"Thank You For Paying Black People"
A Running Diary of Barrel & Flow Fest 2024
Beer fests are dead, or so the cynics will tell you, but maybe that’s the wrong way to think about it? Perhaps the widespread availability of “special” beer has simply forced the modelto evolve. Pittsburgh’s Barrel & Flow has found a way to redesign the blueprint for success by serving a much higher purpose than just beer enthusiasm. Participating breweries pair up with black-owned businesses (including other breweries), entrepreneurs, artists, and creatives to design and brew collaborations which serve as a catalyst for this festival to bring people together to spotlight all the great work being done and communities being built.
Feel free to be a fly on the wall as I walk through the #1 beer festival in the country, see where the wind takes me, who I run into, and what we talked about:
5:01 PM - Pints & Panels!
I happened to get into line at the same time as Em Sauter of Pints and Panels, a fellow writer and visual beer educator with a famous Instagram account for beer fans. Her and Jen Blair (Master Cicerone!) ended up joining my wife Alma and I for most of the evening as we explored. Two interesting things going on in Em’s world:
She has a new book releasing September 24th called “Pairing Beer With Everything”, which can be pre-ordered here. We talked about how publishing vs. self-publishing works and how she went with the later in this case.
Some account in Turkey called kaan.erkus is adapting her art and passing it off as his own. Em had been letting him have it on Instagram and then later updated that she was successful getting Meta to take down the posts in question. While most people think it’s crazy to pay for the blue checkmark through Instagram (I don’t disagree), it was the customer service access that convinced me to do it. I’ve got 11 years of effort invested into my page and will pay up to protect it from getting hacked, or prevent a hack repurposing my work. Glad the extra service level helped Em in this case. Something for breweries to consider…
Quick sidebar - Back in 2013, I bought a 6-pack of Ballast Point Sculpin, a fishing lure, then biked to Chicago’s beachfront with my camera and gear to execute the photo below. Back then, beer content for me was a creative photo paired with a review or other thoughts. After posting, Ballast Point stole it and made it their Facebook cover photo with no credit, receiving thousands (thousands!) of likes. When I called them out on it, they deleted it and never acknowledged me. I know that it was simply the actions of one individual in marketing operating off the cuff, so I never held it against the brand but it’s the WORST feeling to have your creative stolen like that when you put in the thought and time.
5:10PM - Old Thunder Brewing and the ESH1 Riwaka Variant
Early last Spring, I received a DM from the co-founder of Old Thunder Brewing in Pittsburgh. We had met at a previous Barrel & Flow fest and he saw a video I posted about our new one-off IPA, DDH Riwaka-Hero. I set them up with a 4-pack to try and they wound up being the first brewery tent we walked up to. What were they serving? Wasted Talent, a Riwaka-hopped Hazy Pale Ale, but not just any Riwaka, a variant of the New Zealand standout called “ESH1”. The concept of hop variants sounds like something that the Jude & Jeremiah of Hop Butcher for the World would have told me about awhile ago and gone over my head.
Just like a brewery makes variants of their barrel-aged stout release for those looking for a next level of flavor, it makes sense that the hop farmers take a page out of that same playbook. The Old Thunder folks explained that ESH1 Riwaka has even higher oil content than normal Riwaka, which is already beaming with exotic tropical fruit and white grape. The flavor was intense and as always with Riwaka, you forget that there’s not actual fruit in the recipe. I love that they partnered up both a local singer/songwriter (@lamestrapper) as well as an artist (@hippyswizzy) to design and brew the collaboration, and even made this great video on it’s origin 👇
5:20pm - A Heavenly Cold Black IPA
Very early on I spotted Paul Schneider, founder and head brewer at Cinderlands beer. We’ve traded many messages on the ‘gram but never met formally. He immediately greeted me with my favorite beer of the festival:
We brewed a black IPA with orange blossom honey to dig into our shared history in the steel industry’s boom and bust. The bricks of central Ohio built bustling terraforms of beehive coke ovens in the forests in the Appalachian foothills. Coke companies produced this critical steel component in patches of green nature, turning them for a time into buzzing dens of industry buried deep in our woods. A hundred plus years out from their peak, these beehive coke oven plants are now GHOSTS OF THE FORESTS, dotting the landscape along our coal corridors.
We brewed this beer with cold IPA methods including a grist of pilsner malt and flaked maize, of course with some de-bittered black malt for color, and a hefty dose of orange blossom honey to lighten the body and make this a crisp, summer-time riff on the style. Nelson and Mosaic Dynaboost lay the hot-side hop base, then we dropped a huge dry-hop of Nelson, Nelson Cryo, Mosaic, HBC 1019 and Columbus Cryo.
We’re pulling chocolate-covered orange, crystalline kush, pineapple slice, and German chocolate cake.
That’s super thoughtful story-telling and description that I miss seeing more regularly.
My favorite part about my interaction with Paul though was the fact that his brewery was the last thing he wanted to talk about. He spent all of his energy pushing me toward his collaboration partner’s tent, encouraging me to check out their beers. So that’s what I did, and boy was here right. That’s what this festival is all about and when I got lost in my excitement to meet Paul, he quickly and subtly reminded me of why we were there. Shout out Alematic Brewing out of Huber Heights, OH and congrats on the delightful Cold Black IPA!
5:35pm - Rhythm Brewing, Great Logo and Even Better Lager
Next I had the pleasure of meeting Alisa Bowens-Mercado, founder of Rhythm Brewing out of Connecticut. She brought the energy in addition to their Unfiltered Lager and Unfiltered Light Lager, a simple and effective 1-2 punch 🥊. When I walk around a beer fest these days, I’m happy to dabble with modern beer styles that I don’t seek out on the regular, but I get especially excited when I see palate relief in the form of some easy-drinkers.
In this case, the experience included the opportunity to see how drastic the differences are between light and regular side-by-side, not to mention the flavor-driven, unfiltered approach of both. Lastly, whoever designed their logo hit it out of the park. What a cool way to include the Treble Clef, but turn it into the R for Rhythm 👌
5:50pm - Give me Moor’s
Normally I want to be in a tent slinging Deep Wood beers and talking to Pittsburgh’s finest, but plans fell through this year and I just came as an attendee. Before I could even get to Pittsburgh for Barrel & Flow 2024, I began chatting with Damen here, founder of Moor’s Beer, about a collaboration for 2025. Moor’s has been off to a fast start in Chicago since starting up in 2021, lead by their Kölsch which is resonating in a big way. Moor’s has a great crew and even has NFL Hall of Famer Warren Sapp as an investor.
6:00pm - Stop and Admire
Last year we had to take cover from tornados. But we were blessed with the most gorgeous night possible, complimenting my partner in crime here quite well.
6:05pm - Allagashians + Leading with Crystal
Last year while pouring at Barrel & Flow, the Allagash crew saved my day when I was given a jockey box from hell. Thankfully they had all the right parts to get me fixed up and operational. This year, not only was my draft tech in shining armor back, but he brought their legendary brewmaster Jason Perkins to pour alongside him. We’ve never crossed paths all these years, but we did have some phone calls earlier this Spring to talk hop water as they prepared to launch their own.
Now having tried their Hop Water, I had one dumb question for Jason, which was around their decision to lead with Crystal hops on the can, when Citra is the more popular other hop in the recipe. He said that Crystal is the primary hop in Allagash White, so they wanted to create as many connections as possible to their best seller, which is why they also added orange peel. #Respect.
6:25pm - Two of the Industry’s Kindest: @SentricStyles & “A-Train”
Sentric here (on the left) is one of those faces that started popping up on my Instagram feed a long time ago, reviewing beers and providing thoughtful commentary. He’s done a great job of adapting to the short form video that Instagram demands these days, being entertaining AND informative, and is just one of those guys who is so easy to get behind. I look forward to running into him each time I’m here.
