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Tara Nurin calls in to Brew Ha Ha to discuss plans for a documentary film about the subject of her book A Woman’s Place Is In The Brewhouse. This call came near the end of the episode with Gabi Demozzi, which is right here. The film is called Witchy Boots.  Tara is a journalist who covers the beverage business and the personal stories of people in the beverage industry. She is the author of A Woman’s Place Is In The Brewhouse and she has been on Brew Ha Ha many times. Tara covered mental health in the beverage industry on this episode on May 2, 2024. Tara also holds the honor of being the guest on our first podcast episode here in February of 2018. Tara lives near Philadelphia, the site of next week’s Craft Beer conference. The Pink Boots Society is kicking off the conference on Sunday with an inclusive festival that is inclusive of beverages and of people. Philadelphia is known for other foods than cheesesteaks. The Redding Terminal Market is the oldest indoor food market in the country. Also, the Italian Market takes up several blocks in south Philadelphia. In recent years there are some Mexican restaurants in the area and further south, some Asian restaurants. It is becoming more eclectic. Herlinda remembers some killer pizza too. There are several oldest, coolest, original this or that, all over the city, to discover. Look for Philadelphia to be the official home of the 250th anniversary of the US, this year in July, 2026.  

Gabi Demozzi, a Dim Sum chef and beer judge from Brazil, is our guest today on Brew Ha Ha with Herlinda Heras and Daedalus Howell. Gabi is a certified Cicerone, professor, consultant and chef who has been working with beer for 16 years. She is currently working on opening a restaurant that will match Dim Sum with craft beer named Dim Sum da Gabi. It is already operating via delivery and private dinners. Today is her first time on the show. Herlinda met Gabi two years ago when she was a judge in the Brazilian national beer competition. Herlinda describes her trip to Brazil in this episode, from the week after she got back. Gabi was in Denver recently for the World Beer Cup, and they will be in Philadelphia next week for the World Beer Cup. A Beer Judge’s Job Judging beer is hard work and carries a lot of responsibility. In the field of professional beer judging, there are thousands of beers in many different categories. Usually there are four or five judges per category. Beer judges have to swallow the beer in order to properly evaluate it. This is different than wine judges who spit the wine out after they taste it. Yesterday Gabi spent six hours at Russian River Brewing Co. in Windsor. Afterwards they even went to Russian River downtown. The official Brew Ha Ha cocktail shaker is ready and we hear it in minute 10. Gabi has brought a bottle of Cachaça (pron. “ka-SHA-sa”). It is distilled from fresh sugar cane juice. The Caipirinha (pron. “kai-pi-REEN-ya”) is the Brazilian national cocktail, made with cachaça. This one is flavored with cinnamon and clove. She mixes limes and lemons, but Caipirinhas can be made with any kind of fruit juice. The better quality the Cachaça, the tastier your Caipirinha will be.   

It’s not business as usual this time on Brew Ha Ha with Herlinda Heras and Daedalus Howell, as Herlinda presents Beatles and Brews today. She has had this playlist on her main fridge for about 6 years. What’s more, she has such a collection of beers that she can line up the labels to match the songs for today’s show. The show begins with two Beatles tunes, She Loves You and I Want You / She’s So Heavy. Herlinda is a Beatles superfan. She knows Pete Best, who was the drummer for The Beatles before Ringo joined the band. Herlinda even has a signed picture with him from when he played in Petaluma on tour. Pete’s mother Mona Best bet on a horse named Never Say Die to win the 1954 Epsom Derby, at 33-1 odds. (sorry, audio garbled at 8:00) She used the winnings to buy the house where they built The Casbah Coffee Club in the basement. Pete’s brother Roag still runs tours at the original Casbah location. She Loves You goes with A View From The Top from Five Boroughs Brewing in Brooklyn. They brewed this beer to commemorate the refurbishing of the Empire State Building. It matches the Beatles arrival in NY in 1964 on Ed Sullivan and at Shea Stadium, and all the later New York connections. Daedalus asks Herlinda how she became such a big Beatles fan. Herlinda’s dad was in the Navy, and they were stationed for a while at Hunter’s Point Shipyard. Candlestick Park was nearby, and her mom wasn’t at the Beatles concert, but she said she could hear the crowd screaming. When her dad was in the Far East in the Navy, there where places where he could record albums onto