You're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Today, we are very excited to announce that we have a legend of the brewing community here with us. Brewmaster from Firestone Walker, Matt Brynildson. Hey, it's great to be here. Look how much Roger's shaking right now. I will admit it, I'm a big fan boy. We're going to try hard for this not to be the Chris Farley Show, where I just ask you, remember when you made that beer? That was awesome. But to keep me in check today in the room, we have. Jenna, I do communications. Hey, it's Pat from the spirits department. I'm Chris. I do wine. Right on. I drink a lot of beer. Rather than go through a crazy list of your accolades, I will ask, is the trophy case on display at Firestone Walker, because you guys have amassed under your direction, a crazy number of medals, including 55 or so from the Great American Beer Festival alone. Yeah. Well, I've been brewing a long time, so plenty of time to collect things. Congratulations are in order last year. We had originally planned to do this via phone last year. At the time, you had just traveled to the International Hop Congress in Prague, where you were awarded the Order of the Hop by the Hop Growers Union of the Czech Republic. Yeah, that was really cool. It's typically reserved for hop industry people, so farmers, growers, merchants, those types, and very rarely is it given to a brewmaster. So it was a real honor. The only other brewmaster I'm aware of that has received the Order of the Hops, at least here in the United States, is Steve Dressler from the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. Okay. But talk a little bit about, you're kind of very famously the hop evangelist here. So you co-founded the Hop Quality Group, correct? Yeah, exactly. One of the founding members. My journey into beer started with hops very fortuitously. My first job while I was in college and after college was for Kalamazoo Spice Extraction Company, which is this really interesting company that deals mostly in spices. So they were doing hot chili extracts, cinnamon extracts, all these different things, but they also did hop extraction and had a patent for some light stable hop extracts. They were big in the industry back in the 70s, developing those types of products with Miller, Heineken and others internationally. I was going to say that's the kind of thing that's in high life, right? Exactly. The Todd family that owns that company were real innovators, and they had one of only a handful of hops labs in the world that worked on that type of chemistry. I just fortuitously fell into that job. I wasn't looking to be in the beer industry, I was looking to be in hops, and I caught the bug. They actually sent me to Siebel here in Chicago, and that's what started my journey into beer. Through that, I met Greg Hall and John Hall, and started working for Goose Island in the mid-90s. When you were looking in the hops at that time, this predates some of the hops that now have become so famous and commonly used, that I saw a meme mocking Citroen Mosaic as the Hallmark movie hops. But what was the hop world like when you, you've really seen some amazing innovation while you've been working with hops? Yeah. I think you've heard it a million times. We really owe a great deal to Sierra Nevada and Ken Grossman for bringing cascades, cascade hops to where they are. That really started this whole love affair with American citrusy fruit forward aroma hops. Prior to that, the benchmark hops around the world where the hops coming out of Germany, Hallertau Mittelfrue, Saz out of the Czech Republic, and that noble hop character is what brewers around the world really coveted and thought was the ultimate. American hops were always considered to be these kind of wildly, use them for bittering, don't use them to flavor beers. Then, Sierra Nevada and I guess Liberty before that, some of these brewers in the United States were using Cascade and those types of hops successfully. It created this whole what we know as craft beer revolution. I think that you follow the lineage or the history of hops in the United States and it really is also the history of craft beer. Right. Yeah. I think they were saying that, how did Cascade become such a universally beloved American hop at the time? I think I remember Ken Grossman saying it was the hop that was new and available. Yeah, it was universally available. Yeah, I think it was exactly that. It was the thing that he could actually get his hands on and he's such an innovator himself and such a wizard when it comes to beer. He just built this beautiful beer around that hop. I got to home brew with Ken Grossman just a couple weeks ago at a brewer's retreat in Sonoma. I spent an entire day over a one barrel home brew kit with Ken Grossman. I was super nervous. I was like, okay, I'm just going to be Ken's bitch today. I'm just going to haul hops and malt for him. But it was just fascinating and he was just recalling his history. We talked about hops, but most importantly just how it all started for him and the fact that there was no commercial equipment available to him. The raw materials like we were just talking about, the hops weren't available to him and he really had to just build that from nothing. Repurposed milk. Yeah. He went and took welding classes so he could build his own brewing equipment. I mean, it's just an amazing story. That's wild. I think there's a select few breweries too and I would put the Firestone in that class that have been at this for so long, but still seem really passionate about it and that's good to see. It's like these are the Rolling Stones that just refuse to quit and not be deterred by, oh, you're old at this point or look at what the new kids are doing. It's like, no, you still very much are a voice. Especially with your passion for hops, I mean, you're out there selecting experimentals and getting really into that and you're one of the forerunners, I feel like giving those a try. Well, it's so interesting because just like the brewers that you meet that are passionate about making beer and the energy that's involved with that, you meet hop growers in the same way. I mean, to be a successful hop farmer, you have to endure a lot of ups and downs and the ones who are good are just as passionate as your favorite brewers. And it's just as addicting or just as inspiring as the beer game is. You got to be the Keith Richards, not the Charlie Watts. Sorry, Charlie. But I am a drummer. Oh, really? You might be one of the people that's uniquely can provide some background on what it's like. You usually hear about brewers making the trip out to Yakima and doing some hop selection. But talk about for a minute what doing hop selections in Europe is like, or what the Czech Republic in general, I think has this rich hop growing heritage that a few Americans probably really appreciate and understand how important it is to them. I think that dovetails into your love of Pilsener as well. That's something that all of a sudden we're finally seeing some curiosity and interest, I feel, with thinking about Pilsener and giving them a try. Well, there are just some facts and figures that it's a different game in Europe, hop selection-wise, or just procuring hops. And the fact that if you go to the Pacific Northwest, there's approximately 75 growers. So they're all very large. The acreage of each farm is large. And it's a little easier to get to know and follow and connect with that smaller pool of growers. You go to Germany and there's something in and around 1500 growers. And each one of those farms is quite small. I mean, the average German hop farm is somewhere between 20 and 40 hectares. So these are relatively small family operations. Those farms can typically be operated with maybe two or three family members and a couple hired hands. I mean, they're very small enterprises. And so the importance of a merchant group to collect and distribute those hops is so much more critical. You know, in the United States, we can do some direct to grower contracting pretty successfully. We've gotten to know those farmers as personal friends over the years. You go to Germany, and there's just, I mean, I have a couple very close grower friends now in Germany, but there's so many farms. So when we procure hops, for instance, for 805, Hollertau Tradition is the hop for that beer. We're probably selecting from, I don't know, 20 farms oftentimes to collect enough hops. Oh, wow. It's almost