Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

Latest Episodes:

276: Kyle Carbaugh of Wiley Roots Explores the Outer Limits of Flavor in Fruit Beer and Barrel-Aged Stout Nov 26, 2022

Show notes

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 program, which produced one of Craft Beer & Brewing’s Best 20 beers in 2022. Along the way, he also touches on:

moving past “if you brew it, they will come”
creating transition beers to get people into more “advanced” styles
developing the fruit-beer category with different brands that explore everything from leaner fermented fruit profiles to sweeter smoothie approaches
designing a brewhouse with kettle-acidification in mind
blending purée and juice concentrates for well-rounded fruit flavors
creating purée from whole fruit with a commercial food processor and masticating juicer
stabilizing fruit beers at various pH levels
building heft in stouts with additional fermentables
adjusting during the aging process for better barrel-aged results

And more.

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275: Brett Taylor of Brooklyn’s Wild East Runs a Brewery, Not a Museum Nov 18, 2022

Show notes

Brooklyn’s Wild East 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 isn’t optional, water is very important, and the imperfection of more “rustic” malt offers a tension that makes for more interesting beers. In this episode, Taylor discusses those approaches to lager, as well as their techniques behind West coast IPA and mixed fermentation farmhouse beers, and along the way, he covers:

leaning into Czech-style lagers due to the similarity in water between New York and Pilsen
designing a brewhouse with decoction methodology in mind
treating lagers gently in every step of the process to preserve the delicate flavors
using the same yeast in different ways across the lager program
brewing West coast and New England IPAs with Conan yeast
modernizing West coast IPA recipes
the challenges of scaling up farmhouse brewing cultures
optimizing for light Brett character and very gentle acidity in foeder saisons
achieving juicy yet dry notes in everything from IPA to mixed culture beer

And more.

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274: Best in Beer Brewers’ Perspectives on Hazy IPA and Sweet Molé Stout Nov 15, 2022

Show notes

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 in Fairbanks, Alaska and John Garcia of King Harbor 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 its use of dry yeast. Along the way, he touches on:

Using Vienna malt for color while achieving stable haze with just 10% wheat
S-04 dry yeast for hazy IPA fermentation
Lower temperature whirlpooling to reduce isomerization
Single stage dry hopping with longer contact time and aggressive rousing
Selecting hops for more cantaloupe and honeydew melon character
Paying attention and reducing oxygen pickup throughout the brewing and cellar process
Pushing both chloride and sulfate levels higher than typical rates

And more.

Garcia walks us through Choco-Latte, a coffee, oats, and molé-spiced sweet stout that’s decadent and drinkable, while discussing:

Building a spectrum of malt flavor from Simpsons maris otter base malt through midnight wheat
Hot side whirlpool additions of cocoa powder, lactose, cinnamon, and toasted ancho chiles
Sourcing and selecting the right, high quality ingredients
Fermenting with US-05 dry yeast
Adding coffee through a concentrated cold brew

And more.

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Episode 273: Best in Beer: Top Critics and Writers Discuss Their Best in Beer of 2022 Nov 11, 2022

Show notes

Our core writing team spends an inordinate amount of time every year talking to brewers, hop growers, maltsters, suppliers, distributors, publicans, and other leaders in the brewing industry. Our goal is to make sure we’re bringing you the very best in actionable insight in every story we write.

In our critic’s lists every year, we share what gets us excited—brewers, beers, and anything that exemplifies the very best in creative and technical prowess. This episode captures that energy and thoughtfulness, as five of the very best in beer reporting and insights share their thoughts on what’s best in craft brewing, right now.

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272: Special Episode! The Best in Beer 2022 Nov 08, 2022

Show notes

It’s that time again: Our blind review panelists and editors at Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine® have tasted through thousands of beers, winnowing them down to what we believe are the very best. That yearlong process culminates in our annual Best in Beer issue (available now), featuring your Readers’ Choice picks and our Best 20 Beers in 2022.

In this special episode of the Craft Beer & Brewing Podcast, we share the results of our reader survey—in which you voted on the top beers, breweries, homebrew gear, and more—and we share the stories and thought process behind the selection of these 20 pinnacles of craft brewing.

This episode is brought to you by:

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271: Brooklyn’s Grimm Artisanal Ales Apply a Yeast-Driven Approach to Brewing Nov 05, 2022

Show notes

Joe Grimm of Grimm Artisanal Ales would like to dispel some myths about hazy IPA. “No matter what some brewers say, hazy IPA is one of the hardest styles to make, because it’s never good enough. I’m never happy with the beer.”

That never-satisfied attitude has driven the husband-and-wife brewing duo to explore different methods of making compelling hazy beer, from top-cropping yeast to employing a Brasserie de la Senne–inspired approach to tank geometry, and pushing their yeast strain far, far past normal generation limits (they were on the 275th generation at the time the podcast was recorded). In this episode, they discuss that thoughtful approach to fermentation in hazy IPA as well as their less-conventional approach to spontaneous inoculation, and their evolving method for using fruit in wild and spontaneous beers.

