Welcome to a very special edition of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Joining me today is Kristin. Hello. Pat. Hey, Raj. And Greg. Hey, Raj. Today, we are honored to welcome an industry icon, author of The Brewmaster's Table, editor of The Oxford Companion to Beer. From National Geographic to Martha Stewart, he's pretty much done it all. A voice for beer, Garrett Oliver. He's traveled the world, championing the cause of beer, always finding his way back home to the Brooklyn Brewery, where he served as a brewmaster for over 20 years. Mr. Oliver, thank you very much for joining us. It's good to be here. That was literally the longest one of those we've ever done. That was impressive, right? Well, I am 400 years old. So, you know, that... Yes, this is Beer Royalty. And again, we really do appreciate you joining us. One of the things that I always thought was funny, introducing your beer to customers in the store, was I would mention Brooklyn Brewery. And I can't tell you how many times they go, Brooklyn, like Brooklyn, New York. What was the beer scene like in Brooklyn when you started? And how has it changed? What's it like now? Well, when I say that I'm 400 years old, that's only a slight exaggeration. So there really was no beer scene in Brooklyn when I started. Back in those days, Brooklyn was thought of even by many New Yorkers as a no-go sort of place altogether. Now Brooklyn, of course, is huge. I mean, there's more than 3 million people in Brooklyn. But a lot of people are unaware of the history of Brooklyn and the brewing history of Brooklyn. So at the turn of the last century, the 19th into the 20th, say the 1880s, 1890s, there were 48 breweries in Brooklyn. They made about 15 percent of all the beer in the United States. So Brooklyn was one of the great brewing capitals of the world. We had such a wide variety of things that were brewed there. There were vice beer specialist breweries, there were porter breweries, there were IPA breweries. There was so much IPA being brewed in New York City that there was a New York burdenizing company that all they did was sell brewing salts to brewers of pale ales and IPAs. There were a number of breweries in Brooklyn that were much larger than Brooklyn brewery is now. That really gives you an idea of the history that we had. We also had people from all over the world, obviously living in Brooklyn, so we had this amazing food culture and this amazing beer culture. Through the last 100 years in the middle, the weirdness of the middle of the last century, we lost everything. We forgot where we actually came from. But the new Brooklyn actually looks a lot like the old Brooklyn, much more like the one that I would have grown up around in the 70s and 80s. You've brewed so many amazing beers over the years. We were just talking the other day about how Brooklyn Summer is one of our favorite beers. We always look forward to that every season. Can you talk a little bit about how that came about or what the inspiration was behind that? Well, it's funny how that happened because normally, I'm going to push back against the sales crew and they have an idea. It's like, you sell the beer, we'll have the ideas over here, and you say over there and you sell what we give you. That's true. The proper treatment of the sales crew. It's like, now, now, no more of these ideas. But the thing is, every once in a while, of course, I would come up with an idea that I thought was a great idea but just didn't really work. One of them was an early beer which was called Brooklyn Light Dinner Ale. Light Dinner Ale actually was a type of beer from England. It's actually a forerunner of English Summer Ale, which you don't get many of them here, but they're big in England. A dinner ale was also known as a family ale because the idea was, it would be about four, four and a half percent, it was relatively light, and it was a thing that a gentleman might go home and drink around his family, unlike the other times when apparently he would get drunk and violent or something. It's like, you could drink these and still have a family. So light dinner ale was supposed to be very sophisticated. You're not like heavily drinking, you're just having a light dinner ale. So, you know, we were quite early to the idea of session ability. I'm talking like late 90s, early 2000s. You know, people liked it, but it just didn't really sell. So finally, I had our guys out on Long Island, which is a big, you know, beach community. All of our beaches and stuff are out there saying, come on, we really need something called summer ale. And I was like, what's summer ale? You know, summer ale isn't really a style. Usually what people would do is they do some kind of wheat beer or something like that. And I said, fine. And I took light dinner ale and dry hopped it with Amarillo. And it was just for Long Island to take care of the beach communities. And then it took off as a thing unto itself. But I made the beer, as always, that I wanted to drink as opposed to what people thought we might make. A nice lighter pale ale that was just, you know, easy drinking, but with some character. And it kind of took off from there to become our, you know, our number two beer, even though it's only available less than six months out of the year. But we actually start brewing