Natalie with Pliny the Younger 2025.

Natalie Cilurzo is back with the first taste of the 2025 Pliny the Younger, on Brew Ha Ha with Steve Jaxon and Herlinda Heras.

This will be the 21st release of Pliny the Younger. They used to release in February but during covid they moved it to last march early April. That turned out to be better for a lot of reasons. So this year the dates are March 21 through April 3.

They continue to do wholesale distribution to bars and restaurants in February. This helps them get an attraction during the slower winter months. Also, San Francisco Beer Week is coming. Today they are finishing the brewing and bottling and kegging, but the first people to taste it are on this show today.

Dan Berger is here as a special guest, and so is Mackenzie Miller, who is the host of Mid-days on the Krush, KRSH. Brew Ha Ha will do a remote broadcast March 27, to be confirmed. The last time we did a remote was when Windsor opened in 2018.

Since many people participate in Dry January, Russian River Brewing Co. produces a Hop Water, which is sparkling water flavored with Citra and Eldorado hops. It’s very refreshing.

Russian River Brewing Co. is open in Santa Rosa on 4th St. and at their big Windsor location. Visit their website for up-to-date hours, menus, beers and more.

Every year at Valentine’s Day they make a beer called Rejection, a dark beer made with Belgian yeast. It is toasty and has coffee flavors. It is 6.1% ABV. Dan Berger describes it as rich without being sweet, perfect for dry January because it finishes dry. It is available on tap only at the two pubs, or to-go in growlers.

Then they taste another beer called Docta-Ron, named after a New Zealand hop breeder. It is available in cans and on tap.

This is the 21st year of Pliny the Younger. Vinny Cilurzo tweaks the recipe every year and this year the long list of hops used includes a new one. It has an orange-y flavor and makes the 2025 Pliny the Younger, according to Dan Berger, the tastiest one ever.

Russian River Brewing Co. is also making a wildfire relief beer called We “heart” LA. A brewery in LA called Common Space started a fund raising beer. Here is their website. The beer is set to be released all at once by all the collaborators on March 7.

Now finally it is time to taste the Pliny the Younger 2025. Dan Berger declares it the most amazing beer ever produced. It is over 10% ABV and it is very dry and clear.

Amarillo, Citra, Mosaic, Nectaron, Simcoe, Warrior and Tangier. Tangier is a new hop from Washington and they like it for its orange flavors. Dan says the beer has more floral qualities than last year. The Pine flavors definiteliy come from the Simcoe. Dan says this beer is like a great wine, full of complexities and unexpected flavors.

They are kegging it tomorrow and it will start going out for distribution on Monday, Feb. 2. Look around at your usual bars and restaurants, look for your usual suspects… Happy hunting!

Visit our sponsor Pizzaleah in Windsor for the finest pizza menu and the most authentic flavors around! 🍕🍻

Mike Schnebeck from Fort Point Beer Co. in San Francisco is our guest in the studio today on Brew Ha Ha with Steve Jaxon and Herlinda Heras. Mike was on Brew Ha Ha once before in 2023, on this episode. Herlinda happily reports that Fort Point Beer Co. is actually growing and doing very well. They also are producing cider. And also, today is the eleventh anniversary of the first episode of Brew Ha Ha, back when Herlinda did the show with Joe Tucker. It was four years after that, on Feb. 8, 2018, that this podcast started. Cheers! 🍻

Mike and his two partners founded Fort Point Beer Co. ten years ago. Before that they ran another smaller brewery. The name Fort Point comes from the fort that is at the base of the Golden Gate bridge, on the city side. It is a famous landmark for locals in the know, and even if it is in the shadow of the Golden Gate bridge, the fort is not as widely known.

The first beer tasted is their KSA which is their take on a German Kolsch. This is their first non-alcoholic beer. They have a whole line of non-alcoholic beers. Many have a regular and a non alcoholic version.

Visit Russian River Brewing Co. on 4th St. and at their Windsor location. Click the logo to visit their website for hours, menus and beers on tap.

