Four Brewers | Craft Beer And Homebrew Podcast

Season 3, Episode 13 – We didn’t really have a show planned out for this week, so we decided to raid John’s cellar. Sometimes, you just want to head into your beer cellar, dust off some bottles, and see what happens. This week, that’s exactly what we did. If you’re a long time listener of Four Brewers, you’ve heard about John’s bloated cellar and the black hole of beers within. Since we didn’t really have anything planned for this week’s episode, John and Greg decided to brave the closet, no, uh, “cellar” and see what they could find. Port Brewing and Lost Abbey So, what did they find? Turns out that John has a lot of brews from Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey. The beers they chose are among some of the best whalez out there, even for our beloved “new-money” craft beer drinkers. The thing is, when you cellar a beer, you take a monetary risk. While most breweries would agree that beers are packaged to be consumed fresh (unless you’re Deschutes), beer geeks can’t resist laying a beer down for a while to see how

Season 3, Episode 12 – This week, we try to figure out exactly why Tired Hands Brewing Company’s hands are so tired. Spoiler: we still don’t know, but you should still listen to the episode. This week on the show, we’re drinking beers from the whalez-bro-brewery outta Pennsylvania known as Tired Hands Brewing Company. Their beers are difficult to get in SoCal (they don’t distribute here), but our good friend, Dr. Zack, came up on a massive shipment and was kind enough to share some cans with us. SWEET. Their Hands are Tired AF, Apparently. Before we get into the beers, we open up the 4B Mailbag and answer some questions about dry-hopping and where to acquire some good beer in Cleveland, Ohio. Want to send us a question? Hit us up at feedback@fourbrewers.com. First up is Hop Hands. Without giving too much away, this beer was the best of the bunch. It should be said that all three beers that we sampled were murkier than potato soup, which was to be expected, I guess. They were all served from cans (ICYMI above)

Season 3, Episode 11 – This week, Jason brought us so many beers from Modern Times…and it’s awesome. Get your Four Brewers “Metal Logo” shirt!Sales end Tuesday (3.15.16) evening!Available for a limited time: fourbrewers.com/metal Before we get into the beers, it should be known that Greg’s cask ale festival called “Firkfest” is going down on March 19, 2016 in Anaheim, California. We’ve been promoting this event for good reason—it’s a unique festival to Southern California, featuring 30 breweries and 50 cask beers, ranging from the more traditional cask conditioned beers to firkins with chocolate, peppers, or whatever else brewers want to add to their standard release and one-off beers. Get your tickets at firkfest.com. Bottle Logic Beers in Cans We’re drinking a lot of Modern Times beers on the show this week, 12 beers to be exact, which makes this show one of the longest 4B episodes yet. Jason is the resident Four Brewers Modem Tones super-fan, and he did not fail to deliver some Modem Whalez. …and These Mod

Season 3, Episode 10 – We’re back with part 2 of our visit to Bottle Logic Brewing in Anaheim, California, and this week, we’re saddling up some unicorns. Get your Four Brewers “Metal Logo” shirt!Available for a limited time: fourbrewers.com/metal Before we get into the beers, it should be known that Greg’s cask ale festival called “Firkfest” is going down on March 19, 2016 in Anaheim, California. We’ve been promoting this event for good reason—it’s a unique festival to Southern California, featuring 30 breweries and 50 cask beers, ranginga  from the more traditional cask conditioned beers to firkins with chocolate, peppers, or whatever else brewers want to add to their standard release and one-off beers. Get your tickets at firkfest.com. Barrels at Bottle Logic Brewing We kick off the show right where we left off with part 1, drinking some German Chocolate Cake. The beer lives up to its namesake, and we find out that this beer is also what runs through Nagel’s veins (he’s German…bad joke). This beer is serve

Season 3, Episode 9 – This week, a last minute stop into Anaheim’s Bottle Logic Brewing ends with juicy beers, something tart, and gigaflops of hops.   Get your Four Brewers “Metal Logo” shirt!Available for a limited time: fourbrewers.com/metal Before we get into the beers, it should be known that Greg’s cask ale festival called “Firkfest” is going down on March 19, 2016 in Anaheim, California. We’ve been promoting this event for good reason—it’s a unique festival to Southern California, featuring 30 breweries and 50 cask beers, ranging from the more traditional cask conditioned beers to firkins with chocolate, peppers, or whatever else brewers want to add to their standard release and one-off beers. Get your tickets at firkfest.com. Beers From Bottle Logic Brewing Shooting each other in the junk with laser beams sounded like fun at the time, but drinking Bottle Logic Brewing beers in their barrel room seemed like a better idea. Speaking of shooting each other in the junk with lasers, it turns out that She Sh

