Happy New Year, beer lovers! Join us for an uncut episode featuring the 'Pope of Foam,' Charlie Bamforth. With over 20 minutes of cut conversation, we dive deep into the art and science of brewing, the importance of foam, and how beer shapes civilization.

Patreon Exclusive Live Stream - Jan 5 @ 7 PM (CST): https://www.patreon.com/posts/146379474

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TIMELINE

00:00 Patreon Livestream - Jan 5

00:56 The Pope of Foam

01:47 Charlie's Journey into Brewing

04:53 The Science and Lifestyle of Beer

42:29 Pubs for Community Building

53:34 Beer and Civilization

01:00:18 Importance of Beer Foam

01:19:25 Support us on Patreon!

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CREDITS

Hosts:

Bobby Fleshman - https://www.mcfleshmans.com/

Allison Fleshman -https://www.instagram.com/mcfleshmans/

Joel Hermansen

Gary Ardnt - https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/

Music by Sarah Lynn Huss - https://www.facebook.com/kevin.huss.52/

Recorded & Produced by David Kalsow - https://davidkalsow.com/

Brought to you by McFleshman's Brewing Co

Happy New Year, beer lovers.

Quick reminder, we are on our holiday break, so today we're pulling something from the vault.

We have Charlie Bamforth, the uncut edition, pulling it out from behind the paywall of Patreon.

There's about 15 to 20 minutes that you didn't hear if you've only listened in the main feed.

So as a friendly reminder, you can listen to all of the episodes over on Patreon uncut in one full long episode, just like this one.

And you can get access to episodes a week ahead of time.

Exclusive beers and access to the live stream that we are doing next Monday at 7:00 PM Central Time.

Gary, Bobby and Allison will be recapping 2025, looking forward to 2026 and doing a taste test of off the shelf beer blind.

It's gonna be great.

We hope to make fun of them.

Anyways, enjoy Charlie's wonderful voice as he tells you about beer.

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Respecting the Beer.

My name is Gary Arndt.

With me again are the usual suspects.

The man who rolled dual spec astronomer and brewer, Bobby Fleshman.

We got the historian of hops, Joel Hermansen, and Charlie, I have to say you have caused quite a fuss over at McFleshman's this week.

So many people have been excited about this interview.

Our very special guest this week is a man who several years ago, a, college of brewers got together and elected him and they announced it to the world by white foam coming up the chimney of the Sistine Chapel.

The Pope of Foam, Mr. Charlie Banforth.

Thanks for being on the show.

Nice to be with you.

I wish I could be there in, in, physically there with you as well, sharing a pint.

But nice to be with you remotely.

We'll make that happen again.

But before we kicked off this recording, we were reminiscing and how you came here almost four years ago for a beer fest we were holding when you were the guest speaker before that, but yeah, we'll make that happen in person again, if we can, hopefully my wife, Allison can pop in and so I, Charlie, before we're going to go kind of organically through some stuff tonight, and I, I think people need to understand something about your background.

And we have a very casual.

up to, uh, informed beer audience.

So you started with Bass, if I'm not mistaken, you started before that as a microbiologist, I believe, or at least overlapping with that.

And then you were quality at Bass and then you worked with the brewing research Institute.

Making your way to UC Davis and becoming the Endowed Professor of Brewing Science there by, uh, Anheuser Busch, if I'm not mistaken.

You taught me in 2013 in the Master Brewers Program, so I met you there.

And then, uh, you made your way here and then somewhere along the way for that beer fest we had, and somewhere along the way you got hired by Ken Grossman and Sierra Nevada to be their senior quality advisor.

So I don't want to discount all the publications you have there.

It takes quite the thumbscroll just to go down the list, but you've touched on a lot of subjects.

I brought you up here today on the premise of talking about how one incorporate beer into a healthy lifestyle.

But I hope we get to meander through some of the other aspects of your career.

Yeah, we can be under as much as you like.

Um, so yeah, I've been, I've been in this business since 1978, which is, Probably longer than a lot of your listeners have even been on the planet.

So, uh, yeah, but, you got the history approximately correct, but

We have some soccer, uh, notes on the side.

I'm, I

All right

but on my right and left, we have some of that as well.

Yeah, I mean, we were really glad that you were able to join us today in light of the fact that your Wolves lost 3 0 to Newcastle.

Well, thanks for thanks for mentioning that yeah, it was it it was a bad a bad day at the office should we say, Yeah, they look bad.

They look really bad today.

It's, it's, it's not looking good this season, but who knows?

As long as there's three other teams that are worse than us, then we'll be

appeared to be that right now, I think.

Isn't Ipswich the, the bottom

No, no, Ipswich are just outside the relegation zone, Wolves are third from the bottom and underneath are Leicester City and, uh, my brain's gone blank.

so there are, there are officially, uh, uh, two or three teams that are potentially worse than Wolves.

The bottom three will go down.

So yeah, Southampton are right at the bottom.

They're, they're pretty awful.

well, I I'm gonna be paying huge attention just to make sure you guys don't get relegated.

well, thank you

do what I can

Well, yeah, send good vibes our way, you know, um, but, um, they're in theory, at least they have the players.

They just, it's a case of bringing them all together.

That's like anything in the world of brewing as well.

It's bringing all the parts together to achieve a successful outcome.

Right, so what do we jump in?

Gary normally hosts.

I'm the worst Gary's the voice and he keeps it rolling You have so meant such a diverse background and when the context of beer.

I I think that You So Joel came in.

He has some great prompts for me here.

He's a teacher by by trade, and he left me with some, some prompts here, and some of which are highlighted.

So I think we should ask the first one, right?

Because I'm just gonna Charlie, I'm just gonna be honest for a second.

I read your book this weekend.

Um,

Which one?

Right.

Beer is proof that God loves

Oh, that one.

Yeah.

Loved it.

Um.

I, I, as a, as an amateur brewer I've been a huge fan of yours for many years.

I told Bobby that as a Grateful Dead fan.

This is me talking to you today is like me talking to Jerry Garcia.

So this this is kind of a big deal.

So we we made some notes just so that we could be prepared uh to to speak with you.

But one of the questions that So I'm going to ask you a question that I had is we feel I think Bobby and I share this thought that you have the greatest job on the planet.

And when, when we look through all of your writings and all of your books and all of the things that you've done, it's just, it's spectacular.

And we're wondering how you've been so lucky and how you feel about that.

Yeah.

I do feel lucky.

Um, I guess I was in the right place at the right time.

There's never been a master plan in any of this.

Um, so I, you know, joining the brewing industry was, it was the first job, uh, that, uh, took my eye when I would finish as a postdoc in, in Sheffield in the north of England and uh, just so happened to be at the Brewing Research Foundation.

So give me a job I can do that.

So beer and um, enzymes as well, bringing them two together.

And then, you know, Bass took a shine to me and, and, and, and, and so I went to Bass and that gave me the industrial experience and it was back to the brewing.

And they also gave me quality, uh, a lot of quality experience.

And it's back to the Brewing Industry Research Foundation, or BRF as it was called in those days.

And I was also, my very close friend is a guy called Graeme Stewart, and he gave me the opportunity to be the visiting professor at Harriet Watt in Edinburgh.

And so when they wanted a brewing professor at UC Davis, they wanted somebody who'd been in the industry, and actually had practical brewing experience.

They wanted somebody who had a research record in brewing, and somebody who'd been in academia.

So, yeah.

So I was pretty much the only guy on the planet who checked all the boxes.

So I came to Davies in, in 1999.

And, uh, 20 years later retired.

And, and Ken, Ken Grossman said, Hey, come up to Chico.

I'll buy you lunch.

I'll give you lunch.

So I went up and I said, What can I do for you, Ken?

He said, well, you're retiring.

