Every year, we reflect on how lucky we are to chronicle the stories of folks making the beer world better. From incredible leadership to innovative ways of thinking, these are the people shaping the future of the industry—and we’re thrilled to share them with you. These are the 2019 Signifiers.
We’ll be updating this page every day for the next two weeks, so come back and check in! Thanks for spending a little bit of your time with us.
You can’t talk about craft beer in 2019 without a sideways glance at recreational cannabis. Coincidentally, one of the country’s largest cannabis companies is headquartered just down the street from GBH.
In four short years, Grassroots Cannabis has become one of the biggest vertically integrated, multi-state, real-estate-driven providers of medical cannabis—and has a pending merger in play worth $875M. On the back of all that growth, the people-based part of the business grew by almost an order of magnitude. And that development was led by former 16 on Center HR manager and recruiter Andrew Zens.
At 16oC, Zens was tasked with building a corporate layer for the thriving hospitality group known for Dusek’s Board & Beer, Thalia Hall (where we host Uppers & Downers), and Longman & Eagle, among many others, helping recruit a team of Michelin star-winning chefs and hospitality workers along the way.
At Grassroots, he’s helped grow a team similarly focused on hospitality—particularly as the company prepares for the expanding recreational market (cannabis becomes legal in Illinois in January). In doing so, he’s taken all the lessons he’s learned from brewery taprooms, restaurants, and bars and is employing them in an entirely new sector, with almost no precedent.
What does this have to do with being a Signifier in beer? If you attend one of his office bottle shares and see the number of craft beer professionals following his interest into cannabis, you’d have an idea.
—Michael Kiser
For four years, two months, two weeks, and one day, you couldn’t drink at The Kernel, not even if you wanted to. The brewery—which was founded in 2009, and is arguably London’s most influential of the modern era—was a victim of its own success. For a while, on Saturdays, crowds would flock to its railway arches, and take up every square inch of the picnic tables it arranged between pallets of malt and KeyKegs. Soon, waits for a drink grew to 15, 20, 25 minutes long.
No one was happy: not the thirsty visitors, who soon learned to order two beers at once, and certainly not the brewery staff, whose hospitality just couldn’t accommodate the volume of besieging drinkers. And so, on September 5, 2015, The Kernel ceased pouring on site. “We are working on a more suitable way to be able to serve beers directly to our customers, but this will take some time,” the brewery’s farewell note read.
“Some time” proved to be an understatement, but the wait for that suitable solution has been worth it: the brewery’s new taproom—which officially opened on November 20, 2019, and is located just two arches down—is warm and woodlined, dotted with plants and outfitted with proper, heavy tables. It’s an accessible space, unshowy but resoundingly comfortable, primarily because Mauritz Borg and Michaela Zelenanska worked so hard to make it that way. Borg is now the taproom’s general manager—previously, he worked behind the stick at beloved pubs like The King’s Arms and The Axe—and Zelenanska has been a Kernel employee for the last three years. “Michaela and I were project managers, basically,” says Borg. “Neither of us had any experience in the field.”
When they were first given access to the arch, the configuration of the space was wrong, and so they demolished all the interior walls to get back to a blank slate. From there, they taught themselves how to build a bar—quite literally from the ground up. Together, they worked out the layout of the space; liaised with licensing lawyers, architects, builders, plumbers, and electricians; and puzzled over decor. Borg designed the draft system and hired a crack team of his favorite bartenders. Zelenanska insisted on the soundproof panels that have given the space a zenlike softness. “It makes such a difference—it’s magical,” says Borg.
As is true of everything the Kernel does, the taproom’s construction has been a study in conscientious, ponderous care. “To [founder] Evin [O’Riordain], me, and Mauritz, it matters to try and do things better. If we can do things better, we would like to,” says Zelenanska. Now, the return of this better, happier taproom signals nothing less than a bright new era in London’s beer scene.