like the Bordeaux trade in that sense, right? Yeah. So it's a much different game. The Czech Republic, unfortunately, I'm not as familiar, so I can't really talk in great detail about how many growers, but it's a very similar type of situation with very small farms and almost everybody grows saws, right? And those hops are coveted around the globe. Last time I was in the Czech Republic or just last year, I was kind of blown away with how much of the annual saws supply goes to Japan. Wow. Really? For like Sapporo and Versailles and things like that? And there's big international growers, or brewers, excuse me, that are taking up the vast majority of that hop in Belgium as well. I mean, it's very popular in Belgium with the majors there. So I don't know how much really makes its way to the United States. I do know that it's interesting, a lot of the breweries lately that have been giving the Pilsner style a chance and trying to experiment with it, a lot of them are using the locally grown super saws as kind of a, it's just so much easier to get and you know what not. Originally, we've been wanting to try to get you on the podcast for a while, but one of my easiest arguments was I was really adamant that Pivo come back. And I'm like, what's the deal with Pivo? I have tons of friends. I know people in the industry. It's like, people absolutely love this beer. I think, as always, has been the challenge with craft loggers. Craft Pilsner isn't necessarily appreciated enough, and people don't necessarily know what to make of it. But we love Pivo. Obviously, a lot of other people did. It debuted and took home gold and then won gold three consecutive years in a row at GABF. So clearly, the people in the industry who evaluate beer thought it was pretty darn good, too. So on the Firestone website now, it says, you know, this is our Brewmaster's favorite beer. So let's talk about Pivo and drink some Pivo. Yes. Finally. I'm so, yeah, I'm f**king thirsty, Roger. Part of this is to see how long I can make Pat go without drinking beer. I almost got up in the left. Too bad you didn't. Oh, damn. Jenna. Speaking truth to the powerless. So how did this beer come about? I know that at the time in 2013, there weren't necessarily a ton of American craft breweries looking at Pilsner. It wasn't something a lot of people talked about. It wasn't necessarily something that Firestone Walker was definitely is you're making hop forward or also English traditional style. So what was it like to have to try to sell this to them? It was a different time, obviously. I mean, if you think back in and around the time Pivo came forward, this was before our brewery was making 805, which now is dominating our total volume. It was before we were deeply enroute in a lot of IPA brewing because Union Jack came around 2006, I guess. So we've been a brewery for 10 years prior to releasing our first IPA. We had a much more diverse portfolio. We were making Hefeweizen, we're making a lot more classic styles, let's just say. I bet when you went to California in what, 2000, you thought you were going to brew IPAs, right? It's so funny. Then it took how many years? It took six years. Every year, when we were talking about what are we going to launch next year, it's like, how about an IPA? They're like, no, no, no. I always just assumed Union Jack was as old as everything else in the portfolio. I know the double barrel story is being the first and all that, but- Yeah, it's really crazy. But we did have Pale 31. We were making hop forward Pale Ale and doing really well with it. I think that was somewhat the reason that Adam and David were holding back on an IPA. That was our point of differentiation. We're doing really well with it. Our flagship at the time was double barrel ale. Adam's kind of famous for saying we do very few things very well. So, slow your roll, which it worked. And the fact that we came out with an IPA in 06 allowed us the opportunity to go to school on everybody else's IPA, right? By that time, I was very in tune with Pliny, very in tune with what Sierra Nevada was doing, like Celebration Ale. Pizza Port was just tearing it up with great IPA in Southern California. So there was a lot of great beers to go to school on. Right. And I think that's why we were able to be so successful with Union Jack in those days. But back to your Pilsner question, we would go to Europe to look at brewing equipment, we go to Europe to look for hops. It's really hard not to be inspired when you're in Germany, in a beer garden, drinking great lager beer, or getting the opportunity to drink a Pilsner fresh. Obviously, here in the United States, we sometimes have opportunity, maybe more here in Chicago than anywhere else in the world, but it's nothing like drinking it fresh at the source. This beer is phenomenal. That was really the inspiration. I've told the story a million times, but it wasn't until I was at a, I think it was European Beer Star Competition, where Agostino from Beer Aficio Italiano had won for Keller Pils at a German competition. I was like, holy cats, I need to meet this guy and taste this beer. That Tipo Pils was really what inspired me to make this beer, because although it was very classically brewed, the little twist was that he used dry hopping to just accentuate the hops. As soon as I taste that and it clicked, I'm like, okay, this is something we can sell in the United States for sure, because trying to go head to head with American Light Lager beer 10, 15 years ago was just no point. IPA was already starting to dominate, but this idea of a Hoppy Pilsner- Kind of bridge the gap. Yeah, it's what I want to drink, and I feel like if you go to any craft beer bar, there's always a place for a Pilsner beer on the lineup. You're not going to drink double IPAs all night long. So I don't know, it was probably mostly the beer I wanted to drink, but also being convinced that it would fit into the portfolio somehow in California. Part of the reason that I thought it was time to revisit Pivo was that I was seeing local craft breweries making Italian style Pilsners, and it kind of made me laugh. Like you obviously didn't choose to call yours an Italian Pilsner, but it was modeled after Tipo. So in a way, how do you view that now as like, I think inadvertently, you've probably done more than anyone else to promote this style. That's so funny, yeah. But I know Augustino comes to the Invitational every year, and so A, what does he think of your beer, and B, do you consider this an Italian style Pilsner? Yeah, absolutely. And of course, at the time that we brewed Pivo and released it, there was no such thing as an Italian Pilsner, other than there were a couple of great Italian brewers making Pilsner beer, but they didn't even consider it. But it's basically just his, that beer you mentioned is what everyone's modeling this beer style after, or maybe your beer as well. I have a text from him that I just got like right after the Invitational where he thanked me for somehow building this beautiful myth that has helped his brewery become so famous. So I take really great pride in that. The other thing I take great pride in, and I'm I don't know if I've ever said this publicly, but he admitted to me that after tasting Pivo, he changed his hops to use Saphir. So he then changed Tipo to be a little more like Pivo. So that's probably the greatest compliment I've ever been given. It's amazing because Ago is so passionate about beer, and if you get to know him and the other brewers in Italy, everyone really looks up to him. He started brewing in the early mid-90s, so he's one of the godfathers of craft beer in Italy. He's fiercely independent and very much engaged with his raw material selection and everything. So it's again talking about inspiration. It's hard not to be inspired by a brewer like that. Right. And the fact that just why he was doing it, and the fact that that's basically his flagship beer for his brewery. Yeah, it was kind of a no-brainer. I came home, I'm like, I got to make that beer. Well, it's tasting pretty great today, I have to say. It's remarkably fresh out of this can. Well, you know, Pilsner actually has pretty good legs, more so than Hoppy Ales. You've got a little bit of metabisulfite that's produced by the yeast, so you've got a little bit of natural antioxidant. You don't have the same type of hop aroma that kind of gets buggered up by time and oxygen. So Pilsner's have good shelf stability in general. This