Brew Ha Ha

APR 16, 2026

<p>Tara Nurin calls in to Brew Ha Ha to discuss plans for a documentary film about the subject of her book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Womans-Place-Brewhouse-Forgotten-Brewsters/dp/1641603429" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">A Woman’s Place Is In The Brewhouse</a>. This call came near the end of <a href="https://brewhaharadio.com/gabrielle-demozzi/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the episode with Gabi Demozzi, which is right here</a>. The film is called <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt40426047/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Witchy Boots</a>. </p> <p>Tara is a journalist who covers the beverage business and the personal stories of people in the beverage industry. She is the author of A Woman’s Place Is In The Brewhouse and she has been on Brew Ha Ha many times. Tara covered <a href="https://brewhaharadio.com/beverage-industry-mental-health/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">mental health in the beverage industry on this episode on May 2, 2024</a>. Tara also holds the honor of being the guest on <a href="https://brewhaharadio.com/tara-nurin-forbes/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">our first podcast episode here in February of 2018</a>.</p> <div class="entry-content"> <p>Tara lives near Philadelphia, the site of next week’s Craft Beer conference. The Pink Boots Society is kicking off the conference on Sunday with an inclusive festival that is inclusive of beverages and of people. Philadelphia is known for other foods than cheesesteaks. The Redding Terminal Market is the oldest indoor food market in the country. Also, the Italian Market takes up several blocks in south Philadelphia. In recent years there are some Mexican restaurants in the area and further south, some Asian restaurants. It is becoming more eclectic. Herlinda remembers some killer pizza too. There are several oldest, coolest, original this or that, all over the city, to discover. Look for Philadelphia to be the official home of the 250th anniversary of the US, this year in July, 2026.</p> <p> </p> </div>

13 MIN

APR 16, 2026

Gabrielle Demozzi, Dim Sum and Beer

<p>Gabi Demozzi, a Dim Sum chef and beer judge from Brazil, is our guest today on Brew Ha Ha with Herlinda Heras and Daedalus Howell. Gabi is a certified <a href="https://www.instagram.com/dimsumdagabi" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Cicerone, professor, consultant and chef</a> who has been working with beer for 16 years. She is currently working on opening a restaurant that will match Dim Sum with craft beer named Dim Sum da Gabi. It is already operating via delivery and private dinners. Today is her first time on the show.</p> <p>Herlinda met Gabi two years ago when she was a judge in the Brazilian national beer competition. <a href="https://brewhaharadio.com/author-tara-nurin/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Herlinda describes her trip to Brazil in this episode</a>, from the week after she got back. Gabi was in Denver recently for the World Beer Cup, and they will be in Philadelphia next week for the World Beer Cup.</p> <h4>A Beer Judge’s Job</h4> <p>Judging beer is hard work and carries a lot of responsibility. In the field of professional beer judging, there are thousands of beers in many different categories. Usually there are four or five judges per category. Beer judges have to swallow the beer in order to properly evaluate it. This is different than wine judges who spit the wine out after they taste it. Yesterday Gabi spent six hours at Russian River Brewing Co. in Windsor. Afterwards they even went to Russian River downtown.</p> <div class="entry-content"> <p>The official Brew Ha Ha cocktail shaker is ready and we hear it in minute 10. Gabi has brought a bottle of Cachaça (pron. “ka-SHA-sa”). It is distilled from fresh sugar cane juice. The Caipirinha (pron. “kai-pi-REEN-ya”) is the Brazilian national cocktail, made with cachaça. This one is flavored with cinnamon and clove. She mixes limes and lemons, but Caipirinhas can be made with any kind of fruit juice. The better quality the Cachaça, the tastier your Caipirinha will be. </p> <p> </p> </div>

