Roger, when you told me that we were going to have a special guest, somebody who's been on the podcast before, I thought you were talking about me. Who the hell is this? Kind of a big deal, Greg. So we're honored to have with us again, Matt Brynildson from Firestone Walker Brewing out in California. One of the people that I think is the most knowledgeable in the country, and I'm not just being hyperbolic, about hops. This is one of the true hop-zars, to name an old beer that's no longer with us. So we definitely are gonna want to talk hops today. Yeah, super exciting. I was really disappointed when I came in and saw Greg, but you know. I've been on the show with like, I don't know, forever. I don't know why. I've been right over there though. Just like right over there. It's a rough crowd. We're out. Hey, you're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg, in the room. I'm Roger from Beer, and I'm here. And Chris. And Chris. And Matt. Hey, I'm Matt from Firestone Walker. He's back, cool. Matt, we're really thrilled to have you back with us. Why don't we just hop right into the beer? Pun intended. Part of the reason that I believe you are in Chicago is because we have a collaborative brew between Firestone Walker and one of our other favorite breweries, Half Acre, right here in Chicago. Yeah. And this is a beer that is celebrating the Firestone Invitational. So for those that aren't aware. Delicious can crack. Oh yeah. Pavlov's dog right here. I know, my mouth is watering too. Here, let's open two of these. They brought tons of beer, so everybody needs to have a nice full glass so you can. We've been making our way around town and dropping these cans everywhere we go. Awesome. There you go, two at a time. Wow, typical Greg, he's back. So for those that aren't familiar, Firestone Invitational, Matt, how long has this been going on, the festival? This will be our 11th event and we had to take a year, maybe two years off over the COVID years. Yeah, this is number 11. This is the festival you didn't want to have. Originally, exactly, yes, yes, it's true. 11 years of pure pleasure. And I'm so glad they talked me into it. No, but I think in the sphere of people that really geek out about beer, I don't think there's a festival that people revere more. And I think it says it right in the title. It's the Invitational. So you have to be asked by Firestone Walker. You guys are veterans. Let's be honest. We've all been to some beer festivals before where there's some dubious beers. Whoa. This is like anybody who brought an amber ale in the last 15 years. Roger warned me. He was like, be good. No, but this is an all-star lineup always. The lineup of breweries at the Invitational is killer. So this is the beer that is going to be essentially the festival beer for this year. Yeah, and we don't do it the same every year. But this year we decided to pick one of our favorite brewers. I've been wanting to brew with Half Acre for a long time. Actually, Matt and I, Matt Gallagher and I participate in the Hot Quality Group together. So we worked together on that project. I've been a big fan of both he and Gabriel and everything they've done with that, you know, the whole Half Acre brewery. I mean, it always felt so organic. It always felt like a true Chicago brewery. And so this is the first time we got to collab and... They're great. We're huge fans. We're actually gonna have Matt on the podcast and not too long from now they're collaborating. Not only do they collaborate with you guys, then they're collaborating with Sierra Nevada so... Yeah, it's a big one. They're doing something right. Matt's a great guy and he definitely you can tell is passionate about hops as well. He's okay. He obviously couldn't make it today. I think the Half Acre, I've given more money to have their t-shirts. Other people just give me their t-shirts. I'm like, I don't want, you know, name some stupid Bloody Mary mix, but Half Acre, I've given them a lot of money for t-shirts. Yeah, they're a class act. So we've been wanting to make a beer with them for a long time. And really, as soon as I said, you guys want to make a beer, Matt came up with the idea right away and he'd had a bead on Sugar Creek, the maltster out of Indiana, very small, you know, I'd call artisanal, both grower of barley and small maltster. I'd never worked with them. I really didn't know much about them. So he put me in contact with Caleb and that's where it all started. And we really wanted to make a beer that expressed what that maltster and that grower could do. And I think this beer does a great job of that. It's a very simple recipe. It's the Edelweiss Pils. It's an heirloom variety of barley that they're growing there in Indiana. It has origins, I guess, in breeding somewhere in Austria. However, it was grown in the Czech Republic for making Czech style pills. And he brought some seed over. It really took on his farm and he malts it in a way that it's rather under modified. Very old school. Yeah. So, it makes a super pale beer. We did use a little bit of his Vienna malt, but it's not like a typical Vienna malt in terms of it's not really dark in color, it just brings kind of a biscuity, almost honey-like character to the beer. And then we chose classic hops, Herzbrücker and Hollertal Mittelfrüh. And we brewed it more like we brew Pivo, so there's a little bit of late hopping, a little bit of dry hop. So, it's hard to pin this as a Bohemian style pills, somewhere between Italian pills, German pills and Bohemian pills. I'm not gonna really, you know, we're just calling it pills. And we really wanted to make a crusher because for the invitational, oftentimes you guys have been out there, it can be pretty warm and passer-bubbles. Yep. And so, you know, something that's refreshing, something all the brewers want to drink. It is snappy. It is certainly snappy. That's citric. I think we made news today, Mr. Hopps was starting with the malts. I like it. Mm-hmm. Building a beer around the malt, who thought of that? I love it. And you know, I'll have to admit, like I picked a Chicago brewery also because it would bring me back to Chicago. And so, as soon as we did the collaboration, I knew we were going to put it in Cannes and we could bring it to the Chicago market. I'm like, I got to get there before the Invitational so we can talk about it and celebrate it a little bit. So, I'm really stoked on this beer. Yeah. For the people that aren't aware, just a really quick background. So, your brewing beginnings are here in Chicago at one of the many people that passed through Goose Island. Yep. This is back like 90, basically 96 through 2000. We were wondering if maybe you were brewing a lager because the Chicagoland area is kind of almost, dare I say, leading the charge a little bit with this like lager kick as of late. Definitely, no doubt, inspired by people like yourself with, I think, Pivo is probably more adored here in Chicago. It's always been like trying to get it back in market because we were always looking for Pivo and love it but- Roger was. There's a lager thing happening in Chicago right now and I'm not just saying this, damn it. That's actually true. No, it is very true. It is lager galore. Yeah, and it's music to my ears and most brewer's ears because I think a lot of us would love lagers to have their day. So I'm basically on my way back from the McKellar Beer Celebration in Copenhagen. I was just there over the weekend and they have for the whole festival, it was hashtag year of the lager. They had done a big collaborative project with Budvar. So Budvar was at the event. They had done a collaboration beer with them. They were doing all these side pour bohemian style pilsners and kind of the theme was pilsner. So even there in Copenhagen amongst all those international brewers, you know, lager beer was a theme. So I think that Luker side pour has done more for lagers than anything else. Yeah. Today's generation, very photo centric. They want to look at stuff and people, especially people manipulating the side pour for not as it's intended use. Like in Czech, they want to rip beers on that thing and pour as many as possible. And then here like beer shots making these really slow pours with it. But you're getting kind of the best of both worlds that way in that you're getting that wet foam, but then also that slow pour marshmallow top. People just love the way that looks and it does. It looks pretty enticing. So maybe that's what we need. That's the hook, right? To get people to give lagers a chance and then we let them taste them. They're like, holy cow, this is refreshing. I can drink a whole glass of this and I want another one. Yes. Plus the aromas coming off that head. I like how hoppy this beer is specifically. This is like the celery stick to clear your palate between beers. Yeah. Again, we made it because we knew the brewers would want something crushable, thirst quenching. We weren't trying to get fancy or anything like that. It's actually quite dry by the numbers, but I think that the malt brings this