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Episode 55 - Short Fuse Brewing (feat. Brian Lagro)
118 Plays4 years ago
On this episode we venture out from the comfort of our homes to Schiller Park, IL to visit Short Fuse Brewing. We speak with head brewer Brian Largo to learn a bit more about the brewery, Brian's resume and how to melts pounds of gummy bears.
https://www.shortfusebrewing.com/
Theme music provided by Myke Kelli (@mykekelli)
Check out all our episodes at www.themaltinghour.com
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Transcript
Introduction of hosts and guest
00:00:00
Speaker
Brewing wise, what are you most excited for for the rest of this year? What are you looking forward to kind of accomplishing? I'd have to look at our brewing schedule.
00:00:10
Speaker
And we come with the hard hitting questions. I know, right? On this episode, we're joined by short fuse head brewer, Brian Largo. This is episode 55 of The Molting Hour.
00:00:40
Speaker
Some people take it close, some people take it on.
00:00:48
Speaker
to The Malting Hour. It's our first time being somewhere together and not zooming out and about in a very long time. And before we get into that, I am one of the hosts of The Malting Hour. Tony Golic, join always with Brandon Winninger and the Poet Laureate of the group.
00:01:12
Speaker
Clark Fetridge. Do you have a poem for this? Was a metridge. And he didn't have anything in his fridge. I shouldn't have let him record it. I'm very nervous being in person again. It's very hard. Ryan just checks his watch to see how long it's going to
00:01:29
Speaker
Guys, you're a minute in. You're over the limit.
Brian's journey from Goose Island to Short Fuse
00:01:35
Speaker
As mentioned, we are out and about, and today we are at Schiller Park at Short Fuse Brewing Company, and we are joining with brewer Brian. Brian, thank you for joining us, man. Thanks for coming out, guys. We appreciate it. Fun way to spend a Saturday morning on this hot spring day. I know.
00:01:42
Speaker
take.
00:01:54
Speaker
I'm sure it's spring. It just skips right to summer. The high is going to be 88 today. That's ridiculous. I'm not complaining, especially with the beer that I'm drinking. It's peach sour beer. It's refreshing, and I feel like this is fitting. But before we get into all those beers and everything, Brian, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role here at Shortfuse?
00:02:13
Speaker
Head brewer, I've been here let's say about a year and a half now. Prior to that I was at Goose Island for five years mostly in brewing when I was in R&D for let's say six months or so and then my last few months training in the cellar and before that head brewer 1090 for a little over a year and prior to that
00:02:37
Speaker
We're just going to keep going back. I did the Siebel Master Course in 2013. It's an impressive resume.
00:02:47
Speaker
It's getting building on it a little bit. That's cool. How did you just decide to make that transition over here to Shortfuse? Yeah, so I'm trying to think. I guess what brought you over there. Right. It was probably towards the end of my time at Goose, like the end of 19. We had just had our second kid, so I was off for a paternity leave for about three months. And I came back, back to shift work.
00:03:16
Speaker
And I was like, oh man, like shift work with a couple of kids and like driving from the suburbs to Chicago and back every day. It's like, this is kind of like brutal. And I had actually, I had a message from Nick, the owner here on LinkedIn, and I never checked LinkedIn. It just popped up in my email and he's like, hey, you know, looking to hire somebody wondering if you'd be interested. I was like, I don't know. So then like,
00:03:46
Speaker
I get back to Goose for about a month of
Brewer interviews and challenges
00:03:48
Speaker
working. I was just like, I don't know, maybe I'll kind of like feel that email out or if it doesn't work out, maybe there's somebody here at Goose that would be interested. And one thing kind of led to another. I had some good interviews with Nick and I was just like, I'm going to take a chance and do it.
Diversity in beer styles at Short Fuse
00:04:04
Speaker
It's been a good change. It was a great time at Goose, but I think
00:04:08
Speaker
life things in general. It's worked out for the best. And it's been really good working here. Awesome. I always wonder, how does an interview go for a brewer? Like, do you have to bring in samples of your beer? You think they put you through the ringer. Do something on our system right now. Come in. We'll let you know if you have a job.
00:04:31
Speaker
Yeah, some interviews can be pretty brutal. I remember towards the end of Siebel, people were interviewing like Sierra Nevada, New Belgium. And like some of the smartest people in our class and those interviews like really put you through the ringer. And I was like kind of nervous. He's like, oh man, like these guys are having a tough time with interviews. I'm screwed.
00:04:52
Speaker
But thankfully, everything worked out for everybody. But for the most part, they're pretty laid back, talking about what was your role, and what have you been doing, what would you like to do, what are your interests. And I think the second round of interview, we probably drank more beer than we talked about the job.
00:05:12
Speaker
So I'm pretty laid back. That sounds fun. That's how I got the job at Inclusion Solutions. That's exactly right. Took me out drinking. And then what happened?
Brewing techniques and hop varieties
00:05:24
Speaker
And then you fired things.
00:05:29
Speaker
You went through your resume of brewing. How did you get into brewing? Did you start like us, home brewing? Kind of. Kind of not. So I read an article either in Time Out or Chicago Magazine. They were highlighting breweries in Chicago.
00:05:49
Speaker
and talking about head brewers or brewmasters or whatever, and I forget who it was, but they had mentioned they went to Siebel. So I was like, there's a brewing school in Chicago? That can't be true. And I looked into it and I was like, oh man, I should do that. I was like, I could do that, I think. So I actually signed up in 2010 and would waitlist it until
00:06:11
Speaker
2000 whatever and somebody must have dropped out because I got in in 2013 so it was kind of just like taking a total chance I think at that point between signing up and going to Siebel I had brewed one batch of beer at home. Turned out okay I think it was like a clone of a Bells Brown or something like that.
