Dr. Bill Sysak | Four Brewers Podcast

Season 2, Episode 45 – This week on the show, we’re drinking beers from Russian River Brewing Company. BOOM.

If you’re a craft beer drinker, you’ve heard of Russian River Brewing Company. Craft beer drinkers far and wide seem to adore Russian River and their beers, ranging from the somewhat hard to find and ever-so-hoppy Pliny The Elder, to the hard to get beers like the tart and acidic Beatification.

Russian River has roots in the Inland Empire of southern California, originally hailing from Temecula, California, but moved up the coast to Santa Rosa, California, which is where they call home today.

We’re kicking off the show with the legendary beer geek-hoppy-holy-grail, Pliny The Elder. Bottles of this beer tend to be hard to find outside of central California, so getting some bottles for the show this week was a bit of an endeavor for us. Luckily, we have a few friends in high places, and were able to score a couple bottles, one from La Bodega Wine & Spirits in Riverside, California, and at the last minute, El Cerrito Liquor in Corona, California.

Pliny The Elder is a beer that is best enjoyed fresh, due to the copious amount of dry hops used in secondary fermentation. IPA in general should always be consumed as fresh as possible, and Russian River goes out of their way to make sure you know this by plastering it all over the bottle’s label.

We’re drinking A LOT of Russian River beers on the show this week, so we’re not going to get too in depth on the blog post about them. We tried to get as many as possible, going as far as San Diego the day before the show to pick up a bottle of 2013 Framboise for a Cure from the legendary cellar of “Dr. Bill” Sysak. We also got a bottle of Beatification from our good friend, Cougar Steve, which he brought back from a recent trip to Russian River Brewing Company.

Huge thanks once again to Kim at La Bodega Wine & Spirits and Jazz at El Cerrito Liquor for the Pliny, as well as Dr. Bill and Cougar Steve for the whalez hookups. It takes a village to do a beer podcast, you know…

BREW THE SHIT OUT OF IT.

Beers from this week’s episode:
Russian River Brewing Company: Pliny The Elder
Russian River Brewing Company: Damnation
Russian River Brewing Company: Salvation
Russian River Brewing Company: Sanctification
Russian River Brewing Company: Framboise For A Cure 2013
Russian River Brewing Company: Supplication
Russian River Brewing Company: Consecration
Russian River Brewing Company: Beatification

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Season 2, Episode 26 – This week, we’re back in Dr. Bill’s cellar, and talking about the business side of beer.

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This week we’re back in Dr. Bill’s epic cellar, and we’re discussing the beer industry. We kick off the discussion with a beer that falls right in line with the discussion, Stone Brewing Co.’s Enjoy By 07.04.15 IPA. Stone is a big advocate of enjoying beer fresh, and really has led the way in bottle dating and stressing the importance of checking the freshness of beers before they’re purchased and consumed. Enjoy By literally tells you when to drink the beer. Drink it fresh!

Stone Brewing Co. - Enjoy By 07.04.15 IPA — Stone Brewing Co. – Enjoy By 07.04.15 IPA

The next beer up is Cantillon’s Grand Cru Bruocsella, vintage 2011. This beer kicks off a really important discussion about beer quality, in regards to localized nano breweries. Craft beer is booming right now, and there are a lot of great breweries opening (which is totally awesome), but it does come with its caveats. Brewing beer on such a small scale leaves a lot of room for mistakes and QA issues. We talk about how important it is to make the best product possible, since many new customers are trying beer for the first time. You don’t want to leave them with a bad taste in their mouth…right?!