Veteran Writers Revive All About Beer Magazine

When a company shuts down, former owners occasionally kindle the dim flame of hope among their fans: you never know; if the right circumstances arise, maybe we can reopen! When I wrote the obituary for All About Beer Magazine three and a half years ago, no one was kindling anything. A 39-year institution was gone, and owner Christopher Rice was facing bitter recrimination for his financial mismanagement. The end seemed especially final when, two years later, the website and all its extensive archives vanished. All About Beer didn’t succumb to the pressures other print magazines did—but those were very real, too. No one ever expected to see it return.

And yet, improbably, I’m happy to announce that this morning, All About Beer is back at its old url and in the hands of a couple of capable writers, Andy Crouch and John Holl. Andy will be taking the publisher role, while John will slide back into the Editor’s chair, a position he held from 2013-2017. “I have loved this magazine since I was young,” Andy said when the three of us spoke this week. “We are excited to be bringing it back and we hope we can be good stewards of the brand. John agreed, and said editing AAB “was one of the best jobs I’ve ever had.” Go have a look and marvel: it’s really back.

From Print to Digital

In late 2019, Crouch and Holl launched Beer Edge, a business-focused newsletter, adding podcasts and, earlier this year, a partnership with ProBrewer. Before that, both had had a long relationship with All About Beer, and they wondered whether it could be saved somehow. They knew pre-Rice AAB owners Julie Anne Johnson and Daniel Bradford, who inherited what was left of the property following its 2018 collapse. John and Andy first inquired about buying the magazine and its archive in January, and by March had agreed to take it over.

For the four decades of its first incarnation, All About Beer came to readers in the mailbox, packaged between glossy, colorful covers. As it returns today and going forward, it will live as a digital site. To start with, the legacy and archive are tremendous. Jeff Quinn, the former art director, had much of the archives on an old hard drive, and Bradford maintained the web archive for two years. In reconstructing the old content, John and Andy spoke to other editors and writers associated with the magazine, and many had fragments squirreled away. “As best as I can tell, the archive goes back to 2002,” Andy said. “We have all that material—old Michael Jackson articles, Fred Eckhardt.” They have been busy restoring those archives, fixing links, and gussying up the place. “It’s like a house you’ve abandoned for five years,” he said, laughing.

The archive is a great asset, but the plan moving forward is publishing a full digital magazine. “We live for getting new content,” John said. “There were well established departments and features at All About Beer. I'm looking forward to having those filled in with new content. This is going to be a place where people can come see what’s happening.”

Crouch and Holl have only owned the magazine for a month, and they have much left to do. They’re still planning for how to structure the finances and get writers paid. That’s a big priority of John’s—and also finding those new voices who have emerged since the last time he edited AAB. “I love telling compelling stories,” he said, “and I want to work with writers to bring these articles to readers.” In the meantime, they’ve prepared some new material for the launch. The Craft Brewers Conference begins next week, and they wanted it live by then.

Thriving in the Modern Media Environment

In the few short years since All About Beer sent out its final issue, the media landscape has changed tremendously. Crouch and Holl recognize that the conversation has moved online. “We need to modernize,” Andy said. “A lot of the publications went extinct because they failed to adapt.” As we spoke, Andy name-checked Good Beer Hunting and Pellicle as examples of the outlets now hosting serious journalism. The two, who already host podcasts for Beer Edge, plan to launch a podcast element as well.

Still, this is going to be an uphill pull. Social media has almost wholly supplanted the old media ecosystem of brewspapers, national magazines, local newspaper columns, and long-form blogs. Despite that, they see a gap in the coverage. “A lot of people care about beer,” Andy said. “They need someplace besides social to go.” John echoed the sentiment. “Social media has changed the game since I last sat in the Editor’s chair, but we’re going to give people a reason to come to the site. I understand that breweries want to tell their own stories on on social media, but a lot of people still want stories from verified sources.”

It doesn’t hurt that they’ve also gotten the logins and rights to social media accounts. The magazine’s Twitter presence is massive, with 80,000 followers, and the Facebook page is almost twice as large as that. Even the Instagram account has 27,000. (They have a feeling of that abandoned house, too, with posts dating back to 2018.)

As someone who wrote for the magazine for years, I feel a sense of ownership over the publication—but also some anxiety. For four decades, through the amber ale/brewpub era and the IBU wars all the way to hazy IPAs, All About Beer covered—well, everything about beer. I want to see it in its full glory. I am cautiously optimistic. Andy and John are talented and experienced—and they have a long relationship to the magazine.

“When All About went defunct, we felt it personally,” Andy said. “We hope we can do well by its reputation and restore it.”

Best of luck, fellas—