is just tasting phenomenal. I mean, quite honestly, Pivo to me tastes best after about 30 days in package. It's almost like you talk about wine bottle shock. I almost feel like the Pilsner kind of settles in after about 30 days in the package. I totally agree with that because there's some pretty, especially for people that don't have the acclimation to the bittering hops, I feel like this is generously hopped. Would you say that this is kind of like a Northern German? That's kind of the basis of what Teeppo is going for, right? It was like inspired by Northern German style pills. Absolutely. Yep, exactly. Exactly. Distinctively both dry, bitter, and then the twist is the aroma hopped edition that really kind of accentuates this really nice noble hop character. We chose Saphir because it's just ever so slightly off the exact beat of say, Hallertal Mittelfrue or something that's just like truly land race noble. There's a little bit of lemongrass there. It's just a little bit of new hop nuance, but still very noble. Yeah, a little kiss of citrus there. Yeah, exactly. It's so interesting that now Italian pills is a thing. Yeah. It's taken on a complete life of its own. Yeah. Yeah. It is. Clearly, it's because of you and Augustino. Yeah, if that goes on my gravestone that I had something to do with a good beer like an Italian pills, I'm happy. I mean, this is definitely a dry Pilsner, but there is nice malt character here, and it's so light and easy on the palate, and that lifted aromatics, and the head retention was fantastic, dense, creamy ad. I mean, what more could you ask? Yeah. I would say that if Augustino is in the room, probably the other point of differentiation is that Italian pills, as he makes it, is an unfiltered beer. So, it is Keller style. So, there would typically be a little bit of haze to it, but really nice foam, you know, really bright hop character. We do filter Pivo pretty bright, so. Before we jump on to the next beer here, I have one quick question. I think something that people, especially just getting into craft beer and especially craft lagers, might not know that's kind of interesting, I was just mentioning this the other day to someone, is how difficult brewing a Pilsner is. That it actually might seem like a simple looking beer or not as complicated, but in a lot of ways, it is, talk about some of the pitfalls when it comes to making a Pilsner. Yeah. I think in general, when you talk to brewers, there's a real pride when you can get to the point where you can successfully make any lager beer. Lager brewing in general is a little more nuanced. Typically, these lighter beers have less going on to cover up. You got nowhere to hide. Right. Exactly. It also requires some technology. I think it makes a lot of sense that in early craft brewing days, when people had pre-rutamentary equipment and minimal refrigeration, that ales made a lot of sense. Then once you improve your kit and in some ways, I'm jealous of new brewers who walk into these perfect situations with beautiful equipment, the ability to make lager beer so well out of the gates. You know, I had to grow into that a little bit. Then they finally got everything dialed in, but just you know, business is business and it didn't work out for them. But yeah, they were definitely deserve credit as one of, you know, when you were working at Goose Island, it's got to be pretty wild when you come back to Chicago to see how many breweries there are now, right? I mean, there were barely any back then. So, I mentioned earlier the Invitational. For those who've never heard of it or been to it, tell us a little bit about what the Firestone Walker Invitational is all about. How much time do you have? I'll give you the short story is that I just had a really perfect opportunity. This was about 12 years ago from one of the city fathers in Paso Robles, who had access to the Mid-State Fairgrounds, which is where we do the event, a really good event center, and just had a lot of support locally for doing something in an event. He came to me and he's like, hey, you want to do a beer fest? This again, 10, 12 years ago, and I was burned out on beer fest. I felt like they had progressed in a way where many times you'd go to a beer fest and no offense to the distributorship world or whatever, but you would go and it would be distributor X and their portfolio, and some sales guy or gal pouring you these beers. It really didn't have any intimate connection with the production of the beer. By the end of it, everybody was drunk and didn't care what they were drinking. You're out in a field somewhere. I don't know, I just was kind of over it. Maybe I've gone to too many of them. I was approached and said, hey, you want to do a beer fest? I'm like, no, absolutely not. They're like, why? I'm just over it. He's like, well, if you got to design the ultimate beer fest, what would it be? I'm like, well, you couldn't afford to do it because you'd be flying all my favorite international brewers in person with their beer fresh. You'd have as much good food as you had good beer. You'd have to be in a great location. I just named off all. There had to be great music. He's like, yeah, let's do it. This is like the auspice du Rhone that they have there. Yeah, exactly. In some ways, very much inspired by that. I can feel that. Yeah. That happened in Paso Robles for many years prior to the Invitational. I think you're dead right on. I just basically challenged him, you can't afford to do this. He's like, I think we can. He just collected a lot of support from the local community. A lot of that support is coming from non-beer related companies like the local Ford dealer and the boot bar and all these other things that have really nothing to do with beer but just community members who love the notion of putting on a really good event. Year one, it just clicked, it worked and we haven't looked back. Nice. We're pretty lucky here to be able to try the beer that was poured as the collab there. Tell us a little bit about this beer, No Vacancy. Yeah, No Vacancy is a West Coast IPA that we brewed with our friends up the road at Alvarado Street. One of my favorite breweries in California. I mean, they're just crushing it, not just in IPA but in all sorts of categories. They're really innovative. JC. Hill, the founder and brew master is just kind of a mastermind of all things. The restaurants that they run are really top-notch as well. So, we'd always kind of talked about doing a collaboration with them. They've always been at the Invitational, so we finally got together and brewed an IPA. This is a beer that we're ripping off of their My Type A. I don't know if you've had that, but that's their flagship IPA. They're kind of one of those forerunners in the style that they modernized it with very little specialty malt, so it's essentially just Pilsner malt. It's very mosaic hop forward, which doesn't sound that unique or there's a lot of mosaic IPAs on it. We love mosaic. I mean, it might be in a lot of beers, but for good reason. Yeah. It's just our riff on that beer. This uses incognito though too as well. Yeah. We use mosaic in all of its available forms, incognito, cryo, and T90. The hell is incognito? I've never heard of this. I guess you'd call it a downstream product. It's essentially a hop extract, but a whole hop extract that really focuses on the aroma qualities of the hop. It's built to be used hot side, so we use it in the whirlpool. However, there's some brewers now using it as a dry hop as well. North Park is a pretty famous IPA brewer in Southern California now, that's been using it down the cold side and turning a lot of brewers onto that. But they call it a pourable hop product. Interesting. North Park is in San Diego, right? Yeah. Okay. I've been there. Yeah. So, I noticed you called this a West Coast IPA. I think in the write up, it's a New Age West Coast, because I mean, this has got some haze to it. It's pretty soft mouth feel. Yeah. So, how would you describe, I guess, a good starting point from someone that's been working in California for two decades and famous for making IPAs. As of late, some of the local Chicago breweries are trying to make West Coast IPAs. So, all of a sudden, there's some interest, which we usually then, my response is, awesome. You should go try some of the famous California-made IPAs. Then shoppers will be like, no, I want a local one. Okay. So, from somebody on the West Coast, one of the most famous West Coast