Long-form conversations with the leading minds in drinks, spanning history, science, culture, and craft, with bestselling author and bartender Tristan Stephenson.
#101 Bevan Fawcett - Floor Malting, Heritage Barley, Maris Otter & Selling English Malt to America
Bevan Fawcett is an eight-generation maltster, and this episode was recorded on the floor maltings at Thomas Fawcett & Sons in Castleford, West Yorkshire. Fawcett’s has made malt on the same site since 1809, and it still germinates barley by hand on stone floors alongside Saladin boxes and modern germinating kilning vessels. We talk about why malt is the quiet bass player next to hops, how Fawcett’s keeps heritage varieties like Maris Otter, Golden Promise and Halcyon alive, and what it takes to persuade farmers to grow a barley that yields less. We break down what a maltster tests for (nitrogen, grain size, screenings and germinative capacity), how steeping, germination and kilning turn a hard seed into brewing material, and whether floor malt really tastes different from vessel malt. Along the way: oat malt and the hazy beer boom, crystal and roasted malts, English whisky’s growing interest in old varieties, the £3,000 trip to Denver that opened up America, and what it was like for Bevan and his brother to take over a 200-year-old business young.
This episode is sponsered by:
🍋🟩 Fever-Tree - For the very best mixers that taste pretty damn good even by themselves🌾 Belvedere Vodka - Organic vodka, with substance, made from Polish rye and absolutely no additives.
📷 Follow me on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tristanstephenson/📚 I've written quite a few books on spirits and cocktails - https://www.thecuriousbartender.com/
19 Oct 2026
#100 Tristan Stephenson (Interviewed by Craig Harper) - Black Rock, Whisky Me, Guy Ritchie, Podcasting, the 1650s and Smelling Sugar
For episode 100 we turn the tables. Craig Harper, a close friend and regular drinking partner, takes the interviewer’s chair and puts questions from listeners and friends to the host himself. We start with how three podcasts led to this one, the nerdiest episodes so far, and the night at Purl when London’s hotel bartenders turned up after midnight. From there we get into Black Rock: the flavour-led whisky bar, the oak table with whisky inside it, the bars in China, and where whisky goes next. There’s also the bottle that got away at Chichibu station, Whisky Me and the sample pouch that rescued it, Rosemaund, and a meeting with Guy Ritchie that created a whisky brand. A trip back to the 1650s makes the case for the busiest decade in drinks history. The quickfire round asks whether you can smell sugar, who gets a fist fight, and where the smart money is. We finish with a sunset on a Cornish beach.
Thanks to everyone that sent in questions and sorry we couldn't get through them all. We will look to address more of them in the future episodes.
With many thanks to our sponsors who have made this show possible: Fever-Tree, Belvedere, Denver & Liely, Algebra.
12 Oct 2026
#99 Steven Moore - Drinking Vessels: Tea Cups, the Coupe Myth, Sharing Wine Glasses, Murano’s Glass Prison & Martinis in the Grand Canal
This week we’re at the home of Steven Moore, Antiques Roadshow regular, former dealer, auctioneer, curator and pottery manufacturer, and the self-styled David Attenborough of teacups.
It’s an episode best watched rather than heard, with a table full of objects that tell the story of how Britain learned to drink. We start with the cup and saucer: why the saucer was made for drinking from, how the raised little finger came before the handle, and why the champagne coupe owes nothing to Marie Antoinette. Steven explains how tea and coffee reached London within a decade of each other, why early tea was taxed as a brewed liquid and sent round town by coffee-house boys, and how the tea table gave 18th-century women a rare kind of social power. Along the way he tests us on a 300-year-old Venetian glass tea bowl painted to pass as Chinese porcelain, a Georgian punch cup and a sugar bowl bigger than the teapot (we don’t do well). We get into why 18th-century wine glasses were kept off the dining table, the Venetian art of drinking all day without getting drunk, a friend who coated his martini glass with frozen vermouth and flung the rest into the Grand Canal, and how Murano became an island prison for glassmakers. Steven also gives his verdict on a vintage plunger-action martini mixer, tells the story of the original People’s Princess from his book The Stuff of History, and makes the case for using antiques every day rather than collecting them to sell: a 1760 dining table for £20 beats flat-pack every time.
Buy The Stuff of History (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stuff-History-Curated-Compendium-Forgotten/dp/1785126504)now!
With thanks to our sponsors:
Fever-Tree Mixers (https://fever-tree.com/) for the best fizzy liquids going
Belvedere (https://www.belvederevodka.com/) for additive free, organic Polish vodka
🥃 Get 15% off the world's best drinking vessels at Denver & Liely (https://denverandliely.com/) using the discount code CURIOUS15 at checkout
☕ Get 15% off the best coffee liqueur I have tried at Algebra Drinks (https://www.algebradrinks.com/)with code CURIOUS15
📷 Follow me on Instagram
📚 I've written quite a few books (https://www.thecuriousbartender.com/) on spirits and cocktails
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