Michael Kiser of Good Beer Hunting

[wuntrikpony]

If you banged a she who used to be a he, but she still had her man parts and you only touched it a few times, how much do you charge for a story on her new brewpub?

Following.

 

[SAISON FUCK]

Do you feel that your "Drink Woke" poster printed with gold flake is offensive to a serious social movement? Ironic?

 

[daniel1]

I also talk about, say, Hill Farm because I know Hill Farm. And I know Hill Fram because, I endeavor to know Hill Farm.

Has anyone made this their signature yet?

 

[ant880]

I guess all of this would make much more sense to me if I had any clue at all what the hell good beer hunting is.

 

[Snarf1]

They all talk about, say, Good Beer Hunting, but I don't know Good Beer Hunting. And I don't know Good Beer Hunting becasue I endeavor to not give a single ****.

 

[goodbeerhunting]

Do you feel that your "Drink Woke" poster printed with gold flake is offensive to a serious social movement? Ironic?

Certainly not intended to be so.

The "woke" term has an interesting history. https://www.google.com/amp/fusion.net/story/252567/stay-woke/amp/?client=safari

And long before that, the term "awake" had similar intent in our political/social discourse, but wasn't owned by any one group of people. Although my most vivid memory was the Jehovah's Witness magazine called Awake. (I grew up in some unique religious settings in backwoods Pennsylvania).

So when we had the idea for the poster, we considered our motives. For us, it was a continuation of our internal socio-political stances. Our tag line is "pour liberal" for a reason. As a business we donate to the ACLU, and journalism outlets that work to keep citizens in the know tlike Propublica. This past year we helped raised around $5k for a Latino cultural organization in Chicago that supports. immigrants through the arts with the 5 Rabbit Chinga to Pelo campaign.

So for us, the meaning behind Woke aligns with our values and actions in general, but also in the beer world, helping people understand the machinations behind an industry they love and work in, fighting for diversity and increasing the power of progressive voices, and grounding arguments in fact and respect in an increasingly politicized environment. Anyone who knows us sees the thread.

However, people who do not know us so well can easily read it as us co-opting someone else's message. I get that. There was some risk in it, and there might be some truth in it, albeit unintentional. We're open to that criticism and continue to respect that opinion even if we disagree.

 

[Snarf1]

goodbeerhunting do you look like a raisin after a big meal?

 

[RyanG1]

NOW I HAVE A NEW QUESTION

If you banged a she who used to be a he, but she still had her man parts and you only touched it a few times, how much do you charge for a story on her new brewpub?

Fo free!

Next question!

 

[goodbeerhunting]

Can you weigh in on the craft beer beer bubble, bubble thread
https://www.talkbeer.com/community/...ft-beer-bubble-here-thread-bubble-here.36837/

Based on what I've seen from the inside of business plans and financing, it'll start to look more like the churn of the restaurant industry than a tech bubble. So many ways to fail.

 

[goodbeerhunting]

But seriously goodbeerhunting I'm going to ask the question that's on everyone's mind:
Pliny or Heady?

Will never forget that time I stood next to Natalie a whole day during a Sierra Nevada Fest in Denver with a line that went on forever. A young woman worked her way to the front after an hour and Natalie said "what can I get you?"

"I have no idea, what's everyone in line for?!"

"Here," said Natalie with a smile. "It's an IPA."

 

[ant880]

Classic Natalie.

 

[user 306237]

Classic Natalie.

Such a tart!

 

[disapowzment]

Classic Natalie.

One of the best posts in this entire thread.

 

[wuntrikpony]

One of the best posts in history.

 

[lb304854]

In the Chicago beer scene particularly, is it better to be a verbose master of obfuscation or a name-dropping narcissist?

 

[cneville1]

In the Chicago beer scene particularly, is it better to be a verbose master of obfuscation or a name-dropping narcissist?

