Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast
The Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast is aimed at people who make and drink great beer. Each week it features conversations with professional brewers and industry experts. Episodes cover practical brewing advice, emerging brewing trends, and techniques for getting more out of homebrewing. It is produced by Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine.
Episodes
508: Steve Luke is Surfing the Next Wave in Cloudburst’s Evolution
Earlier this year, Cloudburst founder Steve Luke announced that longtime friends at Bale Breaker would be buying the brewery while he and his wife relocated to New Zealand for her career. For many in the industry, it felt like an ideal outcome, with the beloved Seattle brand finding a home with the talented team at the Yakima-based brewery. But the move hasn’t taken Luke out of the game—h
507: Scott Selix of Lua Mashes up Production-Brewery Discipline with Brewpub Creativity in Expressive Hazy IPA and Low-DO Lager
Scott Selix of Lua in Des Moines, Iowa, started his career as a brewer before leaving for law school. After a brief stint as an attorney, the gravitational pull of the brewing world ultimately proved too strong for him to overcome. Now at Lua, he has the freedom to explore the creative front edge of progressive styles such as hazy IPA while also delving into low-ABV pale lagers—which, he
506: Off Script and Milieu Take Parallel But Contrasting Paths to Popular Hazy IPAs
Denver's Off Script has built a rabid fanbase of hazy IPA drinkers who line up for can releases and special draft events like it's 2015 again, and founder Ryan Taylor has done it by focusing tightly on plush and saturated hazy IPAs. But he brews the beer themselves at Aurora, Colorado's Milieu Fermentation, where cofounder Rob Bessett also makes some high-scoring hazy IPAs of his own. Tog
505: Spoiler Alert—Preventing Microbial Activity in Low- and No-Alcohol Beer, in Partnership with Scott Labs
In this special episode produced in partnership with Scott Labs, we focus on beer spoilers and how to protect your beer from them. Today’s rapid growth in low- and no-alcohol craft beer and beverages presents quite a challenge for brewers because alcohol itself is one of the best ways to prevent microorganisms from turning the beautiful beverage you crafted into something less delicious o
504: Kyle Gregorash of Young Blood Brews Indulgent Fruit Beers Balanced Through Thoughtfully Shaped Acidity
Kyle Gregorash of Madison, Wisconsin’s Young Blood didn’t initially set out to build a brewery around fruit beer, but over the past six years he’s worked tirelessly to perfect it and solve that intractable brewing problem—how can you make something that’s sweet and crowd-pleasing but that finishes with a snap and encourages the next sip? And how do you do that when brewers’ favorite tool—
503: Better Beer That’s Better for the Environment with a Better Bottom Line Using Better Hops and Hop Products, in Partnership with Hopsteiner
For a brewery with a well-loved flagship brand, changing the recipe is fraught with opportunities for failure. Mess up a beloved beer, and customers will let you know that you blew it, but make it better (or give it more longevity in the package), and you’ll likely hear nothing at all. Flagstaff, Arizona’s Mother Road Brewing rose to the occasion recently, redesigning their Tower Station
502: Pacific Northwest Approaches to West Coast IPA with Breakside, Grand Fir, and Varietal
"Pacific Northwest Coast IPA" might not be a thing, but it's a jumping off point for this week's panel discussion on IPA featuring three noted and award-winning brewers—Whitney Burnside of Grand Fir (Portland, Oregon), Chris Baum of Varietal (Sunnyside, Washington), and Ben Edmunds of Breakside (Portland and Milwaukie, Oregon)—recorded live at our Brewer's Retreat in Yakima, Washington.
