Expert interviews, brewing insights, and industry trends.
Over the span of two decades at Sierra Nevada in R&D and quality, Tom Nielsen helped usher in big changes in the way craft brewers work with ingredient growers and suppliers. In this episode, he shares his finely honed approach to evaluating and sourcing raw materials.
The seven-barrel brewhouse at Fritz Family in Niwot, Colorado, may be be small by typical lager-brewing standards. But founder Cory Buenning takes an exacting approach to the lagers he brews for the cuckoo clock–lined taproom, focusing on malt that produces mid-sized proteins that build body.
For Helper Beer, 2025 was a great year, with a gold medal for German-style pils at GABF and a Craft Beer & Brewing Best in Beer editors’ pick trophy for Regis helles. But the methods they use for these classical styles—such as cool pooling with heavy whirlpool hop loads—are anything but stuck in the past.
The former CMO and CFO of Revolution and social media commentator looks into the future to share meaningful movements and trends that he expects to gain steam in the coming year.
This Dutch brewer—in a small Belgian enclave surrounded the Netherlands—gives elegant French names to his English barleywines and IPAs after aging them in Italian wine barrels. The results are far from any stereotypes you might have about Belgian beer.
Historical preservation is a funny thing—to save the past, often we need to connect it to the present and find new ways to make it relevant or interesting to modern audiences. That’s the core approach for Oud Beersel, where localized and familiar ingredients bring new drinkers into the world of lambic, oude gueuze, and oude kriek.
An end-of-the-year look at the most-downloaded episodes, with highlights, insights, and soundbites.
The longtime quality director of Duvel Moortgat has scaled way, way down with a community-focused brewery just outside Leuven, but his creative approach to Belgian beer pulls flavors and inspiration from Scandinavia, the Pacific Northwest, and beyond.
Whether or not fruit-smoothie sours are your thing, there’s no denying that Indiana’s 450 North has carved out a reputation for making great ones that tend to be highly sought by beer traders. Sales director (and recipe writer) Stephen Boardman shares their approach to these playful crowd-pleasers that appeal to a nostalgic sense of whimsy.
A federal ban on hemp-derived THC products will take effect in months unless this young, $30 billion industry can find a way forward. Christopher Lackner, meanwhile, is making the case for common-sense rules that build trust in a product that—if properly regulated and produced—is “no big deal.”
Khristopher Johnson of Green Bench, Bob Kunz of Highland Park, and Evan Price of Green Cheek share thoughts on building texture and body, controlling sulfur character, and maximizing hops in West Coast pils.
Andrew Foss of Human Robot, Matt Manthe of Dillon Dam, and Moh Saade of Fermentis discuss pathways to characterful lagers, both classic and modern, through workhorse 34/70 yeast and other strains.
In our annual Best in Beer 2025 critics’ roundtable episode, our editorial team goes beyond the unabashed popularity contest and thorough blind-judging process to share their own personal favorites of the year, connecting the dots to suss out the contours of craft beer’s today and possible tomorrows.
In this once-a-year episode, Jamie Bogner and Joe Stange share Craft Beer & Brewing’s Best 20 Beers in 2025, as selected by our judges and editorial team—plus, the results of our Readers’ Choice survey for best breweries, beer cities, bars, and more.
Table beer and mixed-culture beer only account for 2 percent of sales at the Establishment in Calgary, Alberta—but cofounder Mike Foniok says its takes up about half their floor space and half their time. That attention is paying off with awards at the highest level.
Recorded live at the Alberta Craft Brewing Convention in Red Deer, this panel discussion centers on the ways that creative brewers in the province use locally grown and malted grain to craft unique beers that tell relevant stories for their customers.
Founder Matt Storm and head brewer Stefano Annicchiarico share their approach to drinkable and (mostly) dry hazy IPA and hoppy pils, using an array of New Zealand hops and a healthy dose of the experimental U.S. variety they sponsored and named five years ago—Anchovy.
There’s a deceptive simplicity to cask ale, but for this Seattle brewer, the keys are great ingredients, close attention to the highly manual process, and conditioning for longevity in cask or can.
You can make medal-winning helles and modern West Coast hoppy beers many different ways, but for the head brewer of this suburban Seattle brewpub, there’s no rushing the mash and no substitute for time in fermentation and conditioning.
Years of iteration combined with several stints interning at a Franconian brewery helped hone Howe’s approach to flavorful, fulsome lager—and the counterintuitive methods rooted in an older style of German brewing contribute to a character that’s difficult to achieve any other way.
Can barley farming practices help mitigate the increased risk from climate chaos? And how can breweries articulate the value of regenerative practices in their beer? In this conversation with New Belgium and Bell's environmental program director Walker Modic, farmer and brewery owner Derek Heersink, and Proximity Malt commercial director Zach Gaines, we ponder the answers to those questions and more.
In this special episode, recorded out in the experimental hop fields of Perrault Farms, Russian River’s Vinnie Cilurzo and hop breeder and grower Jason Perrault tell the story of Simcoe—from the early days of breeding through its near disappearance to the current context, where it’s used in Pliny the Elder in modern flowable formats.
The eight World Beer Cup and GABF medals earned over their first four years of existence isn’t the first thing people mention when talking about Craft Coast—it’s the tacos. But whether they’re making Mexican-style lager, dark lager, XPA, West Coast IPA, or even hazy IPA, they won’t stop iterating and improving as they blend brewpub flexibility with production brewery rigor.
The head brewer of this Brooklyn craft beer innovator brings an iconoclastic approach to hoppy beer honed through years of brewing in Southern California.