summer ale in February because you have Texas, especially there are parts of the country where in February it's hot, you know, and it's, you know, it's summer already in South Florida. So, you know, the trucks start rolling, you know, that early. I was just going to bring up, we've also started to switch the seasons. Oktoberfest comes earlier and earlier each year. So, your Oktoberfest is one of many loggers that I think you do really well. What's the learning curve like for brewing loggers? Well, I think that, you know, getting used to the subtlety and getting the best expression out of loggers, you know, takes time and patience. You know, the people often ask, well, what is the real difference between a logger and ale? And yes, of course, you have two different species of yeast, you have different fermentation temperatures. But, you know, to the average person, you know, what it actually means is ingredient driven flavors as opposed to yeast driven flavors plus ingredients. So generally speaking, and there, you know, there are some minor contributions by a logger yeast. But when you drink logger beers, you taste malt and you taste hops. You know, so generally speaking, you're not seeing all kinds of fruit, you're not seeing all kinds of spices. So that, from a sort of organoleptic point of view, is kind of the difference. And so you really, you have to focus on those ingredients and how you're going to balance them, you know, and express them. And then what would you like your logger yeast to do? Do you want something that's totally clean, so to speak? Do you want something that leaves a little bit of sulfur behind? You know, what is it that you like, you know, in a, in a logger? I like a little bit of sulfur in the background, kind of a fresh fermentation room character. I like a logger that smells a little bit like a brewery. I like the way breweries smell. Yeah, I mean, they pretty famously smell excellent. Yes. We did a podcast where we were talking about Pilseners. We keep hearing, is this going to be the summer of Pilsner? And I think with so much emphasis on IPAs right now, on heavily dry hopping, that a properly made Pilsner can get tired of hearing this, but I do. People say it's just too boring for them. It's not what they're looking for. Whether you agree with that or not, do you think brewers are going to start dry hopping lagers more? Are we going to see kind of a return to the IPL maybe? Personally, I think that a truly great Pilsner is about as thrilling a beer as you can possibly get. You don't taste them every day, but boy, oh boy. I remember the first time tasting Vinny Tlerzo at Russian River, his STS Pils, and I was like, man, you bastard. That's a great Pilsner. That stuff is just a wonderful and it's got all the stuff, all the stuff that you want. I started off loving beer, living in England, drinking beers that certainly had a hop character, but were fruity, malts forward, etc. But I think when you're around long enough, what you understand and people are resistant to this idea that you are involved in fashion. You know, there is fashion, you know, and you like to think, it's like, oh, you're completely independent minded. But in fact, things do move through phases, you know, and a few years ago, oh, black IPA was like all the rage. Well, find me one now. You know, the idea that things are going to remain the same when over the last 30 years, they never have remained the same for, you know, even a few years. Why would you expect that to be true? Based on what, you know, based on the fact that you're living here right now, but you don't remember a few years ago, and you don't, you know, see where things are going to go. And I think that when something is brewed really well, that that's a beer that people can drink all day, every day, and still make it exciting. I'm so happy to hear you say that, because it is my favorite beer category. Yeah, I know. It's just so trusty. Well, I think that, you know, to me, beer is like music, or like food or whatever else. Like, you don't have the same, you don't have the same wishes every day in every situation. And so the beer that I want at the dinner table in a great restaurant is not the beer that I want in a fishing boat or in my backyard or at a concert. Like, they're all different attitudes and stuff. You know, it's like, I don't want to eat, you know, this kind of food in this situation, but I want to eat it over, you know, over here. And I feel the same way about, about wine too. Pairing wine and food is well-trod in territory. Then you came around and wrote this book, and I think opened a lot of people's eyes, The Brewmaster's Table. One of the things in here that I like so much is that it's not just, can you pair beer with food, but that you should, because unlike wine, it can actually fill in some gaps. Well, I mean, I think that there are a lot of gaps. Over the years, I drink a lot of wine. I mean, more than, like, probably half my friends are in the wine business. I know a lot about wine. You know, I'm the guy they hand, you know, the wine menu to. Don't get me wrong. Like, I love wine, but wine, from a culinary point of view, is a fairly limited beverage. And that's not saying anything mean about it. It has one ingredient. It's a nice ingredient, that grape. And it comes in a number of