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Episode 37 - Aleman Brewing
119 Plays5 years ago
On this episode we sit down with Jim, Nate and Brad of Aleman brewing on the northwest side of Chicago. We discuss the history of the brewery, how things have been during the pandemic and what to expect from them this year. Theme music provided by Myke Kelli (@mykekelli) Outro provided by Fluid Minds (@fluidminds) Check out all our episodes at www.themaltinghour.com
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The Molten Hour'
00:00:04
Speaker
What's the haps on the hops? Got yeast, that's peace. This the Molten Hour where we talk about our drink and tell you what we think every other week. And if we get drunk, well, we might slur our speech.
00:00:14
Speaker
Got the gift of gab, the friends who wish you had. Join us for a drink, join us for a laugh. Time is never wasted, when you're getting wasted? The Molten Hour here, people, people taking places.
00:00:25
Speaker
People, people taking places.
00:00:32
Speaker
Oh man, I knew it. All right, I'm gonna lean in.
Meet the Hosts and Guest Introduction
00:00:34
Speaker
Got my mask on. Cause we are here sitting in Ailman here in Chicago, we're from. Obviously, this is the malting hour. I am Tony, joined always with. Brandon. and Clark. That's a new one.
00:00:46
Speaker
That's weird to do, to have to say that Clark's actually here. No offense, mean, it's nothing against you. i mean, we're not gonna talk to you, but yeah. That's fine, I'm just here to look things up. Thank you. yeah That's right, Clark the lookup guy. uh real-time fact checking yeah yeah checking it right now working on it if you guys lie yeah if you guys lie about something he'll know that's why we brought him here we didn't trust you guys depending on the speed of your internet yeah but we're here on the northwest side of chicago uh actually in our neighborhood really um uh sitting with what you guys introduce yourselves i'm jim morehouse and that's say what you do here as well if you don't mind i brew beer and and clean things
00:01:20
Speaker
Brad Zeller. I do more of the customer-facing sales and general administration here at Ailman. I'm Nate Albrecht. I eat pizza and clean the things Jim doesn't get to.
00:01:30
Speaker
Oh, o I want that job. No, you don't. Okay, it sounds good. Thank you guys for... first gym scraps hey Jim eat Jim's pizza crust.
00:01:42
Speaker
Well, thanks for meeting with us today, guys, and hosting us here. We really appreciate it. We've talked about you guys on our show actually a handful of times now. We had, what we have, Soul Man? Yep. And we've had Ladies Man two separate times.
00:01:57
Speaker
Ladies Man, my neighbor Jeff, who is 64, loved Ladies Man. four love ladies man He said he could drink that regularly. so And Jeff's a Stella Artois guy. He likes a lot his old man beers.
00:02:09
Speaker
ah But he really liked them. um And the last time we were here, Brandon, we brewed your wedding beer. That is correct. Which ended up being a lot of fun, so thank you. That was also a lot of fun. But we never really got a chance to talk about like the history of Illman.
Aleman's Journey: From Homebrewing to Competition
00:02:23
Speaker
I just kind of wanted to know if you guys could dig into that a little bit. Tell people where this all started, how you guys came up with the idea, and where you're at now.
00:02:32
Speaker
Sure thing. Yeah, go ahead. I'm going to put you guys totally on the spot. Figure it out. Once upon a time. No, the three of us met years and years ago, probably getting on about nine years ago.
00:02:48
Speaker
and Brad and Jim have been longtime proprietors, the management staff at Rockwell's Neighborhood Grill in Lincoln Square. um Yeah, one of the best one of the best burger and beer bars in the the north side of Chicago.
00:03:00
Speaker
And when my wife and I moved to Chicago, we we settled in at Rockwell's as our first kind of neighborhood haunt. And we made fast friends with the folks that but worked there and we absolutely fell in love with the the culture of the restaurant and the attention paid to the beer program and the food program.
00:03:17
Speaker
And through a a mutual love of of all things malty and hoppy, we eventually became you know thick as thieves and after a long time you know my wife and i both ended up being employees at rockwell's it was all one big family and then uh one sunny summer chicago day we had tied a healthy buzz on and and jim looked at me and said we should brew beer and I said yeah we should brew um So we honestly went to the home brew shop that afternoon and scooped up everything we thought we would need for a starter kit and we jumped head first into home brewing as a hobby and we had known a lot of home brewers we'd known some professional brewers at the time
00:04:03
Speaker
uh just absolutely fascinated by the process and the culture and the and the history of beer making and and uh like i said we we fell head over heels into the hobby and uh started using the restaurant facility when the restaurant wasn't open we would we would homebrew in the basement or on the patio when it was nice out and we had a little bit of ah a homebrew club vibe know folks from the neighborhood would would stop by i with some regularity and and we'd start to bounce ah ideas off one another and have a very kind of experimental fun back and forth pruning schedule.
00:04:39
Speaker
And sooner rather than later we started competing with some of our homebrew and you know nothing too too serious but i at one point we we jumped in and and competed in uh what was then called the iron brew which was a national homebrewing competition it was sponsored by stone in san diego two brothers here a group of local chicago chefs it was a it was a really cool competition and uh that was what 2012 12 12 was the competition um we entered a a coffee india pale into that uh into that scene that at the time you know people were like this will never work this is silly you know coffee only goes in dark beers i remember the first time i heard about a coffee ipa and i was like that sounds disgusting and i was wrong
00:05:33
Speaker
um Well, we thought it was pretty off the wall, but we were pretty sure of our ah production and we always made that beer with purpose. We knew why we added coffee, how we did.
00:05:45
Speaker
um so we we entered that in and and we were very fortunate. We ended up taking first prize. Awesome. And first prize gave us the opportunity to to fly to San Diego. create our homebrew recipe on the scale of of Stone's manufacturing and that beer saw distribution in a good portion of the U.S. and when we started to hear some feedback about the beer i from you know states that we have no connection to, Washington State, North Carolina, Colorado.
00:06:18
Speaker
People started reaching out to the internet asking, who the hell is Ailman? What is Ailman? Never heard of it. So we had to hurry up and figure out really quick what Ailman was.
Transition to Professional Brewing
00:06:28
Speaker
That's when we decided to try and take this thing pro.
00:06:32
Speaker
Awesome. Brandon, I think you're one who told me about Daymon originally. Yeah, so that was that was my first introduction to... the like the guys at element because actually held a home brewers night at fishman's right and you guys all came in and you brought that and i remember trying that and i'm like this is one of the best beers i've ever had in my life because again like coffee and ita didn't sound like it would go together but i'm like i like both of those things so why wouldn't that work yeah and it did and it was phenomenal and then yeah after that that's when i heard about all the the stuff with stone and everything i was like that is awesome that was a cool story
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah, and and I forget when the first time that I came across whoever I met, I met at Fishman's because I ended up getting aleman an aleman bag, like a little like in tote bag. I have a tote bag that i still use. I meant to bring it today to be like, nostalgia, was like, I don't if guys still have those, but yeah. And I forget, it was like one of those. One of a dozen, you have them. Yes, got it.
