Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

Halfway Crooks cofounders Joran Van Ginderachter and Shawn Bainbridge may love the wide world of craft beer, but with their Atlanta, Georgia brewery the goal was to create a space and beers that would let drinkers find a beer they like, and drink the same beer all night. If you arrive with the goal of maximizing check-ins to the widest number of beers, you’ll quickly find you’re in the wrong place.

The same design principles inform the space and the beer itself—equal parts recontextualized nostalgia, funky creativity, wry humor, and dry deadpan delivery. The bathrooms feature illustrations of chickens from the late 1800’s, floral patterned wallpaper, and a separate soundtrack from the main taproom (Bladerunner and Twin Peaks soundtracks). A video screen at the door plays low-fi digital animations. They embrace our digital present with a bit of warm vacuum tube analog glow. And the same can be said of the beers—they’re fresh and current, but with tweaks of nostalgia and fuzz.

The brewery may be best known for their lagers, which center around separate hop varieties.

“You go to a taproom sometimes and see seven different IPAs,” said Bainbridge. “You come to this taproom and you see seven German pilsners.”

They source hops from some of the most sought-after farms in Germany, and build beers around them, yet there’s also an American mentality—boosting aroma through later additions and whirlpooling, using modern enzymes to ensure fermentation proceeds on schedule. They use a brewhouse not optimized for lagers, but have figured out how to get the most from it. There’s no decoction and just single infusion mashes, but the beers are tight and structured.

In this episode, Bainbridge and Van Ginderachter talk extensively about their approach to lager brewing, as well as the creative and technical process behind their Belgian pale ale Sanguine—a Craft Beer & Brewing beer of the year in 2022, which they say is the one beer in their lineup they’re least happy with.

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Old Orchard (https://www.oldorchard.com/brewer): Old Orchard has partnered with a leading logistics firm in the craft beverage industry to transport your craft concentrate blends. To get started on a freight quote for craft concentrates today, head over to oldorchard.com/brewer

American Canning (https://americancanning.com): American Canning provides packaging supplies at competitive prices in order quantities catered to craft. For a smooth packaging experience, also consider their ultra-compact, single operator canning machines. Learn more about their ecosystem of solutions at americancanning.com.

ABS Commercial (https://abs-commercial.com): ABS Commercial is a full-service brewery outfitter, proud to offer brewhouses, tanks, and small parts to brewers across the country. Contact one of their brewery consultants today at [email protected] to discuss your brewery project.

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Perhaps no brewery in the world is as dedicated to fresh-hopped beers as Single Hill in Yakima, Washington. Led by cofounder and head brewer Zach Turner, the Single Hill team leans into vibrantly hopped IPAs all year long—and their Mind Plant double IPA was first runner-up at last year’s Alpha King Challenge—but harvest time is when their strengths and expertise really get to shine. That’s when Turner shifts focus to fresh-hopped beers, driving to farms around the Yakima Valley to see which varieties are freshly picked, rushing the wet cones back to the brewery to pour into the mash tun-turned-hopback, and gathering freshly kilned (but not yet baled) whole-cone hops that they pelletize themselves for the whirlpool and dry hop. The running event throughout the season is the Fresh Hop Rodeo, when Single Hill collaborates with brewers across the country on a series of fresh-hopped beers that compete for the love of local customers.

Single Hill’s singular fresh-hop focus is succeeding: Their Energy Cone IPA was the gold medal–winning fresh-hop beer at last year’s Great American Beer Festival, and their fame and respect for these beers is growing beyond the region.

In this episode, Turner opens the book on his process and approach to fresh-hopped beers, including:

• flexibility and serendipity in pick windows and varieties
• pelletizing their own hops at the brewery
• utilizing lower temperatures for wet-hop contact, to limit vegetal flavors
• fermenting fresh-hop IPAs with a variety of yeasts
• brewing both hazy and West Coast fresh-hop iterations
• their experimenter system that splits a 15-barrel brew into three different fermentations
  
• new and exciting hop varieties on the horizon

And more.

This episode is brought to you by:

G&D Chillers (https://gdchillers.com): G&D Chillers’ Engineers are committed to green technology design, while developing a more energy efficient chiller for the brewing industry. Contact G&D Chillers today at gdchillers.com

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Fermentis (https://fermentis.com): Fermentis, the obvious choice for beverage fermentation, now offers an expanding range of dry bacteria for the production of sour beers. Visit Fermentis.com to learn more.

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Sean White, cofounder of Athens, Ohio’s Little Fish, is committed to mixed culture sour beer. It’s not the only thing that they brew, but it’s part of the soul of the brewery and a founding pillar that they’ve continued to develop (and improve) over the past eight years. Over those years, they’ve been recognized a number of times for the beers from this program—gold and bronze World Beer Cup medals in 2016 and 2018, silver and gold GABF medals in 2020 and 2022—but if you ask White, he’ll tell you that they’re still figuring it out. They haven’t settled, and they’re still learning.