 

[Treebs]

A few more questions:

-Are there specific reasons why you don't have a disclaimer at the bottom of every page, or at least every article stating that there is a consulting arm to GBH? Is there a reason you make your disclaimers in relatively isolated posts on your site that would be missed unless someone was specifically looking for them?

-In much the way people have complained that they feel there is a lack of transparency when you are writing about a client, is it also fair to say that those who do know you have a consulting practice, and also know you don't disclose this each and every time you write, could think that some of the high-profile breweries you feature are clients of yours when that isn't actually the case? If there is a potential for this, is it fair to say GBH could be benefitting from the status and brand equity of breweries such as Side Project, Hill Farmstead, Tired Hands, etc. because potential clients may think GBH's consulting played a part in their success?

The relationship between the "Passion Project" and the consulting work:

-Has anyone you've ever worked with been featured on the website or podcast at any point prior to them retaining your services?

-Have you ever mentioned that you're a consultant while visiting a brewery for website content? Same with Podcast guests. Do you specifically NOT mention it? If you do mention it, have you ever - even once - thought about what you were going to say to the brewery ahead of time, or how you think you could help them? As a professional brand consultant I would imagine that sort of thing comes naturally to you as you experience a brewery while visiting it.

-Do you think there's a potential for someone in your shoes to use visits for content and the subsequent contacts/email addresses/etc. potentially as a lead generating tool? Why should we think that isn't happening? Whether it happens or not, does the mere potential for this sort of thing make any kind of imagined wall between content and consulting meaningless? Should we just trust you don't/won't do such a thing, especially when considering that you seem to have made a conscious decision not to make disclaimers about your consulting work more visible on the day-to-day content of your site - something that seemingly would be easy to do as a one time fix, and certainly easier than linking to past disclosures from time to time? Can you see how that is viewed by some people as actively choosing not to be as transparent as you could be, even though being more transparent seems to involve less time and effort?

 

[goodbeerhunting]

1. We have dedicated pages on the site devoted to the consulting practice. We have a mission statement, and an about page that go into the business in-depth. We also wrote a definitive overview of the business called "How We Hustle" that even breaks down the numbers. So we're trying to get this out there every chance we get. It's even in the bio of all our social handles explicitly.

So we've gone to great lengths to make people aware of what we do. As for specific articles with disclosure — we do that when there's a particular relationship worth noting. And those relationships change over time, so the same disclosure isn't always relevant. 90% of our stories are written by someone other than me, and/or have no relationship whatsoever with any of our clients, so there's simply nothing to disclose. It's possible we make a mistake, but the intent is that if there's no disclosure, there was nothing to disclose.

We have recently re-coded part of the site that enables us to have dynamic content in our article footers (this was a laborious manual process before that we could't update all at once — we run on a Frankensteined Squarespace development). So what you're suggesting is actually possible for the first time on GBH, and I think you're suggestion is a good one. We'll take that into consideration at our next dev meeting.

2. We can't control what people make up in their own heads. All we can do is disclose the clients and relationships we do have. Our Studio page lists every one of our clients (at least the ones that are live, functioning businesses, we can't list start-ups that don't have names yet, but we update when they launch). We do write about our clients sometimes, but mostly to talk about the work we're doing for them, so that's self-evident. We don't write these secretly-paid-for promotion pieces that some people accuse us of. We attempt to clearly label and disclose everything. If you find examples where we've fallen short on that, please tell us.

So no, I don't think we benefit from a perception that all these other breweries are our clients. But I guess you could make a case that we benefit from the perceptions of people who suffer from an addiction to conspiratorial narratives even in the face of explicit transparency and thereby assume that we are even more successful and give us too much credit. But what we actually get in return from those people who suffer in such a way is beyond me.

3. There are some cases of someone having been written about by one of our people, or included on a podcast, who later on became clients. The sequence makes perfect sense, although it can be uncomfortable in terms of how to disclose or deal with retroactively. For some, when they see how we're able to frame who they are and why they're unique, it shows them that they could be better at telling their own stories and ask us to help with that. But I can't get in a time machine and retroactively disclose that relationship before it existed, but once they become a client, we either don't write about them anymore, or if we feel compelled to do so (any one of our writers pitches their own stories) we simply disclose the relationship going forward. This is pretty common in the industry, and has been for a long time. Brewers want to work with people who dedicate themselves to beer in some way. Jeff Alworth is a great example of a writer who also consults in this vein. Many of the writers we read in bigger magazines also consult in this capacity from time to time. Disclosure is the tool for putting the reader and writer on the same page.

4. I don't go out of my way to mention the agency side of things when documenting for a story or recording a podcast. And NONE of my writers do because they don't work on that side of the business at all. They're expressly forbidden from doing so. More often than not, a brewery I'm visiting to write about is already well aware of our business. I've spoken at CBC, the wholesalers convention, Brewbound, and plenty of other industry gatherings — so most brewers are well aware of GBH's larger context. Now, when people visit GBH to record for the podcast, and they see the studio, if they aren't already aware of the agency, they quickly become so because our agency team works out of this space. I'll take a few minutes to describe what we do and introduce them to the team, but then we get busy with the recording and I try to focus on that.

When visiting a brewery for content, have I ever thought about what their client needs might be...hmm. I guess not in the sense that I was ready to pitch them on anything (we've literally never pitched a brewery on work, which is a luxury for now, I guess). But I certainly have personal opinions about their brand or opportunities, things that I know I would do if I were them, I guess. But I'm also aware that those opinions are veiled in at least a little ignorance until I understand why things are the way they are. So it's not like I'm going in looking for a moment to bring it up. On the contrary, if a brewery owner starts talking about that sort of thing, it can get us pretty far off track if I'm there for a story. I usually try to re-direct or tell them we can talk about it another time. I personally don't like to mix the two because then it sets up weird expectations for the story, which I aim to keep honest. So I guess, yes, those things are on my mind, but in a preventative sense. I don't want to muddy the waters if I can help it. As for the rest of our dozen or so storytellers, none of this applies whatsoever. I'm the only individual who has to balance those factors.

We've had a couple instances where a prospective client asked about being featured in an editorial as part of the work, and we immediately ended those relationships because it was clear that such an request indicated they were not the kind of people we'd want to work with. And over the course of 5+ years, we've had a couple stories we were working on where we ended up being asked to do some work for them in the meantime, and we killed those stories. Only once did we have a brewery try to hire one of our storytellers, and asked them if they could get featured on GBH as well — and we killed that instantly. None of our writers are allowed to do that, and they report back to us anytime an inappropriate request pops up like that. We all respect the platform too much to put in jeopardy.

 

[goodbeerhunting]

5. "does the mere potential for this sort of thing make any kind of imagined wall between content and consulting meaningless"

I've stated on multiple occasions that I believe the invisible wall concept to be meaningless in general. Not just for us, but all publications. That's not to say it can't be effective. What I mean is that the wall has no agency or ability to protect anything on it's own. It's not a literal firewall that can block information in a system. It's a concept, and it requires the human beings involved to care about its existence, and work daily to ensure it has meaning to the organization. In that sense, I think we do a great job of maintaining a separation, and when it can't be separated, as is the case in some of the writing that I personally do on the site that involves former or future clients, like Goose Island, I simply disclose the relationship and get on with the work. Our editor, Austin Ray, also writes disclosures when he thinks they're necessary, and interrogates the entire team's work to ensure there are no conflicts of interest going unnoticed. He's been hired to do that.

This article from Forbes outlines my position on the invisible wall pretty well. Since we're not a reporting outlet, rather, we're narrative, opinion, and mission-based ("We Serve Beer") I think we're more akin to an industry publication or the BA's craftbeer.com. We have an internal mission to serve and progress the beer industry. So that's our fundamental bias.