kind of nice little honey element to it. Yeah, mission accomplished. It's beautifully balanced. There's really nice but subtle noble hop aroma and the body, I mean, it is totally crushable. If we have the time, there's a kind of a funny story about the collab. So Matt was, okay, I want you to use this malt and I'm like, all right, put me in contact with Caleb. Caleb's, it's a small operation and I finally got him on the phone and he was like, yeah, that'd be great. I know Matt really well. I'd love to have some malt going out to Firestone Walker. How much do you need? I was like, well, you're gonna need about 14,000 pounds and the line just went kind of silent on the other end. I'm like, Caleb, you still there? He's like, yeah, I just had to think about that for a second. Yeah, I think I can do that. When do you need it? And I was like, that's the problem in about six weeks. Line went silent again. He's like, okay. So he really broke his back and helped us out and got us all this malt, but he did say it's undermodified, so you're gonna have to do this multi-step and preferably decoction mesh. We've never done that in Paso Robles. Oh, this is decoction? Yeah. Wow. With undermodified malt, what choice do you have? We're actually familiar with Sugar Creek. We did a collaborative beer. We've been doing collabs that are barrel-aged ones. We obviously did the wild one with you guys, but locally, we cut our teeth doing barrel-aged collabs, but we've done some collabs that are non-barrel-aged, and we did a collab with Pollyanna and Goldfinger. Goldfinger is all about Caleb and his undermodified malt because they're all about decoction, so yeah, we're quite familiar with this malt. The malt story of this is bonkers, the way he had to slowly prop this up from... Yeah, it's amazing... . this packet worth of seeds that he traveled to go get and build it up. So I mean, if ever there was a labor of love, I mean, you're drinking it when you drink beers made with this Edelweiss malt. It's bonkers. Yeah. And again, so it's the very first time we did a decoction brew in Paso Robles, and Matt and Gabriel came out. We needed to do something like four turns of the brew house to fill a tank, and we got the first decoction done. It went great. I'm feeling pretty good about it. I was pretty nervous going into it. We get second one in the brew house. Everything's going okay. Third one mashes in. We're starting to get tired. It's towards the end of our day and we're about to hand the baton to the brewers to finish it up so we can go have a beer and the power goes out. No weather, no other issue, no reason. Just the power goes out. And I'm like, then I start sweating bullets. And Matt and Gabriel had to watch me go into like, you know, manic Matt mode where I'm trying to like, I'm trying, I gotta fix this thing. We gotta figure it out. But all's well that ends well. Power came back on. We got the brews through the system and we made a pretty beautiful beer. We had something like six weeks of loggering time, which is really like generous for us. And this beer transformed over the loggering period from really darn tasty to just absolutely gorgeous and seamless. So I'm really happy with the beer. Okay, dumbest question. What do you call this beer style? We're just calling it Pils. Trailing West Pils. Yeah. Gabriel came up with that name. That sounds like it. Yeah. Well, we've almost been laughed at how many times we have to try to explain an Italian Pilsner to people like me. I don't get it. Thanks, Matt. Yeah. I didn't invent the name, I just started brewing Pivo and eventually people started referring well, I referred to obviously Ago at Bureauficio Italiano and the fact that Tipo Pils. It's just- You created the beer style. Okay, I know we've talked about this before, but brewers know what that means. Maybe it's a little confusing for the public. It's confusing to the consumer because they're like, is it from Italy? No. Does it have Italian hops? No. Is it maybe Italian malt? Sometimes. Earlier, he said like three geographic regions and then Pilsner after each one. I know, I'm sorry. Italy, California and Czechoslovakia, I'm trying to triangulate, where the fuck is he talking about? Somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. We definitely have a lot of breweries around here trying to play around with, because ultimately it all comes down to that I believe brewers need to lead the charge on educating people. So there's noticeable differences between a Czech or Bohemian style Pilsner and a German style Pilsner. So the Czech Pilsner is more rounded malt character, more body malt character to them. German one is typically leaner, can, especially if they're more northern, have a more expressive bitterness to it. I would say that the bitterness here you've either tricked us through balance or it's not super bitter. It's very subtle, yeah. It's there but not... It's perfectly balanced though. It's amazing. It does follow all the way through to the finish, which I think leads to drinkability because it kind of begs another swig. I think that's one of the goals of these beers. I certainly like a nice assertive but crispy bitterness. It's citric. It's like really refreshing. Nice. It's great. But the hops here, one thing that I think is nice to see is that we're getting a little over laden with the Czech style pilsners that are saz hops. So it's like saz hops, saz hops, saz hops over and over and over again. So with this, you went with Hussbrücker and Hallertal Middle Frusso, two classic German varieties. So they bring a little different thing to the table. And again, I think it's refreshing to see people introducing drinkers that probably have never tried noble hops or old school hops to those. And of the two, the Hussbrücker really stood out to all of us. Had we enough hops, we might have gone all Hussbrücker on brew day. And I know Matt ordered some from this very lot to make some additional beer at Half Acre with. I mean, it's really beautiful. The noble hop character is, it's subtle, it's integrated seamlessly, and it's very nice. And I love the malt care, you're right. There's a little honeyed sweetness up front, but it seems completely dry. That's just the impression of sweetness at the tip of the tongue. Really beautiful. Well, mission accomplished then. That's awesome. So when we were mentioning old school hops, for those of you who aren't familiar, so we're talking here with a brewery famous for IPAs, and you've always, Matt, been on the cutting edge of exploring new experimentals, things that were cross-bred, and after about the decade-long process it takes for a new hop to finally meet the market and get named. Some of these old school hops that people, these names are totally unfamiliar to people. Ironically, some of these hops are struggling in today's climate, right? And just the all of a sudden increased demand amongst craft brewers who want these hops from the Czech Republic and Germany. It seems like people are facing almost a little bit of hop shortages for the noble stuff, right? Yeah, we're just getting connected maybe with the right people. It's been a couple of hard years in Germany, unfortunately, weather-wise, between drought, hail damage, and other pressures. We've had a couple short yield years, and the market's constantly turning and changing. Maybe some brewers are having very specific varieties, potentially. It's been a couple of really tough years for SAAS, so that one might be really difficult to find. I don't know. We've found some small brokers in Germany that are really enjoying what's happening with Kraftlager here in the United States, and have been providing. So I think a lot of it's just networking and finding those connections. So I know that they're working on designing some hops that are better suited for the changes there. I think they run into the problem that there's some very stodgy brewers there that won't make any changes. So it's like, if we've used Spalter, we used Heusbroker, we're not changing it at all, right? So that could be an advantage to American brewers who there might be this new variety that essentially presents in the exact same way, but it's a different name. So I would think that there's an opportunity there for American brewers to use these where some of the older German breweries are afraid of them. Yeah, I would say so. It's been around for a while, but Mandarin of Averia is an example of that. Just didn't find an audience with German brewers. And a lot of American brewers are trying to integrate it into IPAs when in fact it probably is better suited as a pale ale or lager hop. It was bred with cascades, so it was bred with a hop that grows in a hot climate like Yakima. So I think it is more resistant to what's happening weather-wise there. The major deal though in Germany is less than half the crop is under irrigation. And until that's sorted out, we're still gonna have lean years as we have drought years. Have you tried any hops from over there that you are excited about that you think are kind of getting