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Episode 29½ Holzlager Brewing
124 Plays5 years ago
On this episode we sit down with Mario and Chuck for Holzlager Brewing in Woodstock IL. We learn a bit of history of how they started, where the name comes from and what "domestic" beer we all enjoy.
NOTE: This episode was recorded inside their tap room while they were opening, so it sounds like you're there with us!
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Transcript
Introduction & Setting
00:00:04
Speaker
What's the haps on the hops? Guy, ease that speech This the molten hour where we talk about our drink And tell you what we think, every other week And if we get drunk, well we might slur our speech Gotta get a cab, the friends who wish you had Join us for a drink, join us for a laugh Time is never wasted, wait you're getting wasted The molten hour here, people, people taking places People, people taking places People, people taking places
00:00:31
Speaker
Welcome to the Malting Hour. I am one of the hosts, Tony Golic. I just wanted to give everybody a heads up that this interview that we did was in a live and active brewery. We are in Holtzlager Brewing in Woodstock, Illinois.
00:00:46
Speaker
while recording you will hear a lot of white noise background noise things turning on things turning off some people talking in the background because they were open it was time for people to come get some beer so if anything it's like you're there with us but i did want to give you guys the heads up it's a super cool place and we hope you guys make your way out to Woodstock Illinois onto the show
Discovering Holtzlager Brewing
00:01:13
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of Malting Hour. I am Tony Goath, joining us with Brandon Whininger. Brandon, you have brought us to Woodstock, Illinois, and why don't you tell us a little bit about why we're here. Yeah, so we came out to visit the guys at Holtzlager. I'm saying it right. You are. That was much better than I was saying it. Emphasis on the syllables. Got to make sure I do that.
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, so Holtzlager Brewing, they opened up in September of 2019. The reason I became aware of them is one of the guys involved, Chuck, his wife, and I used to actually work together, and we are still friends on Facebook, and I saw her started posting about a brewery, and I'm like, what are you doing posting about beer? And then so I saw this, and I was like, all right, if I ever get out to Woodstock, this is where I'm going to go. You've made it to Woodstock.
00:02:03
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, and I've been here. I've obviously been to Woodstock before, but this is actually the first time I think I've come with a destination in mind. And so, yeah, you guys got this awesome brewery out here. So I think the point is really just to talk about, I mean, I know we talked about this kind of like before we started recording, but kind of get in the background and how you guys got into this and like what your future goals are and all of that kind of. First, obviously, and talk about the beer and introduce yourself. Yeah, I'm Chuck Moran.
Founding Story of Holtzlager Brewing
00:02:32
Speaker
I'm Mario Cortez. We're two of the founding owners. Our other founding partner is currently moving stools out to the beer garden with Travis. Oh yeah, just so everybody knows as you're listening, we are sitting in the brewery, which by the way, today is like really, I guess it was the first day of phase four, but one of the places. Today the weather is nice, so hopefully we get a really good
00:02:51
Speaker
approximation for what the summer might hold for us. Yeah, but we are in a brewery, so there's gonna be a lot of background noise because they're getting ready to start the day here. Sorry, go ahead. No worries. So Mario, Travis, and I actually all used to work together for the same company in Crystal Lake. And Mario and I have known each other for going on 20 years or so. I've lost count.
00:03:13
Speaker
And so we started working together in 2016 and quickly, you know, found Travis as a friend, found out he brewed his own beer. He gave us some beer to taste. We liked his beer. And then I think Mario, one evening, fall evening in like 2017, was at an Oktoberfest event at Nune Whistle.
00:03:35
Speaker
And after leaving there, kind of like called Travis and said, hey, let's start a brewery. And that's kind of how it started. A couple of weeks after that, it always starts. You got a drunk friend from a beer fest and be like, let's do this, man. Literally the conversation with something like, hey, Travis, you want to open a brewery? He's like, hell yeah. That was it. That's just snowball from there. Yeah. So a couple of weeks after that, they asked me if I was interested in participating.
00:04:02
Speaker
So ever since then, the three of us have been working on bringing this to life. It starts with planning, at least if you want to try to be successful. It starts with planning. So we came up with a business plan.
From Planning to Diverse Beer Styles
00:04:15
Speaker
We're trying to attract investors, raise capital, our own included.
00:04:22
Speaker
And over the course of about 18 months, two years, we worked through all these steps. We got the funding necessary. We rented this wonderful space here in Woodstock. And by September last year, we were serving beer. When we opened, we only had like three or four beers available. And now we've got 13 tanks full.
00:04:42
Speaker
and everything's a little bit different, right? It's not like you just have like adjunct versions of the same two beers. There's different styles. We've got Pilsner's, we've got Kolsch, we've got IPA's, Porter's, Stout's. Black IPA's. Yeah, Black IPA. Raspberry. This is phenomenal, by the way. Yeah, that looks, the name of it was Trojan Unicorn. Trojan Unicorn, yeah. And that's the first beer that we brewed in the brew house here when we were cleared by the health department to actually start making beer.
00:05:10
Speaker
That's kind of our flagship beer. That's kind of cool that you guys chose a black IPA as like your flagship beer. Yeah, well that was kind of risky. And that was the last beer that Travis made on his home system before we started really getting into the thick of everything, right? And we all decided right then like this is a really good beer. I don't care how obscure this style is. This is a really good beer. Let's make it.
00:05:32
Speaker
and for that reason that's kind of you know it's solid lean into it there's only one other black ipade that ever got that i really liked and i can't even remember the name of it now but it's the new hilarious black ipade oh yeah wait that top or something like i forget it was a logger i'm thinking no they do have a black ipade though yeah or they did at one point i don't remember necessarily because i remember having that that was like the first time i had one that i really liked i'm like this is a pretty sweet stuff like if you can get it done right yeah
00:05:59
Speaker
this like I could drink this like we talked we did an episode earlier this week talking about summer beers and I'm like this I would throw out even though it's kind of like the Porter style but man like this is totally drinkable
Pandemic Adaptations
00:06:13
Speaker
like I'm gonna have one before I leave but what I went for was the the Raspberry Pilsner and when Brandon was telling me you know we were coming out here of course the first thing I did was I
00:06:21
Speaker
what do they have on tap you know and a little bit of and that's this beer is the one that stood out the most lately I've been wanting to drink lighter beers during silver beer right yeah yeah and then but you know during the whole pandemic and being at home I found myself going through like all my heavy stouts that had sitting around
00:06:38
Speaker
have stout it out guilty yeah yeah too many times so we like this but this yeah this as we were talking before you well we were recording but uh yeah it's it's the what's the name of this one sorry we call that Molina so that's like for mortal combat no Molina is a polish or check word for raspberry
00:06:58
Speaker
I'm learning a lot about different languages. Yeah, so that's one of the things that we've done is, you know, we look for unique ways to say something very simple, right? Even the name of the brewery, Holzlager Brewing Company. The word Holzlager is something that we kind of combined German words to, Holz means wood, lager means to store, to stock. Together that means woodstock.
