Four Brewers | Craft Beer And Homebrew Podcast

Season 3, Episode 41 – This week, we’re drinking Great American Beer Festival 2016 medal-winning brews! Fresh off the The 4B Flight and fresh off the plane from the Great American Beer Festival (just Matt, that is) we’re back with another full-length episode of Four Brewers and we’re drinking as many GABF medal-winning beers as we could get our hands on. GABF 2016 Winners! We’ve gushed about the Great American Beer Festival in previous episodes (2014, 2015), so we won’t get into the event itself too much in this post, but suffice it to say, it’s definitely one of the biggest and best beer festivals in the world. Thousands of eager beer drinkers descend upon The Mile High City of Denver, Colorado for three days of craft beer tasting and celebration. If ever a beer event were to appear on a beer drinker’s bucket list of events, GABF would be at the top of that list.  Matt Becker Wearing His Bronze Medal from GABF There is one thing that made this year’s Great American Beer Festival stand out from previous years

The 4B Flight 2.0, Episode 6 – On the final episode of The 4B Flight 2.0, we’re going big with Feral One (Batch 3) from Firestone Walker Brewing Company. YUM. The 4B Flight is a biannual series in which we do one standard episode of Four Brewers, followed by six mini episodes for an entire week! The 4B Flight is served up in April and October. Enjoy! Welcome to the Autumn edition of The 4B Flight! Due to the flight’s immense popularity back in April, we decided to serve up another round of episodes! Feral One (Batch 3) Today, on the final day of The 4B Flight, 2.0, we’re going out with a sour bang with Firestone Walker’s Feral One, Batch 3. On the show, we talk about Firestone Walker’s titratable acidity rating scale, the people behind the scenes at breweries that make all of this incredible craft beer we enjoy possible, and how Firestone Walker seems to never put out a bad beer.  Catch The 4B Flight 3.0 in April of 2017! BREW THE SHIT OUT OF IT. Beer from today’s episode: Firestone Walker Brewing Company – F

The 4B Flight 2.0, Episode 5 – Today on the 4B Flight, a fantastic saison from Logsdon Farmhouse Ales. The 4B Flight is a biannual series in which we do one standard episode of Four Brewers, followed by six mini episodes for an entire week! The 4B Flight is served up in April and October. Enjoy! Welcome to the Autumn edition of The 4B Flight! Due to the flight’s immense popularity back in April, we decided to serve up another round of episodes! Logsdon Farmhouse Ales – Seizoen I think it’s safe to say that all four of us, The Four Brewers, equally love saison. Okay, well, maybe Matt loves it just a little bit more than us, but overall, we’re super-fans of the style. Today on The Flight, we’re drinking one of the best American examples to date, Seizoen from Logsdon Farmhouse Ales. If you want to hear us gush even more about saison, check out our Saison Showdown from Season 2!  Tune in tomorrow for the next beer in The 4B Flight! BREW THE SHIT OUT OF IT. Beer from today’s episode: Logsdon Farmhouse Ales – Seizo

The 4B Flight 2.0, Episode 4 – Today on The 4B Flight, a gueuze that’s actually a blend of two different styles of beer that maybe shouldn’t have been blended together. The 4B Flight is a biannual series in which we do one standard episode of Four Brewers, followed by six mini episodes for an entire week! The 4B Flight is served up in April and October. Enjoy! Welcome to the Autumn edition of The 4B Flight! Due to the flight’s immense popularity back in April, we decided to serve up another round of episodes! Vicaris Tripel-Gueuze The beer on today’s episode was…different, and a bit odd. Rather than try to describe it here, just read what the brewery says about it on Untappd: "Vicaris Tripel and Girardin Gueuze create a new style.. a melding of Tripel sweetness and Lambic sour. Innovative Dilewyns pairs up with one of Belgium’s most prized lambic producers. Really a taste sensation. Here’s the future of Belgian brewing in a glass. Made by a talented home brewer whose beers were extremely well received in Bel

The 4B Flight 2.0, Episode 3 – Today on The 4B Flight, Beachwood Blendery’s Fortune Favors the Funk, and boy, do we favor this beer. The 4B Flight is a biannual series in which we do one standard episode of Four Brewers, followed by six mini episodes for an entire week! The 4B Flight is served up in April and October. Enjoy! Welcome to the Autumn edition of The 4B Flight! Due to the flight’s immense popularity back in April, we decided to serve up another round of episodes! Beachwood Blendery – Fortune Favors the Funk Beachwood BBQ & Brewing’s funky shoot-off, Beachwood Blendery, has finally reached peak propagation and is finally releasing their interpretation of Belgian-style funky ales. Some might call these beers their interpretations of Belgian lambic, but we’re not going to say that here (they would prefer the term lambic not be used). What we will say is that this beer is spectacular. Beachwood destroys. What can’t they do at this point?! (Make bad beer, that’s what.) Tune in tomorrow for the next

