Bongs, beer, and boogeymen—on this episode of The Gist, we kick things off with cannabis. Then, Sightlines reporter Kate Bernot shares her insights from the 2024 Craft Brewers Conference in Las Vegas. We’re also joined by special guest Paige Latham Didora, who chats with us about non-competes and the FTC’s recent ban on them. What does it mean for the beer industry? Keep listening to find out.

This is a special episode hosted in collaboration with the American Cider Association—a great way to bring you an episode with audio from an event dedicated to cider in the culinary space. While you will hear my voice now, this conversation is led by Leah Scafe of Stockpot Collective in Portland, Oregon. Leah worked with the Cider Association to host the roundtable discussion called “Orchard to Table” during the organization’s annual CiderCon event in January 2024.

With Stockpot Collective, Leah produces unique food and beverage events, and leads conversations that are specific to the needs and interests of food and beverage producers, which is what we’ll enjoy in this recording of Orchard to Table, a celebration of Pacific Northwest cider and Portland’s culinary community. Along with Leah, we’ll hear from three Oregon-based, James Beard-nominated chefs and sommeliers on why they love pairing, cooking with, and celebrating cider:

• Brent Braun of Portland’s OK Omens, a co-owner of that James Beard-nominated restaurant, a Food & Wine Magazine Sommelier of the Year, and co-founder of Post Familiar Wine.

• Katy Millard of Portland’s Coquine, a chef and co-founder of the award-winning Coquine, a multi-year James Beard Award nominee and finalist, and StarChef Rising Star Award recipient.

• Nate Ready of Hood River’s Hiyu Wine Farm, a James Beard Award semi-finalist, former Master Sommelier, farm owner, and alone with making wine at Hiyu, is cider maker for his Floreal line of brands.

Magic takes time, patience, and intention. So does brewing. The two concepts intertwine fantastically and theatrically in Jeff Alworth’s Signifier for Good Beer Hunting, titled “Long Live the Sorcery — Brujos Brewing in Portland, Oregon.” In the piece, he delves into the magical world of Brujos, a business that officially opened in March 2024, but has been percolating for a decade under the creative vision of owner and brewer Sam Zermeño.

What started as a brand and hobby picked up steam on social media around 10 years ago, when Zermeño was still a homebrewer in Southern California with a penchant for making malty beers and an appreciation for what he calls “witchy shit” and the occult. Once he got some professional brewing experience under his belt—or, wizard robes, which seems more likely—and moved to the Pacific Northwest, things began to settle into place. It wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t magic, but it was definitely a journey that deserves its own story. When Alworth decided to write about it, he says it was that slippery concept of “authenticity” that drew him to write about Zermeño’s vision and the Brujos dream finally realized.

In this conversation, Alworth and I talk about how and why this story feels a lot different than much of the cynical, business-oriented beer writing that’s pervasive in media today. He talks about how, despite being in a city proudly full of weirdos, Brujos takes it to a whole new level, and how it still just works. We talk about the dichotomy of the sacred and profane, the beauty of ritual, and magical realism that serves as a foundation for the brewery. As I say later in the episode, it’s a nice story about good people doing cool things.

Hillary Barile isn’t sure what she’d call herself first: a farmer or a maltster. In reality, she’s both, working as a fifth generation farmer at Rabbit Hill Farms & Malthouse in Shiloh, New Jersey. There, she and members of her family produce barley and other crops, as well as run a small-scale malthouse that supplies ingredients for breweries and distilleries. And, as president of the Craft Maltsters Guild Board of Directors, she works to educate and grow the craft malt community across North America and beyond.

So why, and how, did she make the jump from farming pottoes to investing in the agriculture and future of craft malt? It started with homebrewing, of course, with aspirations of opening a brewery to diversify and solidify her farm’s finances. But, as she explains in this episode, the business plan never got that far. As for what’s next, she says the breweries prioritizing local craft malt can tell unique stories that still reach the hearts of drinkers, giving them a small, but sufficient shield against difficult economic forces. We also discuss the many definitions of the word “sustainable,” and the efforts she’s making to ensure generations to come will still have the opportunity to nurture the land her family has cultivated.

It’s time for the Brewers Association’s annual report for 2023. Who came out on top? Who’s new to the list and how did they get there? What on Earth is going on with draft sales, and what new data is still to come from the upcoming Craft Brewers Conference? All this and more is next, on this episode of the Gist.

You’ve heard the joke—four scientists walk into a bar, and hilarity ensues. But have you heard the one about a few NASA employees opening a brewery? It’s not a setup. It’s how True Anomaly Brewing Company in Houston, Texas actually started, when four friends and homebrewers decided to trade in the final frontier for a shot at making their own beer.

Michael Duckworth is co-founder and CEO of True Anomaly, which was recently named Brewery of the Year at the Texas Craft Brewers Cup for the second year in a row. Now in their sixth year, True Anomaly specializes in making wild and sour beers, but in a lager-focused state like Texas, they brew plenty of clean beers as well. They’ve been recognized for both with medal wins in competitions like the World Beer Cup and Great American Beer Festival. And now, they’re preparing to open a much larger second location later this year, which you’ll hear about, and plan to up their output from around 1,200 barrels to around 2,000 by the end of 2024.

All this begs the question: how did a bunch of NASA nerds pull this off? Well, according to Michael, the four founders took a methodical, scientific approach to the business plan and applied an artistic sensibility to making the beers themselves. Wild beer can be unpredictable, but it’s that freedom from expectation he says makes each day a fun and unique surprise. In this episode, he also talks about the potential he sees in the Houston craft beverage scene, why they implemented inclusivity as part of their operations from day one, and why you might see an astronaut or two hanging around the brewery on the weekends.

What happens when a respected name in wine and spirits tries to make a move into the beer world? Does their experience translate into a new category, or do they have to build a reputation from the ground up? Does the beer industry welcome interlopers, or view them with skepticism and confusion? And if they’re asking to judge your beer at a new competition, does anyone show up?

These are all questions I asked myself when I was invited to judge at The Tasting Alliance’s second ever beer competition in December 2023. I, like some others in and around beer, had never heard of the group, or only knew them for their wine and spirits competitions that take place in San Francisco, New York, and Singapore.

In this episode, I talk to Maddee McDowell, vice president of The Tasting Alliance and the person who handles the logistical organization of their beer competition. You’ll hear about what it was like for me to participate in judging, but also what The Tasting Alliance hopes sets them apart from other competitions. Maddee shares what the biggest category of entries was (it’s shockingly not IPAs), some of the differences between running wine and spirits competitions versus beer, and how they’re trying to build relationships in the beer community to gain a wider diversity of palates at the judging table. We also talk about how the competition changed from year one to two, and how many entries she, somewhat optimistically, hopes to receive in year three.

The competition doesn’t end once medals are announced, McDowell assures us. And at the very least, The Tasting Alliance’s experience is another way for us to better understand competitions and what it takes to make them happen.

It’s a consumer’s world—we’re just living in it. Maybe that’s just how it seems nowadays, based on the number of new products on shelves and who’s putting them there. In this episode of The Gist, lead Sightlines reporter Kate Bernot and Beth Demmon (that’s me) take a look at what products Tilray has released since going on a brewery-buying bonanza last August. We also talk about what sort of vibes Kate saw at the recent Illinois Craft Brewers Convention, and finally, what’s the latest buzz on BuzzBallz after Sazerac announced their plans to acquire the one-in-a-million brand success story. All this and more is coming right up, right here on The Gist.