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Episode 75 - Alarmist Brewing
129 Plays3 years ago
This week we venture over to Alarmist Brewing and speak with founder and owner Gary Gulley. We sip on some beers get way off topic too many times. So much so, we had to setup another interview.
Visit Alarmist
https://alarmistbrewing.com/
Gary looking cool on NBC for the Chicago Winter Brew Fest
https://www.nbcchicago.com/top-videos-home/chicago-winter-brew-hosts-annual-event-outdoors-for-first-time/2754329/
Chicago Winter Brew Fest February 19 & 20
https://www.lincolnsquare.org/winter-brew
Theme music provided by Myke Kelli (@mykekelli)
Outro and break music provided by @FluidMinds
Check out all our episodes at www.themaltinghour.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Banter
00:00:00
Speaker
No, no, that's fine. We're definitely gonna use it. No, let's go see your ass crack. Well, actually, you go right there. Never mind. Yeah, I can see it. There it is. Every now and then, I'm just gonna look. Yeah, nice ass crack. That's actually called your, and I learned this from a dermatologist, that's called your gluteal cleft. Mmm. Yeah, look at that, motherfucker. Did she come to alarm us? She learned some shit. Oh, about where your shit comes from. Is that recording? Are we recording? Of course. Oh, yes. Thank you, because now I have an intro to the episode.
Guest Introduction: Gary Gully
00:00:25
Speaker
This week, we're joined by Gary Gully, founder and owner of Alarmist Brewing. This is episode 75 of The Molting Out. What's the haps on the hops? Guy, ease that speech. 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. Got the gift of ab, the friends who wish you had. Join us for a drink. Join us for a laugh. Time is never wasted. The way you're getting wasted. The molten hour here. People, people taking places.
Podcast Host Introductions
00:01:00
Speaker
Welcome to The Malting Hour. I'm one of your hosts, Tony Goley, joined Always With. Brandon Winningger. And making his sophomore episode hosting debut. Let's hope it's not a sophomore slump. Danny from Hip Hop's. Dude, you just set yourself up for, like, you already had an issue with getting empanadas into Molly's Wrong on the first episode, calling me out on my poor editing skills. Sophomore slump might be in your future.
00:01:21
Speaker
Take it place. Take it home.
00:01:29
Speaker
But that's not why we're doing this episode. Right now, we are in the northwest side. Or is this still considered the northwest side of Chicago? It's almost as northwest as you can get. You're right. It is. I don't do geography. I know where I live. It's considered the northwest side of Chicago. Anyway, we're in a basement. It's very quiet. It's very nice. But it's also the basement.
The Sentimental Setting
00:01:54
Speaker
of a brewery, very cool, near and dear to my heart because it was the first brewery. I'm not blowing smoke up your ass right now, just so you know, don't say anything. I'm not blowing smoke up your ass or anything. But, Lejeux has very special play smarts. First hazy IPA that I've ever enjoyed, ever. And that was before
00:02:16
Speaker
won a fucking medal. Brandon and I were there when you guys won the medal. We were there that year. We weren't there. We were there. Introduce yourself. We're an alarmist. We're an alarmist. Here we are. We're an alarmist brewing in Chicago. And who are
Gary's Role at Alarmist Brewing
00:02:30
Speaker
we with? Hi, I'm Gary Gulley. I'm the founder and chief alarmist of Alarmist Brewing. Chief alarmist. What does that entail?
00:02:36
Speaker
running everything except I don't because I have an excellent staff other than Ethan who you met right yeah he drops the ball but other than that we yeah we have great staff so I I have been relegated to things like accounting and things like that but yes it's overall management of the
00:03:16
Speaker
I actually do need to know. I actually love spreadsheets, which is kind of... Spreadsheets are great. They're under Excel. Okay, we're not gonna get into that. Anyways, yeah. So yeah, here we are. Were you about to say something about spreadsheets? No. It looked like you wanted to say something about spreadsheets. No. You sure? No. If you wanted to, this is the time. No. Because we'll never bring up spreadsheets again on this podcast. I probably will. I mean, I have this, you know... Okay,
00:03:21
Speaker
the entity that is alarm is brewing.
Gary's Brewing Journey
00:03:39
Speaker
anyways.
00:03:39
Speaker
So yeah, we're at Alarmist. Gary, tell us a little bit about the history of Alarmist for people who do not know. Because, you know, we reach a lot of places. We reach a lot of cities in the USA. And random countries. And random countries. Someone in Brussels is listening to us constantly.
00:03:59
Speaker
Have you actually checked to see who, like, really? You got some people on, got some officials, huh? We always check the countries. There's someone at one point who is constantly listening to us. And then I'm like, Oh, really? Do we have St Patrick's Day episode and it was downhill.
00:04:14
Speaker
Oh really? Really? That was awesome. We're done. Man, I'll tell you, you just wait until the internet gets everywhere and you'll get people in like Australia and stuff. What? What is that? Oh, it's down south somewhere. I don't know. I've never been there. I heard it was down under. I've never been under what? Oh, I knew the rim shadow, man.
00:04:34
Speaker
Oh, so history. We are doing it. Well, I started home brewing, and I always say, I want to say 1991. So I'm from a town in Indiana called Kokomo. If you sing that fucking song, I will punch you in the balls. Anyway. We don't have the rights to it, so we can't. You might be able to sneak it in somewhere. And I went to Purdue.
00:05:04
Speaker
And I'm a very loud, proud Purdue moral maker, because I'm the only person in my family to go to college originally. And then I study engineering, and I graduate in civil engineering. So what I should be doing is designing bridges and structures and all this shit, and I don't. There's another burr we know who is an engineer. Yeah, I've met a few. I've met a few. It's pretty funny. And so long story.
00:05:32
Speaker
Right out of college, I worked for this company up here in the suburbs. It was part of a large international place. And they sent me down to a nuclear power plant, which is just funny to say, in Texas called Comanche Peak. And it was one of the last nuclear power plants built in the United States. And it had been started in 1972. So I was there in the 90s. So this son of a bitch still wasn't up and running yet.
00:06:00
Speaker
And so I was down there doing stuff that was supposed to be engineering, but it actually wasn't. And I met a guy who was home brewing. And I didn't even know what he meant. Because up to that point, beer was terrible. I was in a male social organization. And we would have parties. And I hated beer because beer was terrible.
00:06:29
Speaker
And so this guy taught me, he's like, oh look, there's these other beers you can drink. So that's what Sierra Nevada was out there. And in Texas, the time was Celes, Celes Brewing, which is one of the greatest breweries ever created by man, and they're gone. But they had a beer called Celes White, which was the first Belgian wit in the US. And we can go into that story. Anyway, he invented the style. But anyway,
00:06:53
Speaker
changed my life, then he said, oh, you can actually make beer at home. I'm like, what? So he showed me. And then the weird thing is there was an actual homebrew store in Fort Worth, which is where I was living. And so we go in there and you buy these cans of malt syrup and stuff.
00:07:10
Speaker
and I learned how to brew and I still have somewhere I have my original recipe handwritten and it's got spills on it from all the work is you look at the recipe is like what the worst beer ever made and I'm sure what and we had to bottle it and I can go on me we'd use bleach to sanitize can we get it so we can make that just you know what I'm gonna look that I you know what I might do I've been thinking about that I think as a task that
00:07:36
Speaker
because I had like fuggle hops which people don't know that's like an old old-school english hop and I don't know anymore what style was the recipe it was like I don't even know like I honestly because it styles back then there weren't any style because it wouldn't make anything it's funny isn't it the first homebrew that I got my wife gave me and her brother
00:08:02
Speaker
I knew you were going to say Mr. Berry. There's one in the brewery right now, by the way. It's probably five years old. I still have, actually, Mike still has the original fermenter. And we didn't, the first time, we're ready to do it. We followed the recipe and then we're like, let's try it. Let's hop this shit. Dogfish had 90 minute IPA. And we put whole cone hops in there. I can't even imagine.
