn Yan, N.Y. While most of the barns in the Finger Lakes region are fully operational, this particular one had sat abandoned for years. It certainly wasn’t looking its best when Garry Sperrick first bought the property.

Sperrick and his family owned the farm for about five years before turning it into Abandon Brewing Company. Sperrick then sold it to his stepdaughter, Sarah Struzzi-Noto, and her husband, A. J. Noto. The couple saw potential in the brewery and knew they had something special when they took ownership in 2019.

Now the beautifully refurbished barn that overlooks Keuka Lake is a well-loved part of the community. As a New York State farm brewery, Abandon Brewing sources most of the ingredients for the beers locally. And like the building itself, head brewer Jeff Hillebrandt keeps the beers traditional in style. A. J. Noto explains that they “don’t make beer with children’s cereal, cookies, doughnuts, candy, food, etc. It’s just not our style.”

The other piece that is critical to Abandon’s mission? Not only do they strive to preserve the history of the building, they do so with zero waste. The spent grains go to local farmers and the wastewater is filtered and reused throughout the farm. Plus, the brewery is powered by thermal and solar energy. For Abandon Brewing, it’s not just about keeping the history of the barn alive, but also preserving it, and the land, for the future.

If you visit Abandon, make sure you ask to see pre-renovation photos of the 1800s barn. You’ll have so much more appreciation for the original beams and wood that still stand in the barn today.

Fireforge Crafted Beer | Greenville, S.C.

After nearly 50 years in use, a former tire warehouse in Greenville, S.C., found itself empty in 2016—but not for long. Brian and Nicole Cendrowski had been dreaming of opening their own brewery for years. While the couple never imagined that they could afford a spot in downtown Greenville, their realtor had an idea: why not the old tire warehouse?

The building was dingy with oil-stained floors, but it had good bones. Knowing that they didn’t want a typical commercial location or new construction, the couple saw potential in the blank slate that the warehouse provided and took a chance on it. According to Brian, “It’s miraculous that this building exists in downtown Greenville. There isn’t anything else like it there.”

The couple broke ground on the property in January 2017 and opened Fireforge Crafted Beer in June 2018. Since the opening, the Cendrowskis and their customers can look back with fondness over the transformation. Now the community can enjoy a pint of beer in the place where they used to get their oil changed.

But the best part? Brian and Nicole are constantly learning about the building’s past. One serendipitous day, a woman and her son came to visit. The two of them had spent their time at the brewery examining the building, which caught the attention of the Cendrowskis. After chatting with them, Brian and Nicole learned about the woman’s late husband, Willie Hudson. Hudson was the former manager of Tire Inc., one of the previous businesses housed in the building. To honor his memory, Fireforge created Big Willie’s Sweet Tea Wheat, an American wheat beer brewed with black tea and lemon zest. To make the occasion extra special, Willie’s family members attended the beer release party and brought old photos to share.

In a city that was turning into a ghost town 20 years ago, Fireforge is providing a spark of life in the community.

Guggman Haus Brewing Co. | Indianapolis, Ind.

Here’s what you get when you combine twin sisters, their husbands, racing history, and a love of craft beer: Guggman Haus Brewing Co. in Indianapolis, Ind.

Courtney and Derek Guggenberger spent a few years in Germany, relishing in the centuries-old brewing history of the country. Meanwhile, Abby and Ryan Gorman were exploring the modern beer hub that is Denver. When the couples reunited in Indianapolis, there was no question about what family business to establish together.

According to Courtney, the crew had spent a year formulating a business plan and were on the hunt for a location. That’s when they learned about the Boyle Racing Foundation, a group of vintage racing enthusiasts who were trying to save the old Boyle Racing Headquarters from a city demolition order.

The building that had once been the center of the city’s racing history had become abandoned—forgotten over time, left to weather the elements and encroaching foliage. But when the family discovered the building, they felt compelled to help preserve the legacy of the Boyle Racing Team after seeing the location and learning of its history.

Guggman Haus Brewing Co. initially opened in 2019, in the house located on the property, after two years of renovations. The couples spent another two years renovating the main building, which opened in June 2021 and houses the brewery, taproom, event space, kitchen, and Boyle Racing Shop. The taproom overlooks the racing shop, so customers can enjoy a beer while viewing a remodeled 1934 Diamond T race car hauler and a replica of Wilbur Shaw’s Maserati.

In keeping with the history of the building, three of Guggman Haus’s core beers have racing themes. Wilbur’s Prize Pils is named after three-time Indy 500 winner Wilbur Shaw. Boyle Brown Ale and Winner’s Milk Jug Stout both pay homage to the Boyle racing team and the tradition of chugging a jug of milk after winning a race.

The Guggenbergers and Gormans enjoy introducing craft beer to the racing community while learning more about the area’s history. They look forward to welcoming race fans to the brewery this coming summer.

Lost Way Brewery | Holdrege, Neb.

When a brewery finds a home in an old creamery, it gives a whole new meaning to milk stout, and rightly so. Lost Way Brewery has named its signature milk stout Ye Olde Creamery as a way to honor the building’s history.

Lost Way Brewery is nestled among a series of abandoned buildings in Holdrege, Neb. When searching for a location for their business, Jessica and Mark Kraus discovered this gem. According to Jessica, “There were quite a few abandoned buildings, so we were happy to be able to breathe some life into an old place.”

The “old place” in question had quite a varied history. It began as a creamery in the 1950s with its tiled floors, walls, and floor drains. It transformed into a print shop in the 70s and remained so for a couple decades before becoming a storage facility for approximately 20 years. The Krauses came along in 2017 to show it some much-needed love.

Throughout the renovations, and with the help of the community, Lost Way’s history has emerged. The original wooden rafters were repurposed as the current bar and banisters in the taproom. Memorabilia from the building’s former life live on as decorations for the brewery. An apron, milk crate, and sign adorn the walls along with old newspaper clippings about the creamery and print shop.

As for the customers? They love what the Krauses have done with the building. Whether it’s the local crowd or the folks visiting their prior homes in Holdrege, everyone reacts fondly to the revitalization of the building. Guests love to peruse the old newspapers on the walls, reading stories or finding photos of their parents or themselves when they were younger.

Ministry of Brewing | Baltimore, Md.

For some people, Sundays are for going to church to attend services. For others, Sundays are for going to a church to…drink beer. That’s exactly what you can do at Ministry of Brewing in Baltimore, Md.

The history of the location stretches all the way back to 1857, when the first church was built on the property. Over the years, St. Michael the Archangel Church served the local German Catholic community before transitioning to Spanish services for its final decade. Due to declining attendance, the church was deconsecrated and closed between 2010 and 2011. It then sat vacant for years before a developer purchased the church complex in 2016 to build lofts. The church itself remained empty, but the developer’s goal was to incorporate a brewpub into the project.

With the loft project near completion, a group of friends were brought in to work on the brewery in 2019. After a year of renovations, Ministry of Brewing was born—but not without controversy. While most of the community embraced the new business, a few members of the neighborhood weren’t happy that their once beloved church was no longer.

Father Austin Murphy Jr., who once led the congregation, held his own conflicting opinions. Nevertheless, he attended the grand opening in January 2020 to see the transformation, happy to witness the revitalization of the former church.

Understanding the sensitive nature of the building’s history, the staff of Ministry of Brewing are very deliberate in their actions and the naming of their beers. General manager Jon Holley admits that they “purposely avoid any beer names with religious tie-ins out of respect for what this building was and what it meant to so many people.” Nonetheless, they did christen their core Pilsner The Point in honor of the building’s nickname. And the team strives to be very involved in the local community, often hosting public events at the brewery.

Most of the features of the church remain the same: visitors can still see the stations of the cross, original columns, murals of saints, and a few remaining pews. But on the altar, you’ll find the 20- and 40-gallon vessels that make up the brewing system. The setting for the brewery is also tied into the tap handles and beer labels, which feature stained glass-inspired designs.

Reaver Beach Brewing | Norfolk, Va.

Don’t expect to pick up your mail at this building in Norfolk, Va., anymore. The old post office from the 1940s is now a modern brewery, slinging pints instead of selling stamps.

Reaver Beach Brewing Co. opened its first location in the heart of Virginia Beach in 2010. Several successful years later, the owners wanted to expand to a second location. General manager Josh Bennett explains that they chose Norfolk because they wanted to join the growing craft beer community there. When the owners came across the old Milan Post Office, they knew they had found the right spot for their second home.

Because the prior post office was a federal building, it took roughly a year for the new owners to acquire the licensing, and then another to finish construction. The Reaver Beach Norfolk location finally opened in February 2021, but the discoveries along the way made it worth the wait.

One of the most common comments from brewery customers is about how large the space is. Previously, postal patrons were only privy to the lobby of the building, but during the renovations, Reaver Beach stripped down walls and opened the space up. They uncovered a back entrance and a hidden brick staircase to the second floor. The stairway landing became an impromptu museum, now housing paraphernalia from the brewery’s history.

The other unique feature of the building is the large safe that sits in the center of the space, holding up the roof trusses. Why was there a giant safe in the post office? When the post office was built shortly after the Great Depression, people had lost trust in banks, so post offices became the place to store their money. The building was designed so that if the safe was attempted to be removed, the building would come crashing down. Now, the safe serves as a piece of history and an interesting talking point for customers.

In another way to pay tribute to the building’s past, Reaver Beach hired a graphic artist to design artwork of the beer labels on postage stamps to tie together the transition of the space over time.

When a Brewery Opens in an Abandoned Building, Everybody Wins

Many buildings across the country remain abandoned. It happens all the time: businesses fail, the economy struggles, or for whatever reason, places sit empty. But when breweries come in and breathe life into the buildings again, it’s a win-win situation. The brewery finds a home and the community welcomes a new business where folks can gather. Plus, the renaissance of the buildings makes their histories come alive and helps people relive their memories tied to each location.

The post Revitalizing Neighborhoods and Reigniting Memories appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Dr. Thomas Curtin, a coroner’s physician and eye surgeon, reportedly coined the pigmented idea at a St. Paddy’s Day party at a Bronx social club in 1914.

If you believe in fairies, well, this could take more than a few shamrocks for illustration. Irish lore suggests wearing green as protective armor in case of a rare leprechaun sighting. And, if you get caught on St. Patrick’s Day without sporting a leprechaun-approved hue, you’re liable to get pinched.

So, if you’re donning the green this holiday season, here are two Irish-American breweries to consider.

Beth Bechtel of Bear Island Brewing in Boise, Idaho has Irish roots beyond the potatoes her state is so famous for. Her mother is from County Antrim, home of Bushmills Irish Whiskey and a host of breweries. “In Ireland there’s such a respect for beer,” insists Bechtel. “It’s not about getting trashed, it’s about communion with friends.” Bechtel has considered throwing a handful of shamrocks and clover into this year’s batch of I-rish You Enough, an Irish red IPA made with authentic Irish oats and named after the traditional Irish blessing. “Gosh, if I were to find a four-leaf clover in our beer, maybe we all would have better luck during the pandemic,” she mused. On St. Patrick’s Day, the Bear Island taproom will host the Boise Fire Department, kilts and all, for a special day of pipes, drums, and other Irish culture. You can also join Bechtel at the Treefort Music Fest March 23-27, featuring a special Alefort that will showcase the intersection of craft beer and local cuisine in Boise.

McLovin, a beer created by brewmaster Scott Manning at Vintage Brewing Company in Madison, Wis., was originally intended as a seasonal bridge between Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day, but was embraced by the locals so much that it was added to the flagship lineup. The Irish red ale boasts a deep copper color and smooth, toasty caramel malt character, with just a touch of roasted barley in the finish. But if you’re in Madison on St. Patrick’s Day and can’t resist hoisting a green beer, Sister Golden is the go-to Kölsch on tap. “My bartenders put one drop of blue food coloring per pint for that yellow-and-blue-makes-green effect,” says Manning. “I didn’t put a stamp of approval on that, but there’s always a knucklehead who wants green beer. I used to be that knucklehead, so I don’t want to turn customers away.” Manning offers this pro tip: “All that green beer in pubs will be half price the day after.” With three food-focused taprooms, Manning assures that Vintage’s St. Patrick’s Day menu will read like an Irish pub’s with corned beef and cabbage—along with other Irish delicacies—front and center. “I will have to wear green that day and show up for my people,” he adds.

No matter how you plan to celebrate a man who transformed an entire country, remember St. Patrick’s words with good cheer: “Here’s to a long life and a merry one. A quick death and an easy one.”

The post Donning, Downing, and Drowning the Shamrock: A Sordid Tale of Green Beer appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Fast forward to today. Craft brewers are increasingly using their platforms—including beer labels, draught chalkboards, or stories told by staff—to remind their customers of beer’s ties to the past. Many modern craft brewers have chosen to restore and preserve the stories—and beers—of the brewers who have come before them.

Finding a Beer to Celebrate Indiana

For Upland Brewing, the brewery’s 15th anniversary was a reason to delve into Indiana’s brewing history. Upland Brewing director Patrick Lynch says that the brewery wanted to do something special for its home state, and their research pointed them toward a historical beer called Champagne Velvet from the former Terre Haute Brewing Company (THBC).

