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.”

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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At the recent Brewer’s Retreat at Dogfish Head in Milton, Delaware, Steve Parker of Fidens (Albany, New York), Scott Janish of Sapwood Cellars (Columbia, Maryland), and Kelsey McNair of North Park (San Diego) answer questions about brewing hazy or New England–style IPA. In this episode, they discuss:

And more.

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In this special episode recorded at the recent Craft Beer & Brewing Brewer’s Retreat at Dogfish Head in Milton, Delaware, Khris Johnson of Green Bench (St. Petersburg, Florida), Doug Reiser of Burial (Asheville, North Carolina), and Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River (Windsor, California) share their answers to attendees’ questions about brewing IPA—focusing on the American and West Coast styles.

Along the way, they discuss:

And more.

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As a trained food scientist with 20 years of experience in the field, Eric Tennant entered the brewing world with a bit more background than most. And that background has served him well, as he considers both ingredients and processes required to achieve the beer flavors he envisions. Over the past few years, he’s focused Benchtop around foeder-aged lagers, but the constraints of the small brewery have led to a number of innovative process solutions. The techniques that he applies are making award-winning beer, too—Benchtop just recently took home a silver medal in Zwickelbier or Kellerbier at GABF, and their barrel-aged barleywine, Old Wooden Ship, was one of Craft Beer & Brewing’s 20 best beers of 2023.

In this episode, Tennant discusses:

And more.

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This second of two episodes recorded live at 3 Sons Lumberjack Day in September includes two separate interviews. First up is Alex Lawes, cofounder of Dublin, Ireland’s Whiplash—a modern brewery known for progressive styles, but also one that focuses on making those styles in low-ABV form for repeat drinkability. Next up is Grzegorz Ziemian, cofounder of Stu Mostów, a decade-old brewery in Wrocław, Poland, and one of several in that country that helped usher in a new wave of excitement for craft beer.

Through the discussion, among other topics, Lawes touches on:

Meanwhile, Ziemian discusses:

And more.

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