June 29, 2024 • 47 mins
What happens when a local news reporter from the Jersey Shore transitions to a leading voice in the craft beverage industry? Join us as we sit down with Jessica Infante, managing editor for BrewBound, to uncover her fascinating journey from covering beached whales to becoming a pivotal figure in the world of craft beverages. We reminisce about our days at the Boston Beer Company, share our current favorite brews—Jess with a Harpoon Rec League and me enjoying a Tropical Lightning from Wilmington Brewing Company—and discuss the importance of providing valuable information through newsletters, podcasts, and conferences.
The conversation takes a sobering turn as we examine the tragic story of Art Lowrance, a craft beer pioneer whose sudden passing left his brewery in disarray. This chapter delves into the challenges of oversaturation in the beer market and the critical need for maintaining quality in brewing. We also highlight the rapid growth of Athletic Brewing Company and its recent expansion, showcasing the evolving landscape of the beer industry. From unexpected closures to remarkable success stories, we cover it all, including some surprising industry deals and the potential impact of veteran brewers' succession plans.
To lighten the mood, we share humorous and heartfelt stories about beer at weddings, the launch of Truly hard seltzers, and the joys of parenting. Our guest, Jess, offers insights into the upcoming Brewbound Live conference in California, featuring key industry figures and the latest trends. From personal anecdotes to expert analyses, this episode is a treasure trove of content for beer enthusiasts and industry professionals alike. Don't miss out on the laughter, learning, and passion for the craft beverage world!
For the latest in Beer Business news: https://www.brewbound.com/
To listen to Jess & the rest of the Brewbound crew: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/brewbound-podcast/id1436101301
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Scott (00:00):
My next guest is Jessica Infante.
Jess is the managing editor forBrewBound, the leading beer
industry news outlet in theUnited States.
Prior to her journey atBrewBound, Jess and I had worked
together at the Boston BeerCompany and have done extensive
beer tastings and are bothcertified Cicerones.
Jessica holds a bachelor'sdegree in magazine journalism
from Syracuse University and amaster's degree in integrated
marketing communication fromEmerson College.
(00:21):
Jessica Infante, welcome toCarney Saves the World.
Jessica Infante (00:24):
Oh, my goodness , what an honor.
I know.
All that stuff you just said istrue, but when you hear all
those things repeated back toyou, I'm like, oh, that's cool,
who's that?
But it's me.
Scott (00:32):
Well, when I was reading, I didn't realize that you were
that smart either, but did younot?
Jessica Infante (00:37):
Can I tell you a secret?
I'm really not.
Scott (00:40):
But it sounds amazing.
It looks amazing on paper.
But it sounds amazing.
It looks amazing on paper,thank you, thank you.
So it has been about sevenyears since you and I have
gotten a chance to hang out andhave a beer.
We're having one now.
What are you having?
Jessica Infante (00:49):
I am having a Harpoon Rec League, which is
their local hazy IPA.
It is delicious, all right.
Yeah, I had our friend andformer coworker, megan Baker
over a couple of weeks ago formy daughter's first birthday and
she recently left Harpoon butstill does some consulting work
for them, so she brought a niceold 12 pack.
Scott (01:07):
Nice.
It's always nice to havefriends in the beer industry,
isn't it Right?
Yeah, I am drinking a TropicalLightning from Wilmington
Brewing Company.
Jess, if you've never heard ofthese guys, they're one of the
best brewers on the East Coast.
Wow, I'm not just saying thatbecause I live here, because
there are plenty of breweries inWilmington that suck.
These guys are phenomenal andthis IPA is one of the best IPAs
I've ever had in my life.
(01:27):
That's amazing.
It's consistently fresh.
This is 15 days old.
It's just an amazing beer.
So how are things, now thatyou're a big managing editor at
Brewbound and what's that like?
Jessica Infante (01:36):
It's a lot of fun.
It's crazy, as you can imagine.
So Brewbound is a tradepublication, so we cover beer in
name, but we also touch onthings like FMBs and hard
seltzers and RTDs and basicallyall that stuff.
Scott (01:50):
All that fun stuff.
Jessica Infante (01:51):
Yeah, all that fun stuff, it's a good time.
I mean the one thing you didn'thit on in my intro, which I
wouldn't expect you to, becauseit's a bazillion years ago, but
right after college I was anewspaper journalist.
Scott (02:01):
Yes, I was going to, but and then I moved to Boston.
Jessica Infante (02:05):
I have a specific question that I want to
ask you about that, but you goright ahead and talk about it,
oh, no, I mean, you know a lotof people ask how you end up in
this role and that's how I didit all.
I did the news, I did the beerand now I do the news about the
beer.
Nice, but, yeah, we writestories.
We publish a newsletter everyday.
(02:29):
That's, honestly, probably alittle too full with info
because we are workaholics whocan't help ourselves.
But I don't want to speak formy teammates, but I aim to make
sure I'm giving people in theBevAlc industry, particularly
craft producers, all theinformation that they need to
know to make business decisions.
Yeah, so, in addition to thenewsletter, we do a podcast, we
do in-person conferences andsometimes we do videos.
We've kind of backed away fromthat.
Scott (02:46):
I've listened to a few of the podcasts.
They're fantastic.
They're really informative.
Thank, you.
I try to get as much news as Ican.
So yes, I wanted to ask youabout your old local news
reporter deal.
It was in the Jersey Shore.
A lot of fun stuff going onthere.
Jessica Infante (02:59):
A lot of fun stuff.
So I wrote for the Asbury ParkPress, which is the daily
newspaper of the half of theJersey Shore.
The Jersey Shore that you'rethinking of is included in that
territory.
Yes, but it was fun.
I covered three beach towns onLong Beach Island.
I covered a mainland town,which is more of an all year
thing, and really just anythingthat happened.
So like, let's see, I rememberI was only a couple of months on
(03:22):
the job when a beached whaleshowed up on New Year's Eve.
Scott (03:25):
Oh, there you go.
Jessica Infante (03:30):
So I had to go like hang out on the beach like
calling in updates to thenewsroom, like yep, the whale's
still here.
Like, oh, now the Marine MammalStranding Center guy is here
and is asking all the peoplewho've come up with their dogs
to please get away from thewhale.
Scott (03:40):
Oh, so yeah, stuff like that.
You don't want the dogs nippingon the whale, no.
Jessica Infante (03:44):
Like people were taking like family photos
in front of the dead whale.
Like is this going to be onyour Christmas card next year
Like this is weird.
Scott (03:50):
It would be for an interesting Christmas card
though, probably, yeah.
So how long did you do that?
For Three years, three years.
Jessica Infante (03:58):
And then you were just like I'm done.
I was a boondoggle and a half.
I lived in my family's summerhouse 12 months a year and
didn't pay rent.
In my defense, I kept offeringand my parents were like no,
save your money, you idiot.
Scott (04:09):
Save your money.
You're going to go to Bostonsoon.
Jessica Infante (04:16):
Yeah, I mean it was like 07 to 2010.
So like great recession whichwas terrible for the whole
country but particularly bad forprint media, and there were
layoffs and furloughs and I meanI never got laid off because I
was probably had the lowestsalary in the joint, so I was a
good deal and eventually I waslike I need to find a way to
have a sustainable career andfound my master's program which
brought me to Boston.
Scott (04:34):
Oh nice, yeah.
So we worked together.
For when did you start there?
2010.
2010.
So yeah, seven years, cause Ileft at 17.
Jessica Infante (04:40):
Yeah Well, so I was a little baby tour guide.
Scott (04:48):
Yes at 17.
Yeah, well, so.
Jessica Infante (04:48):
I was a little baby tour guide.
Yes, I remember and you werealso a tour guide, do you?
Scott (04:50):
remember the first day we met.
I was wondering if you werebringing it up.
Jessica Infante (04:55):
I think that people need to hear it.
Okay, god, you know, I don'tknow when it was, but, like I
know it was summer because wewere giving a tour outside and I
want to say you were guidingthe tour and I was your helper,
buddy, and somebody asked aboutsummer ale.
So question that.
Now, I know people ask all thetime.
But somebody had been like, oh,like, why is summer ale
different this year?
And then you gave, like, thestandard.
(05:15):
Well, you know, beer is brewedfrom agricultural ingredients
and you know, sometimes thingschange, but more often your
palate changes because youhaven't had this beer in a year.
And no, we didn't change therecipe, you did a really good
job.
And then my dumb ass was likeactually, scott, my auntie used
different lemons this year and Ithought you were about to be
like who is this chick?
But it was very funny.
Scott (05:38):
I stopped doing stand-up.
I got my kicks out of makingpeople laugh at the brewery on
the weekends.
I worked in the office duringthe week and then that was like
my stage on the weekends andthere was this new chick showing
up and she was funny and I waslike look, funny is already
taken care of here, we don'tneed you.
That base is already covered.
Jessica Infante (05:53):
Yeah, god, that was so much fun.
Scott (05:55):
Yeah, it was such a blast Like the stuff we could do back
then and give the tours andyou're half of the bag during
them.
So today we're going to talkabout all kinds of cool beer,
gossip stuff that's happening inthe industry, I mean the beer
industry is such anever-changing mess it's a very
polite way to put it A lot ofreally crazy cool things going
on.
One of the coolest things thatI want to talk to you about was
(06:16):
Chobani buying up AnchorBrewery's assets.
Jessica Infante (06:19):
Yeah, so I will give you a little inside
baseball here in my life.
I was on a month of maternityleave when it happened.
I actually was on maternityleave when the first closure
happened.
And then I took this last monthoff, before my daughter turned
one.
I kept more in touch on mysecond baby break and saw that
and was like what the heck?
So yeah, that was not on mybingo card.
Scott (06:41):
I don't know too many people who had that.
Jessica Infante (06:49):
The last I had heard of the anchor sale was
that there was a coupledifferent groups involved.
One of them was like the anchorunion of employees was
interested.
Another was like a localinvestor group.
And then, all of a sudden, mrHamdi Ulukaya, I believe, is how
you say his name, okay, but heis the Mr Chobani steps in and
just buys anchor, which is wild.
I mean, the fact that Anchorwent away at all to me remains
wild and crazy, because that'sso sad.
(07:10):
So sad Like it's a staple yeah.
Did you see their rebrand acouple of years ago?
Scott (07:15):
Yeah, to change all that.
I mean old labels and all this.
I mean they were just kind ofthe OGs.
I mean they were just and theymade great beer.
Like everything they made wasamazing.
Yeah.
Jessica Infante (07:24):
And people were angry.
Yeah, I mean Anger.
Steam is like I hate the wordiconic because I think it gets
used and abused to a point whereit doesn't mean anything.
But it's one of the few stylesof beer that originated in this
country.
To let something like that goby the wayside, like I think, is
kind of a crime.
We'll see what happens happens.
It's interesting to me thathonda yulikaya, mr yulikaya, was
(07:46):
always just saying like Iwanted to buy this brand because
I love san francisco yeah theheck of a thing to buy, man,
when you could just go getchowder and a sourdough bread
bowl and call it a day right, itwas so crazy.
Scott (07:56):
He's like I fell in love with san francisco and I'll just
go buy a brewery like thebrewery of san francisco.
Jessica Infante (08:02):
Bite up must, must be nice.
But like I mean Anchor's beenon a, it existed a long time ago
.
Fritz Maytag bought it in themiddle of last century, sold it
off to someone else and thensold it to Sapporo, who was
basically like we don't knowwhat to do with this.
Scott (08:17):
Yeah, and that was a shame too, because you thought,
with Sapporo buying it at onepoint, that they would have the
capital to infuse into it andmake it work.
You know, if it doesn't work ona national level, make it work
on the regional.
They just, they gave up prettyquick.
Jessica Infante (08:28):
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think Sapporowas like hey, we got stone now,
so we don't need you.
Sad little anchor, put you outto pasture, goodbye.
So I mean I think, like whathappened, is that the best
possible scenario?
Because, like, a lot of thethings that could have happened
was it could have just been soldfor parts, you know, ip sold to
somebody else, equipment soldto somebody else, real estate to
somebody else, and that it'sgoing to stay together, I think
(08:49):
is good yeah.
Scott (08:50):
I read somewhere where his focus is he's going to bring
the brand back to San Francisco.
First keep it there, and that'svery cool.
You don't need to be in all 50states right now, like you're
basically on life support, so Imean, I know we're not going to
get any anchor down here inWilmington, north Carolina for a
few years, but at least there'sa possibility, so I'm really
excited about that.