reel-to-reel. Herlinda had an Akai reel-to-reel tape player. He gave her an audio documentary history of the Beatles that she listened to it over and over again. Black is Beautiful and Blackbird Herlinda was doing her math homework one day while living at Hamilton AFB in Novato. She was listening to KRQR San Francisco when the news came in of John Lennon’s murder. She immediately started her reel-to-reel recorder and captured the local coverage from all the local radio stations. Herlinda opens a beer called Black is Beautiful. She pairs it with the Beatles song Blackbird and points out Paul McCartney’s story of its origin. A bird means a girl in British English and Paul had seen stories of young black girls having to be escorted to school in the American south, and he wrote the song to describe them. The Black Is Beautiful beer started from an African American brewer Marcus Baskerville in the wake of George Floyd’s death. The song Tomorrow Never Knows, with its Indian sitars, suggests an IPA, India Pale Ale. There is more beer and Beatles music than we have time for in one show, so we will have to revisit this topic. Before we end this episode, Herlinda opens a Ukrainian style Golden Ale flavored with coriander. The BJCP judging guidelines recently admitted this Ukrainian style to their catalog. Herlinda suggests the song Golden Slumbers, for the Ukrainian ale. We will have to do a 2.0. We didn’t even get to the English beers. 

Herlinda’s cousins Lloyd and Lee Palmer are visiting from Oregon and they are in the Brew Ha Ha converted train coach studio with Herlinda and Daedalus today. Lloyd Palmer is a train expert and today he will tell us all about the retired train cars that make up the Wine Country Radio studios and offices here in Santa Rosa. Herlinda has brought her family to the show before. Her father Eloy Heras, a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam, was on this episode back in April of 2018. That day, he told some stories that involved both the Navy and beer. Also, Eloy and Herlinda’s brother Anthony came on Brew Ha Ha on this episode, last year on June 19, 2025. Lloyd is also a retired Navy veteran like Herlinda’s father Eloy. “Trains and beer? I can talk all day!” said cousin Lloyd upon Herlinda’s invitation. They have a caboose in their own backyard, with beer. Lee says they have brewskis in the caboosky. Lloyd has a collection of almost 2500 craft beer tap handles. They are all on display in his garage. He started the collection about 30 years ago. He collects tap handles from Oregon microbreweries and IPAs nationwide. Trains are the only vehicle you can drink a beer on and not really worry about it. –Daedalus Howell, Words of Wisdom The Wine Country Radio studios may be the only train car radio studios that Lloyd has ever heard of. There are several types of cars. There is a boxcar and a baggage car. The KRSH studios and Exitos, sister stations, are in the boxcar. He thinks the Wine Country Radio studio was a passenger coach, not a caboose, given its fine original woodwork, high vaulted cieling and windows. Rails from 1925, Cars from 1910-1915 There is still some rail and some historical railroad ties in the ground under the cars. Lloyd found the mill mark on a rail from 1925 from a steel mill in Tennessee. He suggests that these tracks were a spur at a station, used for maintenance, before becoming a train parking lot. A spur means it is not parallel to the main track. Lee has turned her caboose into a painting studio. She wanted to restore it rather than convert it. The caboose is from 1981 and was in use until about 2006. The interior colors are the same except they put a little bar in it. There was a strict rule on the railroad called Rule G which prohibited workers from consuming alcohol before or during work shifts. Now they have a red bar across the Rule G sign. In an ironic twist, Brew Ha Ha is recorded in Studio G. Lloyd estimates the Studio G coach was built from about 1910-1915 since it is made of wood, rather than steel. Its full length extends past the hallway that crosses it. As for the boxcar, that is a standard 40-foot boxcar. They were in use from the 1940s to 1960s, for what they called single car freight, or single loads. Most interstate trains today are what they call Unit Trains like oil tankers or double-stacked container trains. Those carry standard freight containers so boxcars are much less in use today. If you ship a lot of freight, rail takes a lot of freight off the roads. Each rail car takes 3 trucks off the road. So a 100-car train takes 300 trucks off the roads. There is a great train station in Los Angeles, Union Station. It is in fine shape despite its age. The Amtrak Pacific Surfliner runs from San Luis Obispo to San Diego with convenient station stops all along the way. 