00:07:22
Speaker
It's very clever. My reaction now is a lot less because I already knew it, but I think that's a really clever name. Yeah, and the longer story is, and you'll see some of the photos, unfortunately our listeners can't see, but the photo on the left here that you can see is the old Woodstock brewing and bottling company that built down in like 1912.
00:07:43
Speaker
And so our initial idea was to try and revive that brand. Turns out that Distillery in New Zealand owns the trademark for Woodstock. And you can petition, you can use the lawyers and say, hey, we'd like to use this name. We're not competing with you. And it's a crapshoot. So we just found a workaround.
00:08:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's a clever and great workaround. Well, and it makes it more unique, I think. Yeah. Because I honestly did not put that together. And then when I heard that story, I'm like, well, damn, that just fits. And it's a great way to kind of tie all of that together. Yeah, we wanted to still, you know,
Community and Collaboration in Brewing
00:08:26
Speaker
make us part of Woodstock, right? That's one of the things we wanted to really bring in, right? We wanted to be Woodstock's home brewer. Yeah. So when you guys were looking for, like, you know, you had this conceptual idea in 2017, started your business plan, was Woodstock always the location that you guys wanted to open in or were you kind of open to just anything at the point? So we looked around a little bit. I mean, it does help to have, you know,
00:08:52
Speaker
Travis, who was, you know, starting, he was our starting brewer, right? He still does some brewing. We have a full-time brewer now. He lives a quarter mile from here. So that helps. We did look at other, you know, we contemplated other towns, other cities.
00:09:10
Speaker
but you know at the time there was not a single brewery here I mean that was I mean other than Crystal Lake and Scorch start right uh you know Sohap wasn't open yet more more just open yeah wasn't open yet shadow view here in town wasn't open
00:09:26
Speaker
Kishawake Green Company, they're starting to build. They're building, they're building now. We'll see when they open. When we started planning this, there were no brewers in Woodstock, there were only a couple in McHenry County. By, you know, September when we opened, Sohap was open and Huntley, Shadowview's open.
00:09:44
Speaker
of the
00:10:03
Speaker
All right, what else is in the area? And you'll find out that all these other great breweries are out here. Well, and that's how most of us, like, when we go somewhere, whether it's, you know, reasonably close or, you know, other side of the country, like, I'm not the nearest brewery. My wife loves that. That's what I do every time. Well, if we're going to this part of the city, there's at least three more breweries. That's exactly what I was thinking. It makes us more of a destination. I didn't get this travel body from eating. I was traveling around the country and I've been hitting every brewery I found.
00:10:32
Speaker
And that's the other thing about craft beer in general, the industry is very communal, communal, community based, right? We're supportive of one another. Sure, we might, you know, there might be competition here and there, but we all generally agree that we're all more successful and stronger when
00:10:49
Speaker
when everybody succeeds, right? Yeah, definitely. So having other breweries in the area to bring people out from the city like you guys or from Iowa or Rockford or whatever just having a reason for people to come this area is better for everybody. Yeah and you have everybody you have people coming out to you know stop here to have a beer go to the next place have a beer it does make it like a little adventure every time you go out you can come out to Woodstock.
00:11:12
Speaker
We're so close to Wisconsin. I mean, we get a lot of visitors from Wisconsin and, you know, they could essentially just go down 47, you know, 20 minutes down and, you know, they could hit up two, three other breweries. I was driving from here to my in-laws house. They live in Algonquin and.
00:11:27
Speaker
Starting here, I can hit two other breweries between here and my in-laws. So when we were driving up here we I was gonna because he had mentioned more he was I think moors out here and I was like We should look and see if there's other places too. You know, I mean we're gonna head back soon as we're done, but Maybe just one quick stop before we go back home. I don't have much going on I do actually crap. That's why I drove
00:11:53
Speaker
controlling this shit. After, I have to make sure that my wife was like, there's an Antioch pizza right there. Can you bring pizza home? And I'm like, yeah, Antioch pizza is delicious. It might not make the trip back. So my quick story is my family has a house in Antioch. OK. And they go to Antioch pizza all the time.
00:12:12
Speaker
A couple of weeks ago, I was out there and I actually, my sister tells me that she brings it back to the city all the time. I'm like, what? So I did it and brought it home. I'm like, man, it was still awesome pizza. So my wife's like, it worked that time. It's going to work this time. So all right, I'll order some pizza on the way back. Boom, lawyer.
00:12:28
Speaker
So do you guys have YouTube specifically do you guys what's your background in brewing or beer or anything? Beer related I started out as a consumer, right? You know I as I'm sure we probably all can can share a similar experience right in you know It starts in high school and then in a college high school what? Weird
00:12:54
Speaker
But, you know, it went from, you know, cheap beer to, I mean, I remember being like a senior in college and we're buying M.G.D. and thought, oh, finally, we're drinking good beer. And then you get out of college and you see this whole new spectrum of beer that really isn't accessible necessarily.
00:13:11
Speaker
Affordable. Affordable to college students, essentially. And it kind of just steamrolled from there. I mean, one of the first craft beers that I remember having is Sierra Nevada's pale ale. Nice. It's a good place to start. I remember my first impression of this beer and just being like blown away by the hops, right? Yeah. And now I drink a Sierra Nevada pale ale and I don't want a whole lot of hops. It's not overpowering now. Yeah. It's just sort of that relativity of where you're coming from versus where you've been. Right.
00:13:39
Speaker
And so it's just, for me, it's kind of grown from there. It started with just really liking craft beer. I brewed unsuccessfully at best myself. You're a home brewer, you understand what it takes to get a quality batch. And I'm the kind of guy where I'm a perfectionist. I got scars, man. I got scars. I'm a perfectionist. So if I'm going to start a hobby, I'm going to master it. And so I chose not to master brewing.
00:14:03
Speaker
Yeah, it can be tough to be a perfectionist. Yeah, well, you start having kids and your time demands kind of change. And then, you know, kind of fast forward to 2016 and I'm already, you know, I drink pretty exclusively craft beer and, you know, start hanging out with Travis and then here we are, you know, now I know a whole lot more about the beer making process. I'm certainly not a brewer by any stretch of imagination, but I can talk with intelligence about how we do it and what we do and all that good stuff.
