Episodes

  • Meet the Middle Tier's Master Matchmaker

    Meet the Middle Tier's Master Matchmaker
    Nov 5 2024
    Joe Thompson, the founder and president of Independent Beverage Group, is a five-decade drinks business veteran, and one of the most prolific brokers of middle-tier mergers and acquisitions in the United States. He joins Taplines today to talk about how Coors’ “silver” network and Miller’s “blue” network became Molson Coors’ “blue/silver” network — an esoteric saga he knows well, given he was involved in many of those transformative deals in the '80s and '90s. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe!

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    59 mins
  • The Oral History of the "F*CK AB-INBEV" Shirt

    The Oral History of the "F*CK AB-INBEV" Shirt
    Oct 22 2024
    Steve Luke, founder and head brewer of Seattle’s Cloudburst Brewing, joins Taplines today for a freewheeling conversation about an iconic moment — arguably, the iconic moment — of the 2018 Great American Beer Festival, which he single-handedly engineered both literally and figuratively with the help of a DIY t-shirt that read “F*CK AB-INBEV” across the front. There’s a backstory there, more so than the standard David vs. Goliath dynamic that was popular to describe the relationship between craft brewers and macro brewers last decade. Tune in for the full scoop, as told by the man himself. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe!

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    1 hr and 1 min
  • The Cross-Category Battle for the Future of Hard Tea

    The Cross-Category Battle for the Future of Hard Tea
    Oct 8 2024
    This week on Taplines, we're going cross-category with our pond-crossing pal from Cocktail College: VinePair's managing editor, Tim McKirdy. Tune in for a genre-breaking conversation about how the hard seltzer boom gave way to a bust that cleared the board for Twisted Tea’s decades-in-the-making moment in the sun — and paved the runway that vodka-based interloper and VinePair Next Wave 2024 Rising Drinks Brand of the Year finalist Surfside is currently speeding down. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe!

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    50 mins
  • The Road to Beer History Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions

    The Road to Beer History Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions
    Sep 24 2024
    We’re putting our normal Taplines format on the shelf today for a very special reunion episode of sorts with journalists Kate Bernot of Sightlines, and Jess Infante of Brewbound, to talk about two turning points in the national suds saga. Some of you listening may know the three of us as the Beer Byliners, the name of a Twitter Space (man, remember those?!) that we hosted in the early days of the pandemic. Well, we’re getting the gang back together today, and you’re coming with. Stay tuned for a chat about the unveiling of the Brewers Association’s Ozymandian “20% by 2020” mantra, the dark side of Cleveland’s infamous, Stroh's-fueled 10-Cent Beer Night catastrophe, and much more. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe!

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    1 hr
  • Shattering Homebrewing’s Pint-Glass Ceiling

    Shattering Homebrewing’s Pint-Glass Ceiling
    Sep 10 2024
    Today on Taplines, meet Annie Johnson. She’s a longtime homebrewer, the self-avowed Queen of Beer, and an old source of mine from way back. Annie has been brewing her own beer since the mid-’90s, and winning first-place ribbons for ‘em nearly as long. The woman has enough these days to make a damn cape out of ‘em — and she did. We talked about that, and so much more. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe!

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    58 mins
  • Inside Anheuser-Busch’s "Microbrewing" Skunkworks

    Inside Anheuser-Busch’s "Microbrewing" Skunkworks
    Aug 27 2024
    Like any good parable, the "David and Goliath" self-mythology of the American craft brewing industry in the '80s and '90s was illuminating, compelling — and maybe a bit reductive, too. In Episodes 33 and 34, we examined this us-versus-them dynamic from the perspective of one of the “thems,” Keith Villa, who created the Blue Moon Brewing Company from within the Coors colossus in 1995. Today, we’re coming at it once again through the eyes of New Realm Brewing Co. cofounder and brewmaster Mitch Steele, who did a substantial stretch, semi-concurrent to Villa’s at Coors, at Big Beer’s biggest and baddest "Goliath" of all: Missouri’s pre-InBev Anheuser-Busch. After starting his career in a California brewpub, Mitch eventually wound up in St. Louis towards the end of the 20th century on a skunkworks-style R&D team tasked with brewing up answers to those pesky “microbrews” that would somehow satisfy distributors in the mighty red network, the American drinking public, and August Busch the Third himself — no mean feat. Would creative extensions on the premium Michelob line do the trick? What about a new brand named for A-B’s hop farm in northern Idaho? You’ll have to listen on to find out. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe!

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    1 hr
  • How Stone Brewing Dropped a $56-Million Stunner on Molson Coors

    How Stone Brewing Dropped a $56-Million Stunner on Molson Coors
    Aug 13 2024
    Today, we’re joined by the one and only Bianca Bruno, an editor of the venerable trade publication Beer Business Daily, who was there, live and in-person, to cover the landmark trademark trial between San Diego’s Stone Brewing Company and macrobrewer Molson Coors over an allegedly infringing Keystone Light rebrand. The federal jury trial yielded a shocking verdict, and what it revealed about the state of Stone’s business would set the stage for the once vehemently independent firm’s sell-out to Sapporo later that year. Don’t forget to like, review, and subscribe!

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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Saving Narragansett, New England’s Beloved Legacy Lager

    Saving Narragansett, New England’s Beloved Legacy Lager
    Jul 30 2024
    After trading hands several times and closing its Rhode Island facility to contract brew, the Narragansett brand was eventually scooped up by a group of investors in 2005. With hands-on experience marketing beverage alcohol from creating Hendrick's Gin and Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum, Quaker City Mercantile founder and 'Gansett investor Steven Grasse set about rebranding the flagship legacy lager and the rest of the company's portfolio for a future befitting its storied past. This is the story of how that went. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe!

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    51 mins