Monday Night Brewing has grown from their Atlanta roots into taprooms and breweries in major southern US centers—Birmingham, Alabama and Nashville, Tennessee are two, with Charlotte, North Carolina opening soon. The regional powerhouse has grown on the strength of quality beer, measured risk-taking, and a simultaneous embrace of both modern and classic styles. In this episode, brewmaster Peter Kiley shares his unvarnished and thoughtful approach to brewing, touching on: moving to high-gravity br...
May 13, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 303
Finding space for personality and authenticity in hazy IPA and tart fruit beer these days can pose a challenge for brewers, but for Jared Welch, Cofounder and Production Director for Nashville, Tennessee’s Southern Grist, (https://www.southerngristbrewing.com) that’s no reason to stop pushing. It’s why their popular quick-soured fruit beers are now acidified with a locally-caught Lactobacillus strain, and why they’ve tweaked and increased bitterness in their hazy IPAs while eschewing active ferm...
May 06, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 302
When brewers think of Czech hops, they naturally think of Saaz, whose delicate and ethereal character is nearly synonmyous with lager itself. Yet while craft brewers around the world have developed an obsession with punchy New World hops and the character of specific varieties, they often know relatively litle about the hops from this region that’s been growing them for more than a millennium. In this episode, we sit down in Žatec—the home of Saaz—with Zdeněk Rosa, chairman of Bohemia Hop, the c...
Apr 30, 2023•55 min•Ep. 301
To celebrate this milestone—the 300th episode of the Craft Beer & Brewing Podcast—we reassembled three leading voices in West coast IPA to discuss questions spurred on by the original panel discussion, and this time they answered your audio questions, Direct Fire!-style. Kelsey McNair of North Park (https://www.northparkbeerco.com) in San Diego, Evan Price of Green Cheek (https://greencheekbeer.com) in Orange and Costa Mesa, and Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River (https://www.russianriverbrewin...
Apr 23, 2023•1 hr 56 min•Ep. 300
In the trendy Karlín neighborhood of central Prague, the brewpub called Dva Kohouti (https://www.dvakohouti.cz/en/) embodies the merger of the two key elements of Czech beer culture: the brewing and—no less important—the pouring and service. The side-pull taps attached directly to the serving tanks behind the bar are only part of the story. In this episode recorded at the brewery, head brewer Lukaš Tomsa explains the ideas behind Dva Kohouti, how they brew their traditional lagers and more inter...
Apr 16, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 299
Documents show a brewery at the Břevnov monastery in Prague as early as 993. There have been interruptions over the centuries, but the current Břevnov Monastery Brewery of St. Adalbert (https://www.brevnovskypivovar.cz/) is the third incarnation, founded in 2011. This one has gained local and international fans for aromatic and highly drinkable pale lager, Benedict 12°, a well as for its other beers, including an imperial stout, a monastic IPA, and a 9 percent ABV imperial lager beloved by the B...
Apr 09, 2023•58 min•Ep. 298
Tucked into a corner of the sprawling grounds at Pilsner Urquell in Plzeň, Czechia—the birthplace of pilsner—a new chapter in that story is developing. Now in its third year, Pivovar Proud (https://www.pivovarproud.cz/en/) is Pilsner Urquell’s experimental playground—a beautifully equipped 30-hectoliter kit producing a range of both ales and lagers and other creations less easily categorized. Its head brewmaster Lenka Straková has access to Pilsner Urquell’s resources—including malt from its own...
Mar 31, 2023•55 min•Ep. 297
The sandstone cellars of Plzeňský Prazdroj—better known to us as Pilsner Urquell (https://www.pilsnerurquell.com)—may be the ideal place to wallow in the history of the world’s most popular beer style with brewmaster emeritus Václav Berka. As the brewery’s 13th brewmaster in a line that stretches back to Josef Groll, there are few people better qualified to recount the story of pilsner, discuss the details of how it’s brewed at its birthplace in Plzeň, and offer suggestions on how to brew an exc...
Mar 24, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 296
Barn Town (https://www.barntownbrewing.com) popped up on our radar in 2022, with a number of beers across styles that scored well with our blind panel of judges, but the best of the bunch was Neon hazy IPA with an impressive score of 98 (https://beerandbrewing.com/review/barn-town-brewing-co-neon-hazy-ipa-1651076631/). In our upcoming IPA issue, they did it again with another 98 for hazy double IPA Stink, Stank, Stunk, so naturally we felt the need to ask some questions and understand how they’r...
Mar 20, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 295
When Jeremy Kosmicki was promoted off the Founders packaging line to the brewhouse in the early 2000’s, he relished the opportunity to jump from homebrewing to their 30bbl brewhouse. Over the past two decades, he’s overseen the brewing program while the brewery experienced remarkable growth—launching pivotal brands like All Day IPA, scaling production by orders of magnitude—and since Founders was fully acquired and merged into Spanish brewer Mahou San Miguel in early 2023, he’s taken on an even ...
