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JL: What have your most satisfying moments been in working with craft beer?

GG: The thing I love most about it is anywhere I travel, somebody’s making beer and I have this automatic connection with them. As a brewery, or even as a beer geek, I’m able to go into a brewery and meet people and they’re like, “Here, try my amazing beverage.” You drink it, and all of a sudden, you’re talking about other beers and breweries, and it turns to travel. It just becomes instant community that we have. The bar owners, for the most part, are mostly friends. For a long time, everybody was. The breweries get together and there was this real sense of community that for me, I never really got in cooking. As a chef, we just worked lots of hours. As a chef in L.A., on my days off, I lived in Santa Monica and I didn’t want to drive to Pasadena to go to a new restaurant. I’m off on Mondays. So what, I’m going to grab my wife and sit in traffic on the 10 from Santa Monica to Pasadena? Forget it. There wasn’t that sense of camaraderie you get in the beer world. Obviously, that will dilute more and more and more as it blows up. It’s easy to know 100 people. It’s hard to know 1000 people. That’s awesome.

I just get a ton of joy out of getting behind the bar and serving beer and having amazing conversations. Seal Beach, for example, we’re so fortunate to have all these aerospace companies around. At any given time, you’re standing at the bar and there will be guys – I remember walking in one day – this one dude was playing with a superconductor and two other guys were arguing about Higgs boson. And there’s a Lakers game on and nobody’s watching it. Everybody’s drinking beer and having amazing, intelligent conversations. That was one of the raddest days I’ve ever had, going in and going, I created this place where intelligent conversation can be had, where you can share over a beer, and that somehow transitions into beer talk and food talk, right back to some crazy thing they invented in their labs. It’s moments like that make me so happy.

JL: Is there an aspect of craft beer culture you’ve seen in another city or another country that you’d like to see more of in Southern California?

GG: I can’t wait until L.A. or Orange County area gets like San Diego, where instead of a beer bar driven culture, it’s a fully brewery driven culture. That’s what makes San Diego’s beer culture so great. And it’s going to happen, soon. Really, really soon, it’s going to be the breweries who dictate what is great about beer, and depend less upon, like, Beachwood Seal Beach, getting the word out. With that comes a level of sophistication where there becomes a lot of room, where now it’s just that you have craft beer. Everybody will have craft beer, and how you stand out as a craft beer place will be a combination of an interesting menu of beer and an interesting menu of food, as opposed to, “Look at us, we have beer, we have beer, we have beer,” which is what goes on now. The whole, “How do we do better beer than they do? Let’s just have more taps.” The more is merrier thing is silly to me. It’s about having great taps and caring for the beer and pouring right and representing it well. That matters substantially more than that you have 75 IPAs on tap at any time. It does nothing for me. I can’t drink 75 IPAs, so I don’t care that you have that many on.

JL: Clearly, you have no problem getting great beer. Is there a brewery you wished you could get that doesn’t currently have distribution, beer or brewery?

GG: Yeah. I would love it if I had a permanent flow of Moonlight beer. In California, for me, the way he approaches beer and the creativity of it, and his lack of wanting to use titles, it’s just so unpretentious. He makes this world-class beer, and he does these styles that in Southern California, are so often ignored, and he does them so well. Reality Czech Pilsner is just off the hook. Twist of Fate Bitter, I think that may be my most favorite beer. He does these really great styles. His IPA is so good, but it’s not that full forward West Coast IPA where it’s a giant aromatic bomb. There’s all this complexity and depth to it. The guy, [Brian Hunt], he’s a total Renaissance man. What goes in his mind, I’m totally envious of his ability to be creative, yet nail – it’s easy to be creative and yet not execute. I do it all the time. I have these really great ideas in my head, and in my head, I know exactly how to do it, but it doesn’t come together and I have to start over. He just has this uncanny ability. I know exactly goes on in his head, and yet somehow he finishes. He crosses the line and finishes.

JL: Are you sure he doesn’t have false starts?

GG: I’m sure he does too. I know he does, but his amazing executions are vastly better than my amazing executions. He has that foundation, that full understanding so wholly of his foundation that when you drink his beers, you get what it is and you really enjoy the embellishment. Sometimes, especially in the finer food that I do, sometimes my embellishments take over the base. Maybe that just comes from experience. I’ve known Brian now, 25 years into his career. Maybe when he was 15 years into his career, he wasn’t doing that. We would all benefit in Southern California from drinking Brian’s beers.