breweries, how would you describe a West Coast IPA or how it's changed? Yeah. Because it's a moving target. Exactly. So, when we designed Union Jack, I felt like we were already approaching what I would call the second generation of IPA. First generation being beers like Liberty Ale. And maybe some of the English inspired IPAs, maybe even Goose Island IPA would be in that first generation, where you're really riffing on the original concept of an English, maybe English Pale Malt, some Caramel Malt. So, there's a malt backbone to that beer. And then you're really bringing a lot of bitterness. And you're using some of those first generation IPA hops like Cascade. To me, that's first generation IPA. And then second generation to me is the introduction of some of the new cultivars like Citra, Simcoe, maybe Mosaic wasn't around at that point. I think Pliny is one of those beers that to me was like the new generation of IPA on the West Coast. But that also had some color to it back in the day. So, it was still a little bit of Caramel Malt. There still was a malt backbone. Then we went to Hazy's, right? And everyone found the big juicy hops, the Mosaics and the Stratas and all the New Zealand hops that just bring all this tropical juicy fruit. And then the Pendulum swings back to West Coast. And what do we have? We've got these amazing hops with all this tropical character that are in my mouth. I feel like it's softer, juicier. And that kind of like, there's no need for the Caramel Malt and that big malty backbone anymore. So now, brewers have just kind of omitted that completely from the program. It's almost a Pilsner like base now. It's really dry, crisp. You don't need to have a lot of bitterness there. And you just have these beautiful hops that just, and brewers have gotten better and better at expressing those hops on this lighter canvas. So that's what this kind of what maybe we're third or fourth generation IPA now, if you include hazy and all of that. And it kind of takes all the good things from all of that knowledge and kind of packs it into a little more drinkable beer, in my opinion. It does seem like the bitterness pendulum has kind of, it started so extreme, like when you went out there, it was kind of right in the heart of the IBU wars, where it was like tongue burner IPAs that were like, you know, stone bragging, bragging that you won't like the beer, it's so ridiculously bitter. So then, you know, it swings to hazy and some of the first hazy, you know, you usually hear people say like Hetty Topper was essentially the inspiration for the other Vermont breweries, you know, kind of started this. They still were plenty bitter. But I mean, then we went off the deep end with just like no bitterness, you know, like they show a hop to the brew kettle and that's it, you know. And they tell it to a verticeye. This seems to me like by using some wheat and having a touch of haze, maybe it's what we're starting to swing, you know, in a nice middle ground between the two where it's sort of like soft, very aromatic and great, like you were saying, like the Yeah. Yeah. So I feel like it's all the good influences and all that learning on both sides of IPA, hazy or not. And maybe it's being influenced by some of these brewers who are getting into Pilsner brewing and realizing like a crisp, dry finish does lend to a really nice drinkability. Yeah, I was going to say though, hops aside, the most remarkable thing about this progression is the actual malt bill and the grain bill and the color of the beer. I mean, it's just, you know, totally different. Right. Right. So speaking of that, sell us on IPL, I'm sorry, cold IPAs as they are now being marketed, because you guys have seemingly dipped your toes in the waters here. So we're very curious to hear your thoughts on this. If you were initially, again, I feel like this is a beer style that really has like a single origin story, and now it's taken off. There's like four blog posts on the Firestone website about this right now. Well, okay, so where do I want to start? Well, I guess the story starts with Kevin Davy at Wayfinder, and now he's at Heater Allen, but I've known Kevin for a long time. He's a Siebel graduate and worked for Firestone for a while. In fact, he was at Firestone when Pivo was developed, and actually Kevin's most known for his lager brewing, and I think that's where his real passion is. The cold IPA story. I mean, so when I visited him at Wayfinder for the first time, he was very proud to pour me his IPA. And I was like, oh, you're making an IPA. I thought you're going to be an all lager brewery. He's like, well, just taste it and tell me what you think. I was like, you know, it's great. Great. He's like, I made it with lager yeast. I'm like, oh, you know. And so the thought pattern for me anyway, is that you're really trying to make an IPA and a West Coast IPA at that with a different yeast strain. So it's less about the lager effect and more about accomplishing it through a different means. So I guess what I'm trying to get to is to me, it's just IPA. And whether you want to call it cold or not, it just simply is telling you that it was made with lager yeast versus an ale yeast. If that's important to you, great. You know, tied to this, this lager brewing kind of idea, it's a little trickier. So from a technical standpoint, it's a little harder to get to that same endpoint. And for me, we're trying to differentiate, we're talking about hypnosis now, we're trying to differentiate that beer from Union Jack and some of our other IPAs, simply by not having our house ale character. And I didn't want to bring a different ale yeast in to make this beer, but I did have lager yeast available. And through our trials, we learned that we could make a beer taste very similar to US05 or Chico yeast, Sierra Nevada's base yeast that so many IPAs are made with. And it was distinctively different than our British strain that we use for Union Jack and the other beers. So I did it just to get away from our house character on a new IPA and make something that was distinctively different. Which I think a lot of people don't appreciate since we we give hops all the glory. We were starting to finally talk about malts. Yeast is probably always last in line, right? Or I guess maybe water chemistry would be last. But yeast is basically never talked about so much of aroma and so much of the famous, especially the hazy yeast like your London Three or Conan. I mean, these are like massively aromatic yeast, right? Yep. In fact, I like when people talk about hazy IPAs as yeast forward beers. To me, hazy IPA has more to do with like hefeweizen brewing and the banana esters that can come from a yeast. I think of hazy IPA being that way. Really, they're yeast expressions as much as they are hop expressions. Right. Now, Matt, this hypnosis is fermented with a lager yeast. Is it as long of a lagerine time as you would for a traditional lager? And you don't have an issue with sulfur reabsorption or anything? I mean, the beer tastes clean and amazing. Yeah. So what we typically do is we're using lager yeast and, you know, I can't speak for other brewers, but you're using elevated temperatures. So we're closer to ale temperature fermentation, which tends to scrub more of that sulfur out because it's a more vigorous fermentation. You're making a steam beer. Yeah. No. Really? Yeah. Back to the California common, huh? Yep. Why is it called cold IPA then? Well, that's a good question and Kevin Davy could probably answer that better because you are, at least we are fermenting at a close to ale temperature. Maybe it's a little colder than ale, but not much. Lukewarm. And honestly, I think, you know, you mentioned IPL, like that doesn't, there's not a lot of peeling about that. I think it's confusing to consumers, but cold IPA sounds good, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it's a- I'll have a cold IPA. That's what everybody wants to drink. Yeah, I'll have a cold one. Speaking of Steem Beer, actually, just last week, we had Bruce Joseph from Anchor, formerly Anchor, now Hodolene, was in town, and he's been their distiller now since 93 or something. So we talked with him a lot about Steem Beer, and I think he's, I'm sure he knows people at Firestone, through the way, but he was our last industry dignitary just a few days ago. Yeah. So for our listeners, we just popped a can of double hopnosis. The first project was obviously normal standard