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I\u2019m currently sitting in the car outside Black Back Pub in Waterbury, VT waiting for one of my favorite bars in the country to open its doors. I came out to visit Hill Farmstead for the quarterly pickup of their Collected Works membership club. It\u2019s my first time joining the club,\xa0which I mostly did as an excuse to force myself to visit more often. It\u2019s buried in about a foot or two of snow at the moment, but it\u2019s as special as ever. And now my bags are full for the trip home. I\u2019m also here for the weekend for a grafting workshop with Shacksbury Cider. A bunch of us are holing up in an old farmhouse and learning how to graft apple trees in an orchard outside of Middlebury. So I figured I better bring some bottles of Hill Farmstead\u2019s Dorothy to share.\xa0 As much as I admire these kinds of artisanal producers (they really speak to what I love about the ancient traditions of making these delicate, fermentation-driven beers and ciders), if you\u2019ve been listening for a while, you know that another part of my brain is just as turned on by the business and strategy of running a contemporary craft brewery.\xa0 This week\u2019s guest is Austin Beer Works, one of the best in that regard, and someone I\u2019ve been following closely for a while now. They have a strong brand, they\u2019re growing, they self-distribute, and they know their market. They\u2019re really the quintessential case study for how to make and sell contemporary craft beer in a somewhat underdeveloped market\u2014especially when you know that market won\u2019t stay that way for long. Very few do these days. So this is Austin Beerworks\u2014pretty much the whole crew, which represents a variety of skill sets and perspectives, but with a unified goal\u2014discussing the many facets of what constitutes their vision, strategy, and execution. Listen in.