James Pardieu and Drew Tomassini, co-chairs of Battle of the Brews 2026 and D.J. Graves, co-owner of 3rd Street Aleworks, join Herlinda Heras and Daedalus Howell on Brew Ha Ha. Battle of the Brews is an annual event that the Active 20-30 Club #50 of Santa Rosa produces to raise money for their charitable activities. They describe their mission as, “providing young adults an opportunity for personal growth, friendships, and leadership development while improving the quality of life for the underserved children in our communities.” The Battle of the Brews 2026 will have a panel of judges for the Craft Cup competition. There will also be a People’s Choice competition. There will be over 50 different breweries. They expect over 100 different craft brews to be available. In addition to all the beers, there will be a Barbeque competition featuring 10 different BBQ teams. The three categories are ribs, Tri-Tip and chicken. One of the Active 20-30 Club’s favorite and most popular initatives is the Back-t0-School Shopping Day The Active 20-30 Club of Santa Rosa members are men in their 20s and 30s. The organization provides an opportunity for community service to men at a time in their lives before they start families. Daedalus Remembers Tony Magee Daedalus remembers being a cub reporter at the Petaluma Argus-Courier when he visited Tony Magee. He asked how his beer fit in and Tony said, “We’re going to take out foreign beers and replace them with craft beer.” He became fabulously successful. Then he attracted the only buyer he really wanted, as he explained on this episode of Brew Ha Ha in April of 2024. Then he became a foreign beer, in an ironic twist of fate. Listen to Tony Magee’s complete interview with Herlinda Heras from April 18, 2024, which was a great scoop for the show! Herlinda remembers bringing Lagunitas to a beer festival in Lithuania in December one year. Now Laginitas IPA is the number one IPA brand in the world. Beer judges use Lagunitas IPA as the baseline for that style. She explains that with Lagunitas and Russian River Brewing Co., Sonoma County’s reputation as a world beer capital is secure. 

Herlinda and Lisa. Adam Lamb and Jevon Hatter Oiadeje from the Rewind Arcade Taproom in Sebastopol join Herlinda Heras and Daedalus Howell on Brew Ha Ha. Lisa Brower is also here in the studio. She is the host of Jeopardy! bar league that meets at Rewind Arcade. Jevon was on Brew Ha Ha last year on this episode, talking about Rewind Arcade. Their third anniversary falls on Memorial Day this year. The Barlow is a great place for this kind of thing, says Daedalus. Herlinda lists the selection of beers that Jevon has brought. He is in charge of the beer menu. It has a great variety as well as an automated tap system. You get an RFID card that you use to track your pours and make your check. Jevon appreciates that there are so many great local producers to feature. They have 33 pinball machines, up from the original 10. They also sell Stern pinball machines and service them too. He spent a lot of time in a bowling alley as a kid, where his stepdad was the bartender. Here is their 30-second tour Instagram video. Russian River Brewing Co. is open in Santa Rosa on 4th St. and at their big Windsor location. Visit their website for up-to-date Pliny the Younger 2026 information. Jeopardy! Bar Leagues Herlinda mentions her friend Lisa Brower who is the host of a live local version of the game show Jeopardy! They are the only official Jeopardy! bar league in Sonoma and Marin Counties. It is officially sponsored by Sony Television. They worked with a company called “Geeks who Drink” that organized the business. They got the rights to produce it and set up an entirely digital system of results reporting. Everything is on your phone. As an officially sanctioned event the questions come from the Jeopardy! staff. They are launching the national Jeopardy! bar league championships. Teams from around the country will be divided into regions with 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners. The winner national winner gets a sponsored trip to Los Angeles, a studio tour to meet the host and team and an exclusive audition.  They also win an official Jeopardy! party at their home venue. Herlinda and Daedalus consider putting a team together, a dream team with them and Aurelio and Mindi. @19m Daedalus, a host, asks how you become a host of Jeopardy! Their answer button is on their phone, laptop or tablet. The tournament will go on for the next 8 weeks. There are links to it all at Rewind Arcade website. @23m Thanks for plugging the podcast on the radio show! 🔌🍻 Rewind Arcade has kept their licenses to beer and wine. This way, they are eligible to allow all ages in the locale. If they served distilled spirits, they could not admit people under 21. They have a jukebox and DJs once or twice a month on a Friday or a Saturday. Pinball community is fully inclusive and accessible. Adam’s son is eleven years old and is a pinball wizard.

