(upbeat music) - Episode 81 of the Bears podcast recorded from October 9th to the 13th, 2013. The Bears has a great American beer festival. (upbeat music) - Oh my God, you guys. We are fucking here. - I know. - We are fucking here. - We've done it. - We've made it. - And we made it on our own with no help from our listeners. - Shut up. - No. - They know the help from our listeners. - All the help of our listeners. I'm sorry, I'm drunk. - Yeah, I know. We're at the Falling Rock here in Denver, Colorado for the Great American Beer Festival. It's Wednesday evening. - And it's probably the best beer bar in town. - And it is so packed right now. We're sitting at a table surrounded by fucking everything. - So many people. - And it's chilly outside? - I know, it's like 45. - It's wonderful. - This is something we're not used to in Austin. - No. - It's so hot always. And here I'm wearing jackets and shivering. I'm like, what is this sensation? - I have a nice thick hoodie. It's pretty awesome. - Yeah, we're just deciding to record a little something while we're here because they're doing some special tapings right now. And we just got a round of all the beers from, yeah, all the beers from Sunking that they tapped. And my voice still isn't doing very well, but I'm gonna power through it. - So we got some beers called the Jungle Room, Happy Van Muckle, Stupid Sexy Flanders, and Cherry Fog. The waitress gave him to us and she messed up the name, so we were not entirely sure. - We're pretty sure. I think she clarified it. - So I have the Cherry Fog in front of me and the Happy Van Muckle. - Yeah, and I've got the sexy here this glass. - And I got the Jungle Love-- - Jungle Room. - That'll be mad to making me crazy. - I don't think that's what the beer's called. The beer's not a song. - It's Jungle Room. - Jungle Room, and it tastes like diocetal. - I know, I tasted that. - Oh. - There's some buttery-- - Oh, buttery. - Buttery inter popcorn there. - So it's kind of like a cherry sour beer, but yeah, there's a big dastel now at the end. - Yeah, I'm not sure what this sexy thing is. - It's a Flanders Red. - Oh, is it? - Yeah, it's a Flanders Red. - It's a pretty hoppy Flanders Red, that's weird. - You know, I think that one's actually pretty good. - Yeah. - Yeah, it's tasty. - It's got a really nice hot bite, do it? - It doesn't taste like a Flanders Red to me at all. - This is a Flanders. - Oh, that makes so much more sense. - Okay. - This is definitely a Flanders Red. - Is it a tell we've been drinking all fucking week-long? - Yeah. - I've had like four beers since we got here, but that's not all I've had to drink today. - I think I've had about four or five since I've gotten here, and this is six and seven. - Yeah. - And all of us are here, like the whole crew from the show is here, Anastasia is at a Brewers meet and greet. She's on her way over here right now. - Yeah, she's sluttin' it up somewhere else. - Yes. - I have a frequent guest to the show, John Harvey here. - Yeah, nobody can see her. - And Ryan Allen showing up tomorrow. - Yeah, Ryan Mesh is gonna be here tomorrow. So yeah, everybody's fuckin' here. We're all having a good time. - It's crazy. It's like a strange transplantation of the Austin beer scene here in Denver. Just seeing people that we randomly know just on the street. - I flew in today. On my flight was the Jester King crew, the Circle crew, 502 guys, some people from the draft house brewery. So it was just like a plane full of them, as well as me and John Harvey. - Harvey keeps on pointy that himself. Like he wants to talk. - Guys, I'm gonna be internet famous. - Look, it just got way boring in here. (laughing) - We just lost half our audience. - Yeah. - Half of the falling rock left, that's great. Now I can order a beer. I'm kidding. He looks so hurt right now. - He gets really butt hurt when he's upset. - He also gets really upset when his butt hurts. (laughing) - This pappy van, Muckle? It smells like a Withers. Kinda butterscotchy. - Yeah, there's a lot of vanilla. You could smell a lot of the pappy van Winkle bottle. - But also, is that diastole there, Jim? - There's a little bit of diastole in the nose, too. - Yeah. - All of it, really. - Goddamn it. Yeah, it tastes like diastole. That's really disappointing. There's some pretty good flavors happening in all these. I'm not even gonna try to describe shit. This is not us reviewing these beers, other than saying, fuck man, the diastole. - Yep. Mainly I think this was a means for us to kinda get our foot in the door and to talk about our favorite of the Star Wars series. - No. - No. - What's your favorite movie from the Star Wars? - We're not talking about that. - 'Cause there's only three. - Empire Strikes Back. - The search for Spock. - You are correct, sir. (laughing) - Without a doubt. - I think my favorite Star Wars movie is Tron. I like the one that has those light discs. - Rubio. - What? - You're getting off topic. - No, we are completely on topic. - Harvey's talking like they can hear him on the microphone. - Oh shit, I forgot. - But nobody can hear shit. It's really good. It's like an anti-harvey wall. (laughing) He shot the finger at me like that does something to an adult. - But yeah, we're just, like I said, hanging out here, having a good time, drinking some beers. I drank a bunch of blind pig. - Blind pig and blindie. That's basically what I've been sticking to since I've been here. - I mean, it's on tap too. I was pretty excited about that. - Oh, that Trinity Seven Day Sour was really good. - That was spectacular. - And we'll talk more about this stuff later. We're gonna go back and record at the room in a bit. - The best thing, however, coming here to the falling rock and I'm gonna get somebody in trouble with this. - What? - Somebody in a lot of trouble, actually. - Wait, just-- - Oh, no, don't even do it. Don't do it. - No, no, no, you just-- - Oh my God. - You can delete this later, whatever. - I'm not editing these. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, so I'm doing this because this was a treasure and we deserve this. - Do you wanna just like say this later on when we do it at the condo? - Fair enough, Taser. - We got hooked up with some bottles that we should not have been hooked up with for the price. - He's still doing it. - Taser. - Oh, yeah, it was pretty amazing. - What a fantastic fucking bar, though. This is a great spot. - Yeah, we're having a really good time here, like the weather's so much better than Austin. - Yeah, no humidity, nice and cool. - Fresh air. - Fresh air. - Hi, altitude, my nose is bleeding. - I'm just killing it all with cigarette smoke, so-- - My lips are all cracked. - Thank you to the listeners for sending us out here, man. - Oh, yeah, we're having a great time. We actually met up with a few listeners while we were out here, but we'll talk more about that in a while. - It was great. - Well, let's put this away for now and we'll come back in a while. - Yeah, absolutely. - Sweet. (upbeat music) - So, John Rubio here again. We're here at the Almanac Beer Company booth, and I'm standing here with Jesse Friedman, and you're one of the co-founders of Almanac. - Yeah, co-founder and brewmaster at Almanac. - Bad ass, man. So, tell me about some of the beers at your point. I've had a few of the farmers reserve things in some of your single hop beers before, but I don't know very much about Almanac. I just know you guys make a really good beer. - Yeah, so we're a pretty new brewery. We're raised in San Francisco, and we were really inspired by the farm-to-table culture of San Francisco restaurants. - Which is really huge at Austin where we're from, too. - Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's kind of becoming the expected standard, you know, which is great. And so, we looked at sort of beer in the idea, you know, we were both brewing beers with farmers marketing ingredients. That was where the inspiration came from, and there was a market opportunity that there's a lot of restaurants that they're, you know, really, really focusing on sourcing a lot of things, except beer. So we collaborate, you know, with these local farms to create beers with a sense of terroir from California. - That's really cool. So tell me a little bit about that series in particular. - Yeah, so we're pouring some of our, we're pouring our farm, all 100% farm-to-barrel beers here. We've got two of our farmers reserve beers here, which are sours, aged and wine barrels with local fruit. So we have some really fun ones. We have farmers reserve number three. That's brewed with strawberries and nectarines. - Yeah, we actually featured that one on one of our episodes. We do a tasting show. - So awesome. - And that was one of the ones that we tried. It was, I think it was side by side with a bunch of other farmhouse-style beers. - Awesome. - And that one rated very highly super into it. - Yeah, we love it. - And we get those strawberries from Swanton Berry Farm in Watsonville, which is just outside Santa Cruz, right on the water. - Yeah. - And then those nectarines come from the Blossom Bluff Farm outside Fresno. - So how much strawberry did you have to use in there? Because strawberries-- - We use a lot. - Kind of notorious for not putting that much flavor in the beer. - We use a ton of strawberry. We used about 1,000 pounds