00:08:29
Speaker
When I was brewing, you couldn't even get that. The variety of hops was very limited. Like I said, you had bleach water and you would... This is fine. You would rinse the bottles.
00:08:45
Speaker
in it, and you let them dry. At least you're practicing sanitation. Well, yeah, you had to. And I'm sure that beer, I remember drinking it. I don't remember what it tastes like, but I remember thinking, this is the greatest thing I've ever done in my entire life. And so then I started, got into it, and then probably, let's see, so I moved back to Chicago area.
Career Transition: Engineering to Brewing
00:09:10
Speaker
Then I moved again, and I got back here. I brewed for a little bit in the early 90s, and then just kind of got away from it. A lot of people might not know or might not remember because I'm old, but there was sort of this pre-Craft beer revolution in the 90s, so a lot of breweries were opening up. Here in Chicago, we had Chicago brewing, and I actually met one of the guys
00:09:35
Speaker
just sheer coincidence. He was a neighbor, a friend of mine, who was one of the three brothers who opened that brewery. And it was notorious because we didn't know it at the time, but the quality was terrible. They had all kinds of weird infections and stuff in the brewery, but no one knew. Unless you were a big brewery, you didn't know this stuff.
00:09:54
Speaker
And so they had- That's pre-social opinion, too, right? Oh, yeah. They had, was it Big Shoulders Porter? I actually had Googled it the other day to look up the label. I was like, holy shit, I remember these beers. But it really quickly fell away and all these places went out of business because there's a lot of corruption with distributors and not letting these beers get to the market, plus the beer wasn't very good.
00:10:18
Speaker
But one of the few to survive would have been Sierra Nevada, some of the older, New Belgium, all that. And then it kind of just died, and then it came back in the early 2000s, right? So I started brewing again in 2008. I had all this equipment and I still had it. I had to pull out my basement. I found my original mill.
00:10:41
Speaker
There was mouse poop on everything. So I had to take it outside. I cleaned everything. I found a can of German wheat malt syrup for growing that was probably 15 years old. Did you use it? I did not. You get it in a small one.
00:11:04
Speaker
So then I joined the Chicago CBS, Chicago Beer Society, and I met a bunch of people, people who now like, so I met like John Laff and all the guys in Off Color. I met a bunch of people who opened breweries since then and really like expanded our knowledge and the internet just changed everything. We learned so much. It was all of a sudden, it's like just knowledge coming in and you had access to all these ingredients that you didn't have before. Because back in the day, you'd go into a home brew shop.
00:11:29
Speaker
And there used to be one right next to Chicago Brewing Company. It was like at Armitage and Elston. It was that weird intersection. It was right there, and there was also, I don't know if it was Brew and Grow at the time. Yeah, Brew and Grow was tucked back there. Yeah, yeah. And you walk in, and you just had shelf after shelf of malt syrup in cans. And you'd have like a stout malt syrup. And it was Canadian, Belgian, American, Australian, anything you can imagine. They had it.
00:11:58
Speaker
And that's how you, and there would be a little package of yeast underneath the tent. And you didn't know what it was, you didn't care, you didn't, it was terrible. It's going to do something. Oh man, it got, it was awful. I've heard many stories or read stories about like how it used to be with old home brew shops and like, I know nothing about that. It was crazy. I wish I would have seen what it was like. Yeah, it's crazy. And then it all shifted to, you know, all grain. And it got easier once I started remembering, oh, this is so much easier than what I remember.
00:12:27
Speaker
So then, you know, I got the bug and then a whole bunch of stuff happened. So I was in technology. I was doing internet development. I worked for some large technology companies and I fucking hated it. That's not so much the technology. I hated the corporate work environment. I hated it. Yeah. And it took me a really, and by then I had, you know, I was married and I had, you know, two kids and I had this mortgage and which, you know, still have the house and everything. They got, although I wish I could get rid of kids. That's a joke.
00:12:57
Speaker
He said, one just turned 18. You're 18. You're out, motherfucker. He had his fingers crossed when he said it was a joke. It was a joke. One for you, Gavin. One for you, Declan. So a series of events happened.
Personal Challenges and Support
00:13:13
Speaker
So my wife, at the time, she got breast cancer.
00:13:16
Speaker
Our kids were little. I was working for a company that I wasn't very happy at, and I don't want to say their name because I don't want to like, but they fired me. I told my boss, I told the team, my wife's got breast cancer if I act weird. I was just trying to let people know, look, I'm fucking stressed. I never had anything else in my life.
00:13:38
Speaker
And then my boss was on vacation and he came back and I told him, all he said to me was, oh, dude, that sucks. And then fired me. Like, wow, because, yeah. And so I don't want to mention that it was orbits, the online travel company, because I don't want to put down a bad light. Oh, by the way, I don't want to say that because go ahead. They were purchased by Expedia. They're actually a good company now because I have friends that work for them. But back in the day, oh, it was it was bad fucking shitty.
00:14:06
Speaker
Oh, it was bad. Well, you know, we can go on about that. I was not doing a great job, but it was just like I would not have done that to someone anyway. So we got through it. She's totally fine. She survived. Everything's great. And then I told her, I said, look, when this is over with, I am not working for anyone ever again.
00:14:26
Speaker
The only thing I know I can do is brew beer, at least I thought.
Founding Alarmist Brewing
00:14:30
Speaker
He knows accounting. That's how it all started. I am not a risky person. No one in my family is an entrepreneur.
00:14:43
Speaker
Most of us are kind of dumb. Mom, you're not dumb. So then I just fucking got focused and I researched how to do business plans and I fucking spent, I mean, I was unstoppable and it's weird because I've never done that before. And I got funding, I got investors and I got it open and the first couple of years were terrible. I mean, it was rough.
00:15:08
Speaker
I put my life savings into the whole fucking thing and my wife, the whole key to this whole thing is Bridget because she was all for it. She's like, look, you're miserable. I want you to go and be happy and do something. Plus she grew up poor, so that really helps. That's really helpful. So if you want to open a brewery, make sure your spouse is poor already. That helps. So that's how it all kind of came together.
00:15:34
Speaker
But the takeaway is for me, regardless of brewing or whatever, man, if you feel constrained, you're in the corporate America and you hate it, fucking get out and do something on your own, man, just take the risk.
00:15:49
Speaker
I mean, it's gotta be. You can't, you know, I'm not gonna write poetry for a living. I mean, nothing wrong with that. I'm just saying, I got a mortgage to pay, you know? I bet you this poem could pay you this much. Yeah, yeah. Guess what? I wrote a sweet poem. Hey, New Yorker, would you like to pay my mortgage for the buck?
00:16:06
Speaker
This will be released on Valentine's Day, which poems would be acceptable. Hopefully by the end of the episode, one of us can come up with a sweet poem to end the episode with. That's a challenge of giving to all of us, right? That's good. That's an awesome background to the story. I'm going to do something inter-traditional, and we're going to take a quick break. Yeah, we need some booze.
00:16:56
Speaker
And we're back! The best part is, I'll send you the whole file if you want it, because I eventually have to edit everything out. I'm really the only person, other than when we experience this during the recording, get to listen to it, but that is the spot. I listen back to the full thing. Oh yeah, you do, yeah. Listening to some of the stuff, because he presses record a lot without
00:17:22
Speaker
Yeah, you get a lonely unguarded conversation. But then also there's been times where it's like, okay, what I just said though, please do not. But there's also been some gems that have ended up like.