They spent about three years researching non-alcoholic brewing. They found that a specialized yeast strain gave them the best flavor. The beer had to taste good, and also taste as close as possible to real beer. People love the types of beer already, so they wanted to make the same varieties of beer in a nearly-zero alcohol version. With the special yeast, they are able to make great tasting beer but less than one percent alcohol. The brewing process is very similar, with some adjustments. Even Steve Jaxon found it hard to tell which of the tastings were the non-alcoholic ones.

SF Beer Week is coming in February. The Feb-Brew-ary promotion is also coming, in Santa Rosa.

You can order Fort Point beer at Fort Point Beer Co dot com They have a beer club subscription. They have a Fort Point Korean style lager with San Hu Wan in the Mission district, with the chef Cory Lee. They developed the recipe together. It uses Jasmine rice, Herlinda notices. It also uses Contessa hops which have a green tea floral flavor.

Visit our sponsor Pizzaleah in Windsor for the finest pizza menu and the most authentic flavors around! 🍕🍻

Watch the Fort Point social media for up-to-the-minute news about events around San Francisco.

Pizzaleah is a new sponsor of Brew Ha Ha. Leah Scurto has been on the show a few times before, the last time was this episode on August 29, 2024.

Steve, Mark and Herlinda

Our former co-host Mark Carpenter is back with us for a visit today on Brew Ha Ha with Steve Jaxon and Herlinda Heras. His last visit was this episode in July of 2021. For a long time Mark Carpenter was the co-host of this show. He was the brew master at Anchor until he retired.

Mark has news about the present status of Anchor Brewing. Sapporo decided to close it but an investor has bought the company and is slowly working on restoring the location and the company. Here is an article from AP news about that.

The new owner, Hamdi Ulukaya, has plans to revitalize Anchor Brewing, which everyone agrees is good news. He is the very successful founder of Chobani Yogurt so he is certainly ready and qualified for the job.

Mark says he is taking his time about it and has a good approach similar to that of Fritz Maytag, the previous owner who also bought Anchor and revitalized it in the early 1970s when Mark Carpenter started there.  Both Fritz Maytag and Hamdi Ulukaya are openly enthusiastic about the meaning and importance of a business like Anchor as a valuable cultural asset.

Mark briefly tells the story of how he found Anchor. He had been working for the telephone company. He took a tour of Anchor and liked the place enough to ask for a job. It was a small place and had three employees. Mark considers himself lucky to have been hired and to have found Fritz to be such an enlightened owner who gave Mark a book about brewing and sent him to take brewing courses in Michigan.

Russian River Brewing Co. is open in Santa Rosa on 4th St. and at their big Windsor location. Visit their website for up-to-date hours, menus, beers and more info.

Mark has brought a bottle of Truman Royal Ale for Herlinda as a birthday present. It was brewed in England in 1982 to celebrate the birth of Prince William. Anchor Brewing’s Liberty Ale was the first modern IPA brewed in the United States. They didn’t call it IPA, but it had all of the characteristics. Herlinda’s video interview with Mark Carpenter, Tony Magee and Don Barkley is also still on display at the Museum of Sonoma County.

It’s Herlinda’s birthday! Happy Birthday Herlinda!

Herlinda and Stuart.

Sake sommelier Stuart Morris is our guest today on Brew Ha Ha with Steve Jaxon and Herlinda Heras, with Hachidori Sake.

Stuart Morris is a sake sommelier trained in Japan and is a former partner with Kenichi Tominaga of Hana in a sake distribution company. He was a chef “in a previous life” and discovered sake while working in restaurants. He made lots of effort to get to Japan and he learned sake making there.

They begin tasting some sake and noticing the flavors. One is light and clean with lemon, cucumber and melon rind flavors. He makes three types of sake, with different rices and yeasts. He became one of the first six non-Japanese people to get the Japanese sake certification. His own label is called Hachidori which means hummingbird in Japanese.