of strawberries to feed about 75 barrels of beer, give or take. So we add those strawberries directly to the barrel. We allow it to age. We let it all that, you know, we let it sit on there. We get all that fruit in there. And then we blend. And the blending is another opportunity for us to really make sure we're dialing in exactly the fruit character we really want. - Now one of the things that I was really impressed by with that beer is how when you poured it clean, it was all this bright strawberry flavor. And then once you got toward the end with it, the dregs in the east of the bottle, it was very much fleshy nectarines. And I loved how fresh the whole thing tasted. Having that farmer's reserve number four with the Buddha's hand and Meyer Lemons today for the first time, the same thing came through with that. I mean, it was such a fresh sort of beer. - Yeah, it's a real, that I mean, the four is a really, really fun beer. We actually aged it on fruit for about 18 months. - Wow. - You know, it's really about, you know, with all the barrel projects, we don't really get to decide when they're done. The beer decides when we're done. - Oh, of course. - And we taste and we listen to the barrels and do what they want. - So what is your regular line up aside from the farm to barrel stuff? What does that look like? - We also do some year round beers that we package in 12 ounce bottles and four packs and draft. So we do an extra pale with local mandarins. We do a bearded chocolate with chocolate roasting in San Francisco. We do a honey saison with local honey, wildflower honey that's collected from all over the San Francisco Bay area. - Dude, that's really cool. - Yeah, yeah. - You guys enjoy the festival, isn't it? - Oh, this is phenomenal. - It's phenomenal. - It's our first time pouring here and we're having just an unbelievably great time. - That's great, man. It's very nice to talk to you. I appreciate the time. - Absolutely. Thank you so much. - Thanks much. (upbeat music) - We're all finally here. I'm really excited about this and it's fucking 1249 in the morning. And we just left. - In the evening. - Oh, whatever. It's like 1249 AM. - And we're all kind of drunk because we've been drinking all day. - We've been drinking all day long. - Yeah, it's been crazy. - You know what our first meal was? - What? - Beer. - We didn't eat breakfast before we had beer. - That's true. - It was wonderful. - Yeah, well, let me just back up for a second because I got here on Monday. It's Wednesday now and I was the first guy to get into town. And as soon as I got into town, I hooked up with one of our listeners, Ed Barientos, and he took me out. Do you protect yourself? - Yeah, but we went out and he took me to a bottle shop and we had some food and some beer and we went to Falling Rock where we met up with Ben Fields, another listener. And we just hung out for the rest of the night and had a really good time. - Can you say Ed's last name again? - Barientos. My voice has been fucked up this whole trip. So I'm still a little bit squeaky and cranky. It's gross. But the next morning is when Anastasia got in and I went and got an airport. Yeah. - We immediately came back over here, freshened up and went to... - You know. - What, what did we do? - Did not freshen up. You made fun of me because you thought I looked like a wreck and I was like, "I'm good, we're cool, let's go out." - You looked crazy. I don't know what horror movie you put a curse on somebody to make them really thin in, but that's what you look like. I think it was so fish. - Like a bag full of hair. - It was terrible. - Crazy. - But we came back over here and we, at the condo that we're staying in, which is fucking super pimp. Like it's crazy. It's like on the 26th floor, right in the middle of downtown Denver. - This place is holy shit. - I know, it's insanity. - B-A-N-A-M-A-S. - Right now behind us, there's these three windows that have this view of everything. - Basically, there is a thin sheet of glass protecting me from being sucked out into the world and falling 26 floors. - For real. - Yeah, it's floor to ceiling. It's amazing. It's just a lean on it. Just a little bit. - No, that's a little bit true. - I was doing that earlier and you pushed me. I didn't like it. - I didn't bunkiously try to drink a beer. - So like I said, when Anastasia got here, we had the falling rock and we drank for a while and we hooked up with Stephen Gonzalez from Stone. - For a long time. - Yeah, he came out and hung out with us for two, three hours and we drunk our asses off. Like we had-- - And then we went to like, Freshcraft. - Yeah, we went to Freshcraft and we had some food. - Is