varieties. And yes, I can, you know, take a whiff of a glass. And I know the difference between Pinot Blanc and Riesling. But, you know, really, when it comes down to it, beer can taste like almost anything. So if you, I've done many competitions, wine versus beer with cheese, against sommeliers, against winemaker, wine versus beer with dinner, basically it's almost impossible for wine to win. It's like an unfair fight. You know, I can roast it, I can smoke it, I can spice it. You know, how are you possibly going to win that? It's not really even fair. If you're going to look at your culinary life and you're thinking of it like a symphony, and you've decided I'm going to use only half the instruments and half the notes, well, you know, that's just stupid. Imagine meeting somebody who's like, I only listen to classical music. It's like, I only listen to jazz. It's like, really? I feel really, really sorry for you because you've missed a whole. But I would hate to think of living my life without wine. I love wine. And for certain things, you get a great rack of lamb and you've got some killer burgundy. Sure, I've got a beer that will go really well with that. I'm drinking the burgundy. I'm not stupid. I'm a brewer, but it's like, come on, that's a killer combination there. And I wrote Brewmaster's Table because I thought people were missing out. People come back and say to me, it's like, every day is just a little bit better because I put a few seconds of thought into what would be good with what. And I think that's a cool thing to be able to do. So, the first step in a good wine pairing with dinner is basically not having anything get in the way of anything else. What's the approach with beer? I think it's similar. I mean, its balance is important. You don't want a pairing that ends up being a football tackle, with something washing something down or wiping something out. Because beer has a whole range of flavors that don't exist in wine that are actually analogous, tied to a lot of food flavors, that you have an opportunity to do different things. I mean, often what I refer to as a flavor hook, and caramel is a really good example of that, or roast. Whereas, in a lot of cooked food, some of our favorite flavors are caramelized foods, whether you roast something, fry something, you're developing some caramelized flavor, you're browning. I always tell people, it's like, you think you've got this great cut of steak, but what if I were to cook two of them, and they're dry aged beautiful steaks, inch and a half thick, you know, they're both going to be medium rare. And I'm going to cook one until it's like mahogany brown, almost black at some bits on the outside. It's got some nice salt on it. It's got a beautiful crust. The other one is also going to be medium rare, but I'm going to boil it. Who wants the boiled one? It's not about the steak. The steak, you'd rather have a chuck steak cooked really nicely than a brilliant steak boiled. Everybody. So you're not a Sue Vede fan? Yeah. Well, Sue Vede followed by Sears All. Yeah, that's right. Sears All is a must. Or like glowing black iron pan, sure. But Sue Vede by itself, no. If you do wine, you're basically setting up a contrast pairing. Danny Meyer, the restaurateur, put it really well when he said that when you have red wine with a steak, what you're doing is putting a fruit sauce on your steak. That's what happens in your mouth. And that can be really nice. With beer, you can do a completely different thing, harmony and contrast at the same time. So you have Brooklyn Lager with a steak, you've got the caramel grabbing onto the caramel, but then you also have a little bit of sweetness and bitterness cutting across the fat. And so you have the two things happening at once, and that tends to be a more profound pairing, which is why when I do pairing competitions vs. sommeliers, I always win. Shall we change gears a bit here and start talking about the current state of beer? We're seeing fewer and few people walking down our import aisles, talking about imports. Can you convince some of our customers, make a case, give them some inspiration? We can't even give away Carnegie Porter, for example. That's a crime. And it's a great beer. It really is just like everything else in life. If you're only about the local thing, well, local is great. But if you said, I only listen to local bands, I'm only going to eat local food, that this type of food is from this area, so much of your life ends up being left out. Depends on where you live. Euro's an Italian beef. I'm all in. Yeah. No. I think it does depend somewhat on where you live. But is the food that you ate today from here, like I just had tacos for lunch. The Mexican community is living here, but not really from here. I'm not going to limit myself in the things that I eat, the things I listen to. I'm not listening to just local bands. If a band that's great and it happens to be from Brooklyn, that's awesome. But if the band's from England, it's not like, oh, I don't like bands from England. Really, we got the whole craft brewing movement from drinking beers from other countries. If you think that you love saison, but you have not had and do not drink saison de pente, saison de potre, you don't know the fount of the thing that you're drinking. Now, you might go back to