Mar 11, 2023•57 min•Ep. 294
Travis Fritts didn’t set out to brew hazy IPA. In fact, the initial plan for Old Nation (https://oldnationbrewing.com) was far more conventional—brew traditional American craft beer styles like stout and pale ale, with some European standards like altbier and weizenbock, make the beers good, slap some cool branding on them, and wait for the sales to come. But it was 2015, and craft beer consumers had other ideas. To survive, Old Nation starting looking at new and evolving styles, while trying to...
Mar 05, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 293
There’s more to German-style beer than just lager, and Cedar Springs Brewing Co. is out to preach the gospel of weissbier to anyone who will listen. Their Kusterer Original Weissbier has a couple GABF medals to its name, and their dedication to foundational brewing methods—step mashing, open fermentation—along with a knack for storytelling that’s necessitated by their focus on the weissbier family (they generally have two or three different weissbiers on tap at any given moment) makes for a brew...
Feb 26, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 292
Edwin Collazo is a natural born salesperson. Yes, he’s a brewer and brewery owner, but the bridge in City Built Brewing (https://citybuiltbrewing.com)’s logo isn’t just a graphic element—connecting customers with beer they love is the entire point of this Grand Rapids, Michigan brewery. But the focus of the brewery has changed over the years, and COVID presented the crisis that precipitated the brewery rethinking their approach to beer. Now, they’ve embraced progressive styles, from hazy IPA to ...
Feb 18, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 291
Jason Spaulding, cofounder of Brewery Vivant (https://breweryvivant.com) and Broad Leaf Brewery, (https://broadleafbeer.com) has been around the block. He cofounded his first brewery, New Holland, in the mid-90’s, and after exiting that brewery and spending time away from the brewing industry, launched Brewery Vivant with his wife Kris about twelve years ago. Operating a brewery with a niche focus comes with benefits as well as challenges, but Vivant has always focused on beer, food, and hospita...
Feb 12, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 290
Ken Schramm wants to prove it’s possible to make mead that’s every bit as fine as the finest wine, and over the past decade his eponymously named meadery (https://store.schrammsmead.com/storefront.aspx) has pioneered a number of new processes and approaches to help achieve that goal. From shortening the honey supply chain and eliminating intervention and heat degradation, to hand picking fruit for ripeness from their own estate orchard, Schramm’s has found ways to elevate the production process ...
Feb 05, 2023•1 hr 45 min•Ep. 289
BKS Artisan Ales (Kansas City, Missouri) is the result of husband-and-wife team Brian and Mary Rooney’s attempt to bring taproom-based rapid innovation to brewing in their hometown, and their GABF silver medal in 2021 for Clouds hazy double IPA, GABF gold in 2022 for Rockhill & Locust dark mild, and great scores from the Craft Beer & Brewing blind judging panel have confirmed that they’ve been able to achieve it. They started small and still remain small relative to may breweries of simi...
Jan 29, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 288
You may be more familiar with Doug Veliky through his BeerAficionado (https://www.instagram.com/beeraficionado/) social presence, but through his Beercrunchers.com (https://www.beercrunchers.com) blog and his work as chief financial officer, chief strategy officer, and now chief marketing officer for Chicago’s Revolution Brewing (https://revbrew.com), he’s gained a reputation for smart, strategic, and data-driven takes on what’s happening and what will happen in craft beer’s near term. In this e...
Jan 22, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 287
This week’s podcast is a roundtable discussion with three leading voices in West Coast IPA—Kelsey McNair of North Park, Evan Price of Green Cheek, and Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River. Over the course of two hours, these three discuss the ins and outs of brewing modern West Coast IPA today, including: simplifying malt bills to pilsner or two row pale building body with water chemistry to support hop flavor despite the light malt bill lower starting and finishing gravities to reflect a more dry mo...
Jan 20, 2023•1 hr 59 min•Ep. 286
Sean White, cofounder of Athens, Ohio’s Little Fish, is committed to mixed culture sour beer. It’s not the only thing that they brew, but it’s part of the soul of the brewery and a founding pillar that they’ve continued to develop (and improve) over the past eight years. Over those years, they’ve been recognized a number of times for the beers from this program—gold and bronze World Beer Cup medals in 2016 and 2018, silver and gold GABF medals in 2020 and 2022—but if you ask White, he’ll tell yo...
Jan 07, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 285
Over the past decade of working professionally in beer, Inner Voice cofounders Rhett Caseman and Josh Johnson have brewed beers of every style, on systems of very different scales. But when they envisioned a brewery of their own, they knew they wanted to keep it small and taproom focused, with a balance between thoughtfully executed classic beer styles, and leading edge experimentation in hop-driven hazy and juicy styles. The brewery, now fifteen months old, has been turning heads in the metro A...
