Beervana Podcast

Today we go on another virtual tour, this time to the warm, brisket-scented city of Austin, Texas. Our tour guide for today’s travel is Ruvani De Silva, whom you may know by her social media handle, Amethyst Heels. Ruvani, an expat Londoner, has embraced her city with gusto and has perhaps the most comprehensive reviews of Austin’s breweries and beery places at her website CraftBeerAmethyst.com.

The broad category of IPAs is at the center of craft brewing, and as such it’s always changing. Over the past several months, we have been noticing a shift in the buzziest member of the IPA family, hazy IPAs. They seem to be getting a bit more bitter, a bit drier, and maybe even a bit less cloudy. Meanwhile, “regular” IPAs are getting fruitier and cloudier. IPAs appear to be on the move, and we discuss what's happening.

We welcome a true luminary to today's show. Garrett Oliver has been Brooklyn Brewery's brewmaster since 1994. He’s written books, judged beer, and been an ambassador for American craft brewing. His newest project, the Michael Jackson Foundation for Brewing & Distilling has a goal to fund technical education and advance the careers of BIPOC individuals in the brewing and distilling industries. In today's episode, we discuss his life and the new foundation. PHOTO: TOTALFOOD.COM

In any normal year, Munich’s Theresienwiese fairground would have been the site of much activity this week, as workers prepared for a party. Before the pandemic struck, the 187th annual Oktoberfest was scheduled to start this Saturday, Sept 19th. Alas, it has been canceled this year. Nevertheless, we’ll take the opportunity to discuss the fest, its history, and the beer it inspired. We may not be able to attend this year, but we can remind ourselves why it remains the granddaddy of beer fests.

Over the past two weeks we’ve been unpacking distribution with Craig Mullarky, a wholesaler in Bellingham, WA. We wanted to hear a distributor talk about distribution from his perspective. Yet this tier is a strange one, and we thought it was worth delving into the issue in a special Beeronomics episode. Today Patrick will give a more global view on markets and how they function, and how distribution is an odd duck in the world of consumer products.

In the American three-tier system, the distributor sits in the middle of the process, somewhat hidden, but absolutely central. Today we have Craig Mullarky of Sound Beverage Distributors in Bellingham, WA joining us. In part two of our conversation, he discusses some of the more unusual aspects of his business.

In the American three-tier system, the distributor or wholesaler is literally and figuratively in the middle of the process, somewhat hidden, but absolutely central. Today we have Craig Mullarky of Sound Beverage Distributors in Bellingham, WA joining us, and he will give us a full primer on distribution as well as describe some of its more esoteric aspects.

This week Jeff spoke with the directors of a number of brewers guilds across the country to discuss what was happening to breweries in their areas as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. We discussed effects on breweries as well as the guilds themselves. This is the complete conversation.

Even though we’re pinned down during the pandemic, we continue to indulge our sense of wanderlust with the second of our “virtual tours.” Today we're off to Chicago, where Chalonda White, aka Afro Beer Chick, gives us the lowdown on why the Windy City is now one of the country’s best.

The long, warm days of summer are upon us, which means it’s time to do one of our regular examinations of seasonal tipples. Today we’ll consider summer beers, with a special focus on an American classic—cream ale. We’ll explore some under-appreciated styles and talk about what we like in a summer beer.

Periodically, we have tried to visit beer-centric places and report what we’ve found. That is now out of the question, but our wanderlust is no less active. So today we start a series of virtual tours, tapping into the knowledge and experience of locals who will give us a guide to their home towns. We’ll start in one of America’s most famous beer cities, San Diego, and soon we’ll welcome the writer and native San Diegan Beth Demmon to give us the tour.

We have recently been shining a light on lagers—and pilsners especially—which is all right and appropriate. But it means we have not been focusing on our other love, those glorious Northwest hops that have changed the brewing industry so profoundly. So today we plan to indulge ourselves by talking all things hops, including nerdy stuff like science, and indulgent, sensual stuff like juicy IPAs.

On Show 113 we have a special guest: Kevin Davey, the head brewer at Portland’s Wayfinder Brewery. Wayfinder specializes in lagers, and attentive listeners will recall that it won our Great Oregon Pilsner Taste-Off. We have long wanted to talk to Kevin about Wayfinder, his background, and his approach to making beer, and this seemed like a great opportunity to track him down.

In Show 111 and 112 we try something new: The Great Pilsner Taste-Off, a battle royale of all the very best pilsners in the state of Oregon. Over the course of these shows we conduct blind tastings to identify what is surely, definitively the finest example brewed here in the Beaver State. On today’s show we’re broadcasting the final round, in which we reveal the big winner. That plus news and the mailbag.

In Show 111 and 112 we try something new: The Great Pilsner Taste-Off, a battle royale of all the very best pilsners in the state of Oregon. Over the course of these shows we conduct blind tastings to identify what is surely, definitively the finest example brewed here in the Beaver State. On today’s show we’re broadcasting the preliminary round, and next week we’ll bring you the finals.

On today’s show we head to Belgian Flanders today and dig into one of the most interesting categories of beer in the world: brown ales. It is a style both changing and, surprisingly, expanding, and is as much a story of tradition and culture as style. We'll listen to one of the grand old masters of the style, along with a group of young guys embracing the ancient practice.

We have a special show for you today as we sit down to visit with Breakside founder Scott Lawrence and his brewmaster Ben Edmunds to celebrate the brewery's 10th anniversary. Jeff talks with Scott and Ben about those ten years, how Breakside, born in a different era, has grown and changed, and what is in store for them as their big celebration has been interrupted by world events.

On today’s show we’re going to play a little catch-up and offer a round table of topics. Among the issues we’ll touch on are a bit of Coronavirus Beeronomics, “entertainment” and the dubious new Netflix sitcom Brews Brothers, higher ed, new brewery initiatives—and probably a few other things along the way.

On today’s show we’re going to attempt to distract ourselves from all this pandemic business by thinking about some nice, tasty beer—but, since the virus is dominating all our attention, we thought it was high time for a “desert island” show. That is, if you found yourself on a desert island—or, say, sheltering in place—what beers would you absolutely, positively have to have stocked in the fridge?

On pod 106, Patrick and Jeff assess the ramifications to the economy and beer industry of the coronavirus sweeping across the globe in late March. Patrick offers some high-fiber macroeconomics, and Jeff discusses how it's impacting breweries on the ground.