What other crazy news have youbeen working on?
Jessica Infante (09:10):
So a story I wrote this week that I probably
got a little too personallyinvested in but made me really
sad.
Were you familiar with CascadeBrewing out of Portland Oregon?
Scott (09:19):
Yes, sours.
Jessica Infante (09:20):
Yeah, like great sour houseour.
Scott (09:23):
House.
Jessica Infante (09:23):
And really like pioneered Northwest Sours,
announced this week that thebrew is closing.
But it's kind of a twistedstory where the founder this man
, art Lowrance, passed away afew weeks ago.
While I was on leave had aheart attack at the age of 80,
which made we all be so lucky togo in a relatively
pain-free-ish way at yeah thatage, 80 years old, that's a full
(09:44):
life.
Yeah, but apparently Art hadsold.
The Art said he sold thebrewery years ago, in 2020.
I covered the sale to aninvestor group of people from
Oregon, some of whom were allinvolved with other breweries,
only for his family to find outin the last two weeks that that
sale never really went throughand Art was the owner.
I guess he had put these newinvestors on a payment plan and
(10:06):
nothing ever.
This is terrible.
I hear art probably thought hewas having, you know, a nice
retirement.
He sells his company.
You know he's involved as anadvisor but nothing ever closed.
Liquor licenses were in hisname.
They expired 10 days after hisdeath.
Really like, really terrible.
And if you know oregon beer,you have to know art.
Art helped found portlandbrewing, which was like a very
(10:28):
early pioneer in craft.
He also helped start the oregonbrewers festival, which was a
really early, really big beerfestival like yeah you don't get
craft beer in the united stateswithout the pacific northwest
and you don't get craft beer inthe pacific northwest without
art.
Yeah, so so, really sad just tosee everything that's happened
in the past couple of weeks.
Scott (10:47):
Was his family aware?
His family wasn't aware of thisat all.
They just literally found outand they're like no, oh my.
Jessica Infante (10:52):
God, no, I talked to his daughter.
She had no idea and they have afamily trust, but she's like we
can't keep the brewery going.
Scott (10:58):
So what happens to this?
Is it in limbo?
It just dissolved, it's gone.
See you later, yeah.
Jessica Infante (11:02):
Yeah, she dropped off employees last
paychecks and the brewery isgoing to be done.
Scott (11:07):
Wow, that is really sad.
Jessica Infante (11:10):
Yeah, and there's a lot of breweries that
are also about to be done.
Yeah, but I don't think all ofthem quite have this very tragic
personal story attached to them.
A lot of breweries are closingand that is sad, but maybe there
were too many.
Scott (11:25):
And I feel like that sounds a little cold.
But no, you know, you look at,wilmington is kind of pushing
themselves as a big beer townand they are.
We've got a ton of brews butthey just keep opening and that
model is not sustainable and alot of these brews that are
opening are not putting outquality beer.
I'm going to give them thebenefit of the doubt.
It could be because they're newand they're still startup and
(11:49):
maybe on a small scale homebrew.
They know how to do it, buttheir big quote unquote
production brews are not qualityand you can only trick the
public so long to think thatyou're making good beer until
they understand what good beeris and they go wait a minute,
this is not it.
I think a lot of people arestarting to figure that out.
Jessica Infante (12:00):
Yeah, if you got in before COVID when you
could still get capital to dowhat you needed to do but there
was still money to be made andyou'd never been through a hard
time.
You're probably freaking outright now.
And to your point about quality, I think the BA was saying
close to 10 years ago quality istable stakes, and I don't know
if that lesson's necessarilysunk in for a lot of people, but
they're certainly finding itout right now.
Scott (12:20):
And it's really interesting.
We know we came from Sam Adamsand Boston Beer Company was one
of the quintessential qualityfirst companies.
I was there for the N35, theglass inclusion, where the teams
went into every wholesaler inthe country and pilfered through
all of these bottles lookingfor special codes and then
pulled all of them out of theentire country.
I mean, I've got a great story.
I won't name the brewery, I'lljust say I went home to Rhode
(12:41):
Island, got a six pack of one oftheir beers, cracked the first
one and just got a smell thatwas just pure bologna, like
actual meat bologna, oh God.
I poured it into a glass and itwas pure bologna.
What the hell is that smell?
And I went to look a code on itand when I did there were two
labels on it.
One was semi washed off and ithad a year code on it.
(13:07):
So they were reusing bottles andthey were not cleaning their
bottles properly and they wererecycling these bottles into
production and just pouring ontop of previously consumed beer
and it was some of the mostdisgusting smells I've been
witness to in my entire life.
So I emailed them.
I said hey, I'm a certifiedCicerone, I live in Boston, I
work for Boston Beer Company.
I'm just giving you a heads up.
I'm not trying to get a freesix pack out of you.
I'm just trying to tell youwhat I came across.
Let me know if I can help withanything.
Never heard back from herwhatsoever.
Oh wow, I was shocked.
(13:28):
Like not even a thank you.
Yeah, they're still in businesstoo.
I don't know how.
So there's also some stuff thatI learned through BrewBound
about athletic.
That's been pretty crazy.
Jessica Infante (13:37):
A lot of stuff about athletic.
That's been pretty crazy.
Yeah, yeah, Soic.
I mean.
I'm sure your listeners areaware, but Athletic is the
largest dedicated non-alcoholiccraft beer brewer in the country
and they recently made anacquisition of a facility in San
Diego.
They bought the brewery fromBallast Point.
This brewery is going to bringtheir production capacity up to
(13:59):
a million barrels a year.
That doesn't mean that they'regoing to make a million barrels
a year right now, but the growthtrajectory that they're on is
bonkers bananas.
Let me pull up the most recentdata.
So Athletic is the country's10th largest craft brewer and in
(14:21):
2023, they brewed 258, 445barrels of beer.
That's a 51% increase over whatthey brewed last year.
Oh my God.
From 2019 pre-pandemic theywere brewing 7,500 barrels.
So this is a nuts growth bender.
Scott (14:37):
That's crazy.
Jessica Infante (14:38):
They now have two former Ballast Point
breweries in San Diego, whichthat's another.
I mean, I don't know how muchyou want to get into the Ballast
Point constellation of it all,but that's a wild tale as well.
Scott (14:47):
Yeah, so they own now two breweries that were at one
point Ballast Point breweries.
Jessica Infante (14:51):
Yep, and they built their own brewery in
Connecticut, so they've gotbi-coastal operations.
I want to say in Connecticutthey can make about half a
million barrels a year.
Wow.
Scott (15:05):
Their first San Diego brewery is a little bit smaller.
This newest brewery is going tobe the biggest for them.
Jessica Infante (15:07):
Do you think they intend on keeping both San
Diego breweries?
Yeah, I do, wow, yeah, I mean.
Talk about quality.
They're huge on it, but youhave to be, because if you don't
have alcohol in your beer, youhave to pasteurize.
This was something that I willget on this soapbox all day.
I guess I wasn't recentlypregnant, because now I have a
one-year-old, but I was pregnantfor a time.
I have been, I have been and Iwasn't comfortable drinking
(15:29):
alcohol during the course of thepregnancy.
I was really nervous the wholetime, but you know, some people
feel differently.
I personally did not.
However, non-alcoholic is reallyhaving a moment right now and a
lot of craft brewers are veryinterested in it, which, like
God bless.
But a lot of them don't havethe ability to pasteurize, and
when you remove the alcohol fromthe equation, you do open the
door to all sorts of nastythings.
(15:50):
Different bacteria is likelisteria.
Like listeria is the reasonthat, like I couldn't have had
an Italian sub while I waspregnant, so like I was not
going to roll the dice on somerandom non-out craft beer, so
athletic is like huge sticklersfor quality and they have to be
so.
Whenever anybody wants to talkabout this I will always say you
can drink non-alcoholic beerbut get it from like a reputable
(16:12):
unfortunately usually a verybig company, because they've got
the money and the equipment totreat it right.
Scott (16:18):
So non-alcoholics are?
They're not pasteurizing,they're just putting out and
rolling the dice, like you said.
Jessica Infante (16:23):
Yeah, which is?
Scott (16:23):
terrifying.
Yeah, so you mentioned BallastPoint.
That's kind of a shame too.
They were at one point.
They made pretty good beer.
Jessica Infante (16:29):
They were bought for a billion dollars.
Yeah, constellation Brands paidone billion American dollars
for Ballast Point in 2015, whichwas a record.
We will not see the likes ofthat again and they sold it four
it, yeah, four years later forlike pennies on the dollar.
If that to this tiny startupcalled kings and convicts, which
(16:50):
I feel like I always have likea story to go with the story
because, like, I remember what Iwas doing when the news
happened, but I was at brewboundlive, which their annual
conference, and I was only liketwo months in on the job, but we
were in santa monica and all ofa sudden, the beer world blows
up because everybody is like whothe heck is Kings and Convicts?
They just bought Ballast Point.
Scott (17:08):
Yeah.
Jessica Infante (17:09):
For I'm not even going to try to pull the
number off the top of my headbecause I wouldn't be able to do
it, but it is nowhere near abillion dollars.
And you know, I think, likeConstellation learned that they
didn't really understand craftand they don't have to because
they are doing just fine withthe medello, the corona and the
pacifico and it's fine.
(17:29):
But you know, like they also,they tried to go on the same
buying spree that, like av andmolson cores did, but I don't
think their heart was in it.
They got the, they had anotherbrewery but you know they
obviously sold off Ballast Pointand then, like right before I
had Cora, they sold off FunkyBuddha back to Founders, which
is a great story.
You know, like good for thoseguys.
Like get your money.
Scott (17:50):
Yeah, that was really cool.
Jessica Infante (17:51):
And then get your brewery back for much less
money than you were paid for it.
Scott (17:55):
For the listeners.
We both worked at the BostonBeer Company, makers of Sam
Adams, truly Hard Seltzer, AngryOrchard, twisted Tea, et cetera
, et cetera, et cetera.
In late May this year, wallStreet Journal put out a story
stating that there was apossibility that the Boston Beer
Company may be sold to Suntory,a Japanese mega company that
owns all sorts of stuff,including the Jim Beam brand.
(18:18):
It's still kind of up in theair.
Jessica Infante (18:21):
What are you hearing about that?
So Suntory has completelydenied this and I don't know,
like that Wall Street Journalstory was really thin,
anonymously sourced.
I trust the Wall Street Journal.
Like I think that they hadsomething that made them feel
comfortable publishing that.
I don't think that was just youknow, willy-nilly gossip.
I think that that's probablysome smoke.
(18:42):
It makes sense.
It makes sense.
So boston beer and beam centauri, which is like the the us
operations.
They entered intoa jointventure in 2021 that they seem
pretty happy with.
They know each other, they likeeach other.
There's so much crossover now.
I mean you know like there's somuch crossover now.
I mean you know like there's somuch crossover, particularly
(19:02):
between beer and spirits, not somuch with wine.
I think wine is kind of likeyou barbarians figure it out.
So they'll take a spirits brandand put it on a beer type
product and Boston beer willpush that out.
Or they'll take a Boston beerbrand and put it on a spirits
product and a beam pushes thatout.
So they've done truly brandedflavored vodkas that go through
(19:26):
the beam network.
They've done a twisted teabranded whiskey.
They've done uh, they did sowsa tequila branded like agave
drinks that they killed.
That didn't work.
I think that was like theirfirst release and they were just
, you know, getting it off theground.
But they also have a beamflavored like fmb punch thing
that bbc is selling.
So to me like I think it couldbe plausible, I don't know.
(19:47):
Uh, my, my colleague and editor,justin kendall, just did an
interview this week on ourpodcast with nadine sarwat from,
uh, bernstein talking all aboutthis, and she basically was
like yeah, we see it, we don'tknow anything, but like she was,
it's an idea.
Their conversation was reallyinteresting because it was
interesting to hear, like WallStreet's take on Boston beer,
(20:10):
which is basically like puts aton of like sorry, I can't think
of a better word but a ton ofstock in Jim personally and
well-deserved.
Jim is, I'm sure, a genius,certifiably by like Mensa I
don't know if he's ever tried,but Jim is insanely intelligent
and like creepy intelligent,creepy intelligent and also has
(20:31):
like just enough like kookinessto be able to try the big ideas,
but he also knows how to makethem work.
Yeah, but it just seems like ifI I'm not Jim, if I were Jim,
like at this point in my life Iwould be so down to just go hang
on a beach and, like god, lovehim.
That is not what he's doing sowell?