I said, Yeah.

He said, No, you're not.

He said, Do you, you know, You know, we'd like you to spend time, uh, with us, uh, advising us on matters to do with quality.

And he said, you, you, you'll have a simple brief that is, tell me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear.

So, uh, we, we have that relationship and, uh, you know, I would, I would not have done it for anybody.

I would have retired right off the bat.

But Ken is a special guy and, uh,

I can back that up, uh, having, having gone through the master brewers program with, Charlie, his accolades, his, uh, praise for, uh, Ken Grossman.

It's true.

It rings true.

Yeah, he's the most impressive guy I've ever met in all my 40 whatever number of years in the brew industry, 47 years in the brew industry.

He's easily the most impressive person I've ever met.

And, uh, so it's a real honor to be associated with Sierra Nevada.

These days, I'm not sure Bobby whether you were the year in the extension class when they had the bingo cards were you were you were you the bingo card here.

I don't recall that.

Yeah, that was I was lecturing one morning I've been talking for about 20 minutes and this guy put his hand up.

I was ready.

Yes, I was.

I said, I said, you got a question.

He said, yeah.

I said, he said, no, I'm not going to question it.

He said, bingo, and he got a lie.

He got a line and everybody in the class at a bingo card.

And there's a, there's a something I said in every line.

And I've been talking for about 20 minutes and this guy had drawn a line through four of my statements.

And I'm sure one of them was Ken Grossman.

I'm sure it would have been.

Because

I think you use the word Mecca and, and Ken Grossman and Sierra Nevada, all in the same paragraph.

For sure.

Yeah.

so anyway, it's, it's, it's an honor to be part of it.

So back to your question, it's, you know, I am, I'm very blessed, you know, I, I, to, to be working on a, you know, a field that I, I enjoy very much a topic that of course, so many people, you know, enjoy and relish in all sorts of ways.

And, uh, you know, get the opportunity to, to, to speak about it like, like today and to talk and to write about it and so on.

I, you know, it, uh, it keeps me going, you know and long may it continue.

I think, I think your success, I'm going to put words in your mouth.

I think because you say yes so much.

You seem to, you seem to be out there in a good way.

You seem to be promoting the science of beer, the quality of beer, and just the beer industry overall,

Well, it's so important.

Yeah, I do.

And it's so important and it's not easy, you know, because if you, if you're on the inside, And you're trying to spread the gospel about beer as a wholesome component of life.

You know, there are people out there, um, that are out to get you in a way.

And, uh, they're not prepared to, to, to listen sometimes.

But luckily, those people who do respect beer, and those people who are interested in beer, Uh, they do realize just how important it is to, to spread those positive messages about what is, you know, for thousands and thousands of years been an important part of, uh, of a civilized, uh, society.

So, uh, yeah, I, I, I relish the opportunity.

Some years ago, my wife made me put the words at a post posted by my office, uh, in the office by my desk, which said no.

Thank you.

And, and, you know, when people phone me up and say, hey, come and give us a talk, I was supposed to look at this and say, no, but I don't think I, I don't think I ever did it.

Um, so I think, uh, I, I left that notice there for my success.

I'm not sure whether he says no or not, but, uh, I, I very seldom did.

I think we'll have time to come back to this later, but that was, that was chapter seven in, in your book.

And I, I actually teach world history and I found a lot of intersections between, Your historical analysis of all of the forces that have acted against beer through the years you know ranging from religious to Social to economic forces that really resonated, uh with me.

I thought that was excellent

Yeah.

Um, I'm not sure who it was, so it's not that I'm paranoid, but it doesn't mean they're not out to get me.

You know, and it's very easy when you're not careful to.

To realize, uh, or to, to believe that, uh, there are, there are too many negative forces out there.

In moderation, you know, beer is a real force for good, in my opinion.

One of the things I used to teach the students, I hope, and talk about very much, was respecting the product.

And I used to say, you know, there's no place, and this is to the students at UC Davis, 40, 000 students, there's no place for beer pong, you know?

I mean, beer is not something you, as part of a, Inherent feature of a sport or a game.

You don't throw ping pong balls at it.

You savor it, you enjoy it, you respect it and you have

feel like we should

uh, you have it as a wholesome part, you have a, as a wholesome part of, of a lifestyle, you know, but, but don't, you know, it's things like, You know, some of the things that people do, perhaps it's no wonder that people have a down on on beer and other forms of alcohol, but as long as beer is treated with respect and enjoyed and and and cherished for what it is, then long may it be allowed to thrive.

I recall you talking at some point, uh, during one of the lectures about the paradox of how the French drink so much wine and, and yet they, they seem to be so healthy and, and, and they eat so much cheese and so on and so on and so on.

And you, and you said that there's correlation and, and can you expand?

Can you, can you remember that?

you,

can certainly remember it, and you know, it's one of those things at the moment, as you're probably aware, I'm sure you are aware, there's a bunch of reports been coming out and floating around recently that basically say there's, there's no, um, safe level of consuming alcohol, well, you know, That's nonsense, it's absolute nonsense and, and it's, it's, it's, it's coming at it from the totally wrong angle, but the, the point you were raising there was all to do with the so called French paradox, and it all kicked off a number of years ago on a television program called 60 and they were talking about this French paragraph.

Paradox that, you know, there's the French.

You remember I'm English, you know, so I, you know, inherently they're rude about the, the French are rude about the English and vice versa.

So, and I, what I probably said on that day, Bobby is, you know, the French live badly, they eat all this rubbish and all this cheese and so on, but their arteries should be caked solid with bad cholesterol.

And on 60 Minutes he said that it's because they drink red wine.

And red wine cuts down the risk of atherosclerosis, blocking of the arteries.

And, and basically, they, they push something called resveratrol, which is in the grape skins.

And because when you make red wine, there's more contact with the red, uh, the grape skins than with white wine.

You get more resveratrol, and therefore red wine is healthier than white wine.

Yeah, what they don't say is, you know, to get enough resveratrol, you've got to drink over 100 bottles of red wine every day.

You know, um, and it's not the red one.

It's not the resveratrol.

It's the alcohol.

And there have been countless studies.

Whether it's wine, beer, any alcoholic beverage, in moderation, will cut down the risk of atherosclerosis.

And yet people are trying to just say, look, it's rubbish, all those studies are wrong.

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of studies.

And they're just trying to, to sort of gainsay and say, nay, it's just an old wives tale, I think.

Was one of the terms used by the, the former.

chief medical officer for England.

An old wives tale.

Well, you know, they're, they're just selecting the research they want to select.

And if you, if you look at that research, then, you know the stuff that points negative fingers, you, you can drive a, you can drive, and you can drive a truck through it, you know, and I'm not saying that if you consume alcohol to excess, it's, it's not going to do you any harm, but you know, For as many headlines you could have about it.

alcohol and negative aspects of it.

You could write those articles about pretty much anything else that you put into your body, uh, but they're just, they're picking on alcohol.

Um, and it, it, it's, it, you've got to understand it for what it is.

But again, back to the example you were talking about, that's the famous U shaped curve.

With moderate consumption of alcohol, you reduce the risk of dying, basically, from blocked arteries.

If you drink too much, the curve swings the other way.

So there's a sweet spot.

And this is what people are trying to deny at the moment.

They say there's no sweet spot.

Well, there most certainly is.

Um, a sweet spot because there's a lot of evidence, uh, showing that, uh, that the moderate consumption, and when you remember it, I think I'm right in saying the number one killer in this country is actually coronary heart disease and uh, if it's true, and I believe it is, that moderate consumption of alcohol cuts down those risks, then let's have a conversation about that in the press because You know it's a complex area, and I'm sure we'll get into it.