“Even if you don’t know anything about the Champagne Velvet story, when you see the name, it still catches your eye, catches your ear.” Lynch and the team at Upland thought reviving Champagne Velvet for their anniversary would celebrate their state and bring the community together.

In researching Champagne Velvet—a pre-Prohibition Pilsner whose tagline was “the beer with the million dollar flavor”—Lynch discovered that the beer was “the most successful brand to come out of Indiana.” It turns out that Terre Haute Brewing had a storied history in the Hoosier State, and there was already a movement to bring the beer back to life.

Champagne Velvet in Its Prime

Lynch and the Upland team investigated Champagne Velvet’s past and discovered that the beer had enjoyed two heydays in Indiana and beyond. The story of Champagne Velvet is tied to the Terre Haute Brewing Company, originally founded in 1837. By 1880, Terre Haute Brewing was brewing 30,000 barrels of beer—double what the team is producing today at Upland.

By 1902, when the brewery released Champagne Velvet for the first time, THBC was producing more than 100,000 barrels, making it one of the leading U.S. breweries before Prohibition. Following Prohibition, the brewery reopened with new owners, this time in the boom days of World War II. THBC saw a revival after Prohibition and quickly grew to more than 500,000 barrels per year. In 1943, THBC was the 25th largest brewery in the U.S. Champagne Velvet had quite a following, it seems.

As Lynch and the team at Upland explored how to revive the brand, they discovered that someone already owned the rights to Champagne Velvet. Terre Haute historian and beer enthusiast Mike Rowe wanted to open a bar that paid homage to the THBC brewing history. Rowe had purchased the rights from Pabst Brewing, which had owned THBC beers previously. However, Upland and Rowe were able to come to an agreement. “[Rowe] wanted a caretaker for Champagne Velvet who would have the passion to continue the legacy and stay true,” said Lynch. “He was looking for someone to take Champagne Velvet to the next level. We were able to form a nice partnership with him: we’re able to brew the beer, and he’s happy to see the beer still being brewed.”

Bringing Champagne Velvet Alive for Modern Drinkers

With Rowe’s help, Lynch was also able to obtain the vintage recipe to brew Champagne Velvet. “[Rowe] was flipping through a textbook that Terre Haute brewer Walter Braun owned in the 1900s, and a little slip of paper fell out with handwritten notes for what was clearly a beer recipe,” Lynch recounted. “That’s what we have turned into the Champagne Velvet recipe as best we can.” The note mentioned “the water-to-grist ratio and the corn-to-barley ratio, the starting gravity, and some information about what this beer would be. It didn’t mention hops or yeast, so that’s where the combination of staying true to that handwritten note and historical research played into each other.” With the recipe as a guide, Lynch and the Upland team brewed the Pilsner and released it for their anniversary, adding pre-Prohibition malt from a local malthouse north of Indianapolis

Although Upland is based out of Bloomington—about 60 miles from Terre Haute—Lynch said the local community has embraced the beer, and Champagne Velvet has gone on to limited national distribution.

“Champagne Velvet is what national markets are clamoring for,” said Lynch. “It’s our number two brand right now, behind our Dragonfly IPA. It’s great seeing the response from our customers—the name grabs your attention, the story grabs your attention, and then the beer holds your attention once you try it.”

Florida’s Coppertail Brewing Turns a Midnight Purchase into a Florida Special

Coppertail Brewing owner Kent Bailey has a soft spot in his heart for Florida’s historical breweries, often scouring the internet to learn more about his state’s brewing past.

As his Tampa-based brewery was seeking to develop a new brand of light lager perfect for enjoying the Florida lifestyle—whether at the state’s beaches, rivers, the Daytona Speedway, or at Raymond James Stadium—branding from a beer that had come and gone decades prior resonated with Bailey. That’s what led him to purchase the rights to Florida Special, a brand from the former Southern Brewing Company. The historical brewery was born in Tampa after Prohibition and operated until the industrial beer consolidation of the 1960s.

Acquiring the brand rights to Florida Special was the beginning of a project, according to Coppertail’s chief operating officer, Ken Foutch. Bailey ended up purchasing the rights to Florida Special, including the entire branding from post-Prohibition start to 1960s finish.

The team combed through the different logos from Southern Brewing Company, deciding on which iteration of Florida Special to choose from, said Foutch. Southern Brewing had been “in business for 50 years and it’s fun to look at their brand specifically in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s—you can see how it evolved,” said Foutch. “At one point, it kind of had a World War II vibe from that era. At another point, the brand looked like Lone Star looks today, so we took some pieces from their world and then looked at nostalgic brands, some that hardly exist anymore.”

Since the purchase of Florida Special’s rights did not include a recipe, Foutch and his team got to work on shaping their Florida lager. Foutch remembers, “The beer [that would become Florida Special] started out as a beer called Dock Beer—brewed just for employees and when they’re getting off work.” Coppertail’s team loves its IPAs and their special American Trippel, but the appeal of Dock Beer was universal. “We all love crispy, light lagers for having one or two after work.”

With the rights to Florida Special and the recipe for Dock Beer, Coppertail would craft a brand of light lager that would anchor the brewery’s core beers.

“It all evolved from Dock Beer,” says Foutch. “And even since the inception of Florida Special, it’s still changing. We’re still seeking the perfect recipe for this beer.”

The brewing team recently changed the yeast strain to reduce sulfur, and as a result, “It’s a little crisper and cleaner. We’re sticking with noble hops and still trying to stay traditional.” Florida special checks in at 3.8 percent alcohol by volume.

“It’s one of those crispy boys, a beer-flavored beer—that’s my favorite way to put it,” said Foutch. “It’s great to drink whether you’re finishing cutting the grass, out on the golf course, or anywhere in the Sunshine State.”

Gerst Amber Brings Back Memories of Tennessee’s Largest Brewery

For Yazoo Brewing, restoring a piece of Tennessee’s past is a source of pride for owner Linus Hall: the production of storied brand Gerst Amber has returned to Nashville.

The Gerst Brewery was one of the largest in the South at the beginning of the 1900s. “It’s hard to find actual production volumes, but I believe at its heyday, it was producing around 250,000 barrels a year,” said Hall. “The brewery in Nashville occupied four city blocks.”

Ultimately, the Gerst Brewery closed in 1954, and the Gerst family turned to running a restaurant to continue sharing its German heritage with Nashville. When they closed the Gerst Haus in the 1980s, the family sold the rights to local restaurateurs Jim and Jerry Chandler. The Chandlers contracted with brewers in Pennsylvania and Indiana to make Gersts’ beer, but one brewery closed and the other was inconsistent with the beer.

Hall remembers that time. “We were moving Yazoo’s brewery from our original location at Marathon Motorworks to a much bigger building in the Gulch area of Nashville,” he recalls. “With more space and a new, bigger brewing system, I approached them with the idea of bringing Gerst beer back to Nashville.”

Once he worked out an arrangement with the Chandlers, Hall and the Yazoo team began bringing the Gerst recipe into the 21st century. Hall recalls, “We did not have any recipes, and in any case, modern malts and hops are much different than what brewers back then were using. Even if we had an original recipe, I am not sure we would have produced the same beer.”

Modernizing  the recipe took “many 10-gallon test batches on my old homebrew system,” and attention to detail in each one. After producing each batch, the team tasted, critiqued, and adjusted.

“In the end, we made a light-bodied amber ale, with German Munich malts and a touch of flaked corn, as many U.S. brewers were using at the turn of the century.” All of this was accomplished with no written recipe—just recollections of how the beer looked and tasted.

Gerst Amber Springs to Life Again

In the end, when Hall and the Yazoo team had nailed down the final recipe, Gerst Amber returned to the Gerst Haus with fanfare and celebration. “‘I’m very proud of bringing it back to being brewed in Nashville again,” Hall said. “When we tapped the first ceremonial keg, we invited the mayor and all the local media. I had a German beer stein with Mayor Karl Dean’s name engraved on it, and when I offered the first beer to him, he made a short speech to commemorate the occasion, making reference to tying the future of Nashville brewing to its famous past.”

That final recipe is available year-round through Yazoo. “Nashville beer drinkers have really taken to Gerst Amber,” Hall said. “It’s now one of our consistent bestsellers.”

Brewing Team Brings Happy Hops and Velvet Glow Back to Russian River

When a young Vinnie Cilurzo moved to Santa Rosa, Calif. in the 1990s, he heard stories about an area beermaker called Grace Brothers Brewery. At one point, the brewery had a presence in both southern and northern California, brewing in Los Angeles as well as Santa Rosa, Cilurzo recalls.

Cilurzo had begun working for Russian River Brewing until the brewery’s owner, Korbel, decided to exit the beer business. Vinnie and his wife, Natalie, formed a team that purchased the rights to Russian River Brewing, opening a small brewpub in Santa Rosa.

Even when he had the new brewery up and running, “Grace Brothers Brewery kind of hung there in the back of my mind,” said Cilurzo.

He researched more about the brewery and discovered a brand called Happy Hops. “It has that great artwork—that’s one of the coolest things about these retro brands.” After additional research into Sonoma County’s past—the area used to be one of the hop-growing capitals of America before the Pacific Northwest emerged as the epicenter—and coming across the rosy-cheeked hop adorning the Happy Hops label, Cilurzo knew he wanted to incorporate that beer into the Russian River family.

As with many other historical brands, Happy Hops (and eventually Velvet Glow Pilsner, another Grace Brothers brand) had no official recipes that came with the branding. This was no surprise to Cilurzo.

“You have to think back to that era which is both pre- and post-Prohibition,” said Cilurzo. “These beers were around post-Prohibition, but there wasn’t anything else but industrial lager.”

He looked further into the brewery’s history and found that, “Grace Brothers had 50 or 60 labels, but there wasn’t much to really build with recipes.” Cilurzo knew the brand would tell a story, but the liquid had to speak for itself.

Bringing Happy Hops Back to Life

Cilurzo and his team rolled up their sleeves and got to work. “We brewed a beer called Happy Hops, probably in 2009 or 2010, with 100 percent experimental hop HBC 369, which eventually became Mosaic. Happy Hops was an all-Mosaic pale ale to start.”

After trademarking the assets and artwork from the historical beer, Cilurzo and the Russian River team eventually decided to make changes from that first batch in 2009. Around 2015, Happy Hops morphed from a pale ale to an IPA. After all, Cilurzo says, “a beer with a name like Happy Hops should have an even more expressive hop note to it. So I started bringing in other hops into the mix. Instead of being just Mosaic, it’s got Strata, which at the time was an experimental, some Simcoe, Centennial, Brewer’s Gold, Amarillo, and a handful of others. That’s where it is and now Happy Hops is a year-round beer.”

Reminding the Next Generation of Beer Drinkers

Happy Hops IPA and Velvet Glow Pilsner both have a solid place in the Russian River Brewing lineup. Cilurzo said he loves “the history and referencing an old brand and keeping a bit of Sonoma County’s history alive. We have two brewpubs and two gift shops and it’s a nice way to tell some cool historical stories. I feel like it’s our duty as brewers to keep the history going—to remind the next generation of the beer drinkers and brewers who came before us.”

The post Telling Today’s Craft Beer Drinkers the Story of Yesterday’s Breweries appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Probably never, but it’s time to give malt the respect it deserves. With the number of craft maltsters increasing in this country — there are currently 67 members in the North American Craft Maltsters Guild — malt may finally be getting its day.

That’s something Phil Neumann, CEO and co-founder of Mainstem Malt (with his wife Alyssa Martinez Neumann) in Walla Walla, Wash., has been predicting since 2016. “The focus remains on hops, and breweries aren’t paying enough attention to malt,” he says. “But I believe that’s changing rapidly, and 2021 is the year for craft malt.”

Whether his prediction is accurate remains to be seen, but what is clear is that there are numerous advantages for breweries to choose craft maltsters over what’s often referred to as big malt. Chief among them? Sustainability.

“Craft malt at its core is about relocalizing supply chains and getting people to rethink where malt comes from,” says Jesse Bussard, executive director of the North American Craft Maltsters Guild, adding that the impact on local economies is huge. The Guild defines a craft maltster as small (production is between five and 10,000 metric tons per year), local (over 50 percent of grains are sourced from fields within a 500-mile radius) and independent. “It’s about reconnecting craft beverages to the place and land that produces the ingredients and helping push innovation and spur creativity among brewers.”

Partnering Up for the Earth

Breweries are keenly aware of the dire warnings about the future of this planet, many initiating measures to make their beer more environmentally friendly. Cue craft maltsters who are helping breweries increase the sustainability of every pint they make.

Take, for instance, Maintstem which started as a way to help put water back into streams too dry to support salmon. Yet Mainstem also needed a more comprehensive framework for assessing agricultural practices than it could provide, and a non-profit called Salmon-Safe with its focus on wild salmon was already doing that.

Instead, Mainstem, the first maltster to achieve Certified B Corps status, pivoted and now works with growers who are Salmon-Safe certified, meaning that they’re taking into account things like erosion control and habitat enhancement on salmon-bearing waterways. Mainstem also helps its growers implement other sustainable farming practices. “We envision having organic and regenerative organic lines to support this kind of movement, something that will become possible as brewers, distillers and consumers are willing to pay more for their malt,” Neumann says.

