Basic Brewing Radio

Two chemistry professors, Bradley Sturgeon and Paul Charlesworth, join BBR veterans James Spencer, Andy Sparks, Steve Wilkes and Mark Smith to share the results of an experiment putting IBU prediction formulas through their paces.

Peter Bouckaert, brewmaster of New Belgium Brewery, addresses the National Homebrewers Conference in Denver and takes Charlie Papazian to task on beer styles.

Neva Parker, laboratory manager for White Labs yeast, explains her experiment putting three yeast strains through various temperatures and gravities.

Chris Colby from Brew Your Own magazine walks us through the process of designing experiments in brewing to get accurate, useful results.

We talk with members of Fayetteville Lovers of Pure Suds about their fancy fermenters and why they moved up from carboys.

Dan Carey, Brewmaster of New Glarus Brewing Company in New Glarus, Wisconsin, shares his tips on aging beer in oak chips and in oak barrels.

Gary Glass, Director of the American Homebrewers Association, joins us to talk about Big Brew, National Competition and National Conference.

We read listener reviews of brewing software, and Andy Sparks talks about the Boulder Strong Ale Festival.

Chris Colby from Brew Your Own Magazine takes us behind the scenes with the two personalities of one of our favorite styles: English and American IPAs.

Noted batch sparging advocate Denny Conn gives us his side of the batch/fly-sparging debate and answers listener questions and concerns about the process.

David Logsdon from Wyeast takes us through the life cycle of our favorite micoorganism and lets know how we can help our yeast thrive and make great beer.

Charlie Talley of Five Star Chemicals tells us best practices in using household bleach and Star San in sanitizing equipment.

Murl Landman of National Chemicals talks to us about sanitization in general and using Iodophor specifically.

Steven Pauwels of Boulevard Brewing Company in Kansas City, Missouri lets us in on home brewing tips as he talks about some adventurous brews he has planned.

Ken Smith of the Boston Beer Company tells us about how he came up with his winning Boysenberry Wheat, which has been included in the Samuael Adams Long Shot six pack.

Chris Colby of Brew Your Own magazine tells how we can turn seed into malt in our own kitchens.

We travel to Kansas City, Missouri (actually Olathe, Kansas) to attend the 24th annual homebrew competition of the Kansas City Biermeisters.

Adam Avery from Avery Brewing in Boulder, Colorado lets us in on some of the behind-the-scenes details of brewing "Collaboration not Litigation Ale" with Vinnie Cilurzo of Russion River Brewing.

Amelia Slayton from Seven Bridges Cooperative joins us to tell us about brewing with organic ingredients and why we should consider it.

David Myers from Redstone Meadery gives us a preview of the upcoming International Mead Festival in Denver. David also has some advice for our upcoming multi-batch mead experiment.

Researcher Dr. Jay Gottfried explains how the sense of smell works and how a study he's conducting may help us to improve our brews by being able to smell more accurately.

Connie Rieper-Estes and Leigh Nogy from Dark Hills Brewery talk with us about brewing gluten free beer at home and their dream of founding a commercial gluten free brewery.

John Palmer, author of How to Brew, walks us through the potentially intimidating topic of pH. John tells us how to measure pH and what to do with our measurements to improve our beers.

We get input from our listeners on "home brewing" vs. "craft brewing" and extract vs. all grain.

James, Andy Sparks and Steve Wilkes collaborate to taste home brewer Michael Tonsmeire's experiment comparing six different sugars in Belgian beers.