Ryan Miller and Lillian MacNamara—both experienced brewers and cofounders of Freak Folk Bier—are partners in business and life, making the brewery, as Miller says, “a love story interwoven with brewing.” Both share a love of saison, and Freak Folk began with a focus on special-release saisons that has since expanded into a broad selection of styles to fill the tap lines of their Waterbury, Vermont taproom. But even the other styles they brew exhibit the same kind of delicate balance and nuanced structure that they honed in saison experimentation. In this episode, Miller discusses both their ..read more

While popular movies tell finite stories, the real lives of the people they feature don’t stop when the final credits roll. So, it was up to the von Trapp family—whose story was told with huge dramatic license in The Sound of Music—to write their own next chapters. They did so by establishing a popular, Austrian-inspired family lodge in northern Vermont—then, about 15 years ago, they opened a brewery just down the hill. They launched with the goal of producing finely crafted European-style lagers, befitting the family’s heritage. Craft lagers weren’t exactly lighting up the sales charts at the ..read more

Welcome to Las Vegas, craft brewers! In this final of three CBC preview episodes, Crafthaus head brewer Cameron Fisher joins to discuss their approach to making cold IPA (and more) in the desert of Southern Nevada. Whether it’s Czech-style lager served on a Lukr faucet in their Arts District taproom or a throwback hoppy red ale poured with love from their Henderson taproom at the brewery, the beers Crafthaus makes have earned a reputation for quality, breadth, and accessibility. In this episode, Fisher touches on: Connecting beers to audiences through familiarity and experience Using flaked m ..read more

This special fresh hop–focused episode of the podcast is brought to you interruption-free by the the freshness experts at RipeLocker. RipeLocker has patented a radically innovative storage solution to revolutionize the post-harvest industry with technology to extend the shelf-life of perishables such as fresh hops while preserving quality and taste. The company’s low-pressure chambers prolong freshness after harvest by weeks, often months, and for brewers, this opens up new ways to think about fresh- and wet-hop beers. This episode focuses on fresh-hop brewing, from harvest through brewing and ..read more

Dave Pascual, head brewer for longtime Las Vegas brewery Big Dog’s, takes a methodical approach to running the brewhouse, even if it doesn’t feel out-of-the-ordinary to this longtime brewer. Running a clean and organized brewery is just how it’s done. Despite how obvious some of these little things may appear, it’s the sum of all those professional details that’s helped cement Big Dog’s legacy as a consistent award winner in categories as diverse as English-Style Brown Ale and Belgian-Style Tripel. In this episode, Pascual discusses his approach to creating recipes and brewing award-winning be ..read more

In this first of a three-episode miniseries on Las Vegas brewers, timed to give you more local knowledge as you head to the desert for this year’s Craft Brewer’s Conference, Able Baker Director of Brewing Matt Marino discusses his evolving approach to modern West coast IPA and hazy session IPA. Through the conversation, he touches on: brewing oversized batches at high gravity to maximize output from their 15bbl brewhouse pushing extreme attenuation to hit a 1.4-1.6°P finishing gravity in a 7% ABV IPA making the move from 2 row malt to pilsner malt selecting hops and hop formats for survivabil ..read more

Notch founder Chris Lohring loves the fact that more craft brewers are embracing lagers—but he has some strong opinions about the best way to brew them. “‘Crispy boys’ don’t exist,” he says. “Lagers aren’t dry. Clean lager yeast is boring to me.” Refinement and distinction are his goals, not minimalism, and he and his team use all the tools in the brewer’s toolbox to achieve them—such as adjusting mash schedules and malt bills to build body in low-ABV beers; moving lager mid-fermentation from quasi-open fermentors to conicals before later moving to horizontal tanks; reducing and timing decocti ..read more

Will and Joe Quinlan, brothers and cofounders of The Big Friendly, just make beer. Will loves saison so they make a few saisons every year. Joe loves barrel-aged stout so they make a few of those every year. Their distribution is minuscule so their production is very small, but they do take a meticulous approach to beer making despite their small size. In this episode, the brothers each recount their approach to the beers they make, and in the process they discuss: building mixed fermentation cultures out of separate stock strains resting and conditioning saison using flavor- and aroma-forwar ..read more

There is the East Coast and there is the West Coast, but aficionados of hazy IPA know not to sleep on the Gulf Coast, thanks largely to Parish Brewing in Broussard, Louisiana. Parish’s Ghost in the Machine has become a juggernaut in the world of hazy IPA, earning accolades such as a 2019 Beer of the Year from Craft Beer & Brewing and a mention on critic Alex Kidd’s top ten list in 2020. More recently, Parish won a spot in the top 20 small regional breweries as voted on by the readers of Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine®. Nor is their success limited to IPA—Parish also picked up a silver m ..read more

This special fermentation-focused episode of the podcast is brought to you interruption-free by the yeast and fermentation specialists at White Labs. If you brew beer, you’re familiar with White Labs, as they’ve been supplying brewers with the highest quality yeast and fermentation aids for many years, and they now serve brewers around the world from outposts in San Diego and Asheville in the United States, as well as Copenhagen and Hong Kong. Throughout this episode, we focus on the keys to effective fermentations, from yeast health to enzymes and more. Joining for the conversation are Chris ..read more