Cincy Brewcast

I can finally let this cat outta the bag, and thank god – I hate keeping secrets! Recently I teamed up with the awesome folks over at the Fowling Warehouse, and with Merrell from Cincy By The Pint to create what we know is going to be a beer festival unlike any other festival that you’ve ever seen before.

Every beer is handpicked by Merrell and me, the food trucks are hand selected, there’s gonna be mystery beer machine picks by us… it’s gonna be pretty awesome.

So… in an effort to introduce you to ‘Beer, Booze, and Bonks’ I met up with Merrell at Nine Giant Brewing in Pleasant Ridge to grab a couple beers and talk about the festival and what we’ve been planning.

I hope that you are as excited about this as we are.

I really, really love a good Oktoberfest… the beer, and the parties that come around them. Sonder definitely knows how to throw a great one, too. I sat down with a few friend to talk about just that… we drank a few beers and dove into why “Oktoberfest is a feeling”. From there we meandered around a few other topics including some beer trends, and what makes all this work.

This one makes me really happy, I live for nights like this! It might be a little chaotic a time (there were definitely beers…) but I hope you get as much joy from hearing the show as we did from making it!

If you’re looking for all the information about THIS year’s Oktoberfest celebration – check out this!

It’s been a year since I sat down with Garrett Hickey at Streetside Brewing Company, and I feel like every single time we get to chat over a beer, the world looks completely different as it did before. The brewery keeps adapting to the world around them, while further defining who they are and this time is no exception to that.

They’re in the middle of planning their big fifth anniversary celebration, while at the same time prepping things for their Demogorgon day in October, and we cracked into a couple beers to talk about it all.

From Pastry stouts to NE IPAs and Fruited Berliners… there are a ton of great things that you can get excited about from Streetside!

I hate the term gateway beer, because it makes it seem like you should only be drinking these beers as a way “in” to something “better” – and as we see in this episode, some of these are still pretty tasty, and some of them still deserve our respect.

This episode is a little bit different than a normal episode of Cincy Brewcast – I met up with Marco, and we hit up a very… different type of location for the show. We drank a few beers that you might not have dove into in recent time… and had a blast doing it.

It’s been quite a few years since Listermann Brewing Company opened their doors, and as they prepare for their 13th anniversary party, it seems like it might be a good time to sit down with them and talk about the road that they’ve travelled to get here. In the last year or so there have been a lot of changes around the brewery, which opens up a great topic of who they are today. What defines the Listermann personality? We explored it all, from the beer to the people to all the little things that come in the middle.

Listermann is never done evolving, and I’m thrilled that we get the chance to be along for that ride.

When I tell you that I have been waiting to do this show for the last four years – I’m not making that up. They are getting ready to celebrate their fourth anniversary, and this is the first “official” show that we’ve done together… it’s been a long time coming.

This episode goes through it all, Brian McGinnis is the head brewer and co-founder of Grainworks and we started with his road through starting as a homebrewer all the way to where they are today as a growing craft brewery.

We explored their actual growth itself – with their recent taproom expansion and how it helped them survive through Covid last year.

Of course… we drank a few beers, too. Brother James and Katie Albers walked us through not just some of the fun new stuff that they’re cranking out currently – but how it all fits into the current landscape of craft beer across the region.

This is a great one!

This week is a big one for the folks out at the Casual Pint in Hamilton, and as you know from how many times I’ve found myself recording shows out in Hamilton in the last few months – I’m in love with the city and how hard it’s working to turn their downtown area into a destination for folks all across Cincinnati.

If you do the math – it means I’m thrilled to get back out and record at Casual Pint during their anniversary celebration!

The Cincinnati beer news has had plenty of big things happening, with the biggest for me probably being the word finally hitting the streets that Warped Wing is about to open up a new location in Mason. I sat down with Casual Pint’s Andy Foltz (you remember that guy, right?) and we talked about not just their celebration, but dove in deep to the Warped Wing news, too. The conversation quickly moved into some of the other “outside breweries” that we’ve seen come into town, and what makes non-cincy breweries become part of the scene or not.

It’s a big conversation that I can guarantee we aren’t done having on the Brewcast!

When we last sat down with the folks at Middletown’s N.E.W. Ales it was March of 2020. The brewery was brand new, excited for the future, and they had big plans on running their nano brewery as a production only space for the near future. I don’t want to spoil anything if you just woke up from a coma, but 2020 was pretty messed up.

Everything changed.

N.E.W. Ales was forced to very quickly do something that craft breweries have proven to be great at – adapt. The brewery started doing beer to go, and then put together a fantastic outdoor beer garden, and then a small taproom in their space. When I say small, I’m not just exaggerating – it’s tiny – but that’s part of their magic.

This week we sat down, had a few beers and talked about what makes it all work. How do you shift with things when you’re that new? They’ve handled all of these changes better than a lot of folks would have anticipated them to – and the beer that they’re putting out is great, too.

It’s certainly worthy of a long conversation!

Craft beer isn’t just about what’s in your glass – I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get that point across. That’s sort of the focus of this week’s episode of Cincy Brewcast, too. I say sort of because it was a last minute show addition after a (very justified) cancellation from Braxton this week (Huge congrats to Evan Rouse and his wife on the addition of their baby girl to their family – it warms my heart to think of those two as parents!).

The folks at Cartridge were kind enough to drop what they were doing and invite me over to the brewery for an episode of the Brewcast (they even treated me to dinner, and sent my wife some beer home too… they know how to keep peace in my house just as much as they know how to create a beautiful brewery experience!)

What makes drinking craft beer so amazing, if it’s not just about what’s in your glass? We dive in deep, drink a few beers and talk about the beer experience that we all love!

Beer Festivals are near and dear to the hearts of many craft beer drinkers – it’s where we used to scour the room for the things we had never heard of before, or the things we were afraid to commit to when we were shopping in the store. As we continued on our craft beer journey, they became the places that we we go to socialize with groups of friends, or find the rare kegs that didn’t hit distribution that often. We’ve always loved them… but they’ve grown and changed. Craft Beer Festivals can get a little… different sometimes, and not that different is bad – but sometimes we want a festival that’s classic, that makes us feel good – and especially one that we might not have to drive downtown to get to.

If any of that sounds familiar, that hopefully you’re aware of Brews in the Burbs – a beer festival that is classic, yet feels revolutionary. The beer list is amazing. Food trucks aplenty, and live music to keep the night going. This outdoor festival is so much fun that I had to record an episode from this years event.

I was joined by a few familiar faces (and some new-to-the-show ones too) to help paint the picture of what makes Brews in the Burbs so freaking spectacular!