hopnosis, which is available in a six pack. Then with double hopnosis, it looks like besides having a higher ABV, more IBU, it also is change up the hops a little bit as well. Yeah. Both hopnosis and double hopnosis have, we integrate some Southern Hemisphere hops. So that was something that I've been really excited about in the last five years, getting to know some growers down there, finally gaining access to some of these cultivars. They're so hard to get for so many years. Yeah. We could do a whole podcast on how that growing region has really developed and blossomed in recent years with all the interest around the world for Southern Hemisphere hops. I was just down there for harvest. Obviously, it's six months off of our harvest, so it's quite nice you can go down there off season, so to speak. Yeah, it's just some amazing stuff happening there, and it's like a Garden of Eden. It's like a perfect place for growing hops, and much like wine grapes, which I can't speak of in too much detail, but there's just this distinct terroir-driven or climate-driven flavor palate that you just can't get anywhere else in the world. I've just absolutely fallen in love, especially with New Zealand grown hops. Same thing that happens in Sauv Blanc, somehow happens in hops down there. Those thiols are really popping. Exactly. Exactly. I had a question about talking about hops. One of the things that when we're tasting through beers, especially a lot of the new hazies that we'll run into is, they're famously fruit forward and a lot of them have tropical fruit. A lot of them have a melon character to them as well. But then sometimes you run into this overripe, almost spoiled melon fruit character. What do you think is the cause of that from a standpoint of is it yeast health? Is it just hop selection? I think that character could be a couple of things. But the first thing that comes to mind is probably overripe hops. There's this picking window of time and a lot of cultivars, it's a pretty narrow window and the growers trying to get them out of the field at that peak. And some brewers like a little bit earlier in that picking window and you tend to have a little more focused but maybe not as intense flavor profile, but certainly is not that overripe character. And then as you get to the back end of that picking window, depending on the variety, you can start getting these like, yeah, like the fruits been in the garbage pail kind of overripe character. And some are prone to that onion garlic, what we call dank character as well, really in the late in the picking window. And every brewer kind of is a little different in where they select and where they push the grower to pick. And then there's cultivars like Mosaic where there's just so much of it out there. The farmer can never pick at all at the peak. So there's always going to be some early and some late and something in between. And that's where selection becomes really important. Do you think Mosaic is the most widely grown hop in the US now? Citra is number one and Mosaic is a close number two. Okay. Yeah. What do you think? Sometimes we'll walk into a hop cooler and we'll see some of these hops with that are a little age on them. If they're Cryovac, you know, is that something that you feel like there's there still should be an impetus to use them, you know, ASAP or is it like a year, their year old, no problem? Pelletized hops, they're frozen, do have pretty good. I mean, I think, you know, up to three years. But in our program, what we would typically do is once we get past that first year, a year and a half, we would move those to the hot side of the process and hopefully using our freshest hops. Now, year to year variance is there too. And sometimes last year's, you know, mosaic is a little better than what I got this year. And so maybe I'll keep using that in the dry hop program while I try to work through these other hops. Yeah, on the hot side. It seems like that happened to Galaxy. Like a lot of brewers I talked to, like they loved Galaxy. And then it went through this period where it was like, well, so Galaxy is a perfect example of, again, those growers, that's their number one hop. And it's probably a little over planted relative to the picking window. So again, there's a lot of Galaxy having to be picked a little bit early, a lot of Galaxy that's hanging too long. And if you get to select, hopefully you're getting in the middle there. Yeah, you got to get there and do it though. Yeah, somebody's got to work with those others. And they do a lot of blending of that crop to try to get around it, but year to year variance for sure. Yeah. Matt, one thing I wanted to ask you was about how the Firestone Walker Breweries is handling like water management these days. And is this as much a thing for you as we assume it is in California? I know like Northern California got hit with all the atmospheric rivers and stuff this winter and whether or not that ended up in reservoirs is another thing, but like is this of grave concern for you guys or is the Central Coast more just kind of We had flooding in Basel, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we definitely saw a lot of rain this year and that was good for reservoir, et cetera, but our brewery was actually strategically located in Paso Robles because it's right at the headworks of the Salinas River system. So there's actually a lot of water in the ground there. It's also why agriculture does so well in that part of the world. So we've always had ample supply. It's just that that source is quite hard. It's not great brewing water as it comes out of the ground. So we end up doing a fair amount of filtering and processing. Our brewery also recently got access to some reservoir water, which is always softer water, so we can do some blending with that. But no, it's top priority. Like we have to manage that resource very carefully and be very mindful of water, both incoming and then also outgoing. So we have a pretty elaborate wastewater management system as well. Yeah, that Salinas Valley is growing a lot of lettuce and stuff. Yeah. And all that water starts in San Luis Obispo County and heads north up to that part of the world. Roger, what the hell is this? I didn't expect like a Budweiser Chalada size can to get pulled out here. So, Matt, you're responsible for this one? What is this? Okay. I got to be careful here. So, as this isn't Firestone Walker branded, they sent me this. We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. No, let's talk about it for sure. It smells awesome. Yeah, it smells great. So, we're drinking Cali Squeeze Blood Orange, and this story is kind of funny because if you're in the beer industry for a couple decades, you see these kind of trends come and go, right? I feel like it's like the 1990s all over again with fruited beers. And David Walker especially had been asking me for a few years, like, come on, Matt, let's do a fruit beer. Let's do a fruit beer. And I don't know if you remember Rosalie. So, we made a beer that I was like, if I'm going to make a fruit beer, I'm going to make something really legit with roots in our local community. So, we made it was a hybrid beer, which we used a large percentage of white wine, grape juice. Yeah, I remember that beer. We co-fermented and blended in a little bit of kettle sour to give it a little bit of acidity like wine. And then we used hibiscus to give it a rosé color. It was actually a really complicated beer to make, as you can imagine. Because we would have to procure this grape juice at harvest and then keep it in our tanks cold and keep it from fermenting so we could use it all year round. I mean, it was way too complicated. And by the way, it didn't sell very well anyway. So that was my attempt at a fruit beer for David Walker. Part of it was in like a beige label, right? But you already got ad-stacked against you with beige. There you go. Now, do you do a good David Walker impression? Because Jeffers Richardson used to do a great David Walker impression. Not Jeffers. Exactly. Anyway, so David was like... He's not biting. No, I'm not biting. I'm not going to do it. He does have this great line that was like, Oh, that looks like it cost a lot of bendy foldies. There you go. That's as good as I can get. I'm totally going to pull that out next time I see it. Which if you Google bendy foldies, I think he invented that term. I've never seen it anywhere, but you know exactly what it means. So he kept asking for