—Claire Bullen
Collin McDonnell is like the Leonardo DiCaprio of GBH Signifiers. He comes up in conversation every year, but somehow doesn’t get the nod. So in an effort to avoid giving him an award for a bear-mauling film, we’re going to get it right, right now.
McDonnell has been one of the biggest proponents in the industry of Northern California beer, small breweries, self-distributing and co-distributing, freshness, quality, responsibility, and the Brewers Association. This year he managed to hit two particularly high marks that serve the wider industry well (as do most of his victories).
First, he got a local paper to print a massive headline about the importance of freshness in beer. In the run-up to the inaugural Freshtival (co-sponsored by the Bay Area Brewers Guild), a festival showcasing beers that were no more than two weeks old, his message about this unique gathering of breweries caught the attention of local media. He didn’t use that as a platform for his own brewery, HenHouse Brewing Company, so much as he did his interest in spreading the gospel of freshness. In the end, the festival showcased over 100 beers, which must have been a bonkers experience for guests.
Secondly, he got chain retailers to buy into that message in a big way. This year he formed a partnership with 7-Eleven to bring HenHouse’s beer into the convenience chain (which is more often associated with 19.2oz singles and 12-packs of All Day IPA and Miller Lite than the hazy freshies that HenHouse makes and distributes locally).
“People are like, ‘Oh my god, I imagine they just beat the shit out of your beer.’ And I’m like, ‘No, they’re excited about it,’” he says. “Like, the convenience-store-type places, they’re really excited to receive the attention from someone who actually cares about the beer. And it’s a place where lots of people buy beer … there’s a ton of people who aren’t in a position in life, whether it’s money, whether it’s time, whether it’s just interest to go to a brewery for cool can releases, you know, and I want those people to have good beer too, right?”
See you in line at the self-checkout.
—Michael Kiser
Sure, hard seltzer owned 2019, but it was also a huge year for Norway’s kveik yeast, which earned full-length features in The Takeout, Paste, The Growler, October, The Chicago Tribune, Craft Beer and Brewing, and here at GBH, among other publications. That frenzy wouldn’t have happened without the work of Lars Marius Garshol, who pretty much single-handedly brought kveik yeast and the traditions of Norwegian farmhouse brewing into international consciousness through his blog and his magazine writing. Today we might be able to get commercial kveik strains from the likes of Omega Yeast, White Labs, and the Yeast Bay, but that certainly wasn’t the case even just a few years ago. (All three labs explicitly credit craft brewing’s favorite Scandinavian for spreading the kveik gospel.)
In addition to his work tracking down obscure yeast strains, listing them on his essential Farmhouse Yeast Registry, and posting samples off to commercial yeast labs, Garshol also took over the organization of Western Norway’s Norsk Kornølfestival, a celebration of Norwegian farmhouse beers, in 2019. Additionally, he gave a presentation at Burnt City Brewing’s Kveik Fest in Chicago, which should help see many more kveik beers added to the 300 or so that are currently listed on RateBeer. While Garshol has already inarguably changed brewing as we know it, 2020 will mark another inflection point for his work: his new book, Historical Brewing Techniques: The Lost Art of Farmhouse Brewing, will be published by Brewers Publications in April.
—Evan Rail
Much of the argument in favor of “drinking local” has been predicated on some promise of proximity. There’s a feeling of altruism involved when you support a small business in your own town. But what if—and hear me out—not much else about that beer is local after all?
Admiral Maltings’ Ron Silberstein, Curtis Davenport, and Dave McLean aim to address that disconnect. The founders of the Alameda, California craft malthouse are enlisting and contracting their local farmers to grow barley, oats, and rye that the company will then malt and sell to nearby breweries and distilleries.
Beer is, by definition, an agricultural product, and yet standard practice for craft breweries all over the country is to order ready-made, mass-produced malts from companies thousands of miles away. It’s counter-intuitive. But now, maltsters like Admiral are offering another way for breweries to source raw ingredients. The resulting benefits are manifold. By buying from regional suppliers, brewers are another step closer to making holistically local beer; they’re also engaging in a process that’s more eco-friendly and supports area farmers. And that’s not even to mention the stark differences in taste between macro and craft malts.
