PODCAST · arts
Beervana Podcast
by Jeff Alworth & Patrick Emerson
Author Jeff Alworth (The Beer Bible, The Secrets of Master Brewers) and Oregon State Economics professor Patrick Emerson host this engaging podcast about the culture, economics, history, and business of beer and brewing.
Episodes
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Show 194: The End
Nine years ago, almost to the day, we recorded our first episode of the Beervana Podcast. All things must end, and it is with deep gratitude and appreciation that we announce this is our last show. If you'd like to read a bit more of a formal obit, we have one here....
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Show 193: Polish Brewer Marek Kamiński on Grodziskie
At this year’s Central European Brewers Festival, Polish brewer Marek Kamiński gave a presentation on the briefly extinct style of Grodziskie that has been making a comeback in its homeland. Jeff and Marek later sat down to discuss this fascinating style, its history, and how it’s doing today. We...
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Show 192: Czechia and Central Europe
Today we’re going to go to Prague and Budapest, where Jeff recently spent ten days. He was there to speak at the Central European Brewers Conference, and had a chance to get caught up on the beer scenes in the region. The countries there have very diverse brewing backgrounds, from the Czechia…
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Show 191: Is the Era of “Next Big Thing” Over?
Not long ago, we received a very interesting email in the mailbag. It came from Pete Hoppins of Portland’s British-influenced brewery, Away Days. It was the length of a short article and came with a color-coded graph. The essence of the email boiled down to a pithy question he posed about the...
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Audioblog: Singha Beer, Don't Ask No Questions
Audioblog: Singha Beer, Don't Ask No Questions by Jeff Alworth & Patrick Emerson
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Show 190: Ryan Wagner and Megan Schwarz of Guinness Chicago
In September, Dublin's Guinness Brewery opened its second American site, this time in Chicago. Jeff went to the Windy City to check it out and while he was there, sat down with Ryan Wagner, who helped see the project over the finish line, and brewer Megan Schwarz.
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Show 189: The Problem With Style
When we think of different beers, our minds almost immediately frame them in terms of “style.” IPAs and witbiers and Czech dark lagers: this is how we’ve come to understand beer. Today we get philosophical and ask the question: what if styles aren’t the only way to think about beer? What if…
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Show 188: The Business of Hops with Max Coleman
Today we are joined by hop grower Max Coleman for a special edition of Beeronomics. Hops are a very unusual crop, sold only to a single industry for one purpose. How does this business relationship work? We’re going to ask Max how he knows which hops to grow and how many, and how the market for...
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Audioblog: Pumpkin Ales Are Fun — And They’re Making a Quiet Return
Several years ago, beer experienced its “tulip mania” moment in the form of a pumpkin ale bubble. Many of those were bad—but that was the breweries’ fault, not the style’s. These should function like fun autumnal rituals. The new crop may bring you back.
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Show 187: Autumnal Beeronomics
Today we are pulling out our green eyeshades and squinting at some data—it’s another episode of Beeronomics. Our intrepid economist is going to walk us through some numbers. Inflation, draft numbers, taprooms—we’re digging deep so you don’t have to. Cover photo: Midjourney (prompt: beer…
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Show 186: The Hop Harvest
For the second year in a row, we have decamped to Loyal Legion, a local pub that reliably has one of the best selections of fresh hop beers in town. As we sit here and turn our tongues green, we’re going to discuss the hop harvest. Patrick and Jeff went down to Coleman Farms a few weeks back to...
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Audioblog: Fresh Hop Beer Report
After screwing around on the margins for a while, this week I really plunged into the fresh hop marketplace. What I've discovered has been both unusual and enlightening. Here's an early-season report.
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Podcast Extra: Special, "We're Not Dead" Announcement
We're not dead and neither is the podcast. Bear with us, kind and forgiving listeners.