Meanwhile, in Durham, N.C., Epiphany Craft Malt is so keyed in on the brewing industry’s impact on the climate that’s it’s committed to lowering its carbon footprint via regional farming connected credits through Indigo Ag. “Almost 70 percent of our footprint is in the farming practices,” says Sebastian Wolfrum, founder and director of malting and roasting operations.

Through Indigo, Epiphany incentivizes its farmers to practice sustainable growing — for instance, its partner farmers are using an alternative version of nitrogen fertilizer — and get paid through credits that Epiphany receives. As a result, Epiphany was able to achieve a carbon neutral designation in 2020, mitigating 105 percent of its carbon footprint and pulling 421 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere (about a pound of CO2 per pound of finished malt). That caught the attention of Dogfish Head, which used Epiphany’s malt to brew a carbon neutral beer called Re-Gen-Ale.

Carbon emissions is just one of the metrics that Epiphany tracks, something it’s outlined in its Three-Year Climate Resilience Plan. Other metrics include electricity and water use and waste, all of which translates to a lower carbon footprint.

Less impact on the earth, in fact, was what encouraged Carol Cochran, co-founder of Horse & Dragon Brewing Co. in Fort Collins, Colo., to start working with local craft maltsters. “Between transport and growing techniques, we feel confident that for every pound of malt we use that’s grown and malted in northern Colorado, we’re putting fewer greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere when making our beer,” she says.

The farmers supplying the two local malthouses Horse & Dragon uses the most are also forward-thinking in their approaches to land prep, crop rotation, fertilizing and watering, Cochran says. That crop rotation, by the way, is key for the earth. “Crop rotation is a foundational principle of farming that’s important for soil health and disease and pest management,” Bussard says.

For Big aLICe Brewing in Long Island City and Queens, N.Y., sustainability has been a primary focus, one reason it’s been using craft malt since 2013. “The identity and mission of our brewery has been about sustainability and doing what’s right, even if it comes at the expense of profitability,” says Jon Kielty, head brewer and production manager at Big aLICe. “Using locally sourced and sustainably grown grains is just one area where we work toward this.”

In fact, since 2013, Big aLICe has always used at least 20 percent New York grown and malted grains in all of its beers. Last year, that number increased to 32 percent, and with the brewery’s expansion to Finger Lakes, N.Y., Kielty anticipates that to be significantly higher this year. Six beers in its line-up use 100 percent grains from New York.

What Craft Malt Does for Beer That Big Malt Won’t

As important as sustainability is, it’s only one reason driving breweries to choose craft malt. Taste is also crucial, especially given that malt is often called the soul of beer. “It provides all of the sugars and most of the flavor,” Neumann says. “While hops are awesome, malt will always be a more important ingredient, and pretty much everything that has excited consumers about hops can be matched, if not exceeded, by craft maltsters.” There are even signs that barley will experience the kind of directional breeding that will result in accentuated flavor profiles, what Neumann calls the “party trick” that earned hops their current place in the market.

The craft malts Horse & Dragon is using, for instance, absorb what Cochran calls the Northern Colorado goodness. “They’re responding to our water and soil in a way that’s unique to right here, and we love imbuing that in the beer we make,” she says.

Kielty echoes that sentiment, saying that there’s a terroir in some of the local grains he works with. “That helps contribute some unique character to some of our beers, including our 100 percent NY Pilsner,” he says.

That taste is further influenced by the freshness of the malt, which increases its aromas, another unique aspect of craft malt. “Within a month of malting the barley, there are subtle aromas that will disappear if you get the malt eight to12 months later, which is often what happens with big malt,” Wolfrum says. “Because we roast our malts, there’s a night and day difference when you open a bag of our malt versus one that’s traveled for months and over a long distance.”

That’s one characteristic Reed Odeneal, co-founder and director of brewing of Perfect Plain in Pensacola, Fla., has found with the craft malt he uses. “While big malt might focus on consistency, craft malt gives you nuances you can’t get in big malt,” he says. Perfect Plain is in on track to source 50 to 75 percent of its malt from craft maltsters this year. “You have so much more variety with craft malt.”

Plus, because breweries have a relationship with maltsters and can connect directly with the farmers, brewers can take control of their beer in a way they can’t with big malt. “Craft malt offers a closer relationship with your maltster,” Bussard says. “You can work directly with the person creating your malt to customize and create your own.” Odeneal, for instance, was involved in the entire malting process from germination to kilning when a malthouse created malts exclusive to Perfect Plain that were then turned a special release of five beers.

Of course, all of this adds up to a bigger cost for craft malt versus big malt. But it winds up being only about a nickel extra per pint, Bussard says, quoting a “maltifesto” written by the co-owner of an Indiana malthouse who suggests raising pint prices from, say, $5 to $5.25 or $5.50 and explaining how this will help the local economy.

Encouraging Breweries to Form “Maltmanships”

In the end, craft malt translates into a better product for craft beer lovers – and a unique way to leverage the beer. In a similar fashion as the Brewers Association’s Independent Craft Brewer Seal, the North American Craft Maltsters Guild offers a Certified Craft Malt Seal program either for the brewery itself if it uses at least 10 percent craft malt every year or a single beer if it’s produced with at least 10 percent craft malt.

The program, which launched in 2019, requires registration and a small fee; after which, breweries can display the logo and seal, even receive wood certification plaque for their taproom. There are currently 120 brewery members, a number Bussard hopes increases.

One of the unspoken benefits of this certification? “It offers an amazing marketing opportunity for a brewery to tell a story about their beer,” Odeneal says. The certification always sparks conversations among Perfect Plain’s guests.

The future of craft malt indeed looks bright, but getting brewers to rethink their malt will still require work. “Brewers need to think about malt as you would a wine grape or coffee beans,” Bussard says. Malt, after all, isn’t just malt, something perhaps you’ll think about next time you sip a craft beer.

The post Why Craft Beer Is Turning to Craft Malt appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

“I Am Because We Are.” “The Grace of Maybe.” “At the Still Point of the Turning World.” They point toward a philosophy that has guided her through nearly a decade in mixed-culture fermentation. Her newest venture, Keeping Together, isn’t just her brewery’s name, “it’s a mantra for individuals and our collective,” she says, each composed of unique parts that must be recognized and nurtured. And it “implies an ongoing effort,” she adds, to “create the compassionate, ecstatic reality that each person deserves to experience.”

From the pandemic’s disproportionate impact upon women, people of color, and gender-expansive folk to the stories of sexual abuse shared by Brienne Allan, the industry’s underrepresented repeat this invocation. For Swanson, “keeping together” means keeping a strong sense of self, as well. Quoting the T.S. Eliot poem for which she named a beer, “When you become really in touch with yourself, there is a still point in the ‘turning world’ where everything else is happening. If you practice it regularly, you can retreat back to this place of stillness and find sanctuary.”

Keeping it all together

Swanson opened her brewery with the goal of “increasing the collective empathy of the industry,” because changing a culture marked by experiences of sexism and racism starts from within. “In order to find empathy, one must be vulnerable,” she says, “and there is an element of introspection that requires.”

Yet the burden of change often falls upon the people most impacted, and the load gets heavy. Swanson is a Master Cicerone, one of just 19 people (three of whom are women) in the world who hold the highest standardized certification in beer. Earning it was a grueling, five-year process of relentless study and two failed attempts. At the same time, she was head brewer and part owner of Austin, Texas’ lauded Jester King Brewery, traveling the world representing the brand and educating people on mixed fermentation. But it left room for little else, and by 2018, her candle was burnt at both ends.

One week before earning Master certification, Swanson quit Jester King; four months later, her mother died. The following year, she moved to Chicago to open Keeping Together, and then the pandemic struck. The new chapter hasn’t been what she hoped, but she’s “happy with the response to the beer.” Besides, “we’re all moving forward in the world from a history that has brought us to that point,” she says, and learning from the journey requires fearless analysis of both yourself and the path you’ve traveled.

Women are taught to be all things to everyone, and this pressure is internalized, says Crystal Luxmore, one of North America’s leading beer journalists and co-founder of the Ontario-based Beer Sisters consultancy, through which she and sister Tara host education, training, and tasting events. Success in the beer industry typically takes hours and mileage making connections, and “because of the way we’re socialized, men tend to feel more freedom to do those things,” Luxmore says. “As a mom, I wouldn’t feel good if I was always on the road.”

Even before COVID-19, women spent three times as many hours as men on family and household care work; now it’s the equivalent of an extra full-time job. The World Economic Forum (WEF) finds the majority of global care work is unpaid, performed by “women and girls from socially disadvantaged groups.” In fact, “the gradual progress towards gender equality seen in recent decades could not only stall, but be reversed” by the pandemic, the WEF reports.

Luxmore suspects the unequal balance of care work (along with cultural bias) is behind female underrepresentation in the time-consuming task of homebrewing as well as in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) jobs overall. Worldwide, women constitute less than one-third of the STEM workforce; in the U.S., just 11.5% of them are women of color, and there isn’t even sufficient data on LGBTQIA+ representation.

“My family … instilled in me that I have to do something where I can support myself, and not depend on anyone,” says Amanda Trimm, co-owner with husband Jacob and friend Brian Cantu of Barking Armadillo Brewing in Georgetown, Texas. This drove nine years of education to achieve the pharmacy career she loves. “There’s a sense of accomplishment in what I do,” she says. “I see the interventions having a positive impact on people’s lives.”

Besides, they need the benefits in a nation where family support policies are virtually nonexistent. And they’re the lucky ones, having parents nearby to help with childcare, an expense to which the average American household allocates 25-50%-plus of its income. Still, balancing all this work gets grueling, and “eventually,” Trimm says, “something is going to have to give.”

Grab your bootstraps

Jester King brewery and restaurant now sprawls 165 acres of former ranchland, but when Swanson joined in 2013, it was still a pirate ship. She was one of just a few women on the volunteer crew, and when they started an apprenticeship program, “I knew I needed to do whatever I could to secure that position,” Swanson says.

Already working for free, she invested her own time and money into earning her Certified Beer Server, then Certified Cicerone, the first two levels of what is now a four-tiered certification system; along with her passionate testimony, it earned her a paid apprenticeship. From there, she moved straight to the Master (the third tier, Advanced Cicerone, wasn’t created until 2015). While Jester King covered the cost of her first two Master’s tests, all told, Swanson sunk hundreds of hours and an estimated $3,000-4,000 of her own earnings into her professional education.

As in higher education, unpaid labor is common in beer, a practice that deepens existing gender, racial, and class divides. Internships, for example, favor students and workers from affluent and predominantly white families: those who can most afford to work for free. Swanson financed her training through part-time work in Jester King’s taproom, along with side hustles making jewelry and vending vintage kitchenware. She acknowledges that “there are people [in the industry] who have worked just as hard, if not harder, than me and had a much harder time.”

Still, women of all backgrounds remain underrepresented in beer, and Swanson was aware of her differences each time a male colleague asked if she needed a hand. The job involved a lot of manual labor, and “I wasn’t the most physically confident person,” she says. “I learned how to use my body to make things happen so I didn’t have to ask for help. It was as much about proving to myself that I was worthy of being there as it was proving things to other people.”

While we tend to view foundational moments through the lens of the mind, our experience flows through the physical form. “The years leading up to passing the Master were a journey of increasing confidence in myself,” Swanson says. “I drew so much strength from becoming comfortable in my own body.” It fueled her ascension from volunteer to apprentice, brewer, and ultimately to co-owner and head brewer of world-renowned beer. She became educator and ambassador at festivals, collaborations, and conferences, and “every interaction was an opportunity to learn and share.”

But success had a bitter aftertaste. “The people I met didn’t necessarily go into an engagement with me thinking I knew as much as they did,” Swanson says. “It’s tokenization, and I’ve struggled with that a fair amount.”

An autoimmune disorder of the mind

Imposter syndrome, according to the American Psychological Association, is a psychological phenomenon wherein you doubt your own skills, abilities, and inherent worth, no matter how much you achieve or accomplish. For many, it’s an inner voice that whispers, “you’re not good enough, you don’t know anything, and one day, everyone is going to find out.” According to a study in the Journal of Behavioral Science, 70% of Americans experience it, from brewers to Fortune 100 executives. But it doesn’t impact everyone the same way. The difference is whether the culture contradicts or supports your negative inner monologue. If the system supports the voices in your head, is it really imposter syndrome?

“It’s a mind-fuck,” Swanson summarizes. “The organization of the industry as a whole reinforces a lot of the thoughts I feel. It’s like an autoimmune disorder of the mind, where [it] turns on you and begins decaying from within.”

However, reality doesn’t match that internal point of view: In addition to her credentials, Swanson started a successful beer label on her own amidst a global pandemic. Luxmore is an Advanced Cicerone and Prud’homme Beer Sommelier as well as a multi-award-winning journalist and editor of Growler Magazine.

Trimm built and maintains the brewery’s website, social media accounts, and digital marketing and coordinates special events, “all these things I had never done in my life,” she says. She keeps track of administrative and legal tasks, and oversees COVID-safety precautions. “I help with background things that are still important,” she says, “but no one sees those things.”

She’s also primary caregiver to the couple’s daughter and keeps their only steady paycheck coming through her full-time career as a Veteran’s Administration hospital pharmacist. Yet she’s quick to point out that she has no marketing degree, nor is she directly involved with brewing or operations.