Admiral’s green ideals—like working with farmers who practice carbon sequestration and no-till farming—may be a harbinger for the sustainability models of the future, but the company’s biggest selling point is that its malts just taste better: they’re grassy and bready, with notes of honey. And it’s not just me saying so. It’s industry judges, too: beers made with Admiral malts earned 11 awards at the Great American Beer Festival in 2019. That’s something to toast to.
—Alyssa Pereira
Will Tatchell is filling bottles with as much of his farm as possible.
For over a decade, Tatchell, along with his wife Kalie, has been working on a Tasmanian farm, building a young family, and brewing beer. Tatchell’s goal from the start was to make 100% estate ales. That means grain and hops are grown on site, the water comes from a natural spring on the farm, and yeast and bacteria float in from the nighttime Tasmanian air. In the last 12 months, he’s begun malting his own grain, and has released spontaneously fermented beers with blended components that have been aging for up to three years. There are other breweries around Australia doing similar things—growing hops and grain, and making wild-fermented ales—but no one is doing quite as much as Van Dieman.
Thankfully for the rest of the industry, Tatchell loves to share his experience and knowledge. He gives his time to be on the board of the Independent Brewers Association, and leads a small-scale malting panel at its annual conference.
Somehow, he also makes time to have one of the most interesting and charming social media pages of any brewery. Think photos of lambs, with musings on their antics (“granted their game was a little physical, but they did have their own lamb rules and associated lamb logic”), beautiful shots of Tasmanian farm life, and tributes to his dog Rusty, who passed away late this year.
It’s not the easiest way to make a living from beer, but the world is better for it.
—Luke Robertson
In his role as beer consultant to Colruyt (a large Belgian supermarket chain), Jo Panneels initiated a project in 2019 to bring beer from breweries normally excluded from grocery-store distribution chains into local retail branches—all without forcing prices on the breweries, or causing them to overreach on capacity.
Colruyt shoppers this year had a choice not only between Leffe and Duvel and other larger commercial brands, but also between local breweries Panneels had selected for their quality, beer style and regionality, including Verzet, Het Nest, De Ranke, Alvinne, Hof ten Dormaal, Minne, Brussels Beer Project, and La Brasserie de Namur.
But Panneels is more than just a consultant. Back in 2008, he and his friends Jozef Van Bosstraeten, Stijn Ecker, and Jeroen Van Lier began using aging beer in French oak barrels that they sourced from their Burgundy wine connections, purchasing wort and Lambics of various ages from Lindemans, 3 Fonteinen, Oud Beersel, and Hanssens, and experimenting with Kriek Lambiek in 60-liter carboys. In 2016, they officially opened Lambiek Fabriek in Sint-Pieters-Leeuw and teamed up with Jo Van Aert of Belgoo Brewery, who agreed to help them establish their blendery on site and brewed traditional Lambic wort to their specifications.
2019 saw the international recognition of Panneels’ work as a Lambic blender. In February of this year, Lambiek Fabriek—now boasting blending stock of eight 47-hectoliter foeders and 280 barrels measuring between 200 liters and 440 liters—was named Best New Brewery in Belgium by RateBeer. A few weeks ago, its Brett-Elle, a 6% ABV Oude Geuze, also won a bronze medal at the Brussels Beer Challenge in the Speciality Beer: Old Style Geuze-Lambic category.
This year, Panneels contributed not only to the revival of traditional Lambic in Belgium, but to spreading word among the general Belgian public about an important but often overlooked cohort of Belgium's smaller and more interesting breweries.
—Breandán Kearney
If craft beer picked a word of the year for 2019, it would be “diversity”. A close second would likely be the contentious “influencer,” which has spawned ferocious arguments about those who use the title, and their place in the industry, this year. But “black influencer” is the phrase Brandon Montgomery proudly uses to describe himself, and his Instagram account @blackbeertravelers, to me.