ignored maybe or haven't had their chance yet? In the moment, I'm pretty pumped up about Hearst-Brooker and that's an older hop that a lot of brewers knew a lot about that I had never used before. So I guess I'm getting, I'm going back to the classics a little bit and finding that to be really enjoyable. We've always been a big supporter of Mandarin of Averia. Hallertal Blanc. Yeah, love that hop. I think that doesn't get enough love. Right? Hall melon is one that over the years, actually it keeps getting better and better. And I think more and more brewers are finding it again. And the growers like growing them, but they just have to find somebody to buy them, right? Right. Are there American, typically a lot of these noble varieties seemingly either aren't planted here because they don't do well or the growers didn't think there was a market. Do you see any American grown varieties? I know from like a home brewing standpoint, I'd read a book and it would be like, here's your substitutes for like, what would be the American noble-esque hops type of thing? Like, do you see any of those being used these days? So, historically or classically, it was Willamette. Yeah, yeah. And that had been adopted by AB and was in the blend for Budweiser. And it was considered to be a noble-type American grown hop. And so some of the, and I can't remember all the names, but some of the subsets of that, some of the other breeding daughters of that. Now there's some fuggle in that as well. So it's kind of a mix match of whatever was going on in the UK breeding programs at the same time. I feel like all the breeders are always, they always keep one of those noble types in their back pocket. And every time they release them, they get a little bit of a following and then people kind of fall back to the things that they know the most. But maybe now, as we're seeing a little bit of a sea change in the US, we've got an overage of mosaic, we've got a little bit of an overage of citra and some of these other big IPA hops, you'll see the growers leaning back on some of this stuff. I just got a little excited when you said that. Founders ought to bring back the $12.15 pack. Yeah, yeah, that mosaic promise, my so-so of Greg's favorite. So Greg's like chomping at the bit to try an IPA. So let's pop open an IPA here. Where do you want to start? I would like to talk about this new California IPA because we've often joked on the podcast that West Coast IPA is becoming a thing here in the Midwest. People are curious about them again. They're starting to make them here and call them West Coast IPAs. But they tend to look a lot different from what I remember, what I would consider a West Coast IPA. So, I think something that you've, I'm sure, had to deal with over the years is that people's tastes change, their perceptions change. And Union Jack being one of the most iconic West Coast IPAs ever, you seem like a perfect person to ask, what the hell is a West Coast IPA these days? What does this all mean? Does it just mean bitter? Is that it? No. And we talked a little bit about this before we went on the air that it doesn't, however, it does. I mean, it has, right? It used to. It's hard to shake that a little bit. It's like in what it isn't, which is juicy or hazy. Yeah. Well, I guess we've gotten almost into this position where we have our clear IPAs and we have our hazy IPAs. And that's really easy for people to both see and understand. But when we get into the nuances of it, and you know this already as well as I do, is that the trend and the direction people are going, especially out west, but I think all across the country, pulling the specialty malts out, right? So some of the most award-winning west coasts, like some of the stuff coming out of Green Sheik and Highland Park on the west coast, North Park and things like that. I mean, it's nothing but Pilsner malt. And in some case, even maybe even some dextrose adjunct. I mean, trying to keep them as pale as possible and then layering the hops in such a way that we don't have as much bitterness, but we have massive hop aroma. And that's taking a little bit of what we learned in Hazy IPA brewing, maybe not using the same cultivars and certainly not trying to make it like juicy per se, but trying to take a little of what we learned through that exercise and make something I think that you nailed it. Like that's what it all really comes down to and is the idea of like how drinkable is this and drinkability for a while. People don't like using that word because they think it's like a macro term, but whatever, it's very applicable and it's easy to understand. And the hazy movement really evolved over time. I mean, when it first started, some of those New England Vermont style IPAs, they were still plenty bitter, but then we just started dialing back the bitterness to the point where it was like, oh, these are juicy. So let's make them as much like an actual glass of juice as possible. And then the word of the day seemingly became mouthfeel, right? Like a lot of people that really geeked out on the style were obsessed with this thick and creamy mouthfeel. Odie. So again, like it just made it so dessert-like then when you're having so much oat and wheat incorporated into it. So it seems to me like what was universally beloved about New England or hazies was those aromatics and featuring these new hop cultivars, right? For sure. But I think we all got a little bogged down in can we finish an entire glass of one of these? Do we want to? I think what this newer age of IPA seems to be chasing is to keep those aromatics, keep the expressive hop flavors but then lighten them up. I mean, we see this clearly in this beer. You said massive hop aroma, that is what's happening. Let's paint a picture for the listener at home. This beer is nearly as clear as the pills we just drank. And yet it has a big punch of hops right on the nose. And it's honestly on the palate, it's about as crispy. Like it's really just about as crispy. It's not overwhelmingly bitter. But the hop is so present in the nose. So if there was a brewer or a beer that inspired us on this one is a collaboration that we did about a year ago. In fact, it was our Invitational Collab. Now that I think about it from last year that we did with Alvarado Street. And I think although they're really known for their hazy IPAs, they're really known for the great beer across the board. Their West Coast and Mite IPA is their best selling beer on the West Coast. It's a West Coast IPA, but very mosaic forward. And after we brewed with those guys and we've been a big fan of their beers, I think we were inspired to go one back to mosaic. And that's a hop that I've not leaned heavily on because everybody else was leaning so heavily on it. So mosaic hasn't been used a lot in our program, certainly not as the standout hop. The other thing that came along was incognito, which is- Yeah, cutting edge hop technology is being incorporated in the current IPA. And so we chose Citra incognito. And so that goes really late on the hot side, slash into the fermenter. So we're trying to make sure that we carry some of that into the fermentation. But then we capitalized on mosaic and the finish. And since we hadn't made a real mosaic forward beer, this was our opportunity to really kind of showcase it as the dry hop in this beer. I mean, it's pretty delicious. It's definitely not your father's California West Coast IPA at all. The body is eminently drinkable. There is malt sweetness to it, but it is not heavy. And man, the hop aromas and the hop flavor on the finish is remarkable. I think that's one thing that Inca Nido does, at least when we're using it, it gives you a really full hop flavor. Yeah, there's a lot of hop flavor with moderate hop bitterness, is what I'm getting at. And it's not fruit. I mean, it's like a tiny bit of citrus, but it's like green, vegetal, crispy cut. We balanced the Mosaic back a little bit with Strata, and that's a hop that we've fallen in love with. I don't know if we could do an all Strata beer. It gets a little on the cannabis side of the equation, but a little bit, I think, gives a little, what are you just talking about? The green element. Yeah. Yeah. Long time fans of Strata Hopps, since it's the first time that we ever tasted it. The flavor that we always picked up off of it was kind of a juicy fruit bubble gum or jackfruit character. Thanks, Roger. He talks about jackfruit all the good damn time. And now I know that it's the largest tree born fruit in the world and I didn't need to know that. Strata hops are awesome. I mean, I just think that it's a perfect partner for mosaic too because mosaic is named in such that it incorporates an amalgamation of different fruit flavors. I think strata famously does that too. Like it has that, you can't quite pinpoint it unless you've eaten jackfruit. What the tropical fruit mixture is. But yeah, that's really cool. And cryo hops obviously for people that don't know, cryogenically freezing hops, separating those precious lupulin and that from a