While Luxmore says she’s never questioned her skills as a writer, “as a Cicerone and educator, I have,” she says. She feels vulnerable around technical subjects, because “I’ve never brewed at a brewery, but that’s not what a Cicerone is.” And sometimes even Swanson thinks, “Maybe this certification doesn’t actually mean shit.”

When doubts creep in, “I try to practice coming back and being really honest with myself about where those insecurities are coming from,” Swanson says. “I need to be willing to receive feedback and constantly be reflecting on who I am, how I’m interacting with people, and how I’m interacting with my craft.” There are times when this self-inquiry reveals real gaps in knowledge and skills.

But other times, it’s “imposter syndrome, [which] means internalizing the discrimination; I see myself as they see me now.” Swanson recalls festival attendees addressing questions about the beer she made to the man standing next to her as well as more overt attacks: “No, I don’t stir the mash with my vagina.”

“There’s a lot of unconscious sexism [in beer], and women don’t want to talk about it publicly,” Luxmore says, noting colleagues reluctant to go on record. Many fear repercussions, while others, consciously or not, downplay their experience. “I haven’t allowed really overt discrimination against myself,” Swanson says, pushing back with an “acute response.” But just because you don’t tolerate mistreatment doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

When people discover she’s a Master Cicerone, dumbed-down conversations tend to suddenly elevate, and “it’s tokenization,” Swanson says. Conversely, “I became obsessed with trying to prove myself,” Luxmore says. “As a woman in beer [with] these qualifications, I want to know the answer to every question, or I feel inadequate, but that’s an unrealistic expectation.”

Unfinished business

“They say, between family, friends, and career, [you can] pick two,” Trimm says with a wan smile. “You’re always leaving something out.”

At Jester King, “I felt I had sacrificed a lot of my personal mental health and the health of my relationships,” Swanson says. While she battled fears about relinquishing her team and a good job, “I’m glad I left when I did, and was able to be present [with my mom.]” She pauses upon mentioning her late mother, gone amidst other loss.

“Some people there are still my friends. But there was some resentment toward me for leaving,” she says. “I felt like I had PTSD. I thought about it every day for like a year and a half. … I gave a lot to that place, and it’s hard to feel like there are people who don’t think I did.”

But “you can’t think about regrets,” Trimm says. “You have to just keep moving forward, and accept that it’s okay not to do everything perfectly or get everything done.”

Swanson admits that “I had a hard time pivoting between being a leader and a manager; it didn’t come naturally to me.” Still, people management wasn’t her goal, and she was reaching the limits of her learning.

In an industry defined by small business, ownership is often the only growth track, and it’s fraught with systemic challenges. “I know a lot of very talented women who have left craft beer in their early to mid-thirties,” Luxmore says, “because those positions at the top are so few and far between.” Solo female owners, she adds, are even more rare; in the U.S., they constitute just 3%. Meanwhile, less than 2% of brewery owners in the U.S. are of Asian descent, making Trimm among a handful of women within that category.

Besides, it’s not just about making more seats, but about “who gets to stay around the table,” Luxmore says, and whose voices are actually heard. She believes storytelling has the power to combat imposter syndrome; however, it will take a proactive effort to tell stories that go beyond the bylines, brewers, and old-boy’s networks that have dominated both breweries and beer journalism.

But it starts with the stories we tell ourselves, keeping hold of one’s unwavering inner truth. “It’s a practice of returning to self,” Swanson says. “At the end of the day, all the feelings I experience are happening within my sphere of consciousness. Whether it’s real or not, I’m the only one who can change those feelings.”

The Brewers Association and Craftbeer.com are proud to support content that fosters a more diverse and inclusive craft beer community. This post was selected by the North American Guild of Beer Guild Writers as part of its Diversity in Beer Writing Grant series. It receives additional support through a Diversity and Inclusion Grant by the Brewers Association Diversity Committee and Allagash Brewing Company.

The post The Still Point of the Turning World: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Back then, it never occurred to me that Corona was only one type of beer—that it was a Mexican Lager. And while I’m not certain why it was my family’s beer of choice, I have to posit that, as Cuban-Americans living in Miami, we chose this beer because it was marketed towards us in some capacity. When I asked my mom about it, she was surprised by the observation; it was never something she registered. 

If so, it would hardly be the first time that Latinx people were targeted as one large bloc. Much in the way that my past self saw Corona as representative of all beers, most magazines, journalists, marketers—anyone who’s talking to consumers—still tend to think of Latinx people as a single, homogenous group. As of this writing, Latinx folks make up 18% of the U.S. population, representing 33 distinct countries between Central and South American and the Caribbean, and account for 52% of the total population growth. Despite that range, just one style of beer, the Mexican Lager, has seemingly been nominated to represent us all, our backgrounds and countries of origin notwithstanding. 

Painting in Broad Strokes

In applying such simplification to Latinx people, we invite assumptions about a vast group whose common threads are poorly understood and sometimes fabricated. (Even “Latinx” is an imperfect term that can be exclusionary of Black and Indigenous people.) This poor synthesizing has led to a muddled sense of what Mexican Lagers are and, more importantly, who they’re for.  

Mexican Lager isn’t a recognized beer style according to the Beer Judge Certification Program, and without that direct guidance, brewers are often left to their own interpretations. Ray Ricky Rivera of Norwalk Brew House in Norwalk, California points out that it was German and Austrian settlers who came to Mexico and brought their own brewing techniques. This includes early variations of lager and pilsner.

“So, technically the Lager does not originate in Mexico,” Rivera said. “Some argue that Mexican Lager is not a real thing, while others argue that it definitely has its own style and characteristics.”

What is clear is how Mexican Lagers, made by white-owned craft breweries and multinational corporations, are so often marketed. Even if a brewery doesn’t employ a potentially appropriative or simplistic image—like a sugar skull or a sombrero—many ads and labels borrow imagery from a few predictable places: a beach, the Mexican flag, an umbrella. To pretend the style has no clear-cut stance is to ignore the ways non-Latinx people in the United States perceive—and flatten—Latinx culture. 

Adding to the confusion is the success and growth of Mexican-style Lagers over the last few years. Despite the style not having its own category in the Great American Beer Festival (GABF), Lone Tree Brewing in Colorado produced a Mexican Lager that won gold in the American-Style Pilsener or International-Style Pilsener category in 2017. Two Mexican Lagers—True North Ale Company’s Cerveza and Cannonball Creek Brewing Company’s Let’s Talk About Mex!—won silver and bronze, respectively, at the 2020 GABF in the American-style Cream Ale category. 

For the rise in prestige and recognition of these beers over the last few years, that goes against decades where the typical beer drinker—and the typical beer brewer—was not Latinx. In a 2020 Brewers’ Association (BA) report on craft beer consumers, BA chief economist Bart Watson showed that even when Hispanic Americans’ income rises, they don’t consume craft at the same percentage rates as White Americans. Likewise, breweries tend to open in neighborhoods that are predominately white. 

“Craft beer in general has largely left out the Latinx consumer,” says Rivera, noting that this could change as more and more Latinx brewers enter craft—although many entrants have only found space in the craft beer scene in the last few years. “Today, Los Angeles now has 10 Latinx-owned breweries. Four of those opened in 2019.”

For those breweries that aren’t Latinx-led, Rivera has noticed some high-profile partnerships attempting to align with and appeal to Latinx consumers though celebrities like comedian George Lopez and actor Danny Trejo, or using marketing that borrows from Latinx culture, like  Dia de los Muertos.

“My belief is that what we’re seeing now with both big beer and independent craft beer is a scramble to catch up,” he said. “In short, beer needs the Latinx consumer if it’s going to continue to grow.” 

Politics and Beer Collide

This rhetoric—that the Latinx consumer must be appealed to in times of need, and that they can be marshalled to rescue the beer industry’s future (a struggle familiar to other marginalized groups)—is one we’ve seen play out in the political sphere. 

“For years, Latinos had been talked about as a constituency that could help Democrats create a durable political majority at the federal and state levels, but the party had struggled to effectively engage them,” wrote Stephania Taladrid for The New Yorker. During the 2020 United States presidential election, Latinx people were either written about as a demographic who could step up and to help deliver victory for Democratic candidates—or as a confusing voting bloc too complex to understand. “Hence, the last-minute ‘Despacito’ mirage tactics that characterized Biden’s appeals to Latinx voters, relying on the Hispandering view that trotting out a hit song at a Hispanic Heritage Month event is all it takes to reach Latinx voters, or that focusing on television ads rather than community building is enough,” writes Arlene Dávila for Vice. 

The last-minute “Hispandering” of Latinx voters that Dávila describes can be seen in beer, especially when we look at the rising popularity of imported Mexican Lagers over the last few years—in 2013, 1.8 trillion liters of beer were imported through Mexico. By 2020, that number was 3.1 trillion. As imported Mexican Lagers grow and prove their staying power during times of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, more brewers are taking notice, and attempting to add Mexican-style Lagers to their own tap lists to meet a growing demographic need—one that is perhaps long overdue. 

It would be impossible to prove this definitively without better information about breweries that make Mexican-style Lagers (Watson mentioned there were no stats on this), but a quick peek at IRI-tracked data shows a number of Mexican-style Lagers joining brewery portfolios across the nation in the last few years. Some of the beers show up in breweries in California and Texas, which have the first- and second-largest Latinx-American communities (Revolver Brewing in California and Saint Archer in Texas both added Mexican-style Lagers to their lineup in 2019) but they also pop up in breweries in Alabama (Good People Muchacho Mexican Style Lager in 2018), Kentucky (West Sixth Cerveza Mexican Style Lager in 2018), and Wyoming (Melvin Heyzeus Mexican Style Lager in 2017). 

More Latinx people are coming to the United States, they’ve proven their buying power through dominant Mexican-import sales, and, as Rivera mentioned, breweries are starting to notice. But is that what’s really happening? 

The use of language has shaped how we view Latinx communities in the United States. The idea of a word to define people of Latin American descent was only formally codified in the 1970s. “Despite the long history of Hispanic residents in the United States, there was no systematic effort to count this group separately in the census until the late 20th century,” the Pew Research Center shares in a report on the history of the word ‘Hispanic’ on the United States Census. The Census Bureau didn’t introduce the word “Hispanic” on forms until 1970, asking participants to answer the question: “Is this person’s origin or descent: Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, Other Spanish?” It wasn’t until 1980 that the question of Hispanic identity appeared on all census questionnaires, and even though the exact question has changed and evolved, it still tends to skew toward grouping people together. 

A Double-Edged Sword

In the face of this flattening of identity, a growing number of Latinx brewers are opting to produce beers that speak to their backgrounds and communities with more clarity and specificity.

“Every single beer has some type of reference to either my culture or to someone else’s,” Jess Fierro, founder of Atrevida Beer Co. in Colorado Springs, said about her own tap list. Her menu is varied, borrowing not just from her own cultural touchpoints of growing up in a Mexican-American household, but collaborating with friends and colleagues to build beers with a story and a statement. “I make a beer to honor Juneteenth, a beer to honor Pride called Christopher Street, and beers to honor my friends.” 

And yet, the fact that she’s of Meixcan heritage still invites stereotypical questions about the types of beers she should be brewing. “I’ve had folks come in and—it took me forever to make a chili beer because that’s what everyone wanted. ‘Oh, you’re Mexican, where’s the chili beer? Where’s the mole beer?’”

Fierro opened her brewery in 2018, and it wasn’t until a year later she brewed a Mexican-style Lager, which she named Dolores Huerta, after a labor leader who was the co-founder of the National Farmworkers Association. The Dolores Huerta Lager was part of a series of beers Fierro made that were all true-to-style, and in a way a response to comments she said she heard about her beers. “The rumor that was going around was that Jess—meaning me—was getting all this hype because she’s playing the Latina card, she’s playing the woman card. She makes all these beers, but they’re spiced. They’re fruited. Can she make any true-to-style beers?”

The dichotomy of expecting certain things from Latinx brewers—like mole and spiced beers—and then admonishing them for not following a set of rules deemed necessary to be considered legitimate is a reality people who occupy any marginalized identity must endure. And it’s a reality Fierro has always faced directly. 

“They want to put me in this box. And they can’t because I refuse to stay in it,” Fierro said. “I wake up as a woman and a Latina every day of my life. I don’t get to play those cards. That is who I am.”

Reclaiming Identity with Specificity

Some Latinx-owned breweries are also looking to move beyond the near-ubiquitous “Mexican” appellation. The Tank Brewing Co. in Miami is reverse engineering the process with Padron, a beer that it calls a Cuban-American Lager. Miami, like Los Angeles, is a city where the majority of the population not only identify as Latinx, but also identify as being from one particular country. 

Initially, Tank Brewing Co. had set out to make a beer inspired by Mexican-style Lagers, but also wanted to acknowledge that its main demographic would be Cuban-Americans. Its beer is designed for the audience it serves, rather than based on a perceived trend. It’s especially poignant that it labels the beer “Cuban-American” rather than “Cuban,” further acknowledging its particular customer base.

