Carney Saves the World
Welcome to “Carney Saves the World”. I’m your host, Scott Carney. I’m a former stand-up comedian & actor, with a degree in Political Science. Oh, and I’m an almost 50yr old only-child/ man-child. So, you can probably see where I’m going with all of this.
Each episode, I’ll pick the brains of some of the best & brightest entrepreneurs, artists, and creative minds that I know. We’ll dive into what got them started down their chosen paths, how they actually got their start and what their motivation is to keep going in their massively competitive industries.
The name for the podcast comes from a dig my wife hits me with all the time when I think I’m right about all subjects. “Oh, Carney’s going to save the world again!”
Well, maybe it’s time we did just that. Come on, let's go save the world.
Carney Saves the World
EP18 Jessica Infante - From Jersey Shores to Craft Brewery Floors
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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My next guest is Jessica Infante. Jess is the managing editor for BrewBound, the leading beer industry news outlet in the United States. Prior to her journey at BrewBound, Jess and I had worked together at the Boston Beer Company and have done extensive beer tastings and are both certified Cicerones. Jessica holds a bachelor's degree in magazine journalism from Syracuse University and a master's degree in integrated marketing communication from Emerson College. Jessica Infante, welcome to Carney Saves the World.
Jessica Infante:Oh, my goodness, what an honor. I know. All that stuff you just said is true, but when you hear all those things repeated back to you, I'm like, oh, that's cool, who's that? But it's me.
Scott:Well, when I was reading, I didn't realize that you were that smart either, but did you not?
Jessica Infante:Can I tell you a secret? I'm really not.
Scott: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 seven years since you and I have gotten a chance to hang out and have a beer. We're having one now. What are you having?
Jessica Infante:I am having a Harpoon Rec League, which is their local hazy IPA. It is delicious, all right. Yeah, I had our friend and former coworker, megan Baker over a couple of weeks ago for my daughter's first birthday and she recently left Harpoon but still does some consulting work for them, so she brought a nice old 12 pack.
Scott:Nice. It's always nice to have friends in the beer industry, isn't it Right? Yeah, I am drinking a Tropical Lightning from Wilmington Brewing Company. Jess, if you've never heard of these guys, they're one of the best brewers on the East Coast. Wow, I'm not just saying that because I live here, because there are plenty of breweries in Wilmington that suck. These guys are phenomenal and this IPA is one of the best IPAs I've ever had in my life.
Scott:That's amazing. It's consistently fresh. This is 15 days old. It's just an amazing beer. So how are things, now that you're a big managing editor at Brewbound and what's that like?
Jessica Infante:It's a lot of fun. It's crazy, as you can imagine. So Brewbound is a trade publication, so we cover beer in name, but we also touch on things like FMBs and hard seltzers and RTDs and basically all that stuff.
Scott:All that fun stuff.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, all that fun stuff, it's a good time. I mean the one thing you didn't hit on in my intro, which I wouldn't expect you to, because it's a bazillion years ago, but right after college I was a newspaper journalist.
Scott:Yes, I was going to, but and then I moved to Boston.
Jessica Infante:I have a specific question that I want to ask you about that, but you go right ahead and talk about it, oh, no, I mean, you know a lot of people ask how you end up in this role and that's how I did it all. I did the news, I did the beer and now I do the news about the beer. Nice, but, yeah, we write stories. We publish a newsletter every day. That's, honestly, probably a little too full with info because we are workaholics who can't help ourselves. But I don't want to speak for my teammates, but I aim to make sure I'm giving people in the BevAlc industry, particularly craft producers, all the information that they need to know to make business decisions. Yeah, so, in addition to the newsletter, we do a podcast, we do in-person conferences and sometimes we do videos. We've kind of backed away from that.
Scott: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 I can. So yes, I wanted to ask you about your old local news reporter deal. It was in the Jersey Shore. A lot of fun stuff going on there.
Jessica Infante:A lot of fun stuff. So I wrote for the Asbury Park Press, which is the daily newspaper of the half of the Jersey Shore. The Jersey Shore that you're thinking of is included in that territory. Yes, but it was fun. I covered three beach towns on Long Beach Island. I covered a mainland town, which is more of an all year thing, and really just anything that happened. So like, let's see, I remember I was only a couple of months on the job when a beached whale showed up on New Year's Eve.
Scott:Oh, there you go.
Jessica Infante:So I had to go like hang out on the beach like calling in updates to the newsroom, like yep, the whale's still here. Like, oh, now the Marine Mammal Stranding Center guy is here and is asking all the people who've come up with their dogs to please get away from the whale.
Scott:Oh, so yeah, stuff like that. You don't want the dogs nipping on the whale, no.
Jessica Infante:Like people were taking like family photos in front of the dead whale. Like is this going to be on your Christmas card next year Like this is weird.
Scott: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:And then you were just like I'm done. I was a boondoggle and a half. I lived in my family's summer house 12 months a year and didn't pay rent. In my defense, I kept offering and my parents were like no, save your money, you idiot.
