Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 81 - Double Clutch Brewing
138 Plays3 years ago
This week we're joined by head brewer Scott Frank and general manager Steve Milford of Double Clutch Brewing in Evanston, IL.
https://www.doubleclutchbrewing.com/
Theme music provided by Myke Kelli (@mykekelli)
Outro music provided by @FluidMinds
Check out all our episodes at www.themaltinghour.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Episode and Guests
00:00:00
Speaker
Sleep in the back of a car. Nobody will know. Scott keeps threatening to build a hammock upstairs with the loggering tanks. But I know that's a dangerous thing to do because once I put my head down, I'm out. That's it. This week we're joined by Scott Frank and Steve Milford of Double Clutch Brewing. This is episode 81 of The Malting Hour.
00:00:21
Speaker
What's the haps on the house? Guy, ease that speech This the moat now, 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 Gotta get a cab, the friends who wish you had Join us for a drink, join us for a laugh Time is never wasted, way you're getting wasted The moat and I will hear people, people taking places People, people taking places People, people taking places
00:00:48
Speaker
Welcome to The Malting Hour. I'm one of your hosts, Tony Gholich, joined always with Brandon Winninger. And we are here in a lovely Evanston suburb of Chicago, if you're not familiar. And we are joined with Scott Frank, the head brewer, and Steve Milford, general manager.
00:01:03
Speaker
And we are here at Double Clutch Brewing. Thanks, guys, for having us here this morning and letting us come out and talk to you guys. Thanks for coming by. Having a beer at 9.45, 9.50? Is it 10 o'clock now? It's 10 o'clock. It's 10 o'clock. All right, so that works with me. That's a good morning.
00:01:18
Speaker
Everybody spilled it on myself. I didn't need to go home.
Origin of Double Clutch Brewing
00:01:22
Speaker
So why don't you guys tell us a little bit about Double Clutch? You guys are fairly new, obviously. Yeah, so we opened in October 29th, right around Halloween of 2021. We were delayed by COVID, of course. Of course. And so we haven't even been open six months, but so far so good. I think the winter was a little tough.
00:01:45
Speaker
I don't know what this stupid dry January is, but I don't like it. We've done it before. Yeah, I refuse. I didn't do it this year. I always do it February. It's shorter. Smart. I do dry mornings, but not this morning. So how did Devil Clutch come to be?
00:02:07
Speaker
Well, if you want to know the whole story. So so I have a younger brother. He's five and a half years younger than I am. And he was a chef at the time. So this was about 13, 14 years ago. And we were we'd sit around and drink beers were a couple of beer geeks, obviously.
00:02:24
Speaker
And we were shooting the breeze about things we'd never done making bucket lists. And he, you know, just stupid talk, and he said he had never made his own sausages before because he was a chef. And we went through, like, we'd never made cheese, pickles.
00:02:42
Speaker
bread and beer came up. I said, well, I had a roommate once that made beer. I thought that was kind of cool. I'd never done that before. So that conversation passed and was forgotten. And then about a month later, I get a call from my brother and he says, guess what I'm doing? I'm packing my own sausages.
00:02:58
Speaker
I'm like, ah, crap. So my younger brother couldn't upstage me. So I went out and bought John Palmer's How to Brew, right? And I read it cover to cover. Didn't get it all, but I was interested. Gotta start somewhere. That's a good book to start with. Exactly. So some of it's easy and some of it's hard. So I went down to Brew and Grow, and there's a guy who doesn't work there anymore named Rob that took me under his wing, and he said,
00:03:21
Speaker
I told him I want to do all grain brewing. I want to do the real deal. You went all in. I wanted to go all in. And he said, you know, cool your jets. He pointed me over to where the kits were. So I bought like a hundred dollar five gallon, you know, drum and
00:03:39
Speaker
carboy, whatever that $100 kick came with. The bucket and the tubes. We started there.
Scott Frank's Brewing Journey
00:03:47
Speaker
So he said try five of these on your kitchen sink and if you still got a passion for it, come back and talk to me. So I did and I did still have a passion.
00:03:56
Speaker
And it evolved from there onto a Bunsen burner or a banjo burner, I guess, on the deck. Because the family, I have two kids and a wife, and they were complaining about the smell in the kitchen when I would boil. Absolutely. It's a beautiful smell. Yeah. Real quick, my wife can't stand the smell of me brewing. And I have an electric
00:04:20
Speaker
set up where I could, you know, vent it out the window if I really wanted to do it in the basement. She cannot stand the smell. She's like, it reminds her of SpaghettiOs. Oh, that's not good. Yeah. Chef Boyardee. Chef Boyardee don't. Yeah. Sorry. Anyway. No, it's an interesting sidebar. So, but eventually that evolved into a 20 gallon
00:04:44
Speaker
tiered gravity brewery in my garage. And it got to the point where I couldn't park cars in there. We couldn't park our cars in there. I had taken over it. I had two kegerators. I converted an old refrigerator into a kegerator. Put it on a dolly. I built a dolly. I used to be a cabinet maker. So I'm crafty with my hands, I suppose. Built this thing that for block parties, I would wheel this out. And I could put four corny kegs in there with four different flavors on tap.
00:05:11
Speaker
I was a hit in the neighborhood, but it meant I had to brew more and more, so it really became a full-time hobby.
00:05:19
Speaker
My wife was taking the kids to nursery school and met another family who had their oldest kid, who was the same age as ours, and hit it off with this mom. And she said, our husbands should meet each other. And I had met a lot of dads. When your kids are in nursery school, you meet a lot of dads. But this guy, Mike Jacasian, was the first one that said, hey, let's get a beer.
00:05:42
Speaker
Instantly, we hit it off. And we both had a passion for cars. We're both gear heads and we're both beer heads. And so we would sit in my garage when I would brew or when I wasn't brewing and just demolish my supply of beer. It's a good way to get rid of kegs. Exactly. You got to make space for more. Right. Because you're constantly wanting... Actually, what I wanted to do was brew, right? And keep experimenting with new flavors.
00:06:10
Speaker
And so it gave us a great opportunity. And we would sit there and daydream about building a brew pub.
Partnership with Mike Jacasian
00:06:16
Speaker
So that really wasn't feasible for us. Had we done it, this would have been around, I don't know, maybe 2015. We would have failed because we didn't know what we were doing. But he's a property owner and he
00:06:32
Speaker
had a restaurant that wasn't paying the rent essentially and evicted them. And he is two attorneys that do his real estate.
00:06:41
Speaker
attorney stuff, I'm not an attorney, stuff's the best word I can use. Expensive. Expensive, yes. So they owned a couple restaurants and so they said, hey, we can do a restaurant here. And they had the passion to do this Neapolitan brick oven pizza straight from, I don't know if it's Neapolitan or Neapolitan. So they opened Napolito. It was a raging success. And then they opened Pescadero.
00:07:09
Speaker
A very long story, slightly shorter. They now own 12 restaurants in the Chicagoland area. So once that became a network for them, and they had all of the managerial staff and cooks and waiters and everything, servers, now this became feasible. Sure. They said, how could we spend a lot of money? Exactly.
00:07:30
Speaker
So this was, it isn't any longer, but this was to date the most expensive project they had. Wow. I mean, look at all that stainless steel. Yeah, exactly. This place is beautiful, like walking up to it. Not to mention the cars. Yeah, not to mention the cars, I know. So that's their family's collection, mostly. We do have guest cars that are shown here, but he has a very large collection of cars that
00:07:55
Speaker
make the rotation. Yeah, we're going to take a bunch of pictures when we're done interviewing and everything. So it'll be on Instagram and everywhere else. We can share the car book
Focus on German Lagers and Growth
00:08:05
Speaker
too. He has about 86 cars. Holy. Yeah. And each one has a description and a photograph that you'll see their plaques up for each car and gives a little history of the car. And it's kind of fun.
00:08:17
Speaker
love of cars. That's awesome. So you said this became their most expensive endeavor, so to speak. Right. So how did that all then come to a head here? So we were talking about maybe scaling up what I had going in my garage. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. But so we went around and started meeting with other brewers. And I did a short stint with Trevor Rose Hamlin at. Oh, yeah.
00:08:47
Speaker
at old Irving, great guys. Andreas Biller was there. His name gets brought up a lot more than I think. Well, he got gold for his Beezer, J-Z-I-P-A. Well, of course not. That doesn't hurt. Not at all. And he got silver for his Delos, Colsh. Absolutely, yeah. Which was the other place I was supposed to go last night, but brother-in-law, back there, didn't go. Yeah, exactly. I understand. Yeah, we actually sat and talked with Trevor. Was it in December or January?
00:09:13
Speaker
It was December December. Yeah, yeah, that was that was a lot of fun. He's good. Yeah, he and will have been up here and Yeah, they're good really good guys and And then I did you know Mark leg ends over it on tour. I He was nice enough to bring me in and I assisted him for like three weeks and that really sort of got me on this scale But yeah, I owe a lot to Trevor and Mark and Andreas Biller who was now at Great Central he was
00:09:42
Speaker
at the time was Trevor's assistant, and he was fantastic as well. In fact, I still text all of them whenever a question pops up, of course. But so we talked about scaling up that garage equipment and doing an $80,000 brewery. And so we were looking in that direction. We started visiting and talking to other brewers. And everybody we visited was buying more equipment. And we thought, what are we going to do with this
00:10:11
Speaker
just pick a number three-barrel system that we've built when we have to go to a 15-barrel system. And so we really started doing the math on what would be the most efficient size and how much would that cost. And then that required us to bring in a bunch of investors and partners. And so there's a lot of cooks in this kitchen. And there are a lot of voices.
00:10:41
Speaker
That's a good thing in a lot of ways. But they've given me a ton of freedom to do what I'm passionate about. And so what I'm passionate about are German lagers. I was going to ask, because when looking at the menu, that's clearly what stands out. And one of the things that I thought was kind of funny was you guys had, I think, one hazy IPA. That's right. And it's such a short description. And I think that that was very funny and very fitting and perfect.
