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Episode 46 - Brickstone Brewing (feat. Tommy Vasilakis)
128 Plays4 years ago
On this episode we speak with Tommy Vasilakis of Brickstone Brewing. We sip on a few of their beers and discuss the history of Brickstone and how they came to be, from small batch home brew to a local favorite.
https://www.brickstonebrewery.com/
Theme music provided by Myke Kelli (@mykekelli)
Check out all our episodes at www.themaltinghour.com
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Transcript
Creative Engagement Ideas
00:00:00
Speaker
you should make some stickers and like have stickers that you carry with you and when you see somebody that's like walking out with brickstone beer you slap a sticker on their back and it says like you've been Tommy eat or something like that so that way they're like that's when the kids are late it's weird
Interview with Tommy: Brewmaster's Journey
00:00:15
Speaker
This week we speak to Brewmaster and owner Tommy of Brickstone Brewing. This is episode 46 of The Malting Hour. What's the haps on the house? Guy, yeast, that's peace. This the molten hour where we talk about our drink and tell you what we think every other week. And if we get drunk, well, we might slur our speech. Gotta get a cab, the friends you wish you had. Join us for a drink, join us for a laugh. Time is never wasted, way you're getting wasted. The molten hour here, people, people taking places. People, people taking places.
00:00:49
Speaker
We've made it. We've made it halfway through February. It is the day after Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day to everybody. If you celebrate that sort of thing, I'm pretty sure I did as we're recording this before Valentine's Day. I don't know what everybody else did, but I'm sure I made a great dinner and had some great beer that my wife wouldn't try. I'm Tony Golic, one of the hosts here of The Malting Hour and joined always with...
00:01:15
Speaker
Brandon Winninger? And when recordings aren't going to crap and we have to rerecord, we're also joined with? Clark Fetridge. Nice. We got a special show this week. We're very excited. Brandon, you spearheaded this whole interview and set up here. I'm going to step away from the mic and let you take the reins for the beginning, which is crazy for me to do.
00:01:43
Speaker
Awesome, yeah, so I am happy to, it's like great, Tony's gonna stop talking. Okay.
00:01:51
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm super excited about this. We're happy to introduce that we have Tommy from Brickstone Brewery on here, who is the, I believe, owner and head brewer of Brickstone. So those of you that are not familiar with Brickstone Brewery, it is located in Bourbon Bay, Illinois, and they kind of have a rich history. And that's kind of what we're looking to dive in here. So Tommy, welcome to the show.
Brickstone's Beginnings: From Home Brewing to Brewery
00:02:16
Speaker
Oh, yeah, thanks for having me.
00:02:19
Speaker
So kind of going back in the history, I kind of connected with Tommy originally when I was working at Fishman's. I believe Brickstone had just started going into production and I was kind of the craft beer guy at the time. People were always kind of recommending things for me to send to Gus over at Fishman's. And as soon as Brickstone started releasing stuff, I was getting a flood of messages and people saying, hey, you got to get them over at Fishman's.
00:02:48
Speaker
And I remember I reached out, I think I connected with Tommy and we were kind of messaging back and forth, made some arrangements and got some stuff up there. And I think it was a couple of years of us kind of talking, chatting back and forth, kind of getting stuff. And then did it turn out, didn't you know Gus? Yeah, he went to the same school as my cousins. So, you know, it was kind of building each other. It's kind of a small world just, you know, knowing that and
00:03:15
Speaker
The old Chicago connection, as we like to call that. Oh, yeah. But that was, what was it, like, Palos Heights or Palos Park, something? Yeah, Palos Hills. Yeah, Palos Hills, yeah. I remember it was like a...
00:03:28
Speaker
Yeah. And I remember I was having this conversation with Gus and he was like, and I was talking about Tommy at Brickstone and he's like, what's his last name? And, you know, I told, I went through that and he was like, I think I know that guy. And I was like, really? And he looked up Facebook. He's like, I know this guy. I was like, I went to school with his family. I was like, yeah.
00:03:48
Speaker
Okay at this whole time I've been having these conversations and he's like yeah crazy crazy small world but even well before Fishman's I had a friend that lived out in kinkakee that always went to brickstone and he always sung your praises My friend Nate Kula Meyer. I don't know if he listens to this show but shout out to Nate
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah, so he kind of introduced me and I think one time well before I was working at Fishman's, I kind of slipped through the brew pub. I had a couple of beers and kind of fell in love with the stuff that you guys were doing. And I think that was my first time actually having the APA, which I am enjoying right now. It's a
00:04:30
Speaker
It's a delicious beer and it's probably my go-to with Brickstone. I'm actually been, I bought a couple of six packs lately of the hop skip as well because I've been enjoying that one. Just kind of straying away from the APA and staying within the Brickstone family. So very, very, very delicious beer. And I think everyone else is kind of sipping on that right now as well.
00:04:54
Speaker
Um, so yeah, we probably wanted to, sorry for the silence. I didn't know you transitioned into something else. Sorry, sorry. No, but I, so I kind of wanted to kind of jump into, to the history. Um, so I know you guys started off as a brew pub. So what was, how did, how did all of that happen? What was the formulation?
Challenges and Growth in Brewing
00:05:15
Speaker
Were you kind of a home brewer before that kind of moved into this or, you know, what kind of, uh, brought all of this together for you?
00:05:23
Speaker
God, I'm gonna have to remember 15 years ago now. Yeah, we're in our 15th year now at Brickstone. We opened in 2006. You know, I was doing some home brewing at the time I was at DePaul University, going to school computer science programming. And, you know, I got to just go see, try different beers at some Chicago beer bars and started home brewing and
00:05:52
Speaker
Uh, we sat down with our family and said, Hey, we, we owned a restaurant at the time. We said, Hey, what if we, uh, turn our current restaurant into something that we want to go to where we want to go eat, where we want to go drink. And we decided, Hey, we all love beer, um, doing small home brew batches. And we decided to take our, uh, family owned restaurant at the time and transition it to brickstone brewery, uh, uh, involved with my sister Tina.
00:06:21
Speaker
My cousin Dino, my cousin George, and we're all still there today. We all play different roles in helping Brickstone continue to grow and run. But even when we opened Brickstone 2006, we brewed in, I brewed in a 20 gallon stock pots. That was our home brew system. And as I remember, I couldn't brew until the chef was done making soup.
00:06:46
Speaker
And you know, I'd go in early. He's like, Hey, you got beer boiling in my soup pot. I can't make soup. So he's a little upset with me. So I'd have to go in after he was done, you know, two o'clock, start my birthday, which was fine back then. I'd usually sleep until noon then, uh, the good old days. So, you know, at the time we said, look, you know, 20 gallons is not enough. So at one point I'd have like four 20 gallon stock pots going.
00:07:17
Speaker
I'd have a boil over in pot number two and another boil in pot number three. So it's just like running all over the kitchen and brewing beer and everything. Just a big home brew set up. Uh, bought a bunch of, uh, little March pumps. I don't know if you guys are familiar with those, put together some, you know, tubing and through heat exchanger. And you know, I had a pretty, uh, maybe you spent a thousand dollars on the home brew set up.