brewer's standpoint can be really effective from just having to not use as many more efficient. Breweries are always trying to figure out a way to still make excellent beer but not kind of lose the farm on, you know, these beers require a lot of hops, right? Yeah, and so I think we've maybe already talked about this beer before with Hopnosis, the beer that we launched last year was the first time that we really leaned heavily on Cryo. And that gave us the opportunity to visit YCH and see the process, really understand it. I mean, it makes a ton of sense. And in the end, you get really focused hop character but you get this advantage of a higher yield at the end. Everything we learned before we're trying to apply going forward. One thing I noticed on your website that I'm a big fan of, we, you know, hops tend to always be the person stealing the spotlight when it comes to ingredients and craft beer. And I really like how, you know, A, that you've been very transparent about what you're using, which is kind of the antithesis of your old Luponic program, which we'll taste that in a minute. But I like how with the mall, you're calling out where you're sourcing stuff from lately. Was that like something you were involved with or I think that's really cool. You know, I just feel like we want to tell the story of beer. Ben, just like everyone else, hops are sexy. We've been really focused on them. It gets a lot of people's attention. They are pretty great. But just like what we were talking about, Sugar Creek, there's a real story behind malt, the barley. And I feel like brewers are starting to really pay more and more attention to that. We've got Admiral Malting on the West Coast. It's another small artisanal producer. And even some of the bigger American maltsters are still like family run, you know, old companies. Rahr is a perfect example of that, yeah. So yeah, you use the Rahr Two Row in this, for example. Kelly, right? Yep, we've been partnered up with them for a really long time. Have we talked enough about them? Probably not. But maybe that's a function of a lot of these, both the growers and the malt houses are pretty far away from California. We just haven't had as much exposure to them. But I think it was that hops were just such the focus for so long. Which reminds me of a question that I've been wanting for a while. You know, like 10 years ago, there was like two and a half breweries for every American citizen. And what did you do after every single hop pun was exhausted? In terms of varieties? Yeah, any new hop beer and you're just, no puns, like any new hop beer, you're like hop-abulous or hop-ography and then you get sued from like eight other breweries who already made that beer. What do you do? Oh, you make one called Luponic and you just remix it every time. Is that the answer? I think maybe that was. It is impossible to name a beer these days. You already know this. Yeah, okay. So, speaking of Luponic, that was a good transition. Luponic, we were told, was not gonna be coming back, and then lo and behold, it's back. Yeah, what else were they gonna call it? Hop Blonde or something? I always thought this was a brilliant idea. I think maybe you guys bit off a little more than you could chew, and some of the consumers got a little confused. The idea initially was flavor through hops, right? We were in the adjunct days where everybody was kind of flavor blasting, as we like to say, beers with all sorts of different fruits and other adjuncts, and you were like, there's a world of flavor to be captured out of some of these new hop varieties. But then the packaging would have things like pineapples on it or gummy bears, and people are like, oh, so that's in there, right? Because the brewery down the street literally puts gummy bears in there. Yeah, that's completely plausible. No, I think retrospectively, we wish we would have come right out of the gates talking about the hops themselves. It wasn't like we were trying to hold secrets. I think we thought we could speak this language of flavor. And we went 19 revolutions. We made 19 different versions of Luponic before we pulled it. And- That sounds pretty amazing. Yeah, and then we had decided to do this kind of West Coast IPA pack, so it was a perfect opportunity to bring it back. And I think our team, both on the sales side, but then also on the brewing side, was kind of ready to do it again. Because it was also really difficult to come up with the next original mix without it seeming a little like, you know, like we're just throwing a bunch of stuff into the jungle juice bin and- Right, and you're a long-established, incredible brewery, and also, like my uncle's cousin is doing the same thing out of his garage, but he puts a comic book on the can every time. So, you know, the kids buy it, it doesn't matter. Wait, am I the grumpy old man in the room right now? Yes, you are. Get the grumpy chair. For me, Luponic is actually perfect for a mixed pack. So we're not selling this outside of the mixed pack right now. It's only, it's essentially the treasure beer within the mixed pack. And to me, it's a perfect beer for that. Are you going to remix it in the future? I don't know. That's a great question. Is this number essentially 20 then, or did you... Okay, so this is another new one. Were there certain numbers that, you know, kind of, did you go back and think about all the releases, or this was just completely a new? Was it like, oh, people love seven, so like let's remix seven, you know, like... Probably you'd ask, you know, ask ten people which one they like the most. Ten different answers. Yeah. And also it was regionally, like, you know, we did the Michigan, All Michigan Hop, I don't know if you remember that. We did a Luponic Distortion that all the hops came from Michigan, which was wildly popular here in the Midwest. And in California, everyone was like, oh, yeah. Yeah, they're like, it's cute that they girl hops in Michigan. And I absolutely love that one. So you know, and if you remember, we like to focus on experimental varieties. So 1019 was a hop that had come to our attention. We had tried it in a few different pale ales and some other beers at the propagator. And this seemed like a perfect opportunity to pull the trigger on it. It's a cool hop. We've had a few local breweries that have used that and it definitely throws some interesting characteristics. I mean, it might be better suited in a hazy IPA in terms of its kind of lush, peachy, juicy character. But I think it's pretty fun to play with in this beer and it definitely stands out. That's in this here? Yeah, this is the standout hop in this one for me. I get a load of apricot, like dried apricot and mid palate on this one. Aside experimental, you also have Nelson, which is beloved, cashmere and mosaic. The Nelson's apparent in the grassiness on the top. I feel like 1019 and cashmere are close cousins to me. There's a lot of similar soft fruit kind of peachy characters in both of those. Nelson, we're all very familiar with and that gets a little peakier. We talk about tiles and we talk about Southern Hemisphere character. The only thing that Roger likes more than jackfruit is gooseberry. It's a very small amount of this blend and there is a touch of mosaic in there too. I mean, I don't know. Maybe because I'm obsessed with that hop, I can taste it, but it's there. I mean, it has that very distinctive again. No one's had true gooseberries. All you can usually find are those orange imposter cape gooseberries. They make him so angry. But it's so singular. Once you taste a traditional old school green gooseberry, it makes drinking so many different beers so much easier to explain. Very true. It's just such a singular flavor. It's like, oh, yeah, that's exactly what that tastes like. And it sounds a lot better than the alternative, which is like foxy as in fox urine or, you know, like catty as in catty, like, you know, like cat urine, like, or diesel fuel. Like the other descriptors are not very appealing. Have you had a chance to try XBA? Yes. Yeah, in the gold can. So, that's a Nelson Ford beer. I tried it all right. It was, it was, I sung its praises from the hilltops and the beer buzz. Like that beer, you nailed it with that. The color on that beer is, was stunning. I mean, it literally sparkled like gold. I mean, I think that's something that doesn't get talked about enough these days because we went through the turbidity days, but like the beauty and that is the appeal of a lot of lagers is the shimmer and how they look and XBA has a gold hue to it We're turning into the Chris Farley show again. I noticed that there's some malted wheat in here, but this is nice and clear. Use more for mouthfeel or character. I think so. I think also we tend to get a little better foam when we integrate a little bit of wheat and yeah, we have a lot of recipes that they're just a touch but not something that's supposed to be throwing a haze or you know, we're not trying to make a One thing I would say about both of the last two beers is the remarkable