fruit beer and I just was not delivering. I'm sorry. It's just not in my DNA to make these beers. It never has been. I've never been a big fruit beer guy. Certainly in our mixed fermentation program, we use a lot of fruit. And I thought that was going to satisfy the need. And so he went out and just bought one. So he went and bought the Cali Squeeze brand and dropped it on my desk and now I'm making fruit beers. But we put the same passion and love into it. I mean, we really worked hard on this beer and it's paying dividends. It's selling really well in Southern California. It fits the Southern California culture. And we're trying to focus on California grown fruits, so thus Blood Orange and we do a lemon version. I think that's the point of distinction here and why, we've tasted through a lot of fruit inspired things and a lot of things that aren't even beer. And the impasse we usually hit is, is this made with real fruit or not? Yeah. And you can usually very much tell. Yeah. And so for us, it's like we have access to some really cool citrus fruit in California. It's been an interesting journey and I wouldn't have done it had he not bought this brand. And it's selling really well on Draft. This is the one that sells the best, the Blood Orange. And we always say it has a little bit of the fajita effect because it's got this kind of odd reddish pink color. Totally. A pint of this comes out across the bar. Other people say, what is that? I'll have one of those. Yeah. Exactly. The fajita effect. I just heard the espresso martini effect. Yeah. Exactly. I heard rosés are coming back this summer. We're gonna have a summer rosé volume two. So maybe you can push this as a rosé offering. Yeah. There you go. But there's a little bit of sweetness there. There's enough blood orange to make it really interesting. It's just a summer crusher. When do you add the fruit addition? It's late. It's post-fermentation. So it's a little tricky in that regard. Do you have to pasteurize then to make sure it doesn't? We do run it through a flash. Yeah. Yeah. Can't have any yeast floating around. No, no, no, no, no. It still tastes great and fresh. Disaster. Doesn't kill any of that wonderful fresh fruit flavor. Yeah. I think the nose is phenomenal. No, it's fresh squeezed citrus right in the can. These beers are a little bit challenging. I may make fun of them because I would always... I think when I first came out to California, I worked for Slow Brewing Company, and one of their best selling beers was some awful blueberry thing like this. I was like, oh God, I hope I never have to make that again. Of the core beers you make now, what is the most challenging from a brewer's point of view? That's a hard question to answer. It depends. We have a pretty elaborate barrel aging program, and we recently opened up a club. For that, we made it overly challenging for ourselves because we're trying to make really unique beers specific only for that club on a very small scale. It's really almost gotten us back to almost pub scale brewing for some of these projects. Those have been really, really challenging, but it's opened up a lot of doors. We've been doing a lot of collaborations. My new approach on collaborations, which I really loved and embraced is I let the brewer who we're collaborating with bring the recipe. I want as much DNA from that collaboration in rather than, oh, let's just brew another version of our beer. That's become really challenging. We just did a collaboration with Omnipolo, which is a 40-plate-o crazy over-the-top stout like they make. 40-plate-o. How do you even get that to ferment? Good question. Yeah, good question. I don't know. You pour your party neutral alcohol into it. It's just crazy. That's one part. But I think bringing this full circle, I still think making great lager beer is the ultimate challenge. I mean, it's just so hard, so naked, so- Nothing to hide behind. Yeah, exactly. I've noticed lately, I've always been a big proponent of this, especially that breweries have a lot of experience. It's got to be somewhat frustrating to have this big portfolio of beers. Firestone always was a little more focused on a smaller portfolio, but some breweries have amassed this catalog of a million different beers. It seems like lately we've started to see some fans want these beers to come back. So for better or worse, the beer industry now is like a new beer every two weeks, which has got to be pretty aggravating from a brewer's standpoint. It does seem like it provides an opportunity since you don't necessarily have to make a beer that's produced for a full seasonal release anymore. You can do these one-time drops, which 10 years ago no one would have thought that was an actionable business like, we'll make this beer people love it and then we don't brew it for another year. They'd be like, you can't do that. Well, that's all anyone does anymore. So I noticed that you brought Wookie Jack back, which is super cool to see. Any plans to bring back anything from the past or is there anything that you've made in the past that you personally, regardless of if the people say you're allowed to make it, you would like to re-brew? Yeah. We were talking about it earlier. We've just gotten away from a lot of the classics that we used to be so good at. We had Firestone Lager, which was really it was brewed to be a German Helles. I loved making that beer. That's gone away and I'd love to bring that back. Pale 31 is one of those beers. Gosh, I just wish we could figure out a way of bringing that back. I love all my children. I love them all to come back in. Even Cali Squeeze. What about DBA? I mean, I don't think we get DBA in Illinois anymore just because that beer didn't travel well. I had dinner with Michael Roper last night and he was talking about why he couldn't get DBA. We still make it. There's two rules on the brewery. As long as David Walker is alive, we will always make DBA and it will always be fermented in new medium toast American oak and that program is alive and well. It's just a lot smaller than it used to be. Rule two is as long as I'm alive and in the brewery, there will always be Pivo, period. So those are the two beers that won't go away as long as we're real. DBA for me has always been that beer where if a caveman was thought out of the ice and I had to explain this is beer, this is just what beer tastes like, I would give Polly Shore that, or no it was Brendan Fraser, I'd give Brendan Fraser that can of DBA. As like this is the most beer I can think of. What would you give Polly Shore though? Cali Squeeze. That has nothing to do with beer. So he could say squeeze, squeeze in the juice. Cali Squeeze. Now that we have you cornered, we're long-term fan, big-time fans of DBA. And when we went out, you guys are such gracious hosts. A few years back, we did the collab on the Bottleworks release of the paw prints. I'm still convinced that only happened just because Jeffords Richardson had never heard of a paw paw before. We had dinner at the Hitchin Post and we drank some UDBA, which I've been asking routinely. So now that I have you cornered, is there any way we can get some UDBA? Has that ever been canned? Is it just something that only lives on draft? Yeah, it's we for I want to say it was our thousandth batch. We did UDBA in bottles. And this is back in the days of like the 22 ounce dinner bottles and stuff like that. And the joke inside the brewery was it was botch 1000 because it just didn't work well in a bottle. It is a really fragile beer. And so we do typically just have it as a draft beer. Yeah. Well, if we can, you know, I think DBA should come back and we've had some discussions as a seasonal or like out here as like a one time deal. And I would love if there's a way to make it work, do it and release both of them together. You know, here's your one time shot. Because I think it tells that story of how unique DBA is and that it's blended and all the time that goes into the union system. And I think a lot of people, especially people that are new to beer have no idea that it even exists. Yeah. And that's, you know. How many beer nerds don't even know what a Burton Union is? You know? You know, and I had an opportunity to go to Burton on trend. I thought it was necessary when I started working for Firestone Walker, I needed to go to the source point of all of that. And recently, if you come and visit the brewery, for many years, we just got so busy that the union kept getting