Season 3, Episode 8 – This week, beers from Night Shift Brewing and Perennial Artisan Ales. This week, Nagel brought the pain with SoCal rarities from Perennial Artisan Ales and Night Shift Brewing. Before we get into the beers, it should be known that Greg’s cask ale festival called “Firkfest” is going down on March 19, 2016 in Anaheim, California. We’ve been promoting this event for good reason—it’s a unique festival to Southern California, featuring 50 breweries and 30 cask beers, ranging from the more traditional cask conditioned beers to firkins with chocolate, peppers, or whatever else brewers want to add to their standard release and one-off beers. Get your tickets at firkfest.com. Excellent Brews from Perennial and Night Shift. First up on the show this week is a brew from Night Shift Brewing, a gose made with oysters. Oysters are more commonly used in stouts to add a salty, briny/dry character. In this case, they were added during the boil of the gose, which is a beer style that is inherently salty.

Season 3, Episode 7 – This week, homebrew from Four Brewers listener Michael Kirshner, and The Messenger from Noble Ale Works and Three Weavers Brewing Company. Can homebrews be whalez? This is the question that Four Brewers listener, Michael Kirshner, proposed to us in an email a few weeks ago. Personally speaking, I’ve definitely wanted to spear a few local homebrew whalez that have become legendary over the years, so yes, homebrew can indeed venture into the “whalez” territory. Thar Be Whalez! Michael was kind enough to send us some of his homebrew for the show this week and suffice to say, they are pretty over the top, as far as homebrew goes. The first beer up is a Flanders Red that was aged in a second use Buffalo Trace Barrel for five freakin’ years! What?! That’s some commitment.   [Direct YouTube Video Link]   Next up is quad that was brewed in March of 2014. This beer is a crowd favorite according to Mike, and rightly so. It’s delicious! The last beer from Michael is a Russian imperial stout made wi

Season 3, Episode 6 – This week, ALL SURLY BREWING COMPANY BEERS. Well, most of them. OK, eight of them. This week, we’ve got seven beers from Surly Brewing Company that were sent to us by a gracious Four Brewers listener, as well as a super-whale from John’s cellar, a 2010 vintage Darkness. Hell. YES. Surly Brewing Company Surly Brewing makes great beer, hands down. The problem is, they don’t distribute very far outside of their home state of Minnesota. Granted, we have no shortage of great beer here in California, but Surly would definitely be a welcome addition.  We have a variety of their canned brews, ranging from lager, to brown ale, to IPA. Surly has their own unique style and attitude. They know their way around a brew house, for sure. They’re also fans of John’s favorite ingredient, oats. It’s used in a lot of their beers. Surly Brewing Company’s Darkness (2010) As the show progresses, Surly’s Russian imperial stout, Darkness, eventually comes up in the discussion. It just so happens that John has tw

Season 3, Episode 5 – This week, we’re drinking ten different beers form Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. This week, it’s all about Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.. For over 30 years, they’ve been innovators in the craft beer movement in America, producing some the most ubiquitous beers on the market. We have ten different beers on the show this week from Sierra Nevada. While that may sound like a lot (well, it is for this little podcast), it’s actually just a cross section of the many brews they make. We’re covering everything from their more recent release, Nooner Pilsner, to the classic and well-known Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.  Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. Beers Sierra Nevada is also no stranger to barrel-aging beers and collaboration brews. Two of their abbey collaboration beers are on the show this week, along with barrel-aged variants of their Bigfoot Barleywine-Style Ale and Narwhal Imperial Stout. Sierra Nevada brews all of their beers with whole cone hops. If you’re not familiar with the brewing process, most brewerie

Season 3, Episode 4 – Does the shape and size of a glass really affect a beer’s characteristics? This week, we try to find out for ourselves. Does glassware make a difference when it comes to truly enjoying a craft beer? Glasses designed for more traditional beer styles have been around for a long time and it’s believed that they enhance certain characteristics of the beers that are consumed from them. Seasoned beer drinkers know that drinking a beer out of a glass is an overall better experience when compared to drinking straight from the bottle, even if it’s a standard “shaker” glass that brewers tend to despise. Well known beer establishments still serve beer in shaker glasses, despite the claims that the physical shape of the glass is doing a disservice to the beer inside of it. Style-Specific Beer Glassware Recently, beer glassware has reached a new level. IPA, stout, and even American wheat beers can now be served in style-specific glassware that supposedly enhances their qualities and nuances in certai