Natalie and Vinny Cilurzo join Herlinda Heras and Daedalus Howell on Brew Ha Ha with the first taste of Pliny the Younger 2026. This is the 22nd year that Russian River Brewing Company makes Pliny the Younger. “It’s the biggest news of the year in beerdom,” declares Daedalus Howell. For the last 22 years, Brew Ha Ha has hosted the first taste of Pliny the Younger and this is Daedalus Howell’s first time as the host, for this big event. Pliny the Younger has become a “colossal, global event,” says Daedalus. Natalie Cilurzo describes the pressure that they all feel at RRBC during Pliny. Life throws curveballs, like recessions, weather and Covid, but Pliny pours on.  “We keep doing the best we can. “We are just elated when we see people waiting on Friday morning,” says Natalie. Vinny Cilurzo describes Pliny the Younger as using seven hops, the same as last year, but in a different mix. It’s always (about) 10.25% ABV. It used to be 11 but they dialed it back. The malt is a mix of two malts. There is “two row” malt from the US and Canada and some Pilsner malt. It has is a lot of sugar that gives it a dry taste. There was a potential of smoke taint in the region where their Simcoe hops come from. They had to pick the hops earlier. Vinny summarized the history of Pliny the Younger. It was available for five years before the world discovered it. In 2010 there were people waiting outside the brewery at 7AM. Vinny did not know that their beer was Number One and Number Two in the world, on two influential beer rating sites. “We still don’t know how it happened.” Russian River Brewing Co. is open in Santa Rosa on 4th St. and at their big Windsor location. Visit their website for up-to-date Pliny the Younger 2026 information. The Community of Pliny the Younger They did fill growlers and they didn’t distribute it. It was a small batch but word got out to beer enthusiasts. That was a moment when curiosity about beer was rising, back then. Today Craft Beer is established. Back then, there was a novelty factor. Vinny and Natalie both say that their favorite part of the whole thing is walking the line and meeting the customers. Herlinda appreciates that both Vinny and Natalie are natural teachers. Also, they are working as hard as their staff, to make the event a success. “It’s a lot of fun for us,” says Natalie. It has turned into a big reunion. They get visitors from all over the world. There are people who have met in line at Pliny the Younger who have gone on to get married. It’s a pilgrimage. You can meet people from around the corner and around the world. Some people have an annual friends reunion at Pliny.

Dr. Hoby Wedler, a PhD organic chemist and sensory expert, is back on Brew Ha Ha with Herlinda Heras and Daedalus Howell. He has been on the show before, the last time was this episode back in August of 2020. His Instagram has almost 480,000 followers as of today’s show date. Hoby was born sightless, and was raised to have high expectations for himself. He was inspired by his great high school chemistry teacher who has worked at Petaluma High School for a while. He thought he might study history because the prospect of needing an assistant to perform manual jobs in a chem lab. But his graduate advisor was a computational organic chemist. This subject provided an avenue for him to study chemistry with more independence. His original goal was to teach freshman chemistry at the college level. He is an inspired teacher and wants to make his subject more than a requirement. “Hey maybe this is something really interesting that I never thought I would love.” He taught several freshman chemistry courses while at UC Davis. He prepared lessons and study materials carefully, but found that many students just wanted “the minimum knowledge value” to simply pass the class. Russian River Brewing Co. is open in Santa Rosa on 4th St. and at their big Windsor location. Visit their website for