Grace Weitz - Hop Culture

1) When did you start working for Hop Culture?

In 2017, I enrolled in a graduate food studies program at NYU. I answered an “ad” that Hop Culture Founder Kenny Gould placed in our career services system, looking for a beer writing intern. He gave me a travel stipend of $100 a month to come to the Upper East Side several times a week and write about beer. And here we are seven years later. Best decision of my life. 

2) How long have you been writing/editing?

I’ve been writing and editing since high school, when I served as the sports editor for our school paper. In college, I studied journalism and played soccer. Planning to go into sports journalism, I worked for the Women’s Pro Soccer League (now defunct and revived as the NWSL) and a pro fastpitch team in Illinois. But after a stint writing for a magazine called Candy Industry, I got pretty hooked on food and beverage. 

For my first job in beer, I moonlit as a brand ambassador for a brewery called 3 Sheeps and eventually worked full-time selling beer at 5 Rabbit Cerveceria. I loved working in beer but felt I wasn’t leveraging any opportunities to scratch that creative itch, so I headed to grad school. 

After moving to New York, Hop Culture eventually brought everything together for me—beer and writing. 


3) What was the first subject you covered for Hop Culture?

Damn, that’s a good question. I had to go back into the memory vault. It’s a good one, though. 

The Fermenting Ecosystem: Scratch Brewing in Ava, Illinois
While in grad school at NYU, I traveled to St. Louis to present at a Food Studies conference. Scratch Co-Founder Marika Josephson had come to our women, femme-identifying, and non-binary craft beer festival called Beers With(out) Beards. I had just heard magical things about the brewery, so I convinced my dad to rent a car with me and drive two hours to Ava, IL. He literally printed out MapQuest directions to get us there. And while I laughed when we first got into the car, the GPS actually cut out halfway through, so he had the last laugh. 
Although you might say after writing the piece, I got in the last word! 

4) Can you briefly explain what Hop Culture is and how it’s grown?

Juicy beer writing around the world. 

At Hop Culture, we aim to make craft beer more inclusive, positive, accessible, sustainable, and fun by writing and sharing stories about breweries, people, trends, travel, beer styles, and more. 

When I joined, we were just a bunch of beer lovers writing out of a New York City apartment (if you go back even further to when Kenny first started the magazine, it was a bunch of beer lovers writing out of a Pittsburgh apartment). 

In just over seven years, we’ve grown to over 3 million people a year visiting the site worldwide and 104K followers on Instagram. 

Hop Culture Founder Kenny Gould is one of the most intelligent, tenacious, and savvy entrepreneurs I’ve ever known. He had a vision to bring “pop culture” to craft beer through media. As an original team of five, we put our heads down, put pens to paper, put brains to beer, and grew this thing we all loved from the ground up. I’m incredibly proud of anyone who has ever worked at Hop Culture and put creative juice into this juicy brand. 

5) What is your favorite style of beer?

Changes with the season, my mood, what I’m watching on TV, what I’m eating for dinner, where I’m hanging out, what outfit I’m wearing (jk). But lately, I can’t drink enough Czech pale lagers, schwarzbiers, and Munich dunkels. 

6) What was the hardest challenge you’ve faced as the senior content editor at Hop Culture?

Starting a women, femme-identifying, and non-binary craft beer festival called Beers With(out) Beards. I conceptualized and planned the festival as a part of my graduate school thesis project. 

That first year, in 2018, we welcomed over a thousand people through a whole week of eleven different events. All culminating in a large festival that highlighted over twenty breweries. 

I specifically remember the morning of the festival, when it was raining cats and dogs. I changed clothes three times during setup and stole my wife’s shirt when she showed up. With half of the venue outdoors, I became convinced no one would show up. 

They did. 

Halfway through the fest, I stood on top of a shipping crate (because…Brooklyn, you know), taking everything in and looking out at the festival. Guess what? It started to rain again. I thought for sure everyone would head for the door. 

Instead, bit by bit, I saw people crowd under the big tent with the DJ, dancing, drinking, and laughing. For those still outside, colorful umbrellas started to pop up one by one, with groups of three or four people huddled together. Every few minutes, one person would rush out from under the protection to a brewer's booth to grab a few samples before scurrying back to hand them out. 

I realized that people wanted to be there. Rain be damned. They wanted to celebrate all these folks in beer who often went unrecognized or underappreciated. 

That moment felt like a reckoning for me. I had a purpose. 

We went on to host five BW(O)B, including two virtual fests during the pandemic, and eventually started Queer Beer in 2021, which celebrates all the colorful, empowering voices of the Queer community in beer. 

To this day, any time we post about Queer Beer, BW(O)B, feature articles on underrepresented communities in craft beer, or write any stories that challenge the “norms” of our industry, we inevitably get a slew of responses telling me to stop being woke, that they don’t care about gender in beer or who makes their beer because it’s “just beer,” or to go choke on something (seriously, that happened last month). 

But I always just think of that moment standing on top of those shipping containers in the rain, finding beauty amid a storm. 

If all those people could endure a little bad weather, I certainly can, too. 

7) What are some future plans for Hop Culture?

Truly embrace that we’re now a worldwide publication. We’ve covered American craft beer for over seven years now. There are so many beer cultures out there with incredible traditions. And guess what? Beer didn’t start in Anglocentric cultures. I want to make sure that we highlight stories about beer cultures in other countries, from Africa to Brazil to England, Germany, Belgium, Japan, and everywhere in between. 

8) What’s a good reason to check out Hop Culture for those who have never read/seen/visited the site before?

Do you want to know all the best breweries to visit in Los Angeles? Manchester, England? Tokyo, Japan?

Do you want to learn more about a style like schwarzbier? Italian pilsner? Cold IPA? 

Do you know about the cult-followings of Underberg? Guinness? Hamm’s? 

Do you want to find out what it takes to be a two-time CAMRA Pub of the Year? What it’s like brewing at the bottom of the world? How to start an all-women Brazilian-Japanese brewery in São Paulo?

I’d say, if you’re thirsty and curious, Hop Culture is a magazine for you. 

9) Favorite crushable lawnmower? (Hamm’s, High Life, etc)

Although I grew up in Minnesota and really want to shout out Hamm’s (which isn’t even made there anymore), I don’t drink the beer “born in the land of sky blue waters” very often. 

If I’m getting down and dirty, it’s with the glitziest Champagne of Beers—Miller High Life, baby. There's just something about that clear bottle letting in all the good beer-killing sunlight that really gets me, especially when served in stubby 7-oz bottles.  


10) When you’re not writing, what do you like to do on your time off?

I’m either reading a mystery book (or one of Kenny Gould’s new fantasy books…), watching a British detective show (Prime Suspect, Broadchurch, the Tunnel, Poirot, Unforgotten, Endeavour, and Vera are my favorites), or trashy reality show, cuddling with my two dogs, running around my neighborhood, getting a scone at a bakery, cheering for the Minnesota Vikings or Tottenham Hotspurs (sometimes at 4amPT because timezones are crazy), adventuring out and finding a new beer at a new brewery I’ve never been to before, or planning my next trip.