This week Shawn and Tony talk about beer without hops, why distributors hate taprooms, the takeaway from last year’s beer sales numbers and the tough times they’re having over in Ellicott City, Md.  among other things. If you haven’t subscribed to our mailing list yet, here’s your opportunity to keep up to date with what we’ve got going on.

In the next few weeks we’ll be debuting a bi-monthly interview show speaking with brewers from all over the place as well as a new pairing project matching up cigars and beer.

Old World Beer Without Hops

People mostly drank beer without hops in the millennia before they stumbled upon hops as an additive. In fact, they tried almost all the other bitter herbs first, and some of them are coming back. Medieval beers called gruit are making something of a comeback as brewers try and find the other side of weird. In this week’s show Shawn and Tony discuss making and drinking gruit as a home brewer. From there it isn’t far to figuring adding fruits and brewing up fruit wines and ciders as the season kicks into high gear.

This Once-Extinct, Hop-Free Ale Is Making a Comeback

So you’ve sipped IPAs, chugged stouts, and savored porters, but have you tried a gruit ale? You may not have heard of it, but gruit ale was the go-to beer in the Middle Ages, and it’s now making a comeback. This beer recipe substitutes hops with other botanicals, which infuse gruit ales with a piquancy and sweetness.

The Coming Assault on Taprooms

Distributors are getting a little nervous about how popular tap rooms are. From their perspective every person that buys a beer in a taproom is stealing money from them. That’s because they paid good money to make sure state legislatures all over the country made it the law that they got a taste of every alcohol transaction. The workaround of taprooms not only lets the drinkers have a better selection, it also keeps the breweries solvent in their earlier years and helps them establish themselves as part of communities.

The recent craft brewers conference among other topics the brewers spoke about how to protect themselves as distributors come after their taprooms.

CBC: Industry Stakeholders Share Tactics for Building and Defending Taprooms | Brewbound.com

Taprooms and direct-to-consumer sales were hot topics during this year’s Craft Brewers Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. Two seminars — “Building Your Brand Through the Tasting Room” and “Defense and Promotion of Tasting Rooms” — focused on the phenomenon that has agitated some retailers and wholesalers, but the topic bled into other conversations throughout the week.

Brewery Floods

Ellicott City took a beating in the recent storm and they’re doing what they can to get organized, including collecting money and coordinating the rebuilding effort on the merchant’s Facebook Page. There’s a GoFundMe for the brewery employees if you’re interested in chipping in.

Baltimore-area businesses fundraise, offer jobs to displaced Ellicott City workers (Video) – Baltimore Business Journal

Like many of his fellow Ellicott City business owners, Timothy Kendzierski faces a long road ahead as he pre...