It seems like it's really confusing, too, as a consumer of information, one day that pendulum will swing one way, and they'll say what, what you just said, which is that when consumed with appropriate.

you know, moderation that, that beer is actually part of a healthy lifestyle.

And then, you know, a week later, there'll be another report.

And then it'll, you know, and it's hard for the consumer of information to keep track of where, where the current trends are.

And In your book, you actually cited a really good example and you, you related it to a crime and you, you said that you know, if somebody had committed a crime, uh, they were wondering if alcohol was a, was a, a, a component of the motivation behind the crime as opposed to, well, did they eat that, you know, that day did they do other things that very same day that may have also contributed to the crime?

And we ignore all of those other mitigating factors.

Yeah, I mean, they're causal, causal relationships, you know, I mean, you've got to understand a direct relationship between a factor and the impact of that factor.

So, as I'm fond of saying, people say to me, oh, you know, look at wine drinkers, they're, they're healthier than beer drinkers.

And I said, how do you make that out?

And they said, well you just have to look at them.

And I said, well, you know, jokingly I will start them and say, Well yeah, wine drinkers sort of jog and belong to health clubs.

And beer drinkers watch ball games and eat burgers, you know, I mean.

It's not the alcohol, it's the lifestyle, you know, so.

Right.

So that, that, that is slightly tongue in cheek.

But, you know, there was a study years ago in Copenhagen, and they checked what people were buying in the supermarket.

And what they did was, they waited for people to come out of the supermarket, and they asked them for the printout of what they'd been buying.

And so they, they went through thousands and thousands and thousands of these, And picked out those who'd been buying wine and those who'd been buying beer.

And those who'd been buying wine had been buying sort of lettuce and water and cress.

You know, people who were buying beer were buying red meat, burgers, cigarettes, potatoes, butter, you know.

It's one of the beards keeping these guys alive, you know, but, but, but seriously, you know, it's, so it's a lifestyle thing and, and there used to be a excellent guy, a fair minded medic.

Let me, let me, let me just call him that, um, who was based at Kaiser Permanente a number of years ago.

His name was Arthur Klatsky, and he published a paper and he, and he highlighted the fact that when people are drawing correlations, whether it's a positive correlation or a negative correlation, let's be, let's be fair, between how much they consume and, you know, the impact, their lifestyle and their health situation it's on the basis of doctors saying, you know, Do you drink?

And you say, yeah.

Well, well, how much do you drink?

Oh, I just have a, I have a beer every day.

Well, no, you have two or three.

Oh, I just have a glass of wine.

Well, yeah, but what about the gin and tonic and the brandy, you know?

And, and he said, basically it's, it's lying.

And so they hope that one of those axes, you know, we can't draw a correlation between a health impact.

And alcohol consumption.

That X axis on alcohol consumption is, is, you know, often as not, declaration by people about what they're, what they're drinking.

And they're lying, you know, there's no reliability on that axis either.

Now that works both ways, you know, it works, whether it's a positive impact or a negative impact, but, but there's a, it's, it's fraud.

Human beings, they're, they're You know, they don't just drink beer, you know, they eat different things, and they do different things, and they exercise to different extent.

So there's multiple factors that are involved in anybody's lifestyle and one's risk of ill health or one's risk of death.

And, and, you know, as, as somebody pointed out the University of Cambridge, you know, there's not, when people are saying there's no safe level of, drinking?

Well, there's no safe level of getting in a car, you know, there's no safe level of swimming, you know, because who knows what, you know, what other people are doing.

or, or, or what circumstances you're going to find yourself in.

So, I mean, that's a slightly garbled response, but you know, it's human beings do not live by beer alone.

And, and if you look at the numbers that they're talking about, the, and the risk of, of death, I was reading one report only today that was highlighted today.

And, you know, and, and, and a drink a day.

You know, increases, you know, somebody, one in a thousand people are gonna suffer from it.

Well, what about the other in 999?

You know, I mean, even if it's one in a thousand, it's probably one in 10,000, you know?

So I'll take my chances, you know, I won't abuse it.

And I do think that if I, you know, was drinking 20 points a day, I, I don't think they do me much good.

But I, I, I, I, I should not be expecting to be made to feel guilty because I enjoy a Pinter two.

Uh, as part of a convivial lifestyle, you know, and I, I think it's going to benefit me.

And if you'd let me just go on for one more minute, my, I'll tell you a story.

My mother, um, went into an old people's home and my brother took her to buy a new bed.

And so she kept lying on these beds and stretching her hand out to the right.

And, and my brother said, what are you doing?

She said, I'm trying to gauge the height for my brandy glass.

And the last thing she did at night.

Was to, to have a, a tot of brandy and she died aged 102.

You know, so, if she'd been a firefighter or if she'd been a, a hides, high wire trapeze artist, then chances are she probably wouldn't have made 102.

But she did.

And Brandy obviously didn't that do that much harm, did it?

So, where does that leave us in the context of dry January and this movement toward zero alcohol?

I, myself, my own opinion is we should moderate through the 12 months rather than binge.

I don't want to say binge, but to completely shut completely off and then completely on at some point.

I, I don't know what your opinion is of, of this.

My opinion is informed by another story that was reported some, some years ago about the benefits of moderate alcohol consumption.

And the point, the point was made that it's, that's constant moderate consumption.

So it's not sort of abstaining from, you know, Sunday to Friday and binge drinking the rest on a Saturday night.

You know, that's, that is binge drinking and that's not healthy.

So, you know, even, even if it's even if you're consuming moderately throughout the year, there's, there's going to be no advantage unless you're trying to count calories.

From abstaining on, on, uh, throughout January, uh, for example, because if, if the benefits are due to a, a constant moderate

consumption pattern for alcohol, then why, why jeopardize that by avoiding the alcohol throughout the month of January?

So yeah, I agree.

We're not, we're not talking about heavy consumption 11 months a year and then none at all on a daily basis.

In January or whatever month you prefer to choose.

But, uh, I, I, I, I think that it probably stems from the fact that, you know, people sort of eat richly and dying well over the Christmas holiday period.

And then, uh, it's part of a sort of, uh, overall detox.

They behave moderately, um, in January.

And of course you know, alcohol gets picked on, particularly beer, because people say, oh, you know, all that beer gives you a beer belly.

Well, it's, it's alcohol.

And it doesn't matter whether it's beer or wine or spirits or whatever it is, that's, that's the main source of calories.

If it's simply a case of, of watching your calorie intake, then personally, I would choose the benefits of moderate consumption of alcohol and I'd cut down some other source of calories from my diet in January.

I might even have a bacon free January, but, uh, But I won't,

Do you feel that the brewing industry has created their own problem when it comes to, let's say zero alcohol January, or when it comes to looking back in time seltzers and so on and so on, you, you, you, you've been involved in product development at many times over.

You understand how the marketing and so forth goes.

Yeah, I, I, yeah.

I've got to be careful because, you know, all brewing companies are striving to continue to be successful.

And, and, if somebody is being very, very successful with a certain type of product, then it's very hard not to also go into that space.

So it's a very difficult area.

Speaking strictly personally, strictly personally, I believe I believe brewers should brew beer.

And when I think beer, I'm thinking malt, hops, yeast, and water.

Now, you know, long standing adjuncts, you know, I have no difficulty with the rice, corn, candy sugar, invert sugar.

I have no difficulty with those things.

But I do have difficulty with bizarre ingredients.

And I do have difficulty with trying to, to, if you're not careful, squeeze out the tried and trusted beers with alcoholic liquids that have got a different Provenance.

Okay.

So, you know, if it's, if it's the alternatives and the flavored alcoholic beverages, you know, they can only eat into the beer volume.

I, I, I'm protective of the beer volume.

I, I, I think people should be drinking beer.

