At its height, Pompano Beach’s Odd Breed in Pompano Beach was one of the best-regarded breweries in Florida, winning four GABF medals over a span of three years, and shipping mixed-culture beers to fans around the world. However, real-estate market forces ultimately worked against the niche brewery, and founder and brewer Matt Manthe closed up shop in the summer of 2024.

That’s no reason not to talk brewing, however, and Manthe learned plenty over his years shepherding his mixed cultures from homebrew to commercial scale, changing and adapting processes along the way. While he’s now brewing classic lager and ale styles in the mountains of Colorado—at Dillon Dam, about 70 miles west of Denver—mixed-culture beers still hold a strong place in his heart.

In this episode, he discusses:

And more.

This episode is brought to you by:

Support Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

Mark it down: Baltic Porter Day this year is January 18, always the third Saturday of this month. This year’s will be the 10th edition of a commemoration that began in 2016 in Poland, where rich, hefty, cool-fermented porters reign supreme. Marcin Chmielarz has worn many hats in the industry—bar manager, brewer, video blogger—but one of his most notable achievements is helping to draw Poland’s attention to its own distinctive porters.

In this episode, Chmielarz digs into the history of the style from the Polish perspective, while also highlighting the ingredients and techniques behind it—featuring great malt complexity but smooth character, high gravities, and patient fermentation with lager yeast. He also discusses modern iterations, including those that are dry-hopped, barrel-aged, or flavored with ingredients such as Polish smoked plums.

Along the way, the conversation also hits upon:

And more.

This episode is brought to you by:

Support Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

The city of Grodzisk Wielkopolski was once a major center of brewing in 19th century Poland, but political unrest, world wars, communism, and then misguided capitalism all played parts in closing the previous chapter of the city’s brewing history in the early 90’s. But the rise of craft beer also led to a resurgence in interest for obscure styles like the smoked wheat beer that made the city famous, and by 2016 a new group of owners relaunched the original Grodzisk brewery with a heartfelt mission—to share this homegrown Polish beer style with the world. In this episode, head brewer Marcin Ostajewski shares history and process for the style, as well as ways that modern brewers are keeping the style vibrant and alive through modern variations.

Through the episode, Ostajewski discusses:

And more.

This episode is brought to you by:

Support Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

This final episode of 2024 is our chance to look back at the conversations that resonated most with you, the listeners. Here, we count down the ten most-dowloaded episodes of the past year, with excerpts from each. The countdown includes:

This episode is brought to you by:

Support Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

It’s easy for New World brewers to lump Czech beer into the “historical” category, but—while many prominent brewers there focus intently on the lagers we all love—a growing contingent are also tackling evolving styles such as hazy IPA, fruited sour, pastry stout, and more—and they’re often doing it in their own ways.

In Louny, a historic town about 40 miles northwest of Prague, Pivovar Zichovec is just such a brewery. Lager is their biggest category, but they’re not locked solely into traditional styles, and they’ve been exploring just how far they can go in making trendier styles such as hazy IPA, but using Czech ingredients and processes.

In this episode, Zichovec’s Martin Urban, Adam Huml, and Honzik Petru discuss:

And more, including this take from Huml: “When you’re doing a triple decoction and you don’t have [a direct-fired kettle], you’re just burning gas.”

This episode is brought to you by:

Support Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

Kevin Ely spent many years running the brewhouse at Uinta’s production brewery in Salt Lake City, but family brought him to a farm in rural eastern Ohio. Built next to the farm where his wife grew up, Wooly Pig Farm Brewery is the result of applying big-brewery-systems thinking to the smallest, most self-sufficient farm scale. From embracing the imperfect but interesting well water on the farm to side-streaming brewhouse waste via their drove of Mangalica pigs, he’s using every tool available to reduce waste and costs while making the highest-quality beer.

In this episode, Ely discusses:

And more.

This episode is brought to you by:

Support Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

Dogfish Head has a reputation for pushing the envelope with culinary ingredients in their beer, and that penchant for experimentation was incorporated into the program at this year’s Brewer’s Retreat through this panel discussion on spices (and brewing with them), moderated by Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione and featuring Ethan Frisch of single-origin spice purveyor Burlap & Barrel along with the dynamic duo of Dogfish Head R&D—Mark Safarik and Bryan Selders.

In this episode, they discuss:

And more.

This episode is brought to you by:

Support Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

Barrel-aging is nothing new for Firestone Walker’s Matt Brynildson. He got his first exposure to the process while working for barrel-aging pioneer Goose Island in Chicago, and for the better part of two decades has been exploring the impact of wood, aging, and blending in the development of beer flavor at Firestone Walker. A post-pandemic initiative at the Paso Robles brewery, the Brewmaster’s Collective, has created new occasions to explore processes and approaches through collaborations with a range of brewer friends, and in this episode Brynildson is joined by two collaborators—Henok Fentie of Stockholm, Sweden’s Omnipollo, and Enzo Frauenschuh of Gundelfingen, Germany's FrauGruber. Together, they take a look at the similarities and differences in barrel-aged stout brewing in the United States and Europe. Along the way, they discuss:

And more.

Note: Firestone Walker is a media partner of Craft Beer & Brewing

This episode is brought to you by:

Support Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

The Best in Beer theme continues this week, as contributing editor Kate Bernot and hops insider Stan Hieronymus sit down with executive editor Joe Stange and cofounder and editorial director Jamie Bogner. Together, they discuss their personal favorites from the past year in beer, round-robin style, recorded live at Craft Beer & Brewing office in Fort Collins, Colorado. They each discuss their own top 10 beers as well as most their compelling beer experiences, meanwhile offering thoughts on trends that should give hope for the future of craft brewing around the world.

While we determine the magazine’s Best 20 Beers in 2024 via a combination of blind judges’ scores through the year plus additional blind tasting among this same crew, their personal picks are their own—from hedonistic choices to compelling stories that tell beer stories through their own eyes.

This episode is brought to you by:

Support Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

Our annual issue on the very Best in Beer today hits subscribers alongside this special, once-per-year episode of the Craft Beer & Brewing podcast. Hosts Jamie Bogner and Joe Stange reveal results from our annual Readers’ Choice survey—including your favorite breweries, beers, bars, and destination cities—as well as our Best 20 Beers in 2024, decided through a year of blind judging, and finally culminating in careful consideration by our editorial team, including Stan Hieronymus and Kate Bernot.

It’s an episode filled with insight, experiences, trends, memories, and even a few hot takes, as we take a closer look at the absolute Best in Beer today.

This episode is brought to you by:

Support Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast