The Indie Beer Show

We are living our best lives over here at TIBS! For the second time, we all got to attend the Great American Beer Festival!  This is America’s largest beer festival with over 800 attending breweries and more than 4,000 different beers poured.

We start the show with Ann Obenchain, the Brewers Association’s Marketing Manager. We discuss GABF is overall terms, get those important statistics for you guys, and also talk about some of the things the BA does to help its members.

After our keynote interview we dive into a montage of spot interviews on the floor of the festival, we talk to St Arnold Brewing, Cerveceria San Pascual Baylon, King Cong Brewing, Briess Malt, and Broo Craft Beer Shampoo.

We close out our festival interviews with a group of discussions with medal winning breweries that include Port City, Kern River (Brewery Group of the Year on top of 4 medals), Lost Abbey, Kilowatt, Claremont Craft Ales, JAFB Brewery, and Two Roots.

It’s hard to convey how ginormous GABF is but I will say this, if you have a chance to attend, it will blow your mind! Here is one unique episode for you guys!

 

In the Halloween  spirit, Pariah Brewing Co. is teaming up with The Good Seed Food Company for a Spooktacular Beer Pairing. It’s a self guided pairing of small dishes with taster size beers that will only set you back $20. There was little risk of these entities coming together for something ordinary, and they over delivered. Are you ready for bugs and beer pairings?

Chef Chuy worked with Jesse Smith to establish what beers worked with what insects and then they turned that experiential data in to a mini pairing meal, just for you. I have to say, if you’re on the fence about eating insects, this is a great way to dip your toe into the creepy pond; Esthela was a champ and ate all 4 dishes! These plates, while featuring different bugs, aren’t extremely insect forward, flavor wise. They have done a great job at balancing flavors and textures with these dishes. Think of it as Bugs and Beer 101.

I hope you’re all adventurous eaters as you listen to us sample this pairing and discuss the strangest other things we’ve eaten in our lifetime. If you’re bored, throw us an Itunes rating!

We are super stoked to be celebrating our first anniversary here at TIBS! It wouldn’t be possible without you guys, the greatest fans on Earth, so, thank you!

The fine folks at North Park Beer Co. were incredibly nice to us and made us one of the freshest kegs of Hop Fu! to ever leave their building. The great people that made the fine decision to join us for our party/live show drained that keg in less than 2 hours! We also grabbed a giant tray of Stupid Wings from The Good Seed Food Company, they were devoured in even less time!

Currently, I’m sitting in our hotel room outside of GABF with roughly 45 minutes before we can go into the Friday night session, which gave me just enough time to get you guys this episode! Next week (or so), we’ll have an episode from the largest beer festival in America!

Enjoy listening to us talk about our first year, Esthela and I had a blast recording this show with a gathering of some of our favorite people laughing and drinking with us! I hope our gratitude for your support comes through, but just in case THANK YOU to every single person that has ever listened to The Indie Beer Show!

 

It’s a special time in beer currently, wet hop season! You just asked yourself, “why do we care?” Well, you care because you’re the type of indie beer person that loves beers you can only get once, and there are a lot of opportunities for that right now!

We collected a handful of currently available wet hop beers, brought in Liz Bauer from Glacier Hops Ranch, and had delightful time talking about them. Did you know that there are a few hop farms, here in San Diego? You do now!

If you pay close enough attention, you’ll notice that I was off my game and was inaccurate in almost every statement of where certain hops are grown, I have no idea why, but I’m thankful for Liz’s patience in correcting all of my mistakes.

Have a fun time making fun of me in your head why you listen and once again, thank you to Liz for joining us!

The CA Craft Beer Summit is a 2 day educational convention put on by the CCBA. This year celebrated to 30th anniversary of the CCBA! The convention culminates with a giant, California beer festival featuring over 600 breweries and 1800 beers. That happens to be the largest beer festival on the West Coast.

We are thankful that we had the chance to attend. I found many of the seminars informative and really enjoyable. In particular, 2 speeches hit home with me, Dr J. Jackson-Beckam’s (BA’s director of Diversity) session titled “Stop ‘Doing Diversity!’ Build an Inclusive, Equitable, and Just Workplace that Drives Success” and Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery on “Reality vs. facsimile” in the American Food Culture and the Implications for Craft Beer.