Scott (20:50):
yeah, I looked it up.
I didn't realize the man's 75years old, yeah, which is weird
because he's so youthful andhe's always drinking beers on a
regular basis.
Just think of him as maybe like45, 50 I don't know why I don't
see him any older than that,but but 75 is holy shit.
75, 75.
I think he has grandkids I'mnot sure, but I know his oldest
two are married and you can'ttake it with you.
Jessica Infante (21:15):
No, I mean he always says his succession plan
is to not die, which is funnyand good luck to you and the Red
Sox on that, but you weren'taround for the Dogfish deal.
Scott (21:25):
It wasn't, and I was extremely upset about the
Dogfish Head deal because I justleft and my favorite beer on
the entire planet is DogfishHead Indian Brown Ale by far.
When it was available, I wouldbuy cases of it Like love it.
Yeah, it crushed me that I wasnot there for that.
Jessica Infante (21:43):
Yeah, so I was only there for a few more weeks
after it happened and to me Ikind of felt like one of the
biggest assets of this deal isSam.
Scott (21:50):
Yeah.
Jessica Infante (21:51):
You know, I don't know how management
committee goes down anymore, Idon't know what town hall
meetings are like, but I imagineSam is like a super visible
quantity in leadership.
So I think like Jim, if youwant to go hang out on the beach
, you got your bud.
Scott (22:05):
Yeah.
Jessica Infante (22:06):
He's got it.
Jim has also said that he wouldbe the last American owner of
the company of the largestbrewery.
He's got some quote out therein the quote.
Jim is a quote machine but youknow, like he's also kind of
said like this will potentiallyend with him.
I don't not that I'm at allcalling for Jim's demise, jesus,
but like we'll see what happensLike you're a jerk.
(22:28):
I could see it.
He would never.
I will tell you what he wouldnever, ever sell to AB or Molson
Coors.
Scott (22:36):
Absolutely not.
Jessica Infante (22:37):
And I I hope, given everything we just talked
about, Constellation is not onthe table for a potential buyer.
Yeah, the thing aboutConstellation is that to me it's
a super complex operation.
There's a lot of brands, butthey've got this insane
innovation pipeline andgenerally wholesalers think
super highly of them.
So you get a lot, were you toacquire.
Scott (22:59):
It's a nice distribution footprint.
He's built a great network ofwholesale partners, staying out
of the AB houses for the mostpart.
Jessica Infante (23:06):
Yeah, and AB is not interested anymore anyway.
So I know we can very easilysay Jim would never sell to AB.
But they just sold off a bunchof brands last summer in a fire
sale, to tell them.
Scott (23:16):
They've got bigger fish to fry.
It'll be interesting to see.
I wish them all the best.
It's crazy because you're kindof like, oh, don't sell, don't
sell.
But at the end of the day is hegoing to be 90 and run the
joint?
His kids are not interested.
He's kind of run the gamut ofit.
He's getting up there in age.
Let's celebrate the guy and lethim kind of go off into the
sunset.
Jessica Infante (23:34):
Yeah, I want Jim to let his story end,
however he wants it to end.
Scott (23:37):
Yeah, it should.
It's not like he's selling afailing company or still a
billion dollar business.
You know, maybe not on aregional level, but on a
national level.
You still think of craft beer.
That is the one you think of.
Jessica Infante (23:48):
I mean, their business has certainly changed
since you and I were around.
Yes, everything is different.
Scott (23:53):
Yes.
Jessica Infante (24:04):
The last I had crunched these numbers in their
off-premise scan data, which isnot the whole picture of the
business.
But you know all the beer thatgets sold in stores to be drunk
at home 80% of their sales weretwisted tea and truly.
Scott (24:10):
Yeah, the craft business in general is just very cyclical
.
But seeing what I'm seeing downhere in chains, it shocks the
hell out of me that I walk intoa store and there's nothing Sam
Adams in the cold box, and thatis something that you see here
in North Carolina.
Now.
It's kind of crazy.
It was five, six skews and thenthe teas, and then the ciders.
You don't even see any SamAdams in there anymore.
(24:31):
And I mean, again, the industryis cyclical and it's, you know,
it's kind of how long can youhold on for?
Jessica Infante (24:34):
Right.
I mean, what's interestingright now is we're seeing this
like resurgence of like retroseeming lagers.
Yeah, so, like you're right,everything is cyclical.
Scott (24:44):
It'll be interesting.
You know, like I said, I wishhim the best.
It just it's kind of crazy tohear it and to see it.
Jessica Infante (24:54):
I'm sure you had a super secret knowledge of
the letter that went out to thewhole company.
Yes, I, I did receive that,that text message.
I was actually I was off, itwas like the last day of my
maternity leave and was like,well, this will be fun on Monday
, something to do, so yeah, sothat rumor happened and then,
like a week later, this cannabiscompany, green Thumb Industries
(25:15):
, published like an open letterto Jim, like hey, we'll buy you.
Scott (25:19):
Really.
Jessica Infante (25:20):
Which is crazy, just gets them like some
publicity and some notoriety.
There's a lot of reasons whythat can't really happen.
Scott (25:26):
Yeah, are they a large cannabis company?
Jessica Infante (25:29):
like they've got enough cash to do it yeah,
their market cap wasn't thatmuch smaller than boston beers.
Wow, uh, I guess they could,but I mean, I think they're.
They're based in the us wherecannabis isn't federally legal
like so one of the the biggestcraft brewers in quotes right
now is Tilray, which is aCanadian cannabis company, but
cannabis is legal in Canada, sothat makes all of their
(25:50):
financial operations and theirability to operate much
different.
But they've been buying up uscraft breweries in the past
couple of years.
They bought.
They started with sweet waterin 2020.
They bought green flash andAlpine in San Diego.
They just bought Montauk in NewYork a year and a half ago and
then last summer they bought allthose brands from AB, which
includes, like a lot of theirpack Northwest stuff like Widmer
(26:11):
and 10 barrel.
I don't want to be wrong onanything, but they bought shock
top.
Scott (26:17):
Well, did they really?
Jessica Infante (26:18):
Yes, the fact that shock top still exists
astounds me.
I don't know how this happened,but there's like a running joke
on our podcast now that I wasgoing to name Cora, baby shock
top, my daughter, to the pointwhere, like our our weekend
newsletter writer, sean, youwould love it Me.
Super funny.
Uh, we'll like occasionallyinto newsletters, right, and
baby shock top like shock top, Idon't even remember the last
time I saw a shock top, like dothey exist?
Scott (26:39):
I don't know.
Remember the last time I saw aShock Top.
Jessica Infante (26:41):
Do they exist?
I don't know.
I was home at the Jersey Shorefor a point in the summer and
was out socializing with myfriends.
Scott (26:49):
Doing some investigative reporting.
Jessica Infante (26:51):
Some guy started talking to me somewhere
and we were out.
I was like, oh, are you workingcraft beer?
That's really hot.
My favorite beer is raspberryShock Top.
It's like cool Thanks.
Scott (27:03):
Leave it to the jersey shore.
Yeah, never fall in love withthe jersey shore no, but it's
funny that you bring up shocktop, because I mean, shock top
is just a anheuser-busch bluemoon ripoff and I just, uh,
rediscovered a beer that's verysimilar to both of them but 20
times better, and it's actuallymy second beer.
Jessica Infante (27:21):
I'm going to try today, you're going to have
two beers you breathe.
Scott (27:25):
Lost Coast, tangerine.
Oh, this is a good one.
Jessica Infante (27:30):
I'm impressed that you get them.
Scott (27:32):
I know, and it's fresh too.
Wow, it's only a month old.
Shock that we get them all theway from California.
Jessica Infante (27:37):
Because they are like a super remote part of
California.
Scott (27:40):
Yeah, eureka, you're kaya eureka, tiny, tiny though, but
yeah, it's such an amazing beertoo, like just had it this
weekend, hadn't had it in awhile.
They do um great white.
It's like one of the last likewhite ipas on a planet like oh
god, remember though.
Jessica Infante (27:56):
Oh, they're so good.
Well, I know you remember thoserip to whitewater.
Scott (28:00):
If anybody knows me, that's the one thing I'm going
to be known for is my whitewaterIPA love.
Jessica Infante (28:04):
I might be wrong.
Wasn't the beer that we werepouring on tours that was made
for your bachelor party?
Wasn't that like an earlyversion of Rebel IPA?
Scott (28:14):
No, so close.
So it was.
I found out that one of theolder people that we worked with
had brewed their own beer atthe brewery.
How do you get to do this?
So she was like, yeah, I talkedto jim, it's, we can all do it,
nobody asks.
So I was like you're gonna beshitting me.
So I went and talked to jim andI was like I'm getting married,
can I brew my own beer?
And he's like yeah, sure, I'mlike you, serious, this is
(28:35):
amazing.
So I made a 60 minute hopversion of a white ipa, but it
was supposed to be hopped atminute intervals all the way
through, like a 60-minutedogfish.
I made it with Dean, one of theOGs down there a little of that
guy.
I made it with him and it cameout fantastic and I got a keg of
(28:58):
it for my wedding.
And then they put the othernine kegs from the yield on the
tap room.
But yeah, it was so good.
But it was funny because it wasbefore Whitewater came out and
I was just to make fun of DaveSipes, who was the brewer that
designed the beer, and I saidyou know, you totally ripped me
off, dude.
I know you ripped me off and hewas like I didn't rip you off,
(29:19):
your beer sucks, mine's great,but yeah, such a great.
I mean it's kind of like a hazy, not really, but just a little
bit different.
More wheat.
Jessica Infante (29:28):
I feel like they walked so hazies could fly.
Scott (29:30):
Yeah, yeah, it was a fun time.
We got the keg and we wentthrough probably like three
quarters of it and in themorning they put it back on ice
for us.
And in the morning my new wife,katie, and I woke up and we got
to take the keg home and killit ourselves.
But it was nice that woke upand we got to take the keg home
and kill it ourselves that wasnice.
Jessica Infante (29:46):
That's fun, that's fun.
I did not do the make a beeroption, but I got married the
weekend after the Bostonmarathon, so we had a keg of
26.2.
Scott (29:56):
Oh nice.
Jessica Infante (29:57):
Which I love, but I'm an idiot and I totally
forgot to bring a tap handle, sonobody even knew that it was
there.
Like, I actually think I likementioned it at the end of my
vows and was like please drinkthe beer from the keg, like, and
I think we brought home likehalf a full keg.
Scott (30:12):
It still is.
That was such a cool thing todo that we each got the
opportunity to have that, youknow, at our wedding and Super
cool.
Jessica Infante (30:19):
I mean, I was a jerk about it.
Like I think I or you get 25cases, Yep, and I was such a
little obnoxious craft beerpurist that I only had beer.
I think maybe I brought in likeone case of angry orchard and I
got every variety pack we hadavailable, so there ended up
being like 25 styles of beer.
Oh god, took a palette from thebrewery, I chalkboard, painted
(30:40):
it, I hand wrote all the beers,I divided them up by like malty,
fruity, happy, like whatever,and like you know, nobody at a
wedding gives a fig about that.
Scott (30:48):
Oh yeah.
Jessica Infante (30:48):
And the bartenders didn't care either.
They're these like gruff ladiesat the Jersey Shore working at
this yacht club.
So like people would come upand be like, can I have a Sam
Adams?
And they'd be like sure.
So they were just pullingwhatever they had out of the ice
and they were just grabbing anyold bottle.
So months later, one of mymom's good friends, joanne, was
telling me.
She said, jess, we had so muchfun at your wedding.
And I was like yeah, that'sgreat.
(31:09):
I'm glad you had a good time.
And she was like you know whatwe did?
We were doing the Boston Lagers, but we drank down the neck and
we asked the bartenders to fillit with Bacardi Limon and it
was great.
Scott (31:19):
Oh, I have yet to try that.
Yeah, I don't see how thatcould be good.
I don't know.
Jessica Infante (31:27):
I told Jim about it once.
He was like okay, they liked itGreat.
Scott (31:30):
Yeah, I mixed mine up.
I had ciders and, I think, sometwisted teas.
Just mixed it up a little bit.
But yeah, I can see where you'dbe like that?
Jessica Infante (31:37):
Yeah, you're a normal person.
Scott (31:38):
No, I'm not really.
You're giving me way too muchcredit a truly test market.
Jessica Infante (31:48):
Yeah, so when, like the bbc contingent arrived,
they went to like the storethat had it and they just bought
it all and like, drank it allweekend.