Scott:Save your money. You're going to go to Boston soon.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, I mean it was like 07 to 2010. So like great recession which was terrible for the whole country but particularly bad for print media, and there were layoffs and furloughs and I mean I never got laid off because I was probably had the lowest salary in the joint, so I was a good deal and eventually I was like I need to find a way to have a sustainable career and found my master's program which brought me to Boston.
Scott:Oh nice, yeah. So we worked together. For when did you start there? 2010. 2010. So yeah, seven years, cause I left at 17.
Jessica Infante:Yeah Well, so I was a little baby tour guide.
Scott:Yes at 17. Yeah, well, so.
Jessica Infante:I was a little baby tour guide. Yes, I remember and you were also a tour guide, do you?
Scott:remember the first day we met. I was wondering if you were bringing it up.
Jessica Infante:I think that people need to hear it. Okay, god, you know, I don't know when it was, but, like I know it was summer because we were giving a tour outside and I want to say you were guiding the tour and I was your helper, buddy, and somebody asked about summer ale. So question that. Now, I know people ask all the time. But somebody had been like, oh, like, why is summer ale different this year? And then you gave, like, the standard. Well, you know, beer is brewed from agricultural ingredients and you know, sometimes things change, but more often your palate changes because you haven't had this beer in a year. And no, we didn't change the recipe, you did a really good job. And then my dumb ass was like actually, scott, my auntie used different lemons this year and I thought you were about to be like who is this chick? But it was very funny.
Scott:I stopped doing stand-up. I got my kicks out of making people laugh at the brewery on the weekends. I worked in the office during the week and then that was like my stage on the weekends and there was this new chick showing up and she was funny and I was like look, funny is already taken care of here, we don't need you. That base is already covered.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, god, that was so much fun.
Scott:Yeah, it was such a blast Like the stuff we could do back then and give the tours and you're half of the bag during them. So today we're going to talk about all kinds of cool beer, gossip stuff that's happening in the industry, I mean the beer industry is such an ever-changing mess it's a very polite way to put it A lot of really crazy cool things going on. One of the coolest things that I want to talk to you about was Chobani buying up Anchor Brewery's assets.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, so I will give you a little inside baseball here in my life. I was on a month of maternity leave when it happened. I actually was on maternity leave when the first closure happened. And then I took this last month off, before my daughter turned one. I kept more in touch on my second baby break and saw that and was like what the heck? So yeah, that was not on my bingo card.
Scott:I don't know too many people who had that.
Jessica Infante:The last I had heard of the anchor sale was that there was a couple different groups involved. One of them was like the anchor union of employees was interested. Another was like a local investor group. And then, all of a sudden, mr Hamdi Ulukaya, I believe, is how you say his name, okay, but he is the Mr Chobani steps in and just buys anchor, which is wild. I mean, the fact that Anchor went away at all to me remains wild and crazy, because that's so sad. So sad Like it's a staple yeah.
Jessica Infante:Did you see their rebrand a couple of years ago?
Scott:Yeah, to change all that. I mean old labels and all this. I mean they were just kind of the OGs. I mean they were just and they made great beer. Like everything they made was amazing. Yeah.
Jessica Infante:And people were angry. Yeah, I mean Anger. Steam is like I hate the word iconic because I think it gets used and abused to a point where it doesn't mean anything. But it's one of the few styles of beer that originated in this country. To let something like that go by the wayside, like I think, is kind of a crime. We'll see what happens happens.
Jessica Infante:It's interesting to me that honda yulikaya, mr yulikaya, was always just saying like I wanted to buy this brand because I love san francisco yeah the heck of a thing to buy, man, when you could just go get chowder and a sourdough bread bowl and call it a day right, it was so crazy.
Scott:He's like I fell in love with san francisco and I'll just go buy a brewery like the brewery of san francisco.
Jessica Infante:Bite up must, must be nice. But like I mean Anchor's been on a, it existed a long time ago. Fritz Maytag bought it in the middle of last century, sold it off to someone else and then sold it to Sapporo, who was basically like we don't know what to do with this.
Scott:Yeah, and that was a shame too, because you thought, with Sapporo buying it at one point, that they would have the capital to infuse into it and make it work. You know, if it doesn't work on a national level, make it work on the regional. They just, they gave up pretty quick.
Jessica Infante:Yeah. Well, I mean, I think Sapporo was like hey, we got stone now, so we don't need you. Sad little anchor, put you out to pasture, goodbye. So I mean I think, like what happened, is that the best possible scenario? Because, like, a lot of the things that could have happened was it could have just been sold for parts, you know, ip sold to somebody else, equipment sold to somebody else, real estate to somebody else, and that it's going to stay together, I think is good yeah.
Scott:I read somewhere where his focus is he's going to bring the brand back to San Francisco. First keep it there, and that's very cool. You don't need to be in all 50 states right now, like you're basically on life support, so I mean, I know we're not going to get any anchor down here in Wilmington, north Carolina for a few years, but at least there's a possibility, so I'm really excited about that. What other crazy news have you been working on?
Jessica Infante:So a story I wrote this week that I probably got a little too personally invested in but made me really sad. Were you familiar with Cascade Brewing out of Portland Oregon?
Scott:Yes, sours.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, like great sour houseour.
Scott:House.