up-to-date Pliny the Younger 2026 information. Then Hoby met Francis Ford Coppola, who asked to organize truly blind tastings at his winery. Hoby then trained his palette by tasting and smelling things, day after day. He was at UC Davis where the brewing program was going on right next to where he was getting his PhD in computational organic chemistry. Professor Charlie Bamforth, “The Pope of Foam” worked nearby, so did Michael Lewis. An Intersection of Art and Science Hoby thinks of wine and spirits and beer as a very fine intersection between art and science. Science gives us the tools and art gives us the way we want to use those tools. Herlinda first met Hoby Wedler at one of his Tasting in the Dark events. Guests were encouraged to take their time and focus on taste and smell. They use the blindfold “…so people can focus on their other senses even more.” Today they will taste two brews, a barleywine and a Tripel from CuVer Brewing in Windsor. Herlinda admits that as a beer judge, she begins by looking at the beer. Is it clear? What color is the foam? Hoby says you can smell the carbonation. Hoby points out that you can hear the carbonation too. When he smells the cuVer, he tastes clove, allspice, a bit of nutmeg and orange peel. These elements are coming from the yeast, which produces esters. Belgian yeast is special and produces esters that carry these fruity flavors. He can also taste the malt. It has a low-to-mid hop profile but the flavor is dominated by grain and malt, and the ester compounds coming from the yeast. He also knows that the water in Belgium is special, it’s very pure. Herlinda smells coriander and also the alcohol. Tasting in the Dark Hoby promotes his tasting experience called Tasting in the Dark. It works with many kinds of foods and beverages, including wine, beer, spirits, olive oil, vinegar and even beef. He did a tasting experience of scotch, gin and bourbon for the launch of a new kind of freshwater fish bait. The bait is designed to be attractive to the fishes’ sense of smell. Hoby’s Instagram has grown explosively in the last year. He put a few reels online from their tastings and they proved to be very popular. Some of them were from Hawaii about tropical fruit. They went from 3000 followers to 480,000 followers today. The second tasting is a Barleywine called Bigfoot from Sierra Nevada. Hoby knows Ken Grossman who started Sierra Nevada out of the back of his pickup truck in 19790. Barleywine uses light hops and so much malted barley that the beer has a similar alcohol concentration to wine, 9.6% ABV.

Jenna Bautista from the Pink Boots Society, also a Senior Quality Analyst for Lagunitas, joins Herlinda Heras on Brew Ha Ha. Jenna Bautista joins Herlinda Heras on Brew Ha Ha, with Adam Bosch from Parliament Brewing Co. also in studio. International Women’s Day is Sunday March 8, this year. There is a whole weekend of Pink Boots Society collaborations to check out. Lagunitas has made Glass Breaker, using Nectaron, Simcoe, and O-33 experimental hops. It has pine and stone fruit flavors and is a little over 8.5% ABV. It will be released this Saturday. Russian River Brewing Co. is open in Santa Rosa on 4th St. and at their big Windsor location. Visit their website for up-to-date Pliny the Younger 2026 information. The Pink Boots Society North Bay has partnered with CuVer in Windsor to brew a Belgian IPA called By Her Bootstraps. HenHouse is releasing The Coven, a botanical rice lager flavored with sage, grapefruit and lemon peel and lavender. They are releasing it at Fort Point Valencia on Sunday. Jenna was just in New Orleans for the Pink Boots Society conference. They had a couple hundred women and non-binary people working in the beverage industry. They had a speaker from Europe who talked about advocating for yourself in a tough industry and how to advocate for others. Friday there is a performance of Werewolf on Holiday at Lagunitas, too.