malt hop balance that you've achieved. It's not just malty up front, but the malt character carries all the way through to the finish and just wraps around the hop character. Yeah, it's seamless. It's unbelievable. It's really, really remarkably well done. The yeast has something to do with that. This is not a California ale yeast beer. It's kind of the most ubiquitous yeast, right? Sierra's yeast is used in so many of these. We're still using our Firestone house ale, which is, you know, we call it London ale, but it's a British strain that produces some nice esters. And it always seems to be kind of a rounder beer that helps integrate the malt more than the classic California ale yeast. Subtle difference, but definitely something you can taste. Yeast always gets, you know, no, it's a short shrift. Rodney Dangerfield, no respect, no respect. Like hop steel that everyone always talks about aromatics and fruitiness and it's like, that's not only from hops, you know, it would be really interesting. But I would say when we want to talk about how do we better define West Coast IPA from hazy or other beers, yeast is a huge defining factor. And when we went out, you know, to make mined haze as hard as we could try, we couldn't get it done with our house ale yeast. And we had to adopt a new yeast that would both throw the haze but also create all those juicy flavors. And so the yeast is for me a defining part of the difference between West Coast and Hazy IPA. Meanwhile, water is over in the corner. And it's like, you guys are good. Hahahaha! Well, that's a perfect segue for your latest Frankenstein thing here is to make an IPA, India Pale Ale, but with a lager yeast. Oh, is that what we're drinking next? I guess we're not gonna be seeing many esters here. Call it a cold IPA, call it an, apparently we're not, IPL is verboten. Like it didn't work 20 years ago, and we can never mention it again, ever. I don't get that. I guess the easiest thing is to just not even address it and go, it's an IPA, don't worry about it. Well, that's how we started though. I don't know if you remember, we launched Hopnosis and didn't talk about the fact that it is a cold IPA. And then, you know, a few months in, we decided, hey, we need to start talking about this. We were getting too many questions, and it was getting confusing for people, so. Right. So Hopnosis, we tried this last time, but you're kind enough to bring with you this latest hop pack, which I think is an incredibly strong pack that really does tell the story of IPA and how it's changed and where it's headed. The next beer we're gonna try, then, is Hopnosis. This has been around now for, what, a couple years? Yeah, we're in the second full year. Pretty well received. I think that, you know, as we go forward, I don't know, I mean, you tell me, because we have the other yeast strain now, we're using the lager strain. I feel like you do get a different character in the beer, and to me, it accentuates a little more of the dank side of the hops. It's like a lemon pepper, lemon grass kind of thing. It's not super hempy, but the vegetal quality is there, and it's not like a pepper, right, Chris? What's that called? Pyrazine? Pyrazine, it's not like a pyrazine. Ah, okay. You're talking green pepper. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's more like lemon pepper, lemon grass. When you say lemon pepper, usually that's black pepper and lemon. Okay, well, there you go, because it's got like a little bit of a spicy cut. But he meant both. But he meant lemon grass, I think, in black. I feel like when we make these beers, it kind of sets the hops, it presents the hops more on that cannabis side of the equation. It also, there's a drying impact. The yeast is a little more sulfitic. We had a ton of fun building this beer. It was actually quite difficult, and I'm really glad we went through the process. But the two new IPAs that we just tasted, Luponic and Firestone IPA, we went back to the ale strain. I don't know. I mean, it made a very different beer for me. I love it. The double version of this is also really interesting. Oh, I want that. What are we doing here? You have to settle for drinking a double instead of having a double. Yeah. So can we talk about the dry hop regimen here for a second? Because I have a feeling that maybe you got sat down for a minute and they said, do you know how many bendy foldies we're gonna be spending on this beer? They hold bendy foldies. You pulled that. Mosaic Cryo, Idaho 7, El Dorado, Cashmere, Nelson Sauvin and Ruaca. Ooh, and the Ruaca is the real bendy foldie breaker. Is that all? That's a lot. And more than one Southern Hemisphere in there. It was an opportunity. It was like, I can make another West Coast IPA, I'm gonna throw it all at it. You gotta remember when Hopnosis came to be, we had just got our hands on a lot of really good Ruaca. We had made some really good connections in the Southern Hemisphere. I really wanted to integrate that into this beer. But Cryo had also come along. So we had the one opportunity. I just needed to pack it all in there. The meme where the guy can't figure out which button to press. Talk about a couple, so in the kettle hops, there's a couple that I don't hear you used as often, Talis and Calista. Tell us about those. Again, I think that was in that point in time. We had been integrating Calista into our Hazy IPA program. I don't know how well you know that hop. Not very well. But it's incredibly aromatic for a German flavor hop, a la Blanc Melon in its own really cool way. But it's really low alpha. So, you can use a lot of it. Again, back to the bendy foldy thing. But you can use a lot of it without having a huge impact on bitterness. That's why it's really found a home into our Mindhaze program. Talis at the time, they had just named it and we had really loved it as an experimental and it integrated I think in some Luponics and some other things. And so, it was one of those in the Luponic program. They were like, if we do another West Coast, this has got to go in there. But we had just gotten back from the Southern Hemisphere as well. So, it was like, Rwanda has got to be in there. Yeah. So, you need like an Indiana Jones little map of an airplane flying all across the continents to all the different places that you needed to get hops from this beer. I mean, it is quite the worldly IPA. So, very influenced by Luponic Distortion, no doubt about it. But the Lager Yeast is what I feel like again, kind of defines this beer and makes it different from anything else that we'd ever made before. For sure. It's light on its feet. Yeah. It finishes dry and crisp and clean. And yeah, you don't get that rounder fruitier aspect to it except for the hot bean. And we probably talked about this last time, I don't recall, but if you were going to... At the time, Wayfinder was making cold IPA and one of the defining elements was adjunct, this doesn't have adjunct. So, is it a true cold IPA? By my definition, yes, because the Lager Yeast and the way we're brewing this beer, but there isn't the adjunct that would further dry it out. Which I think, you know, I understand the appeal of what they're going for with cold IPA. It kind of reminds me of what, when it came down to Brut IPA, it was like they got a little too hung up on that it had to look as light as possible and it couldn't have any color. And I think that kind of hurt that style because this is still very light, but you incorporated a little teeny bit of, there's some carapils in there, there's some Munich malt. So you can get it with a nice appealing color that doesn't look anemic, but don't write a rule just to have a rule. It doesn't have to exactly look like champagne, right? And when you can step mash, you can really dry an all malt beer out just fine. You don't necessarily need adjunct. What is a step mash? Oh, well, we can talk about that. Is that one of the... Yeah. I mean... I can either cut this or don't, but I want to know for myself. I mean, in simple terms, it's like a lot of small brewers don't have a mash mixer. So they're forced to pick one mashing temperature and they go right into the mash mixer slash Loderton combination vessel and they can... There's no steam on that vessel. So whatever strike temperature they choose, like home brewing, that's what you're stuck with. You run off and you choose one temperature. And so sometimes you can't make a beer as attenuative that way. When you have a mash mixer, you can actually activate the beta amylase, you can move to an alpha amylase step, you can step the mash through and really break down non-fermentable sugars to fermentable sugars and thus have a more attenuative beer. I knew we were gonna talk about amylase. These are steps in temperature for enzymatic conversion. Yeah, I got you. That's neat. It's not something that someone would think about as part of the process. So when you have a mash mixer, you can do these all malt beers but make them really, really nice and dry. Most German brewers would say you can't make a real Pilsner beer