00:17:34
Speaker
Like at the beginning, it becomes the intro. Well, not the one that I said that was there. No, no, no. But in other times or like in the break. Yeah, absolutely. So we went through your history from where you started all the way to the opening. And I think we ended with it being like,
00:17:53
Speaker
And it was fucking rough. And we lived happily ever after. It was rough, and that was it. And that's where the interview ended. And we went and refilled our drinks. Well, actually, real quick, let's talk about what we're drinking. Because before we get back into the show, we've had a couple of beers since we've been here, which, by the way, thank you very much. Yeah, you bet. You put it on Who's Cap. Oh, it's on your tab. It's on your tab. I'm not charging you guys beers, motherfuckers. No, thanks, man. That's really nice.
00:18:22
Speaker
You gotta find it and edit it. You're gonna probably leave that one in. Everyone you leave in is a dollar off your tab. Keep drinking boys.
00:18:41
Speaker
Oh, good thing we shotgunned those three beers at the bar. Nobody knows. We have a simple rule here. You abide by the word cut, or you know? The cut abides. Oh, shit. All right.
00:18:58
Speaker
Yeah. Brandon, do you remember what it is that you're drinking? Nope. That's the cold IPA. It's called Woodland Chill. That's the only beer that Bob the bartender has ever named. And we laugh because it sounds like.
00:19:13
Speaker
It's like the scent from an underarm deodorant, which is really funny. It's cold spice. It tastes like woodland chill. And I'm like, all right, fine, because I had to get the label out the door. And then we all started laughing about it. That's what we said it tastes like? It tastes like woodland chill. It does taste like woodland chill. Brandon, what do you think? It's not musky or anything. So I do want to kind of comment back. What was the first one that we had?
00:19:39
Speaker
That was Business Hops. Business Hops. Business Hops. Business Hops. So yeah, that one was really good. Yeah, that was really good. And you're not a big hazy APA fan. No, not normally. That one was awesome. This one, it's a lot cleaner. I do like that it's slightly better, not totally better. Yeah. And very just like, you know, and I'm going to the word mouthfeel, like the mouthfeel is just so like refreshing and cleansing almost.
Beer Tasting Session
00:20:06
Speaker
Like I feel like I could,
00:20:07
Speaker
Just keep drinking this and I'll be okay. I will if I keep drinking this. Color-wise, dude, super clear. This is awesome. I see golden. Dan and I were just saying when we... I want to go into the woods, too. With deodorant.
00:20:32
Speaker
Got two deodorants, woodland and chill. I mean, I did come by Bunker Hill heading from work over as we go. And we have done a podcast in the woods on an island. That's true. Dan and I were talking about that beer. I don't even know about that. We'll send you the fuck. I will reject it. Dan and I were talking about that beer when we went upstairs to get more beer. Dan was saying, what were you saying? I'm not used to having a beer.
00:20:57
Speaker
I was just saying it's like, you don't have IPAs that have bitterness really anymore. Unless you get like a West Coast IPA. In general, yeah. In general. Yeah. But it's a trend for sure. It's like a piney bitterness. But with the fruit, like a fruit notes, tasting notes, but then you get the bitterness on the tongue and the back of the throat. Yeah. And it kind of caught me off guard. I didn't know what to expect. I was just going, oh, I had regular IPA. As much as I love hazy IPAs, every now and like, I'll go through phases where it's like back and just
00:21:25
Speaker
Downing hazy IPAs. I love them. They're awesome, right? I burned myself out and then I'm like, oh, that's right There are just IPAs out there. This is kind of and other beers. Yeah, fuck that. That's it. It's just IPAs and pastry stuff and that's it
00:21:40
Speaker
All right, we'll get done. And that was a joke. But this beer is kind of a nice, I feel like, mix of it. Like, I like fruitiness of hazy IPAs, but I also really, you know, kind of miss the bitterness of like old school kind of West Coast. Yeah, that's kind of what we were thinking. It's really good. I really like it. Can I ask you what hops you guys use in this one?
00:22:05
Speaker
this is where it gets nerd okay nevermind i won't ask you no i'm gonna tell you oh is it is it is it a secret i just don't remember oh it's fuggle
00:22:22
Speaker
I know it's a Citra Simcoe and yeah, there's something like stone like not me stone food tropical else that's in there I know whoever the third third top is he's a mystery app. That's fine We don't we don't know tell you as soon as I remember okay when it goes back to you That's gonna be you get like recording
00:22:43
Speaker
You can like do another recording and say, hey, it's not a secret. I just can't remember. The hop was? It's an insert. If you think about it over the weekend. Wait, hold on. Let's pause. And the mystery hop is? See, this one sucked because I don't brew anymore. And I don't remember anything. My mind's, I got so much shit going on in my brain.
00:23:09
Speaker
So that's actually a good question kind of like leading into the like the whole brewing aspect, you know You were a home brewer you came up with you know, obviously the idea for
Brewing Education and Internships
00:23:19
Speaker
this. Yeah, what led you into like
00:23:22
Speaker
I guess my question is, when you're a founder and you create this, how do you step away from brewing? How do you make that disconnect? Or are you still involved in making some executive decisions? Because we have talked to some people who run breweries who still get in there and brew, but for the most part aren't
00:23:48
Speaker
like you know yeah it's a it's tricky so there's different levels to this so um your first question how did this happen my original brewer Aaron Dow who created Lejeux and and and a bunch of our other beers um and crispy boy originally and all this stuff he
00:24:06
Speaker
So he moved to Pittsburgh. In fact, I just got a text from him today. He moved to Pittsburgh. His girlfriend's from there originally. Jill, she's awesome. And yeah, so she's from there originally. And she kind of reconnected with her family during COVID. So she came back and they had a discussion and said, hey, she's like, look, I'd like you to move back to Pittsburgh, as I understand it. So he did. But he found a job with, it's called Golden Age Brewing. And you can look it up.
00:24:36
Speaker
They have everything. They have all the social medias. And the key thing there, which is really funny, is they really wanted to do loggers. And he was really getting into loggers at the time, which we still are. And he kind of sucked me back into that damn thing, which is funny because we're going to go out there in May for a logger fest, which is going to be awesome. It's going to be like a reunion.
00:25:04
Speaker
I knew Aaron from the square kegs, which I live in Lincoln Square. It was a homebrew club at the time. I think it's still kind of around. And so I met Aaron there for something. And then I met him at our debut when we first had kegs out. We had a thing at Riverside Tavern, which is now another bar.
00:25:25
Speaker
and talk to him and he wanted to come work and brew so I hired him and I didn't have any money so he took up a huge pay cut and it was literally just the two of us and it was a fucking nightmare for a long time because we didn't, we only did kegs because we didn't have a canning line and it was just
00:25:45
Speaker
It was tough. And I think that's normal for a lot of strangers. It's just like they know. Yeah. But then you've got to convince people to buy your beer. Yeah. And then we signed up and distributed. So it was super tricky. Can I ask real quick, was that the first time you brewed on a commercial system? Like you had to upscale? No, I had gone to brewing school. And then I did a, so I spent a week. So it's a weird, it's kind of weird to describe. It sounds kind of.
00:26:37
Speaker
hokey but it's called american american brewers guild
00:26:41
Speaker
Yeah, so we had conspiracy IPA stop the steel logger
00:26:52
Speaker
I'm a cunt who should be arrested for this bitch. I can't say sedition. God damn you drinking. Build a wall of bok. Yeah, build a wall of bok. Anyway, that's actually awesome. So no, it's a miracle. So it's funny because this is how, this was like, what, 15 years ago?