In general, I think the mistake some people make when discussing GBH is in assuming that because we have conflicts of interest that we don't care about those conflicts. The opposite is much more true — we work really hard to ensure our stories are honest, conflict-free, and we're constantly questioning ourselves internally. That doesn't mean we let a conflict stop us from writing something we think is important — rather, we put the work in to solve that conflict by either assigning a different writer with no relationship, we write disclosures, or in some cases, we actually do suspend the story until we feel the time is right and it's in a better position to be told free and clear. None of those are perfect. We don't believe the bias ever absolutely resolves. But we can do simple things to dramatically lessen bias.

Here's a perfect example. Going back and forth with a Chicago-based writer on her next assignment this week, Whiner Beer Co. came up as a potential story she wanted to tell. She personally has zero professional relations with Whiner, but Austin knew I had done some consulting work with them in their earliest stages over a year ago, and he asked me what the nature of the work was, and what my relationship was now. I detailed the work for him and even though I haven't worked with that group since then, we decided that we should prioritize another story instead, and then work on how we want to disclose my personal conflict in the story when and if we move forward with it. And I don't even have a role in telling that story. But we think it's fair to the reader to make it clear that our businesses had a connection at one point. And Austin is ultimately in charge of how that's handled in the publication, not me.

So yes, we are ultimately asking that people trust us. And we think we earn that trust.

Appreciate the questions. I have a feeling an ongoing discussion with you would yield even more specific learnings and ideas for how to make GBH better in this regard.

 

[BadJustin]

lol, this thread.

 

[Tooch4321]

 

[wuntrikpony]

 

[Tooch4321]

I am so glad someone took the extra step, our work here is done...

 

[vav1]

Is there a master list of clients, or would you be willing to disclose them all in one location on the site? I dont think it'll satiate everyone, but it might be a way of making that line drawn bolder for most when looking at the site. I know for my part i didn't know about the Hype thing until this AMA, so i've always wondered what was what.

 

[bum732]

Classic Natalie.

 

[goodbeerhunting]

Now we're doing something worthwhile.

 

[goodbeerhunting]

Is there a master list of clients, or would you be willing to disclose them all in one location on the site? I dont think it'll satiate everyone, but it might be a way of making that line drawn bolder for most when looking at the site. I know for my part i didn't know about the Hype thing until this AMA, so i've always wondered what was what.

It's on our studio page, which I mentioned previously: http://goodbeerhunting.com/thestudio

I've also included the parent companies of breweries we've worked with when it helps further illuminate the relationship we have.

This is a couple months outdated at the moment. Since this was posted, we've also worked with a couple more Alchemy & Science brands (Concrete Beach, for example.) Conde Nast, ZX Ventures, a start-up in Glenn Elynn that's still a year out, a Washington farmhouse start-up named Dwinell, and Brewery Bhavana that's about to launch in Raleigh this month.

This list is intended to be both current and historical. The next iteration will more clearly identify which relationships are currently active, and which are either historical or dormant.

The GBHype thing wasn't officially announced because it was still a loosely defined experiment (although we still labelled things as GBHype very clearly even if they weren't paid in the conventional sense). When it relaunches officially, it'll be much more articulated with it's own section of the site (as it was previously). We don't want to mix our main editorial with that work for obvious reasons.

 

[Lansman]

ZX Ventures

For those unaware and in the sense of full transparency for those asking, this is the disruptive growth organization of ABI, which is based in New York City and reports back to Leuven.

 

[goodbeerhunting]

Yep, that's correct, it's their venture arm, sort of like VEB for Coke — We've listed Ab-Inbev as our client from the beginning. AB and Forbidden Root were our first official clients about 4 years ago.

 

[Josh2]

Why are so many people are up in arms about someone who writes about and works in the beer industry?

There's quite a few touched balls and stolen crab legs.