Only one house beer on tap at a brewery we drove out to visit, so what do we do? We order it anyway, grab a full guest flight, and turn the whole afternoon into a real-world Wisconsin craft beer tasting with honest scores and zero pretending. This week we are on location at Alchemy Brewing in Cashton, Wisconsin, where the space is beautiful, the food hits the spot, and the small-town surprises just keep coming. We start with Alchemy’s Orange Kiss, a wine-forward, orange-heavy drink that land...

The quickest way to learn what you actually like is to drink outside your comfort zone, and we prove it with a table full of 3 Sheeps Barrel Society barrel-aged beers. We pour a tight lineup of imperial stouts and an imperial milk stout, then hold every sip to our simplest standard: if the flavor is on the can, it should be in the can. Coffee, coconut, vanilla, cacao nibs, blueberry, cherry, molasses, and even amburana wood staves, nothing gets a free pass. We start with Mariner, an imperial...

Seven IPAs hit the table and we do not protect anyone’s feelings, especially our own. Mike brings the Northwoods Beer Guy scoring brain, Jim brings the skepticism, Matt brings the blunt honesty, and Kate joins us as a self-proclaimed IPA lover who actually did homework before showing up. The result is a fast-moving IPA tasting that’s equal parts flavor notes, friendly roasting, and real guidance for anyone who buys craft beer and wonders why the can never tastes like the label. We work throu...

A salty lime lager that promises habanero heat. An orange ale that smells like fresh juice. A vanilla porter that stays smooth instead of burnt. Then we crank up the ABV with an imperial stout, a pastry stout that drinks like hot chocolate, and a barrel-aged Belgian quad that somehow tastes like figs without punching you in the face with booze. That’s the kind of spread we love, and it’s exactly what we pour at Callahan Lake Resort as we prep for a Fourth of July beer tasting. We’re joined b...

An IPA episode that starts with skepticism and ends with us genuinely impressed. We line up six different India pale ales and do a true side-by-side IPA tasting, the kind that exposes what labels and marketing blur: some IPAs are hop-forward and dry, some are mellow to the point of confusing, and some modern fruited hazy IPAs barely resemble the old-school “bitter grapefruit and pine” stereotype at all. We crack into Dale’s Easy IPA, then move through bigger names like Stone Brewing and New ...

You don’t need a 9% hazy IPA or a syrupy stout to have a great craft beer night. We grab a lineup of lighter, session-friendly beers and put them through the simplest test that matters: do they taste good, and would we actually drink more than one? With Jim and Julie in the studio on short notice, we pivot from a planned on-location recording and turn it into a fast, fun flight of approachable craft beer. We start with Summit Light Lager at 3.8% ABV and talk about why “lawnmower beers” exist...

7.5% turns into 13.8% faster than you think when we line up Scotch ale and barleywine on the same table. We’re back in the studio with Jim and special backup drinker Toby, because this tasting is stacked with higher ABV bottles and cans, plus a few surprises we did not see coming. We start in Scotch ale territory with 3 Floyds Robert the Bruce, then take a sharp left with Samuel Smith Yorkshire Stingo, a pour that reads tart and oaky enough to spark a full debate about “Christmas pudding” no...

Seven drinks, two guests, and a quiet Northwoods backdrop that makes every pour feel like it’s happening around a campfire. We’re joined by my brother Brian (our resident “mad scientist” brewer) and Larry as we work through a mixed flight that’s intentionally all over the map, then rate each one on our 0 to 5 scale. We start with Surly Brewing Rocket Surgery Hazy Ale and get into what “hazy” even signals when the hop bite is almost nonexistent and the first note reads floral. From there we c...

A blueberry beer that tastes like raspberry. A lager brewed with jalapeno, habanero, and Carolina Reaper that somehow stays drinkable. And a homemade trophy that literally has a breathalyzer attached to it. Mike flies solo to recap our Memorial Day beer tasting up in the Northwoods, where seven of us put our palates to the test with a stricter blind beer taste test designed to keep the voting fair and the surprises intact. We break down the full format: three seasonal tastings (Memorial Day,...

Cloudy skies, a long weekend, and a fridge full of “not our usual styles” sets the stage for a Memorial Day ready craft beer tasting that goes from crisp to chaotic. We’re chasing lighter, easy-drinking summer beer that still tastes like something, not just cold fizz, and we put each can to the test with honest ratings and plenty of debate about what we’d actually stock for a day on the deck, the boat, or by the campfire. We start strong with Firestone Walker 805 Blonde Ale, the kind of smoo...