34 MIN

APR 9, 2026

Beer and Beatles with Herlinda

<p>It’s not business as usual this time on Brew Ha Ha with Herlinda Heras and Daedalus Howell, as Herlinda presents Beatles and Brews today. She has had this playlist on her main fridge for about 6 years. What’s more, she has such a collection of beers that she can line up the labels to match the songs for today’s show. The show begins with two Beatles tunes, She Loves You and I Want You / She’s So Heavy.</p> <p>Herlinda is a Beatles superfan. She knows <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Best" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Pete Best</a>, who was the drummer for The Beatles before Ringo joined the band. Herlinda even has a signed picture with him from when he played in Petaluma on tour. Pete’s mother Mona Best bet on a horse named Never Say Die to win the 1954 Epsom Derby, at 33-1 odds. (<em>sorry, audio garbled at 8:00</em>) She used the winnings to buy the house where they built The Casbah Coffee Club in the basement. Pete’s brother Roag still runs tours at the original Casbah location.</p> <div class="entry-content"> <p><strong>She Loves You</strong> goes with A View From The Top from <a href="https://www.instagram.com/fiveboroughsbrewing/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Five Boroughs Brewing</a> in Brooklyn. They brewed this beer to commemorate the refurbishing of the Empire State Building. It matches the Beatles arrival in NY in 1964 on Ed Sullivan and at Shea Stadium, and all the later New York connections.</p> <p>Daedalus asks Herlinda how she became such a big Beatles fan. Herlinda’s dad was in the Navy, and they were stationed for a while at Hunter’s Point Shipyard. Candlestick Park was nearby, and her mom wasn’t at the Beatles concert, but she said she could hear the crowd screaming. When her dad was in the Far East in the Navy, there where places where he could record albums onto reel-to-reel. Herlinda had an Akai reel-to-reel tape player. He gave her an audio documentary history of the Beatles that she listened to it over and over again.</p> <h4>Black is Beautiful and Blackbird</h4> <p>Herlinda was doing her math homework one day while living at Hamilton AFB in Novato. She was listening to KRQR San Francisco when the news came in of John Lennon’s murder. She immediately started her reel-to-reel recorder and captured the local coverage from all the local radio stations.</p> <p>Herlinda opens a beer called Black is Beautiful. She pairs it with the Beatles song Blackbird and points out Paul McCartney’s story of its origin. A bird means a girl in British English and Paul had seen stories of young black girls having to be escorted to school in the American south, and he wrote the song to describe them. The Black Is Beautiful beer started from an African American brewer Marcus Baskerville in the wake of George Floyd’s death.</p> <p>The song Tomorrow Never Knows, with its Indian sitars, suggests an IPA, India Pale Ale. There is more beer and Beatles music than we have time for in one show, so we will have to revisit this topic. Before we end this episode, Herlinda opens a Ukrainian style Golden Ale flavored with coriander. The BJCP judging guidelines recently admitted this Ukrainian style to their catalog. Herlinda suggests the song Golden Slumbers, for the Ukrainian ale. We will have to do a 2.0. We didn’t even get to the English beers. </p> </div>

51 MIN

APR 2, 2026

Lloyd Palmer, Train Expert & Oregon Craft Tap Collector

15 MIN

APR 2, 2026

Lloyd Palmer, Train Expert & Oregon Craft Tap Collector

<p>Herlinda’s cousins Lloyd and Lee Palmer are visiting from Oregon and they are in the Brew Ha Ha converted train coach studio with Herlinda and Daedalus today. Lloyd Palmer is a train expert and today he will tell us all about the retired train cars that make up the <a href="https://winecountryradio.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Wine Country Radio</a> studios and offices here in Santa Rosa. Herlinda has brought her family to the show before. Her father Eloy Heras, a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam, was on <a href="https://brewhaharadio.com/vinny-cilurzo-tara-nurin/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">this episode back in April of 2018</a>. That day, he told some stories that involved both the Navy and beer. Also, <a href="https://brewhaharadio.com/parliament-brewing-co/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Eloy and Herlinda’s brother Anthony came on Brew Ha Ha on this episode, last year on June 19, 2025</a>.</p> <p>Lloyd is also a retired Navy veteran like Herlinda’s father Eloy. “Trains and beer? I can talk all day!” said cousin Lloyd upon Herlinda’s invitation. They have a caboose in their own backyard, with beer. Lee says they have brewskis in the caboosky. Lloyd has a collection of almost 2500 craft beer tap handles. They are all on display in his garage. He started the collection about 30 years ago. He collects tap handles from Oregon microbreweries and IPAs nationwide.</p> <blockquote> <p>Trains are the only vehicle you can drink a beer on and not really worry about it. –<em>Daedalus Howell, Words of Wisdom</em></p> </blockquote> <p>The Wine Country Radio studios may be the only train car radio studios that Lloyd has ever heard of. There are several types of cars. There is a boxcar and a baggage car. The KRSH studios and Exitos, sister stations, are in the boxcar. He thinks the Wine Country Radio studio was a passenger coach, not a caboose, given its fine original woodwork, high vaulted cieling and windows.</p> <h4>Rails from 1925, Cars from 1910-1915</h4> <p>There is still some rail and some historical railroad ties in the ground under the cars. Lloyd found the mill mark on a rail from 1925 from a steel mill in Tennessee. He suggests that these tracks were a spur at a station, used for maintenance, before becoming a train parking lot. A spur means it is not parallel to the main track.</p> <p>Lee has turned her caboose into a painting studio. She wanted to restore it rather than convert it. The caboose is from 1981 and was in use until about 2006. The interior colors are the same except they put a little bar in it. There was a strict rule on the railroad called Rule G which prohibited workers from consuming alcohol before or during work shifts. Now they have a red bar across the Rule G sign. In an ironic twist, Brew Ha Ha is recorded in Studio G.</p> <p>Lloyd estimates the Studio G coach was built from about 1910-1915 since it is made of wood, rather than steel. Its full length extends past the hallway that crosses it. As for the boxcar, that is a standard 40-foot boxcar. They were in use from the 1940s to 1960s, for what they called single car freight, or single loads. Most interstate trains today are what they call Unit Trains like oil tankers or double-stacked container trains. Those carry standard freight containers so boxcars are much less in use today.</p> <p>If you ship a lot of freight, rail takes a lot of freight off the roads. Each rail car takes 3 trucks off the road. So a 100-car train takes 300 trucks off the roads. There is a great train station in Los Angeles, Union Station. It is in fine shape despite its age. The Amtrak Pacific Surfliner runs from San Luis Obispo to San Diego with convenient station stops all along the way. </p>

16 MIN

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