A systems engineer at a global aerospace technology company by day, Montgomery used his knowledge of data and extensive travel experience to launch Diversify Your Palate, a free Google map pinpointing diversely owned beer businesses, brands, and other companies around the world. After compiling it for his own use over the course of years, he finally promoted it publicly at this year’s Fresh Fest in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since then, unique pageviews on the map have more than doubled, and additional crowdsourced entries have poured in from all over the globe.
It’s still just Montgomery handling updates, but he’s broadened the focus from solely black-run beer businesses to include women, Latinx people, and other minority communities in the craft beer scene. He admits that between openings and closures, and given the sheer scale of craft beer around the world, the project will never be “complete.” But he’s hopeful his work will show that genuine influencing can be a force for good.
—Beth Demmon
American embassies traditionally present California wine at their events, but as the agricultural attaché at the U.S. embassy in Berlin, Kelly Stange gave American craft culture a spotlight in a part of the world has long been convinced of the preeminence of its own bier and hopfen.
Over her five years in Germany, Stange and the U.S. ambassador hosted between 200 and 400 people annually at American craft beer tastings in Berlin, while working with the five U.S. consulates in Germany to present American craft beer at their own dinners, tastings, and Fourth of July celebrations. Her influence extended beyond Deutschland: responsible for six Central European countries, Stange brought Firestone Walker’s brewmaster Matt Brynildson to teach seminars on brewing with New World hops in both the Czech Republic and Germany, and even snuck Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider into an embassy event in Vienna.
Stange’s European tour of duty ended in July, but her influence in Lager’s homeland will be felt for a while. For one, she leaves behind teams that are invested in continuing to promote U.S. beer. And while her work was certainly appreciated by European brewers and drinkers who already knew about craft styles, she also brought good beer to a very different audience. It’s one thing to give Czech brewers the chance to ask Firestone Walker’s guy about Luponic Distortion, or to serve the first truly fresh version of an authentic West Coast IPA to a craft-curious German. It’s an entirely different influence to present modern craft flavors to folks who would have never heard of them otherwise: Old World politicians, diplomats, and journalists who normally cover politics and economics. The knock-on effects are immeasurable.
—Evan Rail
In 2019, Hazy Little Thing, a New England-style Hazy IPA, will become Sierra Nevada Brewing Company's #2 brand in chain grocery, convenience, and liquor stores. In its second year of existence.
This is no small feat for one of the country's oldest and most influential breweries, which for years has relied on its flagship Pale Ale to carry the load. Torpedo Extra IPA became a solid sidekick when it debuted in 2009, but sales of both brands have declined for the past four years. Then in March 2017, Sean Lavery, brewing technical director with Sierra's R&D team, started development on what would become a new-age flagship for the 40-year-old business. It’s since sold more than 100,000 barrels’ worth through the end of November—big enough alone to be equivalent to some of the largest breweries in the country.
Across 10 trial versions of the beer, Lavery and five colleagues perfected the combination of ingredients to create a shelf-stable Hazy IPA, released in limited distribution in November 2017, then nationwide in 2018. It doubled its in-store volume in 2019 as Pale Ale and Torpedo continued to decline, and is suddenly at the core of Sierra's marketing efforts as the brewery enters a new decade (and forgoes the clarity of its past brand anchors).
Peers like Samuel Adams (New England IPA) and New Belgium Brewing Company (Voodoo Ranger Juicy Haze IPA) have also had success with the style, but sell about 25% of what Sierra Nevada's version moves. This Little Thing has become such a Big Deal that the brewery is expanding the family, and is set to release the 9% Fantastic Haze Imperial IPA to kick off 2020.
It's because of Lavery and his team that Sierra has found resonance with a new brand—arguably the first time it's had this kind of home run since Torpedo came aboard a decade ago. Past spin-offs of Pale Ale and Torpedo have fizzled in their second or third years, but the juicy, Citra-led Hazy Little Thing is gaining strength. For Sierra, the future looks both hazy and fruitful.
