The State of the Beer Podcast

The State of the Beer is a weekly podcast discussing home brewing, brewing and beer news, trends and culture. Hosted by Tony Russo and Doug Griffith, the show is a great way to learn the language of beer and to participate remotely in the larger beer community.
Homebrewers will be an important part of the show. Each week, Doug and Tony will taste and review a home brew submitted by a listener. If the brewer is available, we will have them on for the beginning of the show. If not, we'll still record the tasting and initiate a conversation on our blog about the beer. If you are interested in being on the show, we record at 11 a.m. You can reach Tony socially on Twitter, Facebook, by posting to the show's Google+ page or commenting below.

Comments

Away we go

In a very, very technical sense, this was the first photo taken for the book. When +The History Press agreed to publish my book , I was a little worried about getting the right photos. But not quite as worried as they were at first. You see, Eastern Shore Beer was to be a pretty book, as well as an informative one. I got something like 32 color pages for a photo insert and was responsible for the cover and back cover art. When they asked if I thought I could get photos I said, "Kind of." There were three problems as I saw it. First of all, beer hasn't been all that well-documented on the Eastern Shore. Certainly, it hasn't been treasured until recently, so the archives that aren't bare, aren't well marked. Secondly, there weren't the kinds of high-profile prohibition busts in the 20s as there were in metropolitan areas, therefore there were no photos of colorful characters in bowlers smirking for the camera after destroying a beer barrel.

Homebrewers getting younger, girlier

Young women have really only stopped brewing for the last 200 years or so. Homebrewing news stories (most recently, " Not Every Homebrewer Has a Beard ") increasingly emphasize the fact that women are brewing, which is funny because it highlights a generational, rather than a gender gap. Stereotypically, the oldsters who assign trend stories in newspapers truly are locked into a perception of gender roles that has only barely been true for the last 200(ish) years, especially when it comes to beer. Women brewed until industrialization made it too profitable a potential business for men to ignore. They ladies returned to homebrewing throughout Prohibition, making beer (and liquor and wine) at home to keep the family wet. The real newsflash is, stories about women crossing gender lines are more about establishment bias than about the real world. Women 'Discover' Brewing Expertise is about knowledge and passion. It's not so much that women continue to ...

Fan Fiction

Groupo Modelo write-offs cost AbInBev $6 billion this year. It lost another $1 billion anyway, even with the Word Cup. This is a tinfoil hat observation, but one that's fun to make. Like all kooky theories, it begins with demonstrable facts and descends into the gap between madness and unlikelihood. Craft beer now has 8 percent of the market and think they can make it to 20 over the next decade. Budweiser's parent company, even bolstered by the World Cup, reported losses of more than $1 billion already this year even though revenue increased. Much of that has to do with them purchasing companies that don't run at the famous AbInBev margins, but, to be fair, the revenue boost was because of Brazil. There won't be a World Cup next year, but there also is no craft beer revolution in South America. Or in Africa. Or Russia. There also is no NFL advertising expense in those countries. Last week, Budweiser made an uncharacteristically frank indictment of the NFL. It w...

The State of the Beer

Search This Blog