Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

Few people have been as influential in adding to what we know about traditional brewing and changing how we think about fermentation and farmhouse brewing than Lars Marius Garshol. On his blog and in his books, the Norwegian author of Historical Brewing Techniques: The Lost Art of Farmhouse Brewing has embraced an obsession with learning more about traditional techniques and heirloom yeasts, and t...

American brewers have long been influenced by European brewing traditions, but what happens when European brewers take some of those American twists and apply them to their own beers? Poland’s Browar Pinta answers that question, as the 10-year-old brewery puts a Pacific Northwest hop spin on Baltic porter while embraces hazy New England-style IPAs and barrel-aged imperial stout. In this episode, m...

Whether they’re out there talking to brewers, publicans, distributors, scientists, hop growers, or other experts to learn whatever they can for our magazine articles, or whether they’re more focused on tasting and critiquing the latest creations and trends, our contributing writers and editors spend a disproportionate and extravagant amount of time simply thinking about beer. Every now and then, i...

It’s been another challenging year for hospitality, for get-togethers, for travel, and thus for beer—yet despite it all, our blind review panel, editors, and writers at Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine® have tasted through thousands of beers, meticulously cataloguing our opinions to arrive at what we believe are the very finest. That yearlong process culminates in the December-January issue, whic...

Launching any brewery is difficult, but launching one that only makes spontaneously fermented beer means total committment to a process that takes years from brew day to beer release. Still, Lisa and Brandon Boldt of Primitive Beer in Longmont, Colorado, inspired by Belgian lambic brewers and blenders, made the conscious choice to focus exclusively on spontaneously fermented beer. Why not add some...

With GABF gold and silver medals for their mixed-culture grisette, Standard Issue, plus gold for Norwegian-style raw ale Pushing Trees, the brewers at Central Standard have established themselves not only as risk-takers but also as disciplined practitioners on the more obscure fringes of the craft. Their accolades have not arrived by accident—they are a product of deep study, practice, repetition,...

When Lacie Bray and Andy Coates, the founders of Ozark Beer in Rogers and Bentonville, Arkansas, began planning their brewery, it wasn’t yet legal to sell beer in Benton County and you could count the number of breweries in the state on one hand. But cultural and business changes were underway in the home of retail giant Walmart, and over the past decade they’ve grown in concert with the populatio...

Beale Street Brewing founder Kelvin Kolheim has always been a flavor enthusiast. From coffee and tea to different culinary traditions, he’s spent his life sampling and filing away those memories of flavor. Today, with his small beer brand—soon to have a brewery home of its own—Kolheim pulls from that vast mental library as he designs beers to connect with a variety of people, from adventurous drin...

“People who visit the space, they understand and get that there’s this intimate quality to the beer,” says Aaron Kleidon, cofounder of Scratch Brewing in Ava, Illinois. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a desire to add weird things to a beer just for the sake of adding weird things.” In the context of American beer today, Scratch is decidedly weird. From their focus on various ingredients foraged from...

For Alma Mader , combining lager brewing with a broad approach to hazy IPA provides the best of both worlds—a dogmatic approach to technical brewing synergized with a ranging program to squeeze every last ounce of flavor from their hops. Founder and head brewer Nick Mader studied and worked with industry-leading breweries before heading back home to Kansas City, Missouri, to open the eponymously n...

Breweries making barrel-aged beer tend to lean heavily on romance. From name-checking the origins of their barrels to weaving stories of long, laborious boils and careful searches for the perfect ingredients, there’s no story today’s brewers can’t embellish. But for Shaun Berns and Phase Three Brewing in Lake Zurich, Illinois, it’s the quality of the end-product—and not the romanticized mysteries...

Jeremy Grinkey worked in wine for the better part of a decade before joining The Bruery in Orange County, California. That winemaking background still informs the way the director of brewing operations and the Bruery itself make beer. From their club-focused sales approach—with special access for their best customers—to the focus on blending and the use of wine grapes as an ingredient, the influen...

Julian Shrago is not afraid to ruffle feathers. The outspoken brewmaster for Beachwood Brewing (Long Beach, California) has cultivated an intense persona, but that passion and focus is evidenced in the beers they brew and the awards they’ve racked up over the past ten years, including 19 GABF medals and 9 World Beer Cup medals. In this episode, he discusses: Beachwood’s flavor-first creative proce...

Firestone Walker doesn’t rest on its laurels. Innovation and new product development are constants within the creative boundaries of flavor that define the brewery. Underpinning all of that is an expectation of quality—i.e., it’s Firestone Walker, so it has to be great. Sam Tierney, who heads up Firestone Walker’s Propagator brewery in Los Angeles, has carved out space in this high-performance org...

For Brandon Capps of New Image Brewing (Arvada, Colorado), the question of how to push more hop intensity in beer flavor and aroma, despite the inherently inefficient process of extracting those vital hop compounds in the weak alcohol solution of beer, pushed him down the rabbit hole of brewing with extracted terpenes. And the deeper he gets, the more excited he becomes about its prospect for redu...

For cofounders Michael Messenie and Tim Lee, the idea behind Dutchess Ales in Wassaic, New York, was to recreate the kinds of cask-conditioned ale they loved when living in Britain. If you’ve enjoyed a proper pint of cask ale in New York City in recent years, there’s a good chance it came from Dutchess. Today, the brewery is branching out, brewing beer for distribution at a host brewery on Long Is...

Sierra Nevada founder Ken Grossman has been working on “innovation” beers since the brewery’s first days in the early ’80s. Beers we all know and love, such as Celebration and Bigfoot, were once “innovation” beers. That culture of trying new things while brewing traditionally inspired beers that speak to audiences today is written into the very DNA of the company. It’s no surprise that they contin...

Kettle sours get a bad rap in some brewing circles, but Urban South’s Alex Flores would love to change your mind. Recalibrating and considering these beers as their own thing—rather than some faster approximation of other sour traditions—and you just might see the in a new light. They’ve definitely grown on the fans of Urban South, who’ve fallen hard for the tart beers. The brewery has nurtured a...

From their small outpost in McMinnville, in Oregon wine country, Heater Allen has flown the lager flag for its 14 years of their existence—long before it was “cool.” The father-daughter duo of Rick and Lisa Allen have embraced lager with dogged determination, convincing drinkers of its place in the craft canon, and doing so while growing slowly and organically. In this episode of the podcast, Lisa...

Hanabi Lager Company’s Nick Gislason has always been a builder, and that same DIY sensibility drives his lager-focused brewery project today. For the past decade, he’s been head winemaker for Screaming Eagle, a small estate winery that makes some of the most coveted wines in California. But before wine, he was a brewer, and Hanabi is his way to stay connected with this parallel passion. Crossover...

For Kevin Ashford, brewmaster of Figueroa Mountain Brewing in Buellton, California, every beer can always be improved. After winning two medals for their Danish Red Lager, Ashford and team made the difficult decisions to simplify the malt bill, dry it out a touch, and add a decoction step—significant moves for a beer that had a following and had wowed judges. But for Ashford, truly great beers are...

East Brother Beer in Richmond, California, makes its living by nailing classic styles, including an oatmeal stout in the core range. Naturally they also brew IPA—Gold or Red, take your pick—but their top two sellers are Bo Pils and Red Lager. Their seasonal lager series includes a maibock, Baltic porter, pre-Prohibition lager, and festbier—no wonder head brewer Paul Liszewski’s customized Californ...

Can we spend an entire hourlong episode talking about one beer? You bet we can. In this week’s episode, Alesmith Director of Brewing Operations Ryan Crisp takes us for a few hot laps around the track as we discuss their iconic Speedway Stout. From building a malt base to complement coffee additions, to validating and substituting ingredients and maximizing hop and coffee additions, Crisp walks us...

Five years ago, Chicago’s Maplewood Brewing brewed 1,000 barrels of beer per year and were small upstarts in a crowded Chicago beer market. This year, they’re on track to brew over 16,000 barrels of beer—a rapid growth trajectory made possible by their twin focus on quality and ingenuity. While they’ve embraced current styles like hazy IPA and all manor of flavor-addled imperial stouts, they’ve pl...

“I’m anti-consistency,” says head brewer Phil Pesheck. “If you’re pro-consistency, you’re anti-advancement. I want to continuously improve the beer, batch after batch.” Improve they have, and Seattle’s Burke-Gilman Brewing pulled off quite a feat in 2020 with a win at the Alpha King Challenge and a gold medal in the juicy/hazy IPA category at the Great American Beer Festival. It was a bold stateme...