00:27:10
Speaker
So, as a husband and wife, it sounds so goofy, but it was actually really, like, so I got a packet of DVDs. I know, it sounds ridiculous, right? I still have them. And so they hired a company to film these lectures, but they had, like, fucking, what's, uh, from Firestone Walker, what's his name? Oh, fuck that.
00:27:36
Speaker
You don't get you to Google, sorry. I know who you're talking about. I've met the son of a bitch. Is this like a Randy Rogers thing? Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, no. Matt Brindleson. Matt Brindleson. Matt Brindleson, I'm sorry, man. So he did a thing on hops and they had like a bunch of like
00:27:55
Speaker
really knowledgeable people and it was good for like because you know it actually worked out well because affordable I was at home I could watch this but I got into it like the the exams took forever like they give you an exam it took a week to get through all the shit it was really intensive and then we went out to Vermont for a week and we were at Harpoon Brewing which is based in Boston in Vermont they had and I think they still have as a bottling facility which I don't know if they moved to Cairns
00:28:22
Speaker
But all you could hear in this fucking place were bottles banging against each other. But it was great. I met all these awesome people who ended up opening other breweries that have won a lot of awards and stuff. And then part of it was you had to have an internship.
00:28:39
Speaker
I knew Doug and Tracy from Metropolitan a little bit. I had volunteered a few times. So they let me be an intern. So I was there. So I took off. That's a whole other story. But basically somehow I was looking for another company and somehow I managed to get five weeks off, which is such a weird story anyway, because I feel like
00:28:59
Speaker
Maybe there needs to be a whole part two now to us hanging out and talking about this. And I'm going to go back and clip like, you said that's another story. You said this is another story. You're not going to do it now. I'll give you the one minute. So I thought, for some reason, I had convinced myself in my brain that I had told my manager that I was going to be gone for five weeks.
00:29:20
Speaker
But the key is, this guy was already on his way out the door from where I was working. I was working at Chicago Tribune. And so he was already on his way out the door. So he never cared about me. I didn't sit by him. I was on another project. But I thought I had told him. And then one day,
00:29:36
Speaker
I came back and this guy said next week, he says, hey, your magic came by last week wondering where you were. And I'd already been out for five weeks, four weeks. And I went through my emails and I was like, oh, I kind of said, hey, I'm going to be doing this. But I never heard back from him. So he didn't actually. It never got the OK. It never actually got the OK. So it's weird because I was gone for five weeks. Which is just insane. Back in a month and a week. So then I worked at Metro. And it was in the middle of the winter.
00:30:05
Speaker
And it was awesome, because I mean, I was like, I learned all kinds of stuff. And we had a really great time and learned tons of shit. Metropolitan is someone we, recently we did a logger episode. Yeah. And we've talked in depth off mic about how we want to meet up with them and talk to them. So they're awesome. And so they learned everything. And I sucked a lot of knowledge from them. And they were very generous. And they've helped a lot of breweries take off.
00:30:35
Speaker
And so yeah, so that's where I, but the main reason I did it was I needed to get a bank loan, I needed to get investors.
00:30:45
Speaker
So I knew the first thing I asked was, what is your experience, right? So that had to be the answer. So I want to say it was like $8,000 to go to this, which compared to other brewing schools is a deal. And so it's what I needed. You didn't have to do it. But for me, that's what I felt I need to do.
00:31:12
Speaker
I did have experience cleaning tanks, filling everything that you had to do, learning the basics, safety and all that shit. I've heard horror stories of trying to upscale recipes and how it doesn't really equate all the time. It's easier to downscale than to upscale.
00:31:36
Speaker
I didn't really care about that because, A, I didn't know what the fuck I was going to brew, so I didn't have a recipe that was like, here's this homebrew recipe I'm going to put up here. We've got this salad. Yeah. And I didn't care. And looking back at it, it wouldn't have mattered anyway, right? Because you would just adapt to whatever that recipe is, and you'd figure it out. But it would be. If you were trying to actually recreate a homebrew recipe, oh, Jesus Christ, there's so many variables.
00:31:59
Speaker
So, um, but yeah, it was, uh, it was, uh, it, I learned a lot and it helped me here. And then my college degree helped me a lot just kind of figuring out how to solve problems, which is a big thing. I always talk about. I started out with my kids. My kids are both, my boys are both teenagers, but when they were younger, I'd be like, I like, I look at my go, look, I don't want problems. I want solutions. And they'd look at me.
00:32:25
Speaker
And I'm like, how are you going to get more avocado on your plate? How are you going to do that? You're going to get out of this high chair. You're going to crawl over the fridge, aren't you? But that was my aim. The whole thing was it was actually about like, don't.
00:32:40
Speaker
You got to figure shit out, right? You just have to do it. And I learned that in college. I learned how to solve these problems that, you know, right now that none of them are, you know, nothing's related to fucking how your shit settles in dirt, which is something I had to study, which was horrible by the way. Horrible geotechnical engineering. Do not recommend it. You heard it here first. It is. Do not study geotechnical engineering. Maybe that's the beginning of the
00:33:07
Speaker
But, but, but that was like, but, but it, uh, yeah. So, um, yeah. So that was a big part of helping me, helping me and getting here. And like, how do you solve a problem? I mean, we literally just did it this week. Like we had a problem with some Walter, Walter, have another martini year. That's all right. Wait till the end of the show.
00:33:32
Speaker
We'll get you there. Taking a problem. So it's all about, and this is something that anybody can use in life, you take a problem, and it doesn't matter what it is, it can be a relationship, and you break it down into little pieces and figure out how to solve those little pieces, right? And so we had, like today we had some water filters, and we couldn't figure out what was going on, so we started bringing it down, right? Well, it's gotta be simple. It's gotta be one of these three things. So we started messing with it, and we figured out what it was within a couple hours.
00:34:01
Speaker
But that's just stuff you have to do, right? And that's what I learned, and that's something I find very important and something I'm trying to teach my kids. And in any business you do, but something like brewing, where there's a lot of equipment, and shit goes wrong all the time. You hang out with brewers, and they'll say, oh, I fucking like how children went down. My boiler went down. I mean, it's just constant shit going down.
00:34:24
Speaker
and you can hire someone, and it's gonna cost you thousands of dollars, or you can figure it out. You can't do everything. I mean, you're shitting like, I gotta hire someone. But we've learned how to, we know now, mostly, when shit breaks, what the problem is.
00:34:41
Speaker
but oh my god. I've always found it amazing especially through the podcast and just being friends with people who work okay in my phone. Well I'll just say I think this is where we asked the Purdue School of Engineering to sponsor this episode.
00:34:59
Speaker
Good call, good call. I would love that. Now, it's funny hearing almost the same story from different breweries that we've talked to and people that we know who work in the brewing industry that it's kind of the same story. I don't think I've heard a story. I was like, start it up.
00:35:17
Speaker
Everything was cool. And there we go. $10 billion. And everything was fucking rad. And that was it. We never had any problems.
Corporate Life Frustrations
00:35:24
Speaker
And I use this as a very loose story that I worked at Lake Effect for a month when I was in between jobs. And it was a lot of fun. I loved it. And everything that you were talking about,
00:35:35
Speaker
like the Metropolitan intern, which is kind of what I was doing, but I was getting paid and I was also a delivery driver, which is to talk about the sciatic nerve thing. There we go. But I did learn a lot, and Clint's an awesome guy. I mean, Clint's been on the show a bunch. Yeah, no, Clint. Yeah, Clint's been. But just like when I heard it, working with him and learning everything about lake effect, you know, Bran and I have been hanging out there since they opened up. Yeah.
00:36:00
Speaker
it's it's cool to hear like not cool but it's it's refreshing almost to hear that everybody almost has the same path. Not refreshing that you guys you know had to go through it but it's it's it's the same it's almost the same formula but all these places are like the places that we reach out to are our breweries that we like. The trials and tribulations are always the same. And we it's unbelievable and you guys all make
00:36:24
Speaker
awesome beer which we haven't even really said yet that yeah I mean we fully got to about how much we like Larma's beer. Well I appreciate that. But um but yeah it's cool to hear the stories of like it's like a punk rock it's a very punk rock story you
Challenges in the Brewing Industry
00:36:37
Speaker
know what I mean? Yeah it's crazy. It's like starting a band where it's like let's see if people like this and then you just you know maybe play the Metro you know two times and that was you know it was cool. Yeah I'd love to play the Metro.
00:36:49
Speaker
So, this is an awesome segue. My next question kind of leads into some other stuff, but I'm going to use this opportunity to take another break. You got two breaks on this show? Yeah!
00:37:20
Speaker
Join the luminaires motherfucker. Oh, sorry. No, I'm using that somewhere that is Second break this is I don't know of many episodes other than oh when we did the fucking first part of our bourbon County
00:37:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah your own media pack. Yeah, we don't get media packs from Goose Island So we built our own we bought all of this past year's Bourbon County and so we've done three of the So we're slowly doing episodes reviewing all those sitting down and drink all the variance. Yeah Okay, the first one we did regular Blanton's and
00:38:00
Speaker
I don't even, man, I know, so it's a funny story about that. Do you wanna record it? You ready? Yeah, we're gonna record it. Okay, that's all right. Well, yeah, we're recording. So back in... Back in my day. Back in our day, this island was an island full of geese. It's true. I was out there just still there, but the geese is all gone. They got made into beer. They got made into a nice quilt is what they got made into. Now that wouldn't work, you couldn't do it like that. It'd be a, you know, a comforter. Yeah, there you go.
00:38:27
Speaker
But we used to go to Busan when it was just the brew pub on Clyburn before they had the production brewery. And I had one of the first ever Bourbon County Stouts. And I can remember we were sitting there and I remember drinking this and I was like, this is the most amazing
00:38:46
Speaker
beer, because no one had ever done it before, right? And it was at least, who's the founder? John Hall. Greg Hall, his son, is credited with creating that style.
00:39:01
Speaker
Since been this but anyway, so that whole part right there. I can't get cut out. Yeah 44 minutes. That's all right I'm gonna listen to the whole fucking thing because a lot going on. He's a cocksucker anyway Oh my god, the stories have hurt so but I remember drinking that beer. I was like, holy shit. This is amazing
00:39:19
Speaker
And that was before they had no bottle line, they had no nothing. And that was the only way you could get it was at the brew pub. So it's funny now because it just blew up like crazy. And now at the actual, at Goose Island here in Chicago, most of their production is used for Bourbon County. That's where it's going now. We got a chance to do the, when they first started doing the prop day, we did, what was it? When was that? When was the first prop day? Five years ago?
00:39:48
Speaker
Oh, that we did. Yeah, we went to the warehouse. What's the prop? Wait, prop day? What's the prop day? To go to, like, they release stuff. Yeah, they call it prop day. Yeah, I think it was 2016. Why is it called prop? I don't understand why. Because they have the propaganda. Propagandhi. Propagandhi shows up, they start playing. Yeah, propaganda stuff. It's the one that's going to be released in Chicago. You think I should know something else, but I don't know. I don't know what anyone's doing anymore. No, I'm actually impressed that you don't.
00:40:18
Speaker
refreshing uh but we went in was like we got to go through the whole barrel facility hmm you've been there before me I've never been in there pretty nice guy like friends are like they don't do it in there and I would never like we ever get invited we're like well we're bringing Gary yeah let me know I'm gonna go in there I've never been in there a lot of people are making promises to us about
00:40:41
Speaker
Oh, that was a euphemism. That didn't actually mean... Oh, you thought I actually meant barrel. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. All right, moving on to the bit that we're drinking right now, because I... I mean, I know... Well, actually, real quick, Dan, you had a question. Do you remember what your question was before you took that break? Oh, Matt, I was going to ask. So you started in 20... You started brewing in 2015. Yes.
Choosing the Brewery Location
00:41:02
Speaker
And how did you pick Asagunosh?
00:41:04
Speaker
If I'm saying that correctly. That's a god damn great question. Which I know you guys are, the limited research I did, you guys are the only bar or brewery with a patio in Saginash? We're the only bar or brewery in, like almost in, there's hardly, I don't think, there's not much around until you get
00:41:20
Speaker
Yeah, so that's a whole whole thing doesn't count anymore cuz they took theirs out so I'll get into that in a second but that's how a little city stuffy one of that but so well for me it was a that I had a You know few criteria had to be relatively close to where I live in Lincoln Square
00:41:39
Speaker
And I had to have tall ceilings, right? You have to have, you know, you got to fit some vessels in there. So our ceilings are 16 feet tall, which is really the bare minimum. I mean, I wouldn't want to be any shorter. And, you know, I obviously wish it was taller because we could put taller, skinnier fermenters. But and I just found it with a real estate broker.
00:42:03
Speaker
And it was, let's see, what was here, it was a screen printer. So it wasn't even, they weren't even using all the space. So down here in this basement where we are, they would do the actual screen printing where they, I don't know how they do it, they developed the screen print and shit. So, and then upstairs they did, but I don't even know. And then the company that owned it, bought it, that guy had moved out and found it and it was perfect.
00:42:31
Speaker
And the craziest part of the whole fucking thing is this building right here, right here, that we're connected to, was the Siebel Institute of Brewing Studies. And they built that in the 1950s. And that whole building was Siebel's right here. And that was the brewing school.
00:42:56
Speaker
Wow. But they never had a brewery. Well, they had a little tiny pilot. So this over here was not a brewery. So as I understand it, some of the Siebel, some of the Siebel brothers had a side business and this was a warehouse where they were selling shit. I still don't know. I still don't know that whole story. But so over here, like you look at some of the luminaries or the lumineers and the craft industry, like Dan Carey from New Glarus, which is my favorite brewery on planet earth. He went school in that building right there, which is crazy.
00:43:26
Speaker
And so, you know, I'm friends with like Ray Daniels and he lives, like he lives really close by, but he's got stories about this place that he used to be in here and teaching stuff. So it's just a weird, crazy coincidence. That's so cool. Yeah, it is, right? You find that out after you picked it?
00:43:41
Speaker
After, when I was looking at it, somebody told me that, and the only way you would know, there's an electrical box, and we still have it, and someone had put a Siebel sticker on it. And that's the only indication whatsoever. But then, a friend of mine, Keith Lemke,
00:43:58
Speaker
Who's uh and he's Canadian so he says a boot all the time but he he there's a few look up there's a uh he sent he gave me this uh framed picture of what the building looked like which is exactly the same except it's at sievel and some of the pictures inside so it's like he and he came out in the courtyard and he's like oh you wouldn't believe all the stuff about up here i just want to see a boot because i don't know what else they do but he's just talking about oh we used to hang out here we used to drink this and then you know just going on and on about all these stories so it's
00:44:27
Speaker
It's a little piece of American craft brewing history. So it's really weird that we're like right here next to it. So it's so crazy. So that's how it goes. The height, the price was great. It had the things when you had a dock and all these other things that you don't really know about until you need something and you're like, you know, the dock, what do I need a dock? See all the fun shit you can learn when you listen to this show. Hey, it's the malting hour.