00:14:33
Speaker
Yeah, for myself, I was a home brewer. Certainly not to the extent of Travis, right? But yeah, I've had several batches. Quite successful by IAT, actually. But yeah, but it's just one of those things where, you know, it's
00:14:52
Speaker
It's a whole day thing, you know, you got a plan for it. Whether you're brewing seven barrels, a hundred barrels, or one barrel, it's the same amount of time. Basically my brother-in-law's argument of, well, I'm like, well, let's do a small batch, like a studio gallon batch to test it out. He goes, why? Just to take the same amount of time. I'm like, I know, but if it sucks, we only have one gallon. So yeah, so for me, it was, you know,
00:15:16
Speaker
I mean, the first, I kind of jumped into the deep end of it, you know, I did, you know, the same perspective, some experiences as as Chuck, as far as, you know, college and, you know,
00:15:27
Speaker
you know, drinking, you know, the loin beers and all of that, right? But whatever we could all afford. Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, graduated from school, you know, started, you know, kind of getting more into the good things in life, let's say, right? You know, because I had a little money that I could spend on certain things now. Right. But yeah, so like I kind of jumped into the deep end and some of the first, what I would say, craft beers were Trappist that I tried. So, you know, I was, you know,
00:15:55
Speaker
I went right into like 13 percent. What does this taste like? So that's kind of how I started and just kind of developed from there.
00:16:08
Speaker
Like, pretty much drinking nothing but craft beer. Now, every once in a while, I have some of the mistakes. Yeah. You know? When we were building this place last summer, we drank a lot of Rolling Rock. I was going to ask what if you get it. I was going to, like, literally, I was at the top of my head, because I remember, like, sitting at your place or, like, my place, whatever, when we were, like, in high school. Oh, yeah. When we didn't drink in high school, we drank Rolling Rock. Because it was the closest thing to not drinking. Yeah. Because it's, I mean, it is. It's, I don't know where last time I went to rock, but, yeah, it's super easy. But also, I think that's the only thing people are willing to buy us.
00:16:37
Speaker
Yeah, we'll get you rolling rock. That's cheap. So I was gonna ask yeah before you guys said that what is as far as like domestic beers go which I always I always I think it's funny that Those like big it's called. Yeah, it's called domestic but craft beer is also domestic But I think it's just that general idea. It's easier to do but you guys had to go to domestic is it rolling rock or is it something else? Um, you know if I'm out somewhere and maybe like I
00:17:01
Speaker
but the beer menu isn't extensive or whatever. I will drink a PBR because it's, you know, exactly what you're going to get. Sure. And it won a blue ribbon, so. It is a winner. It is a winner. It's a great beer for the price point, too, right? I can nurse a pint of, you know, a tall boy of PBR and we're really happy. Tall boy is probably more often than not.
00:17:31
Speaker
Yeah, that was raised in Hazard Bush. Okay. So, you know, Bud Light, Budweiser, you know, that's, you know, I'm Mexican, myself, you know, Mexican heritage, right? So, usually when I'm drinking those domestics, and what I would call not domestics as well, because Mexican beers, right? Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, going to my parents' house and, you know, you know, my dad always has modelos. Right.
00:17:53
Speaker
And stuff like that, right? I know, I'm still right. Actually, it's one of the ones I want to bring. Most of the beers that I typically kind of lean towards when I'm not driving a craft. Sure. Yeah. Mine has been high life from day one. It's just never like when I was in a band, it was easy to just get a 30 pack. Yeah, a 30 rack of high life. We finished half of it during the practice, finished the other half after. For sure. It's really easy.
00:18:18
Speaker
what was yours isn't it uh because when we did the old man beer episode i don't i think well now i think it's changing like and the only reason it is bud light is just because that's what somebody brought over on christmas eve and that's what i still am down to like my last can i had a friend that came and cleared me out not that long ago um
00:18:36
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, growing up, I just remember my dad always drinking Miller Lite. Like, that's just- My dad drinks Stro's. Wow. I think we talked about that in the old- Yeah, I think that's one of the ones that we were on the second part of the- But yeah, I mean, I'm not opposed to Miller Lite, like, but I've, like, Bud Lite and, like, my brother-in-law drinks Coors Lite a lot. So, like, if I go, like, if I'm meeting with family, like, I'm usually the one that'll bring a craft beer. Now my brother, he's hardcore, like,
00:19:02
Speaker
he thinks he was born in Germany he speaks German now like he has like everywhere he goes it's like any type of you know Polina or whatever like anything that's like German he's bringing it and then he's got a keg of German beer on tap all the time like whatever he's crazy but it's like I'll bring you know
00:19:19
Speaker
sometimes I bring like you know everyday hero or like something like a light happy beer because you know people I drink it and I don't care about anyone else and then like my brother will bring a bunch of Coors and I'm like you know what I think you just rather have a Coors yeah sometimes those are the yeah so I'm
00:19:35
Speaker
I'm domestic flexible. It's a situation, right? Like if you're hanging out at a backyard barbecue. You're going to be drinking all day. I don't want to throw them back 7.5% IPAs all day. They're sweating orange juice. I was trying to explain the session IPA. We had a conversation about the whole session IPA. I think that was the last episode that we did. That was because we talked about summer beers. I know people who don't like session IPs. Even when I saw it, I'm like, why the hell would I want to drink that?
00:20:02
Speaker
you know when you realize you're drinking when you're out in the yard and you know you're just discovering craft beer and say you've got you know the 7% IPA and it's hot as hell and I was saying like I've hit two I feel full and a little yeah I got more than a little buzz going on.
00:20:19
Speaker
With, you know, phase four rolling in, you guys now, so you open up in September. When did you guys have to kind of cease being open? When did that, when Illinois all went to? Yeah, I mean, it was just like everybody else was whatever. It feels like it was so long ago. Excuse me. So, you know, St. Patrick's Day. Yeah. And we had green beer ready. Oh, my God. Oh, great. This is going nowhere.
00:20:46
Speaker
But yeah, so March 17th, you know, just like everybody else when the governor's mandates came out, we went out in line like anybody. And we quickly pivoted to go sales. We already had our crawler machine. So we started when we get that, like October, November last year. So we were already doing the 32 ounce crawlers.
00:21:09
Speaker
And so when everything shuts down, I'm like, okay, well, we can't have anybody in here. Let's pivot. So we started filling a lot of crawlers. We sold some crawlers to local liquor stores. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. And then we quickly moved into getting the 16 ounce cans going. So we bought the fillers, the seamer for that.
00:21:28
Speaker
a bunch of other infrastructure, labeling, and it's all still a manual by hand process, right? One of our employees will sit for a couple hours and just label cans and turn out 10, 20 cases and then we'll fill it and then we'll seam it and then we'll store it and we'll just do that.
