Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Matt Bitner asks I’ve been enjoying your other podcast, Respecting the Beer. What is your go-to type of beer?

For those of you who don’t know, I am hosting another podcast with my friend and astrophysicist-turned-brewer, Bobby Fleshman, called Respecting the Beer. The podcast covers the science, history, and culture of beer and brewing.

Bobby is a truly fantastic brewer, and he makes a wide variety of beers in every style you can imagine. Stouts, ales, lagers, pilsners, sours, cask beers, nitro beers, and many many others. His brewpub will usually have about 20 different beers on tap, with other beers rotating throughout the year.

My favorite beer is usually something that changes throughout the year. Right now, I’ve been having gose. Gose is a slightly sour, lemony beer with a low alcohol content. It is great to have in the summer.

In the fall, I’ll probably shift to the Oktoberfest beers that come out that time of year.

I am a big fan of barrel-aged beers, which I never really had until relatively recently. These are beers that are usually aged for about a year in used bourbon barrels. I can’t really drink more than about 7 oz and it is more for sipping.

Along those lines, my absolute favorite is Eisbock. Eisbock is a barrel-aged doppelbock that is stored outside and frozen in the winter. It is made in very limited quantities and is very rare.

The reason why it is so hard to find in the United States is that, legally, letting beer free is considered freeze-distillation, which requires a distilling license, not a brewing license, even though it requires absolutely no distilling equipment.

However, if you import Eisbock, it is imported as a beer, not a spirit.