“I wanted to introduce a maltier, sweeter, less hoppy Lager to our portfolio. We had made a Mexican-style Lager, so I started thinking, ‘Maybe we could call this a Cuban Lager,’” says Moh Saade, director of brewing operations for The Tank Brewing Co. (and a lifelong Miami resident). “I didn’t really like the idea because it didn’t feel like it hit home like for us. But then I was like, ‘Well, you know, this is Miami, everybody’s Cuban, but they’re really Cuban-American.’”

The beer evokes a retro vibe, which makes sense—because of embargoes placed on Cuba by the United States, Cuba is known for its classic cars—but it also speaks to Miami residents without being predictable or overly simplistic. “What we’re trying to do is to create meaningful stories behind the beer,” Saade says. “It’s not just like, ‘Oh, let’s put a Cuban flag on it and let’s speak Spanglish.’”

Saade’s effort shows there are ways to evoke identity and speak to a specific audience without lumping people together. At The Tank, it was as simple as looking at the customer base around the brewery, and being intentional when addressing that audience. 

What Would We Be Drinking?

I’m not sure that, if The Tank had been brewing these beers when I was a kid, they would be something my parents gravitated towards. But it is interesting to see children who grew up seeing brands like Corona in their homes and grocery stores reclaim what a Mexican Lager can be. “These are the beers we’d see everywhere—you’d see them in corner stores but then you couldn’t find fresh produce because the community is a food desert,” says Alex Ruiz of South Central Brew Co. in Los Angeles. 

Ruiz teamed up with two of his childhood friends and hopes to reclaim beer culture in their neighborhood, including using a tagline for their business of “Making it happen in our hood before them developers do,” a callout to the harm of displacement and gentrification.

South Central’s beers highlight tangible people, issues, and ideas within Ruiz’s community. Los Vendors, a wheat beer with pineapple and mango, calls attention to street vendors and proclaims on the label that they should be legalized. A second iteration of that beer, Los CarWasheros, donates proceeds from sales of the beer to car washers, who have been severely impacted during COVID-19.

If Ruiz were brewing in Miami, his beers would be different. If The Tank released Padron in Los Angeles, it’d likely have a different name. Identities are personal, varied, and hard to simplify, and that’s what breweries who co-opt imagery of wrestlers and piñatas are missing. No one wants anyone to stop brewing or enjoying Mexican Lagers. But a nuanced look at what you’re brewing, how you market it, and who you consider your audience is key to brew respectfully and in a way that welcomes a diversity of drinkers. 

The Brewers Association and Craftbeer.com are proud to support content that fosters a more diverse and inclusive craft beer community. This post was selected by the North American Guild of Beer Guild Writers as part of its Diversity in Beer Writing Grant series. It receives additional support through a Diversity and Inclusion Grant by the Brewers Association Diversity Committee and Allagash Brewing Company.

The post One Style for All: The Complexity of Mexican Lagers and Latinx People in the Brewing Industry appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Shiny homebrewing equipment filled the garage so the fledgling craft brewers stood in the car port—pint glasses in hand—sharing names, hometowns and brewing experiences.

The SoCal Cerveceros homebrew club was born.

“We didn’t really know what it was going to be,” said Ray Ricky Rivera, one of the club’s seven founding members at that inaugural meeting on April 10, 2015.

Six years later, America’s largest Latino-based homebrew club has blossomed into a mosaic of nearly 250 diverse beer aficionados, mirroring the ethnic melting pot of its Los Angeles County stomping grounds.

Many of the Cerveceros have become prominent players in the So Cal craft beer scene, opening and operating brick and mortar breweries and spearheading commercial collaborations with popular craft breweries. This network of knowledgeable and influential brewers has established a pipeline to careers in an industry that has lacked Latinx representation.

“The Latino culture impacts the whole city,” said Sarah Flora, an award-winning homebrewer and internationally-known YouTuber. “It’s super fun to see that come out in our beer. Beer’s not an old, white man’s game anymore.”

Setting the Stage

Agustin Ruelas, now co-founder of Brewjería Company in Pico Rivera, played host at that inaugural gathering six years ago. He poured pints of early home-brewed creations he concocted in his garage with his brother, Adrian Ruelas, for his new club mates, Adrian Gonzalez, Jaime “Jimmy” Cardenas, Alfred Mayen, Richard Estrada and Rivera.

It was a breath of fresh air for Rivera, who admits he often wondered why he had never seen other Latinos at his go-to homebrew shop of Stein Fillers in Long Beach.

“Every time I went in there I was the only brown dude there,” Rivera said, noting Los Angeles County is home to more than 5 million Latinos.

With the Cerveceros, Rivera felt like he was among peers.

The group agreed to meet the third Friday of every month, sharing brewing tips, favorite beers and must-visit local breweries.

The club grew to 20 members before Zaneta Santana became the first woman to join the Cerveceros. A member of the South Central Brewing Co., Santana also works as the general manager at Angel City Brewery in Downtown LA.

Rivera, now the club’s president, said the club struggled adding female members outside of wives and girlfriends, but he was determined to create the diversity he knew was lacking.

“It wouldn’t be genuine of us to criticize the beer industry or the homebrew community if we weren’t actively working on our own diversity,” Rivera said. “Having a bigger presence of women helps us to be cognizant about creating a welcoming, supportive, safe space for all members.”

Rivera recruited on social media and created the ColdXela Homebrew Fest. The fest only allowed club members to pour beers at the event, which sparked a rise in membership numbers.

A kaleidoscope of like-minded homebrewers flocked to join. Members of the Warcloud Brewing Company, a group of mostly African American homebrewers, were the first non-Latinos to join the ranks. Laurie Ann Gutierrez, a Caucasian homebrewer and cider specialist, was one of the first non-Latinas to sign up.

More than 30 percent of the club’s members are now women. There’s enough passionate female brewers that they’ve created the SoCal Cerveceras, a sub-group that organizes additional brew days and online meetings of their own.

“We didn’t realize how big this could be,” Rivera said. “We’ve become this massive network…Now we’re directly impacting the LA beer industry.”

Brewing Up Something Special

Edgar Preciado—better known as BeerThugLife to his 15,000 followers on Instagram—teamed up with fellow Cervecero Julio Trejo to release a string of highly-anticipated brews with their business partner, Daniel Phoenix.

Preciado was already known for his lightning quick beer chugging abilities before he joined the club, but he wanted to take his beer persona to the next level.

Shortly after attending ColdXela Homebrew Fest in 2018, Preciado joined the club to learn how to homebrew. He fondly recalls nights where he’d stay up until 1 a.m. perfecting his recipes.

“I just wanted to learn,” Preciado said. “I knew if I kept trying, that it’d come out good.”

Once he found his groove, he collaborated with Indie Brewing Company to release “Para Mi Gente,” a popular Mexican-style lager. He’s since partnered with various breweries to release 17 more beers, with another pair of brews set to drop in April.

Through homebrewing, Preciado’s gained a new appreciation for beer.

“It brings everyone together, no matter where you’re from,” he said.

A common interest in beer brought Preciado and Flora to the same Cerveceros meetings. Where else could a former gang member with a criminal past share homebrewing tips with a woman who serves as a director of operations at a Hollywood art gallery?

“She’s a rockstar,” Preciado said of Flora.

Flora’s homebrewing skills have grown exponentially since brewing up a pale ale with the Craft A Brew Catalyst Fermentation System kit she had bought for her husband.

Despite her concerns about not being Latina in a Latino group, the Cerveceros took her in as one of their own. She received invaluable feedback on her creations at bottle shares and she was inspired by some of the beers she tasted, including an avocado honey blonde, which she raves about to this day.

She’s developed into an award-winning homebrewer, claiming a pair of gold medals in 2020 for her Rosewater Lemon Gose called “Anything Gose” at the Doug King Memorial Homebrew Competition (put on by the Maltose Falcons) and Romancing the Beer competition.

Her evident obsession with the hobby has turned her into a homebrew aficionado. She’s wildly popular on social media, garnering 36,500 followers on Instagram and 17,000 subscribers on YouTube. She also recently launched the “Brewing After Hours with Sarah Flora” podcast on the BLEAV Podcast Network.

While she’s enjoyed unparalleled success online, she’s more proud to witness the growing number of women brewers, which she credits to Cerveceras and national organizations like the Pink Boots Society, which supports beer lovers and professionals who identify as female.

Flora said she’s also impressed by the growth she’s seen in fellow Cervecera Tyler Sadler.

Sadler, who started brewing early in 2018, has excelled as a homebrewer since joining the club.

“I do believe joining SCC was a game changer,” Sadler said.

The more types of beers she sipped at club meetings, the more she found herself intertwined with the craft.

• Since joining, Sadler has won two homebrew gold medals, one at the SheBrew HomeBrew Competition for a beer she calls “Mangose Before Hoes” and another for her Reseda Porter at the Romancing The Beer competition.
• Now a board member for the club, Sadler started working full-time at Simi Valley Home Brew in January, and she launched a successful homebrewing podcast, the Brew’d Up! Podcast, with Gutierrez.
• Most recently, Sadler spoke on the “Crafting Conversations: Black in Beer” panel hosted by Angel City in February.

Sadler’s meteoric rise in a relatively short period makes Rivera believe she’s destined to be a head brewer someday.

“Not only is she going to be a really talented brewer, she’s somebody that other women brewers can look up to,” Rivera said.

A club that started with seven amateur Latino homebrewers in a car port has developed into a full-fledged army of diverse, talented brewing specialists looking to influence the craft beer scene for years to come.

“We’ve definitely begun to make some kind of impact,” Rivera said. “That’s only going to grow.”

Notable SoCal Cerveceros Members and Alumni

• Steven and Aracely Cardenas, Pacific Plate Brewing/Monrovia Homebrew Shop
• David and Carmen Favela, Border X Brewing
• Marlene Garcia, Brew-N-Crew Ale House
• Lewis Martinez, George Lopez Brewing Company
• Abraham Mercado, La Bodega Brewing Company
• Edgar Preciado, BeerThugLife
• Aurelio and Tania Ramirez, Feathered Serpent Brewing
• Ray Ricky Rivera, Norwalk Brew House
• Alfredo Rocha, Los Barbones Cerveceria
• Agustin and Adrian Ruelas, Brewjería Company
• Julio Trejo, Cerveceria Mundial

The Brewers Association and Craftbeer.com are proud to support content that fosters a more diverse and inclusive craft beer community. This post was selected by the North American Guild of Beer Guild Writers as part of its Diversity in Beer Writing Grant series. It receives additional support through a Diversity and Inclusion Grant by the Brewers Association Diversity Committee and Allagash Brewing Company.

The post SoCal Cerveceros, America’s Largest Latino-Based Homebrew Club, Is Making Its Mark appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

For so long American craft beers have been left out of Japanese and Korean restaurants—because they seemed to clash with, or overshadow the food’s character (too hoppy, too sour, too spicy). But by sticking to dependable pairing ideologies—big flavored or high alcohol beers with salty, fatty foods and more balanced, lower ABV beers with high acid, spicy ones—and expanding on others, such as matching sour with sour, chefs and beverage managers are now finding smart ways that these cuisines and beer pairings can coexist (and maybe even improve one another).

Korean cooking is permeated with the unmistakable likes of kimchi (lacto-fermented vegetables) and gochujang (a fermented bean paste with red chile pepper) as culinary building blocks for tanginess and spiciness. In Japanese kitchens, rice vinegar is a backbone to many marinades, dipping sauces, but isn’t as detectable an acid as one would expect. Spice doesn’t play a big role in Japanese cuisine though there is chile: shichimi togarashi, a 7-spice chile flake seasoning, used more as an on-the-table condiment than prominence, not unsimilar to yuzu kosho, chiles fermented with salt, yuzu zest and juice. While impactful, they tread lightly in Japanese recipes—a more nuanced approach to Korean’s palpable palate.

Rachel Yang, chef/owner of Joule, a Korean steakhouse in Seattle, WA. Admittedly, Yang didn’t think too much about how drinks work with food until owning a restaurant. “Koreans have their own name for chicken and beer: chimac. Chi means chicken, and mac is the first few letters of beer in Korean; beer is called macju, which literally means barley drink.” “It’s a cultural phenomena, immensely popular amongst young people,” says Yang, who had a restaurant in Portland called Revelry, which closed last year—it served spicy Korean fried chicken. The chicken and beer (usually a pale lager) combo was by far the most popular item on our menu.

When it comes to spice, one of the best-selling items at Joule is tteokbokki, Yang’s take on a staple Korean dish of chewy cylindrical rice cakes that are tossed in gochujang as part of a stir fry. To this, she adds garlicky chorizo, and fermented mustard greens, describing it as “a 4 out of 5” on the heat scale, but with some acidity. “ Beer would be better than wine with this one,” Yang says, pointing to the effervescence as a means of sort of “mentally” washing away the heat. “Physically, high alcohol accentuates spice, that’s why wine wouldn’t help.”

In Korea, lagers are #1—a clean crisp choice for all the big and bright flavors in Korean food. Yang was first approached by Fremont Brewing, a neighbor to the restaurant, to help them pair their hard-to-find dark beers and aged-reserve stock. She had to do a lot of tasting to figure out what kind of foods would go well with them. The answer: big flavors, like juicy pork dumpling (fat), kimchi (acid), szechuan peppers (heat).