00:06:34
Speaker
But I just did a bunch of reading that was suggested by Keith Lemke, who was the VP there at the time. And it worked out pretty good. Wow. That's awesome. It's diving in head first, pretty much. Yeah. Yeah.
00:06:46
Speaker
Yeah, to be honest, when you said Siebel, I wasn't 100% sure if that's what I thought it was, and I'm glad you cleared that up for me because I hate asking dumb questions like that. Because I think I remember hearing about it as well, and I've been brewing now for almost nine years, so it put around that time as well.
00:07:06
Speaker
I think maybe Mike and I had saw that we're like, oh, look at that. I didn't go to school for brewing. I should do that. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. And here you are. I know. And here I am now talking to the brewers at least that. So as far as working here goes, what
00:07:24
Speaker
I want to say, what have you brought to the table? What have been some of the beers that, as we saw, the tap list here is, I think it looks like 23 beers are on tap right now? Yeah, at least. Quite the variety. That's what I loved about it. You can get anything. And everything is really interesting. This is my kind of brewery where I can try 20 different beers and they're all completely different.
00:07:46
Speaker
Yeah, actually Jeff, my name is Jeff, and his family came here two weeks ago and they were saying how much they went from here and then went to microphone. So they were saying how much they liked coming here for all the beers and that they only had like one or two at microphone. No offense microphone. They started to refuse and stayed here for a while. So they were pretty excited to hear that I was coming here.
00:08:12
Speaker
I would say, I guess I'm asking, what have you brewed here so far that hasn't been something that was already here, I guess? New beers. Yeah. What do you bring to the table? This is your new interview.
Unique beers at Short Fuse: Peach sour and Hopcycle
00:08:26
Speaker
Yeah, we're really going to compress it. Oh, shit. I would trouble it out. I really think the main thing was just bringing a little bit more diversity, because not everybody wants to drink super hoppy or fruity hoppy or sour.
00:08:40
Speaker
whatever, there's a lot of beer styles. But like I mentioned, bringing in spring thaw, spring time, having that Maybach in is really nice. We did the wit. There was a heft here before I started, but continuing that, trying to think in the fall time, we did a Dunkle Vice, which we got gold for at the US Open Beer Championship.
00:09:10
Speaker
So bringing some of those like traditional styles in, you know, I don't want to say basic, but like, you know, straightforward beers, because I mean, think about like how many times people just like, I just want a beer. Yeah. You know, don't like throw anything crazy at me. But, you know, Suave is our Mexican lager. We've had that. I brought in a low calorie lager, our flight path because we're in the flight path of our airport.
00:09:36
Speaker
but then just like working towards consistency on batches you know flavor consistency fermentation consistency making sure everything like lines up batch to batch was kind of think the other thing that we were really focused on as well as bringing in a little more diversity nice yeah and like you said you know there's going to
00:09:56
Speaker
Tons of different breweries. Sometimes there are those tap lists where there isn't just a beer, so to speak, to go to. Everything is so over the top with either being super hazy, or everything's barely aged, or everything's just an IPA. Which I have not opposed to any of that, but it's nice to have a variety. Especially bringing people with you. It helps, too, when you go to places and you want a flight of beers. With the amount of beers on tap here, you could say that
00:10:24
Speaker
you know, that's too much. But I mean, if you look at the space, I mean, yeah, you can get a lot of people coming through here and I bet you burn through some beer. But I like the idea of being able to have such a diverse list and sit down, order a flight and then try a bunch of stuff, you know, versus like being stuck, you know, to a hoppy beer or something like that.
00:10:42
Speaker
again same thing as you it's not opposed to that but I like the variety and even though I went for a happy beer yeah yeah we want to talk about the beer you got brand yeah so I'm drinking the hopcycle and I believe you said it was mosaic and Citra yeah this is it's it's funny it's lighter than I thought it was going to be
00:11:01
Speaker
What's the ABV on this? I mean I honestly like I just thought it was gonna feel a lot heavier but it's super easy drinking so I'm trying to like pace myself because I could burn right through this. I'm trying to do the same with mine. And we've talked about this before like you know we like brewing with Citra like when we home brew and Mosaic is
00:11:20
Speaker
you know really good too so this it's very well rounded and like the the hop flavor is just so prominent but not overwhelming there's no like real bitterness that I would expect from like you know a hop forward you know IPA all IPAs are hop forward but like
00:11:36
Speaker
get what you're saying yeah yeah i mean it's it's you're getting more citrus yeah and then bitterness which you know lends to those hops very well but this is this is awesome like this would be a go-to like i wouldn't come to this place and probably order this again you know um even though there's like 20 some other right like this was this would be a you know a solid go-to this is it this is the only bear i'm ordering never drinking anything else again bad news we probably never brewed again oh boy no
00:12:06
Speaker
I shouldn't say never. But yeah, part of our hop cycle series is like it's always a different hop combo. But that's cool, though. That would make me want to come back and keep trying. That's true. Do you know what's coming next in that? Kohatu and Zappa.
Exploration of beer styles and traditional methods
00:12:21
Speaker
Ooh. I'm not familiar with those. Zappa, I think I've had maybe a hop butcher beer before. But Kohatu, I don't think I've ever had. Yeah. Kohatu's in New Zealand. It's super tropical. It's really good. I used it in a beer at Goose a few years ago. And I was like, what?
00:12:35
Speaker
this is like really good. And then Zappa, it's like it's always hard to come by. I don't think they make a whole lot of it because I think part of the lineage is like the Neo-Mexicanus that like true American like hop variety blended with
00:12:49
Speaker
whatever, I don't know. Hot breeding is pretty crazy. Yeah, it's insane. I remember when I started brewing it, I'm like, oh, there's seven hops. There's cascade. They all start with C. And then as you get more into brewing and getting into the beers that you're buying and finding out, what the hell are all these hops? Even when I see experimental hop names on beers and I'm like, man, this is really good, I don't know. I can't go and get it right now. It's not out packaged or anything.
00:13:18
Speaker
Pisses me off. Speaking of like hot varieties, you know with this large list of beers, is there like when you brew, is there a hop that you prefer to use? The one that you like the most? Because I think we said like Citra is something that we kind of go to a lot when we brew.
00:13:38
Speaker
And I'm always, I don't think I've ever had a beer where I'm like, I don't really like that hot, that's terrible. I mean, there's some that are okay, but is there ones that you like to kind of put into beers that give you flavors that you enjoy? Yeah, I mean, citrus always a good standby. I'm really big on Sabra right now. I love the coconut flavor of it because it's very different than a lot of the other tropical flavored hops that are out there.
00:14:03
Speaker
What else? A big fan of Meridian coming out of Indie Hops. I think they were the ones that put that together. Chinook. I really like Chinook. Classic. One of the Z's, there we go. One of the Z's, back to the Z's. I think it's just got a nice round, piney, fruity citrus. I think it's a good combination.
00:14:25
Speaker
We actually have some really good centennial here on Michigan. Not always one that I go to, but the stuff that we have is pretty good. I'm trying to think what else. Galaxy. I'm a big fan of Galaxy. I know a lot of people are on the fence about that one. It's a little polarizing.
00:14:42
Speaker
I've always had pretty good success with that. You're a big fan of the Galaxy, aren't you? Sure. I don't know, when he's using the Galaxy, it's like... No, I'm pretty sure I used that for one of my... I can't remember which one. Oh yeah, I think it was... I think it was Rode Soda. Yeah, we were like, yeah, I'm using the Galaxy, and I was like, hmm, interesting. I was judging you. Sorry, I won't do it again. Rode Soda was pretty tasty. Well, Clark, since we're talking to you and you're about to take a sip, what are you drinking?
00:15:07
Speaker
Ooh, I am drinking Sunday morning stacks, which is fantastic. Well, I'd love the brewer to tell us about it, because he'd probably do a much better job. Describe what you're tasting. Well, I'm tasting a lot of maple. I'm tasting a lot of cinnamon. Do you want to get into exactly what it is before I... Those are the two things he said that were in there. I mean, I wanted to tee him up.
00:15:29
Speaker
The base beer is a wheat wine and it also has maple syrup and cinnamon. No, it's, you guys were talking about easy drinking, I mean for eleven and a half? Yeah. I could be done with this right now. It's a breakfast beer. We weren't doing this episode. No, it's a perfect breakfast beer. I mean pancakes in there? Seriously, it tastes like pancakes. Pancakes on the label, so.
00:15:54
Speaker
Really? We got everything decent. Is that cooler there, too? That one? Yeah, that one's on that one. Yeah, I might need to grab one of those. Maybe we can do a little sharing there. No, this is incredibly smooth. Need a drink for the ride home? I want to say light. We're an 11 and a half percent beer. Light on the mouth.
00:16:13
Speaker
Man, very impressed. Speak up on you. Yeah, I was tempted to try that as well, but I got a lot going on today. I don't have too much going on, so it's fine. Yeah, that's all right. I'm always fascinated by the wheat wine style, because I think the first wheat wine I ever had was at Pipeworks, and it was like a Fourth of July beer, like,
00:16:39
Speaker
Uncle Sam vs. Unicorn or some shit like that. There was a wheat wine. I might be mixing that a lot, but I was like, wheat wine? I'm like, I know a barley wine, but a wheat wine? This is brilliant. It's a brand new thing. I've never heard of this. And I like the wheat wine, mainly because of the body that you get from it that's not as thin as a barley wine. Right. Barley wine's good. But I've realized, having a non-barley wine, this must sound so shitty. I don't really like having a non-barley-ish barley wine anymore.
00:17:08
Speaker
I'm with you. It's okay. It's okay to say that. I had one, I'm not going to say what it was, but I had one this last Christmas and I was like really excited to buy it. I was like, all right, it's been a while since I had this. Okay. Cause then when I took it simple, I was like, it's good. What is it? The, like the extra bitterness that comes out of it or something that is kind of toned down. It's like a tea, like a tea tannin or something to it. Like a tannin or I don't know, I don't know if I'm using, not tannins, but it reminds me of the bitterness of like herbal tea.
00:17:33
Speaker
Okay. What was the one we did our plop day? Was it a wheat wine or a barley wine that we didn't like? It was the wheat wine. It was a wheat wine. We won't talk more about that. I just remember not liking that one. It was old. It was old. It was old and that's what we'll leave it at. That's a sore subject. We don't want to talk about that again. We'll talk about it afterward.
History and growth of Short Fuse Brewing Company
00:18:00
Speaker
So can you give us a little history, actually, we jump straight into your history, but do you give us a little history on short fees? This is our fourth year. Obviously, a couple of years before I started, I don't really know what happened here. Because I wasn't here. Yeah, I mean, we've got this huge space restaurant, 30-barrel brewing system.
00:18:28
Speaker
We're probably doing about close to 5,000 barrels a year. This is a little more recent history. We've got a pretty good distribution footprint in Eastern and like Southern Wisconsin. Our distributor there just expanded us from like the Milwaukee area.
00:18:49
Speaker
into the Madison area. Cool. And we also have a distributor up in Michigan, mostly on like the east, like central east side. Things have been going pretty good up there. To your side, Clark.
00:19:00
Speaker
I'm on the west side. Oh, sorry. Forgot. Confusing. Math, lyrics, left and right. Two things I don't really know. Math and directions. Anyway. What else? We've got pretty good coverage in Illinois. We work with, they're not a distributor here, they're more of like a delivery service on whatever like
00:19:23
Speaker
legal around about thing they have but we send beer over to them they'll put together orders and like send those out so that works out pretty well. What else we've had some like really good growth we survived last year pretty well all things considered we've had some pretty good investment new equipment new tanks new can line
00:19:49
Speaker
trying to think what else, like redoing our barrel program. So definitely a lot of changes in the year and a half that I've been here. Yeah, I was going to say, I feel like I see more short-fused beers on the shelves now in Chicago than I used to. I don't know if that's maybe. I think, well, that's prominent for a lot of the breweries, a lot of the places you're seeing more on the shelf because the pandemic forced people into
00:20:17
Speaker
breweries that weren't canning started canning because they had to get their stuff out the door i forgot about last year yeah i blocked it out that's all that barley wine i drink well what i was going to say though so is has this always been the original location yeah
00:20:37
Speaker
That's pretty good. Have you guys always had this entire space? That's awesome. This is an impressive spot. So for folks that are listening, if you haven't been out here, if you're worried about needing to social distance, don't worry. You got some space. This place is massive. And with those garage doors open up,
00:20:55
Speaker
Yep. That's pretty sweet. We'll have to take some pictures. We can throw those up when we post the episode. Yeah, the restaurant side is roughly 9,000 square feet. Between 9 and 10.
00:21:08
Speaker
So which side is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is it? Which is
Creative beers inspired by candies
00:21:28
Speaker
it? Which is
00:21:36
Speaker
have my wife try this for like brunch, like a brunch beer. It's really good. I wasn't expecting, it's a sour, correct? Or wild. Wild. Yeah, it's not like a sour, it's sour. But it's nice and tart, the peach flavor is really good. It's very refreshing. It's not
00:21:55
Speaker
You guys do have a lot of, I don't want to say crazy beers, but you guys have a lot of crazy beers. Like the ones you talked about, the very bad kids. I was very close to getting the Sour Patch. It's good. The watermelon Sour Patch Kid inspired beer. That sounds awesome. But this is very straightforward as far as being, like you said, a wild, fermented beer with peach. It's really good. I could drink this all the time, too. Guys, we chose well, I feel like. We chose. I think it's a nice assortment. Yeah. Yeah.
00:22:25
Speaker
representing everything. And then what are you drinking? Yeah, I know you were talking about before. We got our nitro mocha stout. So it's our peanut butter cup stout base beer before the peanut butter is added. Then we just let it sit a little bit steep on some coffee for a few days. It came out pretty nice. Nice. So you were saying that you were probably like the idea was to
00:22:48
Speaker
You had it for your peanut butter, what was it, peanut butter beer? Stout. Yeah, peanut butter cup. Base and peanut butter cup stout. And then now you guys are going to try and do some other variants with it as well. Yeah, so looking at like potential variants, you know, can we justify brewing a little bit extra peanut butter cup stout and then taking, you know, a portion of that, whether it's two and a half barrels or 10 barrels and doing a peanut butter variant, or can we take some of that beer before the peanut butter and like do something else like the mocha or
00:23:17
Speaker
you know, whatever else. Yeah, I mean, sky's the limit, really, because, you know, we have all these weird beers, crazy beers. And I know you're not drinking that one. But so speaking of a peanut butter stout, what do you guys do to get the peanut butter in the beer? What do you use specifically?
00:23:34
Speaker
So we have powdered peanut butter. We brew with that. So we do about 100 pounds of that in the boil, like the last 10 minutes of the boil, just to get it to mix up pretty well. Because we used to add it to the Whirlpool and used to clump quite a bit. And we'd have to stir it in. And that just got annoying. So I figured if we add in the last 10 minutes, use some of the agitation of the boil to mix it up, as well as the Whirlpool.
00:23:59
Speaker
And then we found a really good peanut butter flavor that will dose into the bread tank. Nice.
00:24:07
Speaker
Yeah, I've done one peanut butter beer in the past. And I for some reason thought it'd be a good idea to make it for my block party where it was like 90 degrees. It was a peanut butter porter. I remember that. Yeah. How'd that go? I think like two people tried it. Refreshing. Yeah. Refreshing. That was a peanut butter sour, actually. Did you use powdered peanut butter? No, that time I just used the extract, the plate flavoring. Oh, that's right. Yeah. But we, you and I,
00:24:33
Speaker
When we, I know I did another one where I did use like, I think I used PB2 in it, which worked great. And I use it for protein shakes. My beer, my protein. It's a healthy beer. It's good for you. I'm starting protein shake beers. Oh man. I'm surprised nobody's done that.
00:24:52
Speaker
Taking like protein powder and just dumped it into a beer and then like sure somebody has to call it muscle milk and then get sued That's
00:25:06
Speaker
So one of the beers that I wanted to talk about, and I don't know if this is, you know, from you being here, because there's, like you said, you weren't here from the beginning.
Crafting gummy bear beer
00:25:15
Speaker
One of my favorite beers that I didn't expect to like from short fees, someone brought it up for my birthday, it was named Barry White. And it was in my refrigerator, I left it in there for like,
00:25:22
Speaker
a good way to get recognition
00:25:25
Speaker
I'd say a good two weeks, to be honest with you, I was like, all right, let me give it a try. I'm nervous. I'm not nervous, but I just didn't like seeing the gummy bears on the can. It's a very clever name, but I was so surprised at how much it's a refreshing wheat bear.
00:25:44
Speaker
It fucking tastes like gummy bears. So is that, again, like just like another flavoring thing? You don't have to give away secrets. No, no, it's the actual gummy bears. So we made the change shortly after I started talking with our other brewer because we were brewing double batches for a 60 barrel batch. And he's like, well, I mean, it's kind of annoying to like waste that second day. It's like, why don't we just brew a high gravity batch?
00:26:10
Speaker
the water back. So we started, we changed to that. And then once we get towards the end of fermentation, you know, maybe like to Plato before terminal will melt 300 pounds of gummy bears. And that's, that's the last addition slash water back to get it in line with the 4.8%. So we actually had straight up gummy bears.
00:26:37
Speaker
So do you do that after the boil or does it go into the boil? So we boil it to melt it down so like you got we right now so we have our brew day and we'll brew a 30 barrel batch to about 20 play-doh
00:26:53
Speaker
And then we'll water that back. So we're at the end of the brew day, we wind up about 45 barrels of beer. And then about a week later, we'll melt roughly 15 barrels of, sorry, 15 barrels of water with 300 pounds of coming beers.
00:27:09
Speaker
And that gets like a full 60 barrel batch and all that delicious gummy bear flavor. That's ridiculous. I was like, I saw it was funny seeing your reaction. And then we just melt the gummy bear. We just melt them. What? It was also like an aha moment. At the same time, I was thinking, I was like, in my head, I was like, I bet they melt them. And we melt them.
00:27:33
Speaker
Oh my god, they melt them. My other thought was that maybe you were like, I just want to see the image of 300 pounds of gummy bears just melting.
00:27:43
Speaker
It's got to be a big purple. Yeah, how are they? Is it in liquid or it's in the water, right? Yeah, so we put it, we add the water to the kettle and we get it boiling and we'll put CO2 through the bottom to help agitate it and to also de-irate the water. And it just like mixes it up. Then we'll run the Whirlpool in the kettle for like 20 minutes or so, make sure everything's like pretty well mixed up. And we'll just cool it down and shoot it over. How fun is that to clean?
00:28:13
Speaker
It's better when we get, so when we started, when we have interns. When I started we were still experimenting with stuff and we'd wind up with like a lot of gummy bears, that gelatinous mess in the bottom. We got to like mix this up better, like we're not getting like our full potential here.
00:28:30
Speaker
So that was a pain to clean because like you get some just like slowly just like drip out and drain just like pathetically draining. Now it works out pretty good so we'll run like a just like a quick like 20-30 minute caustic cycle afterwards.
00:28:48
Speaker
It's not too bad.
Revamping the barrel program
00:28:50
Speaker
Have you guys ever had a chance to try it? I haven't. No. You guys should have had it. You guys should have had it before. Should have. But you stuck with yours. No, I'm enjoying it. 40%. 40%. It's only 40. Well, at least it's not the 62% of yours. That's our secret. It's our moonshine that's blended with something.
00:29:11
Speaker
Do you guys have anything, you know, anything, you mentioned the bike ride, you know, that you guys had last weekend. Do you guys have anything, I mean, with everything kind of opening up and by kind of, I mean, actually is opening up. I mean, there's some festivals now and people are getting vaccinated and whatnot. It seems to be like we're on the path of some normalcy here. Do you guys have any like set in stone plans coming up for the year? We do. So currently we do beer, yoga,
00:29:40
Speaker
I don't think it's not like every weekend, but we have like set dates you can check like on our Instagram and website But the next one we have coming up on June 12th Saturday is our hops in a summer so previously we had done a festival called hops in a spring and
00:29:57
Speaker
It was canceled last year for unfortunate reasons. So we're bringing it back this year in Hopson this summer. And what it is, it's a big festival here, like parking lot inside the brewery. We have all of our beers, plus we'll have beers from a number of other breweries in the area. I don't know what the list of other breweries is right now, at least what's finalized. But we usually have quite a few. So it's a pretty good mix. Sounds cool. Yeah. Guys, it's not that far. We should go.
00:30:26
Speaker
I'm in. Brandon? Let's do it. All right. Sold it. Thanks. Yeah, it's nice to hear all these things that are coming back and, like I said, returning to a bit more normal suit here. It's nice to be... I mean, when was the last time? I know we did... We did one interview last year. I think it was the ailment. We did three. Never mind.
00:30:47
Speaker
We did three interviews last year. That was it. Well, summer was a little different. It was a little different. Yeah. That's true. Ilman, we were fully masked up. Yeah, we realize that right now. They're like near, let's say, Addison and Cicero is the next thing. Yeah. I'm just curious because in between like the Siebel course, like the master course, you have May off. And I came home from Germany.
00:31:11
Speaker
and actually did a couple weeks of volunteer work at Beguile. This was back when Matt was still the head brewer. Like the first day I went in there to help, he was cleaning out a tank. It was an Aleman stone collaboration with like cedar chips.
00:31:27
Speaker
And they had just dumped the chips into the fermenter. And Matt was just like, all right, we're cleaning this out. And it's like totally clogged. Like you can imagine cedar chips trying to come out of like an inch and a half pipe. And he's like, so I'm going to need you to empty this.
00:31:45
Speaker
It took a while. The beer was actually like really, really good. I mean, you think like cedar chips, maybe, but it turned out pretty nice. That'd be my moment. I don't know if I want to be a brewer. See you later. Let's move on to gummy bears. What's your stance on gummy bears? So that's my little assignment. That's funny. I was going to say, I was going to kind of follow up on the almond thing. That's what we did.
00:32:13
Speaker
We did that one in person. What else did we? Oh, we talked to Crush My Giants. Crush My Giants, and Holeslager. Yeah, Holeslager. Holeslager, we were spread out. That was a fun one to do, driving out to Woodstock. The only problem was, midway through the episode, which I'm happy, music turned on over. They were getting ready to open, so the staff fired up the radio. So have you guys done any collaborations with other breweries?
00:32:43
Speaker
Not yet. So the one collaboration we've done is Pinche's Michรจs. They make Micholata mix. Smaller company. Pinche's Michรจs. Their stuff, I think, is in most bigger stores. I can refer you to this section. But we did a Micholata with them last year, 10 barrels, and it sold out.
00:33:05
Speaker
So we did it with our flight path logger. So we high gravity brew that and then like water it back. And what we actually did to keep the ABV at like a 4.2 I think is we just took the full strength like 8% beer and just like watered that back within each a lot of mixing water to get to 4%. So we didn't really sacrifice any like beer flavor or like wind up dipping below that.
00:33:30
Speaker
But that turned out really good. I got it. I like Bloody Mary's, you know, like brunch and stuff like that. Meets you a lot as you're tasty. But this one was really good. So we've got a batch of our flight path that we're like, we're trying to work out the tomato aspect so we can do it like sanitarily. Sure. Dose it in with
Future collaborations and barrel-aged projects
00:33:49
Speaker
the flavors and stuff. I think we figured something out. So we're pretty close to getting that wrapped up.
00:33:55
Speaker
But no, in terms of like other breweries, I've talked to Brian at Pollyanna, who's a friend of mine about doing something. Because when I was at 1090 Contract Brewing, they were the first collaboration that we did while they were working to open up their space in Lamont.
00:34:13
Speaker
so probably, you know, kind of bring that like full circle kind of thing. That's cool. But we should be doing more collaborations, I think. We gotta get back into that. Yeah, those are always fun. I always like to, it's cool to see the community of
00:34:27
Speaker
breweries that we have here in the greater Chicagoland area. Yeah. Which, you know, it's competition, obviously, but it's everybody seems to kind of work together in that sense of like, hey, that's what we're going to be together because everybody knows somebody at some other place. Oh, yeah. At least that's what I'm learning pretty much from talking to everybody. The degrees of separation are small. Yeah. So you mentioned like last year during the pandemic, I think you kind of noted that you did some revamping to your barrel program.
00:34:57
Speaker
Yeah, so can you so again? I haven't had a barely hear from you guys, but kind of talk about like what's in store like what you guys are you know working on Yes, we just we kind of determined going through some of the barrels that none of it was really Kind of up to par with what we would feel comfortable leasing So we got rid of it all we started from scratch and we
00:35:25
Speaker
clean the floors back there we actually the whole half of the brewery in like the packaging and barrel and storage we like totally refinished a little diy it looks okay it's not professional but we we started from scratch and we've got a pretty good mix of stuff sour wild and like bourbon stuff so we've got the imperial oatmeal stout imperial rye we have a barley wine i'm trying to think what else we have
00:35:55
Speaker
We have one Imperial Stout that pays a little homage to Goose Island and Bourbon County and kind of like starting and revolutionizing barrel-aged beers.
00:36:07
Speaker
I think what else we have one that I'm sure really excited for through BSG Leopold Brothers, which is a distillery in Denver. They malt their own malt and they got into doing malt for breweries and they sell it through there. So we have whiskey.
00:36:25
Speaker
whiskey malt for like beer. It's not like the high, you know, extract, like a distilling malt. So we use that specialty malt from Proximity in Colorado and then actually got barrels from Leopold Brothers. So I'm very excited for that because the barrels smelled incredible. But we've got some sours and like wine barrels, rum barrels,
00:36:53
Speaker
We put our wit into, what did we put it into? Pinot Grigio barrels. So we've got like quite a bit of mix of stuff. So we should have some stuff coming out maybe the next couple months. Cool, we're hoping.
00:37:09
Speaker
We have a lot of reasons to come back. Humorous. This is where we should have our meetings from now on. Yes, official. We'll sell the office downtown at the corner of State and Dearborn. Go to the corporate office. We'll just come here. We'll build a little drywall. If you don't mind. We're quiet. Don't worry.
00:37:35
Speaker
So speaking of the barrels too, you mentioned a couple of them. So what, as far as the barrels that you got, what barrels are you most excited for to see the results of? We have some pappy barrels. We have six, I believe we have six pappy barrels.
00:37:54
Speaker
What else? We've got some Weller, we've got Blanton's, Willett. We've actually had some pretty good success getting barrels. That's awesome. Oh, there's a line, actually. People are already coming out. And then what else? The Burial of Ryestow. I'm pretty excited about it, because it's going to be a blend of Templeton, Willett, and I'm trying to think of the other one. It's been so long since we filled these barrels.
00:38:25
Speaker
It's like a blend of four different ryes, some pretty popular ones. So that'd be pretty cool. There are like a few other barrels that we have. We've got a Scotch Ale in Scotch barrels.
00:38:38
Speaker
That should be pretty interesting. That's fun. I like effect, I think, did something like that with the Loch Ness. Yeah. That was better than being pretty good. And I never would have thought of like, oh, I mean, it makes sense. Scotch ale and Scotch barrel, it's a play on it. But yeah, I'm only.
00:38:56
Speaker
I like scotch. I don't love scotch. Peated or unpeated? Peated. You don't like that? Yeah, I don't really care for it. Well, Goose did that scotch, was it Bourbon County a couple of years ago? No, it was the Cooper series.
00:39:15
Speaker
I think I like that one. Were you still there? Yeah. Okay. That was actually mine. That one I think got mixed. This is great. I understand if you don't like scotch way. I feel like that was the first.
00:39:33
Speaker
time that I appreciated that bit of stuff in it. My brother-in-law, he's a big Scotch, not big Scotch drinker, but he enjoys Scotch and he's got a collection of it, so he's always trying to find one that I like. So a Scotch barrel aged beer always intrigues me. It's not like when I hear I'm a Lord barrel aged beer, where I'm like, I have to try that.
00:39:53
Speaker
I'm the opposite of, no, thank you. What about a fernet barrel aged? So I have had a fernet barrel aged beer, and it was a stout. And it almost gave off like this, which is weird, like a mint flavor. Which, fernet, I guess, you know, what's, I forget, what kind of, it's like other core, right? Or not other core, but.
00:40:20
Speaker
Yeah, like a pair of teeth. There you go. Digestive. Digestive. How many other French words do I know? Is that kind of like bitters? Because bitters is supposed to be a digest. Italian type of amaro, a bitter, aromatics. Yeah, it is bitter.
00:40:38
Speaker
Yeah, and it was really good. I didn't know what to expect. I had never had it until I tried that beer. That was when I was, again, working at Lake Effect. We had to bottle it off, and I got to try it. It was really good. And I told him, I'm like, kind of saying it's minty. And he was like, I don't know about that. I'm like, well, that's what I get for it. I like it. You are wrong, Tony. Yeah, I mean, Adam, who's got the Malort?
00:41:02
Speaker
Oh, that's a look. Is it, like, if I do it before? And I know that Revolution, they're doing some stuff. Oh, yeah. And I get it. I mean, I know a lot of people do like Malort. I just, I... It's everybody in the service industry. Yeah. I will say, I had my first sip of Malort a couple months ago. It wasn't...
00:41:19
Speaker
awful. I mean, I could sip it if I had to or wanted to. I will give it one more chance. It's gotten better, I think, now that it's been moved up to... It's not quite what it used to be. I remember it was like early 2020, I went downtown, got together with one of the guys from Goose, and we had some beers, and he likes Malort.
00:41:40
Speaker
He's like, I don't know, it's weird because he's a Philly guy. He went up to the bar to get beers, but came back with Malort and was like, what are you doing? He's like, that's not this kind of night. He's like, just trust me. It's better. I was like, all right, fine. And it's better. I'm not huge on Malort or like for a nat or any of that stuff. Scotch, bourbon, that's a different story. Sure. It's a whole different world. Yeah, right. But yeah, it's gotten better, I think.
00:42:07
Speaker
All right, I'll give it a shot. I'll give it another shot. Yeah, I think I had it once, but this was like 2016, maybe, and I had it. I think it was when I was at Fishman's and I think they had a bottle and I took a shot of it. And I was like, here's the thing is like, I like bitters. Like, I'll take shots of bitters and like, Underberg. Yeah, I do that, I can't.
00:42:27
Speaker
It's in that same wheelhouse, so when I think about that and I'm like, all right, it's not the worst thing in the world that I've had. Would I drink it on the regular? No, no. It's not going to replace my bourbon or a beer. A couple sips a year. Fine. Yeah. Am I going to buy a bottle? Maybe if I have people from out of town that I want to see their reaction, because apparently they like some big things. Watch your out-of-town friends.
00:42:51
Speaker
hate you. It was funny because so for for our wedding we ended up we had gift bags for everyone that was staying at the hotel we put in little bottles of Underbird because we couldn't find they didn't make them at the time because little bottles of the Lord that's what we wanted and then literally it was like a couple months after our wedding and I think as probably when CH Distillery started taking over they started producing the little like one ounce bottles or whatever I was like
00:43:16
Speaker
Damn it! I still have a bunch of that Underberg that you gave me, thank you very much. I still have a bunch of that Underberg, because he gave me a case of it. There was like 144 little bottles of Underberg, and I'm like, they still have like half a pallet sitting in my house. Just trap it off at dovetail. Oh yeah. There you go. A donation. There you go. I get a bill like that. They go through that stuff like crazy. Perfect.
00:43:44
Speaker
So what are you, I mean we talked about kind of upcoming events here, but brewing wise what are you most excited for for the rest of this year? What are you looking forward to kind of accomplishing?
00:43:56
Speaker
Boy, not have to look at our brewing schedule And we come with the hard-hitting questions. I know right? The next hop cycle that Kohatu Zappa I'm pretty excited for We have some stuff towards end of the year We're gonna do a Sati we got some some Viking malt out of Finland that's some Sati malt for that and then what
00:44:21
Speaker
I've been thinking about for a long time and I've noticed is gaining a lot of popularity is Norwegian style ale not not beers brewed with kavikis but like Norwegian styles and one of the largest or the largest boat like most like
00:44:37
Speaker
under the radar beers is the smoked beers out of Norway. I don't speak Norwegian, but I think it's pronounced Stjordal. Don't quote me on that. Get on that, Clark. How do you pronounce that? S-T-O-R-D-A-L.
00:44:55
Speaker
This region, they malt their own malt for all this homebrew, and part of it is smoking it over alderwood, which you can't really... Actually, Sugar Creek malting does alderwood and smoke malt, but we have beech wood for it.
00:45:16
Speaker
But it's just juniper branches, you know, maybe like a little bit of sugar, caramel malts. Interesting. So I'm looking forward to doing that. And then for anybody that's been here, we have a bunch of murals painted on the walls doing more beers inspired by those. So we have this woman here. We did last year a red ale, an Irish red for that.
00:45:40
Speaker
And then this fire starter, I want to do a smoked red ale. This one guy over here is what we did the Scotch ale for, at least the barrel aged version, but we'll do like a normal, like maybe like a standard strength. A porter for one in the back and then the far one is still a mystery. So kind of bringing some of those into the mix. Again, going back to like, you know, diversity and the list.
00:46:07
Speaker
Um, I was going to ask about the, especially the fire starter, cause that one looked like it was specifically like put there because it's a beer already. No, that's the other way around. Yeah. Um,
00:46:22
Speaker
So I mean, that's what I can think of right now without looking at our, we've mapped out like our year brewing schedule tentative, just to kind of help with like ingredients and planning and ordering and stuff like that. But I know we have like a number of other things, traditional beers, you know, more stuff in line with like our fruited IPAs. Those are always changing, always different fruits.
00:46:44
Speaker
Oh, our pie series. So the hoses, like those little pie. So those like little hostess hand pies. So hostess used to be here in Schiller Park. So we did one, we did cherry pie last year, and that turned out pretty good. And our next one is going to be key lime pie. So we've asked this a couple of a couple of brewers and breweries, and it seems like you have it all figured out. But has there been one idea that just did not work?
00:47:13
Speaker
like you threw in whatever it is. But I mean, again, you have all these crazy ingredients. Was that beer with the circus peanuts? Yeah. You have all these crazy ingredients that you figured out. So maybe you don't have one. Yeah. I'm sure there's a lot of trial and error, but. But you even talked about stuffing your barrels that didn't work out. Yeah, true. So no cheeseburger beers or? No cheeseburgers. No mayonnaise beers. Mayonnaise beers.
00:47:43
Speaker
No, I mean I wouldn't say like nothing that like didn't work out but I think there's things that like okay like we need to like back off on this or we need to like increase you know something else but I wouldn't say yet at least at this point I mean obviously we're always experimenting and I had a conversation with somebody recently about like well how do you if it's something you've never brewed with before like how do you know how much to use
00:48:08
Speaker
I was like, sometimes it's just a total shot in the dark. Just guessing. Sometimes I think of things like that in terms of how much would I want, like if you think about a standard half barrel keg, how much of this would I want inside that? That's honestly how I start with a lot of things. All right, pound, that seems like a little too much kind of thing. You just kind of go from there.
00:48:32
Speaker
Hopefully, sometimes it's the thing where you can adjust. If it's a hot side addition, maybe you can adjust on the cold side. Sure. You kind of luck out or save yourself there.
00:48:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think so far we've done good. I don't know how much our luck is going to last on that, but hopefully it keeps going. With everything that we've seen here, and the stuff that we've, we didn't go too crazy. Clark, you did, you psycho. Yeah, I still have a sip of it. And the stuff that I've tried, like I said, the very white, you guys seem to be knocking it out of the park. Thanks. I hope it continues to, I hope you guys don't have that batch, you're like, well, shit.
00:49:13
Speaker
shouldn't have listened to them with the circus peanuts. That was disgusting. Circus peanut mayonnaise beer. Maybe that's what he thinks. Circus peanut stout rolls off the tongue very nicely, but it doesn't sound good. What is that flavor? Gross. I think it's just labeled as plastic. Circus peanuts is orange plastic. That flavor doesn't exist in nature, does it? It does, and it's only the circus peanut. Worst idea ever. Now I'm going to make one.
00:49:41
Speaker
Please don't. It's going to be in your house. You guys got anything else you want to talk about? I asked all my hard-hitting questions. Thank you. Do you have any more hard-hitting questions? No, I think we covered it.
00:49:56
Speaker
Well, I'm glad we finally made it out here. Like Clark said, we're going to build our office right behind us here. We'll start tomorrow. We'll give you a day to tell everybody. Don't mind the construction. Just so you guys know. And anybody who is obviously in the greater Chicagoland area, or if you're visiting Chicago, definitely come out here. I'm going to say Franklin Park, Shiller Park. If you have a really long layover at O'Hare,
00:50:22
Speaker
Yeah, this is not that far. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we are the closest brewery to our hair. Yeah. You don't know that Ram's gone, right? Ram's not thrown anymore. Well, they do have that facility right at the road. Are they still brewing there? I don't know. Well, and isn't Hothbrow? That's... Hothbrow's gone. Yeah, that's right. Well, it's gonna be a pizza joint now. They will retain... they are keeping their brewing system. Oh, really? Yeah.
00:50:44
Speaker
I mean they own it. So I don't know if they'll, because they, the owners of that building are our landlords. Like they own this building as well. So like the owner here and them like obviously talk quite a bit. Yeah. They're, they're going to keep their brewing system. Oh cool. And they will be a pizza joint. Mmm, beer and pizza. You can't go wrong with that. Makes sense, right? Yeah, perfect combo. Circus peanut.
00:51:08
Speaker
Beer and circus peanuts. Great. Well, Brian, thanks again, man, for joining us today. For sure. Thanks, man. For some beers, talking beers. Give us a little about your history and your very long time that you spent here. You can give us all that history. We appreciate it. And we all will be back very soon. Sounds good. That's for sure. Brandon, love you, man. Love you too, man. Clark, why don't you send us out with a poem? I do have a poem ready to go. Well, or a word.
00:51:34
Speaker
Spood on Spood on Spood on Spood on Spood on Spood on Spood on
00:52:04
Speaker
On Untapped, B-Dub drinks beer. Tony can be found on Instagram and Untapped under Asafelp Chicago. On Twitter, TheAsafelpChicago. Clark can be found as Clarkhouseki on all three. Be sure to subscribe, like, and rate the show on your preferred podcast listening platform. Until next time, cheers from all of us at The Malting Hour.