When Barry Chan and his partner started Lucky Envelope, they were concerned with appearing “too Chinese.” The craft beer world at the time wasn’t ready for that, they thought, and they wanted to fit in and not alienate craft beer’s core clientele. Today, with a GABF medal under their belt in the classic Munich-style helles category, they’re more conformable knowing they make classic styles in a compelling way, and they’ve pushed deeper into exploring ways to connect their Chinese-American heritage (and its culinary traditions) with the broader world of craft beer.
In this episode, Chan discusses the ways they’ve approached that, including:
Locking down base styles before embarking on experimentation
Building “smoked” beers using smoked tea as an ingredient
Finding effective ways to extract flavors from challenging ingredients
Searching for inspiration in unexpected places
Ingredients that don’t work in beer
Risking failure with ingredients like durian
Creating nuanced beers with habanero and shishito peppers
Pushing into European styles like Czech dark lager
Working to increase diversity in the craft beer world
And more.
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