it and say, well, that's not the one for me, but to have no idea and to say, I love music and you're like, I've never heard The Beatles, I never heard Mozart. I like this band that came out last year, but you've never heard any music from the 60s, 70s, 80s, so you've never heard David Bowie, but you know three derivatives later. It's like you're missing out on so much. So you're saying understanding the foundation will just lend to better appreciation over time. Then also, David Bowie is also great. Yeah, pretty good. So I listen to David Bowie and I listen to LCD sound system, and LCD sound system has been listening to a lot of David Bowie. It's all one good thing. My life would be considerably less rich if I'd never drank Dufal and if I had never had some of the great British beers, etc. My first look at the world of beer, I think, was through the books of Michael Jackson. I think that's something that's just sort of disappeared now, is that interest in, I wanted to try as many styles as possible. I wanted to try as beers from as many places as possible. Yeah. You don't think that's like the entry point for new beer fans these days? I was one of the first brewers in the United States to brew real American style IPA, and I started off brewing British style IPA back in 1989 at Manhattan Brewing Company. At the time, IPA was a historical British style which almost no one brewed. Today, it is a modern American style that everybody everywhere brews. And as an American style, if you want to call it even a style now, it has evolved as we were saying into like 12 different things. But the thing about it is that, you know, it had a quality to it. I've seen it arc, you know, over time. I think that if you know where IPA came from, you have a foundation for it. And I drank the old ones and I liked some of the new ones. But a guy like Michael Jackson kind of like gave you that whole world of stuff to look at, and here is the range of things, here's a history to it. You know, and a history to something, to me, you know, makes it, you know, deeper. Do you have any stories you could share with us about Michael Jackson? This being the beer hunter, not the king of pop. Oh, I have many great stories over time. He was a really good friend of mine. One of my earliest great memories, you know, with him was being invited to his house for the first time. And, you know, I went over there and I'm like, Oh my God, like I'm getting to go to Michael Jackson's house. I'm inside the inner sanctum of, you know, the beer world, everything that I had read about and whatever. And, you know, got over to his house and basically proceeded to drink him out of, you know, like all of his best stuff. I'm like, Oh, is that a bottle of this? Is that a bottle of that? And then he wrote about later, you know, an article where he said, basically, Garrett Oliver came to my house and drank all my best bottles. And I was simultaneously ashamed and thrilled at the same time that Michael Jackson had told everybody that I went to his house and drank him out of his best stuff. Yeah. I'm like, at least I knew what it was. I want to be that guy someday. And then the next day, we went out to see, you know, rugby. And there are two types of rugby, rugby union and rugby league. Rugby league is like the rough and tumble, like, you know, vicious form of rugby. And Michael always presented himself as this very cultured, well-mannered, you know, person. But once we got out there on the rugby pitch, he was out there, kill them, kill them. Run them into the ground full of, you know, show no quarter, give no mercy. And I kind of feel like on that day we became friends, because he just like let loose, you know, the very, you know, the very cultured Englishmen went away. And I saw an actual Yorkshireman, you know, you know, yelling from the stands. It was awesome. Pat, you're losing it. This is everything you love. New England IPAs are everything wrong with the beer business and everything I hate the most about the beer business. Well, people always say that I totally hate on New England IPAs. I actually like a lot of them. I went to a great event with Cloudwater in England, and I had caused apparently some controversy by saying that New England IPAs were the first beer style based entirely on Instagram. Yeah, we saw that. But the fact of the matter is every major producer of New England IPA will absolutely tell you that's true. I mean, they know it, you know, and they are totally cool with it. The problem really is that a lot of them aren't good. Yep. You know, I mean, you get a lot of bad beer out there, so, you know, as long as people actually know what to do, it's not, you know, there are technical reasons why you get diacetyl and all these problems, cans puffing up on shelves, all kinds of weird stuff. It's like, you know, one of the primary things that, you know, you have to do as a professional brewer is to be a professional. And what that means is that you need to be sure that when you sell people like a four pack for $16, that is actually worth $16, you know, and somebody might have spent an hour or more working for that money. And, you know, you need to have some respect. And I kind of feel that way about us. You know, I've looked at some of our beers that I thought weren't worth X number of dollars, even though