Season 3, Episode 3 – This week, beers from Founders Brewing Co., and Going In Blind with Matt. Michigan. More great beer from Michigan.  Founders Brewing Co. is finally available in southern California, and we’re pretty stoked about it. Founders is a well known brewery among craft beer drinkers, brewing everything from hoppy IPAs to delicious, highly sought after bourbon barrel-aged stouts. Getting our hands on their beers proved to be quite the difficult task in the past, but not anymore. This week on the show, we’re sampling a bit of each. Founders Brewing Co. We always seemed to find a way to get our hands on a few of their beers before they were available here by means of trading, which was kind of a pain in the ass. How rad is it that we’ll now be able to go to our local bottle shop and get it right off the shelf?! So. Rad. Having Founders Brewing Co. beers on the show this week is a milestone that we are thrilled to arrive at. Huge thanks go out to Ze Beer Guy for getting these beers to us. He’s one of

Season 3, Episode 2 – This week, it’s all Bell’s Brewery. What’s that I hear? A bell? A tolling bell? This week on the show, we’re drinking NINE different beers from Bell’s Brewery. For us in SoCal, that’s pretty awesome, considering they just recently added distribution to southern California (May, 2014) and we were able to buy all of these beers in our local bottle shops.  Bell’s Brewery Beers Fuck. Yeah.  It would be quite tedious and redundant to go through and give a summary of every beer on the show this week, so I’m not going to do it. We tried to stick with more of the mainstream stuff from Bell’s that anyone could pickup in their area, if available (Saturn being the exception. That’s from Jason).  Bell’s Brewery has been around for a long time, 30+ years, in fact. It’s safe to say that they know how to make great beer that’s unique to them, in more ways than one.  Shout out to listener Dave V. for the email that inspired this show. Cheers, brother. BREW THE SHIT OUT OF IT. Beers from this week’s epis

Season 3, Episode 1 – This week, we’re drinking three homebrews from Greg (two of them are pink!), and going in blind with John. Welcome to 2016 and season 3 of Four Brewers! This week on the show, we’re drinking homebrew from Nagel and going in blind with some blind tasting action provided by John. First up are two pink concoctions from Mr. Nagel. The first one is a cranberry Malbec wine cooler thingy. It should be noted that all of these brews were made by Greg for the holiday season to serve to guests in his home, and they’re all made from kits. The wine he made came as a kit with the grape juice, chemical additions, and cranberries, which makes for a really easy homebrew. Making kit wine is really easy. John wrote a piece on a Riesling wine he made from a kit a few years back. Check it out if you want a rundown on the process. John’s Beers for “Going In Blind” Next up is a prickly pear witbier, which was again, made from a kit. The prickly pears, however, were not included in the kit, and were acquired at

Season 2, Episode 52 – This week we conclude season 2 of Four Brewers with coconuts, stouts, barrels, and some good ol’ blind tasting, courtesy of Jason Harris. Here we are. We made it! The final show of 2015, episode 52 of season 2. When I say “we made it”, I mean just that—all of us. Four Brewers wouldn’t be a thing without all of the support we get from beer geeks all over the world. We thank you all from from the bottom of our beer-soaked hearts. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. You’re all the best. Barley Forge, Stone Brewing, and Oskar Blues Beers We’re ending 2015 with a show that falls in line with classic 4B structure and fashion. We’re drinking a couple of whalez, blending some brews, doing some blind tasting, and having fun. That’s what this is all about, right? Having fun with friends and drinking great beer. First up is a beer that’s making another appearance on the show, the coconut rye stout from our friends at Barley Forge Brewing Co., The Patsy. The first time we had this beer wa

Season 2, Episode 51 – This week we’re doing kind of a grab bag episode with beers from The Good Beer Company, Side Project Brewing, El Segundo Brewing Company, and Kern River Brewing Company. Hey, y’all. It’s a holiday week. I’m gonna level with you. I’m in the mood to holiday. I need to get my holiday (and Star Wars: The Force Awakens) on. Writing about this week’s Four Brewers episode just doesn’t seem to flow properly. There’s some fun stuff happening this week. Oh, and did I mention Star Wars? Yeah. Star Wars. Star Wars: The Force Awakens This week’s show is a little random. We’ve got some hoppy stuff, some sour stuff, and some funky stuff, all of which is very good stuff, but let’s face it: they’re no match for a holiday week that also involves Star Wars: The Force Awakens, amirite? The Good Beer Company is a fairly new brewery from the downtown Santa Ana area of California. We’re drinking three of their sour beers this week, all provided by Mr. Nagel, their biggest fanboy. But is Greg a Star Wars fanbo

