OnTap Magazine

BEER EVALUATION If you’re looking to extend your vocabulary of beer flavours and aromas, these talks are invaluable. These podcasts are not recommended for morning listening, as you’ll spend the rest of the day pining for great beer. Rather listen on the way home from work and be sure there’s a cold one waiting in the fridge when you get home. TECHNICAL BREWING To some brewers the basic brewing information is not enough. They need words that are long and complex; they need discussions on the enzymatic activity caused by dry hopping; they need explanations of chemical composition changes during boiling. They need these podcasts! Advanced to extremely complex topics, from oxygen uptake during bottling, to various types of malting and how the grain type is affected by malting. This podcast may use words that take up more than two lines if you write them down, but John Bryce (Bryce Brewing Co.) and his guests explain their topics in detail, making it “easy” to understand. However, there are also some very advanced/ technical topics where deeper knowledge is required. Hilarious conversations as four friends discuss beer, news and each other’s personalities. Their beer reviews are amazing, as they build on each other’s palates. However, the magic that happens in their banter is what makes this my favourite podcast. In 2005 CBR started talking about beers. Every week they focus on five or six beers, discussing the aromas, flavours and all the details in between. Jeff and Greg have tasted thousands of beers, and by now they have fine-tuned their senses. BJCP judges sit down to taste and rate homebrew. After the rating they discuss their findings with the brewer, explaining scores and how to improve the beer. A great podcast if you want to enter your beer into a BJCP competition. MASTER BREWERS PODCAST BEERISTS CRAFT BEER RADIO DR HOMEBREW Let's face it, listening to beer/brewing experts discuss their passion, their craft and sharing their knowledge is what we want (and need) to hear. Michael Kiser and his team (The Fervent Few) discuss everything from macro to micro and host big name guests from the beer industry. GOOD BEER HUNTING Marshall and his team of experimenters take common brewing knowledge to task, as they take a “rule” and see if it makes a big enough difference that tasters will pick it up. Using various “extremes”, they brew the same beer in different ways and see what happens. The information and experiments are anecdotal, but it may help you RDWHAHB. BRÜLOSOPHY PODCAST Dr Brad Smith (founder of the BeerSmith software) discusses various beer topics with some of the greatest minds in the industry. Most topics are homebrewer friendly, but there is an occasional topic that is more commercial brewery orientated. His friendly discussions are easy to listen to and very educational. BEERSMITH HOME BREWING PODCAST WHAT IS A PODCAST? Think of a podcast as “internet radio”. It’s similar to normal radio, except that you can listen to the episodes whenever you want, wherever you want. You can listen to these episodes by either going to the web site of the podcast, or using an application like iTunes, PocketCasts, or any of the multiple other apps that play podcasts. Some podcasts may be video episodes, just like telly. Not only may this be the first South African beer podcast to make more than five episodes, they had, at the time of writing, released episode 43. Troye May discusses beer with some of the biggest beer names in South Africa, as well as a few international guests. Murray Slater's brand-new podcast joined the digital airwaves in June 2018, and at the time of writing already had three episodes available. His easy-going, yet content-focused discussions with brewers and experts make for a great listening experience. #BEERTIME THE MASH TUN PODCASTS LOCAL ontapmag.co.za | Spring 2018 | 59