Adam Bosch from Parliament Brewing is back on Brew Ha Ha with Herlinda Heras today to talk about the Cheesesteak Competition on March 21. Adam has been on the show several times, the most recent was this episode last September. Chris Amadio from Mamadios food truck, is in the studio. They were the people’s choice winner at last year’s Cheesesteak competition. First, they are drinking Capital Letters, a new West Coast IPA that they started brewing last year. The hops are Riwaka, Citra and Nelson. Russian River Brewing Co. is open in Santa Rosa on 4th St. and at their big Windsor location. Visit their website for up-to-date Pliny the Younger 2026 information. This is their third year of the Parliament Brewing Cheesesteak competition. Apart from the five cheesesteak vendors, they will have four bands and a dj, plenty of seats, tables and chairs, tents and parking. The cheesesteak vendors will be Mamadio’s, Lila’s Streetside Eats, The Spot Food Truck, Golden Steak Warriors and Canevari’s Deli. There will also be so far about 13 merch vendors, and food and beverage vendors. Eagles, Phillies, 76ers, Flyers. Herlinda recalls visiting Philadelphia and finding cheesesteaks. The old city has cobblestone streets and lots of corner shops like delis and restaurants. There is also a burgeoning brewery scene. Chris Amadio is from Philadelphia and he can really turn on the Philly accent when he wants to. Eagles, Phillies, 76ers, Flyers. The competition is for cheesesteaks not limited to Philly style, so everyone can have their own twist. There will be two awards, one from the judges and the people’s choice award. Herlinda will actually be one of the judges on March 21. One of the other judges is Mercedes Ramos who runs the SoCo Market, who has also been on the show. The Cheesesteak competition day is kid friendly and dog friendly. There will be four bands, SPF, Citizen Flannel, Werewolf on Holiday and then Ellie James and the Electric Dream. 🍻

The Fort Point HenHouse merger is the subject today with Justin Catalana of Fort Point Brewing and Colin MacDonald of HenHouse Brewing, on Brew Ha Ha with Herlinda Heras. Justin is calling in on the phone today while his friend and colleague Colin is in the studio at Wine C0untry Radio with Herlinda Heras. Fort Point Beer Co. has been featured on Brew Ha Ha before, the last time was this episode. Colin has been on the show before, most recently this episode in 2024 about the Freshtival that year. Recently HenHouse and Fort Point breweries joined forces. Although they still produce beers under the two brands, Colin describes them as having complimentary strengths. HenHouse is rooted in the North Bay and Fort Point has grown to be San Francisco’s biggest craft beer. The first beer tasted today is an alcohol-free KSA from Fort Point. SF Beer Week is happening all over the Bay Area. Fort Point makes KSA which is a non-alcoholic Kölsch style beer. They also make other NA beers. Herlinda will be with Fort Point at the Dim Sum Brunch at the Hong Kong Lounge on Saturday. KSA is the beer they are most known for. Kolsch style beer comes from Cologne, Germany. They will be serving this beer tonight in the same style as a brew pub in Cologne, in the same kind of glasses. The event on Saturday is a huge Dim Sum service with Fort Point beers. This is one of Herlinda’s favorite SF Beer Week events. Russian River Brewing Co. is open in Santa Rosa on 4th St. and at their big Windsor location. Visit their website for up-to-date Pliny the Younger 2026 information. Big Chicken Big Chicken is a double IPA that HenHouse makes once a year. It is also a statement about freshness. They want it to be the freshest beer it can be. You can buy beer that was packaged the same day. Fresh beer is so much better and makes enough of a difference that they founded the brewery on that principle. They used to do a promotion called the Freshtival, where they brought beers in that were no more than a week old. This Sunday Mar. 1 they have an event to promote the end of Big Chicken this year. Colin compares its flavor to a tropical fruit bowl. That then begs the question, what do you pair it with? Something big and intense, so fried chicken. The Big Chicken fest this year closes with the Fried Chicken competition at Palace of Barrels in Petaluma, from noon to 4 PM. They will have 5 food trucks there serving to the people and a distinguished panel of judges. There will also be a separate hot sauce award. There will be a distinguished guest list and plenty of great tasting fresh beer. 🍻

Marty Nachel Marty Nachel, founder of the American Craft Beer Hall of Fame, calls in to discuss the 2026 HOF nominations, on Brew Ha Ha with Herlinda Heras and Daedalus Howell. Marty has been on the show before, including this episode back in December, about his recently published book the Beer Story Project. Today’s Brew Ha Ha show is appearing online as 3 separate podcast episodes, so that all the guests can have their own page, and their own Internet traffic. This also makes it easier for listeners to find the guest they are looking for, among the other two.  Marty Nachel is a well-known author who also wrote the popular book Beer for Dummies. He is calling from Chicago, which always invites the comparison of the weather there and in Santa Rosa, California, aka Beer City. Russian River Brewing Co. is open in Santa Rosa on 4th St. and at their big Windsor location. Visit their website for up-to-date Pliny the Younger 2026 information. The American Craft Beer Hall of Fame will induct its second annual class on Saturday, February 28, at 3:00 EST, 12 noon PST, they will livestream their induction ceremony. Eight people are being inducted this year, whose names will be revealed at the ceremony. There are links to the live stream at their website. There will also be events at different breweries where people will gather to watch. Herlinda wants to have one here in California too, next year. The event will be on YouTube afterwards, for on-demand viewing. This is the second year of the Craft Beer Hall of Fame. Last year the inaugural class included several famous founders of the craft beer movement. Jack MacAuliffe, Fritz Maytag, Ken Grossman, food and beverage journalist Michael Jackson, and eight others made up the class.