501: Perspectives on Fresh Hop Brewing With Bale Breaker, Single Hill, and Russian River
This week’s episode is another panel discussion recorded live at our Brewers Retreat in the hop country of Yakima, Washington, and features three brewers with decided experience brewing fresh hop beers—Kevin Smith of Bale Breaker, Zach Turner of Single Hill, and Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River. Through this ranging conversation, the three discuss celebrating the current harvest through th
500: The Current State of Hazy IPA with Monkish, Brujos, and North Park
Episode 500! It feels surreal to achieve this latest milestone, but in this episode, recorded live at our Brewer's Retreat at Bale Breaker in Yakima, Washington, we talk hazy IPA with three luminaries in the category: Henry Nguyen of Monkish, Sam Zermeño of Brujos, and Kelsey McNair of North Park. Along the way, we discuss everything you'd expect us to discuss: dry hopping at warm tempera
499: Spyglass Searches for Unique Modes of Balance in Hazy IPA and Mexican-Style Lager
Nashua, New Hampshire’s Spyglass may not have a unique origin story—engineer friends with a knack for homebrewing started the brewery to focus on the styles they were tired of driving and trading for—but after honing their processes and recipes for the past eight years, and growing into a 20 bbl brewhouse and large-capacity taproom, they’ve grown more comfortable tackling technical brewin
498: Andrew Sabatine of Around The Horn Builds Classic Through Lines to Anchor Modern Lagers and West Coast IPA
Andrew Sabatine of Around the Horn (Groveland, CA) may have learned much of his trade at breweries on the hazier and more fruit-driven side of the brewing equation, but serving a small mountain town with a huge tourist population means making all the beers that people might want to enjoy. Lagers play an ever-growing role in that product mix, but Sabatine doesn’t fully throw out the rulebo
Episode 497: Todd Malloy and Robin Reed of Glenwood Canyon Match Lager Discipline with Brewpub Ingenuity for Medal-Winning Results
Over the past 30 years, the Glenwood Canyon Brewpub has earned an impressive 18 Great American Beer Festival and eight World Beer Cup medals. Mostly recently, there have been back-to-back GABF golds in festbier and a 2024 silver in helles, plus a score of 99 for that same helles from our blind panel at Craft Beer & Brewing—so, they’re showing no sign of letting up.
Brewing lager on a
496: Tonya Cornett and Ian Larkin of UPP Liquids Continue Their Tradition of Challenging Each Other and Winning Together
While UPP Liquids may be their latest home, Tonya Cornett and Ian Larkin have been brewing together, then apart, then together again, across three different breweries over the past decade and a half. Over that time, they’ve won countless medals in competitions large and small—including Cornett’s prestigious Russell Schehrer Award for Innovation in Craft Brewing—and they continue that trad
495: Fermenting Expressive Hoppy Beers with Dry Yeast, in Partnership with White Labs
Many of the historic brewing yeasts we have today are products of their time and place. The ingredients brewers used with them, the tanks they fermented in, and the styles they made have all played a role in how that yeast grew and hybridized itself over hundreds or thousands of generations. Today, however, brewers typically brew into tanks far different than those of a hundred years ago.
494: Patrick Raasch of Sunriver Builds a Throughline of Refinement into Boldly Flavored Beers
With 19 Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup medals, an Alpha King win, and nine beers scored 95-plus by Craft Beer & Brewing—including two in our upcoming Fall issue—Sunriver has become a medal-winning powerhouse of a production brewery and brewpub. But while their hop-forward offerings get much of the attention—and a fair amount of time in this podcast episode—they’re equ
493: Podcast 493: Fresher Than Fresh! Jake Watt of Trap Door Utilizes Hot- and Cold-Side Techniques in Award-Winning Wet-Hopped IPAs
In both 2024 and 2025, Jake Watt, head brewer at Trap Door in Washougal, Washington, took home gold medals in the GABF fresh hop category for his beer, Fresher Than Fresh. Interestingly, the recipes for each of those beers was quite different—and the recipe for the 2026 edition that he’ll submit this year will see more changes as well. Fresh-hopped beers are a moving target, ephemeral in
492: Building Better Gateways into Brewing, Produced in Partnership with Pinter
The vast majority of brewers we talk to for this podcast—and for the magazine—start out as homebrewers. And anyone who’s listened to more than a few episodes knows how common it is to hear about how an influential brewer’s journey started with a simple extract-based brewing kit. Making it easy for people to brew and enjoy beer at home is an important part of the craft-beer story—that’s wh
491: Brewing Scientists Tom Shellhammer and Cécile Chenot Are Changing How We Think About Older Hops
Over the past two decades, the amount of hops sitting in cold-storage warehouses has more than doubled. While the volume of those stocks is inching back down from its peak in 2022—and while it’s important that the industry has a buffer against climate challenges and bad harvests—a fundamental question remains: Just how useful are those hops two, three, or four years after harvest?