This week’s show is focused on standout moments from both of these speakers; I hope you enjoy this unique episode!

If you are reading this on release day, 9/23, and can’t make our First Anniversary Show Party tomorrow, be sure to leave us a voicemail at 619-698-7038 that tells us your favorite moment from the first year of TIBS! We’ll play them all on the anniversary Show!

Eppig Brewing is in the middle of an extremely long hitting streak and will be the first company to successfully leave the Brewery Igniter program! With a new 30 BBL production facility nearing completion in Vista, the Oktoberfest season almost upon us, and their third anniversary on the horizon, we thought it was a great time to sit down with Nathan and Clayton, both co-founding brewers and have a discussion about all things Eppig! They have garnered notoriety for their lagers but I’m a fan of their entire portfolio of well executed beers.

We dip into the history of the name of their brewery, discuss the Oktoberfest celebrations, get an update on their new location and some possible timelines for debuting in North County, and have a blast hanging out with two seriously authentic brewers that genuinely love their craft.

This would be a great episode to listen to while visiting their Waterfront Biergarten, just saying. Hit the play button and enjoy!

** Heads up! We’ll be taking a week off next week. Don’t worry, we’ll be back the following Monday with some interviews from the CCBA conference and festival in Long Beach!**

 

Did you know that Thorn Brewing (mid sentence shout out to Thorn for using a .beer address, like us!) recently opened a new tasting room in Mission Hills? Well they did and it’s a really cool place to hang out, have a tasty beverage and play a little skeeball.

We linked up with Tom and Jay from Thorn to have a great discussion about all the things currently going on and enjoy the amenities of the newest addition to their family. They now have 3 locations for your indie beer needs, the OG spot on Thorn St., the newer production facility in Barrio Logan, and the aforementioned new spot in Mission Hills.

I hope you have a Relay IPA, Hopster Pot, or any other delicious Thorn beer in your hand as you hit the play button!

We often discuss many aspects of San Diego beer history on TIBS!, but to hear it directly from integral members of the industry and those documenting it live was truly a special occasion! August 14th, at Latchkey Brewing, located in the original Mission Brewery Plaza, that was built in 1913, we were honored to host 50+ people for a night of learning and fun!

We began The Show with Matt West, Co-founder of Latchkey Brewing, to discuss what attracted them to the location and some of the difficulties improving a historical structure.

Then we take a deep dive into the history of San Diego beer, starting in the 1800s and working our way up to some current trends. We have amassed a super star panel for your listening pleasure; Judith Downie, Curator of the Brewchive™ at Cal State San Marcos, Bruce Glassman, Long-time editor, writer, and publisher who has been covering the San Diego beer scene for nearly a decade and is a team partner working on creating the Museum of Beer , Sheldon Kaplan, beer author and producer of Suds County, Gina Marsaglia – Co-Founder of Pizza Port, and Chris Cramer, CEO & Co-founder of Karl Strauss.

With roughly 100 years of cumulative San Diego beer knowledge, the panel offers you many insights to the what lead to and is currently driving the gigantic success of the SD beer industry. 

Get comfortable, grab a Red Trolley or a Swami’s IPA to honor our panel, and hit the play button!

Beyond being one of the preeminent yeast manufactures in the country, San Diego’s own, White Labs has an entire educational training series to help your brewery’s staff increase their knowledge. Their classes cover a wide variety of beer and yeast topics that will develop anyone’s proficiency in the wonderful beverage we call indie beer!

In this episode, we sit down with Erik Fowler, Education & Engagement Manager, to take a toe dip into the pool of beer vocabulary.

We also discuss some of what makes White Labs’ tasting room so unique, they take the same base beer and ferment it with different yeasts so you can taste the significant differences presented by using distinct strains.

Have a fresh indie beer ready and hit that play button!

Sometimes when revisiting a brewery we haven’t been to recently we find their beer quality has improved. This is certainly the case with BNS Brewing and Distilling Co. Not only that, they have a great community following, the tasting room was packed for Taco Tuesday!

A first for TIBS!, we got to taste through an entire flight of GABF medal winning beers!

Get comfortable and hit the play button friends!