moved around and eventually ended up back three buildings behind the first building, you know, back by the keg hall, and nobody ever got to see it. And I think people didn't even believe we were doing it anymore. So recently, we've moved it now front and center, right by our beer garden, behind glass. Oh, cool. And you can watch the brewer filling it, and you can watch it ferment. Yeah, when Raj and I were there, it was just in the middle of the keg line. No, exactly, exactly. You know, and we were using it, but it's just like it's back there where no one's going to see it. I mean, why not put it on the spot? No, exactly, exactly. And we really do it. You know, those barrels are worked on every single week. There's beer in them all the time. So we really want to show that off. And now it's finally front and center. We're seeing some renewed interest in English styles too. You're seeing, you know, sadly, No, we are not. There is. And I never thought in a million years, because you know, I always make fun of British Milds. I think they deserve that boring moniker. I'm an ESB guy, it's like one of my favorite styles. So yes, I put that on the table, full disclosure. I'm obsessed with ESBs. Speaking of excitement to ESB, come on. People are brewing these. And I never thought in a million years, there'd be four different breweries making a Dark Mild at the same time. I had an amazing Mild at Revolution Brewing Company with Jim Seebeck yesterday. And I think he brewed it in January. So six months later, it was still tasting amazing. Yep. So it's a brewery style, though. It's like it's hard sell, right? I so that's what I was about to say was that I think a lot of people are being cut short that are young. That this idea that young people only drink fill in the blank and then they like point at the FMB mystery aisle. That's like premixed beverages and everything else. Like, you know, that's making an assumption and a stereotype. Then anyone that's young only likes like what's pop culture, you know, and hard tea. I think, I think, you know, craft beer, one of the things in the originators, it was alt culture. Like we need to get a little back to alt culture and less pop culture. And I think it's really the responsibility rests. And yes, I said responsibility because that's how seriously I take this. You're in trouble now. On venerated breweries like you. And I think, you know, I have noticed you started. They've got you behind the camera now. You're doing these little easily digestible snippets. And, you know, people aren't. I'm smart enough to know that nobody's reading books anymore. No one's buying a Michael Jackson book on beer, you know, and working their way through all the classics anymore. So I think it's going to take breweries like Firestone Walker kind of teaching people. And if if maybe you do one time releases of some of these classic styles, it gives you the chance to, you know, enjoy a beer that normally, you know, yeah, you can't necessarily market this to a gigantic audience for four months of a year. But, you know, when Sierra Nevada got rid of Summerfest, people got to sharpen the pitchforks, you know, it's like you don't need another IPA. And that seems to be a thing in in California right now. That's kind of puzzling where it's like everyone's just making turning their breweries into only IPA breweries, which. Yeah. I would imagine from a brewer's standpoint, that gets kind of is kind of a head scratcher, no? Yeah. No, I mean, when I called mild a brewer's beer, I mean, all of these are, you know, brewers love these beers. They're very drinkable. They're classics. They're what we, you know, I I started brewing at Goose Island. And Honkers was the beer we made. And that was that was where I started my career. So I couldn't agree with you more. Which they're bringing that back, at least in a limited run at some point. They've hit some pitfalls and blah, blah, blah. But again, it's it's on cask. If you still want to pop in there while you're in Chicago, you can drink Honkers on cask. Hey, Matt, now that Jim has kind of gone from the Barrel Works program, have you been getting pulled into the wild fermentation side of the business more? Or are you kind of staying in your lane with the pills in the IPA, and we have other people taking over that end of the business? No. So after Jim left, his assistant, Molly, who's an amazing brewer, is heading up that program now. It's no secret that mixed firm and sour beers are difficult. It's a difficult segment. And so we have downsized that program a little bit, but we're still fully committed to it. It's still in Buolton. It's still its own standalone facility. And the club kind of helped breathe some new life into that as well. So it's definitely a direct-to-consumer game for us right now. To answer your question, I mean, I've been getting a little bit more involved in that. I'm pretty passionate about breaded Cezanne's. And Firestone's never had a strong Belgian portion of our portfolio or done a lot of Cezanne's. We had Opal back in the day. So we've been doing a few breaded Cezanne's down there. Oh, cool. Cezanne bread is one of the best beers you guys have ever made. That is such a good beer. Yeah. And I've been spending more and more time with the brewers at Boulevard recently. And yeah, nobody does it better. And so I've been kind of learning through them. And so that's being integrated a little bit more into the Barrel Works program. So smart to have a separate facility too, I mean. Yeah. If you can afford to, you want to keep it away from everything else. What do you call them? Foldy bendies? Yeah. It takes a few bendy foldies. Yeah, I mean, I remember speaking to DBA, Agrestic was kind of your nod to, you know, Orval in a way, kind of, right? Yeah. And the beautiful story of that was that that would be unfiltered or oak fermented double barrel ale that's breaded. And if you ever have a really fresh Orval, it tastes like an English bitter. Yeah. It's a hoppy English pale ale that develops this bready character over time. I just had one. I had one at Hop Leaf last night, actually, with Michael. It was awesome. That's very true. That bread doesn't doesn't really come out until later. Yeah. So if you're in, you know, if you're in Belgium close to the source and you look at the dates and you taste one that's like only a month or two old, it's like there's no bread. It's just beautiful hops and beautiful, you know, amber beer. It's it's gorgeous. So in kind of the background of of DBA, you also did a amped up version double DBA. And this year to commemorate the ten thousandth batch, you re-brewed it and put it in some pretty bomb barrels. These are 11 year old, old Fitzgerald's weeded bourbon barrels. Wow. Slummin it. I mean, again, full disclosure. More Bendy Foldies. I've always loved this beer, so I'll let other people speak for Sing It's Praises. You better like it. You better like it. It's pretty f**king tasty. Yeah, I mean, it just makes a lot of sense. I mean, it's an imperial version of double barrel ale. We do ferment it in the Union and then we age it in these spirit's barrels. It's so creamy. It's just, holy s**t, that's good. Yeah. Yesterday, I was doing a collaboration beer at Revolution, and I mentioned it because it's a beer not so dissimilar from this that we're doing, and we brewed it in Paso when they were out for the Invitational. So it was Jim and Marty. Oh, great. Then I flew in and we brewed the exact same recipe on Revolution's kit so we can release them both at the same time. It'll be similar to this in that it'll get at least a couple of different barrel treatments. But the twist is Marty went out to Paso Robles this last year on a little sabbatical and worked at Herman Story, which is a great winery in the Paso region. We've interviewed. Oh, Russell. Russell from? Russell and Marty are both previous podcasters. Nice, yeah. So Russell is a close personal friend. Marty obviously worked there and went through the whole harvest this last year. And so we're going to finish that beer in Herman Story Barrels. So it'll spend a full year in Spirits Barrels, but it will do a finishing step in some. And the wines that they make there, they're going to have a lot of impact. Yeah, yeah. Because they're extracted. Yeah. This beer is freaking incredible. It's like butterscotch candy. Oh my God. Or like a toffee bar. Yeah. The caramely, yeah. Vanillin and everything just lingers and the retro nasal. The last time I had