At Joule, Yang has come to understand that no matter what her guests are ordering from the menu, they really just want to drink west coast IPAs, which aren’t always the most food friendly. She advocates for beers where the hop character isn’t overly assertive, as with hazy or session IPAs. “We’re not a bar, so all our drinks have to be enjoyable to supplement our menu.” Yang prefers the unfiltered mouthfeel of a hazy IPA and its smooth finish.

As a chef, the food’s flavor profiles come first. “We talk a lot about acid here, bright citrusy vinegary flavors,” says Yang. A cool cucumber salad, or even heirloom tomatoes will raise your taste buds, and a big, hoppy beer can make that unenjoyable, a battle between two opposing flavors. “Goses, saisons, sour beers are all extremely food friendly because acid works well with acid,” she says.

But often, in her cooking, dishes aren’t just high acid or just spicy, but will be a combination of the two.“Our kimchijeon (spicy and sour kimchi cheese pancake) is very spicy, but the lactic acid in the kimchi is sour. With two big flavors, you really need a bigger beer,” says Yang, suggesting more malt or higher alcohol.

Alexandra Nowell, brewmaster and director of brewing operations of Three Weavers in Inglewood, CA. As a resident diner of Los Angeles County, home to the highest Korean population in the country and highest number of Japanese residents among cities outside of Japan, Nowell has eaten her fair share of both cuisines, plus her business partner (Lynne Weaver, who’s family is from Fukuoka) is Japanese. Nowell believes their IPAs have a place at the table in both these cuisines—made for easy drinking, but also these kinds of cuisines in mind. “Our Expatriate IPA isn’t overly bitter, it lends well to fermented food and fatty meats. Hopped with El Dorado and Mosaic, you’ll get a hit of bright grapefruit, bag of weed, and Christmas trees, ending with a candied lemon tropical note from the Simcoe,” states Nowell. They’re very balanced for west coast IPAs, they don’t finish with astringency or bitterness,

“We brewed a beer for the (now shuttered) Japanese restaurant MTN, an offshoot of Gjelina. We made a rice lager with a light hopping of Citra, which gave it a mango-like character. Super flavorful, but it was restrained enough in structure, that it also complimented everything else they had on the menu from sashimi to ramen to funky fermented pickled stuff.”

Nowell says it’s beer’s low pH, that really works well with the subtleties of Japanese cuisine. ““Anything with a phenolic yeast bite, anything floral, mild citrus, works well with Japanese food,” she says.Three Weavers makes an IPA with Japanese yuzu and Buddha’s hand citrus, but Norwell thinks even that may be too citrus-forward.

In Brooklyn, where citrus isn’t as local, husband-and-wife team Aaron Israel and Sawako Okochi of the Japanese-Jewish restaurant Shalom Japan, riff on many classics from Hiroshima, where Okochi grew up. That region is known for both its okonomiyaki, savory, cabbage-filled pancakes piled with many sweet and savory toppings, and ramen, like tsukemen, a dipping-style. There’s also oysters, big ones, that are usually grilled, and served with local lemons—relying on layers of umami throughout the menu. Umami is made of glutamic acid, and needs a balanced beer that will fortify flavors rather than be a force of its own. Their mainstay beer: Rockaway ESB.

“I try not to drink that much beer when I eat ramen, I get so full,” says Okochi, ”but ramen has such fattiness, it needs another note”. Randolph Beer in Brooklyn approached the couple about making a specialty beer for these flavor bombs. And thus, Ume-Gose-Shi was born. “It’s a bit sour, and that acid through the fat well.” Originally meant to pair with their house-smoked wagyu pastrami sando (served on shokupan, Japanese milk bread, with Gulden’s mustard and dill pickle), it wasn’t a super sour gose, a little more balanced and hoppy than a full sour. “With undernotes of plum, the ume isn’t really acidic, it’s more basic, but feels the same on your tongue,” mentions Israel, but admittedly leaves the beverage pairings to Robert Sniffen, the beverage manager at Shalom Japan.

ESB, Extra Special Bitter, is an often-neglected style in the States, and funny enough, isn’t usually as bitter as an IPA—most run at about 50 IBUs. Around 5% ABV, with some malt character, a little richness, and of course, slight bitterness, the beer doesn’t take over the food. Sniffen likes pairing the Rockaway with their fall-off-the-bone Teriyaki Duck Wings, which have a bit of sweetness in the sauce; the ESB cuts through that nicely. “A little bit spicy from sriracha, the teriyaki sauce is basically a caramel, shocked with soy sauce and mirin, blended with garlic confit, and hot sauce for heat and acidity,” mentions Israel. With a lot of gently-hopped pairing options in the New York State region, Sniffen is looking forward to welcoming Grimm Ales, Threes Brewing, Captain Lawrence, and more beers from the Hudson Valley.

They also serve a very beer-friendly roasted oyster appetizer, topped with miso butter that starts you off with salt, fat and umami in a single slurp. Follow that up with a few sips, and you’ll see how you won’t miss mignonette—the acid’s already there (in the beer).

RECIPES

Kimchijeon (Spicy and Sour Kimchi Cheese Pancake)

By Rachel Yang, Joule, Seattle, WA

Tangy kimchi, spicy gochujang, melty cheese—a trifecta of tastes cohere into a spectacular singular savory pancake.

Makes two 9-inch pancakes

Active time 15 min

Total time 15 min

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon onion powder
• 1 tablespoon cayenne powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 egg
• ¾ cup water
• 2 tablespoons gochujang (Korean chili paste)
• 1 cup kimchi, chopped
• ¼ cup mozzarella cheese
• ¼ cup cheddar cheese
• 2 tablespoons canola oil

Directions

1. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, cornstarch, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne powder, salt, and baking powder.
2. Add egg, water and gochujang to the dry mixture. Mix well with a whisk.
3. Add kimchi and mix well.
4. Heat 1 tablespoon of the canola oil in a 9-inch non stick pan over medium heat.
5. Pour half of the batter into the pan and spread well, turning the pan to coat the bottom.
6. Sprinkle half of the mozzarella and half of the cheddar cheese evenly over the batter.
7. Once the bottom has crisped up and browned (2 to 4 minutes), flip and cook the other side the same way.
8. Repeat with remaining batter.
9. Serve the pancakes hot, on their own, or with a soy-based dipping sauce.

Teriyaki Sauce

By Aaron Israel and Sawako Okochi of Shalom Japan, Brooklyn, NY

Teriyaki is a very stable sauce—a quart will last in the fridge for months.

Yields 1 pint

Ingredients

• ¾ cup peeled garlic cloves
• Canola oil
• ½ cup mirin
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• One 1-inch knob of ginger, cut into ¼ inch slices
• 1 cup and 2 tablespoons (250 grams) sugar
• 1 tablespoon and 2 teaspoons (25 grams) sriracha
• Candy thermometer, optional
• Heat proof or wooden spatula

Directions

1. To a small pot, add the garlic with enough canola oil to cover. Over low heat, bring to a very gentle simmer. Cook for 10-15 minutes, until the garlic cloves are soft enough that they can be easily smashed with a fork. Remove from heat and strain off the oil. (You won’t need it any further in this recipe, but it’s wonderful to have on hand for other uses, like for fish or tofu. Just let it cool, and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to a month).
2. Put the garlic cloves in a blender and buzz on high speed until you have a smooth paste. Remove from the blender and set aside.
3. To a small pot, add the mirin, soy sauce and ginger, and bring to a boil over high heat. Once it boils, turn down to low, and simmer for 2-3 minutes. Turn off heat and let the ginger steep in the liquid for 10 minutes; then remove the ginger and discard.
4. To a medium sized pot (4 quarts would be ideal, but not smaller), add the sugar. Add a tablespoon of water and mix thoroughly until the sugar has the consistency of wet sand. If you have a candy thermometer, clip it to the rim of the pot and set in the sugar. Turn the heat to medium high—do not disturb the sugar. Once it starts to melt, and you see it starting to caramelize, about 3-5 minutes, give it a couple to few stirs using a heat proof spatula or wooden spoon. Let the sugar continue to caramelize, stirring infrequently, only once or twice every few minutes. If you stir it too much, you risk having it crystalize. Once the caramel  reaches 350F, about 8-12 minutes—it should have a uniform, deep amber color, and just barely start to smoke, with a deep caramel aroma.
5. Turn off the heat, and immediately, and incredibly carefully, pour the mirin/soy liquid, very slowly into the caramel. This is the most dangerous thing you will do in a kitchen, with the molten caramel having the capacity to sputter and jump out of the pot. This is why you want an amply large pot. Do not take your eyes off the bubbling caramel and don’t allow any pets or small kids near the stove during this procedure. The caramel and mirin soy will bubble violently when they meet each other, but should settle down within 15 to 30 seconds. Let the hot caramel cool for twenty to thirty minutes in the pot.
6. Once the caramel has cooled slightly, whisk in the garlic confit and sriracha. Transfer to a heat proof container and store in the refrigerator, for up to two months, until you are ready to use it.

Roasted Oysters with Miso Butter

By Aaron Israel and Sawako Okochi of Shalom Japan, Brooklyn, NY

Panko breadcrumbs are added into this simple compound butter so when it melts on top of the oyster it doesn’t melt all over the place—it’s more like a crust. Use awase miso for middle of the road umami, and an oyster that’s not too salty.

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 1 stick (¼ pound) butter, at room temperature
• 2½ tablespoons awase miso
• 1/3 cup panko breadcrumbs
• Aluminum foil
• Shucking knife
• 12 large oysters (preferably ones with a nice deep cup)
• 1 lemon

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, combine the butter and miso and mix thoroughly. You can use a stand mixer with a paddle attachment for this step. Once mixed, fold in the panko breadcrumbs. Put in a non-reactive container and set aside.
2. Preheat the oven to 475F.
3. Set some crumpled aluminum foil on a baking tray. Shuck the oysters, and set them on the foil, so they don’t tip over. Spread about a teaspoon of butter in a nice even layer on top of the oysters. Bake in the oven for 6-8 minutes, until the miso butter is golden brown and the breadcrumbs are toasted. Alternatively, you can broil the oysters for 3-4 minutes, just take care not to burn the breadcrumbs.
4. Remove the oysters from the oven, and grate some lemon zest on top of each one. Cut the lemon in half and squeeze a little juice onto each one as well. Serve immediately.

The post Spice, Fat, Acid, Beer appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

From Mari Kemper, who opened Thomas Kemper Brewing in Seattle with her husband in 1984 and now co-owns Chuckanut Brewery & Kitchen in Bellingham, to Tamil Maldonado Vega, who launched Raices Brewing in Denver five months ago, nine women reflected on topics ranging from the need for gluten-free beer to the surprising number of women working in Mexico and Turkey’s craft brewing industries. That said, much of the session revolved around ways the women make their US-based businesses more inclusive to females and ways they recommend women get ahead in their careers.

“My advice is similar to what I tell men: Put your head down and hand up. You would be amazed at how quickly you can get promoted,” said Leah Cheston of Washington, D.C.’s Right Proper Brewing. “And be out there. Keep doing it. Be an example so that ‘women in beer’ is not a weird thing anymore.”

(Related: Discrimination Lawsuit Targets California Brewery’s Women’s Beer Forum)

“Build relationships with other women,” advises Maldonado Vega. “Be part of the craft beer community and be your best. Keep up with all the evolutions and patterns.”

And Julia Herz, BA Craft Beer Program Director, who moderated the event, added that women who want to get into the craft beer world might first teach themselves how to homebrew.

“Start brewing,” she said. “It gives you professional brewing experience in your own home.”

Speaking via recorded video because she caught a bug that kept her from flying in from Santa Rosa, California, Russian River Brewing co-owner Natalie Cilurzo said she makes herself available as a mentor to women just as she works to set an example for her employees.

“I consider mentoring to be very similar to how I run my company,” she said. “I want my employees to feel they can come to me.”

Karen Hertz of Golden, Colorado’s gluten-free Holidaily Brewing, said in addition to learning everything possible about the craft beer industry, styles, pairings, and more, “Have female leaders (at the brewery) willing to show people the ropes.”

“Look beyond just the industry,” adds Dogfish Head Craft Brewery co-founder Mariah Calagione. “We look to our vendors, our banks, all the people supporting our brewpubs, and make them understand we want them to value this and we’re looking at who they’re sending in.”

And Theresa McCulla, who’s curating the BA-supported Brewing History Initiative at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, takes care to include women in her collection and talk about them whenever possible. She rarely misses an opportunity to mention investors and workers Suzanne Stern Denison and Jane Zimmerman when she speaks about Sonoma, California’s long-shuttered New Albion Brewing as the first ground-up brewery built in America since after Prohibition. Founder Jack McAuliffe usually receives all of the credit for that endeavor.

(More: Brewer Averie Swanson Starts a New Chapter in Chicago)

“Suzy had the van and brewed the beer herself when Jack wasn’t there. Two women funded the first craft brewery,” she told the audience.

And Virginia Morrison, of San Diego’s Second Chance Brewing, tells men that women can’t eradicate discrimination on their own.

“If you’re in a room and someone talks over a woman or takes over an idea, speak up. Speak up. We will be your best friends.”