Thro
490: Mike Stein and Pete Jones of Lost Lagers Look Back at American Brewing Over the Past 250 Years
Mike Stein and Pete Jones are brewing buffs and historians based in the Washington, D.C., area, and the intersection of those two interests has proven to be fertile ground over the past decade. Through their consultancy Lost Lagers and Extinct Ales, they’ve done the research and helped surface recipes and process information about brewing in the founding years of the United States—for exa
Episode 489: The Post’s Nick Tedeschi Brews Flavorful Low-ABV Beers for Great Times with Great Food
For Nick Tedeschi, a great beer evokes memories, and the beer lineup at any of the Post’s five Colorado locations is designed to feel familiar, whether you’ve ordered one there or not. Like the food and the environment, the intention is comfort, with beers designed to tuck into the experience rather than define it. But that doesn’t mean they can’t stand out on their own, and the World Bee
488: Wynn Whisenhunt of Wondrous Makes Better Beer by Doing Less
When Wynn Whisenhunt launched Wondrous in the compact Bay Area town of Emeryville, California—wedged between more well-known neighbors Oakland and Berkeley—he brought with him big ideas about what it would take to make great beer. After growing up around well-known homebrewers like Mike “Tasty” McDole and Jamil Zainasheff, studying brewing in the Siebel-Doemens program, and working at bre
487: Ben Allgood and Brady Jones of Geisthaus are Finding their Brewing Identity by Focusing on Lager
For brewing industry veterans Ben Allgood and Brady Jones, the chance to open their own brewery in Sacramento, California—Geisthaus—meant endless possibility, but they chose to intentionally limit themselves to lagers. Despite that self-imposed restriction, they’re finding space for a range of creative expressions within the familiar worlds of pilsner and helles—but they’re also not shyin
486: Predicting Brewhouse and Cellar Issues before They Happen, in Partnership with Brightly Software
In this special episode, we talk about efficiency and managing assets in your brewery, as well as proactive and preventive approaches that extend the lifespan of your equipment and reduce equipment downtime. There’s more data available to you than ever before, but understanding how to use that data to make smart decisions and anticipate issues before they happen can save you money and avo
485: Mike Schallau of Is/Was Is Brewing New World Saison For Modern Drinkers
“There can be a stand-offishness of, ‘These are complex flavors, you may not be ready for this,’” says Mike Schallau of Chicago’s Is/Was. “And I’m like, ‘Why?’ You can make those things, but if that’s everything you make, that’s why you don’t get to make that much saison, I guess. I want people to drink the beers, and I want them to drink a good amount of them.”
In a post-pandemic era
484: Matt Gallagher of Half Acre and Suncatcher Believes Small Can Be Sustainable
To some, Chicago’s Suncatcher must appear to be a typical neighborhood brewery. The bar is classic Midwest, salvaged from a midcentury tavern. The patio is expansive and inviting, thanks to the plant nursery next door. And the beers come without clever names—just the style, often defined by color, spelled out in plastic letters pressed into the sign board. But when you consider that it wa
Episode 483: Cultural Collaboration and Brewing beyond the Main Strains with Suncatcher and Goldfinger, in Partnership with Omega Yeast
One of the key features of craft beer today, that doesn’t get enough press, is just how much information brewers have at their fingertips. While companies that serve the industry test and provide information about the performance of their products to brewer customers, it’s the two-way flow of information back from brewers to those companies that supercharges the learning cycle and helps e
482: Stephen Bossu of Hopewell Finds Lager Inspiration in the Occasion
Chicago’s Hopewell has, from its start, charted a different aesthetic and stylistic path than many of its contemporaries. In this episode, cofounder Stephen Bossu shares their approach to building a compelling array of lower-ABV beers designed around the times in which one might drink them. From the eight-ounce stubby can of Lil’ Buddy—it makes a perfect shift beer—to Pocha, the Korean-st
481: Source Material with Firestone Walker: The Science & the Art
When you look at the top restaurants around the world, no matter what cuisine they may focus on, there’s one commonality they all share, and that’s deep relationships with those who grow and raise the very best ingredients. It’s the same in beer—you can’t be the best at what you do without the meaningful, personal, financial, and long-standing relationships that ensure the brewery has acc
Episode 480: Anthony Chen of AleSmith Shares the Inside Story Behind the Award-Winning Handgeplukt Kriek
For San Diego’s AleSmith, funky Belgian-style mixed-culture beers aged on whole fruit may not be impactful to the bottom line. As brewers, however, they love the process challenge of these multi-phase beers as well as the unique flavors made possible by complex fermentations and highest-quality fruit.