Jessica Infante:And really like pioneered Northwest Sours, announced this week that the brew is closing. But it's kind of a twisted story where the founder this man, art Lowrance, passed away a few weeks ago. While I was on leave had a heart attack at the age of 80, which made we all be so lucky to go in a relatively pain-free-ish way at yeah that age, 80 years old, that's a full life.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, but apparently Art had sold. The Art said he sold the brewery years ago, in 2020. I covered the sale to an investor group of people from Oregon, some of whom were all involved with other breweries, only for his family to find out in the last two weeks that that sale never really went through and Art was the owner. I guess he had put these new investors on a payment plan and nothing ever. This is terrible. I hear art probably thought he was having, you know, a nice retirement. He sells his company. You know he's involved as an advisor but nothing ever closed. Liquor licenses were in his name. They expired 10 days after his death. Really like, really terrible. And if you know oregon beer, you have to know art. Art helped found portland brewing, which was like a very early pioneer in craft.
Jessica Infante:He also helped start the oregon brewers festival, which was a really early, really big beer festival like yeah you don't get craft beer in the united states without the pacific northwest and you don't get craft beer in the pacific northwest without art. Yeah, so so, really sad just to see everything that's happened in the past couple of weeks.
Scott:Was his family aware? His family wasn't aware of this at all. They just literally found out and they're like no, oh my.
Jessica Infante:God, no, I talked to his daughter. She had no idea and they have a family trust, but she's like we can't keep the brewery going.
Scott:So what happens to this? Is it in limbo? It just dissolved, it's gone. See you later, yeah.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, she dropped off employees last paychecks and the brewery is going to be done.
Scott:Wow, that is really sad.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, and there's a lot of breweries that are also about to be done. Yeah, but I don't think all of them quite have this very tragic personal story attached to them. A lot of breweries are closing and that is sad, but maybe there were too many.
Scott: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 town and they are. We've got a ton of brews but they just keep opening and that model is not sustainable and a lot of these brews that are opening are not putting out quality beer. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. It could be because they're new and they're still startup and maybe on a small scale homebrew. They know how to do it, but their big quote unquote production brews are not quality and you can only trick the public so long to think that you're making good beer until they understand what good beer is and they go wait a minute, this is not it. I think a lot of people are starting to figure that out.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, if you got in before COVID when you could still get capital to do what you needed to do but there was still money to be made and you'd never been through a hard time. You're probably freaking out right now. And to your point about quality, I think the BA was saying close to 10 years ago quality is table stakes, and I don't know if that lesson's necessarily sunk in for a lot of people, but they're certainly finding it out right now.
Scott:And it's really interesting. We know we came from Sam Adams and Boston Beer Company was one of the quintessential quality first companies. I was there for the N35, the glass inclusion, where the teams went into every wholesaler in the country and pilfered through all of these bottles looking for special codes and then pulled all of them out of the entire country. I mean, I've got a great story. I won't name the brewery, I'll just say I went home to Rhode Island, got a six pack of one of their beers, cracked the first one and just got a smell that was just pure bologna, like actual meat bologna, oh God. I poured it into a glass and it was pure bologna. What the hell is that smell? And I went to look a code on it and when I did there were two labels on it. One was semi washed off and it had a year code on it.
Scott:So they were reusing bottles and they were not cleaning their bottles properly and they were recycling these bottles into production and just pouring on top of previously consumed beer and it was some of the most disgusting smells I've been witness to in my entire life. So I emailed them. I said hey, I'm a certified Cicerone, 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 free six pack out of you. I'm just trying to tell you what I came across. Let me know if I can help with anything. Never heard back from her whatsoever. Oh wow, I was shocked. Like not even a thank you. Yeah, they're still in business too. I don't know how. So there's also some stuff that I learned through BrewBound about athletic. That's been pretty crazy.
Jessica Infante:A lot of stuff about athletic. That's been pretty crazy. Yeah, yeah, Soic. I mean. I'm sure your listeners are aware, but Athletic is the largest dedicated non-alcoholic craft beer brewer in the country and they recently made an acquisition of a facility in San Diego. They bought the brewery from Ballast Point. This brewery is going to bring their production capacity up to a million barrels a year.
Jessica Infante:That doesn't mean that they're going to make a million barrels a year right now, but the growth trajectory that they're on is bonkers bananas. Let me pull up the most recent data. So Athletic is the country's 10th largest craft brewer and in 2023, they brewed 258, 445 barrels of beer. That's a 51% increase over what they brewed last year. Oh my God. From 2019 pre-pandemic they were brewing 7,500 barrels. So this is a nuts growth bender.
Scott:That's crazy.
Jessica Infante:They now have two former Ballast Point breweries in San Diego, which that's another. I mean, I don't know how much you want to get into the Ballast Point constellation of it all, but that's a wild tale as well.
Scott:Yeah, so they own now two breweries that were at one point Ballast Point breweries.
Jessica Infante:Yep, and they built their own brewery in Connecticut, so they've got bi-coastal operations. I want to say in Connecticut they can make about half a million barrels a year. Wow.
Scott:Their first San Diego brewery is a little bit smaller. This newest brewery is going to be the biggest for them.