00:07:43
Speaker
It wasn't till a while we decided hey, let's make our home brew setup a little bigger. So I bought a hundred gallon That's a little bigger Within about I'd say within about a year we said hey we need to we need to really get a real brew house and that's when we purchased a ten-girl Newlands brew house, you know and
00:08:12
Speaker
You know, from day one, you know, our beer is evolved. You know, when I first started, I didn't think our beer was good. And like every good home brewer thinks. Yeah. And, uh, you know, I just kept adding equipment and we decided, Hey, we're going to.
00:08:32
Speaker
If we want to be a real brewery, you know, back then there was probably 40 breweries, maybe less than, if we want to be a real brewery, we got to get a real brewer equipment. This home brew equipment is just not, not enough to, to service a full restaurant.
The Rise of Brickstone APA
00:08:43
Speaker
So there would be times where we're out of beer for two weeks. Yeah. And I think at the time we only had like two or three beers on tap. So, you know, kind of crazy. And, and we just started expanding from there. We started with some time barrel fermenters, uh,
00:09:00
Speaker
started purchasing 20 bro fermenters. And just when we ran out of space, 2014, we started thinking about our production facility and which we built, uh, not quite across the street, but you know, down the street from the, from the brew pub. So down the street around the corner kind of pretty much. Yeah. I always say across the street and, you know, at the time.
00:09:25
Speaker
Believe it or not, we were brewing APA in 2009 and we just kept tweaking the recipe and I tweaked it until 2012. And the last week I did on that recipe was our entry to GABF. Um, I'm going to kind of give you a history of, you know, how APA became our flagship and why it became our flagship was, it's kind of crazy. I had a hop contract and APA used to be brew with all Amarillo hops.
00:09:52
Speaker
One of my favorite hops of all time, by the way, just throwing that in there. It's so good. I still love using them. And at the time I had a hop contract at 44 pounds of Amarillo, you know, cause we weren't using, we were just putting a little bit of hops in a 20 gallon batch. And, uh, I went to order more hops from hop union. And he goes, Hey, we're, we can't give you any more Amarillo hops here. You're out in your contract and they're not available. I said, what do you mean? You know, I didn't know that stuff. He's like, well,
00:10:23
Speaker
He's like, let me give you a different hop to try. And I told him, well, you know, I'm brewing this beer for the great American beer festival. We're going to enter it for the first time. And I wanted it to be the recipe I tweaked all those years. And I can do, so I said, okay, what do you want? What do you recommend? What do you recommend? So he goes, I got this hop. It's called Citra.
00:10:43
Speaker
That would be my second favorite half. Top contract for 88 pounds. I said, okay, I'll buy 80 pounds of Citra. And, uh, first, so I start, I had, I went in the, um, cooler, got the last of the Amarillo and I said, okay, whatever this batch is, I had maybe 11 pounds left. I'm going to grow a 10 girl batch of APA and I'm going to sprinkle in Amarillo and different, uh,
00:11:14
Speaker
different hop additions until I run out. So I took the Amarillo additions, turned them into Citra, took the Whirlpool additions, split it, Citra and Amarillo together. And the AP you guys are drinking now, it hasn't been tweaked since that, which is kind of crazy. And we obviously, you know, first entry there, we won Great American Beer Festival. Well, World Beer Cup bronze first. And then we entered it again, same year, Great American Beer Festival. That's when we won the gold.
00:11:44
Speaker
Is the gold for pale ale? Yes. That's so crazy that you worked, and that kind of, I think, speaks volumes of just the world of, as a home brewer, brewers themselves, that you worked so, so hard and so long on that beer that you loved and kept tweaking it and tweaking it, and you still got a damn curve ball at the end. Like, yeah, you're going to have to use a different hop, and you pulled it off still. Yeah. It's like lightning in a bottle right there. Yeah, it was, you know, just,
00:12:14
Speaker
just knowing, knowing now what we do about, you know, hop shortages and stuff, you know, we didn't know back then. And, and, you know, if we knew about hop shortages, maybe APA has never brewed, was never brewed the way it is now because I would have had an emerald hops.
Pale Ales vs. IPAs: Consumer Perceptions
00:12:27
Speaker
So, you know, kind of worked out and got lucky and that's how APA came about.
00:12:34
Speaker
So how did that, um, winning that gold medal, how did that change brickstone? I mean, obviously it, it has to put you on the map for more people. Like, did you see it uptick in business? And the biggest thing is, um, you know, after we won the bronze medal of a world beer cup first, um, we said, okay, let's, let's send, let's. Well, how are we going to win gold? And what we did is we.
00:13:00
Speaker
Uh, changed our water filters out. We bought a pretty good advanced water filter system for the group hub at the time. And we changed it. We ended up winning gold and what, what helped us at the time, put us on the map is it was a first ever Midwest sweep of the pale ale. It was, uh, we won gold, uh, uh, peace with the weight one and not one.
00:13:30
Speaker
So it was those three breweries all in the Midwest swept up. And us, you know, zombie dust was actually one of my favorite beers and still is it's a great beer. And for us to, uh, score the gold medal against it, I think that helped put us on the map a little bit more. If, you know, zombie dust wasn't a, wasn't placing that year, maybe it wouldn't have been such a, uh,
00:13:53
Speaker
a big thing in the Midwest for us. Sure, especially with seeing it as a head-to-head comparison. Before we started recording, I was just talking about that I had purchased Zombie Dust because Clark. We did our Homebrew episode recently.
00:14:10
Speaker
where Clark has a somewhat of a clone that he does that he calls fudgy dust named after his nickname for his son. Not fudgy dust, but fudgy. And we call he calls his son fudgy dust. He drinks a lot of zombie dust. But how much that you know, I
00:14:28
Speaker
When it started drinking craft beer, just like you were saying, around that time, zombie dust was just all the rave here in the Midwest and it was hard to get everywhere else. I bought a six pack of it recently and I was saying I'm kind of getting burnt out, which I never thought would happen. A lot of the hazy IPAs.
00:14:48
Speaker
And having the six pack of zombie dust has been really nice because it's nice to just go back to beers like that. And having the APA right now for this show is definitely backing up that claim. It's really good. Yeah, sometimes you forget about some of the styles you used to drink and, you know, there's times where I'm like, man, I haven't had a glass of AP at the brew pub in a few weeks, you know, because I'm trying to
00:15:15
Speaker
time for her, I just go back and said, well, I miss having these styles. Yeah, and pale ale is one of our favorite, sorry, pale ale is one of our, I just read the throwback Thursday, a post that we did was the decades of pale ales that we we did. And do we end up did we end up drinking this on that? Or did I think we talked about it? At least if we didn't? Yeah, I think we definitely talked about it.
00:15:38
Speaker
Go back and listen to that episode. I don't remember that was two years ago. But yeah, pale ale is one of the is one of my favorite styles. It's I've got like nine different recipes or nine different versions of one recipe that I keep trying to fix and that was one of my resolutions this year was to not fix but like perfect.
00:15:58
Speaker
was to make a pale ale recipe that I'm just so happy with that. Okay, this is it. This is the pale ale that I want to drink because a pale ale just kind of hits all those marks that I want in a beer, something that's slightly bitter, slightly fruity, a little sweet, but also dry, not too heavy, not too high in alcohol and refreshing.
