Episodes

It’s been a wild month for the Beering Ain’t Easy podcast, and we’re glad to be back on the air bringing you another one of our patented beer experiments, this time testing whether specialty beer glassware makes a difference on the taste of your beer! Plus, we bring back friend-of-the-show Sylvia, aka @houstonbeermother, to promote the upcoming and awesome #Houstonbeer event coming to the Houston area August 27th. You don’t want to miss out on the Houston Block Party!

It’s a wild world out there folks - fiercely independent breweries selling to macro-breweries, the Houston beer scene rotating owners and brewers like musical chairs, gasoline costing more than craft beer, and hot dog eating champions having to compete on crutches!  What in the world comes next, and how does craft beer fare in a recession?  Are these signs of the end of times, or is this just some elaborate craft beer soap opera?  Either way, he Beering Ain’t Easy podcast is here for it with a tub of popcorn at the ready.

In honor of Father’s Day upcoming, we discuss the transformation everyone must go through when becoming a dad: solitary hobbies, grilling expertise, awkward friend-making, and most importantly, the dad jokes. We talk about the weird phrases we grew up with, the new ones we’ve picked up along the way, and quiz each other on the proper dad response for a given scenario. Plus we talk about our dads’ beer preferences and if they have changed since the podcast began!

Have you ever tried a Gluten Free Beer? How are they made without barley or wheat? What’s the difference between Gluten Free and Gluten Reduced? The Beering Ain’t Easy Podcast will answer these questions and more as Drew’s wife Meredith joins the show for the first time ever to sample 5 different styles of Gluten Free beer and come to terms with our daughter’s Celiac’s disease diagnosis.

Who wants a nice warm beer? Yeah, we thought so. But as parents, we’ve found that our kids often distract us mid beer at parties or events and leave us with a lovely can of lukewarm. Which led us to an experiment to explore - which beer tastes best warm? The Beering Ain’t Easy podcast has done all the detective work so you don’t have to!

This week we bring you an exclusive sneak peak of Bad Astronaut Brewing, a major brewpub coming to Houston’s Hardy Yards later this year! Chris and brewmaster Rocky walk us through their concepts for the space, their extensive experience in brewing startups to scale ups, and tell us what it truly means to be a Bad Astronaut. And in true Beering Ain’t Easy fashion, we find a way to get in some hot takes about kids at breweries. You don’t want to miss this one!

Upon seeing the early signs of summer weather in Houston, Ryan and Drew decide to send off stout season in style via a Beering Ain’t Easy patented blind tasting! This time we put three Oatmeal Stouts head-to-head, including the award winning Settler’s Stout from Vallensons Brewing Company. Can “new” Houston beers overtake an English beer from the 1700’s, and are the host tastebuds as refined as GABF judges? Plus we update you on our HTown Brewery Challenge by recapping Baa Baa Brewhouse, Twisted Acre, and Battlehops!

Can Fruited Sours sweep you away on a tropical vacation from standard craft beers, or should they only be served at the kids table? Will we uncover health benefits unbeknownst to our hosts? We bring on two guests from the neighborhood to participate in a debate as old as marshmallow creme while we sample six of the biggest name breweries in Slushy/Smoothie beers!

We continue on our quest to highlight great guests from the beer industry, and this week we're joined by Marin, owner of one of Houston's best beer bars - Star Sailor. We'll hear all about the entrepreneurial challenges of opening a business during Covid, the glorious highs of building an inclusive business environment, and even tips on how Ryan and Drew can be better communicators! And beer. Lots of amazing beer.

We bring on special guest Ryan Leer to hear about how his passions for homebrewing and videography mashed together into a career at Brewers Supply Group (BSG), a subsidiary of Rahr Malting. We’ll hear about the craft beer boom from the eyes of the raw material supplier, take a ride through the Yakima hop farms, and throw in some amateur wrestling stories while we’re at it!

Houston versus Dallas - A sibling rivalry of Texas-sized proportions. The Beering Ain’t Easy podcast will settle the debate once and for all as we battle two Houston and two Dallas hazy IPA’s, blind tasting style. Is this a winner takes all endeavor, or can we collectively find common ground to bring these cities together? We’ll bring on special guest and Dallas correspondent Wes to answer this question and discuss the brewery hot spots in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

What are your thoughts on the hype beer market that is driving craft beer nerds across the globe to empty their pockets for a rare beer find? Is this bad economics or the future of marketing? Can you drive up huge interest for a beer in a tasteful way? We’ll ponder these questions and more in this week’s episode, plus we circle back on the H-Town Brewery challenge by talking about Saint Arnold Brewing and Eureka Heights!