Scott (31:51):
So when uh truly came out , so it came out right when the
actual like seltzer craze washuge.
They, you know, flavoredregular non-alcohol seltzers and
my wife was obsessed with them,just every lacroix possibility
you could ever get.
And she found out she waspregnant in march of that year
and we launched like that summer.
So my wife missed the entirelike first nine months of
(32:13):
truly's.
She had no summer ale that yearshe was a very, very angry
pregnant lady.
Jessica Infante (32:20):
Oh, that is so sad because when is finley's
birthday, so finley is uhoctober 25th she'll be eight.
Scott (32:23):
Wow, katie missed everything.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was rightin the middle of the summer, see
I, cory was evicted on june 1st.
Jessica Infante (32:26):
So Finley is October 25th, she'll be eight.
Wow, katie missed everything.
Scott (32:27):
Yeah, yeah, it was right in the middle of the summer.
Jessica Infante (32:30):
See I Corey was evicted on June 1st, which was
Evicted.
Scott (32:34):
Yeah Out you go.
Yeah, Through the sunroof,that's awesome.
Well, you know I don't want tobe cliche and be the guy that's
got the older kid who's like allright, well, you just wait for
this, this, this and this, butyeah, hell's going to break
loose.
Jessica Infante (32:50):
I'm trying really hard not to wish anything
away, and I don't.
I'm really enjoying all of this, but I can't wait for her to
stop putting everything into herfreaking mouth.
Scott (32:57):
It's not going to happen.
It's very stressful Not goingto happen.
My daughter still carries herswaddle blanket that had circles
on it.
It swaddled well blanket.
It had circles on it startedwhen she was a baby.
Would call it circle banks.
I don't know how she's spellingit, but I don't know it's
b-a-n-x, b-a-n-k-s but circlebanks, and she would carry it
around with her.
But a thing just got so nastyand corroded and pulling on it's
(33:18):
now it's like seven pieces butthey're all tied into one um,
and she's like still like sevenyears old, still rubs it on her
mouth.
It's it's so disgusting likeI'll find her chewing on it.
I'm like that is that hasn'tbeen washed in months.
Like get that out of your mouth.
Like that's where covid camefrom.
Her circle banks disgusting,that's adorable.
Do you have any any coolpictures of your daughter going
(33:39):
for beer bottles?
Jessica Infante (33:40):
yes, I do.
Isn't that great.
My husband had just pouredhimself a sip of sunshine, I
think.
Think this was Easter weekend.
Scott (33:47):
Yeah.
Jessica Infante (33:47):
And he's holding her and his beer glass
and she is like it's amazing.
Scott (33:53):
I have a really cool picture of Finn grabbing a
Boston lager out of Katie's handLike, yeah, it's my girl.
Jessica Infante (34:01):
I love her.
Like her interspersed likehouse ad about oh yeah, yeah.
Like her interspersed likehouse ad about oh yeah, yeah.
So when I was little my dad wasa lawyer and there was a car
dealership, honda of Essex inNorth Jersey, that the owner had
his daughters on and they wouldsay you should buy a car from
our dad so we can get moreBarbies, really.
(34:22):
And I would always be like dad,you need a commercial so that I
can be on it.
And he was like Jessica, I amnot the kind of lawyer that does
commercials Like this is notgoing to happen.
Scott (34:32):
We don't do that stuff.
Yeah, we don't do that.
It's not personal injury.
When I asked her, I said I hadthis great idea.
She had already done the endline, thank you and goodbye.
She was I don't know five, sixyears old, six years old and she
had to write herself a script.
All it was was thank you forlistening, bye.
And she spelled bye, b-e-y.
And I was like, oh, that's sosweet and I hope she shakes out
(34:52):
that inability to spell wordsthing.
She wrote the script and thenread the script Like I was like,
oh, this is the sweetest thing.
So she thought it was great andevery time we'd listen to a
podcast, she'd listen to it withme, with me.
So I said you know, I need toget some ad work in here and I'm
, you know, trying to get somesponsors and show them how I
would do it.
And I wrote that for.
And she's like I'm not going tosay, well, so let's do this,
(35:13):
because that's what boys say.
I said, just do it, Just do it.
She was like, nope, I'm notgonna do it.
So about two days later shecomes back and she's like I'm
like you, really, you think youcan handle it.
She goes yep, I got it, put theheadphones on her, sat her up
in my little bedroom studio andshe nailed it in one take.
I was shocked, pro yeah.
(35:34):
I was like this girl's got it.
She's got it.
She can actually act and,unlike her dad, she loves it.
She's always asked who's theguest and who's this?
And?
And the second guest I had wasmy friend Molly Lloyd.
She's an actor and she was inthe Dilly Dilly Bud Light ads.
Oh, do you remember those?
Yes, anyways, listen, go backand listen to that episode
(35:55):
because it's hysterical.
But Molly was great and she wastalking about the Bud Light ads
.
So every time Finn saw BudLight she would scream that's
the Molly Lloyd beer.
But it happened right aroundthe same time that the Great
unpleasantness yeah, everybodygot upset because they put
someone on a can whatever, not apolitical podcast, but it was
(36:15):
ridiculous and she would go inand go that's the Molly Lloyd
beer.
And old white guys would giveher like the dirtiest looks down
here.
Jessica Infante (36:22):
That's amazing.
Scott (36:24):
Like please stop, You're going to get me killed, Please
stop.
But yeah, still to this day shethinks it's the Molly Lloyd
beer.
But yes, pretty cool story.
She talks about how I don'tknow if you've heard it, I have
not listened to this one.
Jessica Infante (36:33):
I'm going to go back and find it.
Scott (36:35):
But the costumes that they used for the whole Dilly
Dilly, they were from Game ofThrones.
No way.
They filmed when Game ofThrones wasn't filming and they
filmed there and used all theircostumes.
That was smart, so it was wild.
I'm like that's amazing.
Jessica Infante (36:49):
I really liked that campaign from them.
It was great.
Scott (36:52):
It was great.
Is it your doorbell.
It's yours, I think it's onmine.
Jessica Infante (36:56):
I mean, it's probably a beer delivery, Is it?
Scott (36:58):
Does that happen often.
Jessica Infante (37:00):
Yeah, almost nobody needs my ID, which is
nice.
A few breweries into, like newbelgium always insists like you
have to go down and show themyour I d, but for the most part
beer just shows up here, really.
Or my mom's house like, becauseI spent like a month at my
mom's house every summer becauseshe lives at the jersey shore
and I work remote and myhusband's a teacher, so why the
honk?
Scott (37:18):
not, we all go yeah.
Jessica Infante (37:19):
so depending on when brewery pr people ask for
my address, sometimes they getthat one and sometimes they
don't change it.
So my mom now lives with hergentleman friend and he loves
beer.
He's literally the most devotedcraft beer fan I know.
He's 80.
Good for him.
Good for him.
Probably not great for craftbeer.
(37:40):
Maybe consider reaching someyounger consumers, I don't know.
Scott (37:44):
That could be the problem we're all experiencing here,
right.
Jessica Infante (37:47):
Right, so Bell's ships to my mom's house,
which is great because they'rehis favorite.
So yeah.
I'm just happy to keep Tomflush with whatever he wants to
drink.
Scott (37:55):
It's really cool.
So you just get part of theperks of the job is you're still
getting free beer.
Jessica Infante (37:59):
Yeah, I do.
I still get free beer.
The problem is that I don't getto pick it.
It just shows up, it's justkind of whatever, whatever's on
offer, and like I mean I, Ican't possibly drink it all the
Ryan tries.
Scott (38:15):
I love Ryan.
How's Ryan?
He's good, he's good, good,tell him.
I said hi, he loves being a dad.
Yeah, good, I'm sure he's agreat dad.
So back to the beer.
No, I'm just kidding.
Oh, yes, that's awesome thatyou just they're just sending
you samples or sending you new,new items and yeah, samples I
mean because people will alsosend stuff which I try not to
like.
Jessica Infante (38:29):
I try to just give it away because I don't
know what the hard and fast ruleis here.
And I also always tell themlike hey, we don't review the
products, which is I have totell people this a lot like I
don't like drink beer and writeabout it.
Like I write about business,like I write about distribution
and contracts and legislation,and it's kind of rare for me to
be writing about, like, what'sin a beer.
Yeah, so I always say that likehey, like, just so you know,
(38:51):
like we've done a lot better.
We do a really good job with anew newsletter format of you
know, highlighting new productsand whatever, but before that we
really weren't doing much.
So I always try to make itclear like you can send me
whatever you want to send me,but don't expect me to write
about it, and some people don'twant to send it anyway, do you?
Scott (39:08):
have breweries giving you their unadulterated.
Take on your unadulterated.
Takes on them.
No, From a business standpointor that you know.
Does anyone ever get upset thatyou, they think you may have
besmirched them, when you'reonly telling the truth?
Jessica Infante (39:20):
No, I think I'm pretty.
I think I shoot everybodypretty straight.
Yeah, there is one largebrewery-ish large-ish brewery in
the state of Georgia.
That was mentioned a lot duringthe reckoning.
How much do you know about thereckoning?
We don't need to get into allof this, but craft beer had its
own movement in 21.
Scott (39:38):
Yes, I was familiar.
Jessica Infante (39:39):
Yes, so that happened.
Scott (39:41):
What's the person's name?
Rab Agment.
Yes.
Jessica Infante (39:44):
That's her Instagram.
Her real name is Brianne Allenand she's very nice.
Okay, so she worked at Notch,which is in my town, salem,
where I live, and you know, forpeople who don't know Brianne,
who worked at Notch, just youknow, ask the question on
Instagram like you know, whenhave you experienced sexual
harassment in beer?
And she started sharing all thestories that she got and it
really turned into like a bigupheaval, like it was huge a lot
(40:07):
, yeah, yeah, huge a lot ofthings came out.
So this one particular brewerygot mentioned a lot but, like,
journalistically it was toughbecause she was sharing these
stories anonymously and a lot ofthe things that are mentioned
in them are so sensitive that Ididn't want to go digging and
find, you know, like, yeah, Iwas trying to be an upstanding
person about it.
So the way that we approachedit to cover was whenever a
(40:29):
brewery either made a publicstatement or, you know, fired
somebody and announced it likewe would cover that and that
kept me plenty, plenty, plentybusy.
So this one brewery would getmentioned but like nothing
really ever came of it.
They blocked me on instagram.
I never even wrote about them.
How full full were they?
12?
Like it took me figuring it,like asking like various people
(40:51):
to check their profile, meblocking various people so I
could see what their profile was.
Like I figured I was like theseefforts blocked me, like I've
never even written about you.
Scott (40:59):
They blocked you.
That's so pathetic yeah.
Jessica Infante (41:02):
I mean, look like you're not doing it right
if you don't have some enemies.
But I don't think, too manypeople hate my guts.
Scott (41:07):
Well, I certainly don't.
I'm glad you were here on thebig show.
Jessica Infante (41:10):
Thanks, bud, this was a lot of fun.
Scott (41:12):
And I'm psyched that we got a chance to drink some beers
together and catch up a littlebit, and I love watching your
stories with little Cora.
She's adorable and it's justcute to watch you guys you and
Ryan be awesome parents too.
Very nice, thank, very nice.
Thank you.
Oh, it's well.
I feel like you are a greatparent role model.
Jessica Infante (41:31):
You look like you were searching for a word to
use.
Scott (41:32):
I was about to say like I feel like you're a really great
role model for becoming aparent at a slightly older age I
feel like you're a great parentwho drinks beer and doesn't
watch their kids, so you'regoing with that's where you're
going with that.
That's where you're going withthat.
Jessica Infante (41:49):
They got to learn.
Scott (41:50):
Yeah, she's great.
I have a video of her.
We were here about a year andHurricane Florence came through
and it was brutal down here Imean brutal and it whacked the
hell out of us.
The whole city evacuated.
We ended up in Greensborobecause that was the last place
that had a hotel where we couldtake a dog.
So we're out at Buffalo WildWings or something and my
(42:11):
daughter has the menu open andshe's looking at pointed stuff
and she's just still kind ofcooing.
She knows a few words.
I think my wife points to beerand she's like what's that?
And she's like beer and she's18 months old.
Jessica Infante (42:25):
And I was like oh, my heart my heart.
Scott (42:26):
So cute, Jess, but this has been fantastic.
Thank you for your insightsinto crazy beer industry that we
know here in the US.
Hopefully some more crazy stuffwill shake out and we'll have
you back on it, but I want tothank you so much for your time
and for all your contributionsto the beer industry.