00:11:10
Speaker
I reluctantly made that beer. I'm sure. I passionately made it. You made it with passion.
Brewing Philosophy and Experimentation
00:11:16
Speaker
But it sells extremely well and we've canned it. So it's doing well. I'm a big fan of KZIPA's. It comes and goes with me.
00:11:25
Speaker
that's right
00:11:44
Speaker
I don't know if it was like December or January that I've come to realize how much I really do enjoy lagers, especially dark lagers. Absolutely. And let's face it, we all grew up on lagers. Absolutely. So, you know, whether it was, you know, the champagne of beers or it was Budweiser. That was my jam right there. It was mine too. Or PBR was another one that I went to. But that's...
00:12:09
Speaker
Unfortunately, the association that most people think of when the word logger gets tossed around, but I do think there's a bit of a buzz and that's how I was able to sell the management or not the management rather, but the owners of this was that there that.
00:12:23
Speaker
logger word is becoming kind of a buzzword in the brewery, at least it was maybe five years ago when we were planning this, and kind of what IPA was 10 years ago, and still is, but it's amazing how many people come in and ask just for an IPA. They don't care what hop is in it, just IPA.
00:12:41
Speaker
You know the the market for loggers, you know, especially if you know when you're going that route and we've I've said this before too I mean look at the success dovetails had absolutely Yeah, I mean two of those I start with dovetail and then somebody's like don't forget metropolitan But yeah, both of those have been extremely successful and just going with you know classic styles and I think that's you know It's coming back in in a refreshing way because while you know I can drink
00:13:11
Speaker
you know reminiscent when I had Budweiser and all that stuff back in the day like it's it's similar but it's the stuff that's coming out now is just so much better yeah it's cleaner it's it's got more body it's got more flavor and I would happily drink that like over you know a Budweiser and
00:13:29
Speaker
Well, one of the mistakes that Budweiser and Schlitz and all of the big brewers, Schlitz was a big brewer until 72. One of the mistakes they did was they started using adjuncts in their product. And that's why I think coming to the dovetails, the metropolitans and the double clutches is refreshing is because they're all malt products. And so you do get more flavor and body and characteristics. And that's why I say I like the German lagers.
00:13:58
Speaker
I didn't say American lagers for that specific reason because you won't find corn and rice and corn syrups in our products.
00:14:07
Speaker
It just doesn't give the flavor and body that you mentioned. I'm clearly enjoying the short beer that we're having. I am halfway through mine. It is very good. I'm really enjoying it. We'll keep them coming. And kind of to that point, the best beer I had hands down was when I was in Munich, Germany. And I went to Hofbrahuis, sat down there, and I'm like,
00:14:30
Speaker
And my wife even said it too. She's like, she drank like two or three liters. And I'm like, what is your problem? And then I was like, I'm the one that's supposed to be doing that. And then she was like, she woke up the next day. She goes, I don't feel like crap. Like, right. Like you get the buzz. You get the fun times. But you don't feel so crappy the next morning. And that's that's a beautiful. It's a clean beer. Yeah. Right. And
00:14:54
Speaker
Yeah, and there's no adjunct in it. There's very little water treatment in it. It's just a clean beer that leaves you feeling refreshed. And I heard an interesting quote about those. I can't remember who said it, but they said that a German Helleslager, and that's really what I've modeled mine after, Augustiner specifically, which is also in Munich.
00:15:17
Speaker
But it should be so delicious that you have to make a conscious decision to stop drinking it. It doesn't shut the door on you because you're inebriated. You have to make a conscious decision. OK, I think I've had enough. But it should be that refreshing and delicious that you just want to keep going.
00:15:34
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like a Hellas Logger is probably the first one, like last summer I was moving some things for my dad and I think I stopped at Bottles and Cans and like built my own four pack and for some reason I was like Hellas Logger from Dovetail, I'll give this a try. I don't know why, it was a hot day, I was like
00:15:52
Speaker
It sounded good. I feel like that probably started me on the path of getting back into enjoying lagers. And it's the exact same thing. I love that beer. The Hellas lager is so refreshing. And exactly, that makes sense. Well, and when I talked about, I'm sorry, but when I talked about talking to other brewers, Hagen was one of the guys that I did their tour twice. And he's got a cool ship, and he's doing a lot of spontaneous fermentation. And they're doing a lot of experimental cool stuff there. And they're both engineers, he and Bill.
00:16:22
Speaker
They rigged their own lager tanks from what I'm to understand from dairy equipment and purchased some of it in Germany. Even though I never worked with him, I've had a half dozen conversations, lengthy conversations with him about the process. He was inspirational for me as well to be confident enough to go in this direction with this menu choice.
00:16:50
Speaker
Awesome. From the time that you were home brewing, was there a certain style when you were home brewing that you really enjoyed? Was it always lagers? I know you were talking about experimenting with other stuff. I did a lot of IPAs. I did a lot of West Coast IPAs. So I've been to Russian River and I love Pliny the Elder.