Late last year, our blind panel at Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine® rated their Han
479: Building Better Fruit and Spice Character in Your Beer
From the very earliest days of what we now know as craft beer, flavor has been a defining factor and a guiding mantra for brewers casting themselves against the monolith of light macro lager that dominated American brewing for so many decades. If you track it back, fruits and spices have been ingredients in beer for as long as beer has been made, so this modern era of craft brewing is mor
478: Bart Watson of the Brewers Association Unpacks the State of the Craft Beer Industry
If you’ve read any mainstream news coverage of craft beer over the past year, it’s likely you’ve seen something about the “death” of craft beer. The apocalyptic tones and pearl-clutching over the industry’s recent economic woes mostly lack context, often painting a complex and diverse industry with a single brush—yet the stories continue.
In his recent State of the Industry presentatio
477: Source Material with Firestone Walker: Anywhere & Everywhere
When you look at the top restaurants around the world, no matter what cuisine they may focus on, there’s one commonality they all share, and that’s deep relationships with those who grow and raise the very best ingredients. It’s the same in beer—you can’t be the best at what you do without the meaningful, personal, financial, and long-standing relationships that ensure the brewery has acc
476: Matt Topping of COVA Finds Fruit Beer Gold with a Focus on Fresh Flavor and Drinkability
Matt Topping of COVA Brewing in Norfolk, Virginia, has a knack for winning medals with his fruit beers—but they aren’t what you think. From the full fruit refermentation to the light herbal spicing, he’s found an equation that’s equally successful on draft in the taproom and on the final judging table at the World Beer Cup. From slightly higher pH to low mash temps for fermentable wort, a
475: CB&B Podcast Live from Philadelphia!
The IPA gang is back together with some special guests for this star-studded episode recorded in front of a live audience of brewers at Union Transfer in Philadelphia. Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River, Kelsey McNair of North Park, and Evan Price of Green Cheek are joined by Ben Edmunds of Breakside and Oregon State University’s Tom Shellhammer—this year’s recipient of the Brewers Associati
474: Brian Hink of Wander Back Beerworks Breaks Down Their WBC Gold Medal-Winning Helles
The founders of South New Jersey’s Wander Back Beerworks are no strangers to the beer world, but the industry veterans had modest expectations for the young project—barely two years old—when they submitted entries to the 2026 World Beer Cup. Winning a medal in one of the top-five categories, Munich-Style Helles, with over 150 entries, would be an uphill battle. But as the awards were anno
Episode 473: Source Material with Firestone Walker: Deep Roots and Twisting Bines
When you look at the top restaurants around the world, no matter what cuisine they may focus on, there’s one commonality they all share, and that’s deep relationships with those who grow and raise the very best ingredients. It’s the same in beer—you can’t be the best at what you do without the meaningful, personal, financial, and long-standing relationships that ensure the brewery has acc
472: XPA Sensei Scotty Hargrave and Medal-Winning Grasshopper Blake Masoner Go Extra Deep on Extra Pale Ale
Scotty Hargrave didn’t invent extra-pale ale—he reinvented it, giving the style the definition it had lacked before. Tinkering away on his homebrew kit in New South Wales, he developed the recipe for what would become Balter XPA—a beer that took off and popularized what has arguably become Australia’s signature beer style. It’s also a beer that also has inspired certain American brewers,
471: Source Material with Firestone Walker: Quality is a Verb
When you look at the top restaurants around the world, no matter what cuisine they may focus on, there’s one commonality they all share, and that’s deep relationships with those who grow and raise the very best ingredients. It’s the same in beer—you can’t be the best at what you do without the meaningful, personal, financial, and long-standing relationships that ensure the brewery has acc
470: Ryan Allen of Soul & Spirits Summons Unusual Flavors with Traditional Methods
Ryan Allen of Soul & Spirits in Memphis loves brewing traditional lager—but when it comes to turning heads at big events like the Great American Beer Festival, he’s not afraid of putting that methodical approach to work on projects that other brewers might view as crazy.