I, I, I'm not a huge fan of, of, of beer.

of drinking adulterated beers with bizarre bits of animals.

Or, uh, I'm not so keen on, you know, let's, let's name name, you know, alcoholic teas and those sorts of things.

Because, you know, there's only so much liquid that people can consume in moderation.

Um, how many times am I going to use that term?

And if they're drinking a, an alcoholic seltzer, they're not drinking a beer.

And I, I, I truly believe that the beer has stood the test of time.

It's nutritious.

It's interesting.

And if you can't, if you can't make an outstanding product range from You know, malt hops, yeast and water, then God help you, you know, I mean, the wine guys seem to celebrate doing so much with just one basic ingredient.

They only worry about grapes.

They don't even worry about the damn yeast, you know, um, and they have put themselves and other people have put them on a pedestal for that.

I think the world of, of the beer industry, I think they really do need to be celebrating what we have, you know, I'm delighted, for example, you know, the, the, the craft industry in the States has finally discovered something called lager, you know, I mean, that's just wonderful, you know, I mean, go with it, you know, there's plenty, plenty there to run with, you know, so yeah, beer, beer as, as, uh, A lot of people are suspicious, you know, they don't understand it.

And I think the brewing industry has got a lot to do to celebrate this wonderful product.

Charlie, thank you so much for those words.

That is like my philosophy to a tee.

Our motto at McFleshman's is respecting the beer and beer flavored beer.

And the, the gentleman sitting right here who does all of this, he, he does great beer.

And I also want to add one thing about this dry January business.

Your current boss makes it impossible for me to do dry January.

Okay.

Because celebration ale comes out.

yeah.

And that is, I, I have stated this and I know you're not that far away from me on this.

Yeah.

That is the best commercially available beer in the United States.

across the United States.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A hundred percent.

That is,

when that thing comes out in late October ish, early November, like I'm lurching around to different stores just to find it.

It is glorious.

It is remarkable.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

I mean, but it's, it's one of the number of glorious products that, um, but, but yeah, you know, and, and my dear friend Terence Sullivan will be delighted to hear those, those words.

And I'm sure Ken would too.

Um, it's an amazing product, you know, and it, it, it celebrates as the name would indicate.

you know, all that's good about beer.

And of course, um, you know, with the wonderful fresh hops and, and so on, it's just, it is of course a delight.

And, and I've got one just down, down, down the corridor here in my refrigerator and I'll be

I was about to say, Charlie, we're 32 minutes in.

I know it's only, maybe is it four o'clock there at this point?

Just after,

it is, yeah.

okay, well, and I don't know if you need to grab one or if we're holding you from doing

No, no, it's all right.

I'll, um, because once I've started having one, I'll, I'll, uh, I'll, no, that, that sounds right.

No, it doesn't.

I can't have another.

no.

And also I want to apologize for not.

We were planning to send you some, but the stars did not align and get them there to you in time.

But we'll make up for that down the road somehow, some way.

We have some beers.

We'd love to have you taste.

And, and this guy to my right is a huge fan of the IPA as he alludes to with celebration.

And, and, uh, yeah, we, we make,

You know, the very first time I met Ken, when I first came over here, I, I, I went up to Chico and we were having, um, some lunch.

I did the flight, I tried various beers.

And remember, I basically just stepped off the airplane from England.

And I said, you know Ken, your beers are about as hoppy as I can take them.

And he said, you know, 25 years ago, I was brewing in a bucket.

Now I'm brewing hundreds of thousands of barrels every year.

Can I, can I leave it alone?

I said, yeah, go for it.

And, and these days, of course, some of the beers are even hoppier and that's what I'm looking for.

That's what I'm, that's what I'm choosing, um, the, the hoppier products.

But, you know, still,

Charlie, we are going to send you some beer in the next week.

I hope you'll get back to us

all right,

We have a logistical guy who's going to send you a lot of stuff.

Also, Charlie, you're familiar with Vinny from

Russian

River Brewing

I am, yeah,

And, and, and he's obviously he's inspired a lot of hoppy beers that are now being brewed in the United States.

We, we, and you might even be familiar with the Toronado in San Francisco, the, the bar that, yeah, yeah.

So, so we make a couple of beers.

That are effectively named after the Tornado.

One is its address.

It's called 547.

The other is called Little Tornado.

And so it's right on the nose.

And one of them is a double and one's a single IP.

But in any case, they're both inspired by the way that Vinny approaches his IPAs.

So we'll get some of those out to you so you can,

You know, it's, I, while we're on the subject of Vinnie, of course, you know, as I point out to people the correct pronunciation of, uh, of his beers are indeed Plinny the Elder and Plinny the Younger, you know,

Absolutely.

and people, people say to me, it's Plinny, isn't it?

I said, no, Plinny rhymes with Vinnie, you know, so,

The episode from our podcast that aired a couple of days ago is all about that beer that we make.

And we mentioned that that pronunciation that, yeah,

I, last

a historian, I take that very seriously, right?

I'm actually not sure what Vinnie calls it.

Does he call it Pliny or does he call it Pliny?

Yeah.

but that's where we are.

Yeah.

Good people, good people.

Oh yeah, for sure.

Absolutely.

and Natalie are excellent,

Absolutely.

Well, Joel, what do you think we should ask Charlie next?

Because we don't want to spend too much time on.

I did have one more health related question, because I fall, I fall victim to this myself.

I try to keep myself in pretty good shape.

I run every day and when my metrics aren't looking like they should, usually my, my gut instinct, and this was one of the reasons I was so happy to come across PASS with your book.

One of my first instincts is, Oh, well, I'm going to, I'm just going to cut out beer for two weeks or I'm going to, you know, stop drinking beer.

And I don't, I, I, I don't think that's actually the driver of, of my own weight gain.

And, and when I, you know, put on three pounds over Christmas and I'm like, Oh, I got, I got to work hard to get rid of that.

I don't think it's the beer.

I really don't.

And, and I've reflected on, on your book.

I've reflected on your words today.

I don't think that's.

No, I,

causation.

I don't, I don't think that's what's causing it.

no, I mean, people have got this, this idea, my brother's, brother's one, he's a dedicated wine drinker and he says he drinks wine because beer gets in the beer belly.

I said, no, you know, I might have one Cascale from England at, you know, at 4 percent ABV and you're having a couple of glasses of, I don't know, Chardonnay or something.

I mean, I, I'm the one who's, Easing back on the calories because it's the alcohol is the main source of calories, you know, so it's a lifestyle thing and as long as you add in The calories from the alcohol alongside all your counting of all the other calories.

Um, then you, you, you choose what you, what you, you know, want to have in your, your, your diet, what you want to have in your meal, if you want to accommodate it.

some beer or some wine or a whiskey or something, then, you know, be checking out what was the total calorie count.

Could you have one less slice of bread, you know, or ease back on the mayo or, you know, so it, it truly is a case of, of, of counting those calories.

And the main source of calories is alcohol.

And that's why I'm a big fan of, of the lower alcohol diet.

products, you know and I know there's a huge interest in alcohol free at the moment.

I totally understand that.

Personally I I'm much more interested in the sort of the two, 3 percent alcohol by volume range.

Now, of course, the issue in this country is if it's Say it's 3 percent ABV, it's exactly the same taxation duty as 10%.

So you say, well, why the heck should I buy a 3 percent product?

I get 10 percent for the same bank, bigger bank for my book.

And that's not the point.

As long as you're realistically looking for a delicious product.

I know from experience from my days in banks that you can get some amazing 2 3 percent ABV product which are, you know, which are drinkable.

And, and enjoyable.

And as I say, when I go back to England, if I have a pint of Cascale, the chances are, it's going to be, you know, less than, or approximately 4 percent ABV.

And that's because taxation is in proportion to our content for every 0.

1 percent increase in ABV, you pay more taxation.

So, you know, as an Englishman, I'm used to that lower alcohol range.

And I think there's tremendous scope in, in this country, if people are prepared to get the message that, hey, you can get some really good beers that are not quite so alcoholic

This would be the perfect moment for my wife to walk in.

Allison would walk in, I don't see her, but I have to stand up for her in this context.

Her favorite beers that we make are Cascale.

And they're, Bidders brown ales and porters.

I personally like our IPA the most, but, uh, all of which are, are in that 4 percent range at, so not quite in the three, but we're, we're, we're high threes and low fours.

And when I, when I was a sports player, person as I'm, you know, it might be difficult to imagine, but I played a lot of football, soccer, a lot of cricket, a lot of rugby.

After the game you know, and I, if I was driving quite a distance to get home, then I would, I would basically get a, the regular, Uh, beer, which in, in the UK would be about 4 percent and I'd mix it with the alcohol free product to, to get, you know, to get my pint, but at 2 percent ABV, you know, and you know, sometimes I go off to give talks in this country without, you know, not having said no and I'd go in and, and, and, and they'd say, what you like to drink?

And I look at the beer list, you know, and the lowest ABV was about 6%.

And I'm thinking, I think it'd be really good to have something a little bit.

Lower in ABV than that.

So there's, there's a, there's a big, big job to be done in this area in this country.

Yeah.

And I think about how we're, we're building a, I call it a set list.

Every day we open our tap room, we have a list of beers on the wall and I have to think about that.

There have to be the highs and the lows.

It has to be.

We have to offer the big beers, the little beers.

It's got a flow and yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I

feel like that's a good

time to take a quick break and come back and continue or

let's take, take a few minutes off and, and regroup for a second.

Charlie needs to go to the restroom or not.

He needs to get a celebration, a celebration,

which Charlie has access to the freshest of the fresh,

All right.

I'll, I'll give me two minutes.

beautiful.

Very good, sir.

I hear a glass.

Or was that not?

Okay.

I'm back.

Okay, there we go.

Born on.

If, if Charlie doesn't have a born on date better than ours, then no one does.

Gary, do you have any questions?

We're, we're, we're taking control.

This is Gary's job.

He

I'm the professional podcaster, but he's the professional beer guy

that said gary has traveled the world maybe What's the most exotic location?

That charlie banforth has had a beer in or at least something he remembers that we'd like to recount So

I was in Bangkok, visiting Singa, Singa brewers, the Boonrod Brewing Company.

And in those days, the, the brewmaster was a guy called Peter Mittman from Germany.

And, so he showed me around and he said, yeah, so now we'll have a beer.

Okay.

So, And it wasn't a regular sort of a smaller bottle, it was a big bottle of Singer.

So, I said, oh thanks, I'll share that with you.

He said, no, you have one, I have one.

And so we had this.

And then, you know, it was another, talking about moderation.

And in due course I managed to escape.

I said, I've got to go.

He said, why?

I said, there's a car waiting for me.

He said, they'll wait.

So eventually I got out and he just started raining.

I don't know if you've ever been to Bangkok.

My God, when it rains when it rains, I mean, I was, I was, the water was lapping over my shoes, you know, and, and, I got in the car and You know, and there's a lot of traffic, a lot of traffic.

And a lot of beer inside me and a lot of water around me and Ah, it was the longest journey I've ever had in my life, but I managed to make it Anyway too much information

So here we are we're back I I feel like Charlie, we have some, I have a prompt here that is sort of a self serving and trying to get you to talk about how the pub fits into, would you say, so Joel prompts me on this.

We're trying to talk about how one can include the, the pub and the Cascale and the so forth into a community building and into beer culture in general.

You can speak to that from where you come from and maybe where.

Some suggestions might be made to where we could go.

Yeah, yeah, obviously put the pub Is and has long been there's basically the center of the community, you know any decent english village or town Well village has got a pub.

It's got a cricket pitch which is not mandatory where you are.

and a church, you know, so I mean, and historically, of course, people would, they would meet in the pub.

And, and that's where you would mingle with your friends and enjoy you know, enjoy convivial company and an excellent beer and perhaps some food.

and of course, back in the day, of course, I'm from the northwest of England and I'm just outside a village, a town called Wigan.

And of course, in those days, you know, the beach or, you know.

Fairly cramped housing and, and, you know, two up, two down, a toilet at the end of the garden at the back of the house and so on.

So the warmest place to go and the most convivial place to, to spread out was the pub.

So, so the pub has, has long been, things of, of society.

about is,

and.

is,

It, it, you know, my favorite pub I is on the North Yorkshire mos, a place called Beckel.

and it's a pub that it's not allowed to change.

It's written into the sort of the, the deeds and all of the, the paperwork that it can't change.

And you go, you come off this, off the mos you've been walking and it's a, a tiny place.

And there's, there's a bar which is basically just a, like a, like a, a cubbyhole, a serving hatch, that sort of thing.

Beers cascade, on hand.

pump There's not much in the way of food to be consumed.

there's, there's certainly no music.

There's, there's, there's not even a ball 'cause it's not big enough.

'cause there'd be, you know, those darts would be weapons.

But, and all you can do is sit and drink beer and have convers conversation.

It's just idyllic.

Absolutely idyllic.

Now, of course, you know, you can have noisy pubs, you can have pubs with music and obviously, you know, culinary experiences and all those things.

But it's the, it's the community.

It's the, and, and, and you're getting it more and more in this country now with some of the, the establishments where people are, you know, in the craft establishments and, you know, people can have games nights and quiz nights and, and all of those things.

All, it's all great.

And that's, and that's what.

Beer is, should be a part of.

It's an adjunct to sort of all these activities that you can do.

Whether it's something as simple as conversation, or whether it's a, you know, a games night or sports, or, whatever it is.

But to me, I would downplay the sort of the, the, the, the live sport on TV, and I would up, upgrade the sort of the, the opportunities for people to interact with one another.

You know, and things like quiz nights is a good example of that, or games nights of any description.

So, you know, the pub is suffering in the UK, there's no question of that.

more and more people are drinking at home, fewer and fewer are going into pubs.

But still, you know, although there are fewer pubs, they're still there and very much in the heart of the community.

And I think it's a very important, and a great example of social interaction, and ways to bring people together.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know if you spend a lot of time in Wisconsin, but this state, I don't know if you've ever seen the stats, has the highest number of bars per capita in the United States.

By a very wide margin.

And in fact, the city we're in, I think if you looked at on a county by county basis, we are in the, this is ground zero.

If you dropped an alcohol bomb on the United States, we would, we, we would be obliterated and growing up.

We always had this, we call them taverns and a tavern was very much like a pub.

Maybe they serve food as well.

But it was, you could bring the kids And this is, you don't see it as much anymore, but, you know, the place that, that Bobby and Allison have created here is that kind of place where parents bring their kids, you know, they don't have to have anything alcoholic, they can have a soda, they're playing board games and you don't see it a lot anymore.

No, and it's, it's very important, you know, I, people say to me, I used to say when I first came over here, what do you miss?

And, and, you know, I used to say, well, I miss the football.

and I miss the Indian restaurants.

but, we miss the pub, you know, and back in, in the day, you know, my wife and I, we would We would perhaps go to the theatre or something and say, Hey, let's just, let's just drop in and have a pint, you know, in the pub.

And some of the bars here and around, you know, they're, they weren't sort of family friendly.

There were sort of solitary drinking experiences.

You know, people, you know, leaning on the bar and you walk in and they'd sort of look across, so to say.

Who are you?

You know, you know, I,

and so there's bars and there's bars.

And so I think what you've just described is perfect.

I mean, that's, that's exactly what, what a pub, what a tavern, what it should be.

