EP-259 Ehren Schmidt of Mikkeller Baghaven

Next up in our series of interviews from the 2023 Foeder for Thought festival, Kate Bernot is talking to Matt Manthe from Odd Breed Brewing in Pompano Beach, Florida.

Most of the locations of the brewers we speak to at Foeder for Thought come from far and wide, and usually from places with more mild climates than Florida has to offer. So Matt and Odd Breed adapt their process and expectations to that reality, working with yeast strains and styles that provide the nuanced results they’re looking for. He also talks about what it takes to help grow the audience for these beers in Florida, which is a younger scene that markets like California or the Northeast.

One of the methods Matt enjoys most is fresh hopping his wild ales for a somewhat hybrid style of IPA and wild and sour beer that is delighting his fans.

In this episode of the 2023 Foeder for Thought festival, I’m talking to Aaron Kleidon of catch Brewing in Ave, Illinois, one of the country’s most obscure and isolated brewers, that also happens to be one of the most welcoming and casual visits among the class of brewers you might consider a destination brewery.

Tucked away in far southern Illinois, Scratch has made a name for itself with foraged ingredients, ancient methods of brewing, such as hot stone and campfire heating, as well as a culinary program at the brewpub that delivers a similarly-minded approach to cooking.

We talk a lot more these days about the connection between agriculture and brewing, but in this conversation with Aaron, you’ll hear something more akin to a naturalist or a conservationist obsessed with his land and the surrounding forests, and how he makes world class beers from those unlikely resources.

In this episode of the 2023 Foeder for Thought festival, Kate Bernot is talking to Trevor Rogers from de Grade Brewing, a geographical outlier like many of these producers, based in Tilamook, Oregon. de Garde was part of the avant garde in American wild ales, founded in 2012 with his partner Linsey, considered by many to be one of, if not THE first producer of these styles of beer in the US.

Part of the legend of de Garde comes from its methods of collecting wild yeast along multiple locations in the Pacific Northwest coastal region, and that influenced a generation of wild ale producers across the US who were looking for the courage to try these traditional Belgian methods in untested areas of the country.

After taking a short break for a St. Pete-style rain to pass through, the crowd at Foeder for Thought gathered in the courtyard at Green Bench again, dried off some seats and got a beer to listen to our second chat featuring Brandon Boldt from Primitive Beer in Colorado.

A well-respected and novel producer of wild ales, Primitive is perhaps more widely known for their packaging style, putting uncarbonated wild ales into a bag and box serving package. These still beers provide a profoundly different drinking experience—without the carbonation, the flavors and textures move over the palate entirely differently than a beer in a thick glass bottle with those highly pressurized tiny bubbles.

Since me and Brandon spoke at Foeder last year, they closed up shop in Longmont Colorado and starting making a big move to a new location—in an annex at New Image Brewing in Wheat Ridge Colorado.

We’re kicking off our 2023 Foeder for Thought episodes with Zach Adams of Fox Farm in Salem, Connecticut. Like many craft brewers, Zach was a home brewer, but unlike most home brewers, he competed at the top of the game in the Boston Beer Longshot challenge and won.

Riding that boost of confidence, he and his partner bought a 1960s dairy barn and renovated it to create a humble but beautiful destination for what would quickly become one of the ties premier beer destinations.

That confidence turns to some measure of humility however when we talk about his venture into wild and spontaneous brewing where he feels they’ll still finding their way and making a name.

Unless you’ve been listening to older episode of the GBH Podcast, you may not have heard my voice in awhile. I’ve been working on some new projects this past year or so that I’m excited about, but if there’s one thing that pulls me out of semi-retirement each year, it’s the Foeder for Thought festival in St Petersburgh Florida every March with Green Bench Brewing Company, and here we are again on the cusp of that annual gathering of wild and spontaneous beer producers gathering.

This year its on Friday March 8th, and in the run-up to that event where I get to sit down and chat with a few leading producers in the category about their trajectory and the future the envision.

I’m releasing last year’s talks as a way to sort of get people excited again and remind them of some of the aspects of Foeder for Thought that make it so special.

First of all, it’s a small event but there’s some serious work and care put in that makes it fantastic. Khris Johnson and his team at Green Bench pull out all the stops for this thing. They get Web’s City Cellar, their companion bar, primed and ready to welcome fans of wild and spontaneous beer to what I consider one of the best beer bars in the country. And I’m certainly not alone in the opinion—this year the James Beard Awards nominated them for the Outstanding Bar category. That’s big time stuff.

It’s going to be a fantastic time - and I hope to see you there.

Now, let’s talk about 2023’s lineup of guests that you’ll hear in these episodes, hosted by myself and Good Beer Hunting’s Kate Bernot.

We’re talking to folks from de Garde Brewing in Oregon, Fox Farm Brewery in Connecticut, Off Breed Wild Ales in Pompano Beach Florida, Primitive Beer in Colorado, and Scratch Brewing in far Southern Illinois.

