A few Good Minutes with Jason Malone

It hasn't been easy, and the stars seemed aligned to prevent it from occurring, but I finally spoke with Jason Malone from Good People Brewing Company Although I'm not sure if I'm legally allowed to post the entire interview because it's for BeerAdvocate Magazine, but here are some juicy excerpts from my conversation with Jason:

Q: What has been your experience as a brewer in Alabama?

A: We’re really fortunate to kind of get involved in brewing in Alabama when we did. There were breweries that came before us in the 90s that, given the market, were ahead of the time. They had to do two things and do it really well, they had to make good beer - but just as important they had to educate folks that it was good beer. With no trailblazers ahead of them, they were trying to navigate uncharted waters. The demographic here, especially at that time, was quite different than places like Colorado and Oregon where craft brewing was thriving… I really think those guys were ahead of their time and because of that they weren’t successful and had to close down back when the first craft wave was coming though.

Q: (OK I don't remember what question I asked, in fact I think he brought it up on his own, but Jason mentioned was talking about beer culture in Alabama as Free The Hops and legislators were working on repealing prohibitive restrictions on ABV)

A: What we did have is a lot of people tuned into what was going on because of this grass roots effort. A lot of the people, instead of saying “Gosh it’s so great we can get all this great beer here,” they were saying “I wish we could.”... People knew that something was going on and that there were a bunch of guys and gals trying to get something going on in the beer world. That really worked well for us when we came down because we had a large group of folks who were interested in drinking good beer. The fact that they couldn’t get a lot of good beer made them even more interested.

Q: How did you get started in the brewing business?

A: We were basically just homebrewers that made beer for a long time without any inclination to start a business. We weren't looking to find a business, the business just found us. You take beer to so many places so many times, and you can only hear someone say this is really good beer you should start selling this, before you take them seriously… when it becomes evident that people think as much about your beer as you do and enjoy drinking it as much as you do, before long you take it seriously.

Q:How did you come up with the name "Good People Brewing?"

A: We just thought it was a really good representation of what we were trying to do and the folks we were serving. It’s less about us and more about our customers and community. The folks who support us and the retailers out here.

Q: Anything else you would like to add?

A: We’re very passionate about being what a local brewery should be. We’re dedicated of taking care of our local market before looking at expansion. We try to involve our local market as much as possible. There’s something to be said about living in a city with a brewery. Most decent sized cities these days have a brewery, so it’s not a novelty its an expectation. One of the benefits is being keyed in and having pride in ownership of what goes on at the local brewery. We’re just trying to be keyed into that.

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Interested in more? Check out BeerAdvocate in a few months for a real story. Sorry, I hate to be a tease, but I don't want to give away the good stuff!

Cheers!