Jessica Infante: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 you have to be, because if you don't have alcohol in your beer, you have to pasteurize. This was something that I will get on this soapbox all day. I guess I wasn't recently pregnant, because now I have a one-year-old, but I was pregnant for a time. I have been, I have been and I wasn't comfortable drinking alcohol during the course of the pregnancy. I was really nervous the whole time, but you know, some people feel differently. I personally did not.
Jessica Infante:However, non-alcoholic is really having a moment right now and a lot of craft brewers are very interested in it, which, like God bless. But a lot of them don't have the ability to pasteurize, and when you remove the alcohol from the equation, you do open the door to all sorts of nasty things. Different bacteria is like listeria. Like listeria is the reason that, like I couldn't have had an Italian sub while I was pregnant, so like I was not going to roll the dice on some random non-out craft beer, so athletic is like huge sticklers for quality and they have to be so. Whenever anybody wants to talk about this I will always say you can drink non-alcoholic beer but get it from like a reputable unfortunately usually a very big company, because they've got the money and the equipment to treat it right.
Scott:So non-alcoholics are? They're not pasteurizing, they're just putting out and rolling the dice, like you said.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, which is?
Scott:terrifying. Yeah, so you mentioned Ballast Point. That's kind of a shame too. They were at one point. They made pretty good beer.
Jessica Infante:They were bought for a billion dollars. Yeah, constellation Brands paid one billion American dollars for Ballast Point in 2015, which was a record. We will not see the likes of that again and they sold it four it, yeah, four years later for like pennies on the dollar. If that to this tiny startup called kings and convicts, which I feel like I always have like a story to go with the story because, like, I remember what I was doing when the news happened, but I was at brewbound live, which their annual conference, and I was only like two months in on the job, but we were in santa monica and all of a sudden, the beer world blows up because everybody is like who the heck is Kings and Convicts? They just bought Ballast Point.
Scott:Yeah.
Jessica Infante:For I'm not even going to try to pull the number off the top of my head because I wouldn't be able to do it, but it is nowhere near a billion dollars. And you know, I think, like Constellation learned that they didn't really understand craft and they don't have to because they are doing just fine with the medello, the corona and the pacifico and it's fine. But you know, like they also, they tried to go on the same buying spree that, like av and molson cores did, but I don't think their heart was in it. They got the, they had another brewery but you know they obviously sold off Ballast Point and then, like right before I had Cora, they sold off Funky Buddha back to Founders, which is a great story. You know, like good for those guys. Like get your money.
Scott:Yeah, that was really cool.
Jessica Infante:And then get your brewery back for much less money than you were paid for it.
Scott:For the listeners. We both worked at the Boston Beer Company, makers of Sam Adams, truly Hard Seltzer, Angry Orchard, twisted Tea, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In late May this year, wall Street Journal put out a story stating that there was a possibility 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. It's still kind of up in the air.
Jessica Infante:What are you hearing about that? So Suntory has completely denied this and I don't know, like that Wall Street Journal story was really thin, anonymously sourced. I trust the Wall Street Journal. Like I think that they had something that made them feel comfortable publishing that. I don't think that was just you know, willy-nilly gossip. I think that that's probably some smoke. It makes sense. It makes sense.
Jessica Infante:So boston beer and beam centauri, which is like the the us operations. They entered intoa joint venture in 2021 that they seem pretty happy with. They know each other, they like each other. There's so much crossover now. I mean you know like there's so much crossover now. I mean you know like there's so much crossover, particularly between beer and spirits, not so much with wine. I think wine is kind of like you barbarians figure it out. So they'll take a spirits brand and put it on a beer type product and Boston beer will push that out. Or they'll take a Boston beer brand and put it on a spirits product and a beam pushes that out. So they've done truly branded flavored vodkas that go through the beam network. They've done a twisted tea branded whiskey. They've done uh, they did sows a tequila branded like agave drinks that they killed. That didn't work. I think that was like their first release and they were just, you know, getting it off the ground. But they also have a beam flavored like fmb punch thing that bbc is selling.
Jessica Infante:So to me like I think it could be plausible, I don't know.
Jessica Infante:Uh, my, my colleague and editor, justin kendall, just did an interview this week on our podcast with nadine sarwat from, uh, bernstein talking all about this, and she basically was like yeah, we see it, we don't know anything, but like she was, it's an idea. Their conversation was really interesting because it was interesting to hear, like Wall Street's take on Boston beer, which is basically like puts a ton of like sorry, I can't think of a better word but a ton of stock 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 like just enough like kookiness to be able to try the big ideas, but he also knows how to make them work. Yeah, but it just seems like if I I'm not Jim, if I were Jim, like at this point in my life I would be so down to just go hang on a beach and, like god, love him. That is not what he's doing so well?
Scott:yeah, I looked it up. I didn't realize the man's 75 years old, yeah, which is weird because he's so youthful and he's always drinking beers on a regular basis. Just think of him as maybe like 45, 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'm not sure, but I know his oldest two are married and you can't take it with you.
Jessica Infante:No, I mean he always says his succession plan is to not die, which is funny and good luck to you and the Red Sox on that, but you weren't around for the Dogfish deal.
