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

370: A Week of Timbo Pils

August 31, 2024·59 min·3 clips

Four breweries can use the same Timbo framework and still make beers that taste completely different.

The show starts with the panel half-laughing through the setup and half-wandering into the subject, which is Timbo Week. They explain that Timbo is Highland Park Brewery’s very hoppy pilsner out of Los Angeles. The beer gets a yearly spread of variants, and the table is moving through several of them here. Highland Park’s version is part of the lineup. Alvarado Street shows up too. Cellar Maker is in the mix. Everywhere is there as well, with different art on the can. The hosts note that they did not get North Park or Pint House for this round. They also mention that the recipe is publicly shared, so the beer has traveled well beyond its original home. That opens the door to a broader discussion of what happens when different breweries interpret the same hop-driven pilsner idea. One version reads more like a hazy beer. Another lands closer to a dank IPA. Another stays more subdued. The panel keeps comparing those differences against drinkability. Palate fatigue comes up again and again. The point is that a hoppy beer can be great, but only if it does not turn into work. They keep returning to the surprise that these beers sit at almost six percent and still feel easy to drink. That becomes a kind of thesis for the whole conversation. A West Coast pilsner needs restraint. It needs enough hops to matter and enough cleanliness to stay bright. The group treats that balance as the real trick. They also talk through how the style sits near other modern hop beers without tasting exactly like an IPA or a cold IPA. That distinction matters to them. It is not just a label game. It is about whether the beer clears the palate and invites another sip. One of the stronger through-lines is that West Coast pilsner has become a favorite style for at least part of the table. The hosts sound genuinely sold on it. The episode keeps its loose, crosstalk-heavy rhythm, but the beer knowledge is steady underneath the jokes. When the conversation drifts, it still circles back to hop character, carbonation, freshness, and whether the beer is actually crushable. That gives the episode a casual pace without losing the point. It ends up as a good snapshot of the panel doing what it does best: taking a beer style seriously without pretending the table is above a little chaos.

As heard by us

A Timbo tasting turns into a crisp, persuasive case for West Coast pilsner.

Four Brewers spends Timbo Week comparing Highland Park Brewery's Timbo with versions from Alvarado Street, Cellar Maker, and Everywhere. The focus stays on what makes a hoppy pilsner work: restraint, balance, and a finish that keeps the beer easy to drink.

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Why you'd press play

You want a Timbo Week West Coast pilsner showdown where the same hoppy pilsner idea gets split into a few different takes.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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