The 4B Flight 2.0, Episode 2 – Today on The 4B Flight, an IPA from one of Anaheim, California’s newest breweries, Unsung Brewing Co. The 4B Flight is a biannual series in which we do one standard episode of Four Brewers, followed by six mini episodes for an entire week! The 4B Flight is served up in April and October. Enjoy! Welcome to the Autumn edition of The 4B Flight! Due to the flight’s immense popularity back in April, we decided to serve up another round of episodes! Unsung Brewing Co. – Anthia IPA Unsung Brewing Co. is one of Anaheim’s newest breweries, recently opening to much fanfare and busting through the gate with some excellent brews and awesome comic book-style branding. Today’s beer, Anthia, is a lemony melon bomb that’s heavily late hopped with notes of weeds and grass. A truly unique beer from a great Orange County brewery that, at this point, shows a lot of promise.  Tune in tomorrow for the next beer in The 4B Flight! BREW THE SHIT OUT OF IT. Beer from today’s episode: Unsung Brewing Co. –

The 4B Flight 2.0, Episode 1 – Today on The 4B Flight, we’re going back in time with Stone Brewing’s Encore Series 02.02.02 Vertical Epic Ale. The 4B Flight is a biannual series in which we do one standard episode of Four Brewers, followed by six mini episodes for an entire week! The 4B Flight is served up in April and October. Enjoy! Welcome to the Autumn edition of The 4B Flight! Due to the flight’s immense popularity back in April, we decided to serve up another round of episodes! Encore Series: 02.02.02 Vertical Epic Ale Today, we’re going back in time to 2002 with Stone Brewing Co.’s Encore series of their Vertical Epic Ale 02.02.02. This beer was widely considered to be a whale up until about 2013, with prices for a single bottle reaching $1500+. Since many of the newer beer geeks of late never got to try the now 14 year old original brew when it was fresh, Stone decided to brew it again. What a great idea! Thanks, Stone! You’re the best! Tune in tomorrow for the next beer in The 4B Flight! BREW THE SHI

Season 3, Episode 40 – This week, we’re blind ranking 13 different gueuze-style beers. The gueuze showdown was inevitable, really. I mean, IPA, stout, and pilsner showdowns are all good and well, but a gueuze showdown is really hard to pull off. Since “sour beers” have been all the rage for the last ten years or so (at least from our limited perspective), it seemed natural to put on our big-boy pants and get to the real deal: gueuze-style beer and lambic. The Gueuze Showdown As always, this showdown is by no means a definitive list or ranking. Many beers were left out of this showdown simply because we couldn’t get them. Gueuze is a tough style to nail for many breweries and blenderies, as is evident in this showdown. Making a great gueuze is tough, and they’re equally hard to acquire. We tried to get as many quality gueuze-style beers as we could find, so don’t get butt-hurt because we didn’t include your favorite. It should also be noted that John was the proctor for this showdown. He served up the beers an

Season 3, Episode 39 – We’re back in the studio this week, and we’re drinking some excellent beers from Chicagoland breweries! Fresh off of our epic road trip to Sacramento for the California Craft Beer Summit, Jason was greeted with a box o’ brew from Four Brewers listener and Patreon Supporter, Max Peltier. Max originally wanted to send us some brew for Cheap Beer Corner, which he did (thanks!), but decided to balance things out with what turned out to be some really, really tasty craft beers. Beers from Chicago! The beers on the show this week range from farmhouse ales to double IPA. The mix of styles made for a refreshing tasting session, and since it was the first episode of session 42, it was welcomed. We can’t thank Max enough for the brews and the support on Patreon! BREW THE SHIT OUT OF IT. Beers from this week’s episode: Central State Brewery – House Beer Transient Artisan Ales – Ardent Illuminated Brew Works – ED’s Legs Off Color Brewing – Whiskers Pipeworks Brewing Company – Mandarin Dragonet Pe

Season 3, Episode 38 – This week, we’re on the floor of the expo at the California Craft Beer Summit in Sacramento, California, talking to some rad beer industry peeps. This week’s post was written in collaboration with the lovely Yvonne England.  Hey y’all! Guess that we did?! We went to Sacramento! (Have you watched our road trip video yet?) Make Beer Clear Again… This week, we went to the California Craft Beer Summit and had the opportunity to talk to a bunch of amazing beer people on the floor of the event. There were so many great breweries and beer peeps in attendance. We couldn’t talk to them all, but we know you’ll love the folks we did get! First on the list was Miss Franny FullPint, of The Full Pint. She’s also the Executive Director of the Los Angeles County Brewers Guild (Get. It. Girl!). She’s badass. Just know that. Then we dropped acid…knowledge with Jeffers Richardson, of Firestone Walker Barrelworks, and learned what the hell Titratable Acidity is. Yeah, that’s a thing, and Jeffers explains i