or a true Helles without a step mash capability, but there's a lot of great beer made in single infusion brew houses. I think those brewers just have to have a little more skill and really focus on the malt bill, the temperature they choose, everything. Some of the breweries, too, that aren't set up for decoction, they kind of argue that they could do step mashes as opposed to that, right? So that can be another. As people try to figure out how to make good lagers, step mashing is something that they, if they're able to, is a way to... And an important factor is how well modified your malt is to be in with, right? Yep, for sure. So one thing we didn't mention with the Luponic was 5.9 on this rendition. Yep. Was it always a uniform ABV? It was. It was always 5.9. Really? Boy, that seemed lower than I thought. No, it was always 5.9. This at 6.7 seems just as drinkable. This is 6.7? Maybe even more. And I think that's where the lager yeast can really be tricky and make people just... It is pretty dangerously drinkable for 6.7. Yeah, this is the slayer of golfers who don't know what they're getting into. I mean, I will say that even the double is pretty sneakily easy to drink too. So you're really putting people face down on the golf course with a beer like this. It's not our intention. I think that is a tribute to that lager yeast, right? It just makes it so drinkable. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we talk about lager being a little more neutral. It's certainly lower ester profile. We did it because it really allows the hops to pop a lot. And like I said, that little sulfitic note lends to the dank side of the hop. I think that human beings just absolutely have this need to like characterize things and put them into little boxes and make rules around them. And they say that's what it is. So I understand the world and I feel less afraid. And I applaud you for smashing through that norms and making a delicious beer that still don't make any sense. Which is fine. Just let it be, just let it be. So again, for our benefit, since you're out there and a lot of the breweries here are kind of looking towards you guys, I had mentioned earlier before we were recording that there's breweries around here that are making what they're calling a California style Pilsner. I think the more established term would just be West Coast Pilsner. I think why they're doing that, A, is that in a lot of ways we all wish we were in California instead of in Chicago at times. Obviously. I mean, you don't say it out loud, though. Especially in the middle of the winter here. We tend, probably erroneously, to think of West Coast as bitter. We think of our classic West Coast IPAs and some of them were unabashedly bitter. I'm thinking, we're looking at you, Stone. I love Stone, but they made some beers where it's like you need to already be in the fold and used to drinking things that are insanely bitter to have acclimated yourself to that. Which some of us are. Yeah, some of us very much. Greg is ready, willing and ready. Bring on the tongue burner IPAs. But other people who maybe have just turned 21 drink these and have an aversion to them. People who've never had a Lister Novo Salvos forced upon them. This is poisonous, too bitter. So, I think there's a real danger here, right, with some of these. Why we, you know, part of the reason IPLs didn't work was that it was these IBU chasing breweries that then went, oh, you want a lager? And then they IBU the hell out of them. And they were way too lean and crazy bitter. So then it was a lead balloon. Like nobody did not have an audience. I remember those. It was like Diet Sprite but Hoppy, it was so weird. So I think people are kind of afraid of like saying they're making a West Coast Pilsner because if people go, oh, I don't know a ton about beer, but I remember West Coast IPAs are the old school bitter ones, then they're going to think, oh, this is a West Coast style Pilsner. It's going to be bitter as hell. Okay. Because it's... I was thinking, you know, we were saying West Coast clear, East Coast hazy, you know what I'm trying to... But there's that middle ground that we all miss. Which is the... Flyover country. That's us. Back to confusing geography. The malt balanced with the hops so that everything gets wonderfully huge. Just humongous. That's what I'm really excited about. Humongous. Well, that's a perfect transition for, you know, since it's here, why don't we have a Union Jack? Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you. But so, before we taste that, just to finish the thought. If people are making hoppy loggers, what do you see most of them coming out as in California? Are they saying West Coast Pilsner or are they calling them a cold IPA? I mean, cold IPA seems to have kind of had its moment here and there's not too many people using that anymore. As far as I can see, IPL, I don't want to say it's dead, but nobody's really chasing that. And I think it wasn't resonating with the consumer. West Coast Pils, but then, okay, so cold IPA happened somewhere, I don't know which one happened first. And that seemed to have some appeal, but some brewers are saying, hey, this is a Pilsner beer I'm making with Pilsner malts, lager yeast, but I'm hopping it like a West Coast IPA, and that's where this West Coast Pils, and that seemed to have a It makes more sense. So it seemed like we were moving in the right direction. So out in California, you hear a lot of West Coast Pils, like that's the thing. And when you said California Pils, I'm like, well, we are a California brewery, so that time I worked to our advantage, but to me, is that the same as West Coast Pils? I think it is. And you might be onto something that the consumer, when they hear West Coast, immediately, we're like, oof, bitter, yeah, I'm not. Yeah, well, so we don't think about Oregon and Washington state at all. So that's the Northwest, the Pacific Northwest. And I was just up there. I judged the Oregon Brewers Awards, or I was asked to be a judge for Oregon Brewers Awards, and spent some time. I made a collaborative beer with Grand Fur. I brewed with Vaughn Ebert. And so I was in Portland, and I was just blown away both by how craft culture is alive and well in that town, maybe more so than I remember even five or ten years ago. Oh, Portland is huge. But I mean, I think there's a new generation of brewers there. They're focusing a lot on West Coast pills, but they're also focusing a lot on traditional pills. And there is just some amazing beers coming out of the Pacific Northwest. I think we're going to hear more and more about them. I mean, Freem is another brewery that's just crushing out there. Yeah, they've always been kind of really when you when you hear about, oh, loggers may be having its day finally. They're usually part of the conversation. It is interesting that Oregon seems to have a little interest in loggers, probably like anything else. It's people getting a little burnt out on a ton of IPA and nothing else. But you know, that trip really was inspirational. I mean, it was it was so cool to see all of that happening up there. Nice. So it's not all just coming out of California, I guess is what I'm saying. Fair enough. This is the OG, right? I mean, so now we're enjoying a Union Jack, the first IPA from Firestone Walker. Correct. Again, with the name, I would think that, you know, this has a little more British, old school British leanings. Would you say that that's more from the East perspective more than anything else probably, or? Yes, and I think at the time, David just was, he just wanted to name a beer Union Jack. So, because I feel like it's very American IPA. It's definitely American hops. There's no Fogel or, you know, EKG in here. But this beer, as we're tasting right now, after having tasted a number of kind of new generation IPAs does have that classic C hop character. You know, it's the centennial, the kind of cascade-esque, geraniol hop. The class in West Coast. The wonderful orange peel and caramel malt underneath. Yep, yep. It's real good. I forgot how much I like this beer. It's real good. And I'm trying to keep it real, Chris. Real good. Real good. Shame on me, I haven't had this in a really long time, but I used to drink a lot of it. We've been bringing some draft to Chicago recently. Beer Temple has been pouring quite a bit at Union Jack for us and it always does my heart good to see that still enjoyed out there, especially here in Chicago. Well, I think, you know, this has often been referred to as old school, but I like that, I think I read once that you guys called it fad proof. And I have a few friends that routinely fall back on this. And I think we see people doing that here, but it's usually with something that's a little more local. But there's some real kind of like at times when you get a little, you know, burnout on, oh, I tried the new flavor of the day over and over and over again. Like this is a nice like litmus. Just, you know what you're getting. It's wildly consistent, whereas a lot of breweries