it a conflict of interest to have, you know, dinner and drinks with our sponsor? - He's not our fucking sponsor. Goddamn it. - Why goddamn it? - You're just the worst. But yeah, we did that. We drank an aid at Freshcraft. And then I don't remember what happened. I think you took a nap. - No, no. We went back to Falling Rock and we couldn't handle it. So then I went back and I took a nap and you went out to-- - Ruby a woke up. - We went for Michael. - I've been in blood in an animal farm. - Yeah. - I mean, I napped you fucking. You guys were like sword fighting all over me. And then eventually I got up because I couldn't take it anymore. - You're half right because I did stay out and wait for Mike. - Kinda crazy dreams. - And Mike showed up at like eight o'clock or something. - Yeah. - We went back to Falling Rock. And just stayed there for the rest of the evening and the United States just showed up at some point and we met up with another listener, Chris. Yeah, Chris, super cool guy. - They're all named Chris FYI. - So Chris is Mike's and John's. It's creepy. He walked up and he was just like, I recognize those voices. - You guys are on the bearers. - Some of these people are having their first taste of people recognizing them off the street, which is great. - I mean, I'm a hooker, so it's not that of natural. - I don't get around too much. So it's weird for me. But then we drank, Anastasia came back out with us to the Falling Rock for a while. - You forced me. - Yeah, you were-- - Rapes. - You went to, you're like, I'm gonna be asleep for like 10 more minutes and then it was another hour and a half before you came back out. - And then who stayed out later than you fucking pussy? - 'Cause you were fresh as fuck, what did you end up doing? - How you know, with you motherfucking pussies. - Okay. And then after that, we all just came back to the condo and passed out. This morning was when Grant got here. - Afternoon. - Yeah, I rolled in around four, 35, 30. - Was it that late? - Yeah. - I'm fucking tie warping all over the fucking place. - You did not take a nap earlier because you lied then. - I did, no, I did take a nap. - You were taking a nap. - I did take a nap because we went to-- - Did you do an Michael Cuddle? - Gross, ew. But we went to Cricut Stave today and it was awesome. Oh God, it was so good, we had a bottle release and we stuck around and drank in their tap room and we had a bunch of samples and stuff that, what beers do we have? I had this like cherry pie sour that-- - Mama bear cherry pie sour. - Yeah. And there was another, like, it was a wit with passion fruits. - Valencia, Valencia oranges. - Oh, but I had one with passion fruit. - Oh, it was the, I believe it was the hops of want fall. - That's the one that you guys got. I got another. - I didn't get that one. - Oh, well, I got a wit with passion fruit. - You got the Wild Wild Brett Violet. - Yeah, that one was fucking great. And what was the bottle that was released? - There's origins number two. - There was four of us and between the four of us, we had what maybe 10 different beers. - And they were all fantastic. - Yeah, good. - I mean, I had standouts. Like that Wild Wild Brett Violet was amazing. - That was delicious. - That fucking, I believe it was the hops of on with the fall with the Valencia oranges. - Yeah. - Double delicious. - And that was the first thing we did in the morning. Like we got up and we went there and we didn't eat or any. - We got eating surpussies. - Four of a breakfast. - Yeah, did we go eat breakfast after that? No, what do we do? We went to a bottle shop and we bought a bunch of other bottles of beer. And then we went to, what was it? Sam's number three for breakfast or lunch? - I haven't eaten since then. - That was like one p.m. - But we loaded the fuck up. And Mike and I couldn't take it. So we came back and had naps. - I haven't been hungry. I'm only snacking because I've been drinking. - Right. So we came back and had naps and you, Anastasia, took off with Habib. What did you guys go and do? - We didn't nap like pussies or one. - It was, okay. It was hard. - Uh-huh, uh-huh. - Yeah, and long. - I was just really sleepy and I had to have a fucking nap. - I had the same amount of sleep that you did. - Says the bits that napped yesterday. - I could have not come out with you guys. I could have had like all of the fun alone. - You napped. That's all you did. - So we left and I had to go pick up some passes. So we went to the convention center and we ran into a bunch of people. You know, we don't have any plans. We have no, we have maybe two scheduled things. - No real agenda. - Yeah, like we have no agenda. We