Sake is brewed in a process that is close to beer brewing. It is made from rice, water and koji, a mould. He grows it in an 80-degree humid room, so the temperature needs to be just right. There is a sake museum, the only one in the US, in Berkeley, that shows the history of sake production. The milling of the rice has an effect on the flavor, the more milled, the more delicate the flavor. You have to taste it to understand it. The highest ABV sake is 20%. His mentor in Japan is a 10th generation sake maker.

Visit Russian River Brewing Co. on 4th St. and at their Windsor location. Click the logo to visit their website for hours, menus and beers on tap.

Stuart worked at Hana where he became friends with the Tominaga family. He later became a partner with Ken in a sake distribution company, before he took the job he has now.

These bottles of Hachidori sake are the very first ones that Stuart has produced for sale. They will be rolling out into some retail and restaurants. They will range in price from about $30/35, then one at about $45, then one at about $100. Sake does not age like wine and usually fresher is better. Stuart stores it in a fridge or at a white wine temperature.

Sake rice is very high in starch. The more glucose, the more starch, the more elegant style of sake you will get.

When Stuart is helping restaurant customers choose sake, he starts by asking them what they like. Some people’s wine preferences are a way to predict what sake one would also like. The key is to drink some sake to taste it and find out what you like.

hiveworks mead co.

Sean Duckworth, COO and Alexander Mendoza, CEO of Hiveworks Mead Co. are back on Brew Ha Ha with Steve Jaxon and Herlinda Heras. The last time they were on the show was this episode back on February 22, 2024.

Steve Jaxon starts by asking Sean and Alex simply to tell about mead. It is an alcoholic fermented beverage made from honey. Mead is probably the oldest fermented beverage in human history, is gluten free and has tons of flavor, so what’s not to love? It takes about six weeks from beginning the brewing process to when it is delivered. Mead is like honey in that it is not perishable. It might lose some of its flavor but it does not go “off.”

Herlinda remembers finding great mead in Finland when she was there to judge a beer and Sahti competition. Braggot is a style of mead that can have stronger flavor and higher alcohol, but which also uses grain in its production. The term Honeymoon refers to drinking mead for a month after getting married.

They are based in Rohnert Park. One of their products just won a Silver medal in its category in the first competition they have been able to enter.

Mead is actually the fastest growing sector of the alcoholic beverage industry today. The TV series Game of Thrones had a lot to do with raising awareness of mead and making it more popular. Since their style of mead is relatively light, that makes it easy for people to try it and get to know it.

Their overall style is a Dry mead, with no residual sugar. Some other meads are sweeter and thicker. Another mead is hopped. Their hopped mead is not a braggot because there is no use of grain.

Herlinda wants to mention President Carter who signed California Senator Alan Cranston’s bill to allow home brewing in the US. That was the one legal change that let the home brewing movement begin.

Alex and Sean have known each other since the second grade. They were home brewing in their early twenties. It didn’t hurt that they also played a little D&D. So at one point they realized that there was no commercial product similar to their idea.

They are expanding their distribution throughout the Bay Area into restaurants and shops. They will double their production capacity in the next year. Watch out for Hiveworks Mead Co.!

Phaedra Achor

Flora Luna Apothecary founder Phaedra Achor is back on Brew Ha Ha with Steve Jaxon and Herlinda Heras today. Phaedra was also on Brew Ha Ha almost exactly two years ago on this episode on Dec. 22, 2022.

There is big news in the beer world. Herlinda reports that RateBeer dot com is closing. Our friend and former co-host Joe Tucker sold it to a big brewing company several years ago. Buying a big beer ratings company, only to shut it down, looks like a corporate power play. There may be buyers who wish to purchase its assets. A lot of site users have postings there that date back many years. There are a lot of stakeholders who have questions. Herlinda will try to get Joe Tucker to come on the show soon to tell us more about it.