Your articles are great Folks.
Check her out on Brewbound.
Your podcast is fantastic.
If know, if everybody's lookingfor cool beer news, check out
(42:49):
the Brewbound podcast.
Anything else that can find youat.
You got any conferences you'rerunning.
Jessica Infante (42:53):
Yeah, we've got Brewbound.
Live in Marina Del Rey,California, December 11th and
12th.
Scott (42:58):
Awesome.
Jessica Infante (42:59):
Right now, our keynote speaker is Natalie
Chilurzo of Russian River.
Scott (43:03):
Ooh, very good, I am really excited.
Yeah, that sounds awesome.
Well, jess, again, thank you somuch coming on the show.
It's been a pleasure and takecare.
Jessica Infante (43:11):
Thank you, this was great.
No-transcript.
My next guest is Jessica Infante.
Jess is the managing editor forBrewBound, the leading beer
industry news outlet in theUnited States.
Prior to her journey atBrewBound, Jess and I had worked
together at the Boston BeerCompany and have done extensive
beer tastings and are bothcertified Cicerones.
Jessica holds a bachelor'sdegree in magazine journalism
from Syracuse University and amaster's degree in integrated
marketing communication fromEmerson College.
(00:21):
Jessica Infante, welcome toCarney Saves the World.
Jessica Infante (00:24):
Oh, my goodness , what an honor.
I know.
All that stuff you just said istrue, but when you hear all
those things repeated back toyou, I'm like, oh, that's cool,
who's that?
But it's me.
Scott (00:32):
Well, when I was reading, I didn't realize that you were
that smart either, but did younot?
Jessica Infante (00:37):
Can I tell you a secret?
I'm really not.
Scott (00:40):
But it sounds amazing.
It looks amazing on paper.
But it sounds amazing.
It looks amazing on paper,thank you, thank you.
So it has been about sevenyears since you and I have
gotten a chance to hang out andhave a beer.
We're having one now.
What are you having?
Jessica Infante (00:49):
I am having a Harpoon Rec League, which is
their local hazy IPA.
It is delicious, all right.
Yeah, I had our friend andformer coworker, megan Baker
over a couple of weeks ago formy daughter's first birthday and
she recently left Harpoon butstill does some consulting work
for them, so she brought a niceold 12 pack.
Scott (01:07):
Nice.
It's always nice to havefriends in the beer industry,
isn't it Right?
Yeah, I am drinking a TropicalLightning from Wilmington
Brewing Company.
Jess, if you've never heard ofthese guys, they're one of the
best brewers on the East Coast.
Wow, I'm not just saying thatbecause I live here, because
there are plenty of breweries inWilmington that suck.
These guys are phenomenal andthis IPA is one of the best IPAs
I've ever had in my life.
(01:27):
That's amazing.
It's consistently fresh.
This is 15 days old.
It's just an amazing beer.
So how are things, now thatyou're a big managing editor at
Brewbound and what's that like?
Jessica Infante (01:36):
It's a lot of fun.
It's crazy, as you can imagine.
So Brewbound is a tradepublication, so we cover beer in
name, but we also touch onthings like FMBs and hard
seltzers and RTDs and basicallyall that stuff.
Scott (01:50):
All that fun stuff.
Jessica Infante (01:51):
Yeah, all that fun stuff, it's a good time.
I mean the one thing you didn'thit on in my intro, which I
wouldn't expect you to, becauseit's a bazillion years ago, but
right after college I was anewspaper journalist.
Scott (02:01):
Yes, I was going to, but and then I moved to Boston.
Jessica Infante (02:05):
I have a specific question that I want to
ask you about that, but you goright ahead and talk about it,
oh, no, I mean, you know a lotof people ask how you end up in
this role and that's how I didit all.
I did the news, I did the beerand now I do the news about the
beer.
Nice, but, yeah, we writestories.
We publish a newsletter everyday.
(02:29):
That's, honestly, probably alittle too full with info
because we are workaholics whocan't help ourselves.
But I don't want to speak formy teammates, but I aim to make
sure I'm giving people in theBevAlc industry, particularly
craft producers, all theinformation that they need to
know to make business decisions.
Yeah, so, in addition to thenewsletter, we do a podcast, we
do in-person conferences andsometimes we do videos.
We've kind of backed away fromthat.
Scott (02:46):
I've listened to a few of the podcasts.
They're fantastic.
They're really informative.
Thank, you.
I try to get as much news as Ican.
So yes, I wanted to ask youabout your old local news
reporter deal.
It was in the Jersey Shore.
A lot of fun stuff going onthere.
Jessica Infante (02:59):
A lot of fun stuff.
So I wrote for the Asbury ParkPress, which is the daily
newspaper of the half of theJersey Shore.
The Jersey Shore that you'rethinking of is included in that
territory.
Yes, but it was fun.
I covered three beach towns onLong Beach Island.
I covered a mainland town,which is more of an all year
thing, and really just anythingthat happened.
So like, let's see, I rememberI was only a couple of months on
(03:22):
the job when a beached whaleshowed up on New Year's Eve.
Scott (03:25):
Oh, there you go.
Jessica Infante (03:30):
So I had to go like hang out on the beach like
calling in updates to thenewsroom, like yep, the whale's
still here.
Like, oh, now the Marine MammalStranding Center guy is here
and is asking all the peoplewho've come up with their dogs
to please get away from thewhale.
Scott (03:40):
Oh, so yeah, stuff like that.
You don't want the dogs nippingon the whale, no.
Jessica Infante (03:44):
Like people were taking like family photos
in front of the dead whale.
Like is this going to be onyour Christmas card next year
Like this is weird.
Scott (03:50):
It would be for an interesting Christmas card
though, probably, yeah.
So how long did you do that?
For Three years, three years.
Jessica Infante (03:58):
And then you were just like I'm done.
I was a boondoggle and a half.
I lived in my family's summerhouse 12 months a year and
didn't pay rent.
In my defense, I kept offeringand my parents were like no,
save your money, you idiot.
Scott (04:09):
Save your money.
You're going to go to Bostonsoon.
Jessica Infante (04:16):
Yeah, I mean it was like 07 to 2010.
So like great recession whichwas terrible for the whole
country but particularly bad forprint media, and there were
layoffs and furloughs and I meanI never got laid off because I
was probably had the lowestsalary in the joint, so I was a
good deal and eventually I waslike I need to find a way to
have a sustainable career andfound my master's program which
brought me to Boston.
Scott (04:34):
Oh nice, yeah.
So we worked together.
For when did you start there?
2010.
2010.
So yeah, seven years, cause Ileft at 17.
Jessica Infante (04:40):
Yeah Well, so I was a little baby tour guide.
Scott (04:48):
Yes at 17.
Yeah, well, so.
Jessica Infante (04:48):
I was a little baby tour guide.
Yes, I remember and you werealso a tour guide, do you?
Scott (04:50):
remember the first day we met.
I was wondering if you werebringing it up.
Jessica Infante (04:55):
I think that people need to hear it.
Okay, god, you know, I don'tknow when it was, but, like I
know it was summer because wewere giving a tour outside and I
want to say you were guidingthe tour and I was your helper,
buddy, and somebody asked aboutsummer ale.
So question that.
Now, I know people ask all thetime.
But somebody had been like, oh,like, why is summer ale
different this year?
And then you gave, like, thestandard.
(05:15):
Well, you know, beer is brewedfrom agricultural ingredients
and you know, sometimes thingschange, but more often your
palate changes because youhaven't had this beer in a year.
And no, we didn't change therecipe, you did a really good
job.
And then my dumb ass was likeactually, scott, my auntie used
different lemons this year and Ithought you were about to be
like who is this chick?
But it was very funny.
Scott (05:38):
I stopped doing stand-up.
I got my kicks out of makingpeople laugh at the brewery on
the weekends.
I worked in the office duringthe week and then that was like
my stage on the weekends andthere was this new chick showing
up and she was funny and I waslike look, funny is already
taken care of here, we don'tneed you.
That base is already covered.
Jessica Infante (05:53):
Yeah, god, that was so much fun.
Scott (05:55):
Yeah, it was such a blast Like the stuff we could do back
then and give the tours andyou're half of the bag during
them.
So today we're going to talkabout all kinds of cool beer,
gossip stuff that's happening inthe industry, I mean the beer
industry is such anever-changing mess it's a very
polite way to put it A lot ofreally crazy cool things going
on.
One of the coolest things thatI want to talk to you about was
(06:16):
Chobani buying up AnchorBrewery's assets.
Jessica Infante (06:19):
Yeah, so I will give you a little inside
baseball here in my life.
I was on a month of maternityleave when it happened.
I actually was on maternityleave when the first closure
happened.
And then I took this last monthoff, before my daughter turned
one.
I kept more in touch on mysecond baby break and saw that
and was like what the heck?
So yeah, that was not on mybingo card.
Scott (06:41):
I don't know too many people who had that.
Jessica Infante (06:49):
The last I had heard of the anchor sale was
that there was a coupledifferent groups involved.
One of them was like the anchorunion of employees was
interested.
Another was like a localinvestor group.
And then, all of a sudden, mrHamdi Ulukaya, I believe, is how
you say his name, okay, but heis the Mr Chobani steps in and
just buys anchor, which is wild.
I mean, the fact that Anchorwent away at all to me remains
wild and crazy, because that'sso sad.
(07:10):
So sad Like it's a staple yeah.
Did you see their rebrand acouple of years ago?
Scott (07:15):
Yeah, to change all that.
I mean old labels and all this.
I mean they were just kind ofthe OGs.
I mean they were just and theymade great beer.
Like everything they made wasamazing.
Yeah.
Jessica Infante (07:24):
And people were angry.
Yeah, I mean Anger.
Steam is like I hate the wordiconic because I think it gets
used and abused to a point whereit doesn't mean anything.
But it's one of the few stylesof beer that originated in this
country.
To let something like that goby the wayside, like I think, is
kind of a crime.
We'll see what happens happens.
It's interesting to me thathonda yulikaya, mr yulikaya, was
(07:46):
always just saying like Iwanted to buy this brand because
I love san francisco yeah theheck of a thing to buy, man,
when you could just go getchowder and a sourdough bread
bowl and call it a day right, itwas so crazy.
Scott (07:56):
He's like I fell in love with san francisco and I'll just
go buy a brewery like thebrewery of san francisco.
Jessica Infante (08:02):
Bite up must, must be nice.
But like I mean Anchor's beenon a, it existed a long time ago
.
Fritz Maytag bought it in themiddle of last century, sold it
off to someone else and thensold it to Sapporo, who was
basically like we don't knowwhat to do with this.
Scott (08:17):
Yeah, and that was a shame too, because you thought,
with Sapporo buying it at onepoint, that they would have the
capital to infuse into it andmake it work.
You know, if it doesn't work ona national level, make it work
on the regional.
They just, they gave up prettyquick.
Jessica Infante (08:28):
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think Sapporowas like hey, we got stone now,
so we don't need you.
Sad little anchor, put you outto pasture, goodbye.
So I mean I think, like whathappened, is that the best
possible scenario?
Because, like, a lot of thethings that could have happened
was it could have just been soldfor parts, you know, ip sold to
somebody else, equipment soldto somebody else, real estate to
somebody else, and that it'sgoing to stay together, I think
(08:49):
is good yeah.
Scott (08:50):
I read somewhere where his focus is he's going to bring
the brand back to San Francisco.
First keep it there, and that'svery cool.
You don't need to be in all 50states right now, like you're
basically on life support, so Imean, I know we're not going to
get any anchor down here inWilmington, north Carolina for a
few years, but at least there'sa possibility, so I'm really
excited about that.
What other crazy news have youbeen working on?
Jessica Infante (09:10):
So a story I wrote this week that I probably
got a little too personallyinvested in but made me really
sad.
Were you familiar with CascadeBrewing out of Portland Oregon?
Scott (09:19):
Yes, sours.
Jessica Infante (09:20):
Yeah, like great sour houseour.
Scott (09:23):
House.
Jessica Infante (09:23):
And really like pioneered Northwest Sours,
announced this week that thebrew is closing.
But it's kind of a twistedstory where the founder this man
, art Lowrance, passed away afew weeks ago.
While I was on leave had aheart attack at the age of 80,
which made we all be so lucky togo in a relatively
pain-free-ish way at yeah thatage, 80 years old, that's a full
(09:44):
life.
Yeah, but apparently Art hadsold.
The Art said he sold thebrewery years ago, in 2020.