And, as I say, I, I, I personally am more in favor of, it's probably my age, toning down the sort of the noisier elements of it, you know, whether it's, you know, endless television screens and, and, and music and so on.

I'm pushing up any, you know, activities that are going to allow people to interact, because I think the interaction is, is very much at the heart of, of the pub spirit.

may have, I may have told you this last time you were here, four, four years ago.

Oh, by the way, look at this, this guy's drinking a celebration.

It's gonna be the freshest.

Can you hold that up again?

There you have it.

Oh man.

He's drinking it out of a beaker too.

I know.

It's a beaker with a handle.

I love it.

I love it.

I was given this.

that's fabulous.

gave a lecture a number of years ago in Indiana.

So this is what they gave me.

Oh, you're, yeah.

Excellent.

yeah.

Yeah.

Charlie, just to give a quick anecdote about Wiggin and beer, I spent, I spent over 10 years traveling around the world and I was in Fiji once and I met a couple of guys from Wiggin and we were having some beers.

We were sitting around a fire on one of the islands in the ISAs and we were drinking quite a bit and we made a deal that I would support Wiggin.

As my English team at the time they were, this is like 2007.

I think they were just in the finals of the, the FC cup back

The FA Cup, yeah, they did.

I don't, I think they're in what league, the third league or something now,

Yeah, they are.

But,

would, I would, so I have a soft spot for them.

And I said, well, then you have to support the Packers as your NFL team.

alright.

But did they, I mean, you're talking about Wigan Athletic, which is the soccer team.

But of course Wigan is really a rugby rugby town.

So, and of course it's Rugby League, which is different from Rugby Union, you know.

So, but the, the real, the, the main sport, the number one sport in, in Wigan is actually Rugby League, which, but, we need a whole new, a different session if I was to explain the rules to you.

Oh, I, I'm very, I was at the finals of the 2011 rugby world cup for rugby union.

got to see whales lose, and But, no, I'm pretty, I shouldn't say I'm super familiar, but compared to every other American, I'm a genius on the subject.

Well, that's good.

But, but, but how's your rugby league?

That's the thing, you see.

Different, different, different sport.

Well,

that, that's kind of the professional, I mean, the national game at the rugby union, but

they're both professional these days.

When I, when I, I used to play a lot of rugby, rugby union.

And the school I went to, we weren't allowed to play anything else.

It had to be rugby union.

But down the road, of course, was the Rugby League team, which is, which in those days, that was, that was professional.

It's all professional these days, and players go from one to the other.

The basic difference is Rugby Union's got 15 players on a pitch, and Rugby League has got 13 players on a pitch.

paid more attention to the Australian, NRL,

Yeah.

They, they, they, they, in Australia, it depends where you go.

Cue my Australian accent.

G'day, hello.

and they say, well, they say, you gotta watch the footy.

And I say, well, what do you mean in this city by footy?

And that, it depends on where you are.

So if you're in Sydney, it's rugby league.

And if you're in, I think Perth would be rugby union.

And I think Melbourne probably would be, Aussie rules.

Yeah.

the South is, Aussie rules, football, NFL, and then, you know, New South Wales, Queensland is all NRL,

right, right.

So, there you go.

So I went, I was, I was over there once and somebody in Sydney said, you want to see the footy?

I said, well, what do you mean by it?

He said, Rugby League.

I said, look, I come from Wigan, the home of Rugby League.

And he looked at me and he said, bullshit.

Anyway, it

Charlie, can I, we expand our demographic, I think at this point, right?

, Joel Hermansen: Charlie, I've had a, I've had a, a, a question that I've wanted to ask you for years.

You have a famous quote and this quote intersects with my world quite a bit.

I teach high school history.

I also teach a history class at McFleshman's, by the way, shameless plug.

Oh, like next week, right?

Next Wednesday.

Next Monday night.

beer and world history.

And I, I have interpreted this quote of yours for myself on more occasions than I can count, but I'm wondering if you could do it for me.

What do you, what do you say?

depends what it is, but yeah, I'll have

Okay.

All right, here we go.

Beer is the basis of modern static civilization.

yeah.

Yeah, no question.

Well, I

on the Mount Rushmore quotes right there.

well, I mean, you catch your mind by 8, 000 years.

And if you're in sort of the, what we refer to as the fertile crescent.

these days, so places like Iraq and, and so on.

I mean, people had a nomadic existence and they used to sort of be going from place to place.

So, so, you know, taking goats with them and finding grass for the goats to eat and so on.

And they used to carry barley with them, raw barley, barley grain.

And that's what they would eat, you know, and so they were biting into this grain and it was hard and tough and astringent and didn't, you know, made them cough and wasn't very nutritious and stuff.

Then they got it wet and it started to sprout and germinate.

So now it started tasting like bean sprouts.

I don't think they knew what bean sprouts tasted like, but it tasted damn slight better than the The raw barley and somehow they made this into a bread and now it tastes really good.

It tastes like, you know, malted milk bowls, the sorts of things that priests sell, you know, delicious.

And that's a cue.

If you talk to the good friends up the road, they're telling to send me some more malted milk bowls.

But anyway,

You have another fan here.

and then, and then,

That'll be in the care package when we send the

thank you very

your way.

Thank you.

And then they, they sort of stored this bread in jars and it got wet.

And of course there were yeast around the place and they converted the sugars into alcohol.

So they put the finger into the, you know, this and tasted the liquid and they said, Oh, that tastes good.

And they drank it and they fell over and they thought, well, hell this is, this is good.

And so they stopped all this nonsense of driving around.

They, they moving around, they stayed put, they grew the grain.

They, they, did the primitive malting and brewing and made the liquid.

So they put all the tents in a circle and made a village and that became a town and a city like, you know, Madison.

and so the whole basis of civilization is because of this discovery of, of beer.

so the static civilization is that this nomadic existence.

Now, of course, bread comes into that as well.

crops, but beer was at the heart of it.

People say to me, sometimes they say, you know, which came first beer or bread?

I said, honey and meat, because you know, with, with, with the honey being spontaneously fermented and so, so.

Yeah, but it's lost in the realms of, you know, mists of time.

You know, years ago when I, when I used to have all sorts of guests come to talk to my class at UC Davis, Ken would come.

I used to teach this big class, Introduction to Beer and Brewing.

It became the most popular class on campus.

It pushed the class on sex into second place and the class, the class on nutrition into third place.

So if you want to know what UC Davis are interested in, it was beer, sex, and food in that order, which.

Which entirely is logical.

Anyway, so Ken used to come three times a year to talk to that class and people like Dan Gordon from Gordon Beers, he used to come as well and we used to get Fritz Maytag and Fritz, told, you know, would tell the story of how they, you know, they made the the beer according to the ancient recipe of

He made one, didn't

He

He did and how they did it and and how they made this beer according to the Hinton Ninkasi and he said you know in those days there was no you know we had to put hops in because that's the rule these days so when it came to that point I asked everybody to turn the other way and I put a hop cone in there you know and then they had a dinner and they all sat around drinking out of the straws just like they would have done you know eight thousand years ago.

several thousand years ago.

And I said, Fritz, how did it taste?

He said, you know, Charlie, it wasn't very good, but we had a hell of a lot of fun doing it.

We've, we've talked about history many times on this podcast.

And so I'm going to pose the question to you because we've asked it.

If you were to have a beer from say 200, 500, 5, 000 years ago.

Do you think it would be any good?

Would you enjoy it compared to a modern beer?

Well, I probably, you know, it's that I don't think that's a valid question with all due respect, because you wouldn't make a comparison.

So what was good five years and years ago will probably not be deemed good now.

So, you know, it's, You know, it would be compared to everything else.

So would it be better and certainly would it be safer than drinking the water?

