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Taplines
Taplines
VinePair

It’s modern American history, one beer at a time! Join VinePair contributing editor and columnist Dave Infante for Taplines, a weekly interview... more

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Episodes

How Anheuser-Busch InBev Built Its Biggest Brand of the 21st Century

Kimberly Clements, co-founder and managing partner of Pints LLC, joins Taplines today to talk about Anheuser-Busch's introduction of a little... more

19 Nov 2024 · 54 minutes
Meet the Middle Tier's Master Matchmaker

Joe Thompson, the founder and president of Independent Beverage Group, is a five-decade drinks business veteran, and one of the... more

05 Nov 2024 · 59 minutes
The Oral History of the "F*CK AB-INBEV" Shirt

Steve Luke, founder and head brewer of Seattle’s Cloudburst Brewing, joins Taplines today for a freewheeling conversation about an iconic... more

22 Oct 2024 · 1 hour,
The Cross-Category Battle for the Future of Hard Tea

This week on Taplines, we're going cross-category with our pond-crossing pal from Cocktail College: VinePair's managing editor, Tim McKirdy. Tune... more

08 Oct 2024 · 49 minutes
The Road to Beer History Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions

We’re putting our normal Taplines format on the shelf today for a very special reunion episode of sorts with journalists... more

24 Sep 2024 · 59 minutes
Shattering Homebrewing’s Pint-Glass Ceiling

Today on Taplines, meet Annie Johnson. She’s a longtime homebrewer, the self-avowed Queen of Beer, and an old source of... more

10 Sep 2024 · 58 minutes
Inside Anheuser-Busch’s "Microbrewing" Skunkworks

Like any good parable, the "David and Goliath" self-mythology of the American craft brewing industry in the '80s and '90s... more

27 Aug 2024 · 1 hour,
How Stone Brewing Dropped a $56-Million Stunner on Molson Coors

Today, we’re joined by the one and only Bianca Bruno, an editor of the venerable trade publication Beer Business Daily,... more

13 Aug 2024 · 1 hour, 1 minute
Saving Narragansett, New England’s Beloved Legacy Lager

After trading hands several times and closing its Rhode Island facility to contract brew, the Narragansett brand was eventually scooped... more

30 Jul 2024 · 50 minutes
When Bud Light First Got Fruity

Our guest this episode is Jeff Musial, a bev-alc industry veteran who was working in research and development for new... more

16 Jul 2024 · 42 minutes
How Cold IPA Got Hot

In 2018, Gold Dot Beer’s Kevin Davey was working as the brewmaster of Portland Oregon’s Wayfinder Beer when he hit... more

02 Jul 2024 · 51 minutes
Why Brut IPA Never Hit It Big

Towards the end of the Teens, Kim Sturdavant was brewing at Social Kitchen & Brewery in San Francisco when he... more

18 Jun 2024 · 46 minutes
The Controversial Rise of Big, Honkin' Pastry Stouts

Pastry stouts — sweet, saccharine, indulgent beers built on flavors more common to a bakery than a brewery — emerged towards... more

04 Jun 2024 · 53 minutes
The Inside Story of "Black Is Beautiful" Stout, One of the Biggest Cause Beers Ever Brewed

In the early months of the pandemic, Marcus Baskerville was working as the head brewer at Weathered Souls Brewing Company,... more

21 May 2024 · 56 minutes
How Budweiser's Iconic 'Whassup!' Ad Went Down

In 1999, Vinny Warren was working at Chicago ad firm DDB and on the hunt for a hit idea for... more

07 May 2024 · 50 minutes
Angry Orchard and the Fight for Hard Cider's Soul

Joining Taplines today is Ryan Burk, the former head cider maker of Angry Orchard Hard Cider. These days, he’s making... more

23 Apr 2024 · 55 minutes
How Beer Boosted the First Wine Cooler Boom

Nothing exists in a vacuum, Taplines listener, and beer certainly doesn’t. When Stuart Bewley and his cofounder dreamed up the... more

09 Apr 2024 · 1 hour, 1 minute
Craft Brewing's "White Dudes with Beards" Dilemma

In the mid-2010s, J Jackson-Beckham, PhD was an academic with a homebrewing habit, blogging incisively about what she called “the... more

26 Mar 2024 · 1 hour, 9 minutes
The Beginning of Goose Island’s Game-Changing Barrel-Aging Program

Joining Taplines today is Seth Gross, a former Goose Island Brewing Co. brewer who was at the meeting where Goose... more