In this episode, we revisit the cult classic Beerfest 15 years later to see if the movie withstood the test of time. What has been its impact to drinking competitions and the beer industry in general? Is it still funny? And what the hell is a ZJ?

We pick two breweries from Dallas to go head to head, Peticolas Brewing Company and Manhattan Project Beer, in an IPA vs. IPA and Winter Ale vs. Winter Ale battle. Plus we cover the highly scandalous and hilarious serious of tweets from Pabst Blue Ribbon and balance out all the Dallas talk by recapping some great Houston breweries from our H-Town Brewery Challenge - City Acre, New Magnolia, Paradigm, and Equal Parts!

There are a lot of winter and “Christmas” beers that come out around the holidays, but do they all really count as Christmas beers? We take three completely different styles of “Christmas” beers and put them to the test to see if they are Christmas enough! Plus Drew pulls out a relic beer from the back of his beer fridge named “Santa’s Butt” and we debate what are the best and worst Christmas songs of all time. I don’t know if there’ll be snow, but have a couple beers!

The Beering Ain’t Easy Podcast is back at it again with a patented beer experiment! This time we make teas out of three different types of hops and see if we can identify them based on their expected flavor profile. And somewhere in the middle of the episode we go completely off the rails and hold our own Judge Judy court to resolve a dispute from the neighborhood Facebook group. You won’t want to miss it!

It’s Peanut Butter Stout Time, Peanut Butter Stout Time! We’ll stack up four peanut butter stouts in a taste-off to find out which is the peanut-butteriest while Ryan educates us on the history of adjuncts and how peanut butter is added to the brewing process. We’ll also give some on hot takes on Reinheitsgebot and our opinions on what stout adjuncts are acceptable to drink. Lastly, we’ll bring you up-to-date on our HTOWN brewery challenge as we recap trips to No Label, Local Group, 11 Below, Gordon Street Tavern, and Holler!

What is the best sport to watch while drinking? To play while drinking? While we’re at it, what is a sport anyway? Do things like golf, Nascar, horse racing, and bowling count? What is your criteria for defining a sport versus a game? Your Beering Ain’t Easy hosts answer all these questions, plus we share “Uncle Rico” moments as we reminisce on our peak sports performances.

What draws you to breweries? Other than the beer of course! We poll the audience and tap into Ryan’s brewery connection to find out the truth. Plus, Adam and Drew lament over a challenging solar system science project assigned to their kids and debate whether it is ever acceptable to offer feedback/coaching to your kid’s teachers.  Lastly, we update you on our HTOWN Brewery Challenge status by recapping True Anomaly, 8th Wonder, Great Heights, and Walking Stick!

The Beering Ain’t Easy podcast gets the low down on the Houston Beer Scene in this awesome interview with Houston Beer Influencer Sylvia, aka the @houstonbeermother! Sylvia has been following the Houston beer scene since the beginning, and she not only acts as a brand ambassador for many Houston breweries, but she also has her own Houston Beer podcast (The Draught Queens) and runs the Houston Beer Guide website. We talk about upcoming Houston Beer events and releases, must-see breweries, Renaissance Fest, and shine bright lights on all the great beer-related things going on in H-Town!

Some things are best repeated, so we rekindled the magic from last year and brought back the Oktoberfest Battle! 4 Beers - Local vs. State vs. National vs. International - and only one winner! Come join us while we talk Oktoberfest, celebrate college football with cheesy player/beer associations, and discuss a real life dad situation where their elementary school daughter asked “what’s a stripper?” Yikes!

Welcome to Season 2 of the Beering Ain't Easy Podcast!

Welcome to Season 2 of the Beering Ain’t Easy Podcast! We’re bringing you all the best parts of season one but adding on the #HTOWNBREWERYCHALLENGE, a quest to visit every brewery within 50 miles of Houston, TX. Come meet the newest member of the Beering Ain’t Easy family, Ryan, BS about suburb craziness and urinal etiquette, and review our first 6 breweries: Misfit Outpost, Fortress BeerWorks, Stovetop Brewing, SpindleTap, Senate Avenue, and Galveston Island Brewing!

So we let Adam drive the agenda on this episode, and let’s just say we hit every topic under the sun while still managing to review Ennio, a tasty Italian Pilsner from the New Magnolia Brewing Company. Come listen to us discuss the Houston Brewsology Beerfest, 911 call dad hacks, the new Shiner Bock ad campaign, and debate the best beverage to consume at an all-inclusive resort! You won’t want to miss all the juicy tidbits and nuggets of wisdom we have to offer.