That’s right! Besides being fresh hop season, pumpkin season, and festbier season, it’s also homebrew competition season.

We’re lucky to be joined this week by Dustin Striplin from the Browns Point Homebrew Club to talk about their iconic Lights Out! Dark Beers Only competition making its return. With him is Phil Saurer, representing both Browns Point and the still young Peninsula Fermentation Society, to introduce their brand new All-American Homebrew Competition, featuring only American-developed styles of beer.

Tune in to hear what sort of work goes into running these events, the challenges organizers face, and if you’re a brewer yourself, jot down the info you need to register for these two exceptional competitions and get critical feedback on improving your beers at home.

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Alright, Grit & Grainers! Please email us at [email protected] with your comments, opinions, and where you can enter your Lucky Charms marshmallow dry-hopped mead. You can subscribe to GGP on YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, and iHeartRadio, and please leave us a review. Be sure to also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

If this podcast is not what you expected, please alter your expectations. No such thing as a bad time to visit Tacoma. No such thing as too much barleywine. Tune in next Friday for more sweet chatter. Cheers!

The post Episode 158: Homebrew Competition Season! appeared first on Grit & Grain Podcast.

We are just about a week away from the most wonderful time of the year for Pacific Northwest beer nerds — fresh hop season!  The chaotic, beautiful, and fleeting annual period where hops are plucked from the bines they grow on and thrown straight into beers while they are still dripping with aromatic oily goodness.

We are spoiled to have so many fantastic breweries that make incredible versions of these beers each year and we figured we would take a week, crack a few beers, and go through some ones we’re most excited for (shout out to our buddy Austin Patjens for publishing his own fresh hops wish list on the day we recorded!). Grab a notepad and tune in for the scoop on which breweries we’ll be hunting for this season.

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Alright, Grit & Grainers! Please email us at [email protected] with your comments, opinions, and favorite fresh hop beers from the past. You can subscribe to GGP on YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, and iHeartRadio, and please leave us a review. Be sure to also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

If this podcast is not what you expected, please alter your expectations. No such thing as a bad time to visit Tacoma. No such thing as too much barleywine. Tune in next Friday for more sweet chatter. Cheers!

The post Episode 157: Fresh Hop Season Preview appeared first on Grit & Grain Podcast.

It’s that time of year again! Brew Five Three Beer & Music Festival, Tacoma’s biggest beer taster-glass gathering, kicked off in a new location this year, the historic Armory building, and we were lucky enough to be invited back for another live show. We get into some highlights of the festival, our favorite beers of the day, and our best buddy and beer festival specialist, Gini Sommer, hops on the mic to talk about her work leading up to the big event.

Tune in for all the live show shenanigans and be sure to follow Tacoma Arts Live for future Brew Five Three news.

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Alright, Grit & Grainers! Please email us at [email protected] with your comments, opinions, and favorite you tasted at Brew Five Three. You can subscribe to GGP on YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, and iHeartRadio, and please leave us a review. Be sure to also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

If this podcast is not what you expected, please alter your expectations. No such thing as a bad time to visit Tacoma. No such thing as too much barleywine. Tune in next Friday for more sweet chatter. Cheers!

The post Episode 156: Live from Brew Five Three Beer and Music Festival! appeared first on Grit & Grain Podcast.

Nestled in the small downtown area of Renton, Wash., a sleeping giant of a brewery is starting to make giant waves.

We are joined by the family-owned and operated Four Generals Brewing. Brewer Ross, parents and business partners Mary and Mike, and Sales Manager Ali all took to the mic this week to tell the story of this small brewery doing huge things — including winning a silver medal at the most recent World Beer Cup!

Crack a classic Altbier, Kolsch, or Helles and tune in to hear how Four Generals pursues perfection and produces beer that truly transports the drinker to the streets of Germany with every sip.

The post Episode 155: German Purity Law (wink wink) with Four Generals Brewing appeared first on Grit & Grain Podcast.

We’re back with part 2 of our raw ingredients special, featuring Rikki Welz from Haas Farms and Brian Estes from LINC Malt. With Grainmaker only one week away, we figured it would be a great time to get all the details from these two about what makes this one of the best up-and-coming beer events in Washington, featuring incredible collaboration beers all geared to showcase specialty ingredients in interesting ways.  Plus, Matt gets all nerdy and philosophical about beer as usual, and who doesn’t love that…right?

If you haven’t yet, grab your Grainmaker tickets before it’s too late. And of course, tune in for this very special episode with these amazing industry icons.

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Alright, Grit & Grainers! Please email us at [email protected] with your comments, opinions, and why malt matters to you. You can subscribe to GGP on YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, and iHeartRadio, and please leave us a review. Be sure to also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

If this podcast is not what you expected, please alter your expectations. No such thing as a bad time to visit Tacoma. No such thing as too much barleywine. Tune in next Friday for more sweet chatter. Cheers!

The post Episode 154: Hop Growers and Grain Makers with Haas Farm and LINC Malt, Part 2 appeared first on Grit & Grain Podcast.

