This week my guest is Michael Fairbrother from Moonlight Meadery. Michael is a national an international award winning mead maker who made the transition from making mead at home to professional only two years ago. Michael is going to share his tips on making great mead at home.
This week my guest is Mike Mraz, an award winning homebrewer who joins us to talk about brewing sour beer styles. Mike will tell you how to brew those distinctive sour beers like Belgian Flanders, Lambics or Sours at home. We also discuss using Brett and Lacto to sour your homebrew.
This week my guest is Jason Perrault, a fourth generation hop grower from Perrault Farms. Jason joins us to talk about how to grow hops at home, and along the way we also talk about how to store and use fresh hops to enhance your homebrew.
This week my guest is Erik Schmid from “The Brewmeister” home brew shop. Erik is going to teach us how to brew the perfect Pilsner beer this week, and has extensive experience with brewing lager beers.
This week my guest is Gordon Strong, three time Ninkasi award winner (best in the US) and a Grandmaster Beer Judge. We discuss advanced homebrewing techniques – specifically for all grain brewers who have the basics of beer brewing down but want to do more.
This week my guest is James Altwies, the President of Gorst Valley Hops. James is an expert in hop chemistry and this week we’re going to discuss what alpha acids, beta acids and hop aroma oils are and how they can help you make better beer. James also shares how you can maximize your hop aroma and flavor in beer.
This week I invite Drew Beechum back to talk about the merits of homebrew clubs. Drew was president of the Maltose Falcons and is active in the American Homebrewers Association, and provides a unique perspective on what clubs have to offer to homebrewers.
This week I invite Bob Hansen from Briess malting and ingredients company to talk about beer brewing, malts, malting your own grain and also malt extract. Bob provides a great overview of how malted barley is grain, how specialty grains are made and even how they make malt extract.
This week I invite Justin Crossley from the Brewing Network to talk a bit about his journey in beer broadcasting, some of his shows and his recent journey into television. Justin is the popular host of the Session (a podcast) and runs a network of several shows centered around homebrewing.
This week I invite John Palmer back to talk about brewing high gravity “big” beers. John shares some of his tips on getting the most from your high gravity mash, scaling recipes up to higher gravities, balancing your big beer and fermentation and aging. High gravity beers provide a special challenge for many extract and all grain brewers.
This week we talk about American hop varieties and developing new hops. Al Haunold, a retired genetic engineer from USDA and Dave Wills from Freshops.com are my guests as we talk about how some of the most popular US hop varieties came about, how high alpha varieties are used now and how hops are grown.
Dr Charles Bamforth, Professor of Brewing Science from the University of California is my guest on this week’s show and he shares with us a detailed look at diacetyl (an off flavor) and how to control it in your beer. Charlie provides insights into the source, and also how to reduce diacetyl. Join us for a detailed look at this interesting bit of home brewing science.
This week, we discuss designing beer with brewing author Randy Mosher. Randy shares with us the process he uses for designing beer and also gives us a sneak peek into the new book he’s working on. Randy provides some great insights into beer design.
This week I invite a panel of three of the top home brewers together to talk about beer brewing myths for an extended holiday edition of the BeerSmith podcast. My panel includes John Palmer, Gordon Strong and Denny Conn in a wide-ranging discussion of beer brewing techniques and myths.
John Blichmann of Blichmann Engineering makes some of the highest quality equipment for homebrewing including pots, three-tier systems, high end RIMS and HERMS systems and also his very popular Beer Gun. This week I interview John about everything from simple stainless pots to high end pump and temperature control systems.