00:21:45
Speaker
keep up with demand and not overflow stock and all that good stuff. It's kind of almost, in the best way possible, forced you guys to kind of have to accelerate for you guys.
Adapting Sales Strategies Due to COVID-19
00:21:56
Speaker
I'm assuming planning on going at some point and labeling, having your own cans and doing the crawlers and being able to do that all. Not being able to do it all, but almost having to do it all. Yeah, the business as we planned it was we wanted to be a commercial brewery with a taproom, not a taproom that also sells around the back door.
00:22:14
Speaker
So our business plan is around serving most of the beer out the back door. And for the first few months leading up to the shutdown, we were doing a lot more business out the front door.
00:22:26
Speaker
We were building accounts with local bars and restaurants and selling them six bowls and half barrels. And then obviously that dries up when they'll be... Right. Everyone's drinking. Yeah. We just pivot into the cans and we start focusing on the liquor stores. And even some of the places that are selling, you know, to go out, you know, the restaurants do the to-go stuff. And it's forced us to do things that we're planning, just, you know, it shifts your price.
00:22:53
Speaker
So if everything like, you know, I'm assuming, like you said, you had green beer on tap ready to go for St. Patrick's Day, you know, as now that we're basically reopening and hopefully stays stay the course for how well that we've done this entire time. Well, we're pretty great. And I'm only hoping for the best. Definitely. Is there stuff you guys have you guys planning anything just yet or you're holding off just in case? Terms of beers or like as far as like any events or anything. And then as far as beers, yeah.
00:23:23
Speaker
Yeah, I mean so typically like this would be like peak like fest season, right? Like we would run trying to like get ourselves into local and even surrounding area beer fests. We do charity events, anything to get exposure. So that's obviously kind of off the shelf right now. One of the things that we're kind of looking at is a one-year anniversary party or festival. Obviously you want to make sure that we understand what we're going to be able to do. Right.
00:23:50
Speaker
So certainly having this outdoor space that we've got here is helpful towards that. Our building owner has been really supportive, you know, if we tell them and obviously get the buy-in from our fellow business owners in the building here, like set up tons in the parking lot.
00:24:06
Speaker
You know, everybody's on board. If it brings more people to this little plaza here, everybody wins. Pizza and beer. What else do you want? Yeah, and in a couple weeks, the tacos joint is going to move across the street. Best tacos will be here. Pizza, beer, and tacos. What else do you want? Up in heaven. Yeah, Taco Tuesday. Yeah, right? With a Mexican lager. Once it's on tap again. They're very popular in town. So yeah, that's definitely going to be fairly enough. Probably going to put traffic. Yeah.
00:24:36
Speaker
I mean the biggest thing we got going on right now is, you know, as we're moving into this, probably for the first time, virtual Great American Beer Festival. Yeah, I just saw that that's happening. You guys submit beers to that? We're submitting two beers to that. Awesome.
00:24:54
Speaker
We did some meat beers for the World Beer Cup. That all got turned into hand sanitizer. All that beer got turned into hand sanitizer. That sucks, man. Better than nothing. At least it's useful. Yeah, at least it turned something like that. Everybody got a refund on their fees and all that stuff, but I would have still liked if it got judged. Like some feedback, please. We have a lot of good feedback locally, so it would have been nice to hear something from the guys that
00:25:23
Speaker
Really know, right? They really know what they're talking about. What beers are you guys submitting for? So we're submitting the Clown Hammer American IPA and we're submitting the El Jefe Negra Laga. Awesome. So both of those beers have been very well received. They're fairly popular, El Jefe.
00:25:44
Speaker
We made a seven barrel batch of it and we pretty much sold it in four weeks. Wow. You know, I think we have like two cases left of it and the only reason we have those two cases is because we kind of held off on selling any more cases to our accounts because we don't have any more draft. We're literally, you know, if somebody wants to do that,
00:26:02
Speaker
You get 16 ounces of it because we're opening up in a can and serving you. But we got a big double batch of that for making the election. It should be done tomorrow or this Monday, Tuesday. Just time for the 4th of July. So we're also working with a kind of, we want to try to push, there's a big
00:26:30
Speaker
Latino, Mexican community can get stuck. And that's something that, especially myself, as being a minority owner, that's something that I really want to go into and try to get. We want to be a brewery that can provide beers to the masses, right? Not just one particular type of drinker, right? So we see that as a community that we can certainly serve to.
00:26:54
Speaker
And our goal was to try to build a series of Mexican-style beers that, you know, maybe that community would really like. And, I mean, right now, El Jefe was very well received, like I said. So we got a couple ideas and some other things that we're doing. I think it's a really cool idea. Yeah, we're also collaborating with a local
00:27:20
Speaker
business owner who's trying to get his company started. And I don't know if you guys ever heard of like a Michelada mix. Yeah. Yeah. So my friend Ian introduced it to me one time. Originally I was against it. I'm like, this looks kind of like, cause I think about like a Bloody Mary, you know, like, and I'm like that. I don't like Bloody Mary's, but then I, he made it for me and I was like, this is, this is fucking delicious. And he left me a mixed sport. And it's not one of those things that you, you know, that you have.
00:27:47
Speaker
all the time, but it's a nice brunch type thing. Sunday morning. It's like the Mexican version of a rattler, right? Right. The Germans pour Coke into their beer. That's hilarious. Mexicans make Bloody Mary beers. Yeah, right. So we're collaborating on that, and we're, 4th of July weekend that Sunday, we're going to do like a, we're looking to work something up and do like a
00:28:17
Speaker
Essentially like a Michelada bar. Cool. And you know primarily because it'll have to be ready and that we already tested and it's phenomenal with it. It works well and we want to have a couple you know we got to do a tasting and get a couple other beers that'll mesh well with that. We should have came out next weekend. You can come back. Yeah I'm thinking about it now at this point that sounds awesome.
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah, so the guys that were collaborating, this is El 3, El 3 Chellava, that's the name of the brand. And so there, yeah, they're coming on, essentially next weekend, Sunday, and we're gonna have a, we're working the details on now, and we're gonna do it outdoors, or in here, or what, but we're gonna be offering that. We might open a little earlier to kind of do like a brunch thing. But yeah, it's something that, again, you're trying to capture that,
00:29:07
Speaker
the consumer profile right from the Latino side. I think this would be another way for us to kind of get involved with that and kind of just provide something that they can be happy about and enjoy. Take pride in it. As I say, it's part of the community.