00:16:19
Speaker
Yeah. Funny you say that because just looking back, I go back all the time. I said, Oh wow, look at this AP recipe from 2009 and 2010. I've taken good notes. It's just seen all the different stuff I've done to it. I'm like, Oh man, what was I doing there? Yeah. Yeah.
00:16:35
Speaker
What was I thinking there? The whole talk about the hops and the different types of hops and things like that. And especially the zombie dust placing in third in the Great American Beer Festival for Pal-El. We talked about this on the Homebrew episode, too. It's a stark reminder that zombie dust is not an IPA, which it gets classified by a lot of people as, even though it's got such a hop forward flavor.
Expanding Beer Offerings and Innovations
00:17:04
Speaker
That's not its classification. And for years, I always thought it was an IPA before I started actually paying attention to what I was drinking. And I was like, oh, this is a pale ale. So there is a distinct difference. Now, when you think about an APA versus a pale ale versus an IPA,
00:17:26
Speaker
I can definitely tell the difference. There's less malt to me and more hop, which if in zombie dust, there is that good mix of that nice maltiness as well as that, you know, big hop flavor. But I think you kind of lose the maltiness kind of fades off when you start going into IPA territory.
00:17:48
Speaker
When we had, you know, we had APAs or flagship beer and we'd go as, as I try to sell beer in, you know, back in the day, we're at Beeper one and trying to sell beer before we had a sales team. You know, I'd walk into the counter like, Oh, we're looking for an IPA. And I'd say, well, you know, we don't, we have paleo. Oh, we don't like paleos. We don't like IPAs. And, you know, as a part where I couldn't sit here and argue with people saying, you know, it's free, you know,
00:18:15
Speaker
You know, the, this IPA and paleo category is kind of, you know, it's a blurry thin line. Yeah. Yeah. You know, they kind of intersect each other and, you know, ours was a little bit higher ABB for the beer style. Sometimes I, people say, Oh, this is not paleo. It's too strong. And I'm not Paul, you know, or this, you know, and it, you know, just over the years.
00:18:37
Speaker
We've always brewed APA, pale ales, IPAs, and we've stuck to that to this day. Now, we've entered into some fruited beers now in our variety pack, the jam series we have there. But we've built our brewery on pale ales and IPAs and hobby beers, and we've stuck to that.
00:18:57
Speaker
And successfully so, because I know many people who very much consider Brookstone APA kind of a staple of pale ales in their homes. The episode we just reposted recently, my cousin Kevin, when I had told him we were doing this episode, he was super excited because he had literally just purchased a six pack of APA. He was like, this is just the pale ale that I have
00:19:25
Speaker
Normally that in fifth city, he says he keeps on hand at all times. Yeah, that's a great beer too. I drink for the city too. Yeah. And one more thing I was thinking now, it's funny cause I'm trying to think back 15 years, people ask how come Brixton APH is called APA? How come it doesn't have a fancy name like hop skip or permit vacation. And I was filling out the floor for GAVF and I was sitting in the back office.
00:19:50
Speaker
And I was kind of in a hurry. I'm like, I'm going to enter a beer, but I don't even know what to call it. So I was just at a brickstone, APA, brickstones. I'm entering brickstone, APA, brickstone stout, brickstone wheat. So now we win the medal and our whole team was like, okay, now we have to come out with a good catchy name. If we want to package this beer, you know, and, uh, we're reading the.
00:20:12
Speaker
letters from the Great American Beer Festival Brewers Association. He said, well, if you change the name of the beer, you can't have the metal associated with it anymore. And, uh, you know, from there, we're like, okay, now we got to name every beer we enter in the GVF.
00:20:33
Speaker
So people like, yes, like, how come, you know, why is it called APA? Oh, I was actually in a hurry. That's the hardest thing to do, is thinking of beer names now. That's funny, especially for me when it comes to homebrew, when I think of a style or what I want to brew, I'm automatically thinking of a name. And my brother-in-law, Mike, when he and I were brewing together, I was like, all right, we need a name. He's like, just call it wheat beer or stout.
00:21:01
Speaker
pretty much just what it was. I'm like, that's so fun for me. That's funny that that's how it that that stuck. Yeah, Justin, our brewer at the brew pub today goes, Hey, Tommy, I got this style, this Imperial style release. And we have a name like, Oh, man, that's not, that's not my alley. I don't know. I'm the guy who named our flagship beer APA. I did my job.
00:21:24
Speaker
Well, so that brings a good point too. So it kind of segues from what I was going to ask. So you stick traditionally with the pale ales and the IPAs and the hoppier stuff, but is it, you guys have an Imperial Stout that you're going to be releasing? You know, obviously Dark Secrets, the only one we brew and we barrel age, we did brew a batch at the brew pub that we have in barrels now. We're kind of,
00:21:54
Speaker
We're going to start to create another Imperial Stout other than Dark Secret. So this is our kind of our test batches. Now we use our brewpub as like our experimental brewpub series. So we did brew a small batch, we put some in barrels and next year we'll see how it's going to taste. But I think Justin kept a few kegs, non-barrel aged, to release because we didn't have a stout on tap at the brewpub.
00:22:24
Speaker
Nice. So how did, how did, uh, you know, with, you know, kind of venturing down of, you know, your world of APAs and, um, IPAs, how did dark secret come about? You know, I, it's, it's actually so dark secret, believe it or not, is the first and only Imperial starter ever made that again, has never had a tweak to it.
Logistical and Creative Brewing Challenges
00:22:52
Speaker
So that's the first recipe I ever did. I've never been a home-brewed one. I just kind of did a lot of research on grain and tasted stuff and put it together. And today, still, that's the same beer we've had since 2000. I think I started brewing in 2011. Oh. That's awesome. Obviously, it's a dark secret. At first, I wasn't barrel-aged. We did different coffee beerings, but now we decided
00:23:20
Speaker
if we release dark secret, it always needs to be barrel aged. So people understand dark secret is always a barrel aged beer. So it doesn't have to say barrel aged dark secret. So we know everything going forward, barrel aged dark secret. I love stouts, oatmeal stouts, milk stouts. I love every kind of stout there is. And I said, I want to brew a very strong stout and I want to try this barrel aging stuff that everyone does. And we actually,
00:23:50
Speaker
took boosts out of the restaurant to be able to fit barrels so we could barrel age in the restaurant. At the time, my mom, my aunt and uncle who helped us start the restaurant and our partners with us in the restaurant.
00:24:09
Speaker
I said, what do you mean you're going to take boots out to put a bunch of beer in it? People need to sit and eat. How are we going to make money? And we said, okay, we're not going to take any boots out. But then after they saw how nice the barrels looked and, you know, on the racks, they said, okay, let's take that booth out of the barrels there. That way barrels in the restaurant, they thought they were good, nice decor for them. But, and the first batch of dark secret was at the brew pub, obviously.
00:24:38
Speaker
barrel aged over there, it's very hard to barrel age there. We would have to fill barrels in the dining room, so we'd have to go in very early. There's not a lot of space there, so the guys the other day barely just knew imperial stout and I said, I'm going to take the day off of this one because it's really, it's a very tight space.