Conor Begley from Fathers Brewing is the guest of Herlinda Heras and Daedalus Howell on Brew Ha Ha today. This is his first time on the show. Sayre Petrokowski, the executive director of the Brewers Guild, introduced Herlinda to Conor. Fathers Brewing was launched less than a year ago, last July. They went through a lot of R&D to create their first two flagship beers. They are a lager (with a red label) and a light lager (with a blue label). Before Fathers Brewing, Conor started a software company that he sold for a lot of money in 2021. His bio is a whirlwind from graduation, to “a startup company that grew really fast” then went to Australia with his girlfriend who is now his wife. He worked for Thunder Road Brewing Co. in Melbourne, Australia, running their digital and social media operations. What he learned there led to his software company, which in the long term has led him back to beer. Relentless R&D The brand is being built in a streamlined format for growth and further investment. Conor is committed to founding the company upon the best possible quality product by a relentless process of R&D. The brand identifies as “clean beer” similar to how his partner’s previous company had a product based on clean skin care. Russian River Brewing Co. is open in Santa Rosa on 4th St. and at their big Windsor location. Visit their website for up-to-date Pliny the Younger 2026 information. When the question for a brewery is, ‘How to stand out?’ Fathers Brewing is defining itself by being organic and clean. Their first production on other people’s equipent, a.k.a. “gypsy brewing” worked at first. Now they have invested in the company adding capacity, from 20 barrels to 400 barrels at a time. That improves the quality and makes it consistent, in the higher quantity. Mikkeller and Evin Twin beers are actually made by rival brewers who are twins. They were gypsy brewing for a long time. Mikkeller became one of the most sought after and expensive beers in the world this way. Conor spoke to a lot of other successful beer entreprenurs, to learn from them. Overall in the brewing business, people are willing to help each other. Clean Beer They have tested for the presence of micro plastics in beer, in the materials from suppliers and in all stages of packaging and processing. Any stage that uses plastic has the potential to shed microscopic plastic debris. Another example, is using surfactants to supress the production of foam. But the material is plastic. It may increase the yield but, “that can’t be good.” So pouring plastic on the beer is right out!

Herlinda, Rob and Chismosa Rob Saccuzzo, Old Caz GM, is our guest in studio today on Brew Ha Ha with Herlinda Heras and Daedalus Howell. This is Rob’s first time on the show but the brewery has been featured many times. Old Caz co-founder Brian Rengel is the featured guest on this episode of Jan. 21, 2024. He was back for an update the following August on this episode on August 8, 2024. Rob Saccuzzo is the General Manager of Old Caz Beer and is also a board member of the Bay Area Brewers Guild. They are preparing for some big events coming soon. SF Beer Week is the biggest event of the year, and they are also putting on the SF Beer Week Beer Fest at the Salesforce Park beer garden on the top of a skyscraper in the city. Rob is busy doing ten events at Old Caz in ten days. They are releasing 16 beers, six of which are being released at the kickoff party on February 20th and many of them are collaborations. Old Caz themselves are releasing another seven. “This is the biggest slew of events we’ve ever done,” says Rob. Russian River Brewing Co. is open in Santa Rosa on 4th St. and at their big Windsor location. Visit their website for up-to-date Pliny the Younger 2026 information. One of the things Herlinda likes about the beer business is collaboration and mutual assistance. Rob describes one with the same ingredients and two brewers. One brewery will add all the hops at the beginning then the beer is hot, and other one only later when it is cool, to produce two different flavor profiles. Chismosa Rob is also a very enthusiastic participant at beer festivals. He likes to remind people that Old Caz is a party and everyone is invited. While they can talk seriously about beer, they will also spray confetti in a Mexican wrestling suit just to get attention for the beer. Their most awarded beer is Chismosa, and has won medals in numerous beer festivals for this beer. He compliments their brewing team for keeping it so consistent. Rob says that if someone had told him in high school that his chemistry class would help him make beer later in life, he would have paid more attention. Old Caz has “a cavalcade of human beings who are hard working and who believe in the brewery.”