00:29:28
Speaker
One of our principal owners is Mexican himself, and this isn't just lip service, right? This is intentional on our part. Yeah, that's awesome. One of the things I noticed while I was reading last night is I was prepping for today, sitting by the fire, drinking. I'm like, I should read up. With your corn cob pipe. Exactly. It was very sophisticated. I noticed that I was reading
00:29:50
Speaker
about what you guys try to get locally sourced ingredients as close as possible and whatever you guys can't get, also you're still finding a way to either get something from the community and to give to the community and support back and forth. Yeah, absolutely. It's exactly like you're saying, you know, it's not just lipstick. Depending on the recipe of the ingredients you need,
00:30:13
Speaker
determines whether how local you can be, right? But one of our beers on tap, the Lucas Road, we have a couple of versions. It's all made with 100% woodstock grown hops. There's a local farm in town with Big Row Cascade. On Lucas Road. On Lucas Road. Clever.
00:30:30
Speaker
And last year, we bought his entire crop and made the initial version. It was a 100% wet hound. So fresh. Nice. They literally harvested in the morning, hauled it over to us, and we brewed that afternoon.
00:30:45
Speaker
So that was the Lucas Road. So that was the Lucas Road, and then we're still getting hops from them, but it's the Pelletic version. So the Pelletic version is the Lucas Road U-turn, and now we have the U-turn. I read the description. It was so good. Yeah, it's great. And then we have a Barrel H, Lucas Road on Bourbon Barrels, and that's the runaround.
00:31:12
Speaker
I'm sorry, the runabout. It's a runabout. That's awesome. That's cool. So with the pandemic and everything, and you guys had to shut down March 17th, has that led you guys into brewing anything different or brewing more, I would possibly think, or less? We took, I'd say, the first two or three weeks.
00:31:37
Speaker
Um, and we had, we had inventory, right? So we, we didn't know what was going to happen. Sorry. Whenever you were drinking, I'll try that. We can edit that back out and come back around to what we said. What were we talking about? Uh, you guys brewing more. Yeah. So when, when everything shuts down, we, you know, we were under, you know, a mode of operation. We were, we were stocked up for that. Right. So we didn't.
00:32:02
Speaker
We didn't really do anything for a couple of weeks. We wanted to see what was going to happen. We started, you know, like we talked about before, filling crawlers, getting into the canning, seeing what was going to move, how it was going to move too, right? Because it's not just people coming in to buy it from us. We're trying to sell it on the back door. And so for two or three weeks, you know, we kind of tread water with what we had on hand and we're selling what we had. And then
00:32:30
Speaker
We were fortunate to get a PPP loan so we could bring staff back. So we could really, we could really decide or be more targeted with how we want to use those funds and use that to these larger goals, right? So we can, okay, well, we can build these account bases with liquor stores or whatever. And, you know, the clown hammer, for instance, is a super popular beer. It's probably a third of our throughput.
00:32:57
Speaker
So we have to brew a double dash of that every other week or so. I think so. So just trying to figure out what the demand is, right? And fitting in the beers that we need to keep around, because people expect that, versus getting stuff that's new or a small batch like we saw earlier. And then trying to be like, we've got a seltzer fermentation right now. We're going to release a seltzer.
00:33:25
Speaker
I think we talked about a little bit, the raspberry pilsner that you had, we've got an ale version coming, which tastes different. You can still get that raspberry, but you're not getting the same pilsner feel. Sure. It's an ale yeast, it's got a different flavor profile, but really
Brewing Philosophy and Local Ingredients
00:33:43
Speaker
good.
00:33:43
Speaker
So we're trying to figure out how to work in new things, wanting to, like the Mexican series that Mario mentioned, expanding some of the IPAs, and then getting into other unique styles, right? We don't want to be one of those breweries that, oh yeah, just go to them for milkshakes, or go to them for sours. And that's not knocking against anybody who does those things. You make good beer, I got respect for you. But we want to make good beer across the board from one end of the spectrum to the other.
00:34:14
Speaker
Yeah, so I noticed you guys do have like a line of barrels over there. What do you guys got going on in all of those? So the ones you're pointing at, that's where we've got the Lucas Road. Over in the corner. Oh, we have a Lucas Road, a Grissett. Oh, the Grissett as well. And also a Colch. Oh, nice. And those are all in bourbon barrels. Wow. So bourbon barrel each.
00:34:36
Speaker
APA, Polish, and Gressette. And then we've got a Russian Imperial over there that's been in since January 4th. We're going to bring that out November-December. We'll do a couple one or two adjuncts, some fruit additives, but that should probably be a 13-15% beer when it's all set down.
00:34:58
Speaker
what was the uh barrel leaf reload we did what did that clock in at i don't even remember like 10 percent yeah yeah it was about 10 percent it was the reason why i say i don't remember it's because we just it just we've had bad luck with barrels i think i think that came out came out of fermentation at about 10 percent okay yeah that's not the first run of it though because no the first one of it was really sorry we're also so we we're in a home room group that we kind of have going like
00:35:24
Speaker
it's kind of defunct now especially with all this we don't meet so we all you know most of us kind of brew separately but not was it 2018 yeah we entered into the Great Lakes brew fest okay they have their home brew island
00:35:42
Speaker
So we got into that. That was the last year they were allowing people from Illinois. And we had done a barrel-aged stout that we had in a bourbon barrel that sat there for almost a year. We brewed 15 gallons, like we had three guys that brewed 15 gallons separately, or five gallons separately, and then we blended those all together, but all using the same recipe.
00:36:04
Speaker
We brought that up to the Great Lakes Beer Fest, and that was our first beer to blow. And they have a voting system on there that rates all the breweries, like home brewers against all the commercial ones. We won first place. Wow. That was crazy. It was like, we're a bunch of idiots that are just like, screwing around with beers. And like, favorite brewery and favorite beer. Yeah, another thing is that. But we were the only ones telling people to vote, though, too.
00:36:34
Speaker
It was hilarious though, because there was other votes for other places, but I'm like, how the hell did we end up? I mean, I guess it was just lip service, but it was hilarious. We take it. You pin that metal on the wall and you move on. We post it on Facebook right away. Here we are, number one, baby. That was our second experience with the barrel. Our first experience, we brewed 55 gallons. Put it in a knob crease.
00:36:58
Speaker
The person who was in charge of the barrel did not sanitize the barrel. He washed it out like in his kiddie pool with a garden hose and then we just dumped the beer in there. So he thought that he wanted to rinse it like that because it dried a little bit.
00:37:13
Speaker
But then again, none of us were in charge of anything else. We didn't know what the hell we were doing. You're disavowing all responsibility. Oh yeah, totally. I'm totally throwing that on Paul. But yeah, unfortunately, it smelled delicious, but the pellicle that formed that top was just, it's like nail polish remover. Yeah, we had one of our beer tenders brought in for one of our staff meetings pre-COVID.
