I strode up to the cement landing pad, gripping a flat plastic circle in my hand. I surveyed the landscape, spying my gray target in the distance. Brimming with confidence, I took a deep breath, stepped back, and charged. Swinging my body to the left and pivoting forward in a semicircle, I arced like a shot putter, releasing my disc into the air. Up and up, it sailed past brush, birds, and blue sky. An adrenaline rush filled my lungs as I watched my disc sail straight…into the branches of a tree.  

So, my first disc golf throw didn’t go exactly as planned. I bet your first homebrew batch didn’t turn out great, either! 

A sport that has technically been around since the 1960s, disc golf peaked during the global pandemic. According to UDisc, an app that tracks disc golf scores and stats, people reported playing 11.7 million rounds in 2020, three times the amount from 2019. In UDisc’s most recent 2024 Disc Golf Growth Report, the group reported an astounding 21.9 million rounds played, with more than 1 million rounds scored each month of last year, a first for the app. 

Undoubtedly, disc golf has turned into a brisk business. But perhaps more surprisingly, the sport has become a compulsive passion of brewers and craft beer drinkers across the country. Some breweries have even designed and built their own courses and hosted tournaments. 

Once you think about it, disc golf and craft beer aren’t all that different. 

Fervent communities drive these hobbies and industries, backed by desire, a little bit of sweat, and a sense of adventure. 

Well, that and flirting with a borderline obsession. 

On Lunch Breaks, During Collabs, For the Ching… Hooked on Phon-Discs?

“I’ve been into disc golf for longer than I’ve been into beer,” laughs Austin Beerworks Co-Founder Michael Graham, who first started playing in high school in the early 2000s. 

The low barriers to entry, especially compared to “real golf,” make the sport very accessible. 

“You can buy a disc for ten bucks, and that’s all you need,” explains Graham, noting you don’t need to pay membership or greens fees. “You can just go to a park and play around for hours and hours and days and days and years and years.” 

Although Mast Landing Co-Owner and VP of Strategy Park Olen has only played since 2017, he says he fell in love his first time out. Halfway through a round on a local free course, he threw a long shot, and it went in. “In that moment, I was immediately hooked,” he exclaims, playing once a week for a year in 2020. 

There’s something unquantifiable about the sport that gets its teeth into you, appealing to the often obsessive minds of those in the industry. 

Horus Aged Ales Founder Kyle Harrop has played disc golf since he was nineteen. While working in Scottsdale, Arizona, he remembers coming home to his apartment one night and “hearing a bunch of chinging,” he says, looking out the window and watching people throw discs into baskets with chains. 

When he returned home to Southern California, Harrop bought his first Latitude 64 disc and started to play on his forty-two-minute lunch break. 

A former collegiate pitcher at Gonzaga, Harrop quickly got hooked. “It felt natural,” he says. “I was good at it from the beginning.” 

Today, according to UDisc, Harrop has played 3,468 courses and logged 4,689 rounds. “I’ve probably played closer to 10,000 to 12,000 rounds in the last twenty years,” he admits, noting he didn’t get the app until during the pandemic, preferring to log everything in spreadsheets. 

If you go by UDisc, the now-professional disc golfer has played the most courses globally and the fourth most rounds in the app. His career spans forty-four different countries. 

Wherever Harrop goes, his discs follow. 

Off the Beaten Flight Path

For Harrop, who travels the world collabing on beers for his highly rated brewery, a disc golf course is never far away. “The greatest part about disc golf is that it’s taken me to places I necessarily wouldn’t have ever gone,” says Harrop. “There’s always a sense of adventure.” 

In the past year, he’s visited New Zealand, Iceland, the U.K., Finland, Norway, and Sweden, to name a few places. When his plane touches down, Harrop immediately checks UDisc to find a course nearby. 

“There’ll be this amazing course an hour and a half away in the middle of nowhere,” he says. “They’ve turned into some of my most memorable experiences.”

For those who drink beer, preparing for travel often involves looking up the best breweries in the area, starring those you want to visit. 

When he travels to beer festivals, Olen says, “Literally, the first thing I do is Google the best course around. More often than not, I’ll know someone who’s going that also plays disc golf, and we’ll plan to play.”

Like Bernie Dieseldorff, the general manager at Calusa Brewing, who played with Olen in Nashville and also when he was down in Florida for vacation.