Dec 31, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 284
In this year-end episode, we look back at the past year of podcasts, and count down your favorites, with excerpts that include: Sapwood Cellars on dry hopping technique, lowering temperature for dry hopping, using an aggressive rousing regimen, and the masking effect of other dry hop flavors on thiols Sam Tierney of the Firestone Walker Propagator and Bob Kunz of Highland Park on selecting malt for West coast pils Raf Souvereyns of Bokke discussing the challenges that new blenders face, as well ...
Dec 29, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 283
Halfway Crooks (https://halfwaycrooks.beer) cofounders Joran Van Ginderachter and Shawn Bainbridge may love the wide world of craft beer, but with their Atlanta, Georgia brewery the goal was to create a space and beers that would let drinkers find a beer they like, and drink the same beer all night. If you arrive with the goal of maximizing check-ins to the widest number of beers, you’ll quickly find you’re in the wrong place. The same design principles inform the space and the beer itself—equal...
Dec 23, 2022•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 282
Brian Purcell may have founded Atlanta’s Three Taverns nine years ago to focus on Belgian-style beers, but today it’s the spirit of that brewing tradition that informs their approach more than a purely stylistic expression. Creativity balanced with drinkability still drives their brewing decisions, whether that’s brewing an American-hopped modern pils expression in conjunction with the team from Pivovar Proud (the experimental brewery of Pilsner Urquell), or tackling the expressive fermentation ...
Dec 21, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 281
Jon Shari of Little Cottage, (https://www.littlecottagebrewery.com) just east of Atlanta, was an avoid homebrewer who built a reputation for his big dessert-focused imperial stouts, and built on that momentum to launch the small, taproom-focused brewery in 2021. But brewing for the taproom is still a small affair, with a very manual 3.5 bbl brewhouse that makes some difficult-to-brew beers even harder. In this episode, he discusses the process behind his stouts, from recipe to adjunct ingredient...
Dec 17, 2022•57 min•Ep. 280
2022 has been rough on craft beer. From the macroeconomic forces hitting the entire economy—rising rents, rampant inflation in raw materials and logistics costs, shortages, rising labor costs—to the industry-specific challenges like changing consumer interest in packaging formats, shifting beer styles, distributor focuses, changing draft beer landscape, and more, it's become increasingly difficult to operate brewing businesses successfully. For Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey cofounder Tomme Art...
Dec 14, 2022•49 min•Ep. 279
Green Flash’s 2018 bankruptcy rocked the beer world and threw the future of their iconic brands into doubt. Earlier this year, those brands were acquired by Sweetwater, and head brewer Ryan Joy was tasked with figuring out how to brew them on a different brewhouse, with vastly different water, and for an audience with a much different context for beer. In this episode, he discusses: matching the unique, and salt-heavy water of San Diego using unusual chlorides, in large amounts changing up the y...
Dec 02, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 278
It’s possible to make great lagers with a single-infusion mash and cylindroconical fermenters—just ask former sportswriter turned brewer Randy Booth. At the taproom-focused Twin Barns (https://www.twinbarnsbrewing.com) brewery, on the shores of vacation destination Lake Winnipesaukee, he’s used the quieter winter season for the time and tank space to hone their lager program. The result earlier this year was a blind-review panel score of 99 for the German-style Belknap Pils (https://beerandbrewi...
Dec 01, 2022•57 min•Ep. 277
If you’re going to make a kettle-acidified fruit beer, make it well. For Wiley Roots cofounder and head brewer Kyle Carbaugh, that means everything from using rustic unmalted wheat from a farmer friend to creating their own fruit pureés from fresh whole fruit. After all, you can’t drive novel, engaging fruit flavor that stands out if you do things the exact same way as every other brewer out there. In this episode, Carbaugh discusses their fruit beer program as well as their barrel-aged stout pr...
Nov 26, 2022•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 276
Brooklyn’s Wild East (https://www.wildeastbrewing.com) is a brewer’s brewery. It’s the kind of place that other local brewers go for a beer when they’re not working. The lagers are exceptional, characterful more than crispy, and their best-selling IPA is a West coast-style iteration—a stark contrast to the hazy and juicy IPAs that make up the bulk of the offerings from neighbors Other Half or Finback. Cofounder and head brewer Brett Taylor has some strong opinions about brewing lagers—decoction ...
Nov 19, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 275
You’ve heard from us, and you’ve heard from our writers and critics, but in this episode of our Best in beer trilogy, you’ll hear from brewers behind two of our Best 20 Beers in 2022—Carey Fristoe of Black Spruce (https://www.blacksprucebeer.com) in Fairbanks, Alaska and John Garcia of King Harbor (https://www.kingharborbrewing.com) in Redondo Beach, California. Fristoe discusses the design and brewing of Aromadome hazy IPA, a mashup of east and west approaches with unconventional choices like i...
Nov 16, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 274
