Today we’re thrilled to announce our second major underwriter for GBH — helping bring another year of acceleration to some of the most progressive, productive, and ambitious voices in the beer industry with our growing team of writers and photographers around the world. I'm continuously in awe of what they accomplish within our relatively modest means.

New Belgium is a culture we’ve been lucky to witness from the inside out, as our studio team worked with them last year on the strategy for their revamp of their specialty portfolio. As the oldest continuous sour culture in America, their beers, and the people behind them, have helped lead the industry for more than 25 years. And with collaborative efforts like the “Sour on Sour” panel Lauren Limbach (formerly Salazar) and Andrew Emerton invited us to facilitate at CBC in Philadelphia a couple years ago, to the work they’re doing with the newly formed Sour and Wild Ales Guild (SWAG), the specialty team has been busy working on a new chapter.

Today, GBH is part of that next chapter as well. Not only are New Belgium underwriting a portion of GBH’s editorial costs, we’re going to be working with them to further the dialog for sour and wild ales in America, continuing to focus on the innovation, conversation, and relevance of these beers to drinkers of all sorts. We’ll be releasing more details on that effort as the program takes shape this month.

The way these partnerships are formed, as we stated with our first, is on a shared understanding that GBH’s focus on a topic is inherently valuable to the industry, far more than any single producer. To that end, no underwriting dictates the particular stories, angles, or subjects we decide to pursue in that shared interest. Rather, underwriting provides ways for a company to invest in GBH’s commitment to dialog even if they themselves aren’t the focus of that dialog, or have a specific voice in it. In other words, helping GBH expand the platform we've created for intellectually honest content in beer. And it’s contractural.

As part of GBH Underwriting, you’ll see display ads and hear podcast mentions from New Belgium and partners that we onboard throughout the year, representing breweries big and small, and companies who find value in our audience even outside of beer. Our focus on sour and wild ales will become a theme on the site, clearly labeled as an underwriter supported column by New Belgium. Those will show up periodically.

For New Belgium’s part, they’re happy to be here, contributing to an editorial voice they find valuable, and helping a theme with clear relevance to their own future turn into critical and revealing dialog for everyone. We appreciate their generosity and selfless contribution to the industry through the work we’ll do. And we hope to do well by everyone for it.

Cheers to the employee owners at New Belgium Brewing.