Brew Ha Ha today welcomes Ramon Tamayo and Mike Gilmore. Ramon Tamayo is the brewer at Russian River Brewing, working for Vinny Cilurzo. He used to work for Mark Carpenter at Anchor Brewing. Mike Gilmore is a brewer in Paris, France. He runs Brew Unique Paris, a shop in Paris where customers come for home brew classes and learn to make beer.  He grew up in the American northeast but has lived in Paris for 20 years. Mike says that there are some good new breweries in and around Paris. He has friends who organize guided tours to Belgian and French breweries. He worked for Boulder Brewery in Boulder, Colorado, starting in 1991. Two professors from CU Boulder started it in 1979. Mark Carpenter remembers that Boulder had a hazy beer, back then, called “The Ugly Beer” that they used to serve as a joke in […]

Colin from HenHouse Brewing Company is our guest today on Brew Ha Ha with Steve Jaxon, Mark Carpenter and Herlinda Heras. We welcome our new sponsor, The Beverage People, Sonoma County’s fermentation headquarters since 1980. They invite beer geeks and home brewers alike to join their Fermenter’s Community Membership Program. It offers the best deals and high level support from their staff, store credit, discounts and a lot more. Visit beveragepeople.com for more details. They have all the materials for making beer, cider, cheese and many others. Colin points out that they will also give you a recipe for a HenHouse brew that you can make at home and then compare to their product. Colin tells about how HenHouse has grown over the last couple of years. They are tasting a new HenHouse beer called Mattress Mafia. They came up with the name this […]

Today on Brew Ha Ha, brewing legend Don Barkley is sitting in for Mark Carpenter and Herlinda Heras is also in, to celebrate Sonoma County Cider Week. Our guests are Ellen Cavalli from cider maker Tilted Shed and Derek Trowbridge from Trowbridge Cider Old World Winery. Derek Trowbridge was a winemaker first, then he learned to make cider and fell in love with it. His family has been growing apples near Sebastopol for a long time. They do barrel aged cider, as they do in some places in Spain and France. Herlinda notes that cider is more like wine than beer, in the production process. There are yeast lees at the bottom of the bottle of cider just like in certain bers. Don Barkley created Red Tail Ale and Eye of the Hawk, and he also founded the Mendocino Brewing Co. He has opened […]

(There is no new Brew Ha Ha show this week, due to an NFL pre-season game being broadcast on our home station KSRO, today. So here is a repeat of a show that originally ran last February, featuring the great Charlie Bamforth, professor at UC Davis.) Prof. Charlie Bamforth, an English scientist who specializes in malting and brewing, is our guest on Brew Ha Ha today with Steve Jaxon, Mark Carpenter and Herlinda Heras. Charlie has been a professor at UC Davis since 1999, and has 40 years in the brewing industry. When he was a biochemist working on enzymes, as a post-doc student at the University of Sheffield, he found a job in his field. He has also written about the English soccer league for the English press. He is a fan of Wolverhapton Wanderers. Herlinda Heras is the coordinator of the craft […]

Mark Legree from Stumptown Brewery is today’s featured guest on Brew Ha Ha with Steve Jaxon, Mark Carpenter and Herlinda Heras. Fridge is also here from Hen House Brewing Company. He also moonlights a bit for Stumptown, promoting the festival. We will talk about the 17th annual Stumptown Beer Revival in Petaluma which also has a barbeque cookout. This is Mark Legree’s 17th year of running the festival. They are tasting a Sumptown beer called Hedge Maze. The BBQ is competition-level. Herlinda actually competed for nine years in the ribs contest. There are ribs and wings contests. There are judges who give awards and also a popularity contest. Mark Carpenter asks if the judges and the public usually agree on their winners and Mark Legree says they actually often to not. The event is August 17th. All the money they raise goes to the local […]

Rich “Ricardo” Norgrove Jr., CEO and Founding Brewmaster, Peter Kruger, COO and Jeremy Grenert, the Marketing Director are here from Bear Republic Brewing Company. Rich and his father started Bear Republic 25 years ago in Rohnert Park. Now his father is retiring and Rich will become the CEO. Rich loves customization and thinks of his role as CEO as facilitating that energy among his staff, who can do the job “better than me now.” They call their Rohnert Park taproom Bear Republic Lakeside and it is near Sonoma State University. Herlinda asks Rich what they have learned from the students there. Rich says that freshness and quality are important. Rich met Mark before he got into beer. He was working at a mountain bike manufacturer and Mark came in to ask if they could make some motorcycle parts. Mark’s card said, “Brewmaster, Anchor” and he […]

Gabe Jackson from The Beverage People is here today with Steve Jaxon, Mark Carpenter and Herlinda Heras. Plus, later in the show we have a phone call from Tara Nurin, from New Orleans. The Beverage People is a retailer that has all the supplies, ingredients, equipment and instruction for home brewing and for making other foods at home, including wine, cider, mead, cheese, olive oil. Home brewing was legalized in 1979. The company started in San Rafael, as Great Fermentations then created a second location in Santa Rosa in 1980. They changed the name to The Beverage People in the mid 1980s. They have classes on brewing, winemaking, cider making, cheesemaking, etc. They sell a beer kit for a 5-gallon batch of home brewed beer. They have brought the brewing tank to the studio, and also some hops and cold live yeast. They sell small amounts of […]

Dave McLean and Martin Voigt are back on Brew Ha Ha with Steve Jaxon and Mark Carpenter this week to talk about the Outside Lands festival which will be going on August 9, 10 & 11 in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Dave is a partner in Admiral Maltings which produces malt for Bay Area brewers.  Herlinda Heras has judged beer in various competitions with Martin Voigt who was on the show last September. He is a beer blogger from Austria and had extended his California trip to attend the festival. This is the 12th year of the Outside Lands festival and the 8th year of Beerlands. There is no beer competition, it’s just three days of great beer, wine and restaurants doing a “Taste of the Bay Area” showcase. There are 30 breweries in Brewlands, including Anchor. There is Ace Cider and Bear Republic and […]

This special Tuesday edition of Brew Ha Ha features Christopher Jackson, from Seismic Brewing. His family owns Jackson Family Wines. He felt brewing and winemaking are closely related that he wanted to make world-class beer in an environmentally sustainable way. He and his partners started planning four years ago and started producing two years ago. Now Seismic Brewing has a new home of its own. They are opening a new taproom in Sebastopol. Its first day is tomorrow, July 3. It is right on Sebastopol Avenue, Hwy 12 turns into Sebastopol Ave. just as you enter the town. They have about 30,000 cars per day that pass by. They will not make their own food but Kendra from Farmer’s Wife will provide sandwiches, Sebastopol Cookie Co. has cookies and Volo Chocolate from Windsor is also there. They will have as many as 12 or […]

Steve Gonzalez from Stone Brewing in Napa is our guest on Brew Ha Ha with Steve Jaxon, Mark Carpenter and Herlinda Heras. Check out the Stone Brewing blog too, here. Stone Brewing is based at Stone Brewing World Gardens & Bistro, a big facility located in Escondido, near San Diego. They also have a brewery in Richmond, Virginia and Shanghai, China. They opened their Napa location in May. It is in an 1877 stone building. It has been a warehouse and a dance hall at different times. There is a restaurant there that gets rave reviews. They have an outdoor smoker for brisket and ribs. They also have a lot of vegetarian choices on the menu. Their co-founders, Steve Wagner and and Greg Cook, met each other in Los Angeles in the music business and then they met again in a brewing class at UC […]