In the above photo:

Front Row, L to R: Theresa McCulla, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington, DC, Mari Kemper, Chuckanut Brewery, Bellingham, WA, Leah Cheston, Right Proper Brewing Company, Washington, DC

Back Row, L to R: Virginia Morrison, Second Chance Beer Company, San Diego, CA, Tamil Maldonado, Raices Brewing Company, Denver, CO, Karen Hertz, Holidaily Brewing Company, Golden, CO, Ting Su, Eagle Rock Brewery, Los Angeles, CA, Mariah Calagione, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Milton, DE, Julia Herz, Brewers Association

The post Female Brewing Pioneers and Innovators Talk Gender Equality in Craft Brewing appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Mikerphone — owned by husband and wife team Mike and Lisa Pallen — is well-known for its New England style IPAs and lyrical spin on every beer name. This big, juicy, women-brewed beer is no exception.

Drippin’ So Much Sauce, which is named after a lyric from Lizzo’s “Juice,” is a double dry-hopped double IPA featuring Citra, El Dorado and Sabro hops.

According to Charolette Converse, the brewery’s marketing and events manager, “This beer embodies the vibe and culture promoted by the women who work in the beer industry.”

The group certainly honed that empowerment for a good cause.

(MORE: Brewer Averie Swanson Starts a New Chapter in Chicago)

Women Empowering Women Through Beer

This whole concept started with the women of Mikerphone showing interest in learning more about the brewing process. From there, it blossomed into making a difference in the community.

“We knew right away that we wanted to partner with a local and women-focused organization because this beer is about being an empowered woman,” Converse says.

Proceeds from can sales will be donated to WINGS, a Chicago-area program dedicated to providing housing, integrated services, education and advocacy to end domestic violence.

“It’s important that our charity and non-profit partners are as hyper-local as possible so that they can directly impact the community that Mikerphone resides in, Elk Grove Village,” she says. “One in four [women] is too high a number, and as a business and voice in the community, it’s our responsibility to assist in raising awareness and support for those in need.”

Mikerphone’s Commitment to Education and Inclusion

Mikerphone’s women-brewed beer, Drippin’ So Much Sauce, will be released on draft and in cans at the brewery’s International Women’s Day Release Party on Sunday, March 8. Attendees will not only be able to meet the women behind the beer and the brewery but also talk with WINGS representatives about the organization’s mission.

The Chicago brewery’s commitment to community spans larger than this women’s day beer release. The brewery places education and inclusion at the top of its values.

(MORE: Ballast Point Employees Celebrate New Chapter with Open Letter)

As Converse explains, “Every customer walking into Mikerphone should feel comfortable asking questions to any person behind the bar, man or woman. Every woman at Mikerphone, and in this industry, should feel comfortable behind the bar, at a beer fest, in the brewery, wherever there is beer.”

The crew at Mikerphone agrees — it’s important to showcase that women are a driving force in the success of craft beer.

“Co-owners, bartenders, brewers, social media managers,” Converse says, “every aspect of this industry is more successful with women working alongside men.

“By empowering the women in your brewery, you’re opening the doors to making entire groups of people feel more welcomed in the craft beer space,” Converse adds. “And here at Mikerphone, we’re telling other women, ‘Hey, there’s a place for you here.'”

The post Chicago-area Brewery’s New IPA is Brewed by Women to Support Women-in-Need appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

“With the Brewers Association’s generous contribution, we now have the power to organize our festival from coast to coast, hosting Beers With(out) Beards for a third time in NYC and for the first time in Oakland,” said Grace Weitz, Beers With(out) Beards. “Organizations like the Brewers Association that take the time to develop new initiatives like the Diversity and Inclusion Event Grants program truly ignite change in our industry. We are honored to be a part of the engine that is breaking barriers and building camaraderie in craft beer.”

Since the creation of its Diversity Committee in 2017 and the hiring of its first-ever diversity ambassador in 2018, the Brewers Association has taken continued, proactive steps to advance diversity and inclusivity among brewers and beer lovers. In 2019, the association released a five-part series of best practice guides that lay the groundwork for addressing, creating, and managing a diversity and inclusion program. In May, the inaugural class of diversity and inclusion event grant recipients was announced, with a total of $20,000 awarded to six recipients. The association also completed its first benchmarking survey of brewery owner and employee diversity in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity; and in December published a free We Welcome Everyone poster available for download in Spanish and English for breweries and beer businesses. For 2020, the Brewers Association will publish a series of case studies written by diversity ambassador Dr. J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham, Ph.D, that spotlight best practices in action, and will also introduce a pilot mentorship program.

“It’s inspiring to see so many organizations striving to connect and welcome new people to beer and each other, ” said Julia Herz, craft beer program director, Brewers Association. “While there is still much work to be done, we are proud to continue our commitment to nurture a more diverse and inclusive craft beer community and we congratulate this year’s grant recipients.”

2020 Grant Recipients

Beersgiving

• Organization: Beersgiving
• Event Location: Fort Worth, Texas
• Event Date: Monthly, 2020
• Event Description: Beersgiving is a national traveling event that brings civilian and military families together by combining craftbeer S.T.E.M. experiments with local food and beer offerings.

Biere de Femme

• Organization: Pink Boots Society St. Louis
• Event Location: St. Charles, Mo.
• Event Date: August 29, 2020
• Event Description: Women from all areas of the beer industry will come together to brew beer and educate the public about beer and the amazing women in the brewing industry. The event will raise money for scholarships to send women to educational programs to further their careers.

Open Hands 48 Film Festival

• Organization: Left Hand Brewing
• Event Location: Longmont, Colo.
• Event Date: July 25, 2020
• Event Description: This event is the first major initiative for the Open Hands Committee, Left Hand Brewing’s diversity and inclusion initiative. The festival will feature short films that showcase diversity, inclusion, and equity in craft beer.

Beers With(out) Beards

• Organization: Hop Culture
• Event Location: New York City, N.Y., and Oakland, Calif.
• Event Date: June 10-13, 2020 and October 7-10, 2020
• Event Description: Beers With(out) Beards will host a series of educational events aimed at empowering women in the beer and brewing industry by cultivating conversations around gender disparity. The festival will feature over 20 of the top women-led breweries in the country. New this year, Beer With(out) Beards will also host the event in Oakland, Calif.

Samuel D. Outlaw Blacksmith Shop Memorial Museum Grand Opening

• Organization: Samuel D. Outlaw Blacksmith Shop Memorial Museum
• Event Location: Onancock, Va.
• Event Date: May 30, 2020
• Event Description: This community event celebrates the history of Samuel D. Outlaw’s Blacksmith Shop, a post-slavery era staple on the eastern shore of Virginia whose owner forged a way of life for the community in the face of racism, segregation, and Jim Crow. The museum has partnered with the community’s first brewery, Black Narrow Brewing Company, to brew a collaboration beer for the grand opening event.

FemAle Brew Fest

• Organization: FemAle Brew Fest
• Event Location: Dania Beach, Fla.
• Event Date: March 21, 2020
• Event Description: This one-day craft beer festival celebrates women in the brewing industry. The festival will feature craft beer, yoga, industry talks, and music. Proceeds will go to the Abandoned Pet Rescue.

HeART and Soul Brewfest

• Organization: Like the Fruit, LLC
• Event Location: Richmond, Va.
• Event Date: July 25, 2020
• Event Description: This urban cultural arts festival combines soul food and craft beer. HeART and Soul Brewfest will feature music, poetry, live painting, and beer from over 40 black-owned businesses in Richmond.

ColdXela 2020

• Organization: Gumball Foundation
• Event Location: Los Angeles, Calif.
• Event Date: August 2020
• Event Description: ColdXela will partner with the SoCal Cerveceros Homebrew Club to highlight Latinx, Asian, and African American brewed beer while educating attendees on the brewing process and beer style varieties. The event will feature beers and ciders from over 50 homebrewers from all over LA County, live music, food, and other local vendors.

Bold Women and Beer Festival

• Organization: Bold Women and Beer Festival
• Event Location: Philadelphia, Pa.
• Event Date: May 16, 2020
• Event Description: Bold Women and Beer Festival, Philadelphia’s first women-centered beer festival, will partner with the Philadelphia Chapter of the Pink Boots Society to raise money for its scholarship fund. Most participating breweries will pour beer brewed by women specifically for this festival. The event will highlight women in beer and women-led and women-owned businesses.

Dopetoberfest

• Organization: Crowns & Hops
• Event Location: Los Angeles, Calif.
• Event Date: October 10, 2020
• Event Description: Dopetoberfest focuses on diversifying LA’s craft beer community through education and culture. The festival will feature panel discussions led by groups who focus on advocating for diversity and inclusion in craft beer, a homebrewers of color showcase, and a craft beer tasting.

Dames and Dregs Beer + Festival

• Organization: Dames and Dregs Beer + Festival
• Event Location: Atlanta, Ga.
• Event Date: August 14-15, 2020
• Event Description: This two-day festival seeks to empower and educate the community by celebrating women’s contributions to brewing and the beer industry. The 2020 festival focuses on beer, brewing, and business education using a blend of hands-on workshops and panel discussions.

Beer Culture Summit

• Organization: Chicago Brewseum
• Event Location: Chicago, Ill.
• Event Date: November 11-14, 2020
• Event Description: This event brings together a community of scholars, researchers, museum professionals, beer industry experts, and everyday enthusiasts to learn about beer’s historic legacies and modern worth. The conference features dozens of events and speakers from varying backgrounds and experiences in the craft beer industry.

Suave Fest

• Organization: Raices Brewing Company
• Event Location: Denver, Colo.
• Event Date: September 12, 2020
• Event Description: This Latin craft beer festival highlights Latin-owned craft breweries from around the nation. The event celebrates Latin American and Caribbean culture with art, poetry, music, and food. New this year, Suave Fest is partnering with Meow Wolf to bring art and artists to the festival.

Brewers of Pennsylvania Symposium

• Organization: Brewers of Pennsylvania
• Event Location: State College, Pa.
• Event Date: September 20-22, 2020
• Event Description: The event focuses on both the business and science of brewing by hosting 15-20 professional development sessions. This year will feature a track called “Project D.I.N.E.” (Diversity Inclusion Not Exclusion) as well as tracks that focus on product marketing awareness and hiring practices to increase diversity in the workforce.

Grant applications for 2021 will be accepted in October. More information on the Diversity and Inclusion Event Grants Program can be found here.

About the Brewers Association

The Brewers Association (BA) is the not-for-profit trade association dedicated to small and independent American brewers, their beers and the community of brewing enthusiasts. The BA represents 5,400-plus U.S. breweries. The BA’s independent craft brewer seal is a widely adopted symbol that differentiates beers by small and independent craft brewers. The BA organizes events including the World Beer Cup®, Great American Beer Festival®, Craft Brewers Conference® & BrewExpo America®, SAVOR: An American Craft Beer & Food Experience, Homebrew Con, National Homebrew Competition, and American Craft Beer Week®. The BA publishes The New Brewer® magazine, and Brewers Publications® is the leading publisher of brewing literature in the U.S. Beer lovers are invited to learn more about the dynamic world of craft beer at CraftBeer.com® and about homebrewing via the BA’s American Homebrewers Association® and the free Brew Guru® mobile app. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The Brewers Association is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, gender, religion, age, disability, political beliefs, sexual orientation, or marital/familial status. The BA complies with provisions of Executive Order 11246 and the rules, regulations, and relevant orders of the Secretary of Labor.

The post Brewers Association Announces 2020 Diversity and Inclusion Event Grant Recipients appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Ballast Point employees marked the next chapter in ownership by publishing an open letter that celebrates the San Diego brewery’s 24-plus years of making beer.

The letter appears on the brewery’s website in the shape of a beer glass. It reads:

Born in San Diego, Ballast Point was founded in 1996 because we love beer.

Through every chapter, that fact remains constant.

What has changed since ’96, you ask? We’ve heard the rumors. And you’re right.

Quality has changed — it’s better.

Innovation has changed — there’s more.

Variety has changed — we’re creating more now than ever.

So, you’re right. Things have changed over the past 24 years.

It hasn’t always been perfect, but we are stronger today than ever before.

Through all of the change, all we’ve focused on is making great beers to share with you, our friends and neighbors.

The same great people, making the same great beer, endured a trying couple of years.

Why stay, you ask? Each other. Our passion. Our beer.

Longtime customers turned longtime employees still walk our brewery halls, and we’ve been here staying the course. Brewing the beer we want to drink.

We’re all in the same dream, with the same goal. Every day, we pour our heart and soul into the beer we brew and into the family we’ve made.

Ballast Point is back, but in fact, we never left. 

The letter appears to follow the plan to return “flair” to the San Diego brewery, as Kings & Convicts co-founder and CEO Brendan Watters told CraftBeer.com in a December interview: “Kings & Convicts has always been a little roguish, a little anti-authority, and we’re going to bring back that little bit of flair that’s been lost as Ballast Point being part of a larger company.”

Ballast Point’s ownership by Kings & Convicts, which is another craft brewer, means the San Diego brewery now classifies as a craft brewer under the Brewers Association definition.

The Brewers Association, the Boulder-based trade group for craft brewers as well as publisher of CraftBeer.com, defines a craft brewer as small and independent. The BA’s definition allows the group to keep data that helps support and inform its membership.