00:44:51
Speaker
Try to make that a name. That is awesome. That's cool. It just happened upon it. It worked out really well.
00:44:59
Speaker
So I think you wanted to get into a question about
Lejeux IPA Success
00:45:01
Speaker
Lejeux. I did, because as I said, this is the first. I was not interested. God bless. Well, you didn't understand it, because you didn't ask the question. Did droids not have silent mode? I don't know. It's the same song. What the fuck is that? Same song, man. Oh, it's on iPhone. That's why. OK, sorry, guys. It's very, very cool.
00:45:26
Speaker
Bullshit. I call bullshit. So when hazy IPAs became a... See how smooth that was and you fucking ruined that brain. You could've just kept talking. Your mom, your mom, your mom. My wife did just say dinner's ready when I went home and was like, well, we started a little later. We took our break, so eat without me.
00:45:51
Speaker
I wasn't interested in hazy IPAs. Nor were we. I wasn't. When I first heard about it, and I was like, well, what the fuck is this? And it was shortly after brute IPAs were a thing. And I was not into that either. I'm like, what do you mean a dry IPA? And I think maybe I had two and was not into it. And I'm really glad that that fad kind of like- We brewed one just to see what it'd be like. And how was it? It was great. It was actually really interesting. It was called Let's Get Physical with F-I-Z-Z.
00:46:20
Speaker
Yeah. This shit was tight. Do you get the song reference? Yeah. OK. Thanks, Dan. Anyway, so when we went to the Great American Beer Fest in 2018. Oh, very good year to go. It was a good year to go. And we met up with a friend. And that was the first time I tried a milkshake IPA. I won't say who the brewery was, but you and I both did not like it.
00:46:50
Speaker
Tried some other beers that were good. And then that's a text message. Well, I have it set up so it is different lights if I wanted to. It's cool when you have an Android, you can have light shows for text. OK. So I don't think I actually had this there. But a son of a, you can just turn your phone off if you want to.
00:47:19
Speaker
If you don't have Siri, what is it? Jesus Christ! What triggers? Hey Google! Run my life!
00:47:29
Speaker
So, so I don't like, I didn't like hazy IPAs. Yes. Uh, did not like brute IPAs. So when hazy IPAs came out, I was like, okay, so it's just another thing that's gonna, you know, the small fad, um, great American brute fest brand and I were there in 2018, had a milkshake IPA, did not like it. And I was kind of thought that that was going to be like, that's what hazy IPAs were as well.
00:47:56
Speaker
Come to find out, I'd already been here, as we talked about on the break, my brother-in-law and I had already been here. And that's when I think we came here and had pants lists. This was definitely on tap. My brother-in-law and I were...
00:48:11
Speaker
big paleo fans in general so that was like awesome for us and just regular IPA fans so i knew that you guys won for this and i think maybe i have to go if clark was here he would say i'm wrong because i probably had Lejeux before it but i don't know dan if you gotta pull it out it's fine um but
00:48:32
Speaker
Lejeux has become hands down. I have many check-ins on tap to make sure that I know how much I'm drinking and my wife will never see. Lejeux is hands down my favorite ACIP. Oh, thank you. That's awesome. It really is. I've talked about it.
00:48:53
Speaker
I think Clark and I, did you ever, the collaboration you did with Old Irving? The, what was it? The Bees. The Bees. No, was it Bees Juice? What the hell? The Bees. It was the Bees. We just did the other one this week. Really? And I think it's going to be Bees Juice. Yeah, all the labels are going to be amazing. We've rooted it. Oh yeah, it's going to be amazing. It's going to be hilarious. Because we're fans of Old Irving. We love them.
00:49:18
Speaker
They're super cool. They're our favorite people. We just talked to Trevor not that long ago. Yeah, we did so great. Actually, that was one of the best interviews we ever did because just Trevor talked all the time. And we barely said anything, so that was so much fun. Lots to live up to. But no, Lejeux is awesome. And you guys took gold. And that was the year that Chicago took medals for hazy.
00:49:46
Speaker
For it being known as an East Coast type beer, pretty much, the fact that Chicago took it, I thought, was amazing. Yeah, it went pretty well that year. Tell me about that experience. Tell us. Well, so that was the first year they ever had that category, right? So it's funny, because basically all of 2018 and into 2019,
00:50:11
Speaker
We marketed as, you know, we're the gold medal winner. And then, you know, old Irving won the next year, right? Which is fucking awesome. We love that. But going forward now, what we say, we were the first ever gold medal winner, J.B.F., because we are. And so it's a little piece of craft beer history. Yeah, that's a weird thing. So when I first saw the style,
00:50:37
Speaker
I remember being at, what's the Garfield Conservatory? Oh, Bear in the Glass. Bear in the Glass, yeah. And I remember seeing a microphone, and I know Mike Powell, and I'm not good friends with him, but we've known each other for a long time, and I saw people lined up.
00:50:53
Speaker
And I was so frustrated that people weren't lining up for a beer. And I walk over, I'm like, what the fuck am I lining up with? He's like, it was called Check Moon 2. And he goes, and I go, what is it? And he goes, oh, that's a hazy AP, whatever, New England, but I don't know what we were calling it at the time. And I was like, oh, can I try? Yeah, of course we want to. And I'd heard of the style. And my impression was that it was a beer that they just let the yeast get into the beer, and it was unfiltered. And I was like, that's fucking ridiculous.
00:51:23
Speaker
And so I drank it, and I was like, oh, shit, this is really good. And then I saw BJ Pitchman, who was the brewer for, oh, shit. Is that Pipeworks? BJ? No, no. No, that's the other BJ. I can't think of that. It's a brew pub on Chicago Avenue. Oh, Rock Bottom? No! I'm stupid. No, I'm sorry. I can't even.
00:51:50
Speaker
I like how you both said no, though. I came up to him and I said,
Embracing Hazy IPAs
00:51:54
Speaker
hey, I just had a forbidden root. I go, yes, forbidden root. Thank you. Jesus Christ. Yeah, by the way, BJ left the industry and went back to corporate America. Sucka. But he, I went up to him and I said, hey, I just had this. I knew he had been brewing them. And he goes, I go, what is this? Is this just yeast being left behind? He goes, no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:52:17
Speaker
So he's like, go on, get on Google, look up biotransformation, all this stuff. And I was like, shit. So I looked at that. I mean, we've got videos. If you look back, probably on Facebook or something, we've got videos of us emptying up the brew kettle when we were done, and like hot matter going to a glass, and we're like, hey, we made an easy APA. We're literally making fun of this shit, like a bunch of idiots.
00:52:40
Speaker
So I started researching it and we tasted some and I started seeing them and of course being the owner and you know, we were not doing very well financially. I was like, I didn't know how we were. We didn't have it, you know, the tap room wasn't open yet. No, tap room wasn't. No, I guess the tap room had just opened. So we were doing okay, but I was like, shit. So Aaron, the brewer, Aaron Dowell, he was like adamantly against it, as was I. And at one point I went up to him and I said,
00:53:10
Speaker
So I don't like run this place like, this is what we're gonna fucking do motherfuckers. I'm interested in Aaron. I go, I think we need to research the spear style because I think it's really good. It's not what I thought it was. And I think this could really help us.
00:53:26
Speaker
and Aaron Buck and once he took it on he he knew everything so we all know we all know each other all the brews so he he we talked to Maplewood we brew with Maplewood he went around to what's the original crushed by Giants what's their first location because we know Frank before corridor thank you don't get old you guys
00:53:49
Speaker
So I've known Brent from Dry Hop, so they were doing some really good hazy, so we just learned, we learned some of the basics, and we researched, and he fucking went down it, and we did an original hazy with Maplewood, and it had so much lactose in it, that it was fucking sticky on the side of the glass, which we didn't know, and then we kept tweaking it, and he came up with Lejeux.