00:37:36
Speaker
We brought in, he had some Goose Island bourbon barrel aged and he had like 2015, 16, 17 and I guess 2015 had gone sour. And so we were doing like side by side taste tests and like
00:37:50
Speaker
2015 like it wasn't bad. It wasn't what you expect right? Yeah, right. It's something different now, but it's still like I don't know a big sour guy I don't really like I've had one sour that I would go back for and that's from flask in Barrington, okay? Shout out to them that, like. Isn't that Clint's cousin or something like that? Sours aren't my thing, but this like I mean it probably helps that it's you know 15% alcohol. Yeah, yeah. We actually one time as we had a
00:38:18
Speaker
We had a whole, we've done a whole show on the Bourbon counties from Goose Island, actually a two-part thing, because it was such a, anyways, it was actually a three-part thing that we had to re-record some more. There's part four, there's part four talking about it again, Goose Island, where's our check? We actually drank a 2015 that had, that was at your condo. Yeah. We had your condo that had turned, but it wasn't
00:38:38
Speaker
bad it was almost like there was uh like blackberry added to it so it was like actually but i know the coffee one that i had that got infected yeah like if somebody had told me that it was intentional to be like that like i would have been like okay i mean i'd already got my money back for that bottle so i didn't really care and i had a few of them i think we ended up drinking them all but like we had talked in the past because we had another friend that had
00:39:03
Speaker
probably way too many of them. We talk about like cooking with them and like turning into like barbecue sauce or whatever. I mean there's definitely uses for bad beers unless it's just a really bad beer. You're two percent heifers and something went wrong. You made an accidental N8. Yeah pretty much. He had a big issue.
00:39:26
Speaker
I told the story on our last episode. We can edit this out. Yeah, my chiller broke. My chiller broke. Burst into places. Right when I was doing, I was like, finished my boil, was just at about five gallons, threw it in there, turned on the water. Actually, well I had it in there, I had the chiller in there for like 10 minutes to get it like to temperature and then to sanitize it. As soon as I turned down the water, I was walking back
00:39:48
Speaker
and I looked and there was 10 gallons of water in my kettle. I was like, that's not right. And then I took it out two big holes in the copper. I was like, oh, stinks. So anyways, I tried to boil it. I boiled it down to like seven gallons and I fermented it. And then I kegged it and tapped it. And at first it's like, oh, this is really good. And then it just has this weird off-flavor afterwards. I was like, uh,
00:40:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's... I mean, brewing is a gamble a lot of times, especially when you're doing new recipes or like when you have incidents that go awry, like there's no solid way to like clean up after that. I thought about that today because our local homebrew shop just opened up again. I was like, you know, maybe I might stop and get some grains to brew this weekend. Like, I've got all these hops in the freezer and I was like, yeah, when some of these hops, I mean, they're sealed, they're vacuum sealed. I'm like,
00:40:46
Speaker
I really want to run the risk. I felt like the last couple beers that I did, I ran, like, it came out okay, but I kind of just want to get as fresh as possible. I mean, it's... When they're fresh, right? When they're not pelletized, you know, that's just a different story, right? When they're pelletized, it's a little bit... They got more shelf life. Right, exactly. That's what happens.
00:41:11
Speaker
When you're home brewing, you're not using pellets, typically. Unless you're getting those... Yeah, the packets. Yeah, which is what I end up with. I've only done the whole cone half.
00:41:25
Speaker
once I think that was one of the first beers that we did and I hated it because of all the beer it soaked up and like everything was in there like this it was also a mystery experience for us too right we make this wet out beer and the yield is not what we expect right and there's yeah everything gets bogged down and
00:41:44
Speaker
But you really do get an awesome flavor and aroma from it. Yeah, that's the trade-off. It's a lot fuller, a lot more, the flavor's a lot higher, right? You really get all of that, right? Yeah, there's definitely a pro to using it. It's just even as a humber, I'm like, I'm going to lose all that beer. But at this point now, I've brewed so much beer. I have beer on tap that's been on tap for a long time. I was just telling him I had this. We have a Halloween party, and he and I will do
00:42:15
Speaker
like weird beers for it, not weird. So like the first year we did beer with Count Chocula Stout and he did Frankenberry, right? Yeah, Frankenberry, half a wide, a wheat beer. Those turned out good, but we also had to add chocolate. But the last one we did was an Almond Joy that I added coconut extract to it. And it was a lot. It was a lot of lactose. For me it was too much. I just dumped it two weeks ago, like the rest of it. It wasn't like a whole lot, but
00:42:46
Speaker
I will correct myself a little bit. So it does taste different. It does taste better, but you got to use the right amount. Right. Exactly. Because you got to concentrate. You know, it's the flour, right? So there is
00:42:59
Speaker
The Dutch thing is, you know, the volume. It's supposed to pelletize, I'm saying. Right, yeah, yeah. With the pellets, I mean, you know... Yeah, you know, it's... The flavor is more controlled. Right, the flowers can be bigger, smaller... Yeah, and the raw fresh products, you don't know what the concentrations are of those, you know, alpha acids and the other... Yeah, I mean, all of the... ...fragrances. Yeah. So I have a quick question. What is it when you went to grab us more beers? What are we drinking right now?
00:43:28
Speaker
So now we're drinking our double New England IPA.
00:43:32
Speaker
Hilda of the East. So this is a, you know, a very juicy, hazy style for sure. I mean, you know, this is what I was drinking when we started and I told you, you know, I like orange juice as well. Yeah, this is, well, it's funny because, like, I really like, oh, I figured it was, you know, the hazy IPA, obviously. It's got a beautiful color to it. Is there any adjuncts in this at all, or is it just? So there is cloudberry in it. Okay.
00:44:00
Speaker
So you get all of the mango, pineapple, you know, flavors. But we also have the cloudberry itself, which is a Nordic berry. That's what we also have in our hill device. Okay, I will not say no. It's a Nordic berry, gross at high altitude. It's more of a wider profile rather than
00:44:23
Speaker
you know, most berries, which is a particular flavor. This, you know, like our wheat ale, some people have compared it to like fruit loops.
00:44:34
Speaker
Yeah, I can see that. It was kind of, well, first off, it's a really good beer. The reason why I asked, because at first I was like, it kind of, like my palate was like, this felt like almost like a creamsicle, you know, some of the milkshake IPAs where the vanilla goes in there. But now when she, when she told me, not that I'm familiar with that berry, but as you were describing it, I'm like, that's what I'm actually tasting. My first thought, this is awesome. Yeah, when we made the Hilda Weiss, that was the first beer we did with the cloud berry. I tasted it, I'm like,
00:45:04
Speaker
Fruity apples. Yeah, this is you know, so frugal that kind of like sugary fruits here. Here we go. I want to do something with that berry Man, if you get that flavor that is the only reason why we talked to anybody else we're like, well, so what we what can we do? No, it is delicious. It's very good. I'm starting to feel like
00:45:27
Speaker
I had a clear idea of what I was going to take home with me today. Yeah. And it's fucked up. It's messed up. You guys have thrown me a trouble. What are you rating this podcast? Whatever you want. Mature audience is always. Oh, yeah. It's also 7.6. So be advised. Hence the FM flying out of my mouth so randomly. Tony will go in and peep out every FM. It was just a one, thankfully.