It most certainly would and so yeah, i'd probably acquire a taste for it.

So I mean I find it impossible people say well How does the beer now compared to how it was when you first started drinking beer?

I can't make that side by side comparison.

It probably is more consistent now, even than it was than it was before 50 years ago.

Let me do a calculation now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

55 years ago.

But, you know, it, it, you know, it's not easy to make those comparisons.

You know, I, I, I have a slide on one of my presentations somewhere.

I use slides very often.

But, you know, there is one which basically gives a list of what was present in a brewery.

This is about 500 years ago, and you can instantly recognize from this inventory that, hey, that's a brewery.

So the basic process hasn't changed, really, for hundreds and hundreds of years.

But what has changed is we understand how to do it, and how to do it much more consistently.

So I think certainly from the, when hops were first introduced and used in beer, then I, I, I'm sure that there was a, a recognition.

You, if you went back, you'd say, yeah, if you tasted something, I'd say, what are you drinking?

I think you probably would say, well, I'm drinking beer.

But, it probably wouldn't have been quite so refined as it is these days.

Oh

of the beta glucans and, and the DMS.

And if we don't watch it, we're going to, we're going to drift into that category, which you know, a couple of things about What do we want to talk about next?

We have Charlie for another, like, 20 minutes.

How

about I, you've earned this nickname, the Pope of Foam.

The average person, if they crack open a bottle of beer, there is little to no foam.

It's not like you're going to get if you're getting it maybe out of a tap.

Bobby recently installed a Luker faucet.

And they were so excited, because of what they could do with foam.

What is the importance of foam in beer?

Because I think mostly the average person probably doesn't care or they don't think about it.

Gary just opened the way for the next 25 plus minutes.

We're going to be here till midnight.

I love this.

I'll keep.

I'll keep this short.

Okay.

when I, when I first came to Davis, I actually, while they were upgrading my lab, I couldn't use the laboratory.

I actually got one type of beer and some glasses.

And I went off to the photographic studio with a photographer, his name was Sam Wu.

And we just took this beer, and I poured it in loads of different ways.

I poured it with a lot of foam, with no foam.

moderate amounts of foam.

And then we drained them, not by drinking, but by siphoning off the liquid.

And so I got all sorts of different You know, halfway down the glass and there's still some foam on some and no foam on others.

And there are different amounts of lacing and all of these things.

I took all these photographs and we showed them to people and said which of these is the best, you know.

They asked some questions and even those people who confessed to the crime, it is a crime, of drinking the beer straight out of the container.

But even those people said, hey, the best ones are the ones with the foam.

Because that's what, that's the, the signature of what beer is.

It's, it's the foam on it, and people are expecting to see a good foam.

And if it's not there, they say, oh, there's something wrong with that.

You know, they might, they might say, well, it's just, it's, the fizz is all wrong.

Or it's not as fresh or, you know, there are all sorts of things they're going to say, but they, you know, people drink with their eyes and, and they're, they're, they notice the foam, they expect the foam to be there.

And if it's not there, they, they're starting to ask questions.

And that, as I say, is even those people who normally don't even put it in a class.

And I remember from my days at Bass, you know, if we, We did a trial, we might do a trial looking for a subtle difference in flavor.

Maybe two beers and we served them.

The one we served, if we made the mistake of giving one with a better head than the other, that was always the one that was preferred.

Always!

They preferred the one with, with the head on it.

so, you know, people, they're, they, you know, to a greater or lesser extent, they expect to see a full wonder beer.

But, you know, years ago, I found it.

Get this, the European Brewery Convention Foam Group.

So all these, all these boffins, all these boffins, were working on foam.

Anyway, one of the members was from Germany, and he came to me and he said, Why you?

I said, What do you mean, why me?

Well, why have you started this group?

I said, Well, why not?

He said, You're English.

I said, yeah.

He said, you have no foam on the beer.

I said, and you've been to London.

So you've never properly been to England, have you?

If you go to the north of England, you've got to have, you know, a couple of inches of foam.

And you've got to have a pint of liquid, so that's why the glasses are bigger than, bigger size.

You have a line on it, tells you you've got a pint of liquid, and you've got the foam on top.

You know, people have, you know, People have asked questions in parliament about this.

You know, I mean, thi this is, this is very, very important stuff.

So thank you for asking the question.

so

, but it's a psychological thing.

It it is totally a psychological thing.

from showing you my glass with the lacing on it.

It's from afar at this point, but I, I, right there, you have it.

And I have been known to send Charlie a picture.

I don't know, every year or so of a, of a, of a glass with lacing.

And, and I think of you in, at the end of that glass, I think of how that foam stacked up and left that.

So, I mean, this, this country.

I would say probably has got us, in many places, the worst foam performance of anywhere on the planet, you

Whoa.

with Belgium being number one, would you put

Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, the north of England, all of the, well, anywhere in England these days.

You know, foam is, it's, and it's all about cleaning the glasses properly.

I'm pouring it properly.

But in this country, so many glasses are just not washed.

right,

And so you've got, you've got, they're either washed alongside the, the food plates or something like that, or they're detergents not being rinsed away afterwards.

And, you know, I, as you said earlier Bobby, I was a QA manager at Bass for, for a while.

And, you know, when people complained about the foam, it was never the beer.

We, we, it was always the way they were pouring it out or the dispense set up or the glasses weren't washed properly and so on nearly all the time.

99 percent of the time I would say it's that.

So the secret for, for, for, for good quality foam first and foremost is It's how is it poured out and what is it poured into.

And, and so many places in this country fail that.

You can always tell, you've got those ugly bubbles on the side of the glass.

When you first pour, pour it out, you've got those bubbles.

And that's just, those are greasy spots.

I remember being in Ireland many times, and I've had, this wasn't just at the Guinness Brewery, but the bartender would go out of their way to show you how to properly pour a Guinness, because they're very anal retentive about how people present the product.

that's right.

And you've got to be patient as well.

You know, it's it's not a quick thing, you know For Guinness, you're way too early, you know, there's plenty of time, you know Ten minutes later you get your pint and it's wonderful.

It's absolutely wonderful

It's a very strong brand, Guinness.

It is.

I, I often tell this story, it's, it's, and my friends at Guinness I think are tired of me hearing this story, but a woman emailed me and she said, is it true, the difference between Guinness brewed in Dublin and Guinness brewed elsewhere in the world is they marinate a dead cow in the beer in Ireland.

So I emailed back and I said, Madam, I've been part of the brewing industry since 1978 and I've never heard anything quite so stupid.

Everyone knows it's a sheep.

And she emailed me back and said, Thank you for the inside information.

I mean, isn't that terrifying?

Isn't that terrifying?

We had an episode on the Reins Heizkabot and there was a court case where there was an actual dissolved cat in a vat of beer that went to trial in Germany.

It was deemed not a violation of the Reins Heizkabot as well.

In all of your free time, you should listen to that one.

That one derailed pretty quickly.

Dan Gordon tells you, you know, he tells the, the, the real history behind the Reinhardt's book, 1516.

Because Dan, Dan was a student at, Weinstein.

He didn't, he didn't come to UC Davis.

I mean, he lived down the road.

But he went to, to Munich.

And, of course, learned all things German there.

Including, at the time, of course, while he was there, he invented the garlic fry, but that's, that's another story.

But, you know, they, they introduced the Reinheitsgebot to stop people using dodgy materials.

You know, people were putting cow bile in, in, in, in the drink, and all sorts of things.

So they said, enough of this, you, you know, you, you use malt hops and water, because they didn't know what yeast was at the time, so that wasn't on the list of ingredients.

To stop people using dodgy materials, or indeed to use other materials they wanted to conserve for other purposes.

So it's become a sort of a holier than thou purity, you know, superiority complex.

