Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

Dr. Ron Beatson is the retired hop breeder who built a storied career at Plant & Food Research developing some of the most popular New Zealand hop varieties today, and Dr. Tom Shellhammer is the Oregon State University professor whose research into hop oils, hop terroir, hop-growing techniques, and more have made an indelible impact on the Pacific Northwest hop industry. Shellhammer is current...

Homogeneity is the name of the game in certain circles of brewing—whether it’s massive brewers who standardize their hop lots by blending before pelletizing, or it’s hop companies that blend lots to iron out highs and lows in a particular crop year. On the other end of that spectrum is Pete Gillespie and his team at Garage Project and Hāpi Research , disrupting the collective quest for like-minded...

Earlier this week, our Industry All-Access subscribers received in their email inbox this week’s subscriber-exclusive article that Kate reported, parsing the latest industry economic data but reading beyond the surface for a deeper look at what’s really going on. We’ve all read the hyperbolic clickbait articles out there about craft beer’s demise, and for the first time in almost twenty years, we...

From their tiny outpost in the ski town of Park City, Offset Bier has turned Utah’s challenges—such as a ban on serving draft beer higher than 5 percent ABV—into opportunities. Last year was a breakout one for the budding brewery—we named their session IPA Dopo one of our Best 20 Beers in 2024 , while another session IPA, Divi, won gold medal at Great American Beer Festival. Necessity is truly the...

Strong brewing communities produce clusters of great breweries, and the Colorado brewing world, centered in Denver, is no different. Friendly competition drives innovation, exploration, and refinement as well as knowledgeable consumers with higher and higher expectations, and in this episode, we brought together three friends (each medal-winning brewers) for a conversation on their approach to Wes...

In our latest issue, Louisville’s Atrium Brewing scored a category-leading 98 for their barrel-aged stout Denny-Lou, Blend 1, and that was as good a reason as any to check in with cofounder Mark Rubenstein and head brewer Spencer Guy for some background on brewing stouts. Their proximity to some of the best distillers in the Western hemisphere informs their approach to both aging and blending, and...

For this 400th episode of the podcast, Neil Fisher of Weldwerks takes over the host chair and puts Jamie Bogner in the hot seat for a ranging conversation about business, passion, creativity, discipline, openness, and why the current prevailing narrative about the “end of craft beer” in no way describes the reality for many brewers today. It’s a departure from the normal technical conversations th...

“If you’re a brewer and you’re not making things that you really want to make, or things you want to experiment with and learn more about, then what are you brewing for,” asks James Herrholz, Chief Creative Officer for Corporate Ladder Brewing in Palmetto, Florida. While some may feel “forced” to brew crowd-pleasing adjunct-laden stouts, Herrholz signed on for the challenge, and approaches the sty...

Over the past few years, Denver's River North Brewery has collected accolades from top beer competitions around the world—four GABF medals, four World Beer Cup medals, four European Beer Star medals just to name a few—and beers like Father Time and Anniversary 11 have earned top scores from our blind panel. They most recently earned midsize brewery of the year honors at the inaugural Colorado Brew...

“If you like beer," says Greg Casey, "There’s no better time in the history of mankind to be living in the United States, right now.” And if anyone is qualified to make such a statement, it's Casey. After decades leading yeast and quality programs for some of the biggest brewers in the Western hemisphere, Casey retired to work on his passion project—telling the story of American brewing from the 1...

At its height, Pompano Beach’s Odd Breed in Pompano Beach was one of the best-regarded breweries in Florida, winning four GABF medals over a span of three years, and shipping mixed-culture beers to fans around the world. However, real-estate market forces ultimately worked against the niche brewery, and founder and brewer Matt Manthe closed up shop in the summer of 2024. That’s no reason not to ta...

Mark it down: Baltic Porter Day this year is January 18, always the third Saturday of this month. This year’s will be the 10th edition of a commemoration that began in 2016 in Poland, where rich, hefty, cool-fermented porters reign supreme. Marcin Chmielarz has worn many hats in the industry—bar manager, brewer, video blogger—but one of his most notable achievements is helping to draw Poland’s att...

The city of Grodzisk Wielkopolski was once a major center of brewing in 19th century Poland, but political unrest, world wars, communism, and then misguided capitalism all played parts in closing the previous chapter of the city’s brewing history in the early 90’s. But the rise of craft beer also led to a resurgence in interest for obscure styles like the smoked wheat beer that made the city famou...

This final episode of 2024 is our chance to look back at the conversations that resonated most with you, the listeners. Here, we count down the ten most-dowloaded episodes of the past year, with excerpts from each. The countdown includes: Thomas Vandelanotte of Timmermans , Waterloo , and Bourgogne des Flandres on the science of lambic Matt Cole of Fat Heads on American-style IPA Robert Fulwiler o...

It’s easy for New World brewers to lump Czech beer into the “historical” category, but—while many prominent brewers there focus intently on the lagers we all love—a growing contingent are also tackling evolving styles such as hazy IPA, fruited sour, pastry stout, and more—and they’re often doing it in their own ways. In Louny, a historic town about 40 miles northwest of Prague, Pivovar Zichovec is...

Kevin Ely spent many years running the brewhouse at Uinta’s production brewery in Salt Lake City, but family brought him to a farm in rural eastern Ohio. Built next to the farm where his wife grew up, Wooly Pig Farm Brewery is the result of applying big-brewery-systems thinking to the smallest, most self-sufficient farm scale. From embracing the imperfect but interesting well water on the farm to...

Dogfish Head has a reputation for pushing the envelope with culinary ingredients in their beer, and that penchant for experimentation was incorporated into the program at this year’s Brewer’s Retreat through this panel discussion on spices (and brewing with them), moderated by Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione and featuring Ethan Frisch of single-origin spice purveyor Burlap & Barrel along wi...

Barrel-aging is nothing new for Firestone Walker’s Matt Brynildson. He got his first exposure to the process while working for barrel-aging pioneer Goose Island in Chicago, and for the better part of two decades has been exploring the impact of wood, aging, and blending in the development of beer flavor at Firestone Walker. A post-pandemic initiative at the Paso Robles brewery, the Brewmaster’s Co...

The Best in Beer theme continues this week, as contributing editor Kate Bernot and hops insider Stan Hieronymus sit down with executive editor Joe Stange and cofounder and editorial director Jamie Bogner. Together, they discuss their personal favorites from the past year in beer, round-robin style, recorded live at Craft Beer & Brewing office in Fort Collins, Colorado. They each discuss their...

Our annual issue on the very Best in Beer today hits subscribers alongside this special, once-per-year episode of the Craft Beer & Brewing podcast. Hosts Jamie Bogner and Joe Stange reveal results from our annual Readers’ Choice survey—including your favorite breweries, beers, bars, and destination cities—as well as our Best 20 Beers in 2024, decided through a year of blind judging, and finall...

At the recent Brewer’s Retreat at Dogfish Head in Milton, Delaware, Steve Parker of Fidens (Albany, New York), Scott Janish of Sapwood Cellars (Columbia, Maryland), and Kelsey McNair of North Park (San Diego) answer questions about brewing hazy or New England–style IPA. In this episode, they discuss: points of difference in West and East Coast hazy iterations balancing high finishing gravities wit...

In this special episode recorded at the recent Craft Beer & Brewing Brewer’s Retreat at Dogfish Head in Milton, Delaware, Khris Johnson of Green Bench (St. Petersburg, Florida), Doug Reiser of Burial (Asheville, North Carolina), and Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River (Windsor, California) share their answers to attendees’ questions about brewing IPA—focusing on the American and West Coast styles....

As a trained food scientist with 20 years of experience in the field, Eric Tennant entered the brewing world with a bit more background than most. And that background has served him well, as he considers both ingredients and processes required to achieve the beer flavors he envisions. Over the past few years, he’s focused Benchtop around foeder-aged lagers, but the constraints of the small brewery...

This second of two episodes recorded live at 3 Sons Lumberjack Day in September includes two separate interviews. First up is Alex Lawes, cofounder of Dublin, Ireland’s Whiplash —a modern brewery known for progressive styles, but also one that focuses on making those styles in low-ABV form for repeat drinkability. Next up is Grzegorz Ziemian, cofounder of Stu Mostów , a decade-old brewery in Wrocł...

In Oakland Park, Florida, Brewlihan meadery sits in rarified air atop Untappd's list of top breweries in the world. Their rabid fan base has propelled them to No. 5—as of this recording—a ranking that founder John Hoolihan doesn't take for granted, as he continually applies science and chemistry to balance flavor, acidity, gravity, and tannin. In this episode, recorded live during the 3 Sons Lumbe...