Episodes

We back? It’s been a minute since our last episode, so we pay penance to the beer gods by drinking weird beers while we bring you up-to-speed with the state of affairs in craft beer and in our hoods. Tarot cards, anonymous Facebook posts, and Troy Aikman branded beer, all in the same episode?

It has been well established on our Podcast that host Ryan likes his beers (and other drinks) unadulterated.  So what did we do to him?  We made him face his fears and drink a wide range of beer mixed drinks for the first time ever, tournament style!  And let him talk about more conspiracy theories.

Ryan and Drew crack into some of the best beers from Belgium and Germany while sitting outside on the edge of the Austin, TX wilderness.  In an episode rife with bad accents and pronunciations, your hosts discuss why Euro beers have fallen down so far on the Beer Advocate ratings while paying homage to these classic styles.  Will Ryan learn to appreciate the Belgian quad? Will we be able to finish the episode without being interrupted by coyotes?  Tune in and find out.

In this episode, we do what we love best - beer news and blind tastings - but also answer some pretty important questions. Mexican Lagers are often considered basic beers, but are craft Mexican lagers an exception? And more importantly, could you pick them out of a lineup? And while we’re at it, where do you stand on putting fruit in your beer? It's time to take a stand.

The Beering Ain’t Easy podcast has evolved into a new form fueled by Chat GPT and Artificial Intelligence, or in short, Beer GPT. We test out the capabilities of current AI and whether it poses a risk to white collar jobs, the writer’s guild, or at a minimum the low-grade humor you come to love on our podcast. We play around with AI generated beer descriptions, movie descriptions, and even generate and record a Beering Ain’t Easy rap!

One of the earliest US craft beer icons from New Belgium, the one and only Fat Tire, has gone through a major overhaul. New recipe, new logo, and new branding with sustainability at the forefront. We pull out our last batch of the old recipe and drink it side by side with the new and debate which tastes better, what does it mean to be a carbon neutral beer, and whether sustainability actually sells. And in true podcast fashion we’ll go off track with trivia about the brewery, pop culture from Fat Tire’s original release in 1991, and popular songs that were hijacked by movies.

So, you’re supposed to drink IPA’s fresh, right? Well it may be common sense to you but we’re going to test it in an experiment anyway as is our tradition. We sample three Saint Arnold Art Car IPA’s at varying levels of freshness and answer why do IPA’s degrade, how do they degrade, and what are the best and worst types of beers to age? And just in case proving common sense beer facts is not your thing, we also provide a meticulous and entertaining recap of the Bud Light Culture War Saga from the month of April!

Asa Hanrahan, General Manager of the Houston Flying Saucer, joins the podcast to share his experiences spanning 16 years at the cornerstone beer bar and landmark of Downtown Houston!  We discuss the craft beer evolution in Texas, Houston new downtown patio space along Main Street, the staying power of the franchise, and the resurgence of Euro beers.  You’ll even find out the most famous people to step foot in the Houston Saucer!  And if that’s not enough, Drew finally joins the Ring of Honor after 18 years!

This week we talk about the one topic Ryan enjoys more than beer… conspiracy theories. We go through a series of wacky beer-related conspiracy theories and make up a few unsubstantiated theories of our own. Plus Ryan runs down Birds Aren’t Real and his favorite conspiracy theories of all time and Drew explains the myth of the Sumerian beer goddess Ninkasi. As Shania Twain might have said: Man, hops make me feel like a woman!

Does the color of your beer affect how it tastes? Is Saint Patrick’s day and its green beer ruining your favorite lager? You better believe that the Beering Ain’t Easy podcast is here to conduct the experiments that no one asked to be conducted. Featured Beers: Cloud Punch. Bad Astronaut Brewing. Houston, TX. German Pilsner. 5.2% ABV. Loggerbier. Equal Parts Brewing. Houston, TX. German Pilsner. 4.9% ABV. Other Shout-Outs: “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy Disney World Wu Tang Clan Inside Out (P...

Adam returns on this episode to share some great beers from Austin and we gush all about the beer scene in Dripping Springs! And of course in addition to the beer we stray off course with some truly ridiculous and hilarious stories (as is tradition when Adam joins the podcast).

After we had so much fun tasting verticals and horizontals during our Eureka Heights episode, Ryan and Drew are back at it again with none other than the Negative Space Milk Stout from 11 Below Brewing! Come find out all about the awesome Negative Space variants and whether this beer is better fresh or slightly aged (and our thoughts on beer aging in general). And if that’s not all, we’ll bring you up-to-speed with our quest to visit all 70+ Houston breweries and make up excuses on why it takes so long to get to all of them!

Join the Beering Ain’t Easy podcast as we jump in a time machine to drink the top 5 beers of 2010 (hint hint one is a big one!). But that’s not all - we’re going to give you the full and unadulterated 2010 experience. This means top 2010 news stories, top music, top movies, slang, and of course after 5 beers we engage in passionate discussions on the history of craft beer itself. Take a break from your first world problems because this episode is lit!

Ryan and Drew use their extensive research to tell you about beer-related world records so you don’t have to google them for yourself! And don’t google them, because we may have made some of these up. Plus, do kids ever throw up where you want them to and is Wade Boggs full of shit?

Stout Season is here! Ryan and Drew go full-on “nucular” by tasting a variety of Eureka Heights Nuke the Whales Imperial Milk Stouts aged across multiple years and their variants. What can go wrong with drinking four 11% ABV stouts? Apparently a lot of things.

Come join us this week while we take a trip down memory lane, rattling off some of our best beer memories as we discovered beer and craft beer, and of course some of the most painful experiences to keep it from being too sappy! And on that topic, sometimes there is a fine line between a great beer experience and a painful beer experience. Is it possible to achieve the perfect buzz? You’ll have to tune in to find out!

Do you hate a beer that everyone loves? Love a brewery that everyone hates? Are you the type of person who holds back your opinions for fear of how stupid you sound, or do you just put it out there in the open for all to dissect? Well, Ryan and Drew choose the latter path, letting rip their beer industry Hot Takes and Unpopular Opinions.

We’re back with the third annual Oktoberfest Episode! This time we ramp things up by not only tasting our beers blind, but also taking our reigning champ, Paulaner, and putting it head to head with three Houston beers. And if that isn’t enough for you, Ryan and Drew test the myth of “Das Boot” with a good ole’ fashioned beer boot chug!

This week we take our beer Adjunct Series into the wild world of blueberries! That’s right, we’re trying four different styles of beers from four different breweries to tell you the best way to enjoy fruit in your beer. While we’re at it, we’ll tell you the many different ways of how to brew with blueberries!

The Beering Ain’t Easy Podcast is celebrating it’s two year anniversary! We bring back original co-founder Adam onto the show to talk about his move to Austin, Drew turning forty, and Ryan’s bathroom etiquette conundrum. Plus we do micro-recaps of the HTown Brewery challenge and cover Turkey Forrest, Elder Son, and Klaus Brewing!

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.