00:07:30
Speaker
Because I think it was Kegs for Kidneys. Oh, yeah. So I think that's probably maybe where you guys were pouring there. Oh yeah. So I'm sure that's where I probably had my first Elman beer.
00:07:41
Speaker
That's awesome how, I mean, that's like one of those stories as a home brewer, as all three of us are like, it's cool to hear that, you know, that's and not, maybe not every home brewers dream, but a lot of home brewers dreams that, you know, oh cool. I made this beer and I really like it. And they have this, you know, idea, like I'm going to open up a brewery.
00:07:58
Speaker
not going to work every time mean you could think that you make your own beer and like oh it's good i like it doesn't mean everyone's gonna like it doesn't mean it's bad for what you like but it's cool to hear that actual like success story you guys had the drive and the passion and everything kind of lined up perfectly for you guys to do this so i think we have a a certain tolerance for failure. And we were, even post Dayman, still approaching very much from a hospitality angle.
Challenges in Establishing a Brewery
00:08:23
Speaker
We were going after a brew because we were all comfortable in that setting.
00:08:27
Speaker
We were going to brew beer and have the best of both worlds. We kind of backed into the production model and just being willing to know what you don't know and learn what you can and ask as many questions as you can.
00:08:41
Speaker
Kind of learn on the job. But it's not as though we we had all the answers. No, yeah, I'm sure. That's awesome. Still don't. um well for the For the mathematicians in the room, if the competition was in 2012,
00:08:57
Speaker
it wasn't until 2016 that we were a licensed business. We were a licensed brewery. So there's ah there's four years in there that was a lot of learning learning, volunteering, making friends with as many people in the Chicago beer community as we can, trying to volunteer and in every facility that we can, learn the ropes, like learn,
00:09:18
Speaker
the the dirty, sweaty, not as glamorous side of of beer production, not to mention the construction here, the permitting. So there was a ah good number of years between the very fortunate competition win and when we were actually able to green light the business.
00:09:34
Speaker
sure Yeah, i remember at one point that we were so embroiled in this licensing and permits to where hadn't thought about building recipes or brewing beer in six months. was like, all right, it's time.
00:09:48
Speaker
is exciting and also terrifying. Yeah, I can see how that kind of gets the whole recipe building. We pushed the wayside. feel like I almost had to find that balance of like, okay there's business and exactly what we're trying to do and that's something that still takes place i'm sure you get so bogged down in a's b's and c's like all right let's
Aleman's Beer Styles and Creative Process
00:10:10
Speaker
create a new recipe let's find a new ingredient that excites us like it's really hard to keep that spark if you don't truly love it sure and how often do guys actually do that like sit down and like talk about like hey let's brew something new let's do something different
00:10:25
Speaker
I don't know if it's sit-down situation. remember then Yeah, i mean, that could come to me while I'm sitting on the couch and falling asleep watching a movie. Like, oh, hold on. Needs to be out and put into the ethos. Is that how Vaigman happened? what we were you watching Ghostbusters and fell asleep and you were like, it? we're just all really big, big Bill Murray fans, and that came here naturally. so One of the few times I was really, really happy to be proved wrong. as we were looking at a a Halloween seasonal, we knew we didn't want to do something pumpkin-y and malty.
00:10:54
Speaker
but I was big in Camp Boogie Man and Jim said no no no no. We're in Chicago, it's kidding. Yeah, it's really good.
00:11:07
Speaker
Not to say Boogie Man isn't a great name for a beer and we will hopefully work that into the the lexicon at some point. Patent and pending. Nobody used that. um so when it when when it came to you guys uh opening up what did you what did you guys start with as far as like your first beer what was it when you guys opened up so you said it was but back when 2016 you guys officially were licensed ready to go okay so what was it the what was the first beer you guys put out we We came out with all three of the core beers.
00:11:38
Speaker
And we also launched with Dayman. Awesome. The one time that the the two other collaborating breweries okayed it as a ah new collaboration or a one-off got you offering. Gotcha.
00:11:51
Speaker
But I mean, the man is basically, it started as Dayman sans coffee. hi It has evolved since then, but so we we knew we had a solid pale recipe in the bag. for Ladies Man was one of Nate's wedding beers actually.
00:12:08
Speaker
So this farmhouse style with the fresh lemon thyme. And then Soul Man is just one of our more successful recipes that I love dark multi beers. Between those three we felt like we had a good well-rounded core lineup that then allowed us to experiment beyond that.
00:12:26
Speaker
But I could walk into any bar in Chicago with something to fill a need. Yeah, and I think all three of those styles really do kind of fit, you know, the three of us went into a bar and, you know, we all have those different styles of what we want to drink that pretty much covers everybody. Like you said, Dark Malty, Firehouse and a Pale Ale IPA.
00:12:45
Speaker
that's That's a really, i feel like that's really smart as far as like flagship beers go. I think aside from Dayman, and maybe, I don't even know if it was before Dayman, but I know Ladiesman was one of the first ones that I had too because you were pouring it i think it was right after your wedding a couple months after your wedding it was at the friends of the craft at saint matthias and you had you had kegs of it left you telling me yeah we had some kegs left so we just thought we'd bring it here and pour it and i was like this beer is awesome what was the other beer you had there it was ladies man and then it was uh so at both time it was at that time it was the worst half and the better half yes yeah
00:13:18
Speaker
So the worst worst half was just a very straightforward pail that was meant to blend well with ladies' men. Yeah. Yeah, that was the idea with the wedding beers. We have his and hers beers that blended.
00:13:29
Speaker
We wrote the recipe so that there would be a third autonomous beer after blending at the wedding ceremony. Oh, that's awesome. It's kind of cool. That's really cool idea. Yeah. And I don't think anyone told me that until after the fast. Like, how you could blended those. I was like, damn it.
00:13:44
Speaker
Now want to get remarried yeah to my wife, and to my wife and do the same thing. Renew your vows. Thank you. Not remarried. Good thing she doesn't listen to the show. love yeah So when it comes to recipe development, whos who's mainly making the recipes?
00:14:00
Speaker
You guys are? yeah Yeah. We have a running Facebook Messenger thread that's probably 100 plus pages at this point. We just join each other over the internet. But in terms of you know recipe formulation, man, is is always has been a ah very organic, very fluid thing. And it could start with an adjunct ingredient. It could start with a malt that we're curious about. it could start with a name. Like, it really...
00:14:29
Speaker
a topical event. There just it has to be one hook. Sure. And then we'll we'll just run with it. But, you know, the the hardest question that probably any brewer gets asked all the time is, you know, what is it about your products that are are different than anybody else's? what is What is it that you do that's different?
00:14:47
Speaker
What is it that you do that's different than everybody else's? Thanks for the hard questions. but Because being... we came
Experimental Brewing: Trials and Errors
00:14:56
Speaker
into this world being such lovers and appreciators of of the beer world in general.
00:15:02
Speaker
Historical, old world styles, new school things, home brewed beer, you know, really wacky off the wall stuff. we We like it all. So I never wanted this company to be like, we're gonna just do you know we're going just do lagers we're going to just do pale beers where you know we're we're all pastry all haze i never wanted to be that company we all you know we want to tackle a little bit of everything yeah and as much as i want to put reese's pieces in beers i also want to make a proper you know helles and then know cut blister do you know cool academic stuff as well so it's
00:15:42
Speaker
My answer to the question that I always try to dodge is our beers, as much as we can, we always try to put ah small signature on the beers.
