On this episode of 'the Nostalgic Vagabond' podcast, I talk with Morgane Thöni.
Morgane is from France but moved to Canada a couple of years ago where she works as a brewer in a rural brewery, kind of in the middle of nowhere, like a lot of Canada one could argue. Being French, I expected Morgane to be into wines (6:20) but Morgane is very much into her beers. Perhaps spending a lot of time in Germany studying, travelling and of course, drinking has something to do with that?
Morgane and I met in Liverpool about 5 years ago when she was travelling with her friend and fellow beer enthusiast Mickael. We enjoyed taking a real ale pub tour (10:30) of the city sampling many traditional and some unique beers.
In conversation, Morgane shares a few places around the world, countries and specific regions, (13:30) she has visited where she found the beer and culture to be interesting. We talk about beer tourism and how beer and culture might be related. Morgane shares of some particularly interesting experiences in Norway, where they use juniper in their brewing process (19:30) which is unusual and something Morgane was intrigued by.
Beer culture has exploded in the last decade or so. It's now possible to get American style IPA all over the place, craft beers and some bizarre heavy beers made with lactose and marshmallow even, banana juice mixed with wheat beers etc.
Morgane tells of some of her favourite places to enjoy a beer (27:45), typically outside in a Biergarten but she is also very happy to take a beer on the terrace at her work, and enjoy the view out to sea, providing it's not snowing I suppose.
Morgane shares the path which led her to become a brewer (30:00) and made it to hold her position at Pit Caribou, in Quebec. She is one of the few female brewers in the industry but this is changing along with the times.
Morgane elaborates on how travel influences her brewing creatively (39:00) and how she sees beer culture and the simple act of enjoying a beer as a way of breaking down barriers and finding accessible means to get to know people and make friends all over the (42:40) world...
Enjoy.
Don't forget to follow Morgane and her beer adventures on Instagram @the.iron.mango
Since recording, Morgane wanted to share that her favourite foreign word is "Feierabendbier" which is a German word and means the beer that we drink at the end of a hard day's work.
Further links:-
Pit Caribou: https://pitcaribou.com/en/
plus their Instagram @micropitcaribou
Oak and Time Brewery in Oslo Insta: @eikogtid
A big thanks to Tom Forfar for creating the title tracks for the podcast series.
And, any comments or feedback feel free to email
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