Beervana Podcast

Many American breweries make sixty beers a year. Rochefort hasn’t offered a single new release in sixty years. Because monks don’t do anything without considering the long view, the abbey also built a new brewery to handle the increased production.

The usual history of American hoppy ales takes us back to Northern California and the founding breweries there, who reinvented staid British ales by injecting them with expressive American hops. Sierra’s Celebration, a proto-IPA, seem to form a straight line through history to the present moment’s hoppy IPAs. But today we’re going to talk about a parallel development that happened further north, s...

What do Portland’s Level Brewing, Foreland, Upright, Steeplejack, and Away Days have in common? They form a growing list of breweries championing honest, proper cask ale. For decades breweries have tried to popularize this style, and Americans have spurned them. We’ll discuss what cask ales are and why Americans—and Portlanders—are finally starting to drink them. Beer Tasting: Good Word Brewing

Today we’re going to be doing a bit more retrospective podcasting. In October, Jeff went on a national book tour—that’s the reason we had to put our podcasting on hold. Well, Jeff saw and learned much on his travels, so today we’ll discuss what he discovered. Photo: Dan Cuzzocreo, the listener who inspired Show 149 on brown ales, came to the Chicago event

Since all has been quiet for months here at the Beervana Podcast, we’ve missed a lot of important happenings. As a part of getting caught up, we thought it would be good to review the key events of the past three months and discuss their implications. So buckle up and let’s go straight to the news!

Media in general has gone through a massive transition in the past decade with the rise of social media, the death of magazines, the arrival of podcasting, and, lately, a sort-of return to blogging in the form of email newsletters. But if you think blogs have no place in today’s media, you couldn’t be more wrong.

Prague’s U Fleků makes the iconic Czech dark lager, so much so they eschew terms like tmavý and cerne. Their’s is a “Flekovský ležák.” In my latest collaboration, this time with Zoiglhaus, we shoot for an homage. It’s a dead-on banger (no bias), but we didn’t dare name it Flekovský.

Back for a second year, and this time we plan to get it absolutely right.

I was pleased to see his eyebrows shoot up during his first sip, and I caught him murmur “this is good” as he placed the glass back on the bar.

The Wiener has landed! Just before Thanksgiving, pFriem debuted their version of a 19th-century Vienna lager like Anton Dreher would have made. It was a tremendous beer, and I’m delighted to say I was a collaborator. This is the story.

When we talk about great beer cities, the name Atlanta rarely comes up. After a visit to five excellent breweries in town—New Realm, Bold Monk, Monday Night, Halfway Crooks, and Elsewhere—I was convinced it should.

Larry Bell announced that he was selling his 36-year-old brewery, Michigan’s Bell’s, today. The language was weird and somewhat concealed the actual details. Yet unlike so many bloodless M&A announcements, the reason may have everything to do with the difficulty of this sale.

On today's show, we beam into Jeff’s book tour and take you to a live recording of a stop he made at Guinness’s Open Gate Brewery in Baltimore, MD. This was a planned stop on the tour, and Jeff, brewer Sean Brennan, and Guinness “ambassador” Ryan Wagner spoke in front of an audience when he was in Baltimore.

In a rather shocking development, the mailbag overfloweth! Long-time readers know that our begging for comments is a regular feature of the show, and we’ve been supported by a few reliable regular commenters. Since our last show, however, the emails have been flying. We have so many that we’ll devote the whole show to them today. You are a smart and observant bunch, and these are great questions.

The Beer Bible 2nd Edition will be available a week from today. Here’s the skinny on everything that’s new. It’s a lot!

Not long ago, listener Dan Cuzzocreo wrote us with this request: “I've really enjoyed the episodes you have done on a particular beer style. I'd love to hear more episodes in this vein, especially about important but less trendy styles, and in particular I was curious if you might consider doing one about brown ales.” Well Dan, you asked, and today we deliver. There is no style less trendy—nor bad...

Writers and brewers have identified most of the useful frameworks we use to understand beer. An important one, often hinted at but never fully explored, is national tradition. It’s never been more important to understand, though—especially now amid the birth of the American tradition.

If you speak to anyone in the service industry these days, the conversation eventually turns to the ongoing worker shortage. Increasingly, people don’t want to work as restaurant servers or dishwashers—or brewers or keg-washers. What’s going on? Today we have a special Beeronomics edition of the show, wherein Patrick will give us the scoop. He’ll provide an overview of the labor industry, explain...

Today we’re going to try something new. Over on his blog, Jeff has an ongoing series called “Making of a Classic,” which investigates why certain beers have become world standards over the decades. They contain a bit of history, a bit of ethnography, and often a bit of technology. We’re going to kick things off today with a beer you’re all familiar with: Guinness Draught. It seems as unchanging as...

Pliny was a bright light in the fog. Despite its hurricane of flavors, it was more focused, refined, and elegant than other IPAs of the day. With the benefit of time, we can see that it reset expectations about what was possible, pointing to the future we now inhabit.

Each year, people traveling to Portland reach out to Jeff for advice about which breweries to visit. Starting in 2018 he thought it would be easier just to write a post on his website with his recommendations. After several weeks of field research, he finally revealed the 2021 edition of the list on Beervana. Today we’ll discuss his recommendations and I’ll add my own comments and corrections. Blo...

Of all the interesting stuff that has appeared at this site over the past 15 years, nothing was more important than the forty-odd posts from brewers and one cidermaker that constitute the Coronavirus Diaries series that ran on the site from March 2020 to this May. They’re now available as a book.

On Monday, Molson Coors announced it was ceasing production of a bunch of minor brands it owned, including one that hurts Oregonians’ hearts: Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve. It was a beer that helped make the city Beervana, but also a remnant of a dying era.

Three months ago, we were all excited to be entering a time when life could go back to something approaching normal following 15 months of a pandemic. But now cases are spiking again, and it’s time to take drastic action to prevent a return to shutdowns and death.

No doubt all the listeners have tuned in today for the thrilling conclusion of the Beervana Show IPA Smackdown! You’ll recall that last week we assembled a range of Oregon and Washington IPAs and tasted them blind. At the end of that show, we identified six beers we’ll be sending to the finals—which we will conduct today! We selected regular-production IPAs, and only IPAs—no double or session or b...