Scott:It wasn't, and I was extremely upset about the Dogfish Head deal because I just left and my favorite beer on the entire planet is Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale by far. When it was available, I would buy cases of it Like love it. Yeah, it crushed me that I was not there for that.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, so I was only there for a few more weeks after it happened and to me I kind of felt like one of the biggest assets of this deal is Sam.
Scott:Yeah.
Jessica Infante:You know, I don't know how management committee goes down anymore, I don't know what town hall meetings are like, but I imagine Sam is like a super visible quantity in leadership. So I think like Jim, if you want to go hang out on the beach, you got your bud.
Scott:Yeah.
Jessica Infante:He's got it. Jim has also said that he would be the last American owner of the company of the largest brewery. He's got some quote out there in the quote. Jim is a quote machine but you know, like he's also kind of said like this will potentially end with him. I don't not that I'm at all calling for Jim's demise, jesus, but like we'll see what happens Like you're a jerk. I could see it. He would never. I will tell you what he would never, ever sell to AB or Molson Coors.
Scott:Absolutely not.
Jessica Infante:And I I hope, given everything we just talked about, Constellation is not on the table for a potential buyer. Yeah, the thing about Constellation is that to me it's a super complex operation. There's a lot of brands, but they've got this insane innovation pipeline and generally wholesalers think super highly of them. So you get a lot, were you to acquire.
Scott:It's a nice distribution footprint. He's built a great network of wholesale partners, staying out of the AB houses for the most part.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, and AB is not interested anymore anyway. So I know we can very easily say Jim would never sell to AB. But they just sold off a bunch of brands last summer in a fire sale, to tell them.
Scott: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 kind of like, oh, don't sell, don't sell. But at the end of the day is he going to be 90 and run the joint? His kids are not interested. He's kind of run the gamut of it. He's getting up there in age. Let's celebrate the guy and let him kind of go off into the sunset.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, I want Jim to let his story end, however he wants it to end.
Scott:Yeah, it should. It's not like he's selling a failing company or still a billion dollar business. You know, maybe not on a regional level, but on a national level. You still think of craft beer. That is the one you think of.
Jessica Infante:I mean, their business has certainly changed since you and I were around. Yes, everything is different.
Scott:Yes.
Jessica Infante:The last I had crunched these numbers in their off-premise scan data, which is not the whole picture of the business. But you know all the beer that gets sold in stores to be drunk at home 80% of their sales were twisted tea and truly.
Scott:Yeah, the craft business in general is just very cyclical. But seeing what I'm seeing down here in chains, it shocks the hell out of me that I walk into a store and there's nothing Sam Adams in the cold box, and that is something that you see here in North Carolina. Now. It's kind of crazy. It was five, six skews and then the teas, and then the ciders. You don't even see any Sam Adams in there anymore. And I mean, again, the industry is cyclical and it's, you know, it's kind of how long can you hold on for?
Jessica Infante:Right. I mean, what's interesting right now is we're seeing this like resurgence of like retro seeming lagers. Yeah, so, like you're right, everything is cyclical.
Scott:It'll be interesting. You know, like I said, I wish him the best. It just it's kind of crazy to hear it and to see it.
Jessica Infante:I'm sure you had a super secret knowledge of the letter that went out to the whole company. Yes, I, I did receive that, that text message. I was actually I was off, it was like the last day of my maternity leave and was like, well, this will be fun on Monday, something to do, so yeah, so that rumor happened and then, like a week later, this cannabis company, green Thumb Industries, published like an open letter to Jim, like hey, we'll buy you.
Scott:Really.
Jessica Infante:Which is crazy, just gets them like some publicity and some notoriety. There's a lot of reasons why that can't really happen.
Scott:Yeah, are they a large cannabis company?
Jessica Infante:like they've got enough cash to do it yeah, their market cap wasn't that much smaller than boston beers. Wow, uh, I guess they could, but I mean, I think they're. They're based in the us where cannabis isn't federally legal like so one of the the biggest craft brewers in quotes right now is Tilray, which is a Canadian cannabis company, but cannabis is legal in Canada, so that makes all of their financial operations and their ability to operate much different. But they've been buying up us craft breweries in the past couple of years. They bought. They started with sweet water in 2020. They bought green flash and Alpine in San Diego. They just bought Montauk in New York a year and a half ago and then last summer they bought all those brands from AB, which includes, like a lot of their pack Northwest stuff like Widmer and 10 barrel. I don't want to be wrong on anything, but they bought shock top.
Scott:Well, did they really?
Jessica Infante: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 was going to name Cora, baby shock top, my daughter, to the point where, like our our weekend newsletter writer, sean, you would love it Me. Super funny. Uh, we'll like occasionally into newsletters, right, and baby shock top like shock top, I don't even remember the last time I saw a shock top, like do they exist?
Scott:I don't know. Remember the last time I saw a Shock Top.
Jessica Infante:Do they exist? I don't know. I was home at the Jersey Shore for a point in the summer and was out socializing with my friends.
Scott:Doing some investigative reporting.
Jessica Infante:Some guy started talking to me somewhere and we were out. I was like, oh, are you working craft beer? That's really hot. My favorite beer is raspberry Shock Top. It's like cool Thanks.