—Bryan Roth
As one of the youngest lab techs in the country, Amy Crook has helped Firestone Walker Brewing Company create one of the largest and most progressive quality departments in the country among smaller breweries. That’s not to say that Crook’s in control, given the microbiological demands of the job. Rather, as she describes it, her efforts are largely about keeping up with the rapidly evolving brewery and the quantity of beers, distribution plans, and degree of customer expectations that would make a more traditional lab team panic.
This year alone, Firestone Walker started distributing in Australia, which stretched its dissolved oxygen goals to the limit as it struggled to preserve freshness during the long journey (and in preparation for the relatively warm shelves of the faraway continent).
As part of the Duvel system of breweries in the U.S., her lab teams are an ongoing resource for the whole family. Crook also helped develop custom software for the brewery’s sensory program, tracking off flavors and taster profiles across the organization.
This year marked one of her greatest challenges to date: the introduction of Rosalie, a beer-wine hybrid that used grapes in the fermentation profile, bringing a new microclimate of wild yeast and bacteria into the brewery—all of which needed to be fermented and blended into a clean beer.
Everything moves faster in craft beer years. How much prep time did she get? “It was kind of like, ‘All right, we’re getting grape just next week.’” she recalls. “I learned a lot about grape juice, microbiology and wine microbiology.”
—Michael Kiser
That there are passionate craft beer fans out there, utilizing their various social media platforms to champion the industry, surprises no one. In many respects, craft beer was built on this fervent word-of-mouth. And that’s where individuals like Ann V. Reilly have really made their impact felt.
Reilly is the executive director of the NYC Brewers Guild. It’s a role that sees her, in the simplest terms, boosting the expansive New York City craft beer scene as her full-time gig. But she’s been one of those passionate fans for far longer.
Previously, Reilly tirelessly promoted local beer and breweries via her Instagram, aptly named @nyccraftbeer. She was a fixture: I can’t think of one person—myself included—who attended or promoted more events/breweries/bars in the city than she did. I was convinced there were two of her, because she was everywhere. In the beginning, the pursuit was a side hustle, done out of pure enthusiasm. Reilly showed no bias, no allegiance to any one brewery. To her, all of NYC’s craft scene needed to be championed, and her Instagram become a virtual billboard pushing brewery openings and tap takeovers and can releases. If you wanted to know what was going on in beer in New York, her feed was a good place to start.
She eventually channeled that enthusiasm into an industry job, working for Five Boroughs Brewing in Sunset Park, Brooklyn as the events and promotions coordinator. This year she accepted her position at the NYC Brewers Guild, a role which, based on her promotion of NYC craft beer for so many years, feels like nothing less than poetic justice. Her job is to do what she’s always done—and the last few years now look like a multi-year interview that has finally landed her the dream gig.
—Cory Smith
Speciation Artisan Ales has been making fantastic mixed-culture beers since Mitch and Whitney Ermatinger opened the brewery in 2016. With a focus on Michigan-grown ingredients and native yeasts, Mitch and his team were already doing the Lord's work when it came to brewing. But why stop there? Why not start making wine?
When Native Species Winery was born earlier this year, it, too, was guided by Ermatinger’s philosophy regarding spontaneous fermentation and the importance of local ingredients. As is common among brewers of his ilk, wine—especially natural wine—had long been an inspiration and frequent choice of beverage for Ermatinger. Soon, his small side project became a legit part of the business—particularly when Ermatinger found out he could no longer drink the beers he made due to a celiac diagnosis.
Ermatinger has since invested heavily in Native Species, to the point where it is now a leading voice in the beer-meets-wine space. Beyond natural winemaking’s low-intervention approach, Ermatinger uses a brewer’s mind (and tools) to push the category forward. Wines are aged in tequila and Scotch barrels, and acronyms like “BBA” adorn his menu. Those flourishes, combined with traditional winemaking techniques, have made for expressive, well-rounded wines that are also accessible for beer drinkers.