Flora Luna Apothecary is Phaedra’s company that produces botanical bitters, syrups and infusions, for creating uniquely flavorful cocktails and other beverages.

Phaedra has a lot to say about holiday cocktails. The first one she is making in the studio today, named Festival of Lights, is a celebration of Hanukkah. It is a gin fizz made with olive oil which gives it a unique flavor and texture.

Visit Russian River Brewing Co. on 4th St. and at their Windsor location. Click the logo to visit their website for hours, menus and beers on tap.

Bitters are botanical extracts, made from three components, a bark, a root and an aromatic botanical. Then, when you macerate them in an alcohol base, you extract the bitter compounds. Traditionally they were a medicinal, used to soothe the gut. Angostura bitters are the most famous example. Syrups are similar to bitters but they are more an infusion, with the ingredient cooked in the syrup.

Phaedra formulates all the recipes and makes everything herself. Her website has all of her products. Her quarterly subscription box contains seasonal concoctions four times a year. The recipes that come with it can be made with or without alcohol.

Flora Luna began in 2015 when Phaedra threw a cocktail party and made five different kinds of bitters for the occasion. They were a hit and some guests were really impressed. This encouraged Phaedra, then she realized that there was interest in cocktails and a lack of great bitters on the market. For the rest of the show they continue tasting and discussing some beautiful craft cocktails.

Herlinda Heras and Kevin McGee

Kevin McGee from Anderson Valley Brewing Company joins Steve Jaxon and Herlinda Heras on Brew Ha Ha today. AVBC is the official brewery of the 2024 Great Dickens Christmas Fair at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Kevin McGee has been on this show a few times, most recently this episode on May 2, 2024.

Anderson Valley Brewing Company has been in business for 37 years. Their entire property is now licensed as a beer tasting room. There is a disc golf course on the site now. They like to offer an experience a little more memorable than just drinking a beer. His family bought the company in 2019 and they also relaunched the Healdsburg Beer Company.

Visit Russian River Brewing Co. on 4th St. and at their Windsor location. Click the logo to visit their website for hours, menus and beers on tap.

Kevin tried making wine at home but without success. His wife suggested he try beer, so he changed his business plan in 2007. At the time it was hard to sell the beer, but Guy Fieri’s restaurant was one of the first customers. AVBC was the first brewery to use only solar energy. They also have a completely self-contained water system that draws water from wells on the property and returns all their used water to the ground on site.

This year AVBC is the official brewery of the Great Dickens Christmas Fair at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, from November 23 through December 22, from 10am-6pm.

Jeffery House and Herlinda Heras

Jeffery House is back on Brew Ha Ha with Steve Jaxon and Herlinda Heras, with news about the company he founded and is back managing now. Jeffery has been on Brew Ha Ha before. His most recent visit was this episode last May, after his book was released.

He sold Ace Cider to Vintage Wine Estates which burned through money and declared bankruptcy. He and his sons attempted to buy the brand back. They went to an auction in New York for the assets. They “got pipped at the post” as a third-generation Budweiser distributor had the winning bid. But Jeffery approached them offering his services and they accepted it. Jeffery is confident that in a year or two they should be back to where they were. Jeffery mentions that they had been debt free for five years and their distribution was getting really strong. The consumers have been very loyal. Awareness of the brand is strong and they are happy with the compliments they are receiving now.

Jeffery House’s book The Cider King came out in May. It is his autobiography, tracing his life from England, in the advertising business, coming to America, starting to import British beer into America. He encountered cider while in the beer business. The book goes through all the events from his discovery of the Sebastopol apple orchards to the founding and growth of Ace Cider.

Visit Russian River Brewing Co. on 4th St. and at their Windsor location. Click the logo to visit their website for hours, menus and beers on tap.

Their ciders range from 5% to 8% ABV but the alcohol is not as prominent in the flavor profile, compared to beer. They discovered a strong demand in the Hispanic market, for example there are about 500 taps of Ace Cider in El Paso, TX.