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Show 185: Austria – More Märzen, Less Vienna Lager
As everyone knows, the three great lager-brewing regions are Bavaria, Bohemia, and Austria. Wait, Austria? Sure it was famous in the last century for Vienna lager, but what has it done lately? We have Franz Hofer on the show today to answer this very question. Franz splits his year between…
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Pod Extra! Fireside Chat: Fireside Chat: How to Succeed in Beer Without Selling IPAs
In their latest Fireside Chat, Breakside Brewery's Ben Edmunds and Beervana's Jeff Alworth speak with three brewers whose breweries do not make hoppy ales. We wanted to hear why they chose this path, and what it entails. Because IPAs are overwhelmingly popular among craft beer drinkers, these...
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Show 184: What We Did on our Summer Vacations
We have an unusual transcontinental edition of the Beervana Show for you today. We thought it would be fun to compare and contrast our summer vacation destinations. I’ve been in Maine for a couple weeks and Jeff took a trip to Oklahoma. We both visited breweries, drank some beer, and we will give...
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Show 183: Special Slimmed-down Vacation Mailbag Episode, aka Bratvana
Both Jeff and I are about to go on excursions out of the state and away from our microphones, so today we’re doing the one, time-sensitive task left to us: addressing your mailbag comments and questions. Illustration courtesy Midjourney. Prompt: drinking beer on holiday in the sunshine
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Show 182: Making of a Classic - Pliny the Elder
Nearly a quarter century ago, veteran brewer Vinnie Cilurzo brewed a one-off double IPA at Russian River Brewing for a local festival. It would become a regular, bearing the somewhat obscure name of a Roman naturalist—Pliny the Elder. Pliny pretty soon became a cult phenomenon and ultimately the...
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Show 181: The Judgment of Lents (Lager Tasting Finals!)
In 1976, a blind tasting of Chardonnays known as the Judgment of Paris changed the wine world forever. Today, in this podcast, we offer you no less an earth-shattering blind tasting, the Judgment of Lents. That’s right, it’s part two of our mass market lager blind tasting, held in a luxurious...
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Pod Extra: Setting the Record Straight on How IPAs Came to Be
A Breakside-Beervana Fireside Chat. How did the American IPA tradition start? Are West Coast beers just about the bitter? Did hazies change everything? What did West Coast breweries take from the east—and how much did East Coast breweries crib from the west? Are there actually two different...
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Show 180: The Great Mass Market Lager Taste-off (Part 1)
Today we have a very special show, along with a special guest. In Show 180, we kick off a two-part taste off of … are you ready? … mass market lagers! While connoisseurs eschew these beers because they have slight and occasionally objectionable flavor profiles, they constitute the vast majority…
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Show 179: Where Have All The Belgians Gone?
In our last show, we delved into the strange, wonderful tale of Belgian witbier. But that story was really just the first chapter in a wave of Belgian-inspired beers and breweries that got going thanks to witbier’s success. For more than a decade and a half, Belgian beer seemed to be growing in...
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Show 178: Witbier
We’re less than a month away from the summer, and that means shifting down from big, boozy beers to lighter thirst-quenchers. We thought it would be a great opportunity to do one of our studies in style and look at that perfect Belgian summer ale, the witbier. If you think that sounds like a tame...
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Show 177: Jeff and Patrick Catch Up
[Note: Dodgy audio! Our field mic may be on the fritz! Apologies!] It’s been a minute since our last show. In the weeks since we last spoke, various events have transpired. Patrick has been to London and back. Jeff has been to Tillamook. The King of England was fêted by BrewDog—and then unfêted....
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Show 176: Portland’s Showcase for Women: SheBrew
A couple of weeks back, Portland enjoyed the return of one of its most unusual events—the 8th edition of SheBrew. As the name suggests, the event celebrates women, and includes two components: a national female-only homebrew competition, and a one-day festival of beer made by women at…
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Show 175: Talking Malt with Campbell Morrissy
In Show 175, we are delighted to be joined by pFriem’s Campbell Morrissy. Campbell is currently the Head Brewer at pFriem, and recently crafted the recipe and formulation for a collaboration pFriem is doing with Jeff. In designing the beer, a pub-strength pilsner, Campbell used a California-grown...