Native Species isn’t alone in this endeavor, as American Solera, Bruery Terreux, and others have expanded into wine and hybrid beer-wine products. But Ermatinger’s experimental ethos has Native Species leading the pack, and continuing to blur the line between the two beverage categories.
—Dave Riddile
Chalonda White wasn’t expecting to get called the N-word that morning. But when she opened her email on September 9th, 2019, an unprovoked message from a stranger included the slur multiple times, along with other obscene names and a claim that she had no place in the beer community.
In the face of such hate, the black beer blogger would have been more than justified in responding with rage. Instead, she chose to share the incident on Twitter to show that, despite craft beer’s desire to be a bastion of diversity and inclusion, there’s still plenty of work to be done.
Within hours, the Brewers Association’s diversity ambassador, founder of Craft Beer For All, and 2018 GBH Signifier Dr. J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham launched the #IAmCraftBeer movement, which now has thousands of entries on social media and recently spawned the activist website, #IAmCraftBeer. (The site’s tagline, “When someone gives you sh*t, use it for fertilizer,” perfectly encapsulates White’s openly resilient attitude in the face of racist antagonism.)
Since the initial encounter, White’s been busy leveraging the support and momentum, inspiring meetups around the world and sparking conversations both behind computer screens and in real life. “Conversations are [now] being had more outright,” she says. As for the long-term, “I want people's mindset to change when it comes to diversity and inclusion. I want them to know it is not just a social media conversation but there needs to be effective change and that starts with the mindset.”
The conversation is just getting started. I, for one, can’t wait to see what’s next.
—Beth Demmon
From the outside looking in, Fresh Fest—described as “the nation’s first Black brew festival”—seemed like one of craft beer’s best parties in 2019. And no doubt it was. But anyone who’s ever put something like this together knows there’s a veritable shit-ton of work that goes on behind the scenes of a great party.
During a conversation with cofounder Day Bracey earlier this year, he described just how insane, and nail-biting, the whole thing was. As the brand picked up steam, so many people wanted to participate—either to connect with his growing audience, or reflect it—that it resulted in a shock to the system for a lot of people who have been struggling to take the diversity and inclusion issue beyond talking points.
Bracey and his colleagues led by example. And that example made things look so … simple.
Beyond what was visible to consumers, the festival grew beyond its original venue capacity, ticket sales didn’t take off until the weather cleared up last minute, and its financial/logistical success was far from guaranteed, despite the intense interest (and partly because of it). Bracey and his team just had to hunker down and believe in the mission, and their hard work paid off.
As brewers came out of the woodwork to join, the breaking point quickly exposed itself, but he proceeded with a kind of faith. “How could I say no to people who wanted to participate when the whole point was to be inclusive?” he said.
—Michael Kiser
Although their first commercial releases were back in the summer of 2018, Tom and Wim Jacobs’ Belgian farmhouse brewery, Antidoot - Wilde Fermenten, really exploded onto the European Wild Ale scene this year. Located just a short drive from the Pajottenland (the region of Belgium from which Lambic hails), the Jacobs brothers are doing their part to keep traditional brewing alive on a small homestead. Their connection to local agriculture extends beyond farmhouse beers, and includes native-fermented ciders using apples from their own orchard; small batches of natural wine; and co-fermented, hybrid beverages of all three.
The brewery’s focus on locally sourced and organic ingredients, fermented slowly in oak without any lab-grown cultures, meant its path was always going to be challenging. Each batch Antidoot released in those early days was small, and demand was high. These difficulties were compounded in 2019, when word spread among Lambic and Wild Ale fans throughout Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and the U.S. about the quality of Antidoot’s products.
Previously, bottle releases happened on the small, solar-powered farm that Tom and his wife, Kristien, own. They had sought a quiet, self-sustaining life in the countryside. Needless to say, when hundreds of sour beer fans show up and form a line that’s several hours long outside your door, any tranquility vanishes pretty quickly.