00:15:54
Speaker
So ladies' men actually started with the idea that lemon thyme was this really delicious sort of savory herb that we were getting familiar with on the culinary side, where you know using it and in some cooking applications and thought like, this is a really brilliant, beautiful citrusy yeah flavor ingredient.
00:16:16
Speaker
This would go great in a wet style beer, something that we could substitute for the the orange peel or the cardamom, like that kind of thing. You guys are absolutely right about that. It's really good. It plays the same role. yeah it It replaces both of those ingredients all by itself. yeah it's it's awesome i i really do enjoy that beer it's refreshing it's it's nice i would have never thought of especially 11 lemon time you know what i mean like sta yeah stylistically that beer kind of uh reads summer but it it's herbaceousness sure fullness kind of drinks throughout the year just as well oh yeah definitely
00:16:49
Speaker
It ended up on our summer list just because of makes sense refreshing. So matter no matter what we make, we try to have a small, you know you unique fingerprint, whether it's you know a process that we learn, the soul man, we we learned how to make proper salted caramel candy.
00:17:07
Speaker
and And so we added the salted caramel to the beer as like this kind of unique thing that we do. We we grow the lemon thyme. These processes, we've we've always been learned by doer type of people.
00:17:22
Speaker
So that's how we we try to differentiate our products with those little signature things. That was actually one of the questions that we had when we did when we had Soul Man last year on our Halloween episode because we were trying to do pumpkin beers and all pumpkin beers were gone. we were like, shit, scramble, try and find something. Because we looked in mid-October. like find something that was, you know, either candy related or something, something like baking. That's the lemon time edition for today's Bachelor. Yeah, fellas, we're brewing ladies as we chat. And the lemon time is going to go into it very soon.
00:17:51
Speaker
Oh yeah, it smells awesome. It's sitting right in front of us ah
Incorporating Unique Ingredients
00:17:54
Speaker
on the table here. It's such an amazing thing because it's like, you smell that. and It is both lemon and thyme. It's insane that how well that works together too. Yeah, I'm ready to make chicken. That's what makes me as well.
00:18:08
Speaker
But i didn't we didn't we didn't know where the salted caramel... came in to the beer and so it's actual salted caramel that's in ladies man so that's a that's a brew day where you absolutely have to have two guys in in the brew house working and as we get closer towards the end of the boil one person's actually building in boiling candy one person's managing the boil kettle and when you hit the right caramelization temperature it goes into whirlpool That's awesome. And hopefully time that up.
00:18:35
Speaker
Very, very careful. Yeah. I can't imagine. Boiling sugar, boiling wort. Look out. Two very different temperatures. Yeah, way
00:18:46
Speaker
One's removing skin, one's just little bit. So good was the idea for that because somebody had like created a you know sort of baking salted caramel or did you have the idea of adding that as an addition and then figure out how make... The beer inspired the the knowledge or the desire to learn how to make caramel. and that That beer was born out of a Partigal where this massive, big, strong brown ale and then this very subtle, long-term, sour, roselera yeast-pitched...
00:19:19
Speaker
Was it Brandy Cherries? Yep. Brandy Cherries. So final runnings, made this sour. so Soul Man was the initial run wow for that beer. See, I think you should never fear that the question that you feel is the hardest ever again.
Homebrew Clubs and Collaborative Projects
00:19:34
Speaker
The fact that you get me, you hit the nail on the head, is like saying that you guys took the time to learn how to make salted caramel, like so you can make this beer says enough of what what's what's special about your beer. i Never fear that question ever again. man That was an awesome answer for that. Because really, i mean, us for even homebrewing, like we're trying to figure out you know fun stuff to do get you know it's a lot easier on the homebrew side you guys know add crazy shit to your beer whatever you want they're like okay we're gonna try this out let's see what happens if it sucks up i'm out you know a batch of beer no big deal um but then the trick of making it commercially viable where know can we grow enough lemon time to be sustainable right can we continue to make the salt caramel and not
00:20:17
Speaker
We seriously hurt ourselves. We actually did try to outsource it to a local confectioner and they just couldn't get it quite right. So we decided let's just keep making our sit. So it's having the idea, the ingenuity, but also what's practical, what can you do repeatedly, consistently. if we scale that If we scale our system up double or three times the size, i i wouldn't want to do it. Yeah, that sounds terrifying. So we'll have to figure it out.
00:20:43
Speaker
yeah And any of that would take ah a next step in our candy making knowledge and the proper equipment to actually do that and finish it on a and a chilling table and fold it.
00:20:54
Speaker
but Now we pour it in liquid form. So it works right now. Yeah. Did guys learn how to make fudge? Do something with that? but Fudge beer?
00:21:04
Speaker
Is there a beer that you had a great idea for and you wanted to try something? This Clark, everybody. I know. This is Clark. He's been here all the time. Jumping into the scene. Welcome to the show, Clark. That you had a great idea, of like doing the Soul Man, and you were ready to go. was going great, and something just didn't work.
00:21:20
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I got a good story for that. we' say that There's a pen and spear that float around for quite some time. Yeah. It involves cucumbers? Yeah. Yep. That's the one. You know it Well, that's actually not the one I had in mind. All right. Go ahead.
00:21:33
Speaker
You know, ae hopefully we don't get into any legal trouble here. but we So we had the Dayman way, way back when. The Dayman was... the The first few batches of the Dayman were very caffeinated, which made for some really fun beer parties. yeah I remember one of the first release parties, we were walking into a bar in Aurora,
00:21:56
Speaker
And these folks had had the the kegs tapped for a couple hours before we got there. And we went we walked in and three people ran up to us like, this beer is so intense. were jacked up. we thought it was pretty logical to have the Nightman be something that was kind of the opposite. Something that we had envisioned this being kind of like your end of night beer. So what a skull cap and a valerian root and uh and ginger and we tried to make like sleepy time tea as a beer and it came out straight soy sauce it was it was awful awful what was what was the base beer for the cucumber beer was blonde it was a blonde yeah it was awful
00:22:42
Speaker
So if you did something wrong or lost a bet, you'd drink a cucumber beer. You can get rid of it. You paid the price. ten he Yeah, and it's beer. I've had a couple of crappy, I tried to do one not very easy, but it's pretty straightforward. Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale clone. I don't know what happened, but I missed something and it ended up being like 7% and just the hops were off. It was just intense.
00:23:08
Speaker
And I just like, this is not very good. i don't really like it.
Community Support and COVID-19 Adaptations
00:23:13
Speaker
I'm not going to not drink it. I mean, I just i spent money on making that beer in my time. and It was for International Homebrew Day, too. You're going to learn. Teach you to brew a crappy beer. I'm going to drink this. about the time we did, like, the hot pool where we all bought different...
00:23:28
Speaker
So we had like a brew club, all of us got together and there was like, don't know, six or seven of us and we all brought our own hops that we wanted to throw into this beer. but So we all brewed this, like we- We had two beers, we had two batches. Yeah, we did two batches and we had two two separate setups going and then we threw all the hops in and then we blended the beers and it was just,
00:23:49
Speaker
It sucked. It was gross. It didn't taste good. It sucked. No one really thought to ourselves, okay, everybody just grab a bunch of hops we'll show up and we'll we'll we'll make these IPAs. We had the base beer. It's great. But nobody really took into consideration of like, all right, so we have all these hops.
00:24:02
Speaker
Are these going to even work together? like And how much are we putting Is this guy showing up just to burn his old hops? Yeah. Which one of you boners brought the Summit hops? Hey, man, i'm i'm one of the I just found out a lot of people don't like Summit hops, and I actually do.
00:24:18
Speaker
Garlic. I know. Everybody says that. And now that I, now you know what? I'm going to ruin it. Bologna. ah Someone else has said onion. i don't But I don't know. i don't I haven't tasted that. I did i did a Summit pale ale once. i thought it was good. When I'm the opposite, like, people go apeshit for mosaic.
00:24:31
Speaker
I hate mosaic. I know a lot people who don't like mosaic. It's just funny how different threads strike people differently. It's like the whole cilantro soap debacle. Your body is just saying, hey, you're eating soap or you're eating cilantro. Those people are broken. Yeah, I agree. You hear that, Jane, my mother-in-law? Jeez. Sorry, Jane. Don't worry, she doesn't listen either. if No, but her son does.
00:24:58
Speaker
were time We're at 25 minutes. man I'm pretty good. You guys want to take a break real quick? Let's do it. Fred Bruce is walking across the street with his groceries and he's It's a CarMax app. I was like, kudos to Fred for doing that. Poking fun on himself.
00:25:13
Speaker
The last time that Biscuit played in Chicago, I went to Saga. did I. They didn't pull up the air again. It half full. It was a free shot. it was probably a prior work night and any lingering Limp Bizkit fans work in the goddamn morning. It's a point. It was a Thursday night. There you go, guys. Bring it on. Curtain's at 6 o'clock. Come on. see the Machine Gun Kelly opened up for him, which is weird. Wow.
00:25:42
Speaker
in the morning And we're back! yeah he Great. You know, the best part about that is always having to go back and figure it out. Do I leave that in after the
Upcoming Releases and Brewing Innovations
00:25:52
Speaker
song? Like we're where where we were talking?
00:25:55
Speaker
I feel like now I should play a little biscuit during the break. i don't care if you get through I probably played Limp Bizkit during this break. Welcome back. We're here at Ailman still. and Still. as he we took it We took a pretty sizable break. You guys are in the middle. beers later. Yeah, literally.
00:26:11
Speaker
Clark and I are in our... Oh no, you're in another beer too. Everyone's in another beer. This is great. You guys are in the middle of brew day. So again, thanks. for meeting with us today and and talking about Yellman, what you guys do.
00:26:25
Speaker
One of the things that we kind of touched on during the break, when what you guys throw are doing, what were you guys doing, 15 competition there? so last missionions Whirlpool. Whirlpool.
00:26:36
Speaker
Final setup. The lemon thyme went in Yeah. um One of the things that we've talked about lately, especially is how companies, or friends of ours, you know, have businesses,
00:26:48
Speaker
and breweries have adapted, as you can tell, we're wearing masks, talking on the microphone, during COVID. Now, he ah do you guys think it's, I don't know, I feel like, has it been easier or harder in the sense of, how do you guys think you would have prevailed had you had a tap room instead of just a brewery in the sense of how how everything's going and what like how has it been regardless?
00:27:15
Speaker
I think that with COVID, the desire, in the main to support small and independent businesses is as high as it's ever been. yeah And in that effect, having a taproom makes point a and point B clear. I want to support these guys. i go there and I support them.
00:27:32
Speaker
Much more difficult when you're talking about, oh, is there a store near me that I can buy or like, so to that extent, having a taproom would have been beneficial both in terms of, you know, people know exactly where and when to come and get it, but also,
00:27:49
Speaker
you know, as three operating owners operating a brewery and not paying ourselves time, like, we didn't qualify for a lot of PPP money because there's no payroll to show. So, you know, having that in place would have allowed us to maybe collect a little more assistance in that regard.
00:28:07
Speaker
You feel like there would be like a... a little bit more like, hey, we actually do need to work, but we're not paying ourselves. yeah Even more so, we should qualify for this. This neighborhood been very supportive. I think it would, you know, we're actually still in talks despite the uncertain nature of the market to put a small taproom operation here. That's awesome. Something on mine, but I don't know. it's not ah not a silver bullet. It's not like, oh, if we had this, we would be here. And because we don't, we're here.
00:28:39
Speaker
would have been a lot easier for people to find us. Sure. So have you guys
Branding and Product Strategy
00:28:43
Speaker
seen any decline or influx or anything? Or has things kind of just been the same as far as sales and stuff goes for you guys?
00:28:52
Speaker
I mean, that's a little tricky because, you know, going back in the Wayback Machine again, Ailman came out of the gates as a draft-only brand for a considerable amount of time.
00:29:02
Speaker
20 months. Yeah, 20 months. We were draft-only in the market. and we really... we we lived and died by draft placements at restaurants and bars.
00:29:14
Speaker
And that has followed us to a certain extent. i mean, we've been canning for a good long time and definitely package sales are up, off-premise sales are up, but a lot of people still kind of consider us ah a draft-only brand.
00:29:27
Speaker
And when bars and restaurants are struggling so hard and then there was the shutdown, getting a draft placement right now is obviously more difficult than it's ever been. Yeah, that I can imagine.
00:29:39
Speaker
I know that with Revolution, with their curbside pickups, you guys both had done it. I've got surprises of like, here's a free case or six pack of Ghost Ride because they had all it brewed and ready to go. They're coached for all the summer festivals.
00:29:53
Speaker
none of the festivals happen. So yeah, I can't imagine what that would be like in this situation. So have you guys switched though to canning more versus doing more drafts? Yeah, we i see are doing more cans, which gets a little uncertain.
00:30:09
Speaker
to the extent that everybody's canning more and the market's slow to react to meeting that demand. So, you know, we try to order larger quantities of cans, order further in advance for such a small outfit that we're probably at the bottom of the totem pole there was a shortage on cans.
00:30:27
Speaker
So, you know, that's something that's kind of scary back of mind, but Yeah, our can sales are up from last year significantly. But whereas, you know, maybe the industry average is 70% off premise, we're maybe more of a 50-50 split pre-COVID. So this is a much bigger portion of our business that went into the chiller. Yeah, and because being a brewery that was focused solely on, well not solely, but well started as draft only and moving into canning,
00:30:58
Speaker
know and i feel like now this is the this is the problem with a lot of small breweries is fighting for shelf space too like especially if you're pushing out the same amount of product but you're doing it more in cans do you guys are you running into issues where people can't take all your product or like Off-premise, not as much. I think it's mostly about keeping things fresh.
00:31:21
Speaker
We have enough historical data that people know what's going to work well versus, you know, we tried this before and just didn't latch on for this reason or that. So off-premise has been fine. I think the scale that we operate on allows us to be far more nimble than maybe a revolution that has a huge amount of beer that has to go somewhere. We're brewing 10 barrels at a time, 300 gallons. We can keep date codes fresh.
00:31:53
Speaker
We can keep a lean inventory and still provide the market with good fresh product. so we're almost really uniquely well suited to, hey, we have a bash in the tank and we fill a couple of kegs and keep a small amount of package and just keep those inventories really clean and fresh in a market that has a lot of old beer still kind of cycling out of both free warehouses, distributor warehouses, and just kind retail or back stock.
00:32:21
Speaker
So I think most people are willing to take it in if it's good and fresh and they think they have a market for it.
00:32:31
Speaker
But we'll see. The thinning of the herd yeah currently happening and we'll see how long that goes. That's always really, it's also really important to to highlight communication with our distribution partners when it comes to this kind of discussion about shelf space and where placements are going. And I mean, it's it's it's very much a marriage. I mean, you hear that cliche all the time with the the brands, the the producers, the suppliers and their distribution partners, but having really open lines of communication with those folks and their planning for stuff off premise is, you is...
00:33:10
Speaker
paramo super important. Yeah, I feel like its ah guess it's kind of a crap shoot to figure out like what where it all stands from like last year to this year. Like it's probably hard. I mean, I know it's kind of like, not a great question to ask, but just out of curiosity of how that all like, you know,
00:33:31
Speaker
where you guys see it now as far as like you know not necessarily being comfortable but you know just kind of where you guys stand so with with everything that's that's been happening um have you guys so as far as like flagship beers those are the ones i pretty much know is there anything that you guys worked on like differently this year
Aleman's Name and Logo: Cultural Roots
00:33:50
Speaker
that like you come up with anything uh as a know having to quarantine and and and and pandemic thinking of this is a beer we want to do specifically or like have a chance to like get more creative because of that Well, we actually had a couple of products that were kind of in developmental phase, you know, early March, just before things kind of clamped down.
00:34:14
Speaker
um for our our For the brewery's birthday every year, we always try to um release a product that is lager or lager adjacent. So that was planning phase for this year's lager.
00:34:27
Speaker
which ended up, it was a Maybach style that we hadn't previously done on a production scale, which is awesome and really, really enjoyable. Loved how the product came out.
00:34:38
Speaker
And then there was a partnership with a beer bar group that wanted us to do a couple of things and it kind of harkened back to some old home brewer days. They wanted to execute a a craft black and tan.
00:34:55
Speaker
So they wanted to brew two small batches of beers that would make a black and tan of sorts. so That was really fun. But yeah, we ended up with two, three, four tanks of beer when the shutdown happened that we had anticipated releasing very shortly after everything kind of clamped down.
00:35:16
Speaker
So we ended up lagering our Maibach a bit longer than we expected. which wouldn' To the beer's benefit, absolutely. Now, is there anything that you guys are, let's, let's get out of the COVID talk. It always feels like it's a downer
Future Brewing Aspirations and Social Media Anecdotes
00:35:30
Speaker
when it's a, mean, it doesn't sound like anything was like too terrible for you guys, which is great. I'm glad that can sales are up. But like you said, you know, with, with draft, obviously you guys took a hit, but it's nice to be in a place where it seems like, you know, you every smaller business is struggling. Every independent business is struggling, but it seems like you guys are, I don't want to say good, I'm saying you're okay. We're very thankful to have the lights on. We're very thankful to still be brewing. That's a good way to say it Having a batch done today. Like, that's not lost on us.
00:35:58
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's that's awesome. and And I'm happy as I'm drinking the man, as we were talking about earlier. And I'm realizing this is a really well-balanced IPA.
00:36:09
Speaker
And i this whole summer, on the previous episodes I've talked about, like I really, and Clark can attest to this as well, we both really enjoy hazy IPAs. And I kind of got lost on the whole idea of What does a real IPA taste like?
00:36:21
Speaker
And I tried going back finding an IPA that I really liked and I couldn't do it. And as I'm sitting here drinking this, I'm not blowing smoke up your asses because I'm sitting in front of you guys making eye contact with you as I say this and you're on our This is a fucking good IPA. No kidding. it's it's It is really good. And I know I've had it before, but I'm just not remembering it.
00:36:40
Speaker
And as we were talking, I kind of got lost. I was like, why I have this in my fridge more often as far as like an IPA that's just when I want an IPA? I don't know. Is there any beers like coming up that you guys are planning on releasing before the year is over that people should be interested in or excited about?
00:36:55
Speaker
Or you guys just sticking kind of what's, you know, stay in the course of what's, uh, you just drink Bankman, which hasn't hit shelves. We haven't talked about that. We just kind of, kind of, you want to talk about that? Cause we drank it without really talking about it.
00:37:09
Speaker
So Bankman is our October release or our fall beer that kind of, pivots from the spiced pumpkin door cookie whatever you want to call it um and it's a double pail with tangerine inspired by Ecto Cooler, which we talked about earlier, and named so daily after Venkman of the Ghostbusters. So for beers that are coming up, that literally hasn't hit many shelves yet or draft lines.
00:37:39
Speaker
guess I guess didn't realize that when you guys said how fresh it was. and didn't i didn't realize it was like, du fresh, fresh in the sense of like fresh, it's not out in the stores and where you happen to be sitting here drinking it. I kind of feel like a big deal right now. going to be honest.
00:37:51
Speaker
It was really good. You're welcome. Yeah. We go home and tell my wife, she's like, that's great. Yeah. Are you going to clean the bathroom or what? We're producing a small project for bottles and cans, advent calendar.
00:38:03
Speaker
Oh, nice. Um, we haven't flushed out the full details of that yet so we're not going to divulge that to you yeah don't tell me i'm i already ordered one so i don't want to be surprised thank you
00:38:17
Speaker
oh he knows your name great yeah we're tossing around like he works here making sure they're trying to pull off our our weizenbach wise man um That is a draft only product, always has been. So we're kind of wrestling with the idea of either it's a really call so a small can run or we just produce just enough to kind of place it into some friendly locations.
00:38:42
Speaker
So, I mean, being four years in, we have kind of our stable of seasonals and yeah know the biggest thing COVID it is just distributors,
00:38:53
Speaker
avoiding uncertainty where possible. And so it's almost consolidating efforts around a few things versus before, yeah you know, we're a 10-barrel brewery, we can put out 300 gallons of something, the market will absorb it.
00:39:07
Speaker
No, now, like, here's what we're doing, here's when it's coming out, here's how much, and here's where it's going. So in terms of new products before the end of the year, I think we're we've got our bank and release,
00:39:20
Speaker
A few tiny little things, but then focusing really on Party Man as our next big seasonal release, which is always our New Year's beer. Which one is Party Man? So that's a IPA with Concord Grape.
00:39:34
Speaker
Oh, yes. We talked about but in which Which, by the way, when we talked about that on last year's Halloween episode, The three of us did not put together the Prince reference at all on the show, nor did we talk about afterwards.
00:39:48
Speaker
And I realized that listening to the episode this year before we recorded it, that i was like, Fuck, that's Prince. You're talking about Prince. We blew it. Why did you play a Prince song at the break? yeah I'm going to put that on you opposed to... No, it's not on you guys. No, no, 100%. That's shy about holy oh like I can't believe we we blew that. So we're going to put a little more effort into a few things and and maybe doing a little more of a few things as opposed to doing a little bit of a lot of things.
00:40:18
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah, I think that's a good way to do it. We're working on ah another year-round beer as well add to the lineup that will be something a little more sessionable considering two of our three-year-round beers are 6.8 or above. We have a rotating double IPA series that we have iterations lined up for.
00:40:41
Speaker
So we're always going to have new interesting products. It's just... like Nate was talking about communicating with your distribution partners, make it clear this is when it's coming, let's go sell it.
00:40:55
Speaker
We might try to experiment on some and like a hundred hundred gallon scale. know Make some new things but make just a couple barrels of them. Exclusive to small independent retailers.
00:41:09
Speaker
No knock to the big guys that you know help kind of pay the bills, here so to speak. there are small guys that need help just like we do. And it also kind of harkens back to homebrew days of like doing that smaller batch that maybe is just, you know, for yourself and your friends and you can kind of experiment and really hone in on, well, we're to this and, oh, we found this, it's really good and give that really good product out to those smaller places. I think that's really cool. We hope so. We're working on ah a line of,
00:41:37
Speaker
It's not yet branded, you know, we could play around with, call it Soda Man at the moment. But we made a ah sparkling dry hopped, lemonade oh high minerality low uh grams per serving in terms of sugar oh this is dry tart it's in all places it's no means this is it's made for the dollar sparkling lemonade you know we've also in lemon soda we go to our favorite watering holes and see these deadlines just because the volition is not there for it to justify having 14 beers on yeah here is something to help fill those lines and it's it's a cocktail mixer it's
00:42:15
Speaker
It's a non-alcoholic beverage that's not a sugar bomb or garbage or, you know, loaded with a bunch of ingredients you don't understand because it's $8 and it came from this small little island out of... No, here's lemonade, and it's more adult than what you're going to get from Sunkist. Awesome.
00:42:31
Speaker
Kind of where we've built our relationships on draft. Hey, draft partner, here's something interesting that you can't just get anywhere. so And people are leaning N.A. just out of...
00:42:43
Speaker
lifestyle trends. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, and that goes to how many breweries now are like getting into the hard seltzer type stuff, yeah you know, like we talked about Lake Effect, like they've, you know, he's released his line of stuff and it's, it's, it's a changing market.
00:42:57
Speaker
And like, I don't knock stuff like that. You're, you're, there's an audience for it. So why not make something that people are going to drink instead of like you said, like going into bars and having dead draft lines when you can put something on there that's going to appease Well, especially with something like you're saying, it's non-alcoholic and it's it's something to mix.
00:43:14
Speaker
But it's also like, I drink carbonated waters, I buy bubbly, I love that shit. When I can finally refill my SodaStream tank of having regular carbonated water, I'll do it. But I have nowhere to exchange my tanks right now.
00:43:28
Speaker
That's awesome. I think that's, internet and and knowing that, you know, like a brewery, number one, that I really like and it can also support like, oh, I'd like support you guys, but um maybe I don't want to drink beer this week.
00:43:42
Speaker
Oh, I could buy a carbonated water even better. i think that's really a cool idea. And seltzer specific is pretty full. I just felt like this is an interesting product that could potentially even then be blended with beers at a later date. And just if we have that solid base, just another feather in the cap, just kind of We can use it whole of different ways.
00:44:06
Speaker
In-house shandies all day. oh te Wasn't it the RZA that suggested you diversify your bonds? Yeah, I'm pretty sure the RZA said that. Oh wait, were we going to call this beer? Or this beverage?
00:44:18
Speaker
And it still is? Yeah. yeah
00:44:22
Speaker
If anyone gets the reference, they can have the entire tank. Bonus points. Tony. Tony. You're our guy You have the answer. don't have any answers. You gotta Google. Hey, there's no fact checking. What's all the first volume bonds? Is that the reference we're talking about? The first volume bonds? Well, if we were to call this project, and it still is, it's a sparkling lemonade.
00:44:47
Speaker
This is tough. This is tougher than Prince's party. don't think I got it. don't think I got it. Working on it. Actually, I want to see if you can find it. Let's get the fact checker and see if you can pull that off. It's not Reba McIntyre.
00:45:04
Speaker
That the first. outside Okay, I think was about to, that was my next question for you guys. Reba McIntyre. Oh man. oh man Alright, let me ask you guys a question.
00:45:17
Speaker
here's It's just a fun one. The three of you. Maybe you guys are particular. Did you think found it? I think got it. Alright, hold on. Okay, do it first. Okay, now, Gangstar? Nailed it. nail take it hold Can you pronounce name song?
00:45:32
Speaker
be Wicked wick. Oh nailed it. Wow! You deserve the whole thing. That's what I'm here for. That's what I was hired. Yeah, I'll send that to Google. Yeah, please do.
00:45:44
Speaker
So what time should we come by to drink that? are You all are welcome to a sample before you leave today. o who who Whoa, didn't even have a thing. Awesome. Yeah, you guys have been very gracious with the ah keeping us hydrated today. Thank you very much. We we appreciate that.
00:45:58
Speaker
You first. random yeah random Random question. Okay, out of and maybe it might be hard because for the brewers in general. Out of all the beers that you guys have brewed and and made, what's your, as of today, what's your favorite to drink?
00:46:16
Speaker
Of our own products? Of your own beer, of your own products. That we've ever made or that can reach for pretty regular. Yeah, just out of your own products in general, if you, like, say it's something that you could, you don't have right now, you could make it, what would it be?
00:46:31
Speaker
Because everyone's got their favorite kid. They just don't say it. I've got one kid so I'm happy. actually, yeah. I should have. I was the favorite kid. I know that for sure. I was too. Thanks, Mom. I really like the Sausage King of Chicago.
00:46:47
Speaker
Abe Frumman? Abe Frumman, yeah. That's when I could, you know, if I always had that in my fridge, I'd be pleased. to It was a Hellas. My mom's favorite movie, by the way, is Ferris Bueller's Day. That would go really good with sausage.
00:47:00
Speaker
See where we're going with that. Nice. Nice. you thought it but yeah I thought this was a question for the brewers. No, no, no. It's Frost's Revy. I it would be harder for the brewers. Brad doesn't like our beer. that The pineapple colch we made for BAMS is pretty outstanding. yeah That's a good call. And that was the bones for our first anniversary beer, Delivery Man.
00:47:22
Speaker
Yeah, that was lights out. i could i I drank a lot of that. Not that I could, but I did.
00:47:29
Speaker
For me, is it's been hype, man. As a ah brewery that is both staunch in stick to what you're good at, but also has an ethos of trial and error, learn by doing, comfortable failing, like,
00:47:46
Speaker
I think there's a lot of bad sour beer out there and a lot of people putting beer in barrels that maybe doesn't belong in barrels just yet. And so we dipped our toe into sour with kettle sour, cheater sour.
00:48:00
Speaker
That's right. That's exactly what we're going for. We're going for a certain pH, a certain level of acidity. That's how I started. I think it hit that balance perfectly to where it's something that we're going to bring back regularly. We might switch up fruits. We might switch up adjuncts, but we definitely have a solid base under our belt and even just have toyed with a few techniques on that beer that allow it to be as successful as possible. So just tart but not too tart, kettle soured IPA.
00:48:30
Speaker
Quick hot take, really quick. does it Is the Hype Man supposed to be a barley wine now? What's the matter? The Hype Man was based on one of great friends you know who likes who loves all things hops, and or hype, I mean, and he is now deep down the barley wine rabbit hole.
00:48:50
Speaker
He chugs them. Yeah. You could probably Google them. Oh, God. Don't Google him. oh What's his name? And his name is? He's one of the artists on the wall. I'll tell you that.
00:49:03
Speaker
Yeah. Barley wines. Oh, man. Chugging barley wines. I don't know. I have a coworker who we know they do who told me the other day, he's like, I can't stand barley wines. Wow. But he loves like, he's like, I love, you know, barrel stouts all that stuff. He's here all these beers. He's like, oh, barley wine's gross. I'm like, I don't get it. What? What you mean? So was the barley wine chugger, was that a Chicago guy? Yeah. Yeah. Is that PK?
00:49:24
Speaker
No. There's two. Barley wine chugger. He would sit there. was the original barley wine chugger. Yeah, he was doing videos of him chugging. I'm like, how are you chugging? Oh, the Dark Lord bottles? What did they used to call it?
00:49:37
Speaker
Just keep sipping? Keep sipping. keep sipping? They would have the same bottles, and it would be like a competition, and both them would just chug it. That was more poking fun at all the beer chasers, the oil chasers. yeah But I couldn't do that. My stomach just s sinks when I think about that.
00:49:53
Speaker
Well, Brandon, Clark, do you guys have anything else you'd like to ask them speak to? So the one thing we didn't touch on was actually your logo that you have. yeah, right. And I know I've asked this question before, but just to hear from you. But not on the show. Yeah, we haven't asked it on the show. What was the idea behind the logo? Like where did that come about? And what made you guys go with that? So the logo was born as a out of nowhere designed by a friend who kind of just nailed it in the moment within minutes.
00:50:24
Speaker
We'd actually sent out like to a group of artists like, hey, casting call, make this logo happen. Here's some imagery. Here's what we're looking for. go for it.
00:50:34
Speaker
And a lot of stuff came back and there was some great content there. But a friend who was very artistic just kind of sat down and paper and it was done in five minutes. Like that's it.
00:50:46
Speaker
With the basic contract there being an imperial pint glass with the fill line of the liquid mirroring the beard of kind of an old weathered face. That's awesome. Perfect.
00:50:57
Speaker
That's super cool. One of the oldest stories, like back to home brewing time, is we were drinking out. I don't think it was Fishman's. It might have been that night at Fishman's actually.
00:51:08
Speaker
We had a buddy that after a couple pops just kept walking around the room going, who is ale man? we're like, I don't really know how to answer that. So we we tasked some artists like, who do you think the ale man is? So,
00:51:28
Speaker
so you know, you have an initial iteration. that is a far cry from the polished image now that we put almost 100% of our branding behind because we'd rather people remember that logo as opposed to any elaborate, yeah colorful thing on any particular canvas.
00:51:48
Speaker
So, initial image, I have a good buddy in North Carolina who was taking down trees for a living. had access to all this wood and just got a wild pair to create a couple of tap handle prototypes.
00:52:01
Speaker
So hand carved wooden tap handles of this initial graphic image, which then kind of evolved back into version 2.0 of the digital that became a little more polished, a little less Polynesian and a little more Nordic and Germanic and kind of what the final graphic images today, but it's just kind of this ven this interesting bounce back and forth from the the virtual to the digital.
00:52:30
Speaker
And Jim and Nate have basically spent the last six years growing their beards, trying to become the element. Which is funny about this. Every time I see your tap handle,
00:52:41
Speaker
I get this imagery. It's like Lord of the Rings, like tree beard. I'm like, I just see that thing and I'm like, that's like a living tree. Like right there. We've been trying to see Lord of the Rings for copyright infringement for a while now, but. You should.
00:52:53
Speaker
No, but it's, it's a good Lord. Check it out, Tolkien. I mean, the, the wood on that, like the wood on the handles, the way those look, that's just like, it's perfect. Yeah, I mean it's a very much it's a really big version of it right there staring at you.
00:53:06
Speaker
kind of speaks to Nate's comments earlier about appreciation for old world and traditional styles and things at the core of what we love about certain beers and then just getting in there and doing that with some of the more urban, more modern, the graffiti.
00:53:21
Speaker
So kind of merging these two sides of our brand into one cohesive whole. Our personalities. that too Do you guys know the the story of of not so much the the logo, but the actual name of the the company? I do now, no.
00:53:36
Speaker
So that's, mean, that's a good kind of... Hey, what's the story behind the name of the actual brewery? I'm just about to tell you. Oh, of course. I'm glad you asked. I got great questions for you specifically. We talked a little earlier about how the three of us have all come from the restaurant world first. We were all involved restaurants and bars before we started home brewing.
00:53:56
Speaker
So when we decided that we were gonna try and launch a brewery, we wanted to do ah a brew pub. We'd always envisioned the brewery having a a food com component for a list of of different reasons, mostly financial constraints and in seed money. Running ah a brew pub is a hell of a lot more expensive than running a production brewery in a lot of ways. Starting, starting.
00:54:18
Speaker
um But we did have a very talented chef who was ah who was a master butcher by trade that was ah was a member of of of the ailment team at first. And he his speciality was making custom blended sausages.
00:54:34
Speaker
Really, really talented guy that made incredible sausages. And he wanted to join up with the team and and kind of champion the food program. And he wanted to blend his his dream for his food program was to blend Spanish food and German food do a fusion of those two things. like that.
00:54:52
Speaker
So the more we thought about that, we were immediately sold on that. Like, that sounds like perfect beer food. And then, you know, we're we're thinking we're still brainstorming Spanish, German, the Spanish word for the country of Germany is Alemania or Aleman.
00:55:11
Speaker
Or Aleman. Americanized. Aleman. Thank you. Congratulations. I figured that out. I didn't even need Clark to Google that. yeah You don't win anything.
00:55:22
Speaker
that's the and That is the Genesis story. That's really cool. That's awesome. And then it's evolved into our branding from there. We had... Day man, we become ale man, hit man, hype man, strong man, just developing ah a branding that's very simple and recognizable around that. I'm going to flip the script.
00:55:40
Speaker
What do you guys brewing these days? Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, on. Oh, boy. Okay. You've got plenty of time on your hands, right? Yeah, we do. How hazy is it? Exactly. Okay, so the last beer was pretty hazy, okay?
00:55:53
Speaker
It was called person... How hazy and how much pumpkin you have in it? Okay, so the last two beers... I'll start. I'll start. The first one, the last beer I did before this last, was called Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV. And it was a hazy IPA, and it came out to like, I think, 6.5%. It was really good. I really liked it. I added a whole bunch of, I added more oats than I normally would have and and used different hops.