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Show 174: Gigantic Reflects on the Beer Industry in 2023
In part two of our conversation, we talk to Ben Love and Van Havig about some of the challenges facing breweries as the year nears its end.
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Show 173: Gigantic's Ben Love and Van Havig
Today we join you from the industrial tract in Southeast Portland that Ben Love and Van Havig selected ten years ago when they founded Gigantic Brewing. At the time, they expected it would blend in with its surroundings, and they devoted little attention to the tiny taproom space they called the...
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Show 172: Winter Warmers
The cold weather seems to come fast. Through October, crisp mornings often give way to sunny afternoons. After Halloween, however, the days grow short and the sun disappears behind gray clouds. Once we fall back after daylight savings end, darkness starts arriving at the end of the workday and…
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Show 171: Craft Beer & Brewing's Jamie Bogner on Modern Media
A few weeks back, Jeff’s editor at Craft Beer & Brewing wrote to explain that the magazine was shifting to its original quarterly format. The reason wasn’t declining revenues, but efficiencies—it’s less expensive and simpler to put out four issues a year than six. That got us thinking: how do...
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Show 170: Making of a Classic - Anchor Steam
For most of the 20th century, if you wanted to point to an actual American style of beer, you had to face San Francisco. Steam beer, a frontier concoction brewed fast for thirsty gold miners, became a signature of the city. Many breweries made it in the latter half of the 19th century, but they…
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Show 169: Fresh Hop Ales!
We join you from the best place on the planet for Show 169—a pub, smack dab in the middle of fresh-hop season. We recorded this show on-site at Portland’s Loyal Legion, which is reliably stocked with these little gems throughout the season. While we sipped on them, we discussed hops, the harvest,...
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Pod Exra: Derek Prentice, Ron Pattinson, and Mike Siegel
[Warning: raw audio of spotty quality] In this Pod Extra, Jeff interviews legendary London brewer Derek Prentice, beer historian Ron Pattinson, and Goose Island Innovation Brewer Mike Siegel. They teamed up on a special project to recreate a 1960s barley wine made by London's now-defunct Truman...
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Show 168 - Headwinds
It’s hard out there for a brewer. Heat, drought, supply-chain issues, metal shortages, war, and inflation—all these things seem to be conspiring against them. On today’s show we’ll have a look at these headwinds, assess how bad they are, and how soon brewers might see some relief.
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Show 167: New Scottish Ales Made the Old Way
Though many Americans may not realize it, Scotland is one of the world’s great old brewing countries. Even if you have heard of 80 shilling ales and wee heavies, however, you may not be familiar with the vat-aging tradition Gareth Young mines at Epochal Ales in Glasgow. Drawing on archival…
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Show 166: Lifecycle of a Brewery
When Stone Brewing launched in the mid-90s, its aggro “you’re not worthy!” vibe captured the counter-culture zeitgeist of craft brewing. It was able to build a brand on the rising popularity of IPAs—one that took it to Virginia and ultimately Berlin. Yet all that reversed itself in recent years…
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Show 165: Washington State Breweries Sue Oregon
If a Portland brewery wants to drive a keg of beer across the river to Vancouver, WA and they have filed the proper paperwork with the state, they’re allowed to. The State of Oregon, however, forbids Washington breweries from doing the same. This rankled Justin Leigh, owner of Dwinell Country…
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Show 164: Biere de Garde, France's Signature Style
It has been a while since we did a classic style dissection, but thanks to a listener request, we have a lovely, overlooked tradition to present today: bière de garde, France’s signature style. It has a history dating back to the 19th century, but the current examples look a lot different. In...
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Show 163: Portland's Best Breweries
Portland has many breweries. Old breweries, new breweries, big breweries, small breweries. But which, among this dense thicket, are the best? For visitors to Portland, that’s an important question, and we’re here to help! This past week, Jeff posted his annual Best Portland Breweries list, and we...