Adrian (on the right) is a brewer, fellow instagrammer, and strikes me as one of the unsung heroes of the Pittsburgh beer scene who always shows up and is the first to raise her hand to volunteer to make important events like Barrel & Flow happen. The last two times I was pouring at the fest, she was making sure everyone had what they needed, enough ice, functioning equipment, etc. This photo was taken at around her 12th hour since starting her shift early that morning to help set up the fest. I think that’s a mead she’s drinking, not a beer. But who really knows these days? 😝
6:50pm - Lets Get Funky
Craft beer feeds off enthusiasm, beginning with the excitement behind the faces of the beer. Getting to know the crew from Funkytown better last year through the release of our collab Cold Sweat helped push me through one of those negative swells where you can start to doubt yourself or the impact of your work. I couldn’t wait to visit their tent, mostly just to give hugs, and as always I was greeted with the biggest smiles in the beer industry. That’s why it’s so important to find ways to get exposure to all the new innovators and fresh personalities in the industry, constantly reminding yourself that its what you make of things. Push yourself past the bad days and avoid surrounding yourself with the downers.
“They don’t make them like the used to”
Yes they do, they’re right here.
7:15pm - Brew Gentleman (BG) goes BiG
When I was trying desperately to get into the craft beer industry, I would watch any content I could find to soak in as much perspective as possible, in hopes of rounding out my own. I remember ironing clothes one day and watching Matt, the co-founder of Brew Gentlemen pictured below, on Brewbound’s Start-up Challenge. I was intrigued by him being a graduate of Carnegie Mellon in my home town of Pittsburgh, known for so many great innovators, and entrepreneurs. The city’s beer community was very small at the time, but Matt and his business partners, including Alaina here, were among the earliest members of the new wave who support Barrel & Flow.
I caught Matt and Alaina what should have been a stressful time, less than a week before opening their their first ever restaurant concept in an ambitious space formerly called Superior Motors, which was vacated by chef Kevin Sousa during the pandemic. You wouldn’t have known it from talking to them though as they were so upbeat and down to chat beer marketing. We must have spent the last 60 minutes of the fest just bouncing marketing topics and ideas off each other including rebrands, marketing stunts, and yes TikTok. Brew Gentlemen is located in Braddock, a very industrial steel town outside the city of Pittsburgh that they’ve remained committed to all these years. “BG” has done as good or better of a job as anyone to elevate the beer occasion locally through hospitality and experience.
8:15pm Day Bracey!!
(Okay this was actually much earlier the night, but I wanted to do this last)
I couldn’t be prouder to have found my way into the orbit of Day Bracey, creator of Barrel & Flow. He’s built a cultural experience in the city that I proudly call my hometown, that’s unlike any other night of the year and brings people together over a common enjoyment of beer and supporting black-owned businesses. Day was also a guest on my short-lived Youtube show during the pandemic. In addition to being a writer, podcaster, comedian, Day and his buddy Ed have a TV show called “Ed and Day in the ‘Burgh'“ and the week of the festival Day found out they were nominated for an Emmy award 😮
Pittsburgh is so intense about their sports (guilty!) that it can sometimes feel like everyone’s social lives revolve a little too much around the teams’ schedules (again, guilty!). I didn’t want to take up too much of his time, but one thing I remember asking Day was if he could ever see the Steelers, Pirates, or Penguins supporting the fest in the future. He explained that he prefers to keep the Barrel & Flow festival itself separate from sports, giving the city something that isn’t relying on the black & yellow to financially support or activate the festival. Keeping the fest independent and about black-owned business makes all the sense in the world, and I really respected the hell out of that answer. But that doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t take advantage of the opportunity to throw out the first pitch at the Pirates game, which I was so pumped to see right as I was taking my seat at the game!
Cheers to Day, Ed, and all the other leaders behind the scenes of Barrel & Flow, everyone who volunteered, brewed collabs, and made the festival the best in the country. And to those in attendance:
