Episode 483: Cultural Collaboration and Brewing beyond the Main Strains with Suncatcher and Goldfinger, in Partnership with Omega Yeast

Stop by the False Idol taproom in North Richland Hills, Texas, and you’ll find a long list of well-made lagers and IPAs, but for head brewer Will Perry, the real fun starts in the corners of the menu where he has space to play. The results speak for themselves, with three GABF medals in saison and pastry stout categories over the past two years, as well as a Craft Beer & Brewing top 20 beer in 2023.

Masthead cofounder and head brewer Mike Pelechaty is no stranger to GABF medals, with five under his belt before adding two more to the collection in 2026, but winning both the light lager and rice lager categories suggests an approach that’s more than just coincidence. In this episode, he outlines the similarities as well as the differences in ingredients and techniques between the two lagers made with rice, and shares the brewery’s general approach to designing, brewing, and ultimately selecting and packaging beers for top-flight competition.

Earlier this year, Cloudburst founder Steve Luke announced that longtime friends at Bale Breaker would be buying the brewery while he and his wife relocated to New Zealand for her career. For many in the industry, it felt like an ideal outcome, with the beloved Seattle brand finding a home with the talented team at the Yakima-based brewery. But the move hasn’t taken Luke out of the game—he’ll be involved for at least a few years, and hasn’t let up on the tongue-in-cheek humor around craft beer history that has led to creative and award-winning takes on things like imperial hoppy red ale or hoppy amber ale.

Scott Selix of Lua in Des Moines, Iowa, started his career as a brewer before leaving for law school. After a brief stint as an attorney, the gravitational pull of the brewing world ultimately proved too strong for him to overcome. Now at Lua, he has the freedom to explore the creative front edge of progressive styles such as hazy IPA while also delving into low-ABV pale lagers—which, he admits, he and the brew team largely brew for themselves.

Denver's Off Script has built a rabid fanbase of hazy IPA drinkers who line up for can releases and special draft events like it's 2015 again, and founder Ryan Taylor has done it by focusing tightly on plush and saturated hazy IPAs. But he brews the beer themselves at Aurora, Colorado's Milieu Fermentation, where cofounder Rob Bessett also makes some high-scoring hazy IPAs of his own. Together in this episode, the pair discuss the ways the IPAs they brew are similar, as well as different, despite following a common path toward a similar end goal.