Natalie and Pliny Natalie and Vinny Cilurzo join Herlinda Heras and Daedalus Howell on Brew Ha Ha with the first taste of Pliny the Younger 2026 from Russian River Brewing Co. Today is a very special edition of Brew Ha Ha because Vinny Cilurzo is also here along with Natalie Cilurzo. They have brought the first taste of the Pliny the Younger 2026 in a keg. Today they celebrate the distribution of Pliny the Younger on draft at all of the bars and restaurants in their distribution network. It will all leave the brewery by Friday. It is a huge effort for the staff but it is like a holiday event. The retail release at the two RRBC locations runs from March 20 to April 2, 2026. Tapenings have begun! Pliny the Younger 2026 “tapenings” are happening and will go on the rest of the month in about 130 locations. The other release of Pliny the Younger to the general public will be in March. Right now, the trucks are on the road for Maine, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, as well as northern and southern California. Vinny also mentions ten or so brewers who are working hard in both breweries. Their sales reps in southern California have worked hard to prepare for Pliny the Younger 2026 to be a big event. A month ago, every tank in both breweries was full. The month of February would normally be the slowest time of the year for a brewery. Their original idea was to create a promotional brew to goose sales for the slow time. At first they never dreamed that it would become such a success. Russian River Brewing Co. is open in Santa Rosa on 4th St. and at their big Windsor location. Visit their website for up-to-date Pliny the Younger 2026 information. Vinny tells the story of Pliny the Younger Vinny describes Russian River Brewing Co.’s history since he took over the brand from Korbel, the original founder. It used to be that barley wine was the winter brew. Vinny decided to see how far they could push the hops. For the first five years of Pliny the Younger, “It wasn’t a huge deal.” But in 2010 everything changed. Vinny would always show up on the first Friday in February to tap the first keg. That time, there were people waiting outside. That is when Vinny learned that this beer was rated the number one and two beer in the world on two popular beer rating websites. He did not know about any of that. By the time they opened, they had to call every employee they could get, and limited people to 4 growlers per person. A table of 4 would buy 16 growlers. They were overwhelmed by its popularity that day. The websites were taking votes from beer enthusiasts. They ended up having to make up rules to govern and limit the traffic. During covid they had to split the distribution between bars and restaurants first and then the retail distribution later. They were forced to wait about 2 months and ended up March into April. They do that every year because it turned out to be an easier way to manage the whole season. Herlinda remembers how they organized a vaccine clinic at the brewery. The Magnificent Seven Hops The recipe has changed a little bit from year to year, but for the last few years it has used the same selection of hops. This is the first year they have used the exact same seven hops. They are Simcoe, Amarillo, Citra, Tangier, Mosaic, Nectaron and Warrior. There are five different hop formats. There are whole cone hops (as they grow) and there are pellets, which resemble rabbit food. Then there are other advanced products that are concentrated flavor extracts. Some of the processes that hop companies are using for extracts are the same as used to make cannabis extracts. As for the malt, it is about 60% silo malt, 30% Pilsner malt and about 10% sugar. They use sugar because it ferments right into alcohol and doesn’t leave any body at all. Pliny the Younger 2026 is 10.5% alcohol but it doesn’t taste so strong. The Sonoma County Economic Development Board has studied the economic impact of Pliny the Younger. In 2024, the last year studied, they found 8.3 million dollar impact on the community. This comes from business to hotels and other hospitality businesses and more. Natalie and Vinny are very proud of this.