00:56:14
Speaker
It's great. It's fine. think I've got one more pint of it left. As was talking about before, when you guys were finished up your brew, we did a pumpkin beer episode. We, all three of us, like pumpkin beers.
00:56:25
Speaker
And the beers that we tried, we were... not very happy with it all. So we decided, well, screw it. We're going brew our own pumpkin beer. So we all just finished fermenting our pumpkin beer. So we all on the same day, like at our houses, did our own set up. So we all brewed.
00:56:42
Speaker
So me and him brewed kind of the same base recipe. on The difference, he used like pumpkin spice. I did the same thing, but added actual pumpkin in there, like canned pumpkin that I roasted. because Then I got the idea from Clark because that's what he does in his beer. He's got his own pumpkin beer recipe. But i yeah, so I roasted the pumpkin with brown sugar, let that roast, and then I threw that in the mash.
00:57:04
Speaker
um It turned out good. It was a lot lighter than I thought it was going to be. And I think, i think I'll talk to you after this. I think I figured out why that happened. Good enough. Because I sent you the recipe. and i think you have my equipment profile not yours no it was mine oh don't know you fucked it um but yeah besides pumpkin before that i did just a blonde ale a nice light you know four and a half percent and that's very nice i'm gonna do guess the bod guess bod is pretty good yeah i did my my octoberfest i i did kind of i kind of looked around to see kind of what uh hofbrau does for their octoberfest so i kind of like frankenstein the recipe together and like brewed that and it
00:57:43
Speaker
That was the first beer I've ever brewed where I nailed all my numbers and it turned out perfect. You really should have brought some of that because we we we had all three of us had it the last episode. It was really good. like I was and felt like, not that it Brandon... I can come back with some. Yeah, that's true.
00:57:59
Speaker
Not that Brandon needed guidance, it had been a while since he had brewed and he'd been brewing with us. He had all his equipment. With having a kid, he had a chance to really brew. So this was first time having a successful brew day yeah on his own. and I felt like a proud father.
00:58:14
Speaker
Seeing my son. And like I literally i drank the beer and I'm like, you holy shit. this is it's this It's a really... anyated room temperature fermented Oktoberfest beer that is fucking delicious. I was gonna say way to pick like a nice easy lead back into the hobby. Yeah, right. I'll do an Oktoberfest. What the fuck? Hey, man, way to go. Yeah, he nailed it, man. It was really good. I've seen social media posts about it.
00:58:38
Speaker
yeah i i drank two i had two pints with that night and the following night i finished the ground so it was awesome you know what man i love fest beers and meritons absolutely love that style and i always feel like every year i just get bludgeoned with them or i just drink so much of them between september and october and with the nature of the shutdown and not being out much i Honestly, every Oktoberfest I've stumbled across this year, I've been like, oh, I've got to have a fest beer.
00:59:04
Speaker
Is there one in particular, I mean, if you don't want to say, is there one in particular that you really enjoyed this year? I mean, I gotta play the high... Not saying like, you know, F the other beers, but like what No, no, no....have in a particular like right now. I'm gonna have to be... I'll take that high road and say I... For me, there is no other Fest beer than Ianger Fest beer.
00:59:22
Speaker
Okay. I think it's the best in the world, always has been. Everyone who's making that beer is... Everyone who's making that style is ultimately chasing sure something like that. Sure, yeah, that makes sense. ah That being said, there's lots of great local ones. a couple nights ago, I had Spiteful's.
00:59:36
Speaker
Awesome, clean, delicious. But for for me, if I anger's on the menu every single time. Almost like they have like a hundred year head start on every level. almost. It's like they created the style. Well, I, this year was the first year that i found out that off color did, did one in Octoberfest and I had waddle and it honestly, that was, was awesome. I think it was probably my favorite of this year. Nothing, nothing, not nothing against the other ones that i tried from other local breweries, but waddle I think just kind of surprised me because
01:00:07
Speaker
I just didn't expect it. Like I happened to see it sitting on the shelf. I go, Oh, I didn't know you guys did in Octoberfest. I think it's maybe the second or third year that they've done it. Um, so it was cool to see it. I got it. I absolutely loved it it. was really good.
01:00:20
Speaker
Um, so I'll go back to what I said before, Brandon, Clark, you guys got anything else you had ask? You guys have anything else you want to say? actually how about this? How, what's the best way for people to, to either find out what's, uh, what's going on, uh, coming up for you guys and where they can find your beers?
01:00:36
Speaker
Not Brandon and Clark. Nobody gives a shit about you Well, actually, if you want to... vote so Just simple answers. Follow us on any form of social media. Elm in Chicago and Twitter and Instagram.
01:00:51
Speaker
But as a small business, I'm not so shameless as to say, if you have a store close to your house that you go regularly, just talk. It could be a cashier. It could be the owner. You never know. Hey...
01:01:05
Speaker
you have any ailment in stock? Have you ever heard of this brewery? Put in a good word for us. That goes a long way with buyers who know that there's a market for that beer to take in ah a new and or unproven product.
01:01:20
Speaker
if so If a customer walks into a store and say, hey, do you have this? And you don't. They hear that a couple of times. like Oh, okay. Well, people are asking. A salesperson walks in actually pitching it. and Oh.
01:01:31
Speaker
Someone's been asking. Funny use yeah what you should mention that. Definitely. So, you know, Binney's is good about bringing in products based on customer requests. But any... small retailer wants to sell the product on their shelves and if you verbalize the desire for it it makes a lot easier to sell it is a symbiotic relationship between consumer producer and seller more shameless plugs yeah if you're on the north side if you're on the northwest side if you're ever in the lincoln square area check out rockwell's hit up rockwell's you can always find our products there the bar in buena in uptown yeah you can always find our products there
01:02:08
Speaker
um and go enjoy some uh a last few couple pints at fountainhead fountainhead yeah hang on a fountainhead as much as you can oh god that's one of the saddest i mean not that any other is bad but fountainhead is fantastic that's just it's really sad let's end let's end it on a downer hey brandon brandon how can people find you on social media
01:02:34
Speaker
BMW81 on Instagram, BW81 on the Twitters, and then I'm not accepting you as friends on Facebook. Cool, cool. Clark, how can people find you? you know what? Never mind. ah You can find me. Oh, no. How can people find you? Oh, just the usual. Clarkowski, C-L-A-R-K-O-W-S-K-I.
01:02:49
Speaker
Did you just log into your Instagram? because I always have to correct your Instagram name. My Instagram name is Correct.
01:03:03
Speaker
If you have to spell it, it's too complicated, guys. asa phelps thank you is thein legally change your name anybody asa phelps is a simpsons reference if you don't get it feels right for you flying hellfish for life thank you everybody for uh listening thank you guys so much for having us here we appreciate it it's been a lot of fun um and hopefully we can do this uh again where we're not all wearing masks and we'll talk about some more beers and maybe we'll bring some home brews by you guys talk so close to your face
01:03:32
Speaker
oh Cheers, fellas. Thanks very much. Thank you. I'm out of here.