can be wildly inconsistent. This is like always delivers. And yeah, it has that classic sea hop, but definitely more like citrus driven than pine, which some of the other West Coast, I feel, have, you know, more of the pine as well as citrus. For sure. I'd say this is more like citrus forward, but a very drinkable beer for the fact that it's 7% and this is 60 IBUs, so. Yeah. And it just, the malt just melts into the hop. Is this, what did you call it? London yeast or London? Yeah, I mean, it's a British ale strain. It's definitely an English ale strain, so it's very ester forward relative to California ale yeast or lager yeast. Nobody knows what an ESB is anymore, but that's invocative. And this would be the yeast that would be used for that type of beer. Yeah. You know, so this is released in 2006. What were we being influenced at that time? Pliny, no doubt, even though it's a double. So that was a beer that I was tasting and like, oh man, I want to try to replicate a little bit of that hop character. That's like Pine City though. Yeah, but I mean, this uses some of the same hops. Piney, the elder? And I would say two-hearted from my time in the Midwest and Celebration, which are both centennial, forward, but still have some specialty malt in them. Those were the beers that were influencing me at the time that this was created. Have you seen it all? You know, we've joked about this with, we recently ran through some DBA, and it's been great to see some interest in English or, I think English ales have always struggled from having, let's just say, f***ing names. Like, this is an English mild. Like, that does not sound appealing. Nobody's getting all jacked up to go out and drink a mild. Well, the flip side of it is the bitter. Yeah, and then you want this, it's a bitter. Like, no thanks. So I don't know, maybe it's time for us Americans to just shed those names completely. We're seeing more breweries out here, refer to them as pub ales, but I see some interest usually on the coast, sometimes you, breweries on the coast set the trends, with people actually making cask beer again and putting things on hand poles. Are you seeing that at all in California or? What the frickin is going on? Yeah, not, unfortunately not at Firestone so much, not with our fan base, because we've always had DVA, we've always served unfiltered DVA in our pubs. It's still very popular, but we've kind of always had that element. So I'm not really seeing the pendulum swinging broadly one way or the other. But I was at Revolution yesterday and Jim Sivik poured me a mild and he had an amber ale that he was brewing on the pilot system. And maybe it's just us old dogs not wanting to learn new tricks, but. I think it's coming back a little bit. I mean, there are several breweries that are putting hand poles on again, which I haven't seen in a long time. So I think there's some potential from, again, we were saying if people don't talk about much, they really don't talk about yeast. I think the potential might be in the aspect of that, you know, Cascade is living beer, you know, the act of yeast. That could be something that young people could dig. So we need to bring back the real ale fest? Hell yeah. That would be pretty damn cool. I would love to see your pale ale back again. I long for a gentle pint every now and then. Yeah, for sure. I mean, people definitely do dig that. I think there's something to be said in that they're enticed by kind of the mouthfeel of the foam from a Luker. Like you get a cast condition beer, whether it's from a gravity pour or an actual hand pull, it does have that really soft, gentle creaminess. But it also is that session ability that I feel like, ironically, this old school, often considered old man beer is in some circles being like the punk rock alternative to the sloppy milkshake dessert IPAs that we've been dealing with, right? Like no, just give me a dark mild. Like dark mild is probably what more people are brewing than anything else. I never thought in a million years, like if you said, well, people start brewing English beers, I'm like, maybe ESBs. Sure as not dark milds. We never sold any dark milds from, I mean, they basically would be dead before they even made it over here. But so I think there's something to be said about both lagers and those styles being drinkable, being something that people can enjoy without feeling like, well, I just had 16 ounces of juice or I just had 16 ounces of chocolate cake, so I'm done, like one and done. I think that these, whether it be a traditional lager, whether it be a cold IPA or whatever you want to call it, essentially IPA brew with lager yeast, it's nice to see people thinking about beer that's not just all about weight, Well, and you mentioned the faucet, I mean, the hand pull, that theater of pour when you're in the pub can lead you or be the thing that gets you to try that beer that you thought you didn't like and then you realize, man, this is very sessionable, Do you guys have UDBA on hand pull? Well, we can, we don't right now, but we can. Man, that would be. That would be next level, man. All right, Farley. So speaking of insanely amazing, rich, complex, over the top beer, it's time for Parabola. Oh, sweet. So you're kind enough to bring with you the latest vintage of Parabola. Parabola is one of Firestone Walker's finest achievements. This is one of those beers that is just always such a pleasure to drink. Worth pointing out, I think that it's very refreshing that you guys with your barrel program tend to take beers in different directions each time you release them. So it really is truly a little bit of a unique release each time. Of course, your anniversary being the best example of that with all the different blending components changing. But it's been interesting to see in the last few years the way you've been real transparent with Parabola as to what kind of cuprage you're using to age the beer. This year's is 12 year old Elijah Craig Barrels. Yeah, which is an old favorite of ours actually. Great whiskey. When we can get them. And we have, I think, more in the last couple years played with the malt bill on Parabola than we were willing to earlier. Not overly influenced by anything, just trying to create something a little more, I don't know, smooth. You know, Parabola is a little bit of a roast barley and high bitter hop. So as a stainless steel beer, it's really aggressive and grippy and the barrel is what really smooths it all out. And we've been playing around a little bit. That's how the old RIS used to be before it was the brownie batter game. There was some hops and imperial stout. And don't be misled, we're in no way trying to make this into a pastry or anything like that. And it's a fairly well attenuated stout. You better not. And in fact, That was fighting words. Over time, we had taken the original gravity up and we've now started backing it back down a little bit, just trying to find this perfect balancing point. We have a new, a relatively new manager in the barrel program, JZ, we call him. He's Jordan Ziegler. He's just doing a great job. So he's both in charge of the Firestone Union fermenting DBA in barrels and doing all the aging and blending in our barrel cellar. What's Beyonce's role? Just there for support. That was dumb. That joke was dumb. I am dumb. You're just learning this? Anyway, this is like a Mexican hot chocolate. It's like low, easy going chocolate with a spicy cinnamon thing. And that's gotta be the barrel. And you didn't say rye, you said barley. Barley, correct. No rye. So yeah, that's the barrel. That's good. That's real good. So the program is under new management. We have the club and we maybe talked about this in the past but we're doing a lot of small projects for our club which just gives us the ability to play with a few more barrels, a few more malt bills. This beer has no adjuncts but we're making some adjuncted versions of parabola now. Having a lot of fun. Some of the other beers that I've really been having a lot of fun with are taking parabola, blending it down with milk stout. So we bring it down to in around 10% alcohol and use some adjuncts to create some complexity. And again, it's by no means a pastry stout but just trying to play with the flavor program a little bit. Adjuncts not extracts, right? Yeah, exactly. Good. Yeah. Important distinction. You lose this when you start messing around with extracts. Well, this is delicious. I mean, it's full of like butterscotch-y brown sugar, almost I'm getting like a bananas foster-esque appeal to it. Roastiness. Yeah, it's really delicious. Yummy. I mean, the argument for do you need adjuncts? The consumer wants them, but the level of complexity here, I mean, look at how many different things we've described. I didn't even throw any out yet. I mean, I got about five or six more. That's what I think can be so exceptional with especially some of these older or not even necessarily just age, but when you're really curating what type of barrels you're using, you can bring some pretty amazing flavors