00:25:02
Speaker
It sounds like it sounds like you guys are still it's almost as if, you know, the fact that, you know, you can find your beers pretty much just about anywhere. You know, local liquor stores, grocery stores. It's kind of funny to hear that you guys are still almost treating it as like a homebrew.
00:25:22
Speaker
Like okay guys we this is the space that we have we're not like building out anything to do it at the moment We're gonna do this here. I can't be here because there's not enough room That I think that's great. I think it's a bit of a charm to it Yeah, yeah, right exactly. Yeah Like no wonder why you didn't always want to brew dark secret
00:25:44
Speaker
You know, we'd have to, um, you know, we'd have to bring the barrels over there. We'd have to move tables to bring the pallet jack in. And so it's a process, but you know, in the end it's worth it because once I get that beer in the barrel, I'm happy and you know, taste in it. Um, and trying something different, you know, smaller batches at the brew pub is, is pretty fun to do. I'm at the production facility all the time, right? So people ask like, do you get bored of brewing the same beers all the time? Oh.
00:26:14
Speaker
No, not really. It is still fun brewing, but it's a lot more fun if you're brewing something different, something new, because 90% of the time I'm brewing APA, hop, skip, permit, vacation, or haze juice. And now every once in a while I tell Justin, Hey, Justin, I'm coming to the group, how to brew a different beer.
00:26:36
Speaker
haze juice was actually brewed at the brew pub first for a while. We did a lot of tweaks on the hazy beers and then it took us about a year and we brought it into life at the production facility. So I still venture off over there and it's fun to brew on a smaller system and brew smaller batches. So it keeps things interesting. So that being said, using the brew pub kind of as your
Balancing Tradition and Innovation
00:27:02
Speaker
you know, your test system, you know, per se, that's kind of where you can find out if things are going to go to full production. You know, whether it was there or even at the full production site, is there anything that you brewed that just didn't work? And you were like, No, we're not we're not going to do this ever again. Well, in 2006, I dumped my first and only batch of beer with it. After that, I've luckily had every batch of beer.
00:27:32
Speaker
you know, uh, pretty close to where I wanted it to be, you know, but I, you know, uh, I think right now at the brew pub, something we're working on is, and we work on for a while, uh, fruited beers, but you know, we ferment the fruit. We don't have a flash pasteurizer. Um, we don't, uh, put on a can, store cold.
00:27:57
Speaker
So we want our beers to be shelf stable. So we took a lot of our time last year of trying to brew fruited beers at the brew pub and then bring them to life in a can. So I would say the hardest thing now is knowing how much of each fruit to use during the bath because we're brewing 100 barrels at the production facility. We can't tweak the beer after we brew it by just adding more fruit in because we have to make this shelf stable.
00:28:23
Speaker
Yeah, nobody wants any canned bombs or any bottle bombs with the fruit. Kind of a messy situation. And a lot of people, some of them are putting, you know, store cold. You know, that whole thing is such a mess. If it can't be on the shelf, don't sell it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so that's the biggest thing now is just trying to learn how to, you know,
00:28:50
Speaker
ferment fruit the right way where you're still going to get all the fruit flavors and, uh, and use the right ratios.
Future Plans and Market Expansion
00:28:56
Speaker
And I think that's the biggest thing now, you know, when it comes to like hoppy beers, we know it works and what doesn't work at the production facility. You know, we've brewed so many different beers over there. Um, so I think that's the biggest challenge now is, uh, you know, trying to bring those beers to life. I could, by the way, kudos for only having to dump one batch. Yeah, seriously. It was actually, so it was kind of funny. It was my first batch at the,
00:29:20
Speaker
at the brew pub and back then we, before I did home brew systems, we used like a complete extract with some, it was kind of, you just heated up the extract, mixed it in with water and used table sugar. And you were able to brew beer back then. It was hopped extract. So at the time we didn't,
00:29:46
Speaker
heat up the extract enough so it didn't dilute in the water. Nice taste there. Yeah, so kind of back in the dark secret, well, even the, I mean, is there any plans to do any type of other barrel aging for your bears? I know like dark secrets, the primary thing, and you talked about some other stuff that you're doing is stout wise, but you know,
00:30:16
Speaker
a barrel aged fruited beer or anything like that. Does that interest you or is that just something that you kind of? No, it does. Yeah, we're trying to bring different barrel aged beers of life. You know, we brewed for our 10 year anniversary, we brewed a barrel aged barley wine. That's the personally barley wine I brewed. I love barley wines. Yeah, I do too. I love sipping on them. You know, barrel aged barley wines are great. I love sipping on them. And it's just a style that not everyone's
00:30:46
Speaker
really, I wouldn't say intrigued about, but know a lot about. Yeah. So for us, you know, dark secret is still a barrier that we're trying to, you know, still grow the brand of dark secret, you know, we don't release a lot of it outside the group of I think this year, most of it got sold online, we're
00:31:09
Speaker
You know, during the pandemic, we've decided instead of any of our Black Friday day, let's, obviously we couldn't at the time. So let's release online. We were very successful in releasing it online. We didn't think we'd have that quick of sales of the beer. This year was actually the most dark secret we've ever brewed. So, you know, we're happy that, um, we're still growing that brand next year. We'll probably put a little bit more in the barrels. And what we did this year is we, we took dark secret a week.
00:31:36
Speaker
We used a bunch of different barrels. We used Weller barrels. We have Double Oak Woodford Reserve barrels.
Tommy's Personal Connection to Brewing
00:31:43
Speaker
We have some Blanton barrels that we're going to release for our 15-year anniversary. Oh, nice. Clark and Brandon, where the hell were you guys on this? You guys have your nose to the internet of grabbing beers like this. I suck at this, and we don't have it. That whole mix just sounds delicious. And here I am with an awesome t-shirt, and I can't even say I tried the beer.
00:32:06
Speaker
Well, I didn't say I didn't share it. You've never had, you've never had dark secret. Come on. Okay. Okay. Anyways, sorry, please continue. You guys didn't get the three cases I sent today? Son of a bitch. Brandon, where is it? Well, I have a couple of them right here, so everything stays real good. I'm going everybody's house after the show.
00:32:33
Speaker
Yeah, well, speaking of, did you actually get the stout that I had sent back? Not yet, because he came back after I left for today. Ah, well, yeah. I forgot my brew day tomorrow. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It is, I think we figured out, it's probably at around like 11%. Not a barrel-aged stout, but it is a stout that we brewed with some, we literally threw full cinnamon rolls, icing and everything into the mash.
00:33:01
Speaker
She should have had my breakfast tomorrow then. Yeah, right? Boom. Yes, that's what we want to hear. And then some Madagascar vanilla bean. We made a tincture of that in vodka. And then some Saigon cinnamon. Yeah, we did a Saigon cinnamon tincture in Buffalo Trace. Oh, nice. Yeah, we gave it to some people. We've had some people try it that don't like beer. And they were like, this tastes like a cinnamon roll. That was perfect. That's what we were going for.
00:33:31
Speaker
So yeah, I'm excited to get your review on that. I'm skipping donuts around having that beer for breakfast. Yeah, we figured with all the beer that you gave us, one beer would be good enough.