they were good. I'm like, that's not good enough. We're not putting that out. I think that's the thing that every brewer, every chef, every winemaker, if you want to be out there and call yourself a professional, you know, you got to come correct. One of the ways that people can get around it is just doing small batches, limited releases. So, you know, you put out a bad batch and everybody dumps it down their drains. But next week, the cans have a different comic book label. So nobody recognizes that, you know, they might have the same mistakes. But in the long run, that producer is going to build the reputation on their own logo, on their own tap handles, on their own, you know, reputation. Yeah. And that's more of a commercial problem. And it'll be interesting to see whether by not having a flagship or whatever else, does that turn into a problem for people when a style changes and people suddenly want this kind of IPA instead of that kind of IPA. Is that going to be a problem? Will they just like move with whatever cultural wind blows through? If that's the case, do you actually have any thing that your brewery is about or that you believe in? To me, anyway, a brewery, a great brewery always has a brewery religion. And it is a religion in that it's not something which is true. It's a thing that you believe. And when you look in the mirror in the morning, it's a thing that makes you feel like you were the brewer that you showed up to be. There are things that we do and things that we won't do. And that doesn't mean that we don't respect other brewers who might do that thing. It's just that's not us. It's the same way going to a restaurant and chef might decide that I want all of my duck to be organic. If you're the chef and you feel better about being the kind of chef that you wanted to be and that's important to you, then maybe you can communicate that through your restaurant and it becomes part of your brand. And I think that one thing, one reason why we continue to do well is because over time, you know, our brand has meant quality but also structure, balance, elegance. You know, we were never the guys who wanted to make the strongest beer or the bitterest beer or the cloudiest beer. I'm trying to make something delicious. You can decide for yourself whether it is delicious, but if you're not trying to make something delicious, I have a problem with you. That's what it's about, really. Yeah, you've brewed some canonical examples of, I mean... Brown ale. Your brown ale. I remember looking at a beer on Untapp that was a brown ale, and the latest review was pretty good for a brown ale. Well... And I mean, I think that's inherently speaks to something that's strange right now, where people have just completely written off styles that there's an extremeness of flavor that people desire and that's being delivered by literally dumping things Powdered brownie mix, things like that. I can take either side of that. We were the first brewery to do a lot of things. We were the first brewery to do collaborations in the world. We were the first brewery to make beers based on cocktails. I did years ago make a beer called Cookie Jar Porter. Now, we never actually took cookies and put them in. I'm not putting butter in my beer. I'm not putting some kind of wax that's on your donuts. But we did basically create through actual maple syrup, pureed raisins, actual ingredients, an impression of something. It was before anybody had done pastry stouts or whatever else. But it's funny that I think it's because of the books, partly that people think of us as being particularly style-driven. If you look at Brooklyn Lager, we just won the gold medal at JABF for American Amber Lager, which of course is very gratifying, but it's not a traditional style of beer. Brooklyn Lager is Brooklyn Lager style. It's a Sriracha Ace is technically a saison in its structure, but does not taste like other saisons. So a lot of the beers that we actually are known for, don't fit directly into style guidelines. Our main sour, we have five sours on draft now at our tap room, but our main one is Bel Air, which has gone like a rocket for us. It's been like for a while, we were like Bel Air Brewing Company. We were 24 hours, 24-7. It was like brewing Bel Air all day, every day. Even now, we're barely caught up. But people a few years ago were like, oh, no one's going to drink. Sure, it'll be a niche thing. It's like, you must be out of your mind. It's like, let me put it to you this way. You know what people really have to learn to like? It's bitterness. How about you go to a three-year-old child and hand him a cup of espresso? If he drinks it, he's going to be a serial killer. Nobody who's three years old is going to drink an espresso. Do you know why? You got to get to a point where you can handle that and it takes time. You got to wait for all those taste buds to die. Yeah, but, you know, I mean, try giving a three-year-old the sourest possible candy. They're going to be giggling. They'll take it out of their mouth and put it in somebody else's mouth. Just show them how entertaining that is. People love acidity. They love it. They start off with like sour candies. They move on to margaritas and they end up with champagne and other things. You know, your entire life, you had a lemonade stand. Your entire