Harrop has played with Casita Co-Founder Ryan Witter-Merithew, who he says is super into disc golf, and Forgotten Road Ales Co-Owner Ben Farrar. 

Just the other day, Olen told me Harrop called him up to ask if he wanted to come play in Nantucket. “I was like, dude, that’s five and a half hours and a ferry ride for me right now!” 

Graham points out that, much like you can find a taproom, brewpub, or brewery in almost every neighborhood across the U.S., you’ll probably also find disc golf courses. According to UDisc, more than 15,000 courses exist worldwide. Do a quick search in your neighborhood, like I did, and you’ll probably find at least a handful of courses around—many near breweries. 

After casually cavorting through my first nine holes at Moraga Commons Park, my partner and I hopped in the car and drove five minutes down the road to Canyon Club Brewery. Several post-playing pints later, we were still laughing about my first throw.

But some people don’t even wait until after their round to start drinking.

 

Don’t Drink and Drive

Like golf, disc golf is one of those rare sports where you can drink and play. You’re essentially walking between holes, so carrying a roadie with you makes a lot of sense. 

And since most of the courses are public or free, Olen says as long as you’re respectful and don’t litter, no one will bother you if you have a couple of cans in tow. 

Olen says whenever he’s out on a course, he always likes to look in the recycling bins. “It’s always good to see a Mast Landing beer,” he laughs, admitting there’s usually a lot of Twisted Teas and High Noons, too. 

During my round, on Hole 7, I spied a half-full can of Modelo sitting on a log. Shaking my head, I picked it up and dumped it in a trash can nearby, where a collection of Sierra Nevada Pale Ales, Miller Lites, and New Belgium Voodoo Rangers threatened to spill over the rim. 

Graham thinks disc golf is like a “bar game that requires lots of space.” He cautions that you have to find a healthy balance of drinking and playing. “We call it the bell curve of ability, where you seem to play better after one or two beers,” he laughs, “but then it drops off pretty steeply.” 

He recommends drinking something a little lighter like the Austin Beerworks German pilsner called Pearl Snap, “where a little slight buzz might make me loosen up and play a little better,” he says. Or a 5.9% ABV pale ale called Flavor Country “if I’m feeling something hoppy but don’t want the full ABV of a full IPA. … It’s just enough to get me through nine holes.” 

While Olen sticks to drinking a lager now and then while playing, he’s seen people on the course drink a double IPA. “How are you not hitting all the trees?!” he laughs. (Hey, you don’t need to drink to hit the trees!)

While a double IPA might not fit the bill, Highland Brewing VP of Facilities Brock Ashburn, who helped build and now maintains the brewery’s eighteen-hole course, says a 19.2-oz can of AVL IPA is perfect. “Depending on how much you drink, it can easily carry [you through] your first nine holes.” 

Ashburn, now fifty-six, has only been playing for nine months, but “I am thoroughly addicted,” he admits, saying it helps that “I get to walk out the front door and play every day.”  

A Brewery With Disc Golf… Of Course! 

When Austin Beerworks purchased sixty-four acres just on the city limits of Austin, Graham had an idea. 

“It was undeveloped land with a lot of neat topography and terrain—a cool creek through the middle and huge pecan and walnut trees—everything that would make a great disc golf course.” 

Tapping a great local designer named Mike Olse, Austin Beerworks turned the land from what Graham called a “jungle” into a top-tier course—Sprinkle Valley Disc Golf Course. 

“It was a lot of hand tools and chainsaws cutting paths through the woods,” recalls Graham. 

The eighteen-hole course, designed for beginners and intermediate players, features two nine-hole loops.

“You can play nine holes, then come sit in the air-conditioned taproom, have a cold water, Gatorade, or beer, then go back to do the next nine,” he explains. “Instead of having to slog eighteen holes in the sun.” 

Already, people have taken notice. In 2023, Austin Beerworks was honored to host the U.S. Women’s Disc Golf Championships, an annual PDGA Pro Major tournament with 346 FPO players. Graham says the course was very well received.  

But, of course, operating a disc golf course isn’t exactly a walk in the park. 

Today, Graham says the course upkeep to-do list never ends, whether it’s trimming limbs, cleaning up a tee box, or screwing a board down. “There’s a million different things,” he says. “It’s really just a long-term sixty-acre landscaping project with no end.” 

