Taplines

This week on Taplines, we're going cross-category with our pond-crossing pal from Cocktail College: VinePair's managing editor, Tim McKirdy. Tune in for a genre-breaking conversation about how the hard seltzer boom gave way to a bust that cleared the board for Twisted Tea’s decades-in-the-making moment in the sun — and paved the runway that vodka-based interloper and VinePair Next Wave 2024 Rising Drinks Brand of the Year finalist Surfside is currently speeding down. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe!

We’re putting our normal Taplines format on the shelf today for a very special reunion episode of sorts with journalists Kate Bernot of Sightlines, and Jess Infante of Brewbound, to talk about two turning points in the national suds saga. Some of you listening may know the three of us as the Beer Byliners, the name of a Twitter Space (man, remember those?!) that we hosted in the early days of the pandemic. Well, we’re getting the gang back together today, and you’re coming with. Stay tuned for a chat about the unveiling of the Brewers Association’s Ozymandian “20% by 2020” mantra, the dark side of Cleveland’s infamous, Stroh's-fueled 10-Cent Beer Night catastrophe, and much more. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe!

Today on Taplines, meet Annie Johnson. She’s a longtime homebrewer, the self-avowed Queen of Beer, and an old source of mine from way back. Annie has been brewing her own beer since the mid-’90s, and winning first-place ribbons for ‘em nearly as long. The woman has enough these days to make a damn cape out of ‘em — and she did. We talked about that, and so much more. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe!

Like any good parable, the "David and Goliath" self-mythology of the American craft brewing industry in the '80s and '90s was illuminating, compelling — and maybe a bit reductive, too. In Episodes 33 and 34, we examined this us-versus-them dynamic from the perspective of one of the “thems,” Keith Villa, who created the Blue Moon Brewing Company from within the Coors colossus in 1995. Today, we’re coming at it once again through the eyes of New Realm Brewing Co. cofounder and brewmaster Mitch Steele, who did a substantial stretch, semi-concurrent to Villa’s at Coors, at Big Beer’s biggest and baddest "Goliath" of all: Missouri’s pre-InBev Anheuser-Busch. After starting his career in a California brewpub, Mitch eventually wound up in St. Louis towards the end of the 20th century on a skunkworks-style R&D team tasked with brewing up answers to those pesky “microbrews” that would somehow satisfy distributors in the mighty red network, the American drinking public, and August Busch the Third himself — no mean feat. Would creative extensions on the premium Michelob line do the trick? What about a new brand named for A-B’s hop farm in northern Idaho? You’ll have to listen on to find out. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe!

Today, we’re joined by the one and only Bianca Bruno, an editor of the venerable trade publication Beer Business Daily, who was there, live and in-person, to cover the landmark trademark trial between San Diego’s Stone Brewing Company and macrobrewer Molson Coors over an allegedly infringing Keystone Light rebrand. The federal jury trial yielded a shocking verdict, and what it revealed about the state of Stone’s business would set the stage for the once vehemently independent firm’s sell-out to Sapporo later that year. Don’t forget to like, review, and subscribe!

After trading hands several times and closing its Rhode Island facility to contract brew, the Narragansett brand was eventually scooped up by a group of investors in 2005. With hands-on experience marketing beverage alcohol from creating Hendrick's Gin and Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum, Quaker City Mercantile founder and 'Gansett investor Steven Grasse set about rebranding the flagship legacy lager and the rest of the company's portfolio for a future befitting its storied past. This is the story of how that went. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe!

Our guest this episode is Jeff Musial, a bev-alc industry veteran who was working in research and development for new products at Anheuser-Busch in the mid-Aughts. This was a heady moment for the St. Louis giant; Bud Light volumes would peak in 2008, the same year the Brazilian-led Belgian outfit InBev would complete its hostile takeover of the firm. But before any of that, Jeff and his team would launch a new line-extension of the A-B flagship, Bud Light Lime, that cracked the code on flavor-forward fruited light lagers for the United States’ leading purveyor of ‘em. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe!

In 2018, Gold Dot Beer’s Kevin Davey was working as the brewmaster of Portland Oregon’s Wayfinder Beer when he hit upon the idea of brewing an India Pale Ale with lager yeast. Hazy IPAs had yet to consolidate their grasp as the dominant substyle of the traditional West Coast variety, and this was the age of tinkering; in fact, Davey says his experimental brew was an answer of sorts to Kim Sturdevant’s Brut IPA invention in San Francisco during that same era. (Check out the episode directly prior to this one for that story.) Davey called his crisp, clear, dry-hopped creation “Cold IPA” — a nod to its lager-like production process, and the temperature at which it's meant to be enjoyed. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe!

Towards the end of the Teens, Kim Sturdavant was brewing at Social Kitchen & Brewery in San Francisco when he developed a new kind of India Pale Ale. He christened his crisp, dry varietal Hop Champagne, and christened the promising new substyle "Brut IPA," a nod to the sparkling wine that this new beer resembled. Brewers in the Bay Area loved it, and drinkers seemed to, too, so Sturdavant had high hopes for the substyle’s future. But just a few years later, Brut IPAs rarely earn mention from craft brewing enthusiasts (let alone casual drinkers) and if they do, it’s often in the form of a punchline. What happened? Well, that’s what Sturdavant joins Taplines today to talk through. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe!