Cincy Brewcast

Cellar Dweller has been slowly upping their game, and putting out some new stuff for a while now, and hot off the heals of an Oktoberfest that I fell in love with, they just released their big (and hyped up) stout with peanut butter and chocolate, called Puzzle Pieces. Sounds like a great opportunity to pull their assistant brewer Marco into the studio for a Brewcast, right?

We drink both the new stout and their big Double Dry Hopped NE IPA called Governor Morrow, as well as a few other surprise goodies, and talk about the process that they went thorough in creating the new beers. We even try to get a little bit of a sneak peek into what might be coming down the road.

It’s a good old fashioned studio show, and a fun one at that!

It’s hard to be a fan of Cincinnati beer for very long before you get sucked into the history of this city and the beverage that we all call a hobby. The storied past of Cincinnati is one that Don Heinrich Tolzmann knows extremely well, and I was lucky enough this week to sit down with him to talk about it alongside his new book called Cincinnati’s Beer Baron’s in the Golden Age of Brewing.

We dive into the topic with a beer in hand, and try to figure out what made Beer Baron’s so important to what this city used to be – as well as trying to figure out if such a thing can (or does) still exist in today’s very different beer community.

Don Heinrich Tolzmann

Self Serve taps might one of the biggest things that you’ve heard about Anderson’s Big Ash Brewing… but this former Collaborative Brewing CO-OP has a lot more going for it than that. We settled into a seat on their warm sunny patio this week to dive into a couple of their great beers and to learn a little bit more about who they are.

We explored the pathway that got them to this point, and then outlined what you can expect when you head over for a point or two yourself. It’s another fun one, and always a good time when we get the chance to welcome a new brewery into the fold of Cincinnati Craft Beer.

I feel like I’ve heard people saying that lagers are going to be the next big thing in craft beer for a long time now. When you dive into the tap lineup at West Side Brewing in Westwood you definitely catch that vibe… I’ll tell you that! On this week’s episode we look deep into not just some of the beers that they brew, but why they brew them and what that might mean for the craft beer community at large.

There’s some really amazing stuff happening on the West Side of town – and this episode is just a tiny peek into that!

It’s still Oktoberfest season in Cincinnati, and as long as the Marzens are flowing, I’m gonna be drinking them!  This week we join Andy Reynolds at Alexandria Brewing Company for their ‘Alexandriafest’ where they were tapping this year’s Oktoberfest alongside some other great beers.

Andy has become my goto “style and beer science” nerd, so I wanted to see if I could finally get to the bottom of this whole festbier/marzen thing… all the while drinking something really tasty.  We definitely did that and more with a show that went a little longer than planned!

The title of this week’s episode isn’t really all that fair. While yes… the show was at the 2019 Mason Oktoberfest, which was hosted by Sonder Brewing company, the reason that I fell in love with the event in the first place was because it’s so ‘All encompassing’.  Somewhere around 18 different local breweries all came together to showcase their Oktoberfests… Marzens, Festbiers, German Party Lagers… they call came together in an incredible display of German happiness.

I sat down with not just some folks from Sonder, but some other perfect examples of some of the other pieces of the Cincinnati Craft Beer community.  Our conversation ranged from (of course) German style beer, to brewery closings and what it means for the community.  We touch on hard seltzer and if it grows the craft beer market, or takes away from it.  The wind whipped us in a frenzy, and the beer kept us cool headed.

It was an awesome time!

I just wrote last night about Streetside’s upcoming anniversary (make sure you know about that) but this week’s episode of the brewcast is about a lot more than just them celebrating another year. The brewery is in the middle of a phase in their life where they are getting to settle in, and really figure out who they are and what that looks like for us as drinkers and fans.

The last time we were out at Streetside to talk to owner Garrett Hickey, he talked a lot about their wood aged program, and the decision that they are in a lot of ways forced to make to lean into the sours, or the big bourbon barrel aged beers. This episode dives even deeper into the philosophy behind the decision and what it means for the actual people that are making these beers for us.

It’s been more than a year since we last sat down with Mark and Amy at Mason’s Common Beer Company, and in that time the brewery has been rolling along and finding their place in the ever-growing Cincinnati beer community.

This week we dive into how their role has changed, evolved and defined itself from the inside out. We explore what it means to be a neighborhood brewery in a city like Cincinnati and how they listen through the noise to find what’s important and what isn’t.

Of course… along the way we also drink a few beers to keep things exciting!

It’s a never ending evolution… this thing that we call craft beer. On every side of things from the creators all the way down to us drinkers, but a side that has long intrigued me is that of the retailer. We were joined this week by Ben Capodagli who owns and runs Cappy’s, a store that has become a household name to nearly every beer drinker in Cincinnati. We wanted to explore this side of things that we often take for granted. What makes a store not just work, but become special? How does the relationships between the store and local taprooms change as the very idea of a taproom changes? It’s complicated, and the dance of the retailer is a beautiful one when you step back and watch.