Community and Creative Brewing Process
00:33:46
Speaker
We're home brewers. It's not like we have that much beer. Next time, it's two bottles. You gave me a four-ounce bottle, too, right? Yeah, exactly. Half full. There was a lot of head.
00:33:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's about probably about 12 ounces. So, you know, that's it. I mean, if you drink all of that, that'll start your day really well. So it's Friday. Yeah. And you know what? So when, you know, things get a little bit better and, you know, things start opening up more, we'll definitely have to we'll be making a trip down by you and we'll definitely bring some stuff to share with you.
00:34:22
Speaker
Yeah, we're trying to brew a lot more this year. So this stuff that we gave you, Brandon and I worked on for a little bit. We threw this all together. It was Brandon's idea from the beginning to use these cinnamon rolls. And we sat down and did it. We tried not to drink a whole lot during the brew day. As a home brewer, you might do that. And then you miss some steps. We even recorded a podcast doing it. And it was probably the most success. That is probably the definition of lightning in a bottle.
00:34:50
Speaker
replicate it again because we're both really proud of this beer and we look forward to what you think about it. Oh yeah, I'll let you know for sure. Awesome. Unless you hate it, then we won't have anything about this ever again. We will delete this whole part. I say drop the bottle, you know. Yeah, we get it. We get it. Good, that's a good code word. We'll edit this part out of the episode. Good thing it's in a plastic bottle.
00:35:19
Speaker
Um, so actually, uh, I'm finishing up my APA. So I'm all done with mine. Yeah. What would you recommend us trying next? Um, I just finished my Hayes juice, but, um, yeah, by the way, the last time I checked in Hayes juice, I checked it in, in August of last year. And I, as we were talking, I wanted to see what I thought of it. I checked in on untapped and I said a little bitter for the style, but I dig it. Yeah. Yeah. We, you know,
00:35:50
Speaker
When we brewed some of these hazy beers, some of them were just so, I brewed some that are very sweet and some that have some hoplite. I kind of wanted it to have a little bit of a hoplite and not be too sweet where it's, you know, is there even really hops in here because it's, you know. So, you know, I feel it has some bitterness, not, you know, obviously not as much as APA has or any of other beers, but. Not by any means.
00:36:19
Speaker
I do get that from people that say, thanks for putting some bitterness into this hazy beer. And there's some of the hazed up beers that we used to brew that were just a lot sweeter and less hot bitterness, so to speak. I definitely like it as far as a hazy beer where you still get that.
00:36:41
Speaker
I like all the hazy New England IPAs. And as I said before, I'm kind of getting burnt out on it at this point, which I didn't think was possible. But I feel like with that beer in particular, it's nice because you get all
Market Strategies and Consumer Perceptions
00:36:54
Speaker
of that fruity juiciness without losing the bitterness of an IPA. Yeah, we've done a lot of tweaks with hazy beers. And I'll tell you, a hopping technique we use in this
00:37:10
Speaker
you know, all our hops are in the whirlpool. We let them sit at about 160 degrees. We bring our wort over from the brew kettle, get it down about 170, you know, between 160 and 170. Then we had our hop addition, let that sit for 20 minutes before we put any of the wort on top of it. We found that adding the wort
00:37:35
Speaker
directly onto those Whirlpool ops create a little bit more bitterness than we wanted to. So this is a hopping technique we use in this beer, which we don't use in any others. So we let it sit a little bit longer in the Whirlpool than our other beers.
Canning, Distribution, and Community Engagement
00:37:49
Speaker
I may have to talk to you off mic to figure out how I can do that at my homebrew scale. So thank you for that information. But yeah, I know we were focusing on that. Try one of the fruited beers.
00:38:06
Speaker
You have the milkshake there. I think you have blueberry pomegranate, right? No, we got the jammed blackberry. And the milkshake. Milkshake, which has blueberries and... Oh, yeah.
00:38:20
Speaker
Let's go milkshake IPA. Yeah, the reason why I was going to agree with that, and Clark, I think you're the same way. We don't really like milkshake IPAs that much, and it's hard for us to find some that we like. There's a handful, and maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but I'm pretty sure. Brandon, when you and I went to Great American Beer Fest a couple years ago, we went and tried one, and I won't mention the brewery, because I like that brewery a lot, but I took a sip and I said, this is gross. Well, I think you're in for a treat, Tony.
00:38:50
Speaker
So many different takes, Adam. There's hazy IPAs to me. You could line up six or eight of them. They're all pretty similar tasting. But when you get into milkshakes, there's so many different takes on them, whether people are eating so much vanilla, or they're just doing vanilla, no fruits, or they're just doing... We try to exhibit, showcase a little more of the fruit character with some of the vanilla sweetness.
00:39:21
Speaker
and not be, you know, not be over, uh, not kind of fill your stomach. So, you know, it's kind of the take we took on it is not to overuse one ingredient. You know, sometimes you get some of these milkshake IPAs and you could taste that one ingredient and that's what stands out. Um, you guys tell me what you're tasting when you.
00:39:43
Speaker
Yeah, no, this is Clark here. And I think Tony, I have the same issue when we're drinking. Welcome to the show, Clark. Yeah, I took a quick nap. I had my first beer. I needed a quick nap to get back at it. I got all my energy. You didn't listen to anything Tommy said this whole time. I was listening to Tommy. I muted both of you. So I got everything I really needed. Perfect.
00:40:02
Speaker
But no, I think only you and I at least, Brandon, I'm not sure about you, but I think we don't like the overabundance of vanilla in the milkshakes. Correct, and I love vanilla. Yeah, it's always way overpowering. In the first sip I took of this, I'm going, yes, this is what
00:40:20
Speaker
I want to drink when I'm having a milkshake IPA. And as Tommy said, it's definitely more fruit forward. And sure, there's the vanilla there, but you're not going, oh, there's a vanilla milkshake in my mouth. You're getting a little bit of everything, and it's very smooth, very pillowy, and delicious. It's the blueberry that is, to me, is prominent. Definitely. Like, yeah.
00:40:42
Speaker
I know I could share this beer with my wife without her thinking this was something that was so much too bitter or too sweet that the fruit does really stand out a bunch. And Tommy, we're not blowing smoke up your ass. If we didn't like this, we would tell you straight to your virtual face that, you know what, I'm not feeling this. This is delicious. I appreciate it.
00:41:09
Speaker
That's how I'm talking about your stout tomorrow. Yeah, I didn't drop the can just so you know.
00:41:18
Speaker
The shocking thing about this too is even the aroma on it, if I poured this into a glass, I would think I'm like, oh, this is some kind of fruited sour. The initial flavor that I get is the blueberry and a little bit of that sourness from the fruit, not from the hops.
00:41:44
Speaker
tell me this is an IPA and I would tell you you're lying because this is amazing the way this all kind of came together because the milkshake IPAs we had of the past were
00:41:57
Speaker
were nowhere near as phenomenal as this. They went way off the deep end, especially on the vanilla portion. And then this is so well-balanced. Kudos, man. Good job. Oh, thanks. Yeah. We try to get the fruit to stand out and ease in it. If you see our canes, any milkshake we do, they're always double-fruited. So the prominent fruit's always going to be what's first on the can. I think it says blueberry pomegranate on their right.