Barbecue sauce–flavored beer? Yes. Beer with the taste and consistency of Southern gravy? Check. Barrel-aged stout
469: How Indeed Uses Data to Make Better Brewery Decisions, in Partnership With Encompass
This special episode of the podcast is brought to you in partnership with Encompass Technologies, and explores how breweries are using data to create savvier approaches to distribution and growth. It’s no secret that it’s become harder to sell beer over the past few years, with two consecutive years where brewery closures have outpaced openings. Distributors are far less bullish on craft
468: Chris O’Connor of Prost and the Quest for Undeniable Helles and Pils
Chris O’Connor, VP of brewing operations at Prost in Northglenn, Colorado, has built a career on being a process nerd. He spent a decade in engineering for the pharmaceutical industry before switching gears and following his passion for brewing. His analytical approach to colllecting data, testing, and questioning conventional logic is a big part of what drives quality at Prost’s award-wi
467: Adjusting the Thiol Dial with ISM, Ology, and Berkeley Yeast
This special episode of the podcast focuses on adjusting the thiol dial and is brought to you in partnership with the innovative and industry-leading team at Berkeley Yeast. They’ve been on the forefront of fermentation-related science since their inception, and whether it’s Fresh strains that keep diacetyl ultra-low, NA strains that make nonalcoholic beer that actually tastes like beer,
466: Ryan McCay of Living Waters Finds His Flow in Barrel-Aged Stout and Barleywine
Living Waters in Nashville, Tennessee, is a full-service coffee house as well as brewery, and its affinity for strong, well-articulated flavor runs through all the beverages they produce and serve. Recently, the brewery’s Barrel-Aged Dyson Sphere (Construct IV) scored a 97 in Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine®—garnering the highest score in the category—so, naturally, we wanted to know mo
465: Corn Coast’s High and Tight Hazy IPAs Find Success Through Discipline
Will Walter grew up in a military family, joining the Marines after college just as his father had. But the pull of brewing proved strong, and in 2022 he and two partners—also former military officers—opened Corn Coast in a small industrial park in Lincoln, Nebraska.
That same year, they won a bronze medal at the Great American Beer Festival for their hazy imperial IPA, Citra Soaker—and
464: Bobby Kros of Kros Strain Lets the Liquid Do the Talking
Bobby Kros hates interviews as much as he loves brewing beer, and while the cofounder of the La Vista, Nebraska, brewery may occasionally search for words to describe what he’s doing, the beers he makes are perfectible capable of speaking for themselves. And speak they have, winning Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine® Best in Beer trophies in 2021, 2024, and 2025, in three wildly divergent
463: Dan Brouillette of Lumen Crunches the Data to Find the Best Hops
Dan Brouillette has always worked in creative fields—he was a professional photographer before launching Lumen in the waning days of the pandemic—but he’s always been particularly attracted to the technical aspects of creation.
Like every IPA-focused brewer, he’s on a neverending search for the most expressive, layered, and interesting hops. But he’s also found that the information upon
462: Bierstadt, New Belgium, Wayfinder, and the Anatomy of a Lager Collaboration
Beer collaborations are a particularly effective way for brewers to share and learn, but what if you could take that experience and share it with a wider audience? That's the idea behind this episode, recorded shortly after the brew day wrapped on a forthcoming collab brewed by Kelly McKnight at the pilot brewery of New Belgium in Fort Collins, Colorado, along with Ashleigh Carter of Denv
461: Von Ebert and Zero Gravity Save Money and Make Better Beer with Process Aids
In this episode, produced in partnership with RahrBSG, we’re taking a close look at process aids in the brewhouse and cellar, from anti-foaming agents and finings to enzymes and more. Whether you’re trying to keep more foam in your beer (rather than lose it while brewing and cellaring), fill tanks with more beer and less headspace (by limiting foam height within tanks), or clarify beer wh
460: How Notch and Halfway Crooks Formulate Recipes for Tasty (and Convincing) Nonalcoholic Beer
Last week, we hosted a series of three webinars focused on different aspects of nonalcoholic brewing. In this episode of the podcast, we share an excerpt from the first session—focused on formulation—featuring Notch founder Chris Lohring, Halfway Crooks cofounder Shawn Cooper, and Abstrax Hops technical sales manager Craig Thomas. Through the course of the conversation, the trio discuss m
459: Zach Typinksi of Urbanrest Brews Gold Medal Pilsner Without Pilsner Malt
Generally speaking, there’s some correlation between brewery scale and lager quality—and while there are plenty of exceptions to that rule, there’s no denying that honing lagers into the best versions of themselves requires repetition, time, and access to the best ingredients. Over the past few years, however, an ever-increasing number of very small breweries have found success in major c
458: Tom Nielsen of Emberside Redraws the Boundaries between the Science and the Art of Beer
Through his decades of work in the brewing industry, many spent in R&D and quality at Sierra Nevada, Tom Nielsen has played a critical role in getting craft beer a seat at the broader brewing table. While industry advocacy groups were once dominated by macro brewers pursuing their own narrow goals, Nielsen (and a cohort of craft contemporaries) helped change the bigger conversation, c
457: Cory Buenning of Fritz Family Focuses on Highly Attenuated Lagers With Perfect Proteins
Fritz Family founder Cory Buenning brewed from the mid-90’s through the mid 20-teens for Wyoming craft beer pioneers Snake River, but the itch to do his own thing was strong, and after returning to Colorado after a few years in Kentucky, he leased the old Bootstrap brewery in Niwot, installed a new brewhouse and cellar, and got to work making the beers he wanted to make—a variety of prima
456: Jaron Anderson of Helper Beer Applies Modern Techniques to Classic Styles with Winning Results
For Jaron Anderson of Helper Beer, listening to the beer itself, rather than following prescribed rules, is the only way to improve it. He’s well-versed in the theory, but not a slavish adherent to dogma—what matters is the beer itself and how it tastes, so any technique or ingredient that gets you there is worth considering.