12 Mar 2024 · 49 minutes
Wolfgang Puck and the Brewpub Conundrum

Today on Taplines, we’re joined by none other than Wolfgang Puck for a candid, clear-eyed look at how his Eureka... more

27 Feb 2024 · 50 minutes
The Rise and Fall of the Beloved Beer Ball

In the mid-’70s, as the Light Beer Wars were starting to heat up, a family-run brewery in central New York... more

13 Feb 2024 · 50 minutes
Remembering Ice Cube’s Iconic, Infamous St. Ides Rhymes

Joining Taplines today is Jacinta Howard, a veteran culture and music writer and editor in Atlanta, to talk about a... more

30 Jan 2024 · 58 minutes
How Left Hand Bottled America's First Nitro Stout

When Left Hand Brewing opened for business outside of Denver in the early '90s, the plan wasn’t to become known... more

16 Jan 2024 · 1 hour,
How Non-Alcoholic Beer Got Cool

Athletic Brewing Company wasn’t the first non-alcoholic beer brand, not by a long shot. But it was the first to... more

12 Dec 2023 · 59 minutes
How Coors Capitalized on Craft Brewing's Boom

Returning to Taplines today for the second installment of our two-part episode about Blue Moon's historic, controversial rise is Keith... more

05 Dec 2023 · 43 minutes
Blue Moon Rising

Joining Taplines today to talk about Blue Moon’s historic, controversial rise, is Keith Villa, the brewer who created the original... more

28 Nov 2023 · 45 minutes
How Finance Bros Discovered Hazy IPAs

Joining Taplines today is longtime beverage-alcohol journalist, VinePair writer at large, and author of the hotly anticipated forthcoming book "Dusty... more

21 Nov 2023 · 1 hour, 1 minute
The Modern Beer Business’s First Black Business League

Not to get all political on here, but historically speaking, Black people have not exactly been welcomed into the halls... more

14 Nov 2023 · 59 minutes
Schlitz's Epic Self-Inflicted Downfall

In the early '60s, a fellow named Bob Uihlein took the reins at what was then a brewery second only... more

07 Nov 2023 · 1 hour, 9 minutes
How Brewer-Activists Popped One of the South's Worst ABV Caps

Idiosyncrasies abound in this country's state-by-state approach to booze regulation, and South Carolina is home to plenty of 'em. Which... more

31 Oct 2023 · 57 minutes
Behind the Scenes with Budweiser's Famous Frogs

In 1994, the mighty pre-InBev Anheuser-Busch made a somewhat shocking decision to do a comedic ad for its flagship brand.... more

24 Oct 2023 · 1 hour,
Who Invented Pumpkin Beer?

If you didn’t know any better, you might assume that the whole pumpkin beer “thing” was an offshoot of Starbucks’... more

17 Oct 2023 · 45 minutes
When America's Biggest Import Went Dutch

Heineken's longstanding dominance as the top-selling import in post-Prohibition America was thanks in large part to the efforts of an... more

10 Oct 2023 · 36 minutes
The Yuppie-fication of Heineken

For most of the 20th century, Heineken was the country's top imported beer by far, and by the 80s, thanks... more

03 Oct 2023 · 35 minutes
The New Yorker's Gift to Craft Brewing

The year: 2008. The magazine: The New Yorker. The story: “A Better Brew: The Rise of Extreme Beer.” Was it... more

26 Sep 2023 · 56 minutes
Writing the PBR Brand Bible

This is the second installment of a Taplines two-parter about the early days of PBR’s cultural and commercial renaissance after... more

19 Sep 2023 · 36 minutes
How Hipsters First Found PBR

Diehard Taplines listeners already know we're fascinated by Pabst Blue Ribbon's ascendance last decade as the ultimate insider beer for... more

12 Sep 2023 · 32 minutes
The Road Trip That Changed Craft Beer Forever

In 2007, after two decades of professional brewing, Teri Fahrendorf hit the road as an itinerant brewer for an odyssey... more

05 Sep 2023 · 46 minutes
Budweiser's Infamous Craft-Beer Smear

The dust had hardly settled on Anheuser-Busch InBev’s 2015 acquisition of Elysian Brewing Company when Budweiser’s Super Bowl ad, “Brewed... more