00:42:21
Speaker
Blueberry vanilla pomegranate. That's how I missed what you were talking about. You got the fruited beers, right? Blueberry pomegranate? No, we got the blackberry jammed. What are you talking about? Yeah, I know it's milkshakes. Whatever the first fruit is, that's what we use for the dominant fruit. And look, we've used double the amount of vanilla in some of our other ones. And we don't want every time we release a milkshake just to be the same amount of vanilla. That's one part of releasing new beers.
00:42:51
Speaker
Um, so we say to like, let's make this one, this much vanilla, this much fruit. And it comes together. I think, I think, you know, sometimes, uh, milkshake IP is misleading to a consumer that doesn't know what the style is. Um, but you know, that's the industry now, you know, uh, well, I want the industry to follow your style. Yeah. Um,
00:43:20
Speaker
But, you know, we're, we're happy with that, that series because you get people that, um, maybe aren't drinking, don't want a very hoppy beer and they want something refreshing and fruity. And look, we're not going to brew a seltzer and put it in a can. It's just, you know, have we thought about it? Probably like every other brewery, but we don't think we could compete with the national brands of brewing a seltzer and being 1499 or 1299 a 12 pack.
00:43:47
Speaker
At this point, I don't think it's worth it. And I like the hard seltzer. To somebody that might drink a seltzer or a fruited beer or stuff, try this. It's funny, three years ago, the guys at Binney's said, Ty, you guys should brew a seltzer. This is before White Claw blew up like it was. I'm like, oh, man, really, seltzer? People are going to drink those? And I was like, see, we told you, we told you. Obviously, now.
00:44:17
Speaker
you go to a grocery store or liquor store and there's so many sellers. So we're never going to try to compete with that. So we took a take on creating these milkshake rooted beers and then the jam series to kind of get someone that might have been drinking a seltzer to venture over to drink that craft beer now.
00:44:40
Speaker
you know, and someone that doesn't want an IPA. So our jam series is in all our variety packs. When we first released the variety pack is all APAs and IPAs. And we decided, hey, let's give the consumer, let's give our fans, you know, something completely different in that variety pack. And that's where the jam series came about. And just looking into this year, jam series will go into a double fruited
00:45:10
Speaker
like the first one we're going to release here coming up in March is probably mango pineapple. So we're going to take 2021 of being double fruited. As you know, 2020, we just did like a blackberry jam. So we're looking at that. Would you say that your tagline for 2021 would be the year of the double fruit? Yeah, that's it. I'm making a t-shirt. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
00:45:38
Speaker
I had a quick question about the milkshake IPA because I've never had it before and I've seen it. You had said that this one is blueberry pomegranate vanilla. Are there other versions of this as well? Yeah, so we slowed down on brewing them just because of the can shortages. That used to go on a white can and we're out of white cans right now. In order to keep our flagships rolling, we took our can allocation and made it more into APA, hop, skip, and permit vacation.
00:46:08
Speaker
You know, we went out of black can cause we didn't have any more allocations of white cans. So we had a raspberry blackberry before, pineapple mango, peach tangerine. I would say we've been throwing them for about, I would say probably going on our second, second year. So about a year and a half.
00:46:34
Speaker
Yeah, I've been so hesitant just because of my experience with milkshake IPAs. Like when I saw that we got this and I was like, okay, this is it. Do or die, Tony, you're gonna try it. But I had no idea that there were, you know, I love the way that you guys design your cans even with the way you've changed it. And this is how I've seen the milkshake IPA. So I only knew it as that. I wasn't sure what was in it because I was so just turned off by the idea of a milkshake IPA still.
00:47:03
Speaker
that I didn't even bother to check. What a loser I am for thinking that.
00:47:10
Speaker
Well, yeah, and this kind of goes back. I have not, I don't think I've literally had a milkshake IPA. So how many years ago was that? That we were a great American beer festival. We both had it and we were like, three, three at this point. It'd be three this year, I think. Yeah. And that was, that was also the year that we went to the Brickstone booth multiple times looking for Tommy. And he was always not there. Thanks for, uh,
00:47:35
Speaker
Brandon kept making sure he's like, we got to go over there. We got to find this guy now, Tommy.
00:47:47
Speaker
Like, he just he just left. He'll be back in like 10 minutes. We're like, Oh, we'll come back. Come back. Like, he just left again. Or he's home for the night. I'm like, all right. Sam, Sam. Yeah, neither. That was a long day. Yeah, that was a long day. Clark, you were you were not there with us. Sorry. I know nothing about that. Correct. You were not invited. Nor will you ever be. This is the point of the show where you're fired. Well, I'll go by myself and I'll find Tommy and we'll I'll be able to talk
00:48:18
Speaker
Exactly. You're wandering around. Well, here's the hoping that, you know, that Great American Beer Fest is a social gathering again soon. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, Tommy, I noticed that you're you're very, as far as I can tell on the socials, as they'll say, very active with events. I mean, it seems like you go to events everywhere, whether it's pop ups or pours at certain beer festivals. Are you so excited about getting back into that someday? Yeah, I love going to events, you know,
00:48:48
Speaker
I still like doing grocery store, liquor store tastings. It's a chance to meet people and get good information about our brand. And I've always said, no matter how big a brewery gets, you gotta stay involved in that.
00:49:05
Speaker
in, uh, everyone that helped you grow. And, you know, I love going, I wish I could go more to more. I have three kids now, so it's a little bit harder. Just bring them with, just bring them with. I'm sure they'll have a great time. Kids love stuff like that. Yeah. Just stay in the car for a few hours. Here's a pretzel. That'll be with winter 16. So they can beat a DD. That's for sure. They're going every year fast. Yeah. Nice. Um, yeah, but you know, I,
00:49:34
Speaker
We really, the whole family, everybody in the family on the team, they like going to events and seeing everybody. I'd say you're never going to get too big to not be able to go see your fans and the people who helped your brand grow over the years. So I enjoy them and shit, I get to drink. Yeah, exactly.
00:50:00
Speaker
beer drinkers, at least for me when I go to any of the beer fest, like we've gone, Brandon, you know, GABF and the Great Lakes beer fest, getting to talk to not just reps, like there are some reps, you know, who represent a brewery and they're, they're great and, you know, not knocking them at all. But when you talk to somebody who's like, Oh, yeah, I'm the brewer, I'm one of the brewers, I'm a head brewer, I'm the, you know, I'm one of the owners. Yeah, it's so much more
00:50:26
Speaker
interesting and fun to talk to those people because it's almost like you're even more connected with the beer like oh shit I'm drinking the beer that came from your mind or or you know you had you had a hand in this beer that I'm drinking and I love it and it makes that experience that much more memorable and personal oh yeah it's fun to meet everybody so you know people always ask when are you gonna walk away from the brew house when are you gonna
00:50:52
Speaker
stop ruining, you know, take, uh, maybe more, uh, operations. Uh, uh, and I say, I don't think I could walk away from, from the burrows because, you know, even though the offices are upstairs, there's no way I'm not going downstairs every hour on a brew day. Just, just going on. So, um, the team, if days, I do need to step away from burrows, you know, they, you know, it's.
00:51:21
Speaker
they're operating just as I would and we've built a great team and I don't think I could ever walk away from something you love doing. So that's the hard part when you give that up of everyday brewing and do other things in the production facility that need operation site.