In 2025, he won GABF gold in the competitive German-style pi
455: Doug Veliky of Beer Crunchers Offers His Predictions for Craft in 2026
Doug Veliky, now of beverage consulting firm BrightBev, author of the BeerCrunchers newsletter and blog, and the personality behind the Beer Aficionado social media account, has a knack for explaining complex beverage-business goings-on without jargon. Over the years of running first finance and then marketing for Chicago craft brewery Revolution, he developed a keen sense of brand buildi
454: Ronald Mengerink of Dochter van de Korenaar is Still Hoping to Make the Perfect Beer
De Dochter van de Korenaar is unusual even for Belgium—a country full of brewers who don’t particularly enjoy being hemmed in by style definitions. Founder Ronald Mengerink has a passion for aging beer in barrels, but the expressions take a more vinous, wine-like approach than those more commonly found in North America. And his riff on port-like beer, Tout va Bien, is one that can’t be ma
453: Gert Christiaens of Oud Beersel Is Preserving Oude Gueuze Heritage by Building New Flavor Bridges
Gert Christiaens loved the beers of Oud Beersel so much that he couldn’t abide the brewery closing in 2003. So, he bought the brewery, learned to brew, and for the past 20 years has focused on preserving the legacy of traditional oude gueuze and kriek. But that mission to preserve doesn’t mean sealing beers in a time capsule. Instead, it involves finding new ways to make these classic sty
452: Counting Down Your Favorite Episodes of 2025
In this special year-end episode, we look at the ten most-downloaded episodes of the podcast, share stories behind the conversations, recount personal favorites, and more, with clips from the top ten that illustrate salient points. It’s a look back at the episodes you found most valuable and shared most often, and a crucial big-picture view of brewing today.
From biotransformation to d
451: Dimitri Staelens of Adept Throws out the Rule Book in Brewing Distinctive Belgian Ales
Dimitri Staelens spent 15 years directing quality across a range of breweries owned by Duvel Moortgat in Europe and North America. Along the way, he built a deep understanding of ingredients and process across a diverse range of styles and recipes. In 2020, however, he chose to scale down, launching Adept—a small brewery in Winksele, Belgium, attached to a restaurant and meeting space not
450: Stephen Boardman of 450 North Builds Intense Flavor and Nostalgic Connection With Fruit
From the corner of the family farm in rural Columbus, Indiana, surrounded by corn fields, 450 North has built a worldwide reputation for intensely flavored fruit beers and supersaturated smoothie sours. Stephen Boardman—now sales director as well as recipe creator and ingredient-sourcing whiz—joins the podcast to share the brewery’s unique perspective on these unapologetically assertive f
449: Christopher Lackner of the Hemp Beverage Alliance Is Fighting for the Loophole that Became an Industry
When President Trump signed the bill to reopen the government on November 12, he also enacted a law that will—unless changed within a year—effectively ban hemp-derived THC beverages and other products nationwide. Virtually overnight, the government had moved to close the book on a broadly popular industry worth an estimated $30 billion—even as adults in many states can, for now, still leg
448: West Coast Pils Panel Discussion Live From the Brewers Retreat
This week’s episode comes from a live panel discussion on West coast pils recorded a few weeks ago at the Craft Beer & Brewing Brewers Retreat in Asheville, North Carolina, and features Khristopher Johnson of Green Bench, Bob Kunz of Highland Park, and Evan Price of Green Cheek. Over the course of the conversation, these three brewers cover a range of topics, including:
the impact
447: Building Character in Lagers with 34/70 and Beyond, Presented by Fermentis
Lager yeast is the focus of this spotlight episode, brought to you interuption-free by Fermentis, the experts in fermentation for more than 160 years. Brewers everywhere depend on Fermentis for yeast that’s consistent, controllable, and high quality—whether you’re brewing an ester-forward Belgian-style beer, your favorite IPA, or a clean lager. In this week’s episode, we focus on brewing
