Four Brewers: Craft Beer and Homebrew · John Holzer, Greg Nagel, Joe Senigaglia, Jason Harris

366: There Does Not Exist (Revisited)

·59 min·3 clips
Spore, the 6.66% hazy IPA, uses mosaic, Nelson, Riwaka, Chinook, and Sabro.
The show starts with a beer handoff from listener and patron Jeff, who promised to bring stuff for the panel and finally follows through. Jon meets up with him in Los Angeles and comes back with beers from There does not exist, a brewery out of San Luis Obispo. The name is the first joke and the first debate. The hosts try to decide whether it sounds like a location, a statement, or a sentence that got cut off in the middle. Once the beers are open, the conversation settles into the usual Four Brewers rhythm. People talk over one another. Somebody corrects somebody else. A joke lands, gets stretched out, and turns into a side argument. The tasting stays loose, but the judgments are clear. They keep coming back to whether a beer is crushable, whether it feels dry, and whether it still has enough hop character to stay interesting after the first few sips. The Kolsch talk drifts into LA Beer Week and the King of the Kolsch event at Arts District Brewing. That gives the panel another angle on the style and a chance to compare what they are drinking against the kind of beer that would fit into a competition like that. The beer gets called clean, dry, and a little harder to drink than the most effortless examples, but still very good. The point is not just flavor but how the beer sits on the tongue and whether it disappears too quickly or not quickly enough. From there the discussion turns to smash beers and hop expression. They talk about how some beers leave gaps in aroma or flavor because they are built differently, and that difference becomes part of the appeal instead of a flaw. The mosaic hop character comes up as a way to talk through what the beer is doing without pretending it is more complicated than it is. The panel sounds impressed by how direct and drinkable the beers are. A comparison between the beers keeps the energy moving. One beer is so easy to drink that it sets the bar for the rest. Another feels drier and a little more demanding on the palate, but still very good. They note that palate fatigue may be part of what makes the later beers seem less flashy, but even that becomes part of the conversation rather than a complaint. The show is happiest when it can argue about small differences in drinkability, and that is what this stretch delivers. The hosts keep circling back to how strong the lineup is overall. They say they are going out of their way to put cans back in the fridge so nothing gets wasted later. That kind of practical enthusiasm is the real signal here. Nobody is acting precious about the beer, but nobody is phoning it in either. The beers are getting finished quickly because they are genuinely good. The episode keeps its usual loose table energy, with interruptions, callbacks, and little bursts of dry humor. There are inside jokes and quick pivots, but the beer talk never disappears for long. Every tangent eventually snaps back to what is in the glass. The panel keeps measuring each pour against the last one, which is exactly how this show likes to work. By the end, the message is plain. There does not exist shows up with a set of beers that exceed expectations, and the Four Brewers crew has a good time figuring out why. The brewery name may be a weird one, but the beer gives them plenty to chew on. It is casual, specific, and very much in the lane of people who know what they like and are willing to say so out loud. The key thing the episode leaves behind is a straightforward verdict: these are the kind of beers that disappear fast because they are easy to keep drinking and worth talking about. Best for listeners who already like beer talk with some mess on it. It fits people who enjoy panel chemistry, style comparisons, and unscripted opinions more than formal reviews. Not for people who want a clean, solitary tasting note or a tightly edited brewery profile.

As heard by us

Casual craft-beer banter with enough palate detail to stay honest.

This episode starts with a listener's beer run and turns it into a breezy pass through beers from There Does Not Exist. The jokes about the brewery name land often enough, but the beer talk stays grounded in actual tasting notes: Kolsch chatter, smash-beer comparisons, and plain…

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Why you'd press play

You want beer talk that actually sounds like a few people cracking open listener-provided cans and arguing their way through them.

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