00:51:48
Speaker
That's awesome to hear. I feel like that speaks volumes to the actual what we're drinking today and what we're going to end up drinking tomorrow as well. I'm looking forward to tomorrow night now with these beers that I have in front of me.
00:52:03
Speaker
that I think that is represented in the product that you guys, that you put out, that you do have. It's not just a business. While it's still a business, it's not just a business to you, it's still something that you still have your hand in, and there's a lot of heart that goes into the beers, and I think that's represented very well in what we have here in front of us.
00:52:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. I think I'd be the same way. I don't have the guts to try and do a brewery, especially in these days, or even if it was two years ago. No thanks, not going to try that one. I'm just going to keep brewing my beers and dissecting everybody else's beers and talk about it here on the internet. We started this as a passion, so that's what we're doing. Some people are going into this business
00:52:56
Speaker
because it's so busy, but you know, you got to love what you do. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the hard thing and you kind of nailed it right there. I mean, I've seen so many people that have gone into this business, you know, with the, you know, their love of home brewing and all this kind of stuff. And then they just, once they get up and running and going and like, they're the ones stepping away and they're like not involved in the day to day of the brewing. And I'm like,
00:53:23
Speaker
where, you know, like, were you in it for the money? Or like, where did the passion go? Like, you know, I feel like that's part of, you know, I think Tony and I are kind of on the same page. It's like, we love the, you know, the process of brewing and the, you know, seeing what we can make with all of the, you know, the various options that are out there, you know, but then like, you know, scaling it up and like having to, you know, run a brewery, it's like,
00:53:51
Speaker
I would be too afraid that something would take the fun out of it for me. And Clark's not involved with that, because he just learned how to use a hydrometer recently. So eventually, we'll get him in there. Clark's been brewing for a long time, but he's just now. Anybody who listens to this show know what we're talking about. ABV is very exciting for me now these days. What's ABV on this? I'm not sure.
00:54:16
Speaker
He doesn't, he doesn't care. That's what I always say about my beers. But his beers, his beers do taste very good. Um, yeah. So kind of, you know, rounded this out. Um, so what is, what does the future look like for Brickstone? What are you excited about, uh, aside for double-fruited beers in 2021? What is, what are you looking forward to this year, next year? Like, is there any big plans for Brickstone? Uh, you know, we've,
00:54:43
Speaker
We're still kind of, we might venture off to some more distribution, possibly in a couple of states. We're not quite ready for that yet because we don't want to take away from our current home state market. We're still trying to grow that. Until you really could own your state and make sure that
00:55:11
Speaker
you're having enough product for your own home state, it's hard to venture off to more because then you'll really lose control. As for us, maybe we've talked about and we do have some possible plans to create a beer garden at a production facility that was always part of a phase when we planned everything.
00:55:33
Speaker
So we are working on some plans to add an outdoor space where people could actually come to the facility and drink on site over there. So that is something we're working on currently. We're trying to bring it to life as quick as we can. You have the space there. I mean, I've been to the production spot and definitely it would be awesome to have that there. We feel we're
00:56:01
Speaker
located in Illinois where it's close enough for people to travel and breweries have become destinations now. So that's the next thing we want to do is just build onto the brand of the production facility and bring that to life to people to be able to come.
00:56:24
Speaker
We love, you know, I love bringing people in there for tours and showing the equipment, you know, and seeing a different size breeze from the, from the brew pub to the production facility. But since, you know, we don't actually have a on-premise spot for them to drink, it's, you know, we don't get a lot of people that even come in there. So we, that's probably, you know, our goal for this year is to finally hit that, um, uh, plan that we put in place, you know, when we built a facility and, uh,
00:56:53
Speaker
We're excited about the cannery brands. We just launched, uh, you know, what goes in a, you know, brewing beer is, you know, creating that beer image on the shelf too. So, you know, our brand or re cannery brand, we're pretty excited for, um, we're bringing APA into 12 packs. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's going to launch in March.
00:57:13
Speaker
Ooh, perfect for the summertime. We're all figuring out what beers we're going to have in the summer. And well, I finally found my paleo that's going to be in my fridge. Ah, thanks. Yeah, so we've always taken baby steps into things. We walk before we start running. This is our 15th year. And it's gone so fast.
00:57:41
Speaker
I think we're just going to keep doing what we're doing with our brand. We don't release 50 different beers and cans a year out of the production facility. We just don't have the ability to do that or the amount of fermenters that do so. So we'll release some new beers here. But yeah, like I said, it's just trying to build on to what we have right now.
00:58:08
Speaker
What you guys are doing, what you have now, uh, works for me and I gotta be honest. Yeah. Yeah. Solid stuff. Just thinking back. I remember talking to Brandon all those years about, you know, getting in our beer on shelves and places and it's crazy how fast it goes. And the first time I saw our beer on a shelf and, and then now you go place and you see it just more than one. And it's pretty exciting. And, but it still excites me when I, when we get in a, a new.
00:58:37
Speaker
store liquor store and I'm like oh that looks great on that shelf you know so that stuff still excites me today you know just
00:58:44
Speaker
Yeah, you know, and that's so not owning a brewery is, you know, something that's not an aspiration for us. But one of the things that Tony of I Tony, we don't own a brewery. We don't. But no, but one of the things that we talked about that would just be like the pinnacle of awesome was like, if we ever worked with a brewery to collaborate on a beer or do something like just like the seeing it on the shelf would be like, yep,
00:59:08
Speaker
We've completed some goal in life. That's it. Wrap it up. We don't have to do the podcast. We're done home brewing. Everything's done. My family will have more time with me.
00:59:21
Speaker
Yeah, so I can totally appreciate, and I think that's probably a dream of a lot of breweries, is once they get their stuff into production, just seeing it on the shelf. Or I would even more of a thrill would be like you walk into a jewel or a binnies, whatever, a grocery store that sells liquor, and you see somebody walking with a six pack of your book and be like, all right.
00:59:43
Speaker
Thank you. By the way, I have my hand in that. Have a good day. I'm going to go and get my frozen vegetables now. You know, it's my kids always telling me, we don't want to go to that grocery store because if they carry brickstone beer, you're going to go to the liquor out and start facing all the cans forever.
01:00:03
Speaker
That's the cutest and most hilarious thing I've heard. I just imagine some store clerk coming up. Sir, please get your hands off the cans. Yes, sir. My cans, damn it. Well, it's funny because we'll go on these road trips, and I'll just pull off the highway and stop at a random store. And I'm like, I just want to see if they have brickstone beer there. I'm like, OK, let's leave. Pull off five minutes later. You're like, Dad, you know they have brickstone beer there because you look at the reports.
01:00:34
Speaker
I just got to make sure. I just need to make sure. Yeah. I like how you said you're doing this on like, you know, random road trips. There's probably some clerk there like finally a customer and you walk in, you look at it, you're like, Oh good. They got it. You walk out. He's like, damn it. I thought I had a sale. Thanks for carrying my beer. See you later. You know, and you kind of nailed something there. You know, it's, uh, it's always like an honor and a good feeling. I've been to grocery stores and not in our hometown, you know, but in other towns where,
01:01:04
Speaker
I'll actually see somebody with a six pack and their card in front of me or behind me. And there's been many times I'm like, here, I'm paying for that six pack. I appreciate it, you know? Oh, that's awesome. That's so cool. The guys thinks you're weird. I was just going to ask them, like, have you ever gone into a store and just bought your own beer? And like, Oh, yeah, yeah, I have many times. But, you know, I see people with it. I say, like, it's like, Dad, leave that cow on. He thinks you're weird.