Herlinda mentions that cider is a great choice for holiday meals and also for toasts. Jeffery says you could pour his Joker cider and it will pass for California sparkling wine.

Jeffery’s wife was in the cantina scene of Star Wars, she was an intergalactic spy smoking a hookah pipe in the bar.

In the western part of Britain, cider is a more popular drink than beer. Bretagne, in northwest France, is also the home of cider in France. That is also the land of crepes and their classic combination is any kind of crepes with a glass of cider.

Cider is gluten free, low calorie and refreshing. It is also versatile, so you can drink it alone or with anything. Cider is actually made more like wine than beer and is taxed as wine too. You make it in a couple of weeks. You can vintage age it but it doesn’t have to undergo all that. It is growing in popularity as people gain awareness of it. That is a different than the trajectory of some of those seltzer drinks. They shot up in popularity then down again (kind of like shaking a can, opening it, getting a big splash, then just a wet mess).

Author Tara Nurin is back on Brew Ha Ha with Steve Jaxon and Herlinda Heras, after judging at Bahia Beer in Brazil with Herlinda last week.

Tara Nurin and Herlinda Heras were in Bahia, Brazil last week, to be judges at the Bahia Beer Festival of the Brazilian International Beer Awards. They discovered Brazilian drinks and steakhouse style, and did a city tour of Salvador, the capital, too. Bahia is the part of Brazil closest to Africa and since colonial times has had the largest African population. Bahia is not on the main tourist path so the Bahia promoters were very happy to meet the international beer crowd. It also seemed that the locals were actively participating and happy that they were all there. Tara is the author of “A Woman’s Place Is In the Brewhouse.” She got a standing ovation at the end of a presentation she gave about diversity and wellness in the industry.

Herlinda found Brazilian beer flavored with Acerola cherries and a lot of dark beers. There is a type of Brazilian beer called Catarina Sour, from Santa Catarina. Tara found that the overall quality of the Brazilian beers was exceptionally high.

Visit Russian River Brewing Co. on 4th St. and at their Windsor location. Click the logo to visit their website for hours, menus and beers on tap.

Here is the results page at the Bahia Beer Festival website. (Use the handy Google translate button to read the Portuguese page in English.)

They also discovered the Brazilian steakhouse style called churrascaria, which serves all kinds of roasted meats on skewers. There is a large Japanese population there too and they found one churrascaria restaurant that also had a sushi bar. Herlinda reports that a top class resort with unlimited drinks cost only $70 per day.

Cashaça is a distilled spirit similar to rum, used to make a cocktail called a Caipirinha. Herlinda brought some back and will make one for Steve soon, but not today. We also hear from Tara Nurin about her plans to offer consulting services focussed on wellness in the beverage industry.

After the competition, Herlinda and Tara received this message from the organizers: 

Brew Ha Ha with Steve Jaxon and Herlinda Heras today features a call from Herlinda in Bahia, Brazil, where she is a judge at Bahia Beer, part of the Brazilian International Beer Awards. Mark Carpenter is also joining Steve Jaxon in the studio today. He was head brewer at the now-closed Anchor Brewing for more than four decades. He was also this show’s co-host for many years.

Herlinda is in Bahia, which is in the north of Brazil. It is a city and region with a mixed history. Since it is the port closest to Africa it was a center of the early slave trade into Brazil. It remains one of the most ethnically diverse regions in the country.

There are over 1000 beers up for tasting and judging and about 25 judges. The resort on the beach is delightful and cost only $70 per night. They are judging beers from 8am to 6pm for two consecutive days.

Visit Russian River Brewing Co. on 4th St. and at their Windsor location. Click the logo to visit their website for hours, menus and beers on tap.

Mark will have to come back to hear more about Brazil when Herlinda returns. He describes his time in Romania, where everything is less expensive on the exchange. For example, his friend spends $7 per month for TV and cell service. Mark recommends Romania to everyone. The food is great and the people are very friendly. Up in the north the picturesque homes and villages seem stuck in past time.