The podcast for those who make and drink great beer.
What’s old is new again for Chicago’s Dovetail—direct-fire decoction, open fermentation, and coolshipping hoppy lager with whole-cone hops are just a few of the ways this classically focused brewery finds ways to build character in their lagers.
Chicago’s Cruz Blanca favors beers with a story to tell. In this episode, head brewer Jacob Sembrano tells the stories behind their their red corn lager, their thick and silky barrel-aged stouts, and their grisette made from 100 percent malted corn and acidified with native bacteria from the corn itself.
Indulge us: Once a year, some of our top writers dig into their notebooks and memories for the beers and experiences that they enjoyed most—the kind that everyone deserves to enjoy—and which left the biggest impressions on them. In this episode, they tell you why.
In this special once-per-year episode honoring the pinnacles of the craft, our editors reveal their Best 20 Beers in 2023 and the results of the annual Craft Beer in Brewing Readers’ Choice poll.
From its outpost an hour outside of downtown Chicago, Art History has quietly built momentum by focusing on a range of Czech- and German-inspired lagers as well as bitters, milds, and other English styles. In this episode, head brewer Greg Browne and cofounder Tom Rau share their approach to making traditional beers cool again.
Over the years, Metazoa has won more than a dozen GABF and World Beer Cup medals. The latest gold—for a double-decocted, Scottish-style ale made with ingredients on hand, minimal specialty malts, open fermentation, and yeast borrowed from their hazy IPA—is proof that there is more than one way to make a compelling and malt-forward ale.
Jason zumBrunnen of Ratio Beerworks and Jeremy Claeys of Protagonist discuss their respective 2023 GABF gold medal–winning saisons, from Protagonist’s classical take to Ratio’s carrot- and elderflower-infused rendition.
In this panel discussion from our recent Brewery Accelerator, Jake Gardner of Westbound & Down, Marni Wahlquist of Odell, and Sean Buchan of Cerebral discuss their approaches to contemporary IPA—hazy, clear, and everything in-between.
It’s two GABF gold medal winners in one episode, as Joel Stickrod and Spencer Longhurst of Nashville’s Barrique discuss the making of their Wet Hop Strata 2023, while 1840’s Kyle Vetter shares the process behind I Don’t Want To Wait.
In a former dairy creamery in northern Vermont, Wunderkammer creator (and former Hill Farmstead head brewer) Vasili Gletsos has developed a decidedly manual, hands-on process using locally foraged ingredients, a wood-fired copper kettle, and no glycol.