Craig spent a long, drunken weekend at the Great Taste of the Midwest in Madison, Wisconsin, and he brought a microphone. So we’ve assembled a “Low ABV” show around a few clips from his experience, and we open two incredible New Glarus beers while wading through the alcohol-induced fog of Craig’s memory. Here’s what you’ll hear:

- Dan Caray from New Glarus discusses the Wild Peach release and a few upcoming (including the slightly-delayed Gueuze).

- Mike Saboe from Toppling Goliath shares barrel information on their 2014 Assassin and some exciting details regarding the upcoming batch of Kentucky Brunch.

- Where did Captain Adam Vavrick steer his ship? He’ll tell you.

- Michael Kiser from Good Beer Hunting talks long Polish last names and his personal drinking highlights, while Craig screams at him.

- Craig and some drunk fans talk favorite beers and get weird.

 ...and all at a sessionable 46 minutes!

Beers reviewed:

1. New Glarus R&D Wild Peach

2. New Glarus Oud Bruin

CHAOS reigns as we open five “Rustic Ales” from Sante Adairius in Capitola, California. We enlist the help of Ken Getty, president of the CHAOS Brew Club, and he drops knowledge bombs all over us about brewing techniques and why CHAOS is doing truly unique things for homebrewers. But we also talk about the Beer Futurists movement, invent Cosmic Beer Pong™, drink Ken’s incredible Kiwi Strawberry Berliner homebrew, and endure a Dennis cameo. Did we just become best friends? Yup.

For this show, we’re at Beermiscuous in Lakeview, and we “drink around” with owner Paul Leamon to review some great tap offerings and learn about his unique beer café concept. Paul gives us a thorough background on the business, from finding inspiration internationally to overcoming licensing headaches and finding the perfect location. We’ll learn about why proper glassware matters, the ordering habits of customers, and the many weekly events happening at Beermiscuous. We are also visited by head “beerista” Austin Bainard, and he talks about how his background in the Chicago craft beer industry helped fill the tap lines with so many delicious, local brews. Which we drink a lot of on this episode. Never has our drunkenness been so public.

To celebrate St. Louis Craft Beer Week, we review six Missouri beers that aren’t distributed to Illinois. And they’re all mighty fine beers, we concur, but one totally blows us away. We try really hard to make Missouri our sister state, infusing this episode with tons of Missouri trivia and a MO-themed “Who said it?” game. There’s also Ryan’s Missouri Literary All-Stars batting lineup and lots of Michael McDonald. Yah Mo B there!

It’s Iowa or bust on this one, and we have the help of Marie Cummins to drink several Toppling Goliath brews. Once again, Marie brings the spot-on food pairings and superior research, we ruminate on how TG would fit in to the Chicago market if they ever expanded distribution, and Craig tortures us with some Biblical character/celebrity trivia. We also discuss the Templeton Rye, X-Men, Beyonce, and the depressing reality of a diabetic Cookie Monster. Yeah. Go Hawkeyes.

Brewmaster Brett Porter sits down with us at the Goose Island Brewery to drink beer and discuss a variety of subjects, focusing on the exciting things happening at his rapidly expanding brewery. He talks about this year’s Pitchfork beer, why Madame Rose is the best wine barrel beer they’ve done, and the secrets behind why BCBS is so good and why this year’s variants will be even better. We’ll also talk about Lagunitas, Bob Mould, the genealogy of mulberries, FOBAB, the pastoral beauty of Idaho, meeting Killer Mike and El-P, the maybe returns of Baudoinia and BCBS Rare, AB-InBev’s impressive stable of endless resources at his disposal, and Craig’s suggestion of finally doing that Pear BCBS. And that’s just barely scratching the surface. Expect to learn a lot from this one, folks.

We’ve picked five different fruited beers from local breweries for this one, and then we went and tossed a bunch of fresh fruit in the beers just because we can. It doesn’t always work out. Craig shares a little BCBS news he got from Brett Porter, Ryan gives a bonus review of Coors’ Summer Brew, and we recap our experiences getting a tour of Une Année’s brewery and checking out Beermiscuous before its opening weekend. Juicy!

Cory King wasn’t satisfied with just brewing amazing beers at one brewery, so he opened another one. We craft an audio love letter (with moderate profanity) to five of his barrel-aged saisons and wild ales. To no one’s surprise, it’s one of the best tasting episodes we’ve done. David Sullivan joins us and vies for title of “best guest ever.” We discuss the best musical side projects, make Cantillon comparisons, expose the secrets of Craig’s successful kissing booth empire, compare a beer to the TV show “Sports Night” and make some tough decisions about our favorite member of the St. Lunatics. Bridges are burned!

Like everyone else, we love hoppy beers, especially when fresh and local! We have five young pales from area breweries while playing our newest game, Hop Bingo. (Play along at home by downloading the card from our website!) Craig talks about his CHAOS Homebrew event experience, Ryan tries to make “Chic-hop-go” happen (It’s not going to happen!), and we both talk comic book/beer pairings. We are floating in the most peculiar way.

The current demand for “session” IPAs is high, and breweries are practically tripping over themselves to release their version of the hoppy longdrinker. We make our way through nine beers under the 5% ABV cap from nine different breweries, tasting each blindly - without the benefit of knowing the brewery of origin. There are many surprise reveals and revelations, our most interesting smell descriptors yet, and a rousing edition of Ryan’s new favorite game, “Jam Band or Flim Flam?” Also, Craig would like to remind you that we’re not cicerones. No kidding.