00:54:14
Speaker
We were like, this is it, man. And so we pulled way back on the lactose and stuff, which, side note, I wish we didn't have lactose in it, but someday we may get rid of it. We did a Mystery Beer episode last year that, before we did it, I had one. I had one issue. We did the episode, and the other guy, Clark,
00:54:36
Speaker
made that part of the mystery, and I couldn't figure out what it was, but I think I got to the point where it was like a hazy IPA. And I'm like, I think maybe I brought lactose, or somebody read the description, there's lactose. I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? They're drinking this for like three years now. Again, there's lactose. Son of a bitch. Yeah, I didn't know until you came out with Drag Through the Garden.
00:54:57
Speaker
Yeah, so that yeah, so So it's a small I mean, I mean it's like it's not a lot. Yeah. Yes, but the idea at the time Yeah was that it gave it body and the sweetness helped Absolutely. Um, and then and then Trevor at OIB. He's the one that shows me you don't need lactose because that's like we thought and then you know the beezer and I was like, oh my mind was like
00:55:21
Speaker
So we still have it because that's the beer. But at some point, we want to pull it out because I just don't want lactose. I just don't want it in there. But it's hard to do because that's 60% of our production is that beer. And I can't mess with it. But I would thank you. But I wish it wasn't in there. So it's funny. You guys are looking at all those variants over there. None of the variants have lactose in them. That's awesome. The only beer we make
00:55:49
Speaker
ever with lactose is that one. And that's it. Even genus variants, we don't put lactose. Like a DJ, just slowly mix it out. You know what I mean? Well, we might do that. We might do it at some point. Little by little by little. And plus there's people lactose intolerant. And side note for anybody who wonders why we don't put on the label, well, I tried.
00:56:10
Speaker
and the TTB, the Tax and Trade Bureau, who is the federal agency that oversees labels and taxing those for breweries. Everybody's favorite. They, it's such a weird, you can't say contains lactose. What you have to say is, you have to say the origin of where an ingredient comes from. So you have to say, it would have to say contains milk,
00:56:37
Speaker
parentheses where the milk's from lactose. So of course, anybody looking at the label would assume that there's milk in it. So that's just silly. So I'm sure there's other ways you can, I don't know. I never really delved down it, but that's why we don't, we don't try to hide it. It just, it was, I was like, you gotta be kidding me. This is ridiculous. Clark found it. So Clark found that there was lactose and I forgot how he did it, but that's how he. Yeah. So we have it on our, we have it on our, I think it's on our website. We don't, we don't try to hide it at all. We want people to know it, but it's just, we couldn't,
00:57:06
Speaker
The federal government was stupid, so. To this day, it still is my favorite, like hazy IPA. It's also, there's a bunch of hazy IPAs, especially in Chicago, I feel like, where, when it comes to barrel-aged outs and hazy IPAs, there's great lawyers, too. I'm not trying to, I mean, you were talking about metropolitan.
00:57:26
Speaker
Like, we're kind of spoiled in that sense, but Le Joux is like, it's awesome to find it when I go grocery shopping now, too. Where it's like, oh cool, Le Joux, grab that. It keeps getting picked up more and more. Yeah, just having it in my original area, it's great. There's a few breweries that end up in my house. Revolution is one, and Le Joux always makes it. Well, thank you.
00:57:50
Speaker
We love the beer, and we keep tweaking. We can tweak it a little bit here and there, but we're getting closer. Like right now, the big thing we're doing is looking at dissolved oxygen, which requires a $25,000 piece of equipment that we bought last year, which is about this big. I told my wife, I'm like, hey, honey, we bought a $25,000 piece of equipment. Would you like to know how big it is? She goes, is it the size of a car? I go, no. It's the size of a fucking old cassette player from Radio Shack.
00:58:18
Speaker
That's an old reference, by the way. So I showed her that. She's like, that's impossible. So we're now at the point where we can figure out how much oxygen is in it, which is going to make an oxidize faster. It's getting that figured out. That's awesome. We're now really getting into quality control and all that stuff. But that beer is not going to change for a while, other than maybe taking some lactose out. But it's our number one selling beer. You very first. The lactose is exiting. The lactose is exiting the building. At some point.
00:58:47
Speaker
But right now, I mean, uh, to continue this conversation, we have brewed other, um, uh, hazies. We've got the, the business hops upstairs, which is a small badge. Thank you. That's all like, um, it's all a play on the.
00:59:03
Speaker
fly the concords and the business socks. But for us what we have kind of come to a conclusion is that
00:59:18
Speaker
if we make other hazies, it doesn't sell that well for us. It's weird. Like no one, we don't have, like we had the juice variants and it doesn't, we thought we could really capitalize on that. And I think so really, quite frankly, the only hazy we're ever really going to brew is juice and that's it. And we're not going to do other
00:59:37
Speaker
out of the, what is it, seven that's over there? I've had five. Simco, I really like Simco and Citra. Yeah, Simco was our favorite. And I've not done the, what's the coffee one? Java Juice. It's unique. Well, and it's funny because I've seen it and I wanted to get it each time that I saw it because
00:59:58
Speaker
Coffee, and I tell you about this, coffee and IPAs, it does work really, really well. It sounds insane, especially if someone's just getting into that period. Well, my friends at Aleman, they did that one that they won the contest with Two Brothers and Stone. Dayman? Yeah, Dayman. And that beer, I was like, holy shit, this is amazing. And I remember sitting at the... Oh, it's an amazing coffee IP.
01:00:21
Speaker
I remember sitting at the Hop Leaf when they debuted, and I didn't even know the guys at the time, and I'm good friends with them now, and I just drank the shit out of that beer, and I got really drunk, and I remember talking to, what's his name from Stone, which I don't know what I'm talking about.
01:00:35
Speaker
But I remember getting so. Because he don't remember his name. That's why you don't know. Greg, Greg, Greg Cook. But anyway, so. But that beer is delicious. So that's kind of what inspired us to come up with this. So we probably won't do it again just because it sounds OK, but it's not something that. Do you ever be like a taproom? Oh, yes. That might be a taproom. So I get a small batch. Well, the reason I say that is so that I can come back and try.
01:00:57
Speaker
Because we do it with whole bean coffee from Big Shoulders, which is a local roastery. And they're good friends. And they're awesome guys. And so. I'm pretty sure there's a benny. When did you guys release it? Oh, we did it a couple years ago. And then we did it again. So. Just recently? Did you use it for a recent reason? Yeah, we did it like in October maybe? November? Still saying. I did see some four packs of the bennies by maybe. Yeah, that's probably out of code. No, don't drink it. No, don't. Drink it. Drink it. No. I really wanted. I feel better. And that's a big problem, just so people know.
01:01:28
Speaker
retail stores, any retail store, it's really hard to be able to, you can go in there, and how a beer can be six months old, you don't have to, or a year old. We've talked about that to extend. It's horrible. Build your own six-pack. It's hard to do. I look at dates all the time. I used to be embarrassed when like lifting up a six-pack and looking at the bottom, like the dates on there. Even with you guys, there are some places where there's Mariano's where I like, oh, there's you, and I, when the label had changed,
01:01:55
Speaker
And I'd looked at one sticker on top, one sticker on the other, which by the way, I never used like
01:02:00
Speaker
It is so important for breweries to just, if it's a sticker or you're throwing the dates in the bottom of the can inside of a bottle, whatever, throw it on there because there are people out there who fucking care. And we'll probably tell the brewery, be like, hey, just so you know, I was at this place. We want people to know.