I covered the sale to aninvestor group of people from
Oregon, some of whom were allinvolved with other breweries,
only for his family to find outin the last two weeks that that
sale never really went throughand Art was the owner.
I guess he had put these newinvestors on a payment plan and
(10:06):
nothing ever.
This is terrible.
I hear art probably thought hewas having, you know, a nice
retirement.
He sells his company.
You know he's involved as anadvisor but nothing ever closed.
Liquor licenses were in hisname.
They expired 10 days after hisdeath.
Really like, really terrible.
And if you know oregon beer,you have to know art.
Art helped found portlandbrewing, which was like a very
(10:28):
early pioneer in craft.
He also helped start the oregonbrewers festival, which was a
really early, really big beerfestival like yeah you don't get
craft beer in the united stateswithout the pacific northwest
and you don't get craft beer inthe pacific northwest without
art.
Yeah, so so, really sad just tosee everything that's happened
in the past couple of weeks.
Scott (10:47):
Was his family aware?
His family wasn't aware of thisat all.
They just literally found outand they're like no, oh my.
Jessica Infante (10:52):
God, no, I talked to his daughter.
She had no idea and they have afamily trust, but she's like we
can't keep the brewery going.
Scott (10:58):
So what happens to this?
Is it in limbo?
It just dissolved, it's gone.
See you later, yeah.
Jessica Infante (11:02):
Yeah, she dropped off employees last
paychecks and the brewery isgoing to be done.
Scott (11:07):
Wow, that is really sad.
Jessica Infante (11:10):
Yeah, and there's a lot of breweries that
are also about to be done.
Yeah, but I don't think all ofthem quite have this very tragic
personal story attached to them.
A lot of breweries are closingand that is sad, but maybe there
were too many.
Scott (11:25):
And I feel like that sounds a little cold.
But no, you know, you look at,wilmington is kind of pushing
themselves as a big beer townand they are.
We've got a ton of brews butthey just keep opening and that
model is not sustainable and alot of these brews that are
opening are not putting outquality beer.
I'm going to give them thebenefit of the doubt.
It could be because they're newand they're still startup and
(11:49):
maybe on a small scale homebrew.
They know how to do it, buttheir big quote unquote
production brews are not qualityand you can only trick the
public so long to think thatyou're making good beer until
they understand what good beeris and they go wait a minute,
this is not it.
I think a lot of people arestarting to figure that out.
Jessica Infante (12:00):
Yeah, if you got in before COVID when you
could still get capital to dowhat you needed to do but there
was still money to be made andyou'd never been through a hard
time.
You're probably freaking outright now.
And to your point about quality, I think the BA was saying
close to 10 years ago quality istable stakes, and I don't know
if that lesson's necessarilysunk in for a lot of people, but
they're certainly finding itout right now.
Scott (12:20):
And it's really interesting.
We know we came from Sam Adamsand Boston Beer Company was one
of the quintessential qualityfirst companies.
I was there for the N35, theglass inclusion, where the teams
went into every wholesaler inthe country and pilfered through
all of these bottles lookingfor special codes and then
pulled all of them out of theentire country.
I mean, I've got a great story.
I won't name the brewery, I'lljust say I went home to Rhode
(12:41):
Island, got a six pack of one oftheir beers, cracked the first
one and just got a smell thatwas just pure bologna, like
actual meat bologna, oh God.
I poured it into a glass and itwas pure bologna.
What the hell is that smell?
And I went to look a code on itand when I did there were two
labels on it.
One was semi washed off and ithad a year code on it.
(13:07):
So they were reusing bottles andthey were not cleaning their
bottles properly and they wererecycling these bottles into
production and just pouring ontop of previously consumed beer
and it was some of the mostdisgusting smells I've been
witness to in my entire life.
So I emailed them.
I said hey, I'm a certifiedCicerone, I live in Boston, I
work for Boston Beer Company.
I'm just giving you a heads up.
I'm not trying to get a freesix pack out of you.
I'm just trying to tell youwhat I came across.
Let me know if I can help withanything.
Never heard back from herwhatsoever.
Oh wow, I was shocked.
(13:28):
Like not even a thank you.
Yeah, they're still in businesstoo.
I don't know how.
So there's also some stuff thatI learned through BrewBound
about athletic.
That's been pretty crazy.
Jessica Infante (13:37):
A lot of stuff about athletic.
That's been pretty crazy.
Yeah, yeah, Soic.
I mean.
I'm sure your listeners areaware, but Athletic is the
largest dedicated non-alcoholiccraft beer brewer in the country
and they recently made anacquisition of a facility in San
Diego.
They bought the brewery fromBallast Point.
This brewery is going to bringtheir production capacity up to
(13:59):
a million barrels a year.
That doesn't mean that they'regoing to make a million barrels
a year right now, but the growthtrajectory that they're on is
bonkers bananas.
Let me pull up the most recentdata.
So Athletic is the country's10th largest craft brewer and in
(14:21):
2023, they brewed 258, 445barrels of beer.
That's a 51% increase over whatthey brewed last year.
Oh my God.
From 2019 pre-pandemic theywere brewing 7,500 barrels.
So this is a nuts growth bender.
Scott (14:37):
That's crazy.
Jessica Infante (14:38):
They now have two former Ballast Point
breweries in San Diego, whichthat's another.
I mean, I don't know how muchyou want to get into the Ballast
Point constellation of it all,but that's a wild tale as well.
Scott (14:47):
Yeah, so they own now two breweries that were at one
point Ballast Point breweries.
Jessica Infante (14:51):
Yep, and they built their own brewery in
Connecticut, so they've gotbi-coastal operations.
I want to say in Connecticutthey can make about half a
million barrels a year.
Wow.
Scott (15:05):
Their first San Diego brewery is a little bit smaller.
This newest brewery is going tobe the biggest for them.
Jessica Infante (15:07):
Do you think they intend on keeping both San
Diego breweries?
Yeah, I do, wow, yeah, I mean.
Talk about quality.
They're huge on it, but youhave to be, because if you don't
have alcohol in your beer, youhave to pasteurize.
This was something that I willget on this soapbox all day.
I guess I wasn't recentlypregnant, because now I have a
one-year-old, but I was pregnantfor a time.
I have been, I have been and Iwasn't comfortable drinking
(15:29):
alcohol during the course of thepregnancy.
I was really nervous the wholetime, but you know, some people
feel differently.
I personally did not.
However, non-alcoholic is reallyhaving a moment right now and a
lot of craft brewers are veryinterested in it, which, like
God bless.
But a lot of them don't havethe ability to pasteurize, and
when you remove the alcohol fromthe equation, you do open the
door to all sorts of nastythings.
(15:50):
Different bacteria is likelisteria.
Like listeria is the reasonthat, like I couldn't have had
an Italian sub while I waspregnant, so like I was not
going to roll the dice on somerandom non-out craft beer, so
athletic is like huge sticklersfor quality and they have to be
so.
Whenever anybody wants to talkabout this I will always say you
can drink non-alcoholic beerbut get it from like a reputable
(16:12):
unfortunately usually a verybig company, because they've got
the money and the equipment totreat it right.
Scott (16:18):
So non-alcoholics are?
They're not pasteurizing,they're just putting out and
rolling the dice, like you said.
Jessica Infante (16:23):
Yeah, which is?
Scott (16:23):
terrifying.
Yeah, so you mentioned BallastPoint.
That's kind of a shame too.
They were at one point.
They made pretty good beer.
Jessica Infante (16:29):
They were bought for a billion dollars.
Yeah, constellation Brands paidone billion American dollars
for Ballast Point in 2015, whichwas a record.
We will not see the likes ofthat again and they sold it four
it, yeah, four years later forlike pennies on the dollar.
If that to this tiny startupcalled kings and convicts, which
(16:50):
I feel like I always have likea story to go with the story
because, like, I remember what Iwas doing when the news
happened, but I was at brewboundlive, which their annual
conference, and I was only liketwo months in on the job, but we
were in santa monica and all ofa sudden, the beer world blows
up because everybody is like whothe heck is Kings and Convicts?
They just bought Ballast Point.
Scott (17:08):
Yeah.
Jessica Infante (17:09):
For I'm not even going to try to pull the
number off the top of my headbecause I wouldn't be able to do
it, but it is nowhere near abillion dollars.
And you know, I think, likeConstellation learned that they
didn't really understand craftand they don't have to because
they are doing just fine withthe medello, the corona and the
pacifico and it's fine.
(17:29):
But you know, like they also,they tried to go on the same
buying spree that, like av andmolson cores did, but I don't
think their heart was in it.
They got the, they had anotherbrewery but you know they
obviously sold off Ballast Pointand then, like right before I
had Cora, they sold off FunkyBuddha back to Founders, which
is a great story.
You know, like good for thoseguys.
Like get your money.
Scott (17:50):
Yeah, that was really cool.
Jessica Infante (17:51):
And then get your brewery back for much less
money than you were paid for it.
Scott (17:55):
For the listeners.
We both worked at the BostonBeer Company, makers of Sam
Adams, truly Hard Seltzer, AngryOrchard, twisted Tea, et cetera
, et cetera, et cetera.
In late May this year, wallStreet Journal put out a story
stating that there was apossibility that the Boston Beer
Company may be sold to Suntory,a Japanese mega company that
owns all sorts of stuff,including the Jim Beam brand.
(18:18):
It's still kind of up in theair.
Jessica Infante (18:21):
What are you hearing about that?
So Suntory has completelydenied this and I don't know,
like that Wall Street Journalstory was really thin,
anonymously sourced.
I trust the Wall Street Journal.
Like I think that they hadsomething that made them feel
comfortable publishing that.
I don't think that was just youknow, willy-nilly gossip.
I think that that's probablysome smoke.
(18:42):
It makes sense.
It makes sense.
So boston beer and beam centauri, which is like the the us
operations.
They entered intoa jointventure in 2021 that they seem
pretty happy with.
They know each other, they likeeach other.
There's so much crossover now.
I mean you know like there's somuch crossover now.
I mean you know like there's somuch crossover, particularly
(19:02):
between beer and spirits, not somuch with wine.
I think wine is kind of likeyou barbarians figure it out.
So they'll take a spirits brandand put it on a beer type
product and Boston beer willpush that out.
Or they'll take a Boston beerbrand and put it on a spirits
product and a beam pushes thatout.
So they've done truly brandedflavored vodkas that go through
(19:26):
the beam network.
They've done a twisted teabranded whiskey.
They've done uh, they did sowsa tequila branded like agave
drinks that they killed.
That didn't work.
I think that was like theirfirst release and they were just
, you know, getting it off theground.
But they also have a beamflavored like fmb punch thing
that bbc is selling.
So to me like I think it couldbe plausible, I don't know.
(19:47):
Uh, my, my colleague and editor,justin kendall, just did an
interview this week on ourpodcast with nadine sarwat from,
uh, bernstein talking all aboutthis, and she basically was
like yeah, we see it, we don'tknow anything, but like she was,
it's an idea.
Their conversation was reallyinteresting because it was
interesting to hear, like WallStreet's take on Boston beer,
(20:10):
which is basically like puts aton of like sorry, I can't think
of a better word but a ton ofstock in Jim personally and
well-deserved.
Jim is, I'm sure, a genius,certifiably by like Mensa I
don't know if he's ever tried,but Jim is insanely intelligent
and like creepy intelligent,creepy intelligent and also has
(20:31):
like just enough like kookinessto be able to try the big ideas,
but he also knows how to makethem work.
Yeah, but it just seems like ifI I'm not Jim, if I were Jim,
like at this point in my life Iwould be so down to just go hang
on a beach and, like god, lovehim.
That is not what he's doing sowell?
Scott (20:50):
yeah, I looked it up.
I didn't realize the man's 75years old, yeah, which is weird
because he's so youthful andhe's always drinking beers on a
regular basis.
Just think of him as maybe like45, 50 I don't know why I don't
see him any older than that,but but 75 is holy shit.
75, 75.
I think he has grandkids I'mnot sure, but I know his oldest
two are married and you can'ttake it with you.
Jessica Infante (21:15):
No, I mean he always says his succession plan
is to not die, which is funnyand good luck to you and the Red
Sox on that, but you weren'taround for the Dogfish deal.
Scott (21:25):
It wasn't, and I was extremely upset about the
Dogfish Head deal because I justleft and my favorite beer on
the entire planet is DogfishHead Indian Brown Ale by far.
When it was available, I wouldbuy cases of it Like love it.
