What do you hope your fans will take away from your Moveable Yeast project? The primary goal of the series was to demonstrate to beer lovers―who may not be as familiar with yeast as, say, homebrewers would be―how large an effect yeast has on the flavor of beer. People talk about malt and hops a... View Article
Tell me about AC Golden. GK: We’re owned by MillerCoors. Pete Coors took a look at how new products like Blue Moon were being developed for the pipeline, and noticed that we weren’t doing many. Largely, what the big brewers have done is spend anywhere from $19 to 30 million developing a brand, developing the... View Article
When Live Oak opened in 1997, you specialized in beer styles that most craft brewers weren’t making. Why did you make that decision? Our first beer was a pilsner. I don’t know if anybody was making any back then—Victory might have been. We started making Czech pilsner because they taste so good and we love... View Article
You’ve won Large Brewpub of the Year twice, and you have won Alpha King twice. So what I want to know is, what’s the story with the plaid pants? That’s a good one. I like that question, right off. In my high school years, some friends of mine used to wear kind of loud pants... View Article
What was the status of craft brewing when you arrived in the U.S.? Back in 1986, there were about 50 breweries, period, including all the big guys. I came here in June of ’86 to help David Geary build Geary Brewing Co. About a month after I got here, Richard Wrigley opened the Commonwealth brewpub... View Article
I think Goose Island was the first brewpub I ever visited, not too long after you opened. Tell me how the brewery began and how you moved into the company. My father [John Hall] was in the paper packaging business, which was a good business, but about the least sexy business there is. And he... View Article
How did you become involved with the Lhasa Beer project in Tibet? When I was at Portland Brewing, one of the things we offered was consulting for other breweries. The Lhasa people came to me and said they were interested in brewing a beer in Tibet. I liked what they had to say. That was... View Article
How long have you been the head brewer for Duvel? I’ve been with the company for 17 years, and I’ve been the head brewmaster for 10 years now.
Over here, we tend to think of brewing in Ireland as being dominated by one very big brewing company and two smaller ones. Tell me about the rise of craft brewing culture there. These days, it’s really one big company and one smaller one, Diageo and Heineken. Craft brewing really took off in Ireland in... View Article