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Audioblog: An Overview of Portland
Today's post kicks off Portland Travel Week. To get things started, I’ll offer an overview of the Rose City, a bit of beer-centric history, and some of the key features of the local drinking culture. Craft breweries follow a familiar model, and if you just go from one to the next, you might miss...
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Show 162: Away Days Brewing
On June 11th, Portland’s English-themed, pro-cask Away Days Brewery hosts a cask ale festival with several regional breweries. As you know, Jeff and I love cask ale and have been promoting it for over a decade—all to little apparent effect. Something changed in the past few years, though, and now...
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Audioblog: Losing the Old Breweries; Heineken to Close Caledonian
Old breweries compact time and preserve it. The hands of old brewers are evident in every dent and scuff. Their habits are preserved in the movements of the brewers they trained. When I stepped into Caledonian’s brewhouse, wort steaming and foaming in weird bespoke coppers, it might have well…
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Show 161: Farmhouse Brewing In Voss, Norway
On today's show we hear from Kjetil Dale, one of two dozen or so farmhouse brewers practicing an ancient craft in the western Norwegian valley of Voss. Brewing here is knitted into the culture of the region, beginning in the classic eldhus, or "firehouse," common on farms here. As the fire…
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Show 160: Norwegian Beer
If you’ve been following us on social media, you’ve probably seen some photos Jeff posted from his recent visit to Norway. He was invited to participate at the Oslo Craft Beer Festival. We’ll hear about that and what he learned of the Norwegian beer scene. Craft beer is only about twenty years…
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Show 159: Rosenstadt Brewing
On Show 159, we are joined by Tobias Hahn and Nick Greiner, founders of the Rosenstadt Brewery. They tell us about their unusual approach to the business, what it’s like to focus on German beer in the American Northwest, and how gemütlichkeit fits into all this.
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Show 158: Monastic Beers Revisited
Way, way back in Pod 16, Jeff and I tackled the Trappist beers of Belgium. In the time since that program aired, four new monastic breweries have opened, and in all a baker’s dozen have started in the past decade. We thought it would be fun to revisit monastic brewing, discuss whether abbey ales...
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Audioblog: Making of a Classic - Saison Dupont
Among living beer styles, rare is the is the case where a single beer accounts for the survival of a whole tradition, but it’s mostly true in the case of saison. Well, a single beer, an English writer, and an American importer.
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Show 157: Inflation and the Price of a Pint
The Labor Department recently reported that inflation was up 7.9% over the past year, sending the stock markets down, and causing the Federal Reserve to begin raising interest rates. This news landed amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one of the biggest grain producers in the world. Add to…
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Show 156: On the Farm with Wheatland Spring
Throughout most of the past ten thousand years, brewing was a farmhouse chore, one of the many ways people preserved their harvest throughout the year. In more recent times it has become a commercial and industrial activity. Yet in a verdant pocket of Loudoun County, Virginia about an hour NW of...
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Podcast Extra: Jeff and Patrick Drink Cask Ales
Our Friday: a two-mile, four-pub crawl (with a short tram ride) where we stopped in and had our choice of two cask beers at each location. We encountered three milds along the walk. The crawl happened in Portland, Oregon. Because we're podcast professionals, we recorded our thoughts at each stop....
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Author Jeff Alworth (The Beer Bible, The Secrets of Master Brewers) and Oregon State Economics professor Patrick Emerson host this engaging podcast about the culture, economics, history, and business of beer and brewing.
HOSTED BY
Jeff Alworth & Patrick Emerson
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Beervana Podcast have?
Beervana Podcast currently has 50 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Beervana Podcast about?
Author Jeff Alworth (The Beer Bible, The Secrets of Master Brewers) and Oregon State Economics professor Patrick Emerson host this engaging podcast about the culture, economics, history, and business of beer and brewing.
How often does Beervana Podcast release new episodes?
Beervana Podcast has 50 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Beervana Podcast?
You can listen to Beervana Podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Beervana Podcast?
Beervana Podcast is created and hosted by Jeff Alworth & Patrick Emerson.
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