Earlier today the 2011 Craft Brewers Conference began with the morning program, which ended with a keynote address by Fritz Maytag and Ken Grossman. It was more of a casual talk or reminiscence, with Maytag and Grossman talking about their early days, with both the challenges and joys of those times when their were trying to get their respective breweries off the ground. They sat opposite one another on comfy chairs and talked for just over 30 minutes finishing with a toast using the collaboration imperial stout they did together last year, Fritz & Ken’s Ale.
It was a highly entertaining talk and even quite funny in places. I’d forgotten my Flip camera, but I did manage to record the audio of the talk. The keynote is introduced by Tom McCormick, executive director of the California Small Brewers Association, and then it’s Ken and Fritz for thirty plus minutes. Enjoy.
Thanks for recording and posting that. It’s often ignored that the few oldline breweries left in the 1970-80’s helped out the fledgling “craft” brewers. The story of Anchor getting yeast at the Bay Area brewers (Falstaff, General, Hamm’s, Burgermeister) is always nice to hear and it’s not often one hears a good word about “Mr. Paul” Kalmanovitz (I know I’ve never written any).
Interesting that Fritz puts the turning point of cut-throat competition around the time of Miller’s rise to #2 and the A-B-Miller “Beer Wars” that began in the late 1970’s.
Also, tho’ not mentioned, is Blitz-Weinhard’s image of a “small brewer” ignored the fact that they were bought by Pabst in the late 1970’s (not long after the introduction of “Henry Weinhard’s”) and then taken over by Heileman in the early 1980’s in that strange 3-way deal and spin-off with Pabst and Olympia-Hamm-Lone Star.
Thanks for posting this Jay, it was great to get the chance to listen for those, like me, who couldn’t make the trip.