Michael Kiser of Good Beer Hunting

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Lazarus thread! Sweet. Just what we all wanted.

The comments on the Brewstuds article were fake. Eventually he realized and deleted them. Here's a screenshot of the one comment I made that he refused to post even as he was publishing the fake ones and arguing with the troll.



He also changed the headline because GBH was not acquired.

October is a project for our studio team myself, our art director, and our experience director). Our editorial team is not involved (except for freelancers who are able to do whatever they want). Austin Ray, our editorial director, remains GBH-only.

October is one of many projects, and we were hired by Condé Nast/Pitchfork to develop the editorial for the purpose of recruiting good beer writers and keeping a team running beyond the influence of ZX Ventures financial involvement.

All the operations, as sales, etc. will be run internally by Condé Nast/Pitchfrok reporting to ZX. Me and Eno work on editorial and don't review the work with anyone.

Possible all that changes at some point, who knows. But for now it's contractually obligated to stay separate and that's one of the reasons why we signed on.

Happy to answer any other questions on that.
 
lurchingbeast said:
Why are Uppers & Downers tickets $60, or the same price as Great Taste, for a three hour session? I get that it's a cool venue but that pricing sucks hard.
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They were $55 last year and we sold out two sessions, so this seems like a late criticism. But to get specific, we offer nearly 30 one-off experimental beers that we pay for (some are quite expensive). We also offer a multi-roaster espresso bar, food specially prepared within the theme, and cocktails. And even at that price point, if we didn't have sponsors like Teeling Whiskey partnering with us, it'd barely break even. The costs of running events like this with limited capacity (a fraction of the tickets that Great taste can sell) is rather challenging on the financial side. Comparing apples to oranges - two very different experiences being offered.
 
nebuck said:
I'm way late to this thread, but I just wanted to say that I only recently started following GBH, and I've become a big fan. I now follow two beer blogs/sites regularly: goodbeerhunting and dontdrinkbeer . I know the comment above was intended ironically, but I really would love to see a GBH interview of DDB. Or vice versa. Unlikely to the point of being funny, I know, but it would be really cool.

Also, I really enjoyed your write-up from last summer (I think?) on Tired Hands. Any plans to do a podcast interview with Jean?
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Thanks! Getting Jean on the podcast is a priority for sure. Interesting guy.

And the DDB thing could happen. I'm a fan, but I also don't like to meet my heroes, so there's that.
 
RedCoffee said:
I just want another set of paragraphs detailing how we don't understand. Is that too much to ask?
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raw
 
goodbeerhunting said:
Lazarus thread! Sweet. Just what we all wanted.

The comments on the Brewstuds article were fake. Eventually he realized and deleted them. Here's a screenshot of the one comment I made that he refused to post even as he was publishing the fake ones and arguing with the troll.



He also changed the headline because GBH was not acquired.

October is a project for our studio team myself, our art director, and our experience director). Our editorial team is not involved (except for freelancers who are able to do whatever they want). Austin Ray, our editorial director, remains GBH-only.

October is one of many projects, and we were hired by Condé Nast/Pitchfork to develop the editorial for the purpose of recruiting good beer writers and keeping a team running beyond the influence of ZX Ventures financial involvement.

All the operations, as sales, etc. will be run internally by Condé Nast/Pitchfrok reporting to ZX. Me and Eno work on editorial and don't review the work with anyone.

Possible all that changes at some point, who knows. But for now it's contractually obligated to stay separate and that's one of the reasons why we signed on.

Happy to answer any other questions on that.
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Just out of curiosity as I'm in the same professions (but thankfully not beer), so GBH is your editorial company and your agency is another entity. Your agency was hired to produce/curate editorial for their magazine?

Meaning, they like what you've built at GBH and want to do that for their magazine? Or that they want your current team?

I must be confused as it would be weird that they would hire you for editorial but also contractually exclude GBH in the deal.

Sounds like a basic custom publishing job which isn't odd or necessarily damning of your GBH editorial.
 
goodbeerhunting said:
They were $55 last year and we sold out two sessions, so this seems like a late criticism.
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I hadn't heard of it until last week when a friend who works at a participating brewery asked if I was attending.

Three hour sessions still seems awfully short.
 
Beer4B said:
Just out of curiosity as I'm in the same professions (but thankfully not beer), so GBH is your editorial company and your agency is another entity. Your agency was hired to produce/curate editorial for their magazine?

Meaning, they like what you've built at GBH and want to do that for their magazine? Or that they want your current team?

I must be confused as it would be weird that they would hire you for editorial but also contractually exclude GBH in the deal.

Sounds like a basic custom publishing job which isn't odd or necessarily damning of your GBH editorial.
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Not exactly, but I get where you're coming from.

The contractual separation is between ZX Ventures and Conde Nast (and anyone they hire to develop the content, which is partly GBH). CN is tasked with building a platform that generates its own business value, and excluding any possible AB fluff is part of how that's going to be accomplished. Hence the separation there.

The other separation is between GBH's editorial team (which is mostly listed here: http://goodbeerhunting.com/about ) and October. Most of the core GBH team will not be crossing over in any way, except for beer reviews maybe. Our goal is to building a new team of writers for October so it has it's own tone and voice, and because it's intended for a more general audience than GBH. I tend to hire people on the GBH side who had more of an industry voice. The most important part of that division is Austin Ray, GBH's independent editor. He does't work on our agency side either. And he won't be touching October.
 
Way to spin that HF v. Fieldwork article goodbeerhunting. First iteration presented as neutral but then your retool basically wraps your lips around Shaun's dick.

I generally enjoy your content but I'm really irritated by this spin. Honestly Vermont needs to take a page out of Texas/KC BBQ, California Burritos, West Coast IPA's, etc and chill the **** out. We all use the best from another geographical location and have our own riff on it.
 
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To be perfectly fair here, I know the guys from Fieldwork personally going back well before they moved up to Berkeley from San Diego. Obviously I'm going to have a predisposition to siding with them, usually.

So, you know, full disclosure...
 
benbikes4beer said:
To be perfectly fair here, I know the guys from Fieldwork personally going back well before they moved up to Berkeley from San Diego. Obviously I'm going to have a predisposition to siding with them, usually.

So, you know, full disclosure...
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Way to spin that goodbeerhunting response, benbikes4beer. First iteration presented as neutral but then your retool basically wraps your lips around Barry's dick.

Full disclosure, amirite? ;)
 
Had a conversation with Alex about the update. It's a fair criticism that the update shifted the tone — we didn't mean to publish it the first time as it was awaiting my edits. I made it clear that I do think Shaun has a better case for his argument, and my update reflects that. Although I think both sides have understandable arguments. Not going to apologize if our point of view comes through in the writing — that's the whole point of writing about the topic. Shrug.
 
I've been a long time listener of the podcast and I often find it to be at it's best when it's not talking much about beer at all.
The one with the Seth Putman of Collective Quarterly comes to mind. I'm not the first or only one to point out that some of that charm has been fading lately.
During the past year, more or less, I feel like many of the interviews have a soft PR edge that's a little bit off-putting.
I listen to the Wicked Weed interview a few days ago and I was very disappointed about the whole angle. Rather than going into the heart of the problem that the beer community sees in this kind of takeovers, you danced around the subject and went out of your way to praise and justify every business decision they ever made.
I'm not on a crusade against Wicked Weed, I've tried many of their beers when I had the chance and some of them are pretty good, if I had access to them locally they'd probably be on my rotation.
The problem for me is that your company takes money from AB Inbev and at no moment that was disclosed during the podcast (maybe it was and I missed it, it was a long podcast) and you're smart enough to understand the conflict there.
You and GBH went out of your way to call out the Rate Beer deal, yet you constantly fail to disclose your own involvement and on top of that take the time to pass an obvious PR piece as something that it's not.
Time for me to unsubscribe, it was fun while it lasted.
 
Apologies for reviving this dumpster fire but would you goodbeerhunting like to make some sort of public apology to those in the St. Louis community for your comments on social media and on your site without any sort of attempt to reach out to those you are scorning coupled with your complete inability to show remorse and apologize? (Here is the start of the arrogance for those who want to take a look before it is likely deleted): )

If your flailing attempt at trying to remain relevant outside of your stipend from ABInBev (no sexism in anything they do, right? Especially not on the advertising front) is to stir the pot, I guess you are succeeding?

How many women are on your 'team' right now? <Checks http://goodbeerhunting.com/about>...3. Out of 24.

I'm not reading any sort of inevitably heavy-handed holier than thou reply that you are going to make to this post because you are completely unable to see us plebes down here far below the view from your high horse.

Delete your account.
 
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Lansman said:
Apologies for reviving this dumpster fire but would you goodbeerhunting like to make some sort of public apology to those in the St. Louis community for your comments on social media and on your site without any sort of attempt to reach out to those you are scorning coupled with your complete inability to show remorse and apologize? (Here is the start of the arrogance for those who want to take a look before it is likely deleted): )

If your flailing attempt at trying to remain relevant outside of your stipend from ABInBev (no sexism in anything they do, right? Especially not on the advertising front) is to stir the pot, I guess you are succeeding?

How many women are on your 'team' right now? <Checks http://goodbeerhunting.com/about>...3. Out of 24.

I'm not reading any sort of inevitably heavy-handed holier than thou reply that you are going to make to this post because you are completely unable to see us plebes down here far below the view from your high horse.

Delete your account.
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when non-journalists try to journalist
 
cneville said:
when non-journalists try to journalist
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I like their reasoning of why they didn't contact all the breweries they mentioned, because "that would be a lot of work". Then maybe don't mention them? Take a second to draft up an e-mail and ask for comment. If they reply with anything useful, use that, if not then you are free to interpret their message as they did not want to comment.
 
just read this whole thread and realized there are sooo many beer blogs I had no idea about or if I should have an idea about them
 

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