Good Humans

Origin Story

Good Humans was originally brewed on 11/10/2009 as a single batch in Elk Rapids. This first batch was bottled and sold exclusively out of the pub. The name, Good Humans, derived from lyrics in a Seth Bernard song stating, "we're humans and we're the best thing ever," and from all of the "good," influential people that Joe had encountered that year; who inspired him to continue pushing forward, taking Short's to great new heights and accomplishments in 2009. The original label art was drawn by Seth Bernard on a napkin at the pub. Joe later scanned the image into the computer and worked with Seth and Brad Kik to finalize the finished piece. The concept of brewing a double brown ale was initially pitched by our CFO, Scott Newman-Bale, after seeing the continued success of our Bellaire Brown and figuring a double would do just as well. Approached by Briess Malt & Ingredients Co., with a brand new malt variety called Carabrown, it was finally decided to brew this double brown for Scott, after much persistence on his end, and the new variety being ideal for a big brown ale. Short's was to be one of only two companies to get a chance to brew exclusively with Carabrown malt, before it became available for commercial sale. According to our sources at Briess, Short's was technically the first brewery ever to use Carabrown, the second was Dry Dock Brewing out of Aurora, Colorado. Samples of the two beers created were used to showcase this new malt variety to other breweries. Officially a Dry Hopped Double Brown Ale, Good Humans is unique, in part, due to the ample dry hopping that takes place post fermentation, giving the beer a floral, fragrant hoppy aroma, uncommon to most big sweet malty beers. Although the Good Humans initial release was relatively small, we saw such success through pub sales and limited keg distribution, that we decided to add it to our newly developed Seasonal bottle program, as the Winter selection in 2010. In it's first month as the Winter Seasonal, Good Humans sold over 1,100 cases, out-selling all other flagship bottle products, except Huma.