life, you loved acid. How could it possibly be that, oh, in beer, you know, it's not going to work? Of course it's going to work. And your grandmother's going to drink it and she's not going to have a problem. You know, you know who really has no problem with sour beers? Regular people, you know. People who tend to have a thing about sour beers are beer geeks. It's like, oh, it's like sour, it's not a sour, it's not kind of sour enough. It's like you give it to grandma, she's like, wow, this is nice. Tastes like lemons. Boom, you're done. No, no problem or whatever else. If it's delicious, they're going to drink it, you know. And we worked really hard on making, you know, a sour beer that was delicious. And we don't care whether you think it's too sour or sour enough. We know that when you get three quarters of the way down the glass, you're going to say, hey, this is really good. And you're going to have another one. Yeah, that Bel Air is really excellent. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the Q&A portion of the Barrel to Bottle Podcast. Write your questions to us at Binny's Bev on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, or email us at comments at binnys.com. If we answer your question on the podcast, you win a $20 Binny's gift card. Garrett wants one too. I want one too. So, uh… I'm going to buy Riesling. Today, our question is from… I don't know why people have unpronounceable Instagram names, but… Because it's Instagram? Yeah. At Avaltee, a Vol-tie… asks, I'm a big IPA fan, but always struggle to find a good pairing with food. Any suggestions? Oh, boy. I mean, that's actually a relatively easy one. Speaking of Instagram, I'm going to get this… Ah, there we go. Yes. You know, IPAs with food, IPAs are generally speaking can be a great pairing, especially for spicy foods. You have the kind of broad range of citrus floral flavors that you're, you know, and aromas that you're getting from the dry hopping, and those tend to roll in really well with lime, citrus juice, chilies, et cetera. If you're eating, say, Indian food, you know, Thai food, you know, et cetera, I find, you know, IPAs can be a really nice pairing. But I've seen IPAs that even can work well with very unexpected things, like, you know, chocolate, for example, where you wouldn't necessarily have seen it coming, as long as it's not very sweet chocolate. You're talking about something that's like 75, 80 percent cacao, and these fruity flavors wrap around together. More recently, although I'm not always an aficionado of the New England IPA style, especially with the lactose added, it is a really effective pairing for a lot of very spicy food, like you get serious Thai food. We can argue about, and I would, whether or not those are IPAs at all, but leaving that part aside, it actually does make a great pairing. You take a really happy IPA and you've got to balance it out with some level of malt, right? So, added caramel-style malt complexity under that happiness would totally pair with spicy food. You can do that. Yeah, absolutely. And then if there is a seared element or a smoked element, et cetera, in the food, then you're also grabbing onto that. So you could have, you know, you have the contrast of sweetness versus what you've got going on, the salt, you know, on the other side. And then you've got some fruit going on and it can be a really nice pairing. To be fair, it will accentuate the heat, though. So people should be forewarned. Well, most things do, in a certain way, accentuate the heat. So I don't think the bitterness accentuates the heat more than, sure, a milkshake, an actual milkshake might not. Spicy food, an IPA, and some ranch dressing. But, you know, if you looked at your general range of, say, alcoholic drinks, wine, basically all wines are going to turn to furniture polish at that level. You know, beers can work well. Cocktails will, like, light your head on fire unless they're really, really sweet. Beers certainly is the thing that does best. And it's fascinating to me to see, you know, how some of these things can fill a particular culinary niche in a way that's otherwise difficult to fill. You know, there's a wide range of foods you can work well with. I mean, an IPA can be great with a burger, too. It's just like cutting power is not a bad thing. There you go. At Aval Tea, $20 Binny's gift card coming to you. Everybody else, write your questions at Binny'sBev on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or email us, comments at binnys.com. Yeah, unfortunately, that's wrapping things up for this edition of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. A big thank you again to Garrett Oliver for joining us. It's truly been a pleasure. If you haven't read The Brewmaster's Table, I've said it once, I will say it again. If you're only going to read one book about beer, it should be this book. And remember, if you love your family, the Oxford Companion to Beer makes the perfect holiday gift. That's it. Thanks for listening, folks. I'm Greg. I'm Roger. I'm Kristin. Pat. Garrett. Keep tasting. It's better together. I didn't get a chance to tell you my story of us almost stealing an Amtrak train, but that will be next time. Oh, now you're obligated for it next time. We did get the engine started. And no, I'm not joking. I have pictures.