Scott:Leave it to the jersey shore. Yeah, never fall in love with the jersey shore no, but it's funny that you bring up shock top, because I mean, shock top is just a anheuser-busch blue moon ripoff and I just, uh, rediscovered a beer that's very similar to both of them but 20 times better, and it's actually my second beer.
Jessica Infante:I'm going to try today, you're going to have two beers you breathe.
Scott:Lost Coast, tangerine. Oh, this is a good one.
Jessica Infante:I'm impressed that you get them.
Scott:I know, and it's fresh too. Wow, it's only a month old. Shock that we get them all the way from California.
Jessica Infante:Because they are like a super remote part of California.
Scott:Yeah, eureka, you're kaya eureka, tiny, tiny though, but yeah, it's such an amazing beer too, like just had it this weekend, hadn't had it in a while. They do um great white. It's like one of the last like white ipas on a planet like oh god, remember though.
Jessica Infante:Oh, they're so good. Well, I know you remember those rip to whitewater.
Scott:If anybody knows me, that's the one thing I'm going to be known for is my whitewater IPA love.
Jessica Infante:I might be wrong. Wasn't the beer that we were pouring on tours that was made for your bachelor party? Wasn't that like an early version of Rebel IPA?
Scott:No, so close. So it was. I found out that one of the older people that we worked with had brewed their own beer at the brewery. How do you get to do this? So she was like, yeah, I talked to jim, it's, we can all do it, nobody asks. So I was like you're gonna be shitting me. So I went and talked to jim and I was like I'm getting married, can I brew my own beer? And he's like yeah, sure, I'm like you, serious, this is amazing.
Scott:So I made a 60 minute hop version of a white ipa, but it was supposed to be hopped at minute intervals all the way through, like a 60-minute dogfish. I made it with Dean, one of the OGs down there a little of that guy. I made it with him and it came out fantastic and I got a keg of it for my wedding. And then they put the other nine kegs from the yield on the tap room. But yeah, it was so good. But it was funny because it was before Whitewater came out and I was just to make fun of Dave Sipes, who was the brewer that designed the beer, and I said you know, you totally ripped me off, dude. I know you ripped me off and he was like I didn't rip you off, 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:I feel like they walked so hazies could fly.
Scott:Yeah, yeah, it was a fun time. We got the keg and we went through probably like three quarters of it and in the morning 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 kill it ourselves. But it was nice that woke up and we got to take the keg home and kill it ourselves that was nice.
Jessica Infante:That's fun, that's fun. I did not do the make a beer option, but I got married the weekend after the Boston marathon, so we had a keg of 26.2.
Scott:Oh nice.
Jessica Infante:Which I love, but I'm an idiot and I totally forgot to bring a tap handle, so nobody even knew that it was there. Like, I actually think I like mentioned it at the end of my vows and was like please drink the beer from the keg, like, and I think we brought home like half a full keg.
Scott:It still is. That was such a cool thing to do that we each got the opportunity to have that, you know, at our wedding and Super cool.
Jessica Infante:I mean, I was a jerk about it. Like I think I or you get 25 cases, Yep, and I was such a little obnoxious craft beer purist that I only had beer. I think maybe I brought in like one case of angry orchard and I got every variety pack we had available, so there ended up being like 25 styles of beer. Oh god, took a palette from the brewery, I chalkboard, painted 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:Oh yeah.
Jessica Infante:And the bartenders didn't care either. They're these like gruff ladies at the Jersey Shore working at this yacht club. So like people would come up and be like, can I have a Sam Adams? And they'd be like sure. So they were just pulling whatever they had out of the ice and they were just grabbing any old bottle. So months later, one of my mom's good friends, joanne, was telling me. She said, jess, we had so much fun at your wedding.
Jessica Infante:And I was like yeah, that's great. I'm glad you had a good time. And she was like you know what we did? We were doing the Boston Lagers, but we drank down the neck and we asked the bartenders to fill it with Bacardi Limon and it was great.
Scott:Oh, I have yet to try that. Yeah, I don't see how that could be good. I don't know.
Jessica Infante:I told Jim about it once. He was like okay, they liked it Great.
Scott:Yeah, I mixed mine up. I had ciders and, I think, some twisted teas. Just mixed it up a little bit. But yeah, I can see where you'd be like that?
Jessica Infante:Yeah, you're a normal person.
Scott:No, I'm not really. You're giving me way too much credit a truly test market.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, so when, like the bbc contingent arrived, they went to like the store that had it and they just bought it all and like, drank it all weekend.
Scott:So when uh truly came out, so it came out right when the actual like seltzer craze was huge. They, you know, flavored regular non-alcohol seltzers and my wife was obsessed with them, just every lacroix possibility you could ever get. And she found out she was pregnant in march of that year and we launched like that summer. So my wife missed the entire like first nine months of truly's. She had no summer ale that year she was a very, very angry pregnant lady.
Jessica Infante:Oh, that is so sad because when is finley's birthday, so finley is uh october 25th she'll be eight.
Scott:Wow, katie missed everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was right in the middle of the summer, see I, cory was evicted on june 1st.