have nothing to do. We missed all of the rare beer tastings. We missed all of the fun exciting things that people do. But to compensate for that, we know everybody in the industry. - Right. - So y'all went to nap, like little fucking baby, Jesus is, Jesus, Jesus. Like, y'all went to nap, like little baby, Jesus. - Well then I was stuck with real Jesus, I, Habib. He was very, very hairy. - Yeah, he's my pal Kaida. - That's a, that's a thing, I guess, right? (laughing) - He's my pal Kaida. - So apparently just shoots his 25, which is younger than me. So way to make good life choices to shoot. So we went and we hung out and we drank some of their anniversary beer and we, oh. - Okay, I'm sorry. Grant just walked over to the giant window. - I'm sorry. - And he's got boxer bros on her underwear somehow, and great. - We are all recording in her underwear and it was amazing. - Yeah, just walk, fuck you. That's why. - He walked up to the window in his underwear and is just dancing and it was. - There's an air vent at the bottom of the window and it felt really good on my crotch. (laughing) - Anyway, I'm sorry. - That is the age I keep going. - So we ended up hearing that the shoots was having a carnival. - Oh. - It was like, I've got a carnival, I want to go to there. So it's in this restaurant, but up the stairs and we get there. Literally the people walking up the stairs in front of us are bringing up a cake. The cake that they're bringing up is a Deschutes 25th anniversary cake. So like, yeah, this is what we're gonna do, I guess. We're gonna hang out, but it was awesome. Like, Deschutes makes some really fantastic beer. - Oh yeah. - And the restaurant that we were at, Euclid Hall and Kitchen, we were too full to eat any of the food, but a beeb got talked into a piece of cake by a sexy, sexy man. (laughing) And I gave him so much for that. - Yeah, it happens. Sexy men are always a nice and neat estate. - Sexy men apparently love sexy men. - You had me at cake. - Yeah. - The cake is the gateway to another sexy man's heart. - It was a peering thing, it was like, so it was a carnival, right? So you have all these games that you play like a ring toss or-- - A euphemism. - I don't know carnivals that well. So you're ring tossing or you're trying to-- - There's the rim job game. - You're like throwing a bean bag at an object, trying to knock a certain thing out. - The old fister one, yeah. - And a beeb sucks at it. I have no-- - That's a point, you're supposed to. - I know, I'm like, I'm not kidding of this. This is all you. If you wanna prove something cool, I will, that my eyelashes at you, if that's what you need to encourage you, but you fucking suck. 'Cause it's a kind of girl I have. - Sure, yeah, as well. - Yeah, yeah, so we're doing that. And you know, they have their regular lineup, but they also have some really awesome things, like the black butte anniversary beer. And I usually cannot get over that chain breaker cocktail. - What was it? - Don't know, chain breaker is their white IPA. - Yeah, which is really good. - Amazing, clean, light white IPA with some citrus notes. It's over ice. It's got some sort of lemon lime, maybe some plus syrup, and it's got some muddled mint in it. - Oh, yum. - Other than that, I don't know the exact recipe, but it makes me wanna have babies. - That does sound amazing. And you know, while you guys were over there-- - You were napping like pussies. - Wasnapping, but then we got up, and around the same time we got up-- - Like pussies. - To let grant into the place. Grant came over and we hung out for a little bit, I guess, and Grant left to the falling rock with John Harvey, who you guys ran into each other on the plane. You're on the same flight, right? - Yeah, we were on, basically, if soul plane was replaced by beer plane. - Crash. - There was-- - Into him. - Oh. - Oh no. - Jesus. - Oh no, God. - Anyway, I went to Circle Brewery, Jester King. There was a bunch of beer people all loaded up onto this plane. I was there, I saw I end up seeing Harvey there, and instead of having to take the shuttle into town, he had a rental car, so I was able to get a hitch a ride with him over here. - We ran over to the following rock, which I guess you guys been there a couple of times. - Here we go. - Yeah, we keep going there. - Every single day. - Twice, okay. - How do you say beer? - Rolling rock. - Oh, falling rock. - Yeah, different thing all together. - Anyway, yeah, it is like three blocks away. Like seriously. - We're fat, unhealthy beer drinkers, and we aren't even winded walking there. It's amazing. - I'm such a great selection, too. - Holy mason. - Bunkits, they do. - Holy buckets? - Holy