As a result of these factors, the Jacobs brothers were forced to make some hard decisions about how to sell their products while maintaining their vision. In November, they launched a registration program for 50 lifetime memberships and 200 annual memberships; all members have guaranteed access to the brewery’s releases. They opened registration for a short time and then handpicked the members, many of whom had supported their efforts since their homebrewing days. This model was not without its critics, but all agreed it would restrict the number of unwanted guests visiting their home.
The brothers received 800 email requests in four minutes.
All those who were chosen had to pledge not to sell or trade the beers: another step to try and keep the community around the brewery focused and personal. Rather than outsourcing production of their dynamic beverages off the farm, they were willing to make sacrifices to operate as originally intended—and to create a new model of distribution in keeping with their products and ethos.
—Tim Decker
Is it gauche to nominate your friend and colleague for a Signifier? It might be. I’m not practicing a cool objectivity when I say that Lily Waite is one of the more extraordinary people that the beer world has the pleasure to know. But failing to acknowledge that—or the fact that Lily has had a truly unstoppable year—would feel like a crime of omission.
It isn’t just me saying so. VinePair described the launch of Lily’s Queer Brewing Project—a collaborative brewing project designed to foster awareness, support, and visibility of trans and queer communities in the beer world, as well as raise money for related charities—as one of the top beer stories of the year. It also dubbed her an “LGBTQ Icon.”
It’s hard to believe that the project (which has seen Lily collaborate with more than a dozen breweries, including the likes of Goose Island, New Belgium, Northern Monk, and Brewery Bhavana) only kicked off in April. I was there for the launch night at Affinity Brew Co., when the first beer—Queer Royale, a wine-hued Blackcurrant Pale Ale—was poured. Since then, it seems like Lily is always on the road: participating in panel talks, taking part in brew days, and traveling to different countries.
2019 was also the year Lily really came into her own on GBH. She published several big stories for us, from a Berlin travel piece and a chronicle of an unexpected culinary retreat in Cornwall to an essay that pulled from critical theory and dug into complex questions around sexism in beer and the male gaze. Her work earned awards and honorable mentions at the 2019 North American Guild of Beer Writers Awards, and she received a commendation in the Best Young Beer Writer category at this year’s British Guild of Beer Writers Awards. Did I mention she also discovered her formidable talent for pottery in 2019, and recently launched her own ceramics line?
As this year has proven, Lily Waite is nothing shy of a force of nature—and this still feels like just the start.
—Claire Bullen
Miranda Hudson, co-founder of Duration Brewing in Norfolk, England, is a woman who gets things done. All her life she has chased down ideas and made them real—when she was studying theater, or working in interior design, or running a charity. Now, she’s betting the farm—quite literally—on a shared dream with her husband Derek Bates, Duration’s head brewer, and the former head brewer at Brew by Numbers in London. “I like to make dreams concrete,” she says.
Duration is building something relatively new in British brewing: a destination farmhouse brewery. It is a gamble to start a business like this away from its core, urban market. But if it works, Duration could showcase an alternative model for independent brewing in the U.K. that frees craft beer from the railway arches and industrial estates it currently calls home.
It’s unusual for a brewery to have attracted as much interest and gathered as much goodwill throughout the industry as Duration did before it had even opened. That’s all down to Hudson, who spun a story that captured the imagination of brewers and beer fans across the country, led the charge on social media, organized pre-launch collaborations, worked the festival circuit, and organized beer releases and other events in key bars and pubs around the country. She was also instrumental in winning grants and investment to get the business going.
Now Duration has its home, set among the ruins of the 900-year-old West Acre Priory, with a brew kit installed at last. Its first beers were launched in December. In 2020 we’ll get to see brewer Bates’ contribution to the project take off—but we wouldn’t have reached this point without Hudson’s fearsome drive and energy.
—Anthony Gladman
For 15 years, Seattle's Georgetown Brewing Company never sold its beer packaged in stores. For 17 years, it didn't even sell beer in its own taproom—at best, it would hand out free samples of what was on tap, or fill growlers to-go.