446: The Critics Speak! Kate Bernot, Stan Hieronymus, and Joe Stange Glimpse the Future Through Their Favorite Beers of the Year
At Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine®, we obviously spend a lot of time thinking about beer—talking to brewers and others in the industry, digging into the details of process, and writing about what we learn. Best of all, though, we get to drink beer—and, like it or not, the taste of every drop flashes through these weird brains that have spent an unhealthy amount of time focused on the l
445: The Best in Beer 2025 Special, Featuring the Stories Behind the Picks
It’s one of the most anticipated episodes of the year—our annual peek behind the scenes of the Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine™ Best in Beer issue, as editorial director Jamie Bogner and executive editor Joe Stange share perspectives on the beers we’ve named as our best 20 of 2025—plus, they reveal the results of the annual Readers’ Choice poll.
Throughout the year, we taste thousands
444: Mike Foniok of the Establishment Takes an Ultramodern Approach to Mixed-Culture Fermentation
Sheesh! The Establishment (Calgary, Alberta) has built a reputation over the past few years for taking an unconventional, experimental approach to mixed-culture brewing—as well as many other styles—and they’ve brought home numerous awards to prove it. The 2025 World Beer Cup gold medal for Belgian-Style Sour Ale may be the biggest of them all, despite the unabashedly modern approach to th
443: Grain-to-Glass Brewing with Local and Regional Malt, Live from Alberta
We recorded this week’s episode live on stage at the Alberta Craft Brewing Convention in Red Deer, Alberta, in early October. The thematic through line is farm-to-glass brewing—something that’s not that hard to do there, since a significant amount of the malt used by North American brewers is grown in the province. Major maltsters such as Canada Malting and Rahr have plants in the provinc
442: Fast Fashion Puts Its Foot on the Gas With New Zealand Hops and Extra Anchovy
Seattle’s Fast Fashion has built a reputation for modern, forward-looking IPAs and hop-focused lagers, and the characterful brewery and taproom in SoDo expresses the eclectic interests and aesthetic taste of founder Matt Storm. It’s a funhouse of sorts—a bit like drinking in a thrift store full of budget mid-century furniture, stocked with kitsch that spans the past six decades. It’s busy
441: Cask Ale Elegance and Understatement with Bill Arnott of Machine House
It can be difficult to articulate how to make simple beers extraordinarily well—much comes down to ingredient quality, training and discipline, and the hundreds of small choices a brewer makes throughout the brew day and through fermentation and packaging. At Seattle’s Machine House, founder Bill Arnott will tell you that he doesn’t do anything special, yet the cask ales he brews are favo
440: Jesse Brown of Formula Slows Down to Make Better Lager and IPA
The 2024 World Beer Cup was quite a moment for Issaquah, Washington’s Formula. Head brewer Jesse Brown is no stranger to medals, but four in one year at the world’s most prestigious beer competition made a statement. His career as a brewer may look like “Swiss cheese,” with stints in Wyoming, Tennessee, Oregon, and Washington, but it’s hard to poke holes in any of his thoughtfully designe
439: Ben Howe of Otherlands Manipulates pH and Process in Pursuit of the Perfect Franconian-Style Lager
Ben Howe’s brewing career reads more like that of a chef than a typical brewer—stints in Denmark, brewing jobs on both the East and West coasts, weeks spent interning at breweries that intrigued him—but one fateful visit to the Zehender brewery in Monchsambach opened his eyes to Franconian lager and inspired a nearly decade-long quest to understand the beer and its mechanisms of flavor. M
438: Regenerative Malt's Impact From Farm to Brewhouse, Presented by Proximity Malt
What is regenerative farming and what does it have to do with beer? In this episode, presented by Proximity Malt, we tackle that question with experts from each phase of the malt supply chain—farmer, maltster, and brewer.