buckets. - I gotta give a shout out to Chris Black, the proprietor of the Falling Rock. He is a fucking great guy. Puts on a hell of an event, especially this week, but that bar is absolutely incredible. - And his staff was great. They were all friendly and just rolling with it, despite a shit ton of people. - I mean, I was like, man, I would be miserable. - They're generally assholes, actually. - Really? - Yeah, definitely. - They were bad ass. - But they're fine. Maybe they allowed to do that. - Maybe they allowed to do beer lovers, I guess. - No, they have to put up with a lot of shit all the fucking time. - First night, that Ruby and I were there. It was just like, oh, she doesn't know a lot, but she was really nice. - No, but that's what they said about you? - No, that's what we said about her. - Oh, you're sweet, you said about her. I'm sorry, I understand the context. - Drink less. - No, but the waitress tonight really put up with a lot of shit. - She did. - Yeah, what was her name, Kelly? - I think so. - Her name was Hadi McHoderson. - Really? - She's cute. - She's a really, that sounds like a really made-up name. - Her parents were the Hoddersons. - The Hoddersons. - But Chris Black and the following rock staff, you guys are fucking awesome, thanks. - Yeah, they were great. And after we did that for a few hours tonight, we ended up going to-- - Somehow, you guys didn't think we were drunk enough. - Well, we were really, really drunk. An anesthesia made up with Habib and John Harvey was there and TJ showed up at some point who's been kind of tripping to life. - Titties, titties are really powerful. I know you're trying to talk, but seriously, titties have a hold over people that don't realize. - This has nothing to do with anything. What are you talking about? - Titties got you to go to Starbar. - No, that was Kevin. Kevin Bain, because Kevin Bain said, "Hey, they're pouring that Imperial Russian "style from stone." - I told you about that. - Templeton Rivey. - Who told you about that? - You showed me a text from a-- - A.K.A. - Titties. - Titties, A.K.A., I did a grant and I was up. - Even then, so we showed up there and we drank some of that beer, which was damn fabulous. - So good, wonderful. - And now we're here. We lost Grant for a bit. That was kind of work because-- - I wouldn't have got you all pizza. - You were fucked. I've never seen you that drunk. - Is there more pizza? - Well, it's more like, yeah, okay, I was drunk. (laughing) - Yeah, I don't know. It takes effort after a certain point to put on the super person. - You were hiccuping for like three hours. - Yeah. - So I had to take a nice lazy stroll down the street. I got a little lost, but I stumbled upon a pizza place and I became a hero. - Yeah, you brought us-- - Good pizza. - Yeah. - I still haven't had mine because we started recording, so. - All the ears for you. - No, fuck you. I'm gonna eat this. - Take it. - Oh, God. No, I'm hungry. I'm too hungry to be fucking threatened by your nudity. - So now we're just sitting around this table, eating cheese and drinking what? - I can't believe we're drinking more beer. - I know. - Okay, I'm gonna tell you. Okay, so this is part of my rambling story that made no sense that I just told what, not 20 minutes ago. - There was carnivals in this year to what IPA's in it. - Yeah, so there's like a carnival and then, no, seriously. - This all sounds like bullshit. - It does, it sounds like a complete bullshit, but Habib and I are adventurers. - Right. - So then somebody ended up texting him and we ended up going to this place in, I guess, Highland, which is a neighborhood of Denver. - Sure. - Which from here is a mile and a half, maybe, not that far. - Right. - But too far to walk when you've been drinking. So we went there and it was cool. We had this really awesome new Belgian beer that nobody else has access to. It was the last cake and whatever, no good shit. We finally decided that we should go to this brewery, which is about a six minute walk away. - Right. - So Habib and I walk down to a post brewing, which is this really small, they've been open maybe a year and they do German styles and they do them fucking well. And they're so fucking clean and we shared a flight because, you know, we had shit to do. So we just kind of like bounced between stuff and we got a flight and then we ended up getting each like half pours of other stuff because it is so fucking good. We both got growlers. - No, no, so we're drinking the half of us, right? - So clean. - It's delicious. - It's so good. - Vice beer, that's what I call it. They don't call it a half-lose, I call it a vice beer. - Yeah, yeah, same thing. But we