Yeah, it crushed me that I wasnot there for that.
Jessica Infante (21:43):
Yeah, so I was only there for a few more weeks
after it happened and to me Ikind of felt like one of the
biggest assets of this deal isSam.
Scott (21:50):
Yeah.
Jessica Infante (21:51):
You know, I don't know how management
committee goes down anymore, Idon't know what town hall
meetings are like, but I imagineSam is like a super visible
quantity in leadership.
So I think like Jim, if youwant to go hang out on the beach
, you got your bud.
Scott (22:05):
Yeah.
Jessica Infante (22:06):
He's got it.
Jim has also said that he wouldbe the last American owner of
the company of the largestbrewery.
He's got some quote out therein the quote.
Jim is a quote machine but youknow, like he's also kind of
said like this will potentiallyend with him.
I don't not that I'm at allcalling for Jim's demise, jesus,
but like we'll see what happensLike you're a jerk.
(22:28):
I could see it.
He would never.
I will tell you what he wouldnever, ever sell to AB or Molson
Coors.
Scott (22:36):
Absolutely not.
Jessica Infante (22:37):
And I I hope, given everything we just talked
about, Constellation is not onthe table for a potential buyer.
Yeah, the thing aboutConstellation is that to me it's
a super complex operation.
There's a lot of brands, butthey've got this insane
innovation pipeline andgenerally wholesalers think
super highly of them.
So you get a lot, were you toacquire.
Scott (22:59):
It's a nice distribution footprint.
He's built a great network ofwholesale partners, staying out
of the AB houses for the mostpart.
Jessica Infante (23:06):
Yeah, and AB is not interested anymore anyway.
So I know we can very easilysay Jim would never sell to AB.
But they just sold off a bunchof brands last summer in a fire
sale, to tell them.
Scott (23:16):
They've got bigger fish to fry.
It'll be interesting to see.
I wish them all the best.
It's crazy because you're kindof like, oh, don't sell, don't
sell.
But at the end of the day is hegoing to be 90 and run the
joint?
His kids are not interested.
He's kind of run the gamut ofit.
He's getting up there in age.
Let's celebrate the guy and lethim kind of go off into the
sunset.
Jessica Infante (23:34):
Yeah, I want Jim to let his story end,
however he wants it to end.
Scott (23:37):
Yeah, it should.
It's not like he's selling afailing company or still a
billion dollar business.
You know, maybe not on aregional level, but on a
national level.
You still think of craft beer.
That is the one you think of.
Jessica Infante (23:48):
I mean, their business has certainly changed
since you and I were around.
Yes, everything is different.
Scott (23:53):
Yes.
Jessica Infante (24:04):
The last I had crunched these numbers in their
off-premise scan data, which isnot the whole picture of the
business.
But you know all the beer thatgets sold in stores to be drunk
at home 80% of their sales weretwisted tea and truly.
Scott (24:10):
Yeah, the craft business in general is just very cyclical
.
But seeing what I'm seeing downhere in chains, it shocks the
hell out of me that I walk intoa store and there's nothing Sam
Adams in the cold box, and thatis something that you see here
in North Carolina.
Now.
It's kind of crazy.
It was five, six skews and thenthe teas, and then the ciders.
You don't even see any SamAdams in there anymore.
(24:31):
And I mean, again, the industryis cyclical and it's, you know,
it's kind of how long can youhold on for?
Jessica Infante (24:34):
Right.
I mean, what's interestingright now is we're seeing this
like resurgence of like retroseeming lagers.
Yeah, so, like you're right,everything is cyclical.
Scott (24:44):
It'll be interesting.
You know, like I said, I wishhim the best.
It just it's kind of crazy tohear it and to see it.
Jessica Infante (24:54):
I'm sure you had a super secret knowledge of
the letter that went out to thewhole company.
Yes, I, I did receive that,that text message.
I was actually I was off, itwas like the last day of my
maternity leave and was like,well, this will be fun on Monday
, something to do, so yeah, sothat rumor happened and then,
like a week later, this cannabiscompany, green Thumb Industries
(25:15):
, published like an open letterto Jim, like hey, we'll buy you.
Scott (25:19):
Really.
Jessica Infante (25:20):
Which is crazy, just gets them like some
publicity and some notoriety.
There's a lot of reasons whythat can't really happen.
Scott (25:26):
Yeah, are they a large cannabis company?
Jessica Infante (25:29):
like they've got enough cash to do it yeah,
their market cap wasn't thatmuch smaller than boston beers.
Wow, uh, I guess they could,but I mean, I think they're.
They're based in the us wherecannabis isn't federally legal
like so one of the the biggestcraft brewers in quotes right
now is Tilray, which is aCanadian cannabis company, but
cannabis is legal in Canada, sothat makes all of their
(25:50):
financial operations and theirability to operate much
different.
But they've been buying up uscraft breweries in the past
couple of years.
They bought.
They started with sweet waterin 2020.
They bought green flash andAlpine in San Diego.
They just bought Montauk in NewYork a year and a half ago and
then last summer they bought allthose brands from AB, which
includes, like a lot of theirpack Northwest stuff like Widmer
(26:11):
and 10 barrel.
I don't want to be wrong onanything, but they bought shock
top.
Scott (26:17):
Well, did they really?
Jessica Infante (26:18):
Yes, the fact that shock top still exists
astounds me.
I don't know how this happened,but there's like a running joke
on our podcast now that I wasgoing to name Cora, baby shock
top, my daughter, to the pointwhere, like our our weekend
newsletter writer, sean, youwould love it Me.
Super funny.
Uh, we'll like occasionallyinto newsletters, right, and
baby shock top like shock top, Idon't even remember the last
time I saw a shock top, like dothey exist?
Scott (26:39):
I don't know.
Remember the last time I saw aShock Top.
Jessica Infante (26:41):
Do they exist?
I don't know.
I was home at the Jersey Shorefor a point in the summer and
was out socializing with myfriends.
Scott (26:49):
Doing some investigative reporting.
Jessica Infante (26:51):
Some guy started talking to me somewhere
and we were out.
I was like, oh, are you workingcraft beer?
That's really hot.
My favorite beer is raspberryShock Top.
It's like cool Thanks.
Scott (27:03):
Leave it to the jersey shore.
Yeah, never fall in love withthe jersey shore no, but it's
funny that you bring up shocktop, because I mean, shock top
is just a anheuser-busch bluemoon ripoff and I just, uh,
rediscovered a beer that's verysimilar to both of them but 20
times better, and it's actuallymy second beer.
Jessica Infante (27:21):
I'm going to try today, you're going to have
two beers you breathe.
Scott (27:25):
Lost Coast, tangerine.
Oh, this is a good one.
Jessica Infante (27:30):
I'm impressed that you get them.
Scott (27:32):
I know, and it's fresh too.
Wow, it's only a month old.
Shock that we get them all theway from California.
Jessica Infante (27:37):
Because they are like a super remote part of
California.
Scott (27:40):
Yeah, eureka, you're kaya eureka, tiny, tiny though, but
yeah, it's such an amazing beertoo, like just had it this
weekend, hadn't had it in awhile.
They do um great white.
It's like one of the last likewhite ipas on a planet like oh
god, remember though.
Jessica Infante (27:56):
Oh, they're so good.
Well, I know you remember thoserip to whitewater.
Scott (28:00):
If anybody knows me, that's the one thing I'm going
to be known for is my whitewaterIPA love.
Jessica Infante (28:04):
I might be wrong.
Wasn't the beer that we werepouring on tours that was made
for your bachelor party?
Wasn't that like an earlyversion of Rebel IPA?
Scott (28:14):
No, so close.
So it was.
I found out that one of theolder people that we worked with
had brewed their own beer atthe brewery.
How do you get to do this?
So she was like, yeah, I talkedto jim, it's, we can all do it,
nobody asks.
So I was like you're gonna beshitting me.
So I went and talked to jim andI was like I'm getting married,
can I brew my own beer?
And he's like yeah, sure, I'mlike you, serious, this is
(28:35):
amazing.
So I made a 60 minute hopversion of a white ipa, but it
was supposed to be hopped atminute intervals all the way
through, like a 60-minutedogfish.
I made it with Dean, one of theOGs down there a little of that
guy.
I made it with him and it cameout fantastic and I got a keg of
(28:58):
it for my wedding.
And then they put the othernine kegs from the yield on the
tap room.
But yeah, it was so good.
But it was funny because it wasbefore Whitewater came out and
I was just to make fun of DaveSipes, who was the brewer that
designed the beer, and I saidyou know, you totally ripped me
off, dude.
I know you ripped me off and hewas like I didn't rip you off,
(29:19):
your beer sucks, mine's great,but yeah, such a great.
I mean it's kind of like a hazy, not really, but just a little
bit different.
More wheat.
Jessica Infante (29:28):
I feel like they walked so hazies could fly.
Scott (29:30):
Yeah, yeah, it was a fun time.
We got the keg and we wentthrough probably like three
quarters of it and in themorning they put it back on ice
for us.
And in the morning my new wife,katie, and I woke up and we got
to take the keg home and killit ourselves.
But it was nice that woke upand we got to take the keg home
and kill it ourselves that wasnice.
Jessica Infante (29:46):
That's fun, that's fun.
I did not do the make a beeroption, but I got married the
weekend after the Bostonmarathon, so we had a keg of
26.2.
Scott (29:56):
Oh nice.
Jessica Infante (29:57):
Which I love, but I'm an idiot and I totally
forgot to bring a tap handle, sonobody even knew that it was
there.
Like, I actually think I likementioned it at the end of my
vows and was like please drinkthe beer from the keg, like, and
I think we brought home likehalf a full keg.
Scott (30:12):
It still is.
That was such a cool thing todo that we each got the
opportunity to have that, youknow, at our wedding and Super
cool.
Jessica Infante (30:19):
I mean, I was a jerk about it.
Like I think I or you get 25cases, Yep, and I was such a
little obnoxious craft beerpurist that I only had beer.
I think maybe I brought in likeone case of angry orchard and I
got every variety pack we hadavailable, so there ended up
being like 25 styles of beer.
Oh god, took a palette from thebrewery, I chalkboard, painted
(30:40):
it, I hand wrote all the beers,I divided them up by like malty,
fruity, happy, like whatever,and like you know, nobody at a
wedding gives a fig about that.
Scott (30:48):
Oh yeah.
Jessica Infante (30:48):
And the bartenders didn't care either.
They're these like gruff ladiesat the Jersey Shore working at
this yacht club.
So like people would come upand be like, can I have a Sam
Adams?
And they'd be like sure.
So they were just pullingwhatever they had out of the ice
and they were just grabbing anyold bottle.
So months later, one of mymom's good friends, joanne, was
telling me.
She said, jess, we had so muchfun at your wedding.
And I was like yeah, that'sgreat.
(31:09):
I'm glad you had a good time.
And she was like you know whatwe did?
We were doing the Boston Lagers, but we drank down the neck and
we asked the bartenders to fillit with Bacardi Limon and it
was great.
Scott (31:19):
Oh, I have yet to try that.
Yeah, I don't see how thatcould be good.
I don't know.
Jessica Infante (31:27):
I told Jim about it once.
He was like okay, they liked itGreat.
Scott (31:30):
Yeah, I mixed mine up.
I had ciders and, I think, sometwisted teas.
Just mixed it up a little bit.
But yeah, I can see where you'dbe like that?
Jessica Infante (31:37):
Yeah, you're a normal person.
Scott (31:38):
No, I'm not really.
You're giving me way too muchcredit a truly test market.
Jessica Infante (31:48):
Yeah, so when, like the bbc contingent arrived,
they went to like the storethat had it and they just bought
it all and like, drank it allweekend.
Scott (31:51):
So when uh truly came out , so it came out right when the
actual like seltzer craze washuge.
They, you know, flavoredregular non-alcohol seltzers and
my wife was obsessed with them,just every lacroix possibility
you could ever get.
And she found out she waspregnant in march of that year
and we launched like that summer.
So my wife missed the entirelike first nine months of
(32:13):
truly's.
She had no summer ale that yearshe was a very, very angry
pregnant lady.
Jessica Infante (32:20):
Oh, that is so sad because when is finley's
birthday, so finley is uhoctober 25th she'll be eight.
Scott (32:23):
Wow, katie missed everything.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was rightin the middle of the summer, see
I, cory was evicted on june 1st.
Jessica Infante (32:26):
So Finley is October 25th, she'll be eight.
Wow, katie missed everything.
Scott (32:27):
Yeah, yeah, it was right in the middle of the summer.