a double DBA, it was in what Matt referred to as a dinner bottle, a 22 ounceer. So it's probably been 10 years or something. Meaning that that's what you have for dinner. Well, yeah. I really think it speaks perfectly to our program because a beer like this, there's no adjuncts, it doesn't have any twists at the end. It's just really solid barley wine, essentially, aged in really good barrels. So it's kind of in the purest form right there. What's the malt bill like on this? Do you use some of the like your Marisott or the famous? Yeah, exactly. So we use English Pale Malt for the base. There's a little bit of English Caramel Malt, and then the oak from the Union helps kind of bring it all together, I guess. Well, I can't sing the praises high enough. This is just fantastic. It's delicious. One thing that I think beer needs to get back to too is in a lot of the podcast episodes I've been trying to bring in some food to have people try some of these beers with, and I think the pairing potential for this is like off the charts. Yeah, Roger, the pairing potential is off the charts. Whoops, I realized as I was saying this that I didn't bring in a million things. But I would suggest pairing this with blue cheese, apricots, everything that I brought to the last one. But there's a peach cobbler in the kitchen. In the largest Tupperware container I've ever seen in my life. What is up with that? In a past episode, in several past episodes, we always try to get people to not save their beers indefinitely, especially adjuncted stouts. I'm sure you've experienced in your career, those fade away and fall off. But there's very few beers that I will age, but Oldale's English Barley Wine style, I'll put it to the test because I think it has potential. So we're going to put you to the test right now. Uh-oh. Let's see how this held up. Are you nervous? No, not at all. A little bit. The last time you saw one of those. What do we got over there? The dinner bottle. Ah. All right. So this is Double DBA from the Proprietor's Reserve Series number 001. Nice. Barrel-aged Imperial Special Bitter, 2012. With who other's signature on the bottom, but this gentleman is sitting with us. We got an 11-year-old Double DBA. Nice. Yeah. So, you know, the very first beer that we released from the Vintage program would have been in 20... No, what would have been? Sorry. So, I was going to say that this is only a couple of years into the Barrel program, but I'm actually incorrect in saying that this would be five or six years into the Barrel program. Yeah. Now, these had been made but used as blending components in the anniversaries before this was released, correct? Right. Yep. Okay. Which we are, in just a couple of weeks, going to sit down with the wine makers and create the blend. I almost grabbed one of those this morning. I was down in the basement, switching over dehumidifier this morning. I was like, I wonder if Roger needs me to bring some old Firestone because I'm also guilty of buying more beer than I drink at times. I think I still have an anniversary 12 maybe. I've got like a 12 through 16 or something sitting down there. The last time I opened one was with Roger probably two years ago. What do we have a 13 or something, Roger and it was perfectly fresh still. It was incredible. It was unbelievable. Well, if we're going by appearance alone, this looks remarkable. I was just thinking, I was like, wow, we nailed the color on it. Yeah, I mean to have, and this was before you were even boxing stuff, so I kept it in a basement. So yeah, not much change in the color at all. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely some age on it, right? Yeah, you can smell age on it. But it's still clean. That's what people say about me. I think that has that graceful oxidation, the materialization that you want. Shockingly drinkable. What's the ABV on this thing, Chris? 12%. I mean, it tastes like six. Yeah. We've dipped back into the early years and are always pleasantly surprised with how these beers hold up. Our library at the brewery is actually probably 45 degrees, so it's actually refrigeration temperature that we're aging our beers. But yeah, I'm pretty happy with how they hold up. Look at the head on this beer. I mean. That's in great shape. Yeah. This is long before we had any kind of flash pasteurization or any high technology. So these beers, we still do this today, but we would go barrel by barrel and sample every barrel and do a thorough microanalysis. Then we go barrel by barrel and taste every barrel to make sure that we didn't have any funny business before we went to Blend because we knew we had no insurance policy on the back end. Wow, right. I mean, this is in great shape. It's got a little sherry nuttiness to it. It's got a little bit of umami development. But not soy saucy. Not to the point of soy sauce in the slightest, it's freaking delicious. Right when you taste at the beginning, anything that is an oxidative character, you're going to be wowed by it at the very get go because it's different and it's like boom, hits your palate. As you drink more of it, you get acclimated to that. Then you start to taste different things like really, this held up pretty phenomenally. Yeah. I mean, the barrel is still there. Everything is still there. You're not missing anything. You just have additive. What a treat. Thanks, Raj. You seriously know what you're doing with barrels. I'd be remiss if we didn't bring up, we do like a year in review episode of Barrel to Bottle where we do our picks for the best of the year. One of my picks are last year. Essentially, my number one pick was your collaboration with Boulevard, the barrel-aged wheat wine. Oh, cool. Was one of the most thoughtfully. Roger would not shut up about this beer. I mean, you achieved a true, you made a beer that created adding the wine component to that. Not only was it a clever play on the idea of a barley or wheat wine, but it brought a brightness and fruitiness into acidity that you just don't find in so many other beers, especially an indulgent barrel-aged beer. It's obviously in sours and wilds, but what a tremendous achievement with that beer. Just phenomenal. That was a fun project because we actually trucked the beer from Paso Robles to Kansas City to do the blend. Which- Crazy. It looked great on paper and then we had to actually get around and do it in a way, goff, man. But Quinn, who's in charge of- A lot of bendy foldies there. Yeah, there's some. But Quinn, who's in charge of the barrel program at Boulevard is truly amazing brewer. He's doing a great job. And Boulevard's barrel program is many times larger than our program. I mean, they really have great support in their local market for those barrel-aged beers. Where in California, I mean, again, a lot of this is moving to direct to consumer and not so much as going through the wholesale network just as things have progressed over time. So they've really, I think they're one of the few brewers out there that's really continued to grow and develop their barrel program in a real positive way. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I mean, these were just, it was a joy to drink through all these beers. The quality of beer coming out of Firestone Walker has always been extremely high. And I think it's, you know, we didn't even really get to it, but you're famously fastidious about, you know, your commitment to things. I've heard a story about that you would only dry hop at night. It is a true story. You have a lot of nicknames, by the way. You go, Merlin, Batman. Are there any I'm missing? We'll just stick with those. OK. I think that that's something that more people need to care about when they drink craft beer is knowing a brewery that has a commitment to, you know, the quality control. And I think it's there. I think it's there at Firestone Walker and that you're a big part of that. And to drink a beer that's literally a deck, you know, over a decade old. And it's it's a joy to drink is is a rare experience. I credit the night hopping. The lunar phases. You've got some biodynamic growers around you. I'm sure they're having smartphones on. That concludes this episode of Barrel to Bottle. Thank you for listening. Make sure that you tell your friends, your family, and everyone you know to download our podcast on the podcast platform of your choosing and leave us a positive review. Until next week, I am Roger. I'm Jenna. I'm Pat. I'm Chris. And I'm Matt. Keep tasting.