Beervana Podcast

For the second year in a row, we have decamped to Loyal Legion, a local pub that reliably has one of the best selections of fresh hop beers in town. As we sit here and turn our tongues green, we’re going to discuss the hop harvest. Patrick and Jeff went down to Coleman Farms a few weeks back to witness it, and we’re going to walk you through the process that takes 20-foot tall bines sunning themselves in the field and turns them into the T-90 pellets breweries use to make beer.

After screwing around on the margins for a while, this week I really plunged into the fresh hop marketplace. What I've discovered has been both unusual and enlightening. Here's an early-season report.

We're not dead and neither is the podcast. Bear with us, kind and forgiving listeners.

As everyone knows, the three great lager-brewing regions are Bavaria, Bohemia, and Austria. Wait, Austria? Sure it was famous in the last century for Vienna lager, but what has it done lately? We have Franz Hofer on the show today to answer this very question. Franz splits his year between Oklahoma and Vienna and writes about the lager-lands on his website, Tempest in a Tankard. Austria is, no kidding, a truly special place where one of the world’s major styles whets the whistles of a nation—while somehow staying hidden from the rest of the world.

Find Franz at his website: https://tempestinatankard.com/

Music: Herbert von Karajan, "Austria: Land der Berge, Land am Strome"

In their latest Fireside Chat, Breakside Brewery's Ben Edmunds and Beervana's Jeff Alworth speak with three brewers whose breweries do not make hoppy ales. We wanted to hear why they chose this path, and what it entails. Because IPAs are overwhelmingly popular among craft beer drinkers, these breweries have had to create interest in other types of beer. How did they do that? And how does the future look for these breweries? Guests in this show:

• Bill Arnott, Founder and Brewer of Seattle’s Machine House Brewing.

• Dan Carey, Co-founder and Brewer of Wisconsin's New Glarus Brewing.

• Alex Ganum, Founder and Brewer at Portland’s Upright Brewing.

We have an unusual transcontinental edition of the Beervana Show for you today. We thought it would be fun to compare and contrast our summer vacation destinations. I’ve been in Maine for a couple weeks and Jeff took a trip to Oklahoma. We both visited breweries, drank some beer, and we will give our full report.

Both Jeff and I are about to go on excursions out of the state and away from our microphones, so today we’re doing the one, time-sensitive task left to us: addressing your mailbag comments and questions.

Illustration courtesy Midjourney. Prompt: drinking beer on holiday in the sunshine

Nearly a quarter century ago, veteran brewer Vinnie Cilurzo brewed a one-off double IPA at Russian River Brewing for a local festival. It would become a regular, bearing the somewhat obscure name of a Roman naturalist—Pliny the Elder. Pliny pretty soon became a cult phenomenon and ultimately the brewery’s calling card. But what makes it special—what makes it a classic—is how Vinnie anticipated the future of hoppy American ales and brewed the first truly modern IPA all those years ago.

PHOTO: Russian River Brewing

In 1976, a blind tasting of Chardonnays known as the Judgment of Paris changed the wine world forever. Today, in this podcast, we offer you no less an earth-shattering blind tasting, the Judgment of Lents. That’s right, it’s part two of our mass market lager blind tasting, held in a luxurious conference room at Zoiglhaus in the Lents neighborhood of SE Portland. Together, Zoiglhaus’s brewmaster Alan Taylor, Jeff, and Patrick sat down to taste the final six lagers and determine which deserved the title of world’s best.

A Breakside-Beervana Fireside Chat.

How did the American IPA tradition start? Are West Coast beers just about the bitter? Did hazies change everything? What did West Coast breweries take from the east—and how much did East Coast breweries crib from the west? Are there actually two different traditions? Just one? Dozens? American brewers, in reinventing IPAs, have changed the way the world makes beer. But how accurately do we understand our own story? We will get to the bottom of this once and for all.

Guests: Noah Bissell, Co-founder of Bissell Brothers Brewing (Portland, ME)

Vinnie Cilurzo, Co-founder and Brewmaster, Russian River Brewing (Santa Rosa, CA)

Mitch Steele, Co-owner and Brewmaster of New Realm (Atlanta), former Brewmaster of Stone Brewing

(Alexandra Nowell, sadly, was sick and couldn't join)