Beervana Podcast

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 badly-named—than brown ale, but today we’ll dig into its roots and see if we can’t discover why it was once a beloved tipple in both the US and UK. Brown ales forever! Photo: The Yorkshire squares of Samuel Smith

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 what drives worker shortages, and how salaries fit into the equation. Picture: Farmers Brewing

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 it is ubiquitous, yet it has gone through tremendous change since its early origins at the start of the 19th century. As a special treat, we also have the voice of the man who created the final, and current, version of the beer.

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. Blog post with the selections: https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2021/7/29/portlands-best-breweries-2021

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 black IPAs (though hazies and West Coasts were both in the mix). Of course, state bragging rights were on the line, but we also wanted to discuss the style and the nature of identifying “the best.” Today we continue the discussion and the judging.

In the latest article in the Sightglass Series, I’ve spoken to a number of women in the beer industry to highlight how their creative expressions have changed the way we make, market, write about, and of course, drink beer. It’s a process entirely of addition, and we are all the beneficiaries of their work.

Today we have a Beaver vs Evergreen State IPA showdown, tasted blind, for what will surely be the most coveted award in the beer world. Yes, in Show 144 we have the first annual Northwest IPA Smackdown! In this episode we feature the preliminary round, where we describe each of the sixteen beers and begin to flesh out what "good" looks like when you're dealing with modern IPAs on a bitter-to-juicy and hazy-to-clear continuum. Stick around to the end when we announce the finalists we'll judge in Show 145.

Every beer contains a whiff of history. Traditional Berliner weisse, which went extinct in the mid-aughts before enjoying a revival years later, contains more than a whiff. Yesterday, at Portland’s Zoiglhaus brewery, I sampled both the ghost and its reincarnation.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the Beervana Show has been on a five-week hiatus, and during that time, the old mailbag has fattened up. On today’s show, we’re going to turn to you and answer questions, respond to your commentary and opinion, and offer a much-delayed update on our mascot, Maris Otter, and the t-shirts she will soon be adorning.

As my perambulations take me around the beautiful sort-of post-Covid City of Roses, I have been finding a number of great beers to try. Today we have a look at stouts at Assembly, hoppy wild ales at Little Beast, and cask summer ales at Upright.