He adds, “But it’s a nice excuse to go for a walk every day.” 

In 2020, Highland Brewing realized they were one of the few breweries in the country with forty acres of terrain they could use to make an excellent disc golf course. 

Similar to Austin Beerworks, Highland Brewing had a bunch of untamed land. 

“It was a jungle,” says Ashburn, who led the buildout of the course designed by Disc Golf Design Group. “It took months of walking, hanging flags, and trying to cut a little path to the next spot.

But the work paid off. Today, UDisc rates Highland Brewing’s course in the country’s top ten best brewery courses. 

“Frankly, we should be higher,” exclaims Ashburn. “And we will be!” 

The brewery gets high marks for its gorgeous and sometimes challenging terrain. Ashburn speaks proudly of the two-person crew that spends at least twenty hours a week maintaining the property, bringing in wood chips from four different tree companies in the city, spreading them around to keep erosion down, and weeding and mulching the property. 

They get a little help from thirteen goats, who keep everything manicured, too.

Starting with only nine holes, Highland Brewing finished the back nine (what they call “The Dungeon” because it dips down into a valley you need to hike out of) after they saw how much people loved the course. 

Ashburn says the response was “off the chain.” 

Since they don’t charge a fee, Ashburn says it’s hard to tell exactly how many people have played the course; based on UDisc data, he estimates that around 35,000 to 40,000 players have used the course in the last year. 

“It’s a pretty big number,” he says. 

Likewise, Graham estimates Austin Beerworks’ course has seen roughly 20,000 to 25,000 rounds in a little less than a year.

That’s a lot of people throwing discs and throwing beers back. 

While Harrop technically built a course at Horus’ new Vista, CA, property, you won’t see any big UDisc numbers recorded. That’s because Harrop says the course is something of a secret—just a place where he, his children, and sometimes traveling friends can play.

For the public, Harrop hosts tournaments, planning his third for this October. 

He says the best part of his organized events is enticing people with an exclusive beer and seeing them leave as a new disc golf fan. 

“I had a sixty-five-year-old, who has been a club member of mine all seven years, come up to me the other day and go, ‘Hey Kyle, I play four days a week now, and I take my grandkids!” Harrop shares. “That is awesome. That is the whole point of merging these two worlds.” 

Likewise, Olen called Mast Landing’s first-ever sold-out tournament, the Frost Heave Open, a thank you to everyone in their local disc golf community for supporting and sharing similar loves. “Everyone is already like, when are you doing the next one?” he laughs. “We’ll definitely be doing it once a year.”

 

Disc Collecting, Beer Hunting

Collecting beers has become a serious hobby. 

Remember the line culture of the early 2000s, where you stood with others for hours just to get a taste of Pliny the Younger or buy a 4-pack of Other Half Broccoli? 

Similarly, disc golfers hunt for discs, often stamped by an exclusive artist or brand. 

After twenty years, Harrop says he has hundreds of discs. “I don’t know the number,” he admits. Perhaps one of his most coveted, the 2015 Innova “Sexton” Firebird, he bought for between $15 to $20 at a little shop at the Huntington Beach course back around 2015. Today, that disc sells for $5,000 to $6,000. “I have every year of those,” he says. 

You do the math. 

Similarly, Graham, who took a twelve-year break from playing before starting up again on the brewery’s course, says one of his first discs has racked up some value. “I thought it was just an old piece of junk,” he says. “But some guy told me it was worth $300, so I’m old enough now where I have collector’s items!” 

While discs are purely functional for Graham, he says for some, they have become cherished valuables.  

Olen likens the hobby to sports or Pokémon cards and video games, “Where I have more discs than I’ll ever need.” 

According to Olen, disc drops can often sell out immediately. 

“It’s a slippery slope,” says Graham, grinning. “Like craft beer sometimes. You start with one disc, and before you know it, you have a whole backpack full, and your whole car is dedicated to equipment.” 

In the past few years, Harrop and Olen have even made their own molds with unique designs. And they’ve become collector’s items in their own right. 

Mold Me, Beer Me

Mast Landing has done several collectible disc collabs. 

Olen says it’s like releasing a different IPA. 