00:45:54
Speaker
That's how we get our PG-13 rating. So I know we're talking about future beers. Is there anything else you guys have lined up that you're excited about for the summer, like being released? Or anything in general, like now that we're open? I'm excited just to have people back, right? We're sitting here in the taproom now. We've got a
00:46:16
Speaker
Patrick's a regular. Hey Patrick. Hey Patrick. Got some other folks. Mario. Both of our wives are here right now. My kids are sitting here. So it's great to just welcome the community back into the space. And then obviously with the beer garden and the nice weather. We're just looking forward to being a place to come in, hang out, and drink a beer. Grab some pizza from Indiana. Grab some tacos, some fast tacos.
00:46:40
Speaker
All right. Free snacks from home. We don't care. Just come have a good time. Just come. Yeah. Just come. Yeah. What I'm looking forward to is, you know, as we're putting more beer out into the market, just kind of getting more canned beer of the different styles. We're going to be releasing the final final pilsner that's going to be coming up, you know, in the next three or four weeks. We'll get that into the market. So just, you know, kind of getting some of those to kind of give us a little bit more exposure, even though if it's, even if it's limited, just because of our
00:47:09
Speaker
number of accounts and such, right? And we're, you know, we're spreading from McKenna County outward, right? I live out in Palatine, so pretty much is, if you look at our map of accounts, is there, you know, things like, you know, kind of, jets out? Hey, that's the right way to do it, though. So, yeah, so that's one of the things that I'm looking forward to, you know, just kind of,
00:47:34
Speaker
you get a little bit more exposure with our beer getting more of our cans out there doing a few more can releases yeah and then getting our barrel egg stuff out and you know having hopefully getting some of that so you guys self-distributing right now or yeah so we're class one brewer
00:47:52
Speaker
So, yeah, we self-distribute. We want to try to keep in control of that as much as possible. One of the best advices so far I've gotten from fellow growers is like, just do it until it's the biggest pain in the butt for you. Where you can't really, you just can't do it anymore, then do that. Because then you gotta talk to the distributor and get into an agreement and all those things that come with that, right? But in the meantime,
00:48:22
Speaker
We're trying to self distribute, we're trying to...
00:48:26
Speaker
We're trying to have some controlled growth, but at the same time, we're not going to decline any accounts. Anybody that wants to have our beer, whether it's on tap or in cans, we'd be happy to get to them. Are you guys even looking into the city as well? Or into Chicago? One of the things that, like every small brewery, like right now we're using our own vehicles to make some of these deliveries, right?
00:48:53
Speaker
Like, one of the biggest steps that the next big milestone that we're looking for is to get a vehicle that we can, you know, have a delivery driver that, you know, we can
00:49:07
Speaker
have out there making those deliveries while we're selling the beer. Those of us that are out there trying to get our beer out there, we can have more of a focus on okay we have people just dealing with the sales side and then have somebody that could just go out and
00:49:24
Speaker
and make those drop-offs and just have those routes and all the in-house heads to take care of that would be much better than dealing with the distributor. That's what a lake effect in Chicago, that's what he does. I used to work for him, Clint.
00:49:41
Speaker
I used to drive the van, deliver the beers, drop off kegs and stuff, and while it, you know, I'm sure it's a pain, which kind of was, but for me, I liked it because I was driving around all day, but that was my job, and then I'd fill up bottles at the end of the day as well. But he's got more control over, you know, who he's doing the business with, and he doesn't have to worry about it, you know, distributing. Right, and the pipe horse does the same thing, right, you see? Oh, yeah. And they deliver all over the place, right?
00:50:08
Speaker
Yeah, they deliver everywhere. Right. So, as far as business-wise goes, is there any future plans of, you know, not so much distributing, like, you know, the beer as wise, but, like, if the opportunity comes expanding, like, let's say the place next door opens up, like, would you ever think of growing this physical location or moving it, or are you guys pretty set in just making this your home base?
00:50:31
Speaker
So I think this would always be our original spot and maybe depending on how things go. Our 10 year business plan, if things were to work the way we want them to, we would try to begin thinking about
00:50:46
Speaker
purpose-built building, larger greenhouse. In the next couple to three years or something like that, depending on how things go, we're certainly not opposed to growing, whether it's another unit here in the building or otherwise.
00:51:04
Speaker
Yeah, I love, I mean, not to say that you guys took us through your facility, not to say that it's small, but from what you guys are putting out and what you have on tap, I mean, it's pretty impressive what you've done with what you have here. You've done a lot with the space you have, which is awesome. This place is that have more space and do less. Yeah, Travis and I in, you know, 2018, early 2019, I think it was. I mean, we visited a lot of breweries because that's one of the things that, so,
00:51:33
Speaker
The three of us are engineers, so we all come from a technical background, right? We kind of started this and it's like exploring a feasibility study, right? Can this be done? What would it take? And Travis and I visited a lot of breweries.
00:51:59
Speaker
And even here locally, I mean, again, it's very inclusive. So, you know, when we're in the brewery and planning, we could call up a brewery and say, hey, guys, you know, we're from so-and-so, and we might come in and check out your, you know, check out how you guys are doing things and see all of that. And we did the same thing in California. Oh, wow. Cool. We went to California, checked things out there.
00:52:21
Speaker
I mean, I know you're saying this is small. There's places we saw in California that were like half our space, maybe more so. And just cranking. And they were just cranking DRL. That's amazing. They were like shoehorning in systems into little pockets with fermenters within two inches of each other. You know, things like that. I mean, they were like, wow.
00:52:45
Speaker
You know, we can make do with it, you know? So that's one of the things that we try to look out for and try to figure out, okay, what can we do? What will we have? And I mean, if you can see, like, our 15-valve fermenters are actually custom-made. They're not like the typical size. Because we had... Yeah, it was insane. So we ended up getting a little shorter, drawing up the cone, the angle on the cone, but we haven't had any issues with the angle. It's worked out pretty well.