Joining the podcast:
Walker Modic, environmental program director at New Belgium and Bell's
Derek Heersink, barley farmer and brewery owner
Zach Gaines, commercial
437: Happy Birthday Simcoe! Vinnie Cilurzo and Jason Perrault Look Back on 25 Years of the Groundbreaking Hop
This year marks the 25th birthday of Simcoe, and when Russian River cofounder Vinnie Cilurzo suggested recording an episode of the podcast in Yakima to celebrate it, we weren’t going to say no. Rather than sit around a table, we took to the experimental hop rows at Perrault Farms and recorded while walking the field. The result is a wide-ranging conversation that covers history, business,
436: Blake Masoner of Craft Coast Strives for Excellence Beer After Beer, Taco After Taco
At Craft Coast in Oceanside and San Marcos, California, Blake Masoner is happy if you show up for tacos and stay for a beer. The fairly priced tacos are scratch-made, down to the tortillas themselves, packing loads of flavor into every bite. Fellow San Diego–area brewers refer to them as “The best tacos between here and Tijuana”—but the beer they brew here is anything but an afterthought.
435: Josh Penney of Threes Brings a Bicoastal Sensibility to Hoppy Lager, Hazy IPA, and More
Before joining Threes, Josh Penney spent the better part of a decade brewing in Southern California, with nearly half of that time at hoppy-lager innovators Highland Park. Now at the helm of Threes in Brooklyn, he’s taking the knowledge he built in lager fermentation and layering in hops of various formats to create beers that pop from the package and the glass.
In this episode, Penney
434: Frank Bilello of Noble Savage Lets the Beer Become What it Wants to Be
The Untappd Community Awards offer an interesting barometer of consumer excitement around breweries and beers, but for Noble Savage in Glen Cove—east of New York City, on Long Island—landing two beers among the top three hazy IPAs in the United States proved quite an accomplishment. Founder and head brewer Frank Bilello has kept things small, tinkering as he goes and using an unusual crea
433: KCBC Brings Brash Energy and a Bit of West Coast Sensibility to Beer in NYC
Making beer commercially in New York City is so difficult that it all but stopped until the previous decade’s craft-beer boom rekindled the fire. Today, about 40 breweries make beer in the city, but doing so comes with its own set of rules. Beyond the regulatory and logistical hurdles, there’s an underlying creative challenge: NYC is the culinary capital of the United States, and competit
432: Ben Clayton of Test Approaches Brewing with a Chef’s Discipline and a Beginner’s Mind
Ben Clayton of Brooklyn’s Test honed his approach to brewing while working in the context of a Michelin-starred restaurant in New York City. Today, building a deep, meaningful supply chain for interesting ingredients animates him more than lighting up the beer-trading boards. Accolades have followed, and today he’s finding stories to tell in thoughtfully sourced grain and the novel ways h
431: Using Taproom Data and Insights to Optimize Brewery Decision Making, Presented by Arryved
The best beer isn’t brewed in a vacuum—it’s brewed with your guests in mind. Every pour, every seasonal release, every new recipe starts with one question: What do people actually want to drink?
In this episode, we dive into how breweries are using real taproom data to answer that question—and brew what sells. From tracking style velocity to spotting daypart trends, our guests break do
430: Float House Explores the Intersection of Beer Culture, Beer Flavor, and Hemp-Derived THC
Hemp-derived THC products, including beverages, have exploded on the market in recent years as producers take advantage of a federal legal loophole that leaves the products legal—or at least not-illegal—in many states. Much of this nascent beverage market is focused on seltzer-style minimalism or sweet, fruit-forward drinks, but Connecticut’s Float House is making the case for beer aroma
429: Cody Peczkowski of Moontown Maximizes Malt Expression in Medal-Winning Märzen
In Whitestown, Indiana, just outside Indianapolis, this small-town lager brewery has made big waves with multiple World Beer Cup golds for its märzen, Follow the Lederhosen—not to mention a WBC silver for its pale Skool House Bock, knockout scores from Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine® judges, and five GABF medals for various lagers.
However, Moontown’s success is a story of working wit
