After maintaining a beer blogs directory on my blog for the past few years I’ve decided to begin a series of blog posts that features beer blogs, Facebook groups, homebrewing clubs etc. that offer brewers (home and professional) and craft beer drinkers a platform to learn a lot about beer. Being that I’ve recently started to take my first steps into the brewing and fermenting of funky and sour beers I’ve chosen the Milk The Funk Facebook group as the first notable homebrewing resource of this new series.
As a new member of this popular group, I didn’t have much of a grasp of the its history and dynamic. Therefore, I chose to contact two of its administrators via e-mail and have them answer a list of questions about both the group and themselves. After reading their answers I decided to post them in interview format in order to keep things simple yet informative.
The Brewed Palate: When did you start the Milk The Funk Facebook group and what inspired you to do so?
Ryan Steagall: The Milk the Funk Facebook group was created on March 6, 2013. Before creating it, one of the first things I did was make sure Brandon Jones with Embrace The Funk didn’t think I was stepping on toes since I wasn’t privy to what he may or may not have planned for ETF and the names shared “the funk” similarity. To start, I was highly interested in wild, funky, and sour fermentation but there weren’t enough people locally to share knowledge with openly. I knew that there were brewers from Atlanta to Louisville that were interested and wanted a way to better connect with them. So, just as quickly as the group was created I added people and brewing friends to the group like: Devin Bell, Matt Warise, and Brandon Jones. It took off from there.
1243695_794892340521111_6174332696832656414_oTBP: How has the group evolved over time and what do you think has made it so successful (e.g. as a source of great information and conversation about funky and sour beers)?
RS: First off, we’ve grown faster than I thought, possibly faster than I would have liked, and continuing to snowball. I’m glad to say that sticking to the basics of what we’re about is what keeps us on track and moving forward. While we don’t have a mission statement, our tagline on our wiki kind of says it all: “Milk the Funk started off as a simple idea to get home brewers interested in more advanced and “funky” topics talking. Since its inception, Milk the Funk has become a communal authority on alternative yeast and bacteria fermentation with an emphasis in alternative brewing techniques.” That is what we’re about and the drive of knowledge is what is pushing us to create other avenues of communication such as our forum and most recently our wiki. I think this will become a great tool far into the future if it develops with our basics in mind.
Devin Bell: The group started very small, mostly people in Tennessee and southern Kentucky. The small number of people that started with the group are very passionate about sour and funky beers. This is something I think has driven our success. I think our members have added new people that share their obsession and that keeps the posts quality high. That’s another thing driving our success. We strive to keep the posts at a pretty high level. There are thousands of resources for basic and beginning brewing, but virtually none for sour and funky beers. I didn’t want this to become a group where half the posts consist of, “Is this beer infected?” like so many other groups.