Jessica Infante:So Finley is October 25th, she'll be eight. Wow, katie missed everything.
Scott:Yeah, yeah, it was right in the middle of the summer.
Jessica Infante:See I Corey was evicted on June 1st, which was Evicted.
Scott:Yeah Out you go. Yeah, Through the sunroof, that's awesome. Well, you know I don't want to be cliche and be the guy that's got the older kid who's like all right, well, you just wait for this, this, this and this, but yeah, hell's going to break loose.
Jessica Infante: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 her freaking mouth.
Scott:It's not going to happen. It's very stressful Not going to happen. My daughter still carries her swaddle blanket that had circles on it. It swaddled well blanket. It had circles on it started when she was a baby. Would call it circle banks. I don't know how she's spelling it, but I don't know it's b-a-n-x, b-a-n-k-s but circle banks, and she would carry it around with her. But a thing just got so nasty and corroded and pulling on it's now it's like seven pieces but they're all tied into one um, and she's like still like seven years old, still rubs it on her mouth. It's it's so disgusting like I'll find her chewing on it. I'm like that is that hasn't been washed in months. Like get that out of your mouth. Like that's where covid came from. Her circle banks disgusting, that's adorable. Do you have any any cool pictures of your daughter going for beer bottles?
Jessica Infante:yes, I do. Isn't that great. My husband had just poured himself a sip of sunshine, I think. Think this was Easter weekend.
Scott:Yeah.
Jessica Infante:And he's holding her and his beer glass and she is like it's amazing.
Scott:I have a really cool picture of Finn grabbing a Boston lager out of Katie's hand Like, yeah, it's my girl.
Jessica Infante:I love her. Like her interspersed like house ad about oh yeah, yeah. Like her interspersed like house ad about oh yeah, yeah. So when I was little my dad was a lawyer and there was a car dealership, honda of Essex in North Jersey, that the owner had his daughters on and they would say you should buy a car from our dad so we can get more Barbies, really. And I would always be like dad, you need a commercial so that I can be on it. And he was like Jessica, I am not the kind of lawyer that does commercials Like this is not going to happen.
Scott:We don't do that stuff. Yeah, we don't do that. It's not personal injury. When I asked her, I said I had this great idea. She had already done the end line, thank you and goodbye. She was I don't know five, six years old, six years old and she had to write herself a script. All it was was thank you for listening, bye. And she spelled bye, b-e-y. And I was like, oh, that's so sweet and I hope she shakes out that inability to spell words thing. She wrote the script and then read the script Like I was like, oh, this is the sweetest thing.
Scott:So she thought it was great and every time we'd listen to a podcast, she'd listen to it with me, with me. So I said you know, I need to get some ad work in here and I'm, you know, trying to get some sponsors and show them how I would do it. And I wrote that for. And she's like I'm not going to say, well, so let's do this, because that's what boys say. I said, just do it, Just do it. She was like, nope, I'm not gonna do it. So about two days later she comes back and she's like I'm like you, really, you think you can handle it. She goes yep, I got it, put the headphones on her, sat her up in my little bedroom studio and she nailed it in one take.
Scott:I was shocked, pro yeah. 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 the guest and who's this? And? And the second guest I had was my friend Molly Lloyd. She's an actor and she was in the Dilly Dilly Bud Light ads. Oh, do you remember those? Yes, anyways, listen, go back and listen to that episode because it's hysterical. But Molly was great and she was talking about the Bud Light ads. So every time Finn saw Bud Light she would scream that's the Molly Lloyd beer. But it happened right around the same time that the Great unpleasantness yeah, everybody got upset because they put someone on a can whatever, not a political podcast, but it was ridiculous and she would go in and go that's the Molly Lloyd beer. And old white guys would give her like the dirtiest looks down here.
Jessica Infante:That's amazing.
Scott:Like please stop, You're going to get me killed, Please stop. But yeah, still to this day she thinks it's the Molly Lloyd beer. But yes, pretty cool story. She talks about how I don't know if you've heard it, I have not listened to this one.
Jessica Infante:I'm going to go back and find it.
Scott:But the costumes that they used for the whole Dilly Dilly, they were from Game of Thrones. No way. They filmed when Game of Thrones wasn't filming and they filmed there and used all their costumes. That was smart, so it was wild. I'm like that's amazing.
Jessica Infante:I really liked that campaign from them. It was great.
Scott:It was great. Is it your doorbell. It's yours, I think it's on mine.
Jessica Infante:I mean, it's probably a beer delivery, Is it?
Scott:Does that happen often.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, almost nobody needs my ID, which is nice. A few breweries into, like new belgium always insists like you have to go down and show them your I d, but for the most part beer just shows up here, really. Or my mom's house like, because I spent like a month at my mom's house every summer because she lives at the jersey shore and I work remote and my husband's a teacher, so why the honk?
Scott:not, we all go yeah.
Jessica Infante:so depending on when brewery pr people ask for my address, sometimes they get that one and sometimes they don't change it. So my mom now lives with her gentleman friend and he loves beer. He's literally the most devoted craft beer fan I know. He's 80. Good for him. Good for him. Probably not great for craft beer. Maybe consider reaching some younger consumers, I don't know.
