Airing tonight: "Brewed on the Bay: Craft Beers of Maryland"

Brewed on the Bay: Craft Beers of Maryland airs tonight Thursday, 14 April, at 8:30pm, on Maryland Public Television, as part of the station's Chesapeake Bay Week.

Join Al Spoler, local food aficionado and cohost of WYPR's Cellar Notes, as he takes us on a tour of the Chesapeake region's microbreweries. Explore Maryland's rarely considered beer traditions and history in a thirst-quenching travelogue of our area.

Here's what I wrote about the program when it was still under development:

[Brewed on the Bay] is a half-hour documentary on the history of Maryland brewing and the rise of the 'craft' beer movement, filmed at breweries throughout Maryland, including all of the state's brewpubs. Those interviewed include Hugh Sisson, Jim Lutz, Steve Jones, Rob Kasper, Turkey Joe Traber, Volker Stewart, Tom Flores, and other brewers and beer poobahs in the region.

Al Spoler is the brains behind the project.

A former director at Maryland Public Television (MPT), now working as a freelance producer, Spoler may be better known as sidekick to Hugh Sisson of Heavy Seas Brewery on the long-running Public Radio show Cellar Notes, a weekly wine (and occasionally, beer) review program in Baltimore, Maryland. Spoler runs the annual Maryland Governor's Cup Wine Competition, and teaches at Loyola University.

I may have a small part in Brewed on the Bay. In mid-December at the Olney Ale House, Spoler interviewed me about the Oxford Brewing Company, where, in the early 1990s, I had been a brewer and, later, manager. Begun as the British Brewing Company, but now closed, Oxford was the first microbrewery to operate in post-Prohibition Maryland.

In some locations you can receive MPT on more than one channel. For cable, check with your local company.. In northern Virginia, MPT can be viewed on Channel 22. In Maryland:

• Annapolis Channel 22
• Salisbury Channel 28
• Baltimore Channel 67
• Hagerstown Channel 31
• Oakland Channel 36
• Frederick Channel 62

UPDATE: The documentary is available on DVD for purchase. Go here.