Labeling Challenges and Freshness
01:02:18
Speaker
And we still, by the way, we do the stickers because buying the thing that prints on the can, that's 10 to $20,000. I had someone on Facebook like, this is industry standard. You shouldn't use a sticker.
01:02:29
Speaker
And I almost got in there and I backed off. I was like, bitch, why don't you give me $10,000 to $15,000 and I'll fucking buy one. My rant real quick, if you can't figure out the sticker, you shouldn't be buying beer. But it's really hard to, if you imagine controlling inventory, how do you do it? And I think part of the problem is that there's some technology solutions that we could do where they could scan and have code. You could come up with a whole new system, and then they'd be able to say, oh, we got beer going on code. Let's move it to the front.
01:02:56
Speaker
Let's figure it out and it would just be easier to do but instead of you guys you guys have to have your distributors really kind of monitor it's a combination of distributors retailers and us and it's just I think there's also like it falls a lot probably in the retailers because there's a grocery store yes right by me yes where I see stuff sit there and then it's been there for a year and then now that it's February yes and
01:03:19
Speaker
there is a red tag saying clearance. It's now $4 cheaper. They should have that. So that's a simple solution, right? And again, breaking down solution. They should have someone come in there every week, every two weeks.
01:03:29
Speaker
going through and figuring out look at the name and not to because you can start I mean if you really need to start knocking out prices earlier be like hey guess what this is on sale because it's been here for a month and it's not moved well there's an extra barcode or something that you haven't put on there says this this shows the date and people just like scan it as it comes in they would oh hey guys look around we should have three cases of XYZ
01:03:52
Speaker
that's coming out of code, so we need to get it out of here, or they send it back to the distributor, which the distributor has to pay for. We do not, because that's the way the law works. Thankfully, we have something on our side, but anyway. But normally we don't.
01:04:08
Speaker
the employees at big box grocery stores, which I think would be kind of hard. But there are people who like, it's hard. Cause imagine like you got fucking all the stuff in there. You got fruit and stuff like potato chips. But there's like specific departments. I mean, you have like liquor in your door. It's like, I get it. But it should just be like, there's a technology solution there, but no one's actually thought about it. There are certain grocery stores that seem to do, I mean, I didn't know it has to do with location. Just drink the mic.
01:04:35
Speaker
It has to do with location where it seems to be much better than others. It just so happens to be that so close to me, the places that I go, I feel that I have a better chance of getting fresher beer at Aldi.
01:04:52
Speaker
Yeah, and I was going to say not to name drop other podcast, other beer podcast, but shout out to Chris Quinn because he's the one I feel like who really ingrained in my head, like to look for dates. And this is like years ago. He is notorious for being strict about it. I'm sorry. Fresh dates to know freshness.
01:05:15
Speaker
Have another drink, Gully. That's right. This whole conversation is going to be conducted. It's sponsored by this Manhattan act right now. But yeah, he's really, and that's fine. I mean, that's good. The problem is there's a latency between when a distributor picks up a beer, and it gets to their warehouse, and it gets into their system, and then someone orders it, and they send it out. That's just the way it is. And I'll be honest, distributor warehouses are
01:05:46
Speaker
how should I say this nicely? There's a lot of inefficiencies there that could be addressed. That's very PC. Yeah, I mean, sure. I mean, I again, I'm looking at prom like this is so simple. It's all data, right? Yeah, just have a scanner. And you know where it is. And whatever. Are we are we done? Yeah. No, we are. Hey, we got we got we got the RAVO signal. We got the RAVO signal.
01:06:09
Speaker
You have to piss. I gotta wait and find out if there's soup in the sink. I want to close this with any thoughts that you have about what we talked about and kind of prefaces that there's probably going to be a part two.
Episode Wrap-Up and Announcements
01:06:21
Speaker
Yeah, would you mind coming back and us doing another one? Oh, yeah, let's do that That'd be hilarious because if there's anything you want to like drop that's coming out As this we're opening a brothel right down here because this episode just came This is Valentine's Day. This episode is out on Valentine's Day Just so you know, so the brothel Valentine's Day
01:06:44
Speaker
Hey, that's the joke. I always use people like if you were brewing. What would you do? I'm like I'd open a brothel My wife's like you wouldn't be able to open a brothel. You wouldn't really get anybody work for you. I'm like, that's hurtful That's hurtful. It's hurtful. That's really hurtful sometimes the truth can't get an SBA loan for brothel What's this world coming through? Let's do this. So yeah kind of found out what Brandon said
01:07:06
Speaker
We're gonna wrap this up because I can't wait to hear what this sounds like as I say it for a lot of episodes, but It's February 14th when this episode is now airing. Oh, yeah, you're fucking watching I got to get a card last year we did you know we didn't super Bob so you as you know that the
01:07:33
Speaker
as one of the Super Bowls. Do you have anything coming up that you want to talk about as far as coming weeks, coming months, this year? I will say, so in Lincoln Square, the weekend after, so this is going to be Monday the 14th, so that means the coming weekend. Winter Brew. We've got Winter Brew and Lincoln Square. It's on Lincoln Avenue between Wilson and Eastwood, so if you know where the
01:07:59
Speaker
I live there. What the hell? Davis Theater. Right there. Right by there. So the street's gonna be blocked off. It's gonna be outside. So it's gonna be freezing fucking cold. Hell yeah. And it's gonna be eight hours. No, it's gonna be cold as shit. It's gonna be eight hours on Saturday and eight hours on Sunday. Are you gonna be there at the hotel? And I've already been bitching.
01:08:17
Speaker
No, I would not be there with it. But I would definitely be there. My wife and I will be there. We're going to split it up because we're all like, Jesus, who the hell wants to work eight hours out in the cold? But anyway, we're going to have a good time with it. We're going to have a fine day. And if you didn't see the NBC thing, go to NBC Chicago and look up Alarmist, whatever. We'll link it in the episode. We'll link it in the episode. And that was not my idea, by the way. That was Carly from Bottles and Cans. Yeah, but you did it. Well, Gary, thanks a lot, man.
Reflective Discussions and Metaphors
01:08:43
Speaker
Of course. I just want to point out that we did reach out to you April 2012.
01:08:47
Speaker
Here we are, but that's awesome. We talked about it in the parking lot, man. Life is not a sprint. It's a fucking marathon. And as the turtle, just slow and steady wins the race. That's the thing. Is that what it was? Turtle falls there, yeah. I don't know, man. It's getting so much beer since I've been here. Jesus Christ. A turtle is something. Something slow wins the race. Something slow, you did it and we won.
Gratitude and Future Plans
01:09:12
Speaker
Thanks a lot, man. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, you bet, man. This has been awesome. Thanks, Gary. Yeah, let's do a part two. We will. Brandon, love you, man. Love you too, bud. Dan. Thanks for, you didn't, you didn't fuck up for your second episode, man. Sophomore slump, overcome. Cut! Fuck, now I gotta leave that in. Bye! I love it!
Social Media and Closing Remarks
01:09:34
Speaker
This has been The Malting Hour. Be sure to follow us on all social media by searching The Malting Hour and at themaltinghour.com. You can also follow us individually on social media. Brandon can be found on Instagram as bmdub81, on Twitter, bdub81, and on Untapped as bdubdrinksbeer. Tony can be found on Instagram and Untapped under Ace of Hope Chicago. On Twitter, The Ace of Hope Chicago. Clark can be found as Clarkowski on all three.
01:10:02
Speaker
Dan can be found on Instagram as hip underscore underscore hops and hip hops on YouTube. 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.