Expert interviews, brewing insights, and industry trends.
Anchor’s storied past and pivotal role in American beer inform every brewing decision the company makes today, and while some things change, the brewing leadership at Anchor is committed to steam beer in theory and in practice.
John Harris has seen it all in his 36-year brewing career—huge process improvements, giant shifts in ingredient quality and range, and a parade of trends that continues today—but the through line in his long career is figuring out how to connect consumers to flavorful beer.
In this new bonus format for the podcast, Weldwerks founder Neil Fisher takes your direct questions on brewing everything from thick stouts to IPA and hefeweizen.
Matt Van Wyk cut his teeth on barrel-aged beers in Chicago in the ’00s, but with Alesong—in the bucolic winery-filled hill country of the southern Willamette Valley—he and cofounder Brian Coombs have built a brewery focused solely on barrel-aged beer.
Some write off quick-soured fruit beers for their simplicity, but they don’t have to be basic. Building complex flavors that reflect the entire fruit is Cornett’s goal, and nothing is off-limits in that pursuit.
Smooj lit up the craft beverage world in 2020, its thick fruit-puree approach a stark counterpoint to more minimalist seltzer offerings. In this episode, head brewer Nick Panchamé gets into the methods behind the fruit-heavy madness, and into new experiments with hop-forward beers.
Recorded in front of a live audience at Great Notion in Portland, Oregon, this panel discussion on trendy beer styles ranges from innovation philosophy to testing and feedback process with perspective from these three leading brewers.
Andy Hooper built a reputation for tight focus on process, and his efforts have paid off with dominating performances in the light lager category at major competitions. In this episode, he discusses the processes behind the brewing, including his use of organic, California-grown craft malt.
Pulpit Rock is all about the stuff. Their highly prized adjunct stouts have garnered much consumer and critical acclaim, and it’s not hard to understand why—their process isn’t your everyday way of adding nuts into beer.
Recorded at the Wild Friendship Blend event at Russian River Brewing, this conversation among friends and peers explores questions of common practice and unique adaptations across spontaneous brewing in markedly different environments.
Northern California’s Slice Beer has quickly built a reputation for evocative and expressive IPAs in both West Coast and hazy veins. Partner and head brewer Zack Frasher shares his philosophy and technique for brewing with hops across styles.
The chemical engineer turned head brewer for London’s Wildcard Brewery is a popular TV presenter in the UK, and her accessible style backed with impeccable brewing knowledge helps her demystify complex styles like hazy pale ale and mixed culture saison.
The Wyoming-born brewmaster of the Private Landbrauerei Schönram in southeastern Bavaria digs into the details of how they brew their captivating, award-winning lagers.
At the 2022 World Beer Cup, California’s Wild Fields won four gold medals—a feat no craft brewer had achieved. But those who’ve followed the career of Ryan Fields aren’t entirely surprised—his studious approach has been paying dividends for years.
New Zealand’s Garage Project may not be a household name in North America, but between their work with local hop growers, Phantasm powder, and crowd-pleasing fest pours, they’ve built a reputation among peers for creativity and honest experimentation.
Scholars have long argued that alcohol is a way of “cheating” the brain’s pleasure circuits. But in his book, “Drunk,” Edward Slingerland synthesizes research that shows our success as a species is linked to our 14,000-year relationship with beer.
Through his career, Cohesion’s Eric Larkin has always gravitated to breweries with narrower style focuses. Now, with the Czech-style lager focus of his new endeavor, he’s exploring the creativity possible within the bounds of style expectations.
In the Chicago suburb of Lake Zurich, Illinois, Beth May and Lane Fearing of Roaring Table have built a small, unassuming brewery that's making waves with an impressive variety of styles.
The R&D director of the Chicago-based yeast purveyors combines her brewhouse experience with years of lab work in yeast genetics to help brewers understand how yeast does—and doesn’t—create stable haze.
Minnesota’s Surly Brewing has a reputation for brash and unapologetic beers, but head brewer Ben Smith is exploring ways to maximize flavor in IPAs by doing less, not more.
For Austin Jevne, cofounder of Forager in Rochester, Minnesota—and now owner and head brewer of the Humble Forager brand—creative flavors are the crux of brewing.
When the former head brewer of a prominent Texas brewery left the large-scale production world for his own small project, the reasons were as much systemic as they were creative. Now, his Costa Rican-based brand is poised to grow… and tell new stories.
Tilquin’s strategy for blending gueuze is one part romance, one part math, as the experience he’s developed with lambics from different Belgian brewers informs every piece of the blend—from age to technical performance and flavor.
Known for their high-gravity beers and irreverent attitude, the Struise Brouwers have injected fresh energy into Belgian beer over the past two decades. Yet the systems they’ve built to brew these big beers are as creative as the beers themselves.