00:53:15
Speaker
I mean, if the opportunity comes, you certainly want to do more. I mean, we do want to, you know, eventually put a purpose-built building, you know, hopefully it's still here in town. And, you know, just kind of go from there, you know, become a regional brewery, maybe a national. I don't
Future Growth and Expansion Plans
00:53:33
Speaker
know who knows where the... Taking over the world wouldn't be anything to bring. Take over the world. You know?
00:53:39
Speaker
Well, this has been, this has been, this has been, this has been awesome, you guys. Thank you very much for coming down and talking with us. I'm sold. I've had two beers for me, guys. I'm sold. Not because this is 7.6.
00:53:58
Speaker
But no, this place is great. I think it's awesome what you guys are doing and what your whole, how you guys came to be and what your basic mission statement is for the community and everything, what you guys have in mind providing everything. So to sum it up, just so everybody knows, where can they find you? What are your hours? He's the brains. Yeah, so whole fire and brewing company, Woodstock, Illinois. We're right on Route 47, just south of 120.
00:54:26
Speaker
Anybody that's going to and from Wisconsin out this far west is going to drive right past us. We're in select liquor stores in the area and expanding. We're in Rockford all the way as far east as Palatine. We heard that. Our farthest account east is actually in Eyewood. They're miscuous. That's a good place to be. Yeah but we're in all the Garfield's kind of a long 14 so there's one in
00:54:56
Speaker
Crystal Lake, Barrington, Palatine, we're in all of those. The building owner of the space that we lease here also owns a handful of liquor stores, so we're in his liquor stores. You guys did everything right!
00:55:12
Speaker
You know, some things worked out really well. We got close on a couple of other spaces that didn't have the same building owner and didn't have the terms and the grass face and all the other stuff that's really coming handy. So, you know, everything's worked out for a reason, I think. And, you know, we're trying to, as Mario said, just continue to expand. We want to do it organically, like start with the community here, build the community here.
00:55:39
Speaker
and then expand that demand hopefully. Yeah and then you know that I mean at this point I think that a lot of the other breweries would agree that the to-go motto is not going to go away anytime soon. I hope not. I think it's been awesome. If you ever you know if anybody's ever going to come through they could order beer online. You can go to www.getbeer2go.com that goes straight to our online ordering site.
00:56:04
Speaker
That is awesome. You can order a beer and we will have it ready for you at your leisure. You know what we should have done? We probably should have started the episode with, hey, where are we? And then, you know, follow up. This is where you go back for the editing part. Oh, I won't do all that. This is how you get people to listen all the way to the end to figure out where they need to go. Smart.
00:56:25
Speaker
So, personally enough, that the main was available, so we took it. Do you believe it or not? That's really smart. That is pretty smart. And then food options, you guys, there's the pizza places here, you guys are open to people bringing stuff. Yeah, we welcome people, just like a lot of the breweries that you guys are probably familiar with as well. We don't have a kitchen, we're not serving food, so please feel free to bring your own snacks. We're family-friendly, pet-friendly in the beer garden.
00:56:50
Speaker
We have a lot of great food options in the immediate area. We've got your sister's tomato pizza. We've got Antioch pizza. We've got fast tacos. Sophie's wine and whiskey also make some good pizza and sandwiches. And then if you just want something quick and easy here, we've got large Bavarian pretzels that will warm up and give you some cheese. That'll get my wife to come out here. Yeah. And we've got a champion pizzas that we can throw in the oven for you. So we want to make sure that everybody can hang out and enjoy our beer.
00:57:20
Speaker
You know, stay fed and have a great time out in Woodstock. Woodstock is an awesome town. People are enough familiar with Woodstock. It's where the Groundhog Day was filmed. I also learned that recently. We should go over there.
00:57:35
Speaker
Go to the square, a lot of it looks exactly the same, and they actually filmed the Jeep commercial. It's a pothole? Yeah. Matt Ryerson, speaking of, we released the beer around the Super Bowl, Matt Ryerson. It was a Saison. That's awesome. Yeah, so we tried to roll it into the Groundhog Day thing. That's funny. Yeah, and it was... I want that beer again. Can we make that again? Yeah, for those of you old enough, the Tracy was... Yeah, the Tracy, yeah.
00:58:04
Speaker
Uh, you know, things like that. Woodstock has a lot of interesting history. We're old enough if that says anything about our age. Yeah, just down the street here, there's a Dick Tracy way, and if you guys ever have the opportunity to go to the square, the historic Woodstock Square, that's where a lot of the Ground Catholic Day movie was filmed, but they have a little, like, kind of back alley where there's this mural and it's got
00:58:27
Speaker
I think Tracy and Groundhog Day and all the other. Oh, that's cool. I think Orson Welles lived here for a certain period in his childhood. There's a lot of weird. He walks me where. Interesting, yeah. I feel like we should just come here and make it. You got points out at your hotel soon, right? Yeah. We can get you a deal at the Best Buster. Boom. Count us in.
00:58:49
Speaker
And even for people visiting from, say, the city, I mean, we're five blocks away from the metro station. Yeah, it's a half mile from here to metro station. Oh, really? Yeah.
00:58:58
Speaker
They've got a bike share program as well that they opened up last night. So I can rent a bike and ride it back to this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can ride the bike over here and then back. Yeah, I can take it back. My bike will train it at home. Well, this has been awesome, guys. Thank you very much. Yeah, you guys are coming out. We appreciate it. Thanks for having us. And everybody listening, you know, surrounding areas of, you know, if you're in Chicago and you listen to us, you know us. But anybody else, if you get a chance to come out to Woodstock, come here to Holtzlager.
00:59:27
Speaker
Did I do it right? You got it. Hey, all right. Yeah, it's awesome. It's a cool spot. And the two beers that I had, I'm having another beer before we go. Okay, great. The two beers that I had so far. We're going to go have one in a beer garden. Well, now I'm going to grab some growlers. I got so many things I'm buying here today. It's amazing. Sorry, Laura. I'm done for you.
00:59:47
Speaker
Brandon, thank you for setting this up. As always, love you everybody and hope everybody is staying safe. And thank you to our guests. Cheers guys. I'm already done with this one.
Visitor Information for Holtzlager Brewing
01:00:04
Speaker
Thanks again to Mario and Chuck for having us out at Holtzlogger Brewing in Woodstock. That was a great time. If you're interested in checking them out, you can find them online first at HoltzloggerBrewing.com. That's H-O-L-Z-L-A-G-E-R, Brewing.com. They're also on Facebook and Instagram. And if you're in the Illinois area or
01:00:25
Speaker
Just want to find a new brewery definitely go and check them out. They're at 150 South Eastwood Drive in Woodstock, Illinois Brandon and I grabbed a couple crawlers. I bought a new glass because Why do I need new glasses? I don't know. I got glasses cool place. Hope you guys enjoyed the show and we'll see you next time