00:17:09
Speaker
And I did my time in Michigan. I lived in Detroit and I lived in South Haven and I love Kalamazoo and Bells of course and I love the Midwest IPAs as well. So I did a lot of IPAs. One of my favorite ones was called an eight ball IPA because it was eight percent. So I wasn't afraid back in the day to make the big
00:17:33
Speaker
hoppy beers. But of course, I think all of us home brewers, the challenging beers are the are the loggers. The process is more challenging. The refinement is more challenging. You know, they're really naked beers. There's nowhere to hide. If you make a mistake, it's it's right there. It's readily apparent. And so in my mind, as a home brewer,
00:17:58
Speaker
The guys that can pull the guys and girls, the women that can pull that off, were always on a higher plateau in my mind. Absolutely. And that certainly doesn't demean all the advancements and experimentation that have been done with hoppy beers. But that's just the way I perceived it as a young brewer.
00:18:19
Speaker
I'm old, but I'm still young enough to maybe change my mind again, so who knows where I'll end up. It's funny the comparison, the way you describe it, because it really is a naked style of beer. It's almost like baking and cooking. Baking is very precise.
00:18:39
Speaker
It has to be it's that's all that's a lot of science involved. That's right cooking You can fix it along the way and I feel like you know There's certain beers that you can brew where it's like, you know, especially the adjuncts, you know and shit like that You know stouts whatever it's it's a lot easier to not easier, but you can be a bit more creative and a little loose Looser with with your method. Yeah, that's a safe way to say it. Yeah, I agree with that I mean if we
00:19:04
Speaker
If we mess up a batch of beer, the first thing that always comes to my mind is, well, just throw hops on it. Well, just try hopping. Try hopping. It's now a hobby beer. Yeah.
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, I would agree with that explanation. Obviously, now we have a hazy IPA.
Challenges in Brewing Hazy IPAs
00:19:23
Speaker
And I've brainstormed with a couple of my brewer friends about process. And it is in itself a very complex beer to make. And I'm having a good time. That's what always thrills me about even styles that I don't appreciate as much.
00:19:44
Speaker
the process and developing a beer. Because really, every step of the process is critical to its end result. And I really get off on that in solving problems. I agree with that sentiment of, especially with hazy IPAs, when I first made one, I didn't understand what I was doing.
00:20:06
Speaker
of the whole whirlpool hopping and all the double-dry hopping and things like that until you finally figure out how you get that silky, smooth mouth feel from whatever grains you're using, oats and wheat. And then to experiment with the different hops, that became a fun process to figure out what flavors am I getting from these different hops. So I think that's what my appreciation for hazy IPAs, that's where that comes from, is all the different hops that you can
00:20:37
Speaker
extract different flavors from, that is a fun thing to try. So I do like those, but then I burn myself out on drinking them all the time and it's bad. Well, and back to my age again, I get like sinus congestion from super hoppy beers. I get that too actually sometimes. And maybe it's a specific hop, I don't know, but every once in a while I'll have one and I'm like halfway through the beer and I'm like, God damn it.
00:21:01
Speaker
Yeah. It's like, all right, it's fucking beer. Slow knees or whatever. Exactly. You do a neti pot. So not to transition, kind of talk about the brewery and the brewery
Steve Milford's Path to GM
00:21:12
Speaker
as a whole. But like for Steve, how did how did you kind of fall into the mix here? I was lucky enough to be approached about the.
00:21:21
Speaker
the concept a few years back and they were looking I've been at an empirical brewery and they'd come in and they were looking to get someone to GM this role and so I took the position again you know it was crazy times took a while to build
00:21:36
Speaker
So I did have to do some time at other restaurants, not that it was prison, but Pescadero Wilmette was where I started with them. And then we started this project when it started really getting going. And then we opened up in October, like he said, but then Covid reared its head again. We had a ton of parties booked for December. I mean, it just we'd let go of staff. You know, it was pretty
00:22:05
Speaker
disappointing opening because, you know, we just thought we'd finally gotten over the hump and then we had another one to go. Yeah. So, but it's an event space. We do live music two nights a week, sometimes in the weekends. We have the Jimmy Project playing tonight on Saturday. It was actually my friend's father's band. And I knew that they were playing. I didn't know it was tonight. Yeah, they are. Very cool. So, you could be here all day. Might as well stick around.
00:22:30
Speaker
You guys got a bed to sleep some off? A comfortable floor. Sleep in the back of a car. Nobody will know. Scott keeps threatening to build a hammock upstairs with a lot of green tanks. But I know that's a dangerous thing to do because once I put my head down, I'm out. That's it.
Double Clutch as an Event Space
00:22:50
Speaker
So yeah, we're in event space. We have three separate rooms, about 12,000 square feet full kitchen. We do brunch on the weekends and we had a private party last night. It was D39, a fundraiser for a local school's charity. And tonight we have a wedding shower in one room. It's pretty exciting.
