Traverse City News and Events

New Beer Magazine Brewed Locally

March 28, 2017

Two decades ago, Rick Coates and Scott Graham helped launch Gaylord’s Big Buck Brewery, where Graham worked as a brewer and Coates served as a consultant. Now, 20 years later, they're together again. Graham is now executive director of the Michigan Brewers Guild, a nonprofit that promotes the state’s craft beer industry; Coates has been named editor of MiBrew, the Guild’s Traverse City-based quarterly magazine.

MiBrew came along just in time to celebrate the Guild’s 20th anniversary, and Coates and Graham hope it will increase the number of the group’s members, called “enthusiasts.” There are currently some 2,000 enthusiasts, people who are serious connoisseurs of craft beer.

“I think that there are a lot of people out there that have some sort of emotional attachment to the craft beer industry,” Graham says. “People love to have stories about beer and breweries and that’s nothing new, but I think craft beer is something that connects with people.”

MiBrew, available only to enthusiasts, has published two issues so far and features profiles of brewers, like the story of Derek “Chumly Anderson, brewer at the Vierling in Marquette and the state’s longest-tenured brewer, in the winter issue. They also feature musicians who are regulars on craft brewery stages, seasonal beer recommendations, and profiles of fun beer destinations. Enthusiasts also get a t-shirt and early access to tickets to the festivals the Guild hosts each year in Ypsilanti, Grand Rapids, Detroit and Marquette.

Coates, a one-time contributor to Northern Express and a former WKLT personality, says festival tickets sell out within hours of going on sale.

Beer has gotten big in Michigan. Around ten percent of beer consumed in Michigan is made in Michigan, but Graham says he believes that number could easily swell to 25 percent. There are projected to be more than 300 breweries in the state within a couple months and more than 500 within five years. That’s a far cry from the state of the industry when Coates and Graham helped open Big Buck in 1997. It was one of the first craft breweries in northern Michigan.

Coates says he was involved in the craft beer industry early because he became a home brewer before he turned 21.

“I got interested in it because I had a real issue – I think I was 16 when they raised the drinking age from 18 to 21, and I had a real issue with that,” he says. He discovered that you didn’t have to be 21 in order to brew beer. And while you had to be 21 to possess alcoholic beverages, Coates says he was happy to take advantage of at least a partial loophole and he started making beer.

He went on to work as a micro-brewery consultant in the early days of the state’s craft beer industry from 1988 until 1998.
That meant Coates was involved in the beginning of the Brewers’ Guild, which was also founded in 1997. The Guild was formed in order to get the nascent independent brewers to start to work together to grow the craft beer market in the state; in the beginning, Coates says, brewers worked against each other, seeing each other as enemies when in fact, history has proven they’ve gotten much further acting as allies.

The Guild also has a lobbying arm that works to make state law friendly to craft beer. Annual membership dues are $55. Click here to learn more. 

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