“You can have the same mold of disc from the same company, but an artist will do a different stamp or artwork on top. It’s a slightly different version,” he says. “Similar to releasing an IPA, you can change it a little bit, release a different one, get cool artwork on the can, and people will collect that as well.” 

He often partners with Thought Space Athletics, a boutique disc golf lifestyle brand that makes coveted art-specific discs. 

Mast Landing’s first disc, called Space Whales, featured two humpback whales flying through space. Olen tells me they paired the release with a new beer. 

“People went nuts for it,” he says. “[They] literally lined up at our door to get the disc and didn’t buy the beer!” 

He pauses and adds, “They sold for up to $100 on the secondary market.” 

A great success, Mast Landing has gone on to release several discs and beers, including a collab with Harrop called The Science of Flight. 

When Harrop releases a disc, it’s here today, gone tomorrow. 

Like his beer, if you didn’t get it when it dropped, you’re SOL. “Once it’s gone, it’s gone,” he says. 

One of his favorites, from local artist Adam Jafry, depicts Harrop as a tiki character in a Dodgers hat riding a wave and holding a disc. Harrop has played off that design three different times with different colors. 

Austin Beerworks has a unique setup, partnering with Mint Discs, which rents space in its taproom. The on-site retail store means you can walk away with a disc right from the taproom. 

“It’s always fun to see somebody walk into their shop with a beer in hand, already feeling good and interested,” laughs Graham. “We’ve seen a lot of hobbies form that way!” 

 

Pro Disc Golfers Like Beer, Too

The crossover between craft beer and disc golf works both ways. It turns out that quite a few pro disc golfers enjoy drinking, too. 

In the past, Harrop partnered with Estonian pro disc golfer Albert Tamm, brewing a beer with seven different berries called Bazooka Berries. “His nickname is Bazooka,” explains Harrop, who has actually caddied for Tamm at the majors and hosts the pro at his house in California for a couple of weeks every year.

When he released the collab, Harrop included a special run of his Horus logo-branded discs. 

Mast Landing might have gotten the biggest coup, landing German-pro Simon Lizotte, who has millions of YouTube subscribers and considers himself a craft beer fan. 

Olen will never forget their first beer, merch, and disc collab. When he showed up two hours before the release, 200 people had already lined up. 

“It caused traffic jams in the parking lot,” jokes Olen. “[Lizotte] probably met over a thousand people, and it was our highest sales day ever.” 

For Olen, “It was one of those bucket-list moments,” he says. But it also encouraged him and put Mast Landing on the map as a brewery supporting disc golf. Amazed at the crossover between craft beer drinkers and disc golf players, Mast Landing has continued to support the two communities. (Olen says they even made a beer for Lizotte’s wedding.)

One-Man-Band to Brewery Baller

Disc golf in the industry has only gained momentum. 

While Graham used to be the only one playing at Austin Beerworks, he says now at least ten employees have joined the bandwagon. 

Similarly, at Mast Landing, Olen has gone from class clown to brewery baller. “A couple of the other owners and managers used to make fun of me because I talked about it so much,” says Olen, the only person playing then.

Now, he estimates thirty-five brewery employees play regularly. The brewery even has a ranking system where you get little cards with a number. You can challenge anyone, and you can take their number card if you beat them. 

At the time of our interview, Olen said that Mast Landing’s warehouse manager, Tyler Cook, held the top spot in the company. 

The obsession is alive and well. 

But as with beer, with disc golf, you can go as deep as you want or simply stay on the surface. 

Venture into Olen’s basement, and he cautions you’ll find 250 to 300 discs, but he knows people with entire rooms full of discs. 

“But you can have five discs in a trash bag and have just as much fun as me,” he says.  

For Olen, it always comes back to two words: community and camaraderie—good friends enjoying beers and throwing together. 

“[Disc golf] has unlimited depth,” says Graham. “It can take over your life if you let it.” 

But mostly, he just thinks that beer and disc golf are “a marriage made in heaven.” 

For me, since that first time out, I’ve gone to a local field near my house at least once a week to improve my throwing. Maybe this will help. 

As soon as Harrop and I got off the phone, he sent me an email. 

“PS I forgot to tell you. One of my favorite discs is a Latitude 64 ‘Grace.’ I think you’ll need to order one of those before you go play 😉”

Consider it done because I might be hooked.

This article was a guest post from our good friend Grace Weitz, Senior Content Editor of Hop Culture 

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