00:23:08
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And we have a lot of one-year-old birthday parties. Oh, that makes sense. I know, because it's the last party the parents will ever have. Oh, maybe I should move my son's party to here. Yeah. There you go. Don't make a deal. Yeah. Do you guys like PJ Masks? We're going to put it up all over the place. Yeah. There was kind of a point you made, like how we all grew up kind of knowing that traditional style of lager. I don't know why it popped into my head, but I have an almost three-year-old son, and I'm like,
00:23:38
Speaker
He's going to grow up in a different world where there's so many different options. I'm like, his first beer probably will not be like a lager or something. It'll more than likely, because I'm a home brewer, so it'll more than likely be a home brew that I force him to help brew. It'll probably be our imperial cinnamon roll stout. Oh, OK. We never know. I'm intrigued by the name. Well, that sounds like Trevor's. It's called Into the Void. What's it called? Into the Void. Into the Void. Yeah, because we're home brewers.
00:24:07
Speaker
We kind of had a home brew club for a while. We went out to Great Lakes Brew Fest when they used to allow Illinois home brewers to come in there and we served there. They had a voting system. We're a little biased because we were telling everybody that came up, hey, you got to vote for your best beer. Our beer won best beer in the entire, like,
00:24:28
Speaker
over the big breweries too. I was like, this is awesome. And I'm like, it was the beginning of that. That was our barrel age style. So we did a 15-gallon brew day. We all brewed the same recipe, but on three different systems in my backyard. And the only difference was, they put DME into theirs,
00:24:56
Speaker
the the ABV on theirs ended up coming out like a 10 and a half percent ours everyone else's was around eight and then we put it in a bourbon barrel that we procured for like a year wait i'm sorry you blended all three together oh yeah bourbon barrel yeah yeah blended all three put it in the bourbon barrel let it sit for a year literally the first keg we pulled off we brought to that brew fest and it was a success
00:25:16
Speaker
So shortly after that, we were kind of spitballing and we kind of had the idea we had a friend. We have a friend that owned a bakery at the time where like they made these massive cinnamon rolls. And I was like, what if we just put cinnamon rolls in the mash? And so we like we took.
00:25:32
Speaker
that's
00:25:48
Speaker
malted cinnamon rolls out of there I'm like it was the best thing we ever ate so then we added like some Saigon cinnamon sticks and like made your own vanilla extract with the buffalo trace yep yeah I mean that's crazy one of the things that we learned when you know this was
00:26:07
Speaker
also a time where we were trying to Adjunct the shit out of everything, you know sugar. Let's try and add it We did cereal beers and we learned that it doesn't do anything. It just adds a bunch of sugar to it Damn, you Frankenberries. Yeah. Yeah, cinnamon toast crunch doesn't work either. No. No, we did. Well, that's Trevor's beer cinnamon post crunch That's one of our favorite beers of all we actually drank that beer that night we brewed well, and it was funny because we
00:26:33
Speaker
At that brew fest one of the one of the beers that we brought we called toast and it was our cinnamon toast beer that we tried to put cinnamon toast crunch in I think we had to adjunct it with you know additional We ended up adding a cinnamon stick. Yeah, because it just like we realized like we really got nothing from that cereal And then it was like a month or two later. I think older ring finally like it was their first release of Prost And I was like
00:26:57
Speaker
What? I'm like, dude, this is exactly what we wanted. This is how it should have turned out. But it was a white style. And it was so good. Yeah, like we look forward to that one every year. Well, and Trevor, trying to combine chef and Trevor. Trevor was a chef. Yeah. And so he brings a lot of that experience to his brewing process, which is really cool. And it sounds like you guys were doing that, too.
00:27:20
Speaker
Yeah, we learned, Trevor's story is pretty amazing, very unique. That was one of the best interviews we ever did because Trevor, as you know, can talk and we barely had to say anything. And it was in a good way, in a good way. Right. It really was. We just sat there and would like just, yes. Yes. It's okay. It's such a good guy. Yeah, he's a great guy.
00:27:40
Speaker
And then that day we got to try the cinnamon prost, the nitro after we'd done with the interview. So that was fun. That was another early morning. Let's have some beer. Sounds like an early night, too. Yeah, right. Yeah, I went home and they gave us a lot of beer, too. That was insane. So you talked about scaling up, obviously, from your homebrew days. So I don't know if we actually asked this question. So what size system do you guys have here currently?
00:28:07
Speaker
Well it's a 15 barrel brew house and it's a three vessel system and what we did because the intention was to do these
00:28:15
Speaker
relatively complex malts, we combined our mash tun with our brew kettle so that we can apply step mashing and heat to the mash cycle. So we go through pretty complex mash routines. We have a computer program that sets those profiles for us. And each one runs anywhere from
00:28:39
Speaker
you know 90 minutes to two hours just on the mash depending on what style you're doing but that gives us the ability to do you know proteolytic rest even though we don't do those with this malt but we can do the ferulic acid rest when we do our hefeweizen which will be coming back out next week
00:29:02
Speaker
And so it just gives us an opportunity to do things. So like I can spend time in beta amylase and alpha amylase, which is nice. So like for that hazy IPA, I like to get a lot of alpha, but I need some beta, right? So it's nice with this program, I'm able to sort of sweep through beta and then rest in alpha, which is a nice way to do it because most brewers
00:29:27
Speaker
are doing a downward infusion, right? So you're just picking your temp, and then if you want to start in alpha and end up in beta, you can do that. It just takes a long time. And then we do have, if you look up above, we do have our horizontal loggering tanks. So all of our loggers can sit upstairs for, depending on the style, the Maybach was up there, I think, 10 weeks. The Dappelbach was, I think, a 12-week beer.
00:29:58
Speaker
So we get, we have that opportunity too, which is nice about this system. So how often are you guys brewing here? Well, it really depends on consumption. So we will be brewing twice next week. We have an event coming up for Meals on Wheels and I did
00:30:18
Speaker
I spoke with Deborah, who's, I don't know if she's, I don't know where her title is, maybe CEO or something, but she, I communicated to her kind of off the cuff that, hey, we could do a special beer for your event. And I didn't, I thought it would just wash over. Well, she came back a week later and was like, I really want you to do a special beer for us. So I thought, okay, I need, it needs to be something that's not German. So we're doing a Belgian wit beer and we're calling it meals wit wheels.
00:30:46
Speaker
We did a full 15 barrel batch of it. And the proceeds will go to, a portion of the proceeds will go to Meals on Wheels, which is just around the corner here in the Fifth Ward in Evanston. So it's a little way to throw a bone back to the community.
00:31:04
Speaker
And they were one of the first events that were booked here, which we're very excited to be, you know, a good neighbor. They're just up the street. So that's awesome. And she's great. She's into the blues scene. So she comes in on Thursdays and listens to the blues. She's kind of. Yeah, she's got a good band lined up. I forget who it is, but pretty big name. I think you mentioned it. Maybe it was with the hazy. Did you see you canned it?
00:31:27
Speaker
The hazy, yes, yeah, the little juice coop. You can't adjust to release here or do you guys plan on doing those? We're not distributing them yet, we will. We just did, it was the first time we ran, we did what? 800. 800. We did 34 cases. Those are four packs, 16 ounce four packs. And we did 34 cases of three different flavors. So we did the Alt Beer, the Hellas, and the Alt Beer.
00:31:55
Speaker
The old beer, the Hellas, and the little juice coop, the hazy, I think. We just want to see how it did. Nice. And the sales are good. We learned a lot. We'll probably do twice as much next time. Right. Much faster. Yeah. We used iron heart. Well, it's going quick. But we just wanted to see, make sure the product held up. Sure. And we learned some stuff. Yeah. And it was much smoother than I expected. So yeah, we can do more.
00:32:17
Speaker
Yeah, especially with, you know, hazy IPAs, we've talked about shelf stability before with, uh, we're just at Goose Island. We did a thing with them, but they're, they're talking about how, you know, the process, you know, for, for certain.
00:32:30
Speaker
Juicy IPAs, hazy IPAs, the shelf stability is tough because of how the beer is made. Some breweries can get away with it because it's not on the shelf for very long. And then others, when you mass produce it, it has to sit on the shelf for a little bit because there's a lot of beer going on out there. That's right. The more you make.
00:32:48
Speaker
So yeah, that's interesting you guys chose to put that one out. But you guys are doing it here. People are buying it. It's not sitting on a shelf somewhere. It's sitting here at the brewery and going right out. Yes, that's right. That was the plan, yeah. And so we are in the process of getting a new distributor. So we are hoping that you will see these products on shelves. But we're working on that. Good. That's awesome.
00:33:11
Speaker
Well, you just brought us some more beers. What do we got here? The Helislager. Yeah, I was hoping that's what I was going to be. Nothing like a couple beers first thing in the morning. I love this. Yeah, and that was, so when we initially started talking about this, that was what I thought would be our marquee beer. It's really good. And actually, that's a nice, I'm glad we started with Darker, going with the Schwartz beer, to move around to this.
00:33:36
Speaker
Not that I wouldn't appreciate this, but I feel like I'm appreciating more to go from something that was a little maltier, a little heavier to something that's very light, kind of fruity, refreshing. It's very crisp. Yeah. This is good, man. Did you say you canned this one? Yep. We did, yes. Do you guys still have cans of them here? Yep, we do. You might have some in your car. I have to grab some. I'm hanging out with my cousin and I for his 40th birthday, so. Perfect. There we go. Some birthday beers. Sorry, man. I'm not hanging out with you. I see you enough. Wait, you're not going to be here?
00:34:06
Speaker
right? Actually I should just bring him back over here. Is that a terrible idea? Let's see, where are we at? This is the fun part of editing where I have to go back and cut out the parts where I go.
00:34:26
Speaker
So you guys are here now. Since you guys are fairly new for being open, I guess it's kind of crazy to ask this question, but I kind of feel like it's a good way to wrap everything up.
Future Plans and Community Events
00:34:42
Speaker
What are the plans for the future? What do you guys see happening, or what are you guys planning on doing? Anything else, or are you just kind of riding with what you guys got now?
00:34:51
Speaker
Well, I think Evanston's been extremely supportive and we're finding a good niche with locals. Of course, we want more people to know about us. Sure. So we are doing a few beer events here and there. And, you know, and like Scott mentioned, we'd like to distribute, but.
00:35:07
Speaker
The use of the spaces we're figuring out with live music and beer events, and we're starting to work on our first Oktoberfest for the fall. We have a lot to do, but we have a lot of, I guess, hopes and plans that we'd like to try to pull out. And we'd like to be a mainstay.
00:35:25
Speaker
place to go. Even since you know beer scene so to speak has you know I used to work here when I was across just the other way of when Temperance opened up so when Temperance opened up it was a big deal I got to see I actually got to do a walkthrough the owner of the company I was working at was friends with the guy who was opening up and or doing the work on the building
00:35:48
Speaker
So I got a chance to walk through it. It was kind of nice to see like, oh man, this is exciting. Like, you know, Evanson's getting a brewery. And, you know, since then, obviously other places have opened up. So you guys are part of a already, I think, really nice collective. Well, I didn't mention them and I should. I didn't mean to exclude them, but Temperance and Sketchbook have been extremely helpful. I mean,
00:36:11
Speaker
I've met all their people and everybody's just bend over backwards, helpful to get us moving. Sketchbook is another place we're hoping to talk to. We were just at their Skokie location, not just a month or so ago, but that location is awesome. Yeah, it's really cool. So nice. I mean, I love their little tap room that they had. And Caesar, I mean, couldn't have been nicer. I've worked some beer festivals with him when they first opened up.
00:36:38
Speaker
I actually have a very old wooden sketchbook tap handle that I got from working the festival with them, so it's kind of cool. Very cool. But they're all good guys. Was it Skokie or Evanston? I have the faint memory of being dry for quite some time. Evanston, that's why Temperance is where their name came from.
00:36:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I just remember it was like a barren wasteland. Right. Like even for bars, it was like, yeah, there was stuff in Skokie, and then across the border, it's like, no. Yeah, well, Howard Street is the border for Evanston and Chicago. And one side was dry, I mean, just back in the 70s, right? And then the other side was
00:37:17
Speaker
wet i guess is the answer right yeah that's a good point i never really thought about that so what uh just kind of talking about the experience here so what can people expect as far as like you know i think you said you do do you guys you have like a blues night yeah we have trivia on monday
00:37:35
Speaker
We have Drag Queen Bingo on Tuesday. Sweet. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Muffy Fish Basket is her name. That's the best name. That is hilarious. And then, like you said, we had the music we're doing every Wednesday night and Thursday now. And then events when we have private events or, you know, we take reservations for 10 or more, just a lot of people doing parties and stuff. So, yeah. We open the rooms as needed.
00:38:05
Speaker
So as far as beer goes, somebody's coming here for the first time. What do you recommend they start?
00:38:10
Speaker
Well, I got a story. Oh, good. You can edit this one in there somewhere. So for my 50th birthday, we, of course, did I'm 56. So this is a few years ago. But we did Oktoberfest. My birthday is October 2nd. So it just fit perfect. We did a little early celebration, went to Munich, did Oktoberfest. There were 10 of us. There were five couples. But what I really wanted to do was go to Baumburg. So Baumburg is about a two hour train ride north. It's still in
00:38:39
Speaker
Bavaria, but it's in the northern part of Bavaria, and it's in an area called Franconia, because a lot of Franks live up there. My last name is Frank, so I felt right at home. But Baumburg, if you don't know, is famous for its smoked beers. So, you know, in the malting process, prior to indirect killing, every beer had a smoky characteristic to it to some degree, and because that's how they dried them all, right? And so,
00:39:07
Speaker
In Baumberg, they still honor that old tradition and they make smoke beers. Most people know Eck Schlenkerle and their Mertzen. But Americans associate smokiness as like a Baltic porter might be smoky. They associate it with a dark color. So we were there. I had a list of breweries I wanted to go to.
00:39:26
Speaker
We went to and facel and speciale are right across the street from each other and special. We went to facel, other beer was good. It was German beers, but special was closed with closed at a private event. So we weren't able to see it on Saturday. We were coming home son or taking the train back to Munich rather on Sunday. We had a noon train to catch. So I wake up. My wife's still getting dressed and ready to go. I'm packed. It's about
00:39:53
Speaker
And I said, I'm going to swing by Speciel and see if I can get a picture or something or see a menu. Well, I get to Speciel and it's open.
00:40:04
Speaker
Not only is it open, it's packed. And everybody's sitting at long beer hall tables drinking a Helles Rauch beer. I'd never heard of seen anything like it. It was as clear as the Helles you're drinking as bright, but as smoky as any smoked beers you'd ever had. Wow. You'd ever had.
00:40:24
Speaker
I immediately when I got home started working on that on that recipe and getting the ratio of pilsner malt to smoke malt and not going overboard with the smoke but not because it becomes too astringent you need some sweetness to balance it out getting that recipe right was a real challenge for me
00:40:40
Speaker
So you ask what what can people experience when they come here are Helles Rauchbir. So I don't think you will find anything quite like that anywhere else. It's truly German. It's inspired by Balmberg. And I'm quite proud of it. And you know, people either love it or hate it. It's you. There's not a lot of gray area in between those two positions because it's smoky. Yeah. But if you don't like smoke, it's like
00:41:09
Speaker
Yeah, so give that one a try. We'll line you up. You've got to run the rail before you leave and try every flavor. OK, if you say so. But that's where that style came up, and I think it makes us unique. No, it sounds awesome. No, and I'm glad you said that, too, because I remember reading the description on the website, and I go back and forth. And it's not that I don't love smoky beers.
00:41:31
Speaker
I would prefer this but I do love when they're done right and especially if you're following you know trying to stay true to the process you know from Germany that's that's pretty awesome and I am excited to try that like I definitely soon as you said that I was like yeah yeah
00:41:49
Speaker
We usually give that on the tours. You get a flight when you do our brewery tours. So that's one that people always... I saw the ad for the brewery tour. It sounds kind of fun. So anybody in the Chicago area, come here and also do the brewery tour.
00:42:04
Speaker
Yeah, second and fourth Saturday. Yeah, the second and fourth Saturday of every month. And you get four beers. It's not just you don't get the flight at once. You get four beers. So we start with the Helles generally, and then we'll move to the Schwartz beer. And we talk about the different types of malts in the malting process. And then we go through a step by step.
00:42:25
Speaker
quick run through of the brewing process, and we talk about the hops. And of course, then we bring in the hazy IPA, and we finish with the Ralk beer, and my lovely story from Baumburg. Actually, before we wrap it up, did you get a chance to try the beer when they were open, when you stopped over there? Especially on? Yeah. Absolutely. I think he was just trained.
00:42:49
Speaker
Yeah, I missed the train too, Bomberg. I made the train home. I thought that you missed the train because you had too much fun. The night of Oktoberfest, I didn't find my way back to my hotel room until about 4 a.m. and I missed my train the next morning. Sounds about right. Sounds like a good time. I was going to say, it sounds like a successful Oktoberfest. I succeeded.
00:43:11
Speaker
Well, we can sit here and keep on talking. What we'd like to do, though, is maybe come back sometime in the near future and have another conversation, catch up with you guys again. This has been a lot of fun. We're happy to finally have made it out here. We're happy that you guys are here in the greater Chicagoland area. It's awesome to have another great brewery that is so close to us. I feel like living in this part of
00:43:37
Speaker
Illinois, Chicago, we're really lucky. We're really lucky with how many breweries, good breweries, not even just breweries, but how many good breweries around. It's a community. It really is a community. It is. Just be saying, people that you've reached out to and talked to and everybody's so supportive. It's a really solid community and it's very lucky. We're happy that you guys are a part of it and to have another stop for me to go to in Evanston.
00:44:01
Speaker
Yeah, thanks man. I always think competition makes better product. And while I don't get the sense that I'm competing with any of my fellow brewers, they've all been bent over backwards helpful.
00:44:15
Speaker
When they come out with a product that raises the bar, I feel I need to as well. And we are blessed in Chicago to have a lot of people raising the bar. There's a lot of good beers here that keeps a brewer on his toes. And that's a good thing. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, that's the best thing I've noticed about the Chicago breweries.
00:44:37
Speaker
And I don't know, maybe it's like that everywhere, but I just feel like, you know, everyone's had their hand in, you know, one brewery or another before they start their own. And it just creates that camaraderie. Yeah. It's just great that how
00:44:58
Speaker
Everyone we talked to there's nothing but compliments and I don't think I've seen that in many other industries So it's it's very cool to see that, you know that still carries on. Yeah, I totally agree with that assessment I mean, it's it's almost shocking that you know, here we are. We're the Technically, I think we were the fifth brewery because they're smiley brothers and peckish pig that we didn't mention and
00:45:21
Speaker
No one shut their doors to us and saw us as a competing market that was going to be taking part of their share. No one treated us that way. They all were happy to
00:45:54
Speaker
It was it was great. And sadly, like Twisted Hippo, we had been in communication with them. We were going to chat with Marley and Carl and, you know, this happened. But I think that'll be a good conversation to have, you know, once they get their footing again and start, you know, I hope they do something else because they were they were a bright spot in that community. So I agree again.
00:45:55
Speaker
help us in
00:46:16
Speaker
Well, you know you guys are about to open. Thanks again for joining us this morning. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks a lot, guys. And we look forward to coming back here very soon. Maybe staying the rest of the day. I don't know. We'll see what happens. I can stick around. It's fine. Thanks, guys. The office floor is yours. Oh, thank you. Brandon, love you, man. Love you, too, bud. See you guys later. Thank you. Thanks, guys.
00:46:38
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.
00:47:05
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.