As per usual, it was an inspired lineup of beers and the producers behind them. All connected through their love of wild and spontaneous beer making, but also unique in their own rights—serving unique audiences and geographies, adapting to the realities of climate change and a shifting market, and finding their own way even as they hold the ancient traditions of these beers in a kind of reverent state.

This episode is one of a three-part series recorded as part of the Rare & Vintage Beer Tasting, an annual event held in Durham, North Carolina that brings brewers and beer lovers together from all over the country. Along with a beer festival, Rare & Vintage also hosts beer industry professional development conversations each January. The combo acts as a fundraising and awareness effort for the Michael James Jackson Foundation, which funds education and career advancement for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the brewing and distilling industries.

For this year’s event, I moderated three discussions, and in this episode, you’ll hear me in conversation with three panelists talking about measurements, bias, and how these things impact the making of beer and how we bring people together for beer. Joining me are:

• Nicole Steinhilber, laboratory operations manager for Charleston, South Carolina’s Edmund’s Oast Brewing.

• April Dove, founder of Tha CommUNITY, a collaborative beer initiative that partners with breweries to offer a blueprint on how to attract Black drinkers to taprooms.

• Jen Currier, cellarmaster at Wicked Weed Brewing and head winemaker at its spin-off winery, Vidl Cellars.

The experience between all three of these industry pros gave us fodder to get nerdy about lab work, ingredients, and more, but it also allowed us to look at big picture challenges facing beer today, most notably how to better welcome new drinkers into the fold. After you listen to this episode, make sure to check out the other two, which includes a panel discussion about bias in sensory and a keynote conversation with my Good Beer Hunting colleague and friend, Jamaal Lemon.

This episode is one of a three-part series recorded as part of the Rare & Vintage Beer Tasting, an annual event held in Durham, North Carolina that brings brewers and beer lovers together from all over the country. Along with a beer festival, Rare & Vintage also hosts beer industry professional development conversations each January. The combo acts as a fundraising and awareness effort for the Michael James Jackson Foundation, which funds education and career advancement for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the brewing and distilling industries.

For this year’s event, I moderated three discussions, and in this episode, you’ll hear me in conversation with three panelists talking about how language and culture have built the lexicon for beer and what we can do to change and enhance it all. It’s a spiritual connection to a James Beard Award-winning story Good Beer Hunting published in 2022, in which Mark Dredge explored how flavor wheels and tasting tools should evolve to speak to a global collection of beer drinkers. To build on the ideas you may have read about in that story and share new ones, joining me were:

• Breeze Galindo, director of operations for the Michael James Jackson Foundation and founder of MiLuna Brewing.

• Lindsay Barr, co-founder of DraughtLab Sensory Software.

• Rafael D’Armas, brewer at Brookyln’s Kings County Brewers Collective, also known as KCBC.

As you listen to the back-and-forth between these three, you get to hear practical, scientific, and philosophical approaches to how we can all think differently about the way we describe and talk about beer. The importance of this, as you’ll hear, is a necessary step to acknowledge how diverse beer is becoming—even if it’s been slow—but how much the language we use is going to matter next year and long after that. After you listen to this episode, make sure to check out the other two from Rare & Vintage, which includes a panel discussion about bias in measurement, brewing, and more, and a keynote conversation with my Good Beer Hunting colleague and friend, Jamaal Lemon.

This episode is one of a three-part series recorded as part of the Rare & Vintage Beer Tasting, an annual event held in Durham, North Carolina that brings brewers and beer lovers together from all over the country. Along with a beer festival, Rare & Vintage also hosts beer industry professional development conversations each January. The combo acts as a fundraising and awareness effort for the Michael James Jackson Foundation, which funds education and career advancement for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the brewing and distilling industries.

For this year’s event, I moderated three discussions, and in this episode, you’ll hear me in conversation with my Good Beer Hunting colleague, Jamaal Lemon. Jamaal has written some of the most celebrated work published at GBH, which includes a 2023 James Beard Award for his story, Come Hell or High Water — Oysters, Brewing, and How the Come Yahs & Bin Yahs Could End Sea Level Rise in Charleston. He’s been a contributor to Good Beer Hunting since 2020 and also writes the blog, Bootlegger’s Baby for us, which focuses on Jamaal’s ruminations on fatherhood and family.

During our talk at Rare & Vintage, Jamaal was welcomed as a keynote speaker, so we engaged in a discussion that would inspire conversations between brewers for the whole weekend. We talked about big ideas, storytelling, innovation in beer, and more. You’ll hear us talk about where Jamaal gets his ideas, why he cares about stories of the water, and much more. After you listen to this episode, make sure to check out the other two, which include panel discussions about bias in beer sensory and science with some of the smartest minds in beer as well as a discussion of how to build inclusive language for how we talk about beer.

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times—beverage companies are going to have to expand their offerings not just to grow, but to survive at all. In this episode of The Gist, lead Sightlines reporter Kate Bernot joins me, Beth Demmon, to take a big look at 2023 and what the numbers mean for 2024, why diversification is the word of the year, and what a brewery buying into CBD could signal to the rest of the industry. This is the Gist.