29 Aug 2023 · 51 minutes
Anheuser-Busch's Corona Killer That Wasn't

Corona enjoyed rip-roaring stateside success in the '90s, and the mighty Anheuser-Busch eventually realized it would need an answer. In... more

22 Aug 2023 · 45 minutes
Who Would Actually Acquire Shock Top?!

As you may have heard, one of the world’s biggest cannabis companies, Tilray, just last week acquired a whole bunch... more

15 Aug 2023 · 1 hour, 7 minutes
How New Glarus Got Big by Staying Small

In 2002, Wisconsin’s New Glarus Brewing Company, makers of the beloved Spotted Cow farmhouse ale, announced it’d be pulling out... more

08 Aug 2023 · 56 minutes
At Dogfish Head, the Imperial IPA Is Born

Imagine a world before IPAs. Can’t do it, can you, Taplines listener? But it’s true: around the turn of this... more

01 Aug 2023 · 44 minutes
How Hard Tea First Went Viral

“Tea Partay,” a 2006 spoof-rap spot from Smirnoff to roll out its new hard tea flavored malt beverage, so perfectly... more

25 Jul 2023 · 37 minutes
When the Empire State Bet Big on Craft Brewing

In 2012, New York State had just 95 breweries — dramatically fewer than its fourth-in-the-nation population suggested it should. Five... more

18 Jul 2023 · 55 minutes
Who Killed Four Loko?

When Four Loko mania reached mainstream fever pitch in 2010, Doctor Joshua Sharfstein was the principal deputy commissioner of the... more

11 Jul 2023 · 48 minutes
Anheuser-Busch's AmeriCan Crisis

Fourth of July is traditionally one of the biggest beer-selling holidays on the calendar, and for the past decade-ish, Anheuser-Busch... more

04 Jul 2023 · 17 minutes
The Most Important Craft Brewery You've Never Heard Of

There must have been something in the water in Northern California in the late '70s, because the region produced craft... more

27 Jun 2023 · 59 minutes
When Goose Island "Sold Out"

In 2011, Chicago's Goose Island Brewing Co. sold to Anheuser-Busch InBev, kicking off a decade-long acquisition spree by the macro... more

20 Jun 2023 · 1 hour, 2 minutes
The End of the Light Beer Wars

Don’t call it a comeback, listener, but today Maureen Ogle is making her triumphant Taplines return to take us back... more

13 Jun 2023 · 58 minutes
How America’s First Craft Brewery Was (Re)Born

The year was 1965 when a young Fritz Maytag acquired 51% of a failing San Francisco concern known as "The... more

06 Jun 2023 · 1 hour, 7 minutes
Solving the PBR Paradox

Pabst Blue Ribbon has been sold in these United States since the late 1800s. It's fine, nothing special. But around... more

30 May 2023 · 1 hour, 4 minutes
The Ice Age: Bros, Blogs, and Smirnoff Malt Beverages

The gag, codified as it was on slapdash websites like Bros Icing Bros, was simple: hide a Smirnoff Ice for... more

23 May 2023 · 1 hour, 3 minutes
How Coors Busted Its Union and Boosted Its Boycott

Conventional business-school wisdom is that most consumer boycotts won't work, because it's almost impossible to put organize a big enough... more

16 May 2023 · 1 hour, 6 minutes
When Anheuser-Busch Went "Craft"

In the early Aughts, as the craft brewing industry recovered from its slump the prior decade, macrobrewers started to realize... more

09 May 2023 · 52 minutes
Craft Beer's Oval Office Origin Story

A lot of people know that in 1978, the Carter administration loosened federal laws about homebrewing with a stroke of... more

02 May 2023 · 44 minutes
The Birth of Line Culture

Throughout the Aughts, craft beer's popularity rose roughly in tandem with social media, and in 2010, the two would collide... more

25 Apr 2023 · 1 hour,
How the Light Beer Wars Began

The Original Lite Beer from Miller hit American supermarket shelves in 1975 — and from then on, nothing was the... more

18 Apr 2023 · 53 minutes
Introducing Taplines

Introducing Taplines, a brand-spankin’-new podcast about the modern history of American beer, only on the VinePair Podcast Network. Each week,... more

11 Apr 2023 · 1 minute
Taplines
How America’s First Craft Brewery Was (Re)Born
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Description

The year was 1965 when a young Fritz Maytag acquired 51% of a failing San Francisco concern known as "The Steam Beer... more