01:01:34
Speaker
I think you should make like, you should make some stickers and like have stickers that you carry with you. And when you see somebody that's like walking out with brickstone beer, you just slap a sticker on their back and it says like, you've been Tommy'd or something like that. So that way they'll be like, that's when the kid gets weird. Yeah. Labeling people as they walk out. Like you're a buyer. I'm emailing the design.
01:02:00
Speaker
Um, well, yeah, I mean, dude, thanks again for coming on. Um, I do have one final question, uh, kind of around, uh, you know, not to round this out, but, um, so with the goodies that you kind of dropped off, um, I, I saw you post about this a while ago, but you did a collaboration on some mustard. Uh, how did that come about? So, uh,
01:02:25
Speaker
You guys know Plockman's mustard, you know, it's the original mustard in the, in the yellow bottle, the barrel bottle. They were the first ones in there and it, we're lucky enough to have them in our backyard. They're facilities in Mantino. Oh, I didn't know that. And, uh, the Plockman's team, you know, they would come to our, uh, they would come to our, uh, group hub and, you know, have some beers, dinner and everything. And.
01:02:52
Speaker
One day they were just joking around. I was like, we should make a mustard with your beer. We're like, damn right. You should. I wonder if they're serious, you know, in the history of Plaquemines mustard, where it went to, it was a first Brewwood Killian's, uh, red, I believe. And then they switched, they were an M.G.D. They're brutal with M.G.D. Um, and he reached eyes, you know, they said, Hey,
01:03:19
Speaker
Could we buy some beer off of you to start doing some batches? And we said, yes. So we took a tour of facility. We saw everything, how everything's handled. And it's pretty amazing. And their mustard, you know, they have award-winning mustard. They've won national awards with it. And they said, we need a craft beer mustard. And we just don't want to just say craft beer on it. We need it with a brand, you know, that they like. And so we gave them some APA. They kept doing some test batches.
01:03:48
Speaker
And they would send the test batches all the way to California to their research and development team. That's where their office is out there. It took about, I'd say a year to probably get all this done. And at that point, we had to help bring our brands together, you know, for the branding portion of it. So, you know, you see the label there. They redid all their labels. They're all designed and they have tequila mustard. They have, you know, obviously our Brixton APA mustard.
01:04:20
Speaker
You know, they have a Tabasco mustard. They have a, they have a big line now that matches that branding of, of mustards. And, um, they sell that right now. Um, not only in Illinois and some other States too. So there's a pretty fun project. Uh, you know, we got lucky that, you know, they, they wanted to do that with us. So it's pretty, pretty neat.
01:04:43
Speaker
Well, Brandon's hauling you that bottle, and Clark and I are going to storm his house this weekend to steal it from him. We asked him to split it through. Well, Clark asked him to split it three ways. Brandon did not comply. So he has the wrath of the mustard gods upon him. No, all you guys got to do is just make some sausages, stick your hand out your door. I'll come by, I'll give you a squirt. That sounds weird. That sounds really weird. Yeah. Clark, did you not get a dark secret shirt? He did not.
01:05:15
Speaker
Clarky. Good. I got the hat, which is much more important for me. All right. Thank you. We did the trade-off. We did the trade-off since we got this. Brandon and I got the shirts. Clark gets the hat. Clark wears hats more than I do. I only wear hats when we're doing the podcast video. So it's fitting. But dude, thank you so much for the beers and the shirts and the hats and the muscle that we're going to steal from Brandon. And the time. Yeah.
01:05:42
Speaker
And in the time you took to talk with us tonight, we're really grateful and thanks for sharing your story and the beers and knowing where you guys started from and where you are now just makes me and I would think anybody who's listening who hasn't tried Brick Zone, go out and try it and now you've got a story behind it.
01:06:06
Speaker
And I think you'd understand what the way we're feeling. Um, I mean, other than the fact that we just said, you know, two really good beers, uh, you know, there's an item I'm feeling pretty good. I'm already done with the milkshake IPA, but, uh, you'd appreciate, uh, and, and, and, and taste, taste the love that has gone into these beers and definitely seek it out as much as you can. No, I appreciate you guys. I appreciate you guys having me. I'm glad we, uh, got to catch up and talk and, uh, kind of, uh,
01:06:34
Speaker
remember the last 15 years. Yeah. 45 minutes. Well, so next. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Brandon. No, go ahead. Go ahead, Tony. I was gonna say, so hopefully the next time, because we're famous for saying and famous just for ourselves and anybody who constantly listens to the show famous for saying, well, this is just the first time we plan on revisiting you again, because we
01:06:58
Speaker
especially when we have a really good conversation with someone who cares so deeply about a beverage that we all love and enjoy. This is the first of hopefully another time and hopefully the next time we get to talk with you and we get to hang out on the show.
01:07:15
Speaker
We get to come down to Brickstone and actually have some beers there, maybe some of the experimental batches that you guys are brewing at the brew pub. I personally am very much looking forward to that. I appreciate it. You guys got to come down and brew at the brew pub.
01:07:55
Speaker
Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done.
01:07:56
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, just to say something for this conversation, I promised Tommy, it would be like 30 to 45 minutes. We're now well over an hour into this hour and 10 minutes. Yes. My clock is stuck at 28 minutes and 34 seconds. Perfect. Oh boy. Hopefully it works. Tommy, don't joke around about that because the last episode, someone's clock did stop and we had to rerecord the episode. Well, we can still see your voice. So hopefully that's good.
01:08:25
Speaker
Otherwise, we'll have to do this again. Otherwise, I hope you're free tomorrow.
01:08:33
Speaker
All right, so Tony, do you want to- Oh yeah, that's my cue to, yeah, sorry. Brandon, I got to say, I think I need to talk less and just let you roll with it. It was so nice to just drink beer and just chime in with dumb jokes and laughs. Tommy, thank you very much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it. Your beers are delicious and we wish nothing but the best to you.
01:08:56
Speaker
And we're going to go ahead and put all the links of where people can find it. Go ahead and find Brickstone beers, you guys, especially if you're in Illinois, because that's only where they're at right now. So go and find it there. Brandon, I love you, man. Love you too, Tony. Clark. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Tommy. And Clark, Clark, you know what? I'm just going to let Tommy, and that was the only thing that was a chance you had to say something. Tommy said, thank you, guys. Clark, you get to say nothing. OK.
01:09:27
Speaker
Bye! See you guys!
01:09:48
Speaker
An untapped, B-Dub drinks beer. Tony can be found on Instagram and untapped under Asafelp Chicago. On Twitter, TheAsafelpChicago, Clark can be found as Clarkhouseky on all three. Be sure to subscribe, like, and rate the show on your preferred podcast listening platform. Until next time, cheers from all of us at The Malting Hour.