Along the way, the two discuss:

the challenge of opening with extremely limited funds, contract brewing at places around the Northeast
learning from the design of various breweries in which they brewed
applying lessons on tank geometry for Belgian beer to their tanks for IPA
top-cropping London Ale III for healthy yeast
adjusting recipe parameters as yeast evolves
maintaining haze while minimizing astringency
brewing spontaneous beer without a coolship
blending wild and spontaneous beer
using carbonic maceration in fruit for better flavor in fruit beers

And more.

This episode is brought to you by:

Old Orchard (https://www.oldorchard.com/brewer): Think outside the purée box and let your brand stand out with Old Orchard's craft concentrate blends. To join the core of Old Orchard's brewing community, learn more at oldorchard.com/brewer

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270: Sapwood Cellars Puts Research Into Creative Practice With Hoppy and Wild Beers Oct 28, 2022

Show notes

What do you get when Michael Tonsmiere, aka The Mad Fermentationist, and author of the book American Sour Beers joins forces with Scott Janish, author of The New IPA, to start a brewery in a Maryland suburb somewhere between Baltimore and Washington DC? Pretty much what you’d expect—a brewery that tends to focus on creative expressions in the pale ale and IPA space, as well as progressive approaches to wood-aged wild, funky, and sour beers. But Sapwood Cellars has done much more than just meet expectations over their first four years of existence—they’ve also honed approaches to both of these focuses, while creatively blending the two with smart mash-ups in the liminal space between them.

In this episode, the founders of Sapwood discuss:

the evolutionary “royal rumble” process behind their wild and sour beer program
building intensity of flavor and points of difference for more broad experiences
controlling acidity through processes like co-pitching sacch when adding fruit, dry-hopping finished sour beer
multi-step fermentations with wine yeasts
employing more potent hops to hold flavor at lower pH levels
avoiding oxidized hop flavors in sour beer through careful barrel preparation
aggressive rousing despite cold dry hop temperatures in hoppy beers
using hops with high survivables on the hot side
maximizing thiols with new yeasts
finding synergies in hops that produce more than just “generic” tropical flavors
the problem with Galaxy hops

And more.

This episode is brought to you by:

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269: GABF Gold! Deadwords and Wye Hill Talk Winning with Light Lager and Hazy Pale Ale Oct 25, 2022

Show notes

In this special GABF Gold edition of the podcast, Greg Winget of Wye Hill Brewing in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Alex Sarames of Deadwords Brewing in Orlando discuss their specific (and often unconventional) approaches to their respective gold medal–winning beers.

Winget and Wye Hill won gold with Luminous Beings, a hazy pale ale that uses a variety of current techniques to maximize flavor expression. He discusses:

brewing with 100 percent craft malt
mash-hopping for thiol precursors, character, and as a pH buffer
employing an unusually long whirlpool spin and soak cycle
fermenting at cooler temps with Cosmic Punch
two-stage dry hopping to avoid over-saturation
slow and measured transfers
the importance of soft water
packaging on a very small but low-DO canning line

Meanwhile, Sarames and Deadwords won gold with Bridge, an American light lager with an unusual hop choice. He discusses:

selecting Rahr North Star Pils for its light character
single-infusion mashing
using Vista as the sole hop in the beer
120-minute boils to drive off DMS precursors
switching to BSI’s Andechs Lager strain for fermentation
using the RO system to strip down and rebuild water
maintaining a clean facility

And more!

This episode is brought to you by:

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268: Garrett Ward of Sideward Layers Hops of Every Form in American and Hazy IPAs Oct 22, 2022

Show notes

Garrett Ward of Sideward Brewing in Orlando, Florida loves to tinker and experiment with new hop formats, and whether it’s hazy and juicy IPAs or their fruit-forward-but-structured American iterations (often now fermented with lager yeast), he’s constantly searching for ways to use these concentrated hop products to boost flavor and intensity.

In this episode, he discusses:

Using hazy IPA technique with American IPAs, and vice versa
Adding layers of hop flavors with classic “C” hops in combination with modern citrus and tropical fruit-forward hops
Maximizing the mix of flowable hop products in the whirlpool
Dry hopping with a hop cannon in multiple stages
Building hop blends high in survivable compounds
Maximizing thiols with yeast like Cosmic Punch

And more.

This episode is brought to you by:

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Old Orchard (https://www.oldorchard.com/brewer): Think outside the purée box and let your brand stand out with Old Orchard's craft concentrate blends. To join the core of Old Orchard's brewing community, learn more at oldorchard.com/brewer

Support Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

267: GABF Gold! Roadmap and Precarious Share Their Approaches to Gold-Medal-Winning Pilsner and Cold IPA Oct 18, 2022

Show notes

In this special episode of the podcast, we brought together segments with two brewers who both won gold medals at the recent Great American Beer Festival—Dustin Baker of Roadmap Brewing in San Antonio, Texas, and Adrian Garrett, head brewer of Precarious Beer Project in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Baker of Roadmap discusses: