FROM THE EDITOR
C O N T R I B U TO R S
12
KANSAS CITY JULY 2022
Cydney Cherepak ILLUSTRATOR
This month’s issue features a decision tree illustrated by Cydney Cherepak, an illustrator and comic artist from Kansas City, currently living in St. Louis. She recently graduated with an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis.
Liz Cook WRITER
This month’s cover package includes two contributions by Liz Cook, a freelance writer with recent work in The Pitch, Eater, Midwesterner, and Defector. She is also the creator of the experimental food newsletter Haterade.
Olivia Augustine EDITORIAL INTERN
This month’s issue has two notable contributions from Olivia Augustine, a summer intern who is a rising senior at the University of Iowa. Olivia tackled the nation’s first police academy at a historically Black college and a profile of KCK muralist Vania Soto.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY VICENTE MARTÍ
L
ooking back, it took a surprising amount of convincing to get me to my first beer festival. Back in February 2008, my buddy Chris wanted me to spend the incomprehensible sum of fifty American dollars for a ticket to the Arizona Strong Beer Festival in Mesa. Fifty bucks! Do you know how much Blue Moon we could buy for that to drink while playing Wii Tennis? He eventually prevailed, and somewhere between sampling the Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA and waiting in line for a little pour of Deschutes Abyss, both whales of their day, I conceded that he was right about beer fests. Now, I’m still a big cheapskate—at the Parkville Microbrew Festival in April, I actually hung a hammock between two trees to sleep off my buzz in the afternoon sun rather than pay fifty bucks to Uber home where I’d just sleep it off on my couch—but I sure love beer festivals. It’s not just the chance to sample hundreds of wildly different beers, though there is that. (I’ve been to the Great American Beer Festival five times now—there are about 4,000 different beers being poured, and you have four precious hours to drink them.) No, I love beer festivals because of the community. It’s not just the friends you bring but the friends you make. There’s a special energy that comes from people circulating around little white tents, consuming a social lubricant that someone’s very proud of making while listening to a ska band. If you’ve never experienced this, go to the Parkville Microbrew Fest—no question, it’s one of the best days of the year in KC. Bring a hammock. That’s the spirit I brought to this month’s cover feature about the best new breweries in the KC area. I spent six weeks getting around to all the spots that have opened since our last survey of the scene, sampling the wares and talking to the people behind them. What impressed me most wasn’t just the beer, though I had some great beers from the folks listed and some who aren’t. My big takeaway was how this generation of brewers specifically wants to use beer to bring people together and build community. Nobody said it better than Nate Schotanus, who opened a little brewery called Range 23 at a horse ranch near his home in Piper, a tiny town in Wyandotte County even people there have never heard of. I’ll let him explain it on page 54. If you’re a beer person, hopefully, this list will point you to some great new spots. If you’re not, hopefully, it’s an interesting look at a handful of passionate small business people. And if you’re someone who will drink a beer but tends to prefer wine or cocktails, you need to get yourself down to our top pick, Pathlight in Shawnee, to sample some of their wild ales. These beers are made from non-commercial yeast strains and are on another echelon of complexity, offering a wide range of flavors. Here’s hoping you have Martin Cizmar EDITOR IN CHIEF the same kind of eye-opening experience I MARTIN@KANSASCITYMAG.COM did at my first fest all those blue moons ago.