Season 2, Episode 50 – This week, beers from Destihl Brewery, Allagash Brewing Company, and the return of Going In Blind: Greg Nagel Edition! This week, we’re diving into some more beers from Destihl Brewery’s Wild Sour Series, as well as some funky stuff from Allagash Brewing Company. Shows from session 27 (episodes 50, 51, and 52) were the first to be recorded in December, so this officially kicks off the 4B 2015 holiday season! It really is the best time of the year. Destihl Brewery Wild Sour Series We first learned of Destihl’s awesome sour beers way back in 2012 when John and Mattwere at the Great American Beer Festival. Destihl brought the pain with their awesome sours that made for huge lines during the festival. We had their gose from this same series on the show back in March. Friend and Patreoneer, Sandro Chiavaro recently sent us the other variants in this series, so of course we’re cracking ’em open on the show. Thanks, Sandro! While drinking these beers, we discuss the recent nerd-rage drama surr

Season 2, Episode 49 – This week, we’re finally raiding our collective cellars for the best beers from The Bruery that we could gather. This week, we’re drinking a lot of beer from The Bruery. On paper, four beers may not seem like a lot, but when it comes to The Bruery and their rich and usually higher ABV beers, it’s a lot, especially for John, ahem…  Beers from The Bruery and Bruery Terreux While an epic event such as this would warrant an even more epic blog post, we’re going to let this episode speak for itself. Needless to say, The Bruery makes many stellar beers and they aren’t afraid to tread in water that others would normally not even dip a toe into. The Bruery is a local favorite for us for different reasons, and they’re really one of the best breweries in the world, and that’s not hyperbole, son. Expect more from The Bruery in future episodes of Four Brewers. Between the four of us and our cellars, there’s much to be consumed. BREW THE SHIT OUT OF IT.  Beers from this week’s episode:Bruery Terreux

Season 2, Episode 48 – This week on the most awesomest beer podcast on the Internet as far as we’re concerned and more than confident is actually true according us, are some mostly local brews and one brew that some how snuck into the “locals only” party. We’re drinking stoutish beers on the show this week. “Stoutish” according to the Four Brewers Dictionary (it isn’t a real dictionary) means “a dark beer that may not be a stout but has certain traits that would lead one to believe it is a stout, and it’s also part of a larger beer tasting that has actual stouts in it, therefore one could say that it’s a group of stouts that aren’t all stouts; also there’s an IPA thrown in for fun and good measure.”  Yeah. We’re doing that this week.  Beers from New English, Ritual Brewing, and Sierra Nevada First up are some stoutish beers from New English Brewing Co., the first of which is an IPA, which is obviously not a stout, but falls in line with the Four Brewers definition of stoutish, so it qualifies.  Anyway, the be

Season 2, Episode 47 – This week we’re hanging out with Jesse Friedman, co-owner and brewer at San Francisco’s Almanac Beer Co., and we’re drinking some really special stuff. This week we are joined once again by our good friend Jesse Friedman, co-owner and brewer at Almanac Beer Co. in San Fransisco, California, and we’re drinking some really interesting stuff that encompasses the worlds of beer, wine, and spirits. Almanac Beer Co. Beers with Seven Stills Dogpatch Whiskey First up is the Almanac Dogpatch Sour. This beer is made with dried Rainier cherries and aged in red wine barrels for a number of months. The beer has a nice lactic tartness to it with the cherries giving it an extra fruity kick. Here’s something interesting. There is an undetectable amount of acetic acid in the beer, which we learned from Jesse is a good thing. Having a beer that is entirely lactic makes for a somewhat boring and overwhelmingly tart and thin beer. Almanac is by no means in the business of making vinegar bombs, but they’ve

Season 2, Episode 46 – This week, beers from two of Los Angeles’ best breweries, Highland Park Brewery and Monkish Brewing Co.. We’re heading back to L.A. this week with two collaboration beers from Monkish Brewing Co. and Highland Park Brewery. These breweries are quickly becoming pillars of Los Angeles beer with their awesome farmhouse and sour ales. Highland Park Brewery and Monkish got together in what we consider a match made in beer heaven to make two collaboration beers, Cart Fetish and Pushin’ Carts. Monkish and Highland Park Beers Keeping with the theme of the show, we’re also drinking Monkish Brewing’s first foudre fermented beer, Haiku de Saison and one of our all time favs, Crux. From Highland Park Brewery, we’re drinking Yard Beer, an early favorite of Jason’s that’s pretty great. Exciting things are happening in Los Angeles beer. The beers that Monkish and Highland Park are brewing are nothing less than exceptional, varying from the classic SoCal hoppy IPA to funky and Belgian inspired sour beer