It’s an extra special double header! We are joined this week by our best buddy and legendary hop sniffer, Rikki Welz from the world-renowned Haas Farms, and we are so happy to welcome Brian Estes, the man behind LINC Malt‘s specialty grain program. The teams these two people help to lead at their respective operations are responsible for some of the most sought-after ingredients used in beer today.

Tune in for part 1, where we dig into some of the details in specialty malt and hop breeding, how Haas and LINC approach the industry in unique ways, and we even get to smell a few very special hop varietals and blends.

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Alright, Grit & Grainers! Please email us at [email protected] with your comments, opinions, and olfactory hallucinations. You can subscribe to GGP on YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, and iHeartRadio, and please leave us a review. Be sure to also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

If this podcast is not what you expected, please alter your expectations. No such thing as a bad time to visit Tacoma. No such thing as too much barleywine. Tune in next Friday for more sweet chatter. Cheers!

The post Episode 153: Hop Growers and Grain Makers with Haas Farm and LINC Malt appeared first on Grit & Grain Podcast.

We’re back! Thanks for sticking around during our holiday hiatus week.  We’re back and have a bunch of catching up to do. Matt climbed a whole mountain, Bethany went camping with her little kiddos (arguably harder than climbing a mountain), and Ron attended the inaugural Legends of the West hosted by our friends at Grains of Wrath, where he caught up with an old Tacoma industry friend!

Additionally, we delve into the recent data released by the Brewers Association, which charts the trajectory of craft beer, the overall health of the industry, and some outliers that have managed to grow even in tough times. Crack a super cold one, turn up your AC, and tune in!

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Alright, Grit & Grainers! Please email us at [email protected] with your comments, opinions, and where you see craft beer in five years. You can subscribe to GGP on YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, and iHeartRadio, and please leave us a review. Be sure to also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

If this podcast is not what you expected, please alter your expectations. No such thing as a bad time to visit Tacoma. No such thing as too much barleywine. Tune in next Friday for more sweet chatter. Cheers!

The post Episode 152: Catching Up After a Week Off appeared first on Grit & Grain Podcast.

This week, we were super lucky to be joined by another local beer podcast crew. Austin and Julie uploaded the first episode of Thru The Sightglass back in March 2024 (with our good friend Rachyl from @beersandbedtime!). After a few excellent local episodes from around the PNW, they hit the road in their sick, live-in van. They spent an entire year visiting breweries around the country and recording the most fantastic on-location podcast episodes. Now they’re back and ready to catch us up on everything. And share a few special beers from the road, of course.

Tune in for this excellent collab episode and be sure to follow Thru The Sightglass everywhere.

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Alright, Grit & Grainers! Please email us at [email protected] with your comments, opinions, and what you see through the sightglass. You can subscribe to GGP on YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, and iHeartRadio, and please leave us a review. Be sure to also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

If this podcast is not what you expected, please alter your expectations. No such thing as a bad time to visit Tacoma. No such thing as too much barleywine. Tune in next Friday for more sweet chatter. Cheers!

The post Episode 151: Looking Thru The Sightglass with Austin and Julie appeared first on Grit & Grain Podcast.

The Washington Brewers Festival and Firestone Walker Invitational have come and gone, and the Grit & Grain crew was lucky enough to be on the ground for both.

This week, we’re recapping the magic—our favorite beers, favorite moments, and the unforgettable folks who made both festivals shine. Don’t miss our Instagram highlight videos from the Washington Brewers Festival, where we chatted with amazing brewers and reconnected with some familiar podcast faces.

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Alright, Grit & Grainers! Please email us at [email protected] with your comments, opinions, and favorite SOS Pro Wrestler you saw at the Washington Brewers Festival. You can subscribe to GGP on YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, and iHeartRadio, and please leave us a review. Be sure to also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

If this podcast is not what you expected, please alter your expectations. No such thing as a bad time to visit Tacoma. No such thing as too much barleywine. Tune in next Friday for more sweet chatter. Cheers!

The post Episode 150: Beer Fest Fever appeared first on Grit & Grain Podcast.

Kendall Jones is back!

For Part 2, we dive right into the article posted to his longstanding Washington Beer Blog the morning of our recording, wherein Jones breaks down the Brewers Association‘s announcement of Mexican Lager being added to official style guidelines right on the heels of our Mexican lager episode. He also weighs in on how the Washington beer industry has evolved over the last few decades, a few of his favorite under-the-radar breweries in our wonderful state, and the impact of his long-running triple IPA beer series, Washington Hop Mob!

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Alright, Grit & Grainers! Please email us at [email protected] with your comments, opinions, and what you have learned at Beer Church. You can subscribe to GGP on YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, and iHeartRadio, and please leave us a review. Be sure to also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

If this podcast is not what you expected, please alter your expectations. No such thing as a bad time to visit Tacoma. No such thing as too much barleywine. Tune in next Friday for more sweet chatter. Cheers!

The post Episode 149: Washington Beer Blog with Kendall Jones, Part 2 appeared first on Grit & Grain Podcast.