Season 3, Episode 37 – This week, we’re heading up to the California Craft Beer Summit and making a few stops along the way. The 2016 California Craft Beer Summit is upon us! But, before get into the nitty gritty of the event, we’re driving up to Sacramento and making some stops along the way to pick up some beers from California breweries that we normally wouldn’t have access to. Erin Peters from The Beer Goddess also joins us in our makeshift hotel room studio in beautiful downtown Sacramento, California. Beers from California California is the largest state in the United States of America, and is home to approximately 600 breweries. According to the Brewers Association, approximately 95% of beer brewed in California in 2015 was sold in California. That’s a lot of beer, and the Brewers Association says there’s still room for more breweries. That’s pretty exciting. The beers on the show this week cover a pretty large swath of California. We made stops in Bakersfield at Lengthwise Brewing Company, Fresno at T

Season 3, Episode 36 – This week, beers from Side Project, 2nd Shift, New Glarus, and more! This week on the show, we’re drinking beers from Four Brewers listener Andy Richter. Andy originally asked us for a bottle of The Bruery’s Imperial Cabinet to trade for something local to him. John, being the awesome and giving individual that he is, told Andy that he’d send him a bottle for “free” (no trade required) just because that’s how John is (Did I mentionwe, mention that John is the shiz?!). In return, Andy sent a plethora of awesome midwest beers. Now, we’re drinking ’em! Season 3, Episode 36 Beers Big thanks to Andy for the beers! They were all pretty big gets for us, and while Side Projectand 2nd Shift Brewing were clearly on top, a standard like Spotted Cow from New Glarusalso got us pretty amped up.  BREW THE SHIT OUT OF IT. Beers from this week’s episode: New Glarus Brewing Company – Spotted Cow Urban Chestnut Brewing Company – Zwickel 4 Hands Brewing Co. – Constellation: Falconers Flight 4 Hands Brewin

Season 3, Episode 35 – Jason’s got Mirkwood. Another week, another awesome homebrew from Jason. We could get used to this! He’s on a bit of a roll actually, honing his skills on newly upgraded brewing setup and making his versions of New England IPA. His latest brew turned out to be a session IPA. Damn mash efficiency! But, before we get to the homebrew, we’ve got some cans fresh off the line from Almanac Beer Company, and four questions in the 4B Mailbag. Beers from Almanac and Modern Times Yeast is THE most important component of beer. Well, fermentables for the yeast to consume are also important, but, yeast is priority one. Poor yeast health and viability can completely ruin an otherwise great beer. Three of the four questions in the mailbag pertain to yeast, two of which are specific to lager yeast.  The topic of yeast leads right into Jason’s latest beer, his New England session (accidental) IPA called, Mirkwood. The brewday for this beer went relatively well, outside of Jason’s poor wort efficiency. We

Season 3, Episode 34 – This week, we head to Canada via Aaron Champion of Cask Ale LA and drink four excellent craft beers from The Great White North. This week on the show, we’re joined by our good friend and fellow beer blogger, Aaron Champion, and he brought us some really interesting and delicious craft beer from his recent trip to Canada. Up until around five or so years ago, Canadian craft beer wasn’t really anything anyone would bat an eye at. A lot of breweries were brewing what was widely thought of as “safe” beers, meaning that they stuck to brewing traditional mainstays in beer. This was obviously not the case with every brewery in Canada, but it was tough to think of more than a few Canadian breweries that were making anything really exciting, different, or even experimental. The beers on the show this week exemplify how the Canadian beer scene is evolving and creating some really awesome beers that Canadians local to these breweries can more easily find.  Canadian Craft Beers The breweries featur

Season 3, Episode 33 – This week, we take a ride on the goser coaster and sample nine gose style beers. Last week’s show was pretty epic. We decided the best way to recover from the incredibly awesome 24 beer pilsner showdown was to relax with some easy-drinking gose style beers from breweries around the world. Gose is a style of beer that’s usually low alcohol, a bit on the tart side, and made with salt to give it a dry, brackish feel (get into the finer details of the style here). While on paper this sounds like a disaster of a beer, it’s actually pretty damn refreshing. There’s a surprising variety of gose available to us in the southern California market, so we decided to go for it. Gose Beer The thing with gose is that some breweries want to “amp up” the style and add fruit to the beer to give it an even more refreshing and easy-drinking twist. This works sometimes, but adding more stuff to an otherwise shitty base beer makes for an even shittier beer. Kettle souring has become quite popular as of late a