Since opening in 2002, it's become one of the 50 largest Brewers Association-defined craft breweries in the country (it was #44 in 2018), all while eschewing the steps for growth nearly all its peers have taken. But 2019 changed a lot for founders Manny Chao and Roger Bialous, who focused almost exclusively on selling beer through bars, restaurants, and local businesses until now.
After a year of construction, Georgetown opened a sit-down taproom for drinkers in October, one that’s big enough to hold 150 people. Those visitors can finally exchange money for beer to be enjoyed on-site. And given the taproom’s 24 taps, they'll have their work cut out for them.
This year was also a big one for Georgetown’s packaged products, which sold about 26,000 barrels’ worth in grocery and convenience chains through the end of November. Just three brands—Bodhizafa IPA, Lucille IPA, and Roger's Pilsner—will combine for almost twice as much in volume this year versus 2018, when the trio had a full year in the market.
According to the Brewers Association, own-premise sales accounted for about 40% of growth for its members in 2018, a figure that increases every year. It seems crazy to think Georgetown got this far without that piece in its business plan, but plans change—and maybe Chao and Bialous are just crazy like a fox.
—Bryan Roth
Middle Brow Beer Co. has been around in one form or another for over eight years, quietly releasing yeast-driven beers all over Chicagoland. So what makes Middle Brow worthy of a 2019 Signifier? The best way I can put it is that this year, its founders built a home.
In late January, Middle Brow opened the Bungalow in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. The Bungalow checks a lot of boxes: it's a brewery, a lunch and dinner spot serving sourdough-crust pizzas, and a destination for its outdoor space on sunny days. It’s hard to describe the x-factor that makes it so homey, but hanging out there feels like pulling an easy chair in front of a roaring fire. Come on in—you’ll want to stay a while.
While the pizza and beer are great—in fact, Chicago Magazine rated the Bungalow’s pizza as the best in Chicago, Bon Appétit included it on its annual Best New Restaurants shortlist, and the Chicago Tribune gave it a two-star review—what makes Middle Brow really special is that it keeps giving. Giving back to the community by offering free breakfast on the weekends to Chicago Public School students. Giving to a dizzying array of charities that seems to change every day. And giving to local artists like the band Whitney, who took over the patio space for a “block party” that included a basketball game, natural wines, and even a special kombucha release that was inspired by the band.
There are almost too many taprooms within walking distance of Middle Brow’s home. And while it's great to sit down and drink beer from the source, we’re going to need more leaders like Middle Brow in the industry—the kind who will sacrifice maximum profits in order to become a destination for the entire community.
— Jim Plachy
Earlier this year, when my creative partner Brad Evans and I were driving to the home of Heady Topper, all I could talk about was the beer. By the end of our tour with founder John Kimmich, it was the last thing on my mind. Instead of hop oils, my head was swimming with guilt about my own attempts to live a low-carbon life.
I’d watched his head brewer empty about 100 malt sacks into the mash tun, and each time he carefully removed the string studiously off the bottom before folding and stacking them neatly. The Alchemist does this with every sack it uses, preparing for the time when they become recyclable. They’re not yet, but Kimmich has been working on a solution with a recycling plant in Texas that he hopes to bring to the world in the next few months. In the meantime, he has been working with the maltsters, other brewers, and even the Vermont National Resources Board to collect and store the bags. Malt sacks seem like small potatoes, but if he’s successful, his efforts could save millions of tons of plastic from the landfill, significantly reducing the industry’s impact on the environment.
On his own, tiny scale, Kimmich is already making a difference. His aerobic digester processes all the organic matter from his brewery down to just a few barrels of slurry, which he then sends to the University of Vermont in Burlington to be used as biofuel. The roofs of his two breweries are also covered in solar panels. That means he puts out less organic waste than a three-bedroom house, and produces more energy than he consumes—with the surplus going to the local retirement home.
Hopefully he won’t think about the carbon footprint of the two cases of Heady I flew back to the U.K. with.
— Jonny Garrett
Words + Visuals by The GBH Collective