In this episode, White discusses how they brew these compelling beers, from timing ingredient additions to parameters around their spontaneous beer program. Along the way, he discusses:

• maintaining multiple cultures via solera and brink
• minimizing beer waste to promote sustainability by reducing failure
• balancing acidity in award-winning beers
• neutralizing aged hops to manage funky flavor components
• sourcing and processing local fruit
• fruiting in the barrel
• bottle conditioning with an acid shock starter to reduce yeast stress
• topping up barrels to prevent the development of off flavors
• not drinking beer for the past eight months, while still brewing it
  

And more.

This episode is brought to you by:

G&D Chillers (https://gdchillers.com): For years G&D Chillers has chilled the beers you love, partnering with 3,000+ breweries across the country. They know brewing doesn’t stop at 5 o’clock and nor do they. Reach out for a quote today at gdchillers.com.

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Accubrew (https://accubrew.io) AccuBrew gives brewers, like you, unprecedented insight into your fermentation process. You can remotely monitor sugar conversion, temperature, and clarity to ensure consistency by quickly detecting out-of-range conditions. AccuBrew helps you monitor, document, and manage your fermentation process in real-time.

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Old Orchard (https://www.oldorchard.com/brewer): If you hear Old Orchard mentioned in the brewing community, don't be surprised: the flavored craft juice concentrate blends from Old Orchard have shipped to over 46 states. To join the core of Old Orchard's brewing community, learn more at oldorchard.com/brewer

Ss Brewtech (https://www.ssbrewtech.com): Ss Brewtech has taken technology they invented working with world-renowned industry veterans and made them available to every craft brewer. To learn more about Ss Brewtech's innovation list, head over to SsBrewtech.com.

Christian Hansen (https://www.chr-hansen.com): Christian Hansen are now bringing their knowledge of microbes to brewers with their SmartBev range of frozen liquid yeast and freeze-dried bacteria. Reimagine what your beer can be. Go to Chr-Hansen.com to learn more on the SmartBev line of products.

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Barn Town popped up on our radar in 2022, with a number of beers across styles that scored well with our blind panel of judges, but the best of the bunch was Neon hazy IPA with an impressive score of 98. In our upcoming IPA issue, they did it again with another 98 for hazy double IPA Stink, Stank, Stunk, so naturally we felt the need to ask some questions and understand how they’re making consistently impressive beers.

In this episode, founder Pete Faber, head brewer Grant Brower, and brewer Cody Guyer cover a list of topics, including:

• updating beer recipes over the past half decade to adapt to changing customer tastes
• building stability in hazy IPA with malted oats, wheat, and Pilsner malt
• why Citra is “the bacon”—good with everything
• chilling the whirlpool and optimizing for survivable
• dry hopping after crashing to minimize less desirable flavors
• consistency and variability in hop varieties from lot to lot
• brewing fruited sour beers without gluten-containing grains
• the impacts of thickness and gravity on batch pasteurizing

And more.

This episode is brought to you by:

G&D Chillers (https://gdchillers.com): For years G&D Chillers has chilled the beers you love, partnering with 3,000+ breweries across the country along the way, and they’re proud of the cool partnerships they’ve built over the past 30 years. Reach out for a quote today at gdchillers.com or call to discuss your next project.

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Ss Brewtech (https://www.ssbrewtech.com): Ss Brewtech has taken technology they invented working with world-renowned industry veterans and made them available to every craft brewer. To learn more about Ss Brewtech's innovation list, head over to SsBrewtech.com.

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Keith Villa is an unlikely advocate for cannabis-infused non-alcoholic beer. The cerebral PhD with a molecular biology background spent more than three decades working for Coors, with two decades focused on creating and building the Blue Moon brand, and today he approaches the subject of cannabis beer with a scientist’s rigor and a marketer’s soul. In this conversation, he lays the groundwork for his current exploration, discussing the ins and outs of brewing Belgian-style witbiers (from grist composition to mash regimens that lock in stable haze and substantial head), the value of ritual and drama in beer service, and thinking beyond style strictures when envisioning beers. From there, he delves into the new opportunities that blending beer with cannabis provides—utilizing terpenes common to both hops and cannabis to promote certain physiological effects—before finishing with a primer in the process and technical concerns around de-alcoholizing beer.

This episode is brought to you by:
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Country Malt Group (https://countrymaltgroup.com): With over 200 years of combined experience in the craft beverage industry, Country Malt Group’s dedicated sales and support staff understand the importance of excellent ingredients, product knowledge, and expertise in making great beer. Country Malt Group’s mission is to provide the products and services you need while making the process of ordering ingredients easy – the focus is to inspire your best craft! Order online at shop.countrymalt.com | @CountryMalt

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