But as I said, you know, what seems like a long time ago, now I said, you know, I'm perfectly okay with the rice and the corn, you know.

But, you know, there's a lot to be said for malt.

Absolutely.

I'm getting prodded in the side.

If I don't ask this question before we, we finished this interview, I I'll be, Exiled.

Exiled from his own brewery.

So, I listened to a different podcast, and it's called, It's Drink Beer and Think Beer.

And when he concludes his interview, He asks the interviewee if they could have, So, it's called the Green Door Question.

And it's in reference to a show called the other place.

And I, I'm not familiar with it, but, but I'm now giving you a second hand interpretation at the end of the episode, one character gets to pass through a door, they get to be anywhere, anytime, any place.

But he asked it in the context of beer, if you could be anywhere, anytime, any place when it comes to beer, where is that place?

That's a great question.

That is a great question.

I,

And with anyone, right?

Yeah.

yeah, I'd rather have, I'd be rather keen to have been, been there when Ken Grossman started his original brewery.

I'd be rather keen to have, to have been a fly on the wall, to see, exactly how things were.

I've heard the stories.

He's told me the many times.

But I, I'd love to, love to have been there.

I'd also like to have been, you know, perhaps involved in, in someone like the Bass Brewing Company back in the day when the very first sort of big name scientists were, were applying their trade there.

There was a guy, for example, called Cornelius O'Sullivan.

And this was in the, the late 19th century.

And at the time he was being paid 5, 000 pounds a year if you, if you, he was being paid big mega bucks, you know and I'd love to have been around to see just.

how things were being done in those days and to the previous question to see just how good the beer was, at that time.

So those would be a couple of, I wouldn't want to transport myself back to ancient Sumeria with, you know, 8, 000 years or so.

But those would be a couple of, of, places I would very much

It's hard to argue with that.

You kind of, you, you segued perfectly.

Do you have a connection to a Mr. Ken Grossman?

I,

Cause that would be,

I do know the guy.

I don't know.

So I reach out to Dan Carey here once in a while in Wisconsin, it's at, at New Glarus and he has gone into full on grandfather mode.

So he spends his time, With his grandkids.

It's hard to get him out to do a show or, or to, to be present at a, a beer fest, but I wonder what Ken Grossman's time looks like these days.

Very respectful for how demanded it may be.

Well, I mean, I'll be happy to ask him on your behalf.

I mean, Ken, Ken's still very much involved very much involved, and, is, is, continues to be, a major, force in the company.

Brian is, is increasingly involved as well.

And of course there are a number of other people, including a fellow Briton who is the chief executive these days, Price

Okay.

But, Ken, you know, as I said, back in the day at UC Davis, I taught that class three times a year and every time Ken Came to talk to that class that speaks volumes on it and amazing But what he used to do was to talk how it was and how it is now So he'd show, you know his original cooler for example is his word cooler now It's you know, and how it is now and he'd show all the tanks that he welded And he talked about how he made his first Lauterton, you know, individually drilling the holes himself in person

Oh

to make his first Lauterton, you know, and now comparing to what they've got these days.

So Ken, it's an amazing story.

You know, people say to me, what, what book should I read?

I said, well, if it's got the name Bamforth on it, you should make sure you read all that.

But seriously,

Agreed.

I'm going to spend some time there.

Ken Grossman's Beyond the Pale.

is an amazing read.

It's an amazing read.

book.

Yep.

In person, he can, he brings that to life.

So, yeah, let's see if I can persuade him to, to join you.

But you know, he,

wonderful.

Can, can I, can I just make a quick shout out to the Sierra Nevada, and I call it green.

The Sierra Nevada pale ale.

That was my gateway.

Into craft beer.

That was your gateway into craft beer.

That was everybody's gateway.

It really was.

Yeah, it really was.

And that beer,

you know, I'll, I'm going through the store and you know, celebration ale and whatever, but then you come by that.

Yep.

And you have one and you're just like, you're transported back into 1993 and you're like, Oh my gosh, this is still.

Yeah.

Right.

Unbelievably good.

Absolutely.

And, and, and it's great for you to say that.

And I encourage everybody to go out and buy a six pack, because it still remains.

One of the great beers.

And you know, I, from time to time, I have wacky ideas, things I suggest, and let me tell you.

anything I suggest ain't going to change the way they produce Ciena out of pale ale.

It's set in stone because it is such a success story.

It's a brilliant beer.

I mean, I have to say the ultimate pale ale in this country.

I, I don't think any brewer would disagree with that and probably not most of the market.

right.

So everybody needs to go out and get a six pack of pale ale and see

for

I have a, I, I have a question.

I, I'm sure you've, you've heard this joke before.

It was a Monty Python joke.

why is American beer like making love in a canoe?

F include, F, you put the F,

Yeah.

yes.

I don't, I really don't think that was Monty Python.

I, I miss a bit too,

There was a live, they told it, I don't know where it came from, but they told it at the Hollywood Bowl,

really,

film.

But you've been in the U. S. now a couple decades.

I think that at one time maybe that may have been warranted, but what are the, has the beer scene in the U. S. changed a lot since you've been here?

Oh yeah, it has, yeah.

I mean, it's obviously there's a lot more breweries these days and, and different styles of product.

When I came here, you know, for example you know, no hazy beer, not well, not officially, deliberately hazy.

Thank goodness.

and, you know, my days of bus, if I'd suggested hey, let's make a hazy beer, I wouldn't have survived very long.

So that's a, that's a big difference.

And there are some excellent products around, including from the company I advise.

but, and, and they're harder to do than, than non hazy hazy beers in many ways.

I will say I've stolen from conversations we've had with you on how to make the best ones.

It's not trivial.

no.

so, so yeah, it's, it's different.

There's a lot more, brewing companies.

There's a lot of different styles of products around these, well, like I talked about earlier on, sort of the tendency to want to put, non-beer materials into beer and so on.

So.

It is a different world but I, I, I always, I'm delighted, you know, that we still see the, some of the, the pale ales of this world still alive and very much kicking.

Charlie, can I close with one quick question before we have our formal ending?

If you could put four People in this country on the Mount Rushmore of craft brewing.

Who, who's on that mountain?

Well, Ken Grossman first of all.

first and foremost.

I guess I would put Fritz, Fritz Maytag on there as well.

I would put, it'd

be easy to say Bobby Fleschman wouldn't it, but I, he would say.

I have some, some stairs to climb.

I would put Vinnie in there as well.

and,

I'm thinking else I might, include in there without,

Can I, can I give you my last one?

yeah,

Charlie Papazian.

Thank you.

Charlie, Charlie's a good guy.

Charlie's a good guy.

Has anyone meant more to Kraft Brewing than Charlie Papazian?

Now obviously he hasn't turned out the product that the others have.

But

you know, I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I would be very careful.

I, I, I wouldn't want, there's so many possibilities, you know, so many.

people that I've, I've interacted with and met in the brewing industry that have done so much for the industry.

So that it, you know, to my mind Ken is, is, is a complete no brainer, of a nominee.

He, he would be, Straight off the bat, I would say it's like these, you know, say something and say, what's the first thing that comes to your mind?

If I say this, then what you just said can, you know, after that, I would need to analyze and discuss and then come up with a reasoned priority list.

Yeah.

That's awesome to hear from the inside because we think the same thing of Ken.

For sure.

We'd love to talk with him.

Yeah.

We'll see what we can do.

Thank you for your time.

This is amazing.

And I, we're all very jealous of what's in your glass and how fresh it is.

That's

as well.

Thank

you, Charlie.

It's good to meet you.

All right.

Nice to meet you.

So thank you very much.

All right.

All right.

Cheers, Charlie.

Cheers.

Bye bye.

Bye.