Jessica Infante (32:30):
See I Corey was evicted on June 1st, which was
Evicted.
Scott (32:34):
Yeah Out you go.
Yeah, Through the sunroof,that's awesome.
Well, you know I don't want tobe cliche and be the guy that's
got the older kid who's like allright, well, you just wait for
this, this, this and this, butyeah, hell's going to break
loose.
Jessica Infante (32:50):
I'm trying really hard not to wish anything
away, and I don't.
I'm really enjoying all of this, but I can't wait for her to
stop putting everything into herfreaking mouth.
Scott (32:57):
It's not going to happen.
It's very stressful Not goingto happen.
My daughter still carries herswaddle blanket that had circles
on it.
It swaddled well blanket.
It had circles on it startedwhen she was a baby.
Would call it circle banks.
I don't know how she's spellingit, but I don't know it's
b-a-n-x, b-a-n-k-s but circlebanks, and she would carry it
around with her.
But a thing just got so nastyand corroded and pulling on it's
(33:18):
now it's like seven pieces butthey're all tied into one um,
and she's like still like sevenyears old, still rubs it on her
mouth.
It's it's so disgusting likeI'll find her chewing on it.
I'm like that is that hasn'tbeen washed in months.
Like get that out of your mouth.
Like that's where covid camefrom.
Her circle banks disgusting,that's adorable.
Do you have any any coolpictures of your daughter going
(33:39):
for beer bottles?
Jessica Infante (33:40):
yes, I do.
Isn't that great.
My husband had just pouredhimself a sip of sunshine, I
think.
Think this was Easter weekend.
Scott (33:47):
Yeah.
Jessica Infante (33:47):
And he's holding her and his beer glass
and she is like it's amazing.
Scott (33:53):
I have a really cool picture of Finn grabbing a
Boston lager out of Katie's handLike, yeah, it's my girl.
Jessica Infante (34:01):
I love her.
Like her interspersed likehouse ad about oh yeah, yeah.
Like her interspersed likehouse ad about oh yeah, yeah.
So when I was little my dad wasa lawyer and there was a car
dealership, honda of Essex inNorth Jersey, that the owner had
his daughters on and they wouldsay you should buy a car from
our dad so we can get moreBarbies, really.
(34:22):
And I would always be like dad,you need a commercial so that I
can be on it.
And he was like Jessica, I amnot the kind of lawyer that does
commercials Like this is notgoing to happen.
Scott (34:32):
We don't do that stuff.
Yeah, we don't do that.
It's not personal injury.
When I asked her, I said I hadthis great idea.
She had already done the endline, thank you and goodbye.
She was I don't know five, sixyears old, six years old and she
had to write herself a script.
All it was was thank you forlistening, bye.
And she spelled bye, b-e-y.
And I was like, oh, that's sosweet and I hope she shakes out
(34:52):
that inability to spell wordsthing.
She wrote the script and thenread the script Like I was like,
oh, this is the sweetest thing.
So she thought it was great andevery time we'd listen to a
podcast, she'd listen to it withme, with me.
So I said you know, I need toget some ad work in here and I'm
, you know, trying to get somesponsors and show them how I
would do it.
And I wrote that for.
And she's like I'm not going tosay, well, so let's do this,
(35:13):
because that's what boys say.
I said, just do it, Just do it.
She was like, nope, I'm notgonna do it.
So about two days later shecomes back and she's like I'm
like you, really, you think youcan handle it.
She goes yep, I got it, put theheadphones on her, sat her up
in my little bedroom studio andshe nailed it in one take.
I was shocked, pro yeah.
(35:34):
I was like this girl's got it.
She's got it.
She can actually act and,unlike her dad, she loves it.
She's always asked who's theguest and who's this?
And?
And the second guest I had wasmy friend Molly Lloyd.
She's an actor and she was inthe Dilly Dilly Bud Light ads.
Oh, do you remember those?
Yes, anyways, listen, go backand listen to that episode
(35:55):
because it's hysterical.
But Molly was great and she wastalking about the Bud Light ads
.
So every time Finn saw BudLight she would scream that's
the Molly Lloyd beer.
But it happened right aroundthe same time that the Great
unpleasantness yeah, everybodygot upset because they put
someone on a can whatever, not apolitical podcast, but it was
(36:15):
ridiculous and she would go inand go that's the Molly Lloyd
beer.
And old white guys would giveher like the dirtiest looks down
here.
Jessica Infante (36:22):
That's amazing.
Scott (36:24):
Like please stop, You're going to get me killed, Please
stop.
But yeah, still to this day shethinks it's the Molly Lloyd
beer.
But yes, pretty cool story.
She talks about how I don'tknow if you've heard it, I have
not listened to this one.
Jessica Infante (36:33):
I'm going to go back and find it.
Scott (36:35):
But the costumes that they used for the whole Dilly
Dilly, they were from Game ofThrones.
No way.
They filmed when Game ofThrones wasn't filming and they
filmed there and used all theircostumes.
That was smart, so it was wild.
I'm like that's amazing.
Jessica Infante (36:49):
I really liked that campaign from them.
It was great.
Scott (36:52):
It was great.
Is it your doorbell.
It's yours, I think it's onmine.
Jessica Infante (36:56):
I mean, it's probably a beer delivery, Is it?
Scott (36:58):
Does that happen often.
Jessica Infante (37:00):
Yeah, almost nobody needs my ID, which is
nice.
A few breweries into, like newbelgium always insists like you
have to go down and show themyour I d, but for the most part
beer just shows up here, really.
Or my mom's house like, becauseI spent like a month at my
mom's house every summer becauseshe lives at the jersey shore
and I work remote and myhusband's a teacher, so why the
honk?
Scott (37:18):
not, we all go yeah.
Jessica Infante (37:19):
so depending on when brewery pr people ask for
my address, sometimes they getthat one and sometimes they
don't change it.
So my mom now lives with hergentleman friend and he loves
beer.
He's literally the most devotedcraft beer fan I know.
He's 80.
Good for him.
Good for him.
Probably not great for craftbeer.
(37:40):
Maybe consider reaching someyounger consumers, I don't know.
Scott (37:44):
That could be the problem we're all experiencing here,
right.
Jessica Infante (37:47):
Right, so Bell's ships to my mom's house,
which is great because they'rehis favorite.
So yeah.
I'm just happy to keep Tomflush with whatever he wants to
drink.
Scott (37:55):
It's really cool.
So you just get part of theperks of the job is you're still
getting free beer.
Jessica Infante (37:59):
Yeah, I do.
I still get free beer.
The problem is that I don't getto pick it.
It just shows up, it's justkind of whatever, whatever's on
offer, and like I mean I, Ican't possibly drink it all the
Ryan tries.
Scott (38:15):
I love Ryan.
How's Ryan?
He's good, he's good, good,tell him.
I said hi, he loves being a dad.
Yeah, good, I'm sure he's agreat dad.
So back to the beer.
No, I'm just kidding.
Oh, yes, that's awesome thatyou just they're just sending
you samples or sending you new,new items and yeah, samples I
mean because people will alsosend stuff which I try not to
like.
Jessica Infante (38:29):
I try to just give it away because I don't
know what the hard and fast ruleis here.
And I also always tell themlike hey, we don't review the
products, which is I have totell people this a lot like I
don't like drink beer and writeabout it.
Like I write about business,like I write about distribution
and contracts and legislation,and it's kind of rare for me to
be writing about, like, what'sin a beer.
Yeah, so I always say that likehey, like, just so you know,
(38:51):
like we've done a lot better.
We do a really good job with anew newsletter format of you
know, highlighting new productsand whatever, but before that we
really weren't doing much.
So I always try to make itclear like you can send me
whatever you want to send me,but don't expect me to write
about it, and some people don'twant to send it anyway, do you?
Scott (39:08):
have breweries giving you their unadulterated.
Take on your unadulterated.
Takes on them.
No, From a business standpointor that you know.
Does anyone ever get upset thatyou, they think you may have
besmirched them, when you'reonly telling the truth?
Jessica Infante (39:20):
No, I think I'm pretty.
I think I shoot everybodypretty straight.
Yeah, there is one largebrewery-ish large-ish brewery in
the state of Georgia.
That was mentioned a lot duringthe reckoning.
How much do you know about thereckoning?
We don't need to get into allof this, but craft beer had its
own movement in 21.
Scott (39:38):
Yes, I was familiar.
Jessica Infante (39:39):
Yes, so that happened.
Scott (39:41):
What's the person's name?
Rab Agment.
Yes.
Jessica Infante (39:44):
That's her Instagram.
Her real name is Brianne Allenand she's very nice.
Okay, so she worked at Notch,which is in my town, salem,
where I live, and you know, forpeople who don't know Brianne,
who worked at Notch, just youknow, ask the question on
Instagram like you know, whenhave you experienced sexual
harassment in beer?
And she started sharing all thestories that she got and it
really turned into like a bigupheaval, like it was huge a lot
(40:07):
, yeah, yeah, huge a lot ofthings came out.
So this one particular brewerygot mentioned a lot but, like,
journalistically it was toughbecause she was sharing these
stories anonymously and a lot ofthe things that are mentioned
in them are so sensitive that Ididn't want to go digging and
find, you know, like, yeah, Iwas trying to be an upstanding
person about it.
So the way that we approachedit to cover was whenever a
(40:29):
brewery either made a publicstatement or, you know, fired
somebody and announced it likewe would cover that and that
kept me plenty, plenty, plentybusy.
So this one brewery would getmentioned but like nothing
really ever came of it.
They blocked me on instagram.
I never even wrote about them.
How full full were they?
12?
Like it took me figuring it,like asking like various people
(40:51):
to check their profile, meblocking various people so I
could see what their profile was.
Like I figured I was like theseefforts blocked me, like I've
never even written about you.
Scott (40:59):
They blocked you.
That's so pathetic yeah.
Jessica Infante (41:02):
I mean, look like you're not doing it right
if you don't have some enemies.
But I don't think, too manypeople hate my guts.
Scott (41:07):
Well, I certainly don't.
I'm glad you were here on thebig show.
Jessica Infante (41:10):
Thanks, bud, this was a lot of fun.
Scott (41:12):
And I'm psyched that we got a chance to drink some beers
together and catch up a littlebit, and I love watching your
stories with little Cora.
She's adorable and it's justcute to watch you guys you and
Ryan be awesome parents too.
Very nice, thank, very nice.
Thank you.
Oh, it's well.
I feel like you are a greatparent role model.
Jessica Infante (41:31):
You look like you were searching for a word to
use.
Scott (41:32):
I was about to say like I feel like you're a really great
role model for becoming aparent at a slightly older age I
feel like you're a great parentwho drinks beer and doesn't
watch their kids, so you'regoing with that's where you're
going with that.
That's where you're going withthat.
Jessica Infante (41:49):
They got to learn.
Scott (41:50):
Yeah, she's great.
I have a video of her.
We were here about a year andHurricane Florence came through
and it was brutal down here Imean brutal and it whacked the
hell out of us.
The whole city evacuated.
We ended up in Greensborobecause that was the last place
that had a hotel where we couldtake a dog.
So we're out at Buffalo WildWings or something and my
(42:11):
daughter has the menu open andshe's looking at pointed stuff
and she's just still kind ofcooing.
She knows a few words.
I think my wife points to beerand she's like what's that?
And she's like beer and she's18 months old.
Jessica Infante (42:25):
And I was like oh, my heart my heart.
Scott (42:26):
So cute, Jess, but this has been fantastic.
Thank you for your insightsinto crazy beer industry that we
know here in the US.
Hopefully some more crazy stuffwill shake out and we'll have
you back on it, but I want tothank you so much for your time
and for all your contributionsto the beer industry.
Your articles are great Folks.
Check her out on Brewbound.
Your podcast is fantastic.
If know, if everybody's lookingfor cool beer news, check out
(42:49):
the Brewbound podcast.
Anything else that can find youat.
You got any conferences you'rerunning.
Jessica Infante (42:53):
Yeah, we've got Brewbound.
Live in Marina Del Rey,California, December 11th and
12th.
Scott (42:58):
Awesome.
Jessica Infante (42:59):
Right now, our keynote speaker is Natalie
Chilurzo of Russian River.
Scott (43:03):
Ooh, very good, I am really excited.
Yeah, that sounds awesome.
Well, jess, again, thank you somuch coming on the show.
It's been a pleasure and takecare.
Jessica Infante (43:11):
Thank you, this was great.
No-transcript.
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