Season 3, Episode 32 – This week, we’re drinking a brewer’s dozen of pilsner and ranking them, like you do. Another 4B Showdown coming at you, this time it’s the Pilsner Showdown 2.0. You might be asking yourself – what happened to the pilsner showdown 1.0? Well we might be asking you to mind your own god damned business. We might also be overcompensating for the fact that we recorded an entire 16 beer showdown that we got so mixed up on which beer number we were on that it ended up incomprehensible. So we did it again. We did it bigger. We did it better. We did it stronger. 16 beers? Not for our fans. We did 24 god damned beers. In a row. And we ranked them. Not in a row. Appropriately for their deliciousness. Or, skunkiness.  The Pilsner Showdown On that note, we need to preface this by saying that some of the beers in our showdown obviously suffered from age and packaging woes. While we wish this wasn’t the case, it’s also the realistic experience of buying these beers on the shelf. So get your shit togeth

Season 3, Episode 31 – This week, we’re hanging out with Nichole Richardson, aka Tasting Nitch, all the way from France! This week on the show, we’re going to Paris, France (via Google Hangouts, of course) to drink some beer with fellow YouTuber and blogger, Nichole Richardson, or as she’s more widely known, Tasting Nitch. Nichole Richardson, aka Tasting Nitch Today’s episode really isn’t about the beer more than about Nichole and the beer scene in Europe and France, as well as beer trends in the United States. We also talk about beer reviewers on YouTube, beer blogs, and podcasts. This Week’s Beers Nichole has been on YouTube for quite a while. She makes videos about beer news, beer reviews, drinking morning beer and commentary on beer trends and such. We highly recommend checking her YouTube channel out. You can also check out the video of the unedited Hangout with Nitch, if that’s something you would like to watch. Big thanks to Nichole for hanging out with us. Definitely keep a look out for her on future

Season 3, Episode 30 – This week, we’re discussing hoppy brew, Saison, and brewery collaborations with Tomme Arthur of The Lost Abbey / Port Brewing. The Lost Abbey is probably one of the best Belgian-style breweries in the world, creating some of the best saison, wild ale, and barrel-aged beer that money can buy. Today on the show, we’re joined by The Lost Abbey’s (also, Port Brewing Company and The Hop Concept) Head of Brewery Operations, Tomme Arthur. The beers on the show this week represent some of the best qualities of the craft beer movement, from the two collaboration beers that The Lost Abbey brewed with Wicked Weed Brewing and Brasserie Dupont, to the experimental fresh and hoppy Mosaic & Eureka IPA from The Hop Concept.  This Week’s Beers The Lost Abbey, Port Brewing Company, and The Hop Concept beers all come from the brewhouse within The Lost Abbey. It can be a bit confusing when referring to three different breweries that are technically located under the same roof, but there’s a reason why

Season 3, Episode 29 – This week on the show, we’re hanging out at Mikkeller Brewing Company in San Diego, California with Head Brewer Bill Batten and Barrel whisperer Daniel Cady. World renowned gypsy brewer, Mikkel Borg Bjergsø, recently opened a new brewery right here in the United States. Mikkeller is probably one of the best-known gypsy breweries out there, brewing stellar barrel-aged stouts, wild ales, IPA, and more. Opening a permanent brewery in SoCal is pretty huge, not only for Mikeller Brewing Company, but also for beer geeks in the United States.  Mikkeller Brewing Company, San Diego Opening a brewery in California is no easy task, which is why Mikkel decided to join forces with San Diego’s AleSmith Brewing Company. In fact, Mikkeller Brewing Company is actually in AleSmith’s former brewery, and they even retained AleSmith’s former Head Brewer, Bill Batten. (AleSmith recently opened a brand new brewery minutes from Mikkeller Brewing, so you should check that out, too). Greg, Jason and Matt with Bi

Season 3, Episode 28 – This week, beers from Bruery Terreux. This week on the show, we’re drinking eight beers from Bruery Terreux in celebration of The Bruery opening a second tasting room in Anaheim, California on July 8, 2016! Beer from Bruery Terreux For those not in the know, Bruery Terreux is what The Bruery is branding their sour, funky, and wild line of beers. The beers are all brewed at The Bruery’s brewery, but the wort that is destined to become a Terreux beer is shipped over to the Terreux facility where it’s fermented, inoculated, barreled, etc. This keeps bacteria and bugs away from The Bruery’s “clean” (non-wild, Saccharomyces fermented) beers. Greg wrote an article about the opening of Terreux: Check it out! The beers on the show this week represent a fairly wide range of what Bruery Terreux is doing. While they’re not all hits, they represent what The Bruery and Bruery Terreux is all about: pushing the boundaries and running wild (pun intended) with creativity.  BREW THE SHIT OUT OF IT. Beers