Oddrop Drinks Podcast

We’re interrupting our series break to bring you a very special episode of the Oddrop Drinks Podcast. We hear from a team of women who have spent the last few months researching and recreating a 5,000-year-old beer from Ancient Egypt. Part of the Pleasant Vices YouTube series, they’ve been working closely with the British Museum to reproduce this ancient boozy beverage. Our fantastic guests in this episode are: Tasha Marks – food historian and founder at AVM Curiosities. Michaela Charles...

In our last episode of the series, we look at a drink that’s particularly close to Lucy’s heart – dry sherry. We look into three of the key styles of dry sherry and their unique ageing processes, with Certified Sherry Educator Karen Douglas, who is also the Director of Global Education at the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET). Plus we FINALLY let producer Lou have a drink! She tries dry sherry for the first time and gives us her unique take on how to describe colours in wine… The...

This episode will start anyone’s morning off right – coffee. This delightfully addictive beverage rules over our mornings and is part of many people’s daily routine, yet we don’t always take the time to appreciate the hard work that goes into each and every cup. There's much more to a cup of coffee than a simple caffeine boost! We learn from Laura Bratti, Head of Training at the Artisan Coffee School, all about the beans themselves, optimum brewing methods, the best kit for brewing the...

This week’s episode is one of our favourites. Cider is perhaps the most misunderstood and underrated drink around, despite being the UK’s indigenous beverage. Often lumped in as an add-on to beer, cider is much more akin to wine. It’s the fermented juice of the apple and each apple variety that goes into it will go a long way towards determining its unique tastes and flavours. We speak with Gabe Cook, AKA the Ciderologist. Gabe’s on a mission to change the UK’s perceptions of this this...

This episode discovers Sake, a Japanese alcoholic beverage made from rice. Not a beer, not a wine, not a spirit, sake is a category all of its own. We talk to sake educator Honami Matsumoto, who gives us a run-down of the very specialist polishing and brewing process that goes into making sake and helps us to break down the category into different styles. Sake is a hugely diverse drink with so many nuances and sub-styles - this podcast gives just a little taste of this amazing drink. We...

This week we take our first excursion into the spirit world, and what better spirit to begin with than gin. We talk with spirits/cocktails educator Hannah Lanfear of The Mixing Class. Hannah has an enormous knowledge of the history and production of this fascinating spirit. She takes us on a journey through time from gin’s arrival in the UK from Holland through to the present-day gin boom (teaser: it has not been a smooth ride!) Hannah also offers us her advice on how to taste spirits neat,...

This week’s Oddrop is the oddest yet. Kombucha is a soft drink that can be simply defined as 'raw fermented tea'. But there’s a lot more to it than that. Touted by some as a health drink and by others simply as a fantastic alternative/accompaniment to alcohol, we have recently become quite fond of this delicious, fizzy, acidic beverage. This week we learn from Adam Vanni, co-founder of JARR Kombucha (and Europe’s first Kombucha tap room) about the origins of Kombucha and the slightly Doctor...

Feeling a little nippy this winter? Spare a thought for Icewine grape pickers. In the depths of mid-winter Canada, these cold-hardy wine-loving troopers are called from their beds in the dead of night to trawl vineyards laden with frozen grapes, often in temperatures of -10°c or below. The reward? A few tiny droplets per grape of pure, sweet and tangy juice – the purest essence of the wine grape. This nectar-like liquid is used to make Icewine – the world’s purest, freshest and fruitiest...

Tea is the UK's favourite beverage (besides boring old tap water) but most of us know next to nothing about where it comes from, how it's made or how to extract the best flavour possible from our brews. In this episode Lucy talks to tea specialist Kyle Whittington about different types of tea, why Brits always reach for the kettle in times of stress and the huge influence that the unassuming little tea leaf has had on the history of global politics. To learn more about Kyle (and tea), visit...

In our first ever episode, we start by exploring the ingredients behind the UK's favourite alcohol, beer! Wine educator Lucy Stevenson meets Ben Richards, a journalist who spent 2017 growing all the ingredients needed to brew his own beer. Most brewers buy in their ingredients from wholesalers or specialist retailers, but not Ben! He tells the story of "the least commercially viable beer ever made" and along the way explains how beer is made, what it's made from, and exactly how much hard...

Preview the brand new Oddrop Drinks Podcast, from the creators of the award-winning We Made a Beer podcast series. Hosted by drinks educator Lucy Stevenson DipWSET, the Oddrop Drinks Podcast explores curious drinks for curious drinkers. Launching early 2018!