Scott:That could be the problem we're all experiencing here, right.
Jessica Infante:Right, so Bell's ships to my mom's house, which is great because they're his favorite. So yeah. I'm just happy to keep Tom flush with whatever he wants to drink.
Scott:It's really cool. So you just get part of the perks of the job is you're still getting free beer.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, I do. I still get free beer. The problem is that I don't get to pick it. It just shows up, it's just kind of whatever, whatever's on offer, and like I mean I, I can't possibly drink it all the Ryan tries.
Scott: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 a great dad. So back to the beer. No, I'm just kidding. Oh, yes, that's awesome that you just they're just sending you samples or sending you new, new items and yeah, samples I mean because people will also send stuff which I try not to like.
Jessica Infante:I try to just give it away because I don't know what the hard and fast rule is here. And I also always tell them like hey, we don't review the products, which is I have to tell people this a lot like I don't like drink beer and write about 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's in a beer. Yeah, so I always say that like hey, like, just so you know, like we've done a lot better. We do a really good job with a new newsletter format of you know, highlighting new products and whatever, but before that we really weren't doing much. So I always try to make it clear like you can send me whatever you want to send me, but don't expect me to write about it, and some people don't want to send it anyway, do you?
Scott:have breweries giving you their unadulterated. Take on your unadulterated. Takes on them. No, From a business standpoint or that you know. Does anyone ever get upset that you, they think you may have besmirched them, when you're only telling the truth?
Jessica Infante:No, I think I'm pretty. I think I shoot everybody pretty straight. Yeah, there is one large brewery-ish large-ish brewery in the state of Georgia. That was mentioned a lot during the reckoning. How much do you know about the reckoning? We don't need to get into all of this, but craft beer had its own movement in 21.
Scott:Yes, I was familiar.
Jessica Infante:Yes, so that happened.
Scott:What's the person's name? Rab Agment. Yes.
Jessica Infante:That's her Instagram. Her real name is Brianne Allen and she's very nice. Okay, so she worked at Notch, which is in my town, salem, where I live, and you know, for people who don't know Brianne, who worked at Notch, just you know, ask the question on Instagram like you know, when have you experienced sexual harassment in beer? And she started sharing all the stories that she got and it really turned into like a big upheaval, like it was huge a lot, yeah, yeah, huge a lot of things came out.
Jessica Infante:So this one particular brewery got mentioned a lot but, like, journalistically it was tough because she was sharing these stories anonymously and a lot of the things that are mentioned in them are so sensitive that I didn't want to go digging and find, you know, like, yeah, I was trying to be an upstanding person about it. So the way that we approached it to cover was whenever a brewery either made a public statement or, you know, fired somebody and announced it like we would cover that and that kept me plenty, plenty, plenty busy. So this one brewery would get mentioned 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 to check their profile, me blocking various people so I could see what their profile was. Like I figured I was like these efforts blocked me, like I've never even written about you.
Scott:They blocked you. That's so pathetic yeah.
Jessica Infante:I mean, look like you're not doing it right if you don't have some enemies. But I don't think, too many people hate my guts.
Scott:Well, I certainly don't. I'm glad you were here on the big show.
Jessica Infante:Thanks, bud, this was a lot of fun.
Scott:And I'm psyched that we got a chance to drink some beers together and catch up a little bit, and I love watching your stories with little Cora. She's adorable and it's just cute 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 great parent role model.
Jessica Infante:You look like you were searching for a word to use.
Scott:I was about to say like I feel like you're a really great role model for becoming a parent at a slightly older age I feel like you're a great parent who drinks beer and doesn't watch their kids, so you're going with that's where you're going with that. That's where you're going with that.
Jessica Infante:They got to learn.
Scott:Yeah, she's great. I have a video of her. We were here about a year and Hurricane Florence came through and it was brutal down here I mean brutal and it whacked the hell out of us. The whole city evacuated. We ended up in Greensboro because that was the last place that had a hotel where we could take a dog. So we're out at Buffalo Wild Wings or something and my daughter has the menu open and she's looking at pointed stuff and she's just still kind of cooing. She knows a few words. I think my wife points to beer and she's like what's that? And she's like beer and she's 18 months old.
Jessica Infante:And I was like oh, my heart my heart.
Scott:So cute, Jess, but this has been fantastic. Thank you for your insights into crazy beer industry that we know here in the US. Hopefully some more crazy stuff will shake out and we'll have you back on it, but I want to thank you so much for your time and for all your contributions to the beer industry. Your articles are great Folks. Check her out on Brewbound. Your podcast is fantastic. If know, if everybody's looking for cool beer news, check out the Brewbound podcast. Anything else that can find you at. You got any conferences you're running.
Jessica Infante:Yeah, we've got Brewbound. Live in Marina Del Rey, California, December 11th and 12th.
Scott:Awesome.
Jessica Infante:Right now, our keynote speaker is Natalie Chilurzo of Russian River.
Scott:Ooh, very good, I am really excited. Yeah, that sounds awesome. Well, jess, again, thank you so much coming on the show. It's been a pleasure and take care.
Jessica Infante:Thank you, this was great. No-transcript.