to the party that might get lost with adjuncting, right? So, I mean, there is definitely a level of dark fruit here, spice, like Greg said. I mean, there's so much going on here that. Yeah, the barrel, the bourbon barrel is so well integrated here. I mean, it's incredible. It's like foundational. It's like the support of the whole thing. Yeah, but it's just enveloping and wraps the beer, but doesn't overwhelm it in any way. Yeah. And we probably mentioned this before, but our cellar is a little bit different than most in that we temperate it down to 10 C. So it's really, I call it cave temperature. It's not quite a loggering cellar. I have no idea what temperature that is. It's about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Okay, thank you. But it seems to keep at bay the soy sauce, umami, aged or oxidized character and really allows you get more of the fresh fruit, roast, barrel, really forward. That's so funny that you brought that up. Someone was just asking me the other day about that. They're like, what causes that soy sauce? And you know, I'm like, it's definitely an oxidative process. For sure. But it's wild. Like some of these beers will remain unnamed. Sometimes you have one and it's good. Another time it's like pure soy sauce. So would you say that it's just, it's mainly, you know, requires oxygen, right? But maybe like a temperature thing you're saying. Yeah, and it's accelerated with higher temperature. And certainly if you had more oxygen exposure or more oxygen ingress because of the wood, I mean, but we've found at that cooler temperature, it kind of what sets our program apart. And sometimes we don't get as much of the barrel impact as quickly as other breweries might. But back to what you were saying. Yeah, we get this really integrated wood character, less of the soy sauce, more of the malt. And that's where I really like it. Have you guys been playing around at all with, it seems like we've seen some breweries pushing the envelope on aging time nowadays and going longer than you would have thought. Obviously, that can be a risky move because you have to really be willing to continuously sample it. But we have some people taking it as far as two, three years in barrel. What was that Central Waters one? The Central Waters one we tried, our collab with them recently was three years and it was phenomenal. And they took a barley wine four years. I'm like, oh, when I first tried it, I'm like, there's no way this isn't just gonna be all umami, but again, I think some of it might be that they're further up north and maybe that's some of it that, you know, their barrel warehouse doesn't get I do think there's, you know, I feel like I would be perfectly fine going longer age times in our cooler cellar. I think, you know, are you topping the barrels? And it's, a lot of it's recipe dependent. We did a couple collabs. One was with Side Project and it was almost a 40 Play-Doh original gravity beer with a really high ending gravity. And he wanted it aged two years. He was like, you know, this recipe requires two eight. I'm like, okay, you know, we'll do that. And so I think it's recipe dependent, temperature dependent. Are you topping all these things? I think topping off has got to be really key to keep that oxidation down. I think if you're gonna go for a really long time, that might be a trick that would help you avoid a lot of the soy sauce. I would agree. The conversation with the accountants where you're like, look, we're gonna make a really good beer and we're not gonna make a dime. Everything, we're gonna wait four years before it comes out of the barrel. And we're gonna use the most expensive g-b-m hops you've never even heard of. How do you work with- If you do top off with something like that, I mean, obviously you have to be so careful because it's an opportunity for microbes to get in. Are you topping off with like, you essentially like sacrificing one barrel and then using that to do the other ones? I would assume you wouldn't want to put some other batch in there, right? Yeah. I mean, I think winemakers know this better than brewers. I know Marty has a side project that he's working on where he's doing this very thing, treating part of his cellar more like a winemaker would with the topping. But you could do a couple of different ways. You'd either set aside some from stainless, put it in kegs, make sure it's protected and have topping liquid ready to go. Or if you didn't have that sacrifice, a barrel, or you might be forced to brew some new beer that you're using to do the topping. But you're right, every time you open that barrel, you're exposing it. But it can be done, no doubt. Yeah, being in a winemaking area, I mean, you might learn some lessons from them, because that is a common practice. Well, Marty's been coming out to Pastor Robles and working at Herman Story, and I think he's done now two harvests and has learned a lot from the winemaking process. And we have a collaboration with Revolution in the pipe right now that Marty's directing a lot of the traffic and how we're doing the barrel side of it. And I think you're going to be really pleased with the result once that's released. Very cool. He's a sharp guy. Oh, I love Marty. Yeah, he's great. He's really passionate about it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, you guys were, I think that whole idea in general of topping off was something that unfortunately probably more people didn't know and respect was your Barrel Works program was all about that. And as we've seen interest in wild and barrel age sours kind of sadly plummet over time, I think one of the biggest reasons why is because so many of these American interpretations of lambic-esque beers, they were having too much oxygen in there and then the acetobacter would go wild and you would just get these acetic bombs that were just way too vinegary. It's like, this isn't lambic-esque, this is like Flanders-esque, it's just like instant heartburn. So unfortunately, I think some of the people that are doing it right, like you guys, don't get the attention you deserve anymore for those kind of beers. But that extra step that you took to avoid that just vinegar situation that so many other breweries and people equated with those type of beers is probably why they're struggling right now. Yeah. By the way, we did have Mr. From from Herman's Story on the podcast. Oh, awesome. And he was excellent. Love Russell. It was a really good episode. Nice. What else we got? We're like an hour 20 into this. Oh, nice. It's mostly good. No, that's what we got. This was a nice little walk through everything again, like the collaboration with Half Acre. So this Beer Fest, Trailing West Pils. This is coming soon. So keep an eye out for that. That's going to be in six packs. All the other IPAs that we mentioned currently available in the Firestone Walker Mix pack. That's a great package. That's a great package. Killer lineup right now. And I think a cool way of one of the things we always talk about is that, you know, if someone says they're come in, they're looking for an IPA, you really have to ask some follow up questions because there's a lot of, you know, there's IPA and then there's the tree underneath of all the different subsects and genres. So this gives you a nice sampling of some different, you know, where it's been, where it's headed and the hop selection. Again, there's some serious hops in those beers, some very pricey hops, a lot of bendy foldies. So I just love that you use that phrase. That's amazing. You know, we finally made a beer called Bendy Foldies. Yeah, we had to send you some. It's a very small release because it is the most expensive beers that's ever been made. Yeah, must try. Please do. And then, yeah, parabola is just dropping. So again, a nice opportunity to pick up the latest vintage. Your barrel aged beers are just world class and they always impress. There's a lot of it out there right now, but there are certain breweries that are just producing some extra special phenomenal examples and Firestone is one of them. So definitely give that a try as well. Well thank you so much for having me on again. It's always a pleasure. We love having you here, Matt. So whenever you're in town, keep collaborating with the Chicago breweries you know and love and we'll be excited to share the beer with people. For sure. That's right, Chicago. If you're not pounding this Trailing West Pils this summer, you're missing the boat. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be a limited drop. So keep an eye on the beer buzz. When it drops, come grab it quick before it's gone. Cool. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thanks a lot. We appreciate it. And thank you for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Back in your feed next week. I don't know. I might be on it. I don't know. And not Matt, though. Nope, I won't be here. All right, cool. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Roger. I'm Chris. I'm Matt. Keep tasting. Zazzabs, zazzabs, zazzabs. Zazzabs.