The BA says Ballast Point has adopted the Independent Craft Brewer Seal, the certified logo that helps inform beer lovers which breweries are indeed craft breweries. Kings & Convicts displays the seal on its beer cans. Watters told us in December, “Independence is not something we take for granted.”

You can see the open letter from Ballast Point employees on the brewery’s website.

The post Ballast Point Employees Mark New Ownership with Open Letter appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

After receiving a collection of strong entries, the Guild and CraftBeer.com will work with four journalists to tell several important stories:

Alessandra Bergamin will chronicle a cross-border collaboration between California’s Dos California’s Brewsters, SouthNorte Beer Co., and Tijuana, Mexico’s Lúdica Artesenal Cerveceria. The story will follow female brewers making a beer that will help fund scholarships for female peers in Mexico.

Stephanie Grant plans to report about the safety of women who work in the beer industry from a variety of roles and perspectives. Industry professionals will share stories and insight on the challenges they face at events, traveling, and more, as a way to give context to their experiences.

Louis Livingston-Garcia will tell the story of the leaders behind Minnesota’s Brewing Change Collaborative, a group made up of people of color and the LGBTQ+ community working to share beer with minority communities and support those who are trying to break into beer.

Jen Blair will connect plant-based food and beer to write about how these dietary options can work together to create a more inclusive environment at events and among those who love beer, especially among African-Americans, who have the highest percentage of vegans among all demographics in the U.S.

As winners of the grant, all four will receive a cash stipend for completed work. The final stories will be published on CraftBeer.com.

The goal of NAGBW’s Diversity in Beer Writing Grant is to highlight the value of stories that can showcase diversity and inclusion – in all its forms and challenges – within beer. In addition to these projects, NAGBW and CraftBeer.com will select additional recipients later this year.

Additional underwriting for the 2020 Diversity in Beer Writing Grant comes from Allagash Brewing Company.

The post North American Guild of Beer Writers Announces 2020 Diversity in Beer Writing Grant Recipients appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Both breweries are run and owned by Chinese Americans, a rarity in the craft beer scene, where 88 percent of brewery owners are white, according to a 2019 report on diversity data from the Brewers Association, publisher of CraftBeer.com.

Aaron Ross was Lucky Envelope’s tasting room manager until he relocated to Asheville last year, where he started a new job as the customer experience and bar manager at Highland Brewing. It occurred to him the owners of both breweries shared a connection as Chinese Americans, so Aaron introduced the two teams.

“We’ve always been kind of tuned in to our Chinese heritage as part of our identity as a brewery,” says Raymond Kwan, Lucky Envelope’s co-owner and director of operations.

The breweries landed on creating a hazy IPA that would be released at both breweries at the start of the Chinese New Year during the last weekend of January. The collaboration beer celebrates Chinese American heritage in both name and ingredients.

(More: Craft Brewers Find Flavor and Flexibility with Rice)

Making Metal Rat Hazy IPA

The decision to brew a hazy IPA came from the fact that both brewers, Barry Chan from Lucky Envelope and Trace Redmond from Highland Brewing, love “big, juicy IPAs,” according to Leah Wong Ashburn, Highland Brewing’s second-generation family owner and president.

“We wanted to make a beer that appealed to a lot of people and the idea of the culture behind the name so we made the Metal Rat Hazy IPA,” Chan says.

The Metal Rat Hazy IPA beer will use Lotus hops as a nod to the Chinese heritage. The collaboration beer uses grain from both Washington state and North Carolina giving it a local connection for both breweries.

Teams at both Highland and Lucky Envelope were involved in making Metal Rat Hazy IPA. The head brewers traveled to each other’s breweries to brew the collaboration beer.

“My hope is that beer fans feel the benefits of collaboration in creating a great beer with aspects of ethnicity and authenticity at the root of the story,” says Wong Ashburn.

Metal Rat Hazy IPA will be released in Seattle at Lucky Envelope Brewing and in Asheville at Highland Brewing on January 25. This will be the first Chinese New Year celebration at Highland Brewing and the fourth for Lucky Envelope. Merchandise commemorating the collaboration and the Chinese New Year will also be available at both breweries. In addition to the Metal Rat Hazy IPA, Lucky Envelope will be releasing a number of beers the week leading up to their Chinese New Year celebration on Saturday, Jan. 25.

The post Chinese American Owned Breweries Celebrate Chinese New Year with Collaboration Beer appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Wildfires in Australia have burned more than 15 million acres since December. More than 100 fires were burning at one point, overwhelming response crews. Australia’s Resilience Beer campaign “came from a desire in the local beer industry to find ways to support those impacted by and fighting the fires,” according to Australia’s Independent Brewers Association.

You’ll remember the worldwide response to the call for help from Sierra Nevada Brewing Company after the 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County, California. The fire killed 85 people and destroyed nearly 19,000 structures, many of them homes, in the communities where the brewery’s employees live.

Heartbroken for the community that supported the brewery for 40 years, brewery founder Ken Grossman wrote an open letter asking breweries to brew Resilience IPA, release it at their own breweries, with the proceeds going to the Camp Fire Fund. Suppliers even donated hops and barley to help defray the cost for breweries who were involved.

Australia Resilience Beer is following the same model, leaning on guidance from the independent U.S. craft brewery to get the movement going.

(READ: Two Brewers, Two Towns, and the Unpredictable Kincade Fire)

“Sierra Nevada has been hugely helpful and supportive in getting the Australian effort live. Ken Grossman reached out in support and offered to assist,” says Tiffany Waldron, who is coordinating Australia Resilience Beer. “The Sierra Nevada team has helped with creating the imagery and also with their learnings from the Resilience IPA Camp Fire campaign.”

Tiffany tells us the Australia Resilience Beer recipe was “designed so that it could easily be brewed from anywhere in the world,” and that craft breweries from all over, include the United States, have reached out wanting to help. She says she’s hearing from breweries “hourly” who are ready and willing to respond.

The Australia Resilience campaign has a website with details on how breweries and others in the craft beer community worldwide can get involved. If you’re a beer lover who is curious about where you can sample the Australia Resilience Beer, stay tuned. The organization plans to release more info in the coming weeks.

The post Sierra Nevada’s Resilience IPA Inspires Aussie Brewers After Devastating Wildfires appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

The goal of this grant is to highlight the value of stories that can showcase diversity and inclusion – in all its forms and challenges – within beer. To best align with this goal, and to support a growing collection of writers that have not traditionally been represented covering the beer industry, those who identify as female, minorities, and people with disabilities are encouraged to apply. The winner of the grant will receive a cash stipend for completed work, which will be published on CraftBeer.com, a website for beer lovers published by the Brewers Association.

From now through Jan. 24, applications can be submitted online using this form. Interested writers must provide a cover letter, two samples of work, and a pitch for their story idea that explores areas of diversity and inclusion in beer. A writer’s level of experience and previous outlets of publication will not be the determining factor in a successful application. Previous coverage does not have to include the beer industry – an emphasis is placed on uniqueness of pitch and storytelling, not an intimate knowledge of beer.

Chosen writers will receive a stipend of at least 50 cents per word for their work, up to $1,000 (depending on the kind of story, length, and other factors), to be paid upon completion and publication of the story on CraftBeer.com.

A key goal of the Diversity in Beer Writing Grant is to provide an opportunity for writers of all skills and experience levels to cover a topic of personal interest and gain exposure to the industry.

Pitches should contain as much detail as possible for your idea and structure of a story, and display a clear direction of what the story will be. Review of pitches will take into consideration the overall idea, proposed execution, potential list of interviews and scope of story. Ability to provide photos with text should be noted, but will not influence the overall strength of an application.

Any materials submitted after noon EST Jan. 24 deadline will not be considered. NAGBW leadership will review applications and announce a recipient or recipients in February. Recipients receive editorial guidance and mentorship from NAGBW members, as well as insight from CraftBeer.com editors.

See the work of previous recipients:

• Beth Demmon (2019): Craft, Community, and Children: The State of Parenting in the American Beer Industry
• Adriana Fraser (2019): Celebrating Women in Beer at 2019 Beer With(out) Beards Festival
• Rebecca Johnson (2018): Pride, Not Prejudice: Brewing Safe Spaces for the LGBTQ+ Community

For questions or more information about the grant, contact Bryan Roth, NAGBW director, at bryandroth@gmail.com.

Complete an application with this form.

Additional underwriting for the 2020 Diversity in Beer Writing Grant comes from Allagash Brewing Company.

The post Entries Now Open for 2020 Diversity in Beer Writing Grant appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

The Brewers Association (BA), the trade group for small and independent U.S. craft breweries and publisher of CraftBeer.com, is crunching the numbers and releasing its highlights of craft beer in 2019.

Growth Amidst Competition

The craft beer industry is increasingly more competitive. As of late 2019, the BA says the number of breweries operating in the U.S. has surged to a new milestone high, surpassing 8,000. Once the organization finalizes its data in early 2020, it’ll release the actual number, but the BA says “it’s certain” the number is above 8,000. The competitive market led to more closures, too; the BA estimates 300 breweries closed in 2019.

Even as the market becomes more competitive, craft brewers continue to collectively produce more beer. The BA won’t finalize its data until early 2020, but the group estimates craft brewers increased production volume 4% over last year.

Independence Matters

The first ever National Independent Beer Run Day in July. The inaugural Small Brewery Sunday during Thanksgiving weekend. At the heart of both of these new beer holidays was the call for beer lovers to seek the seal—the Independent Craft Brewer Seal that certifies a brewery is indeed a craft brewery.

Since the BA released the seal in June 2017, more than 4,700 brewing companies have adopted it. [Fun fact: Delaware has officially become the first state to have full adoption; all 21 breweries in the state have signed on.]

Celebrating Craft Beer’s Roots

2019 is the year the story of America’s craft brewers went on display for history (and beer!) appreciators at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

The museum recently re-opened its “FOOD: Transforming the American Table” exhibition with its new “Brewing a Revolution” display, which chronicles the contributions of craft brewers in America. Historian Theresa McCulla, curator of the American Brewing History Initiative, a project supported by the BA, has spent the better part of three years collecting oral histories and cool items from the industry’s pioneers, which are now on display as part of the nation’s history.

Read more about the year in craft beer on BrewersAssociation.org.

The post Highlights of Craft Beer in 2019 (Infographic) appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Since the news broke on Tuesday, Dec. 3, Brendan Watters, co-founder and CEO of Kings & Convicts, has spent much of his time on the phone fielding media questions.

“The biggest reaction has been ‘What the hell?,'” Watters says. “Quickly followed by ‘Who the hell are you people?'”

Watters, an animated and outspoken fellow with a thick Australian accent, understands the confusion.

“People are unable to process how this could possibly take place,” he says. “This just doesn’t happen.”

“Whenever everyone else is zigging, we’re going to zag. That’s kind of that down under mentality from Australia,” Watters says. “When you got all this authority of people saying what you should do, we tend to go against the grain.”

To make it happen, Watters and his business partner, Christopher Bradley, brought on two new investors, in addition to themselves and two others who were already on board at Kings & Convicts. On Wednesday, Watters revealed the primary new investor is longtime wine industry figure Richard Mahoney, as first reported by The Chicago Tribune.

(TRAVEL: Around Ohio in 18 Beers)

Watters stresses that he and his business partners have been longtime fans of Ballast Point.

“We’ve always loved their beer, their quality control, and everything that made them special,” Watters says. “Our other investors are all private individuals, people I’ve worked with and have gone to the well with me before. Quite frankly, this was just an opportunistic way for us to secure this, and Chris and I will still be operating and running it ourselves.”

At its peak in 2016, Ballast Point sold 431,000 barrels of beer. This year, that number has fallen to just above 200,000 barrels. Kings & Convicts, on the other hand, will brew roughly 600 barrels of beer this year, though Watters is quick to note it was already working on a 48,000-square-foot expansion facility in Wisconsin. Kings & Convicts will add at least 70 new sales and marketing positions at Ballast Point, Watters says. No current employees will be let go.

The Brewers Association (BA), the membership organization for U.S. craft brewers and publisher of CraftBeer.com, establishes the craft brewer definition so it can serve its members through resources and provide data. BA Chief Economist Bart Watson says the BA evaluates its craft data set each year during an annual review and, “Our initial sense is yes, it appears based on what we know about the company, the Kings & Convicts Brewing Co. will remain a craft brewer with Kings & Convicts and Ballast Point brand families.”

“Independence is not something I take for granted,” Watters says. “At Kings & Convicts, we have the seal on our cans, and proudly fly the flag.”

“Independence is not something I take for granted.” Brendan Watters, Kings & Convicts Brewing Co. CEO

With a fresh perspective, Watters believes Ballast Point has a strong future.

“Kings & Convicts has always been a little roguish, a little anti-authority, and we’re going to bring back that little bit of flair that’s been lost as Ballast Point being part of a larger company,” he says.

(MORE: Heroes of the Brewhouse)

Watters spent the majority of this week in California meeting with Ballast Point employees, and he is looking forward to tapping into their potential.

“The excitement came [Wednesday] morning at the Miramar brewery, seeing the look on the employees’ faces as they realized who we were. Seeing these employees sit there and see their shoulders perk up, as they ask questions about what we can do to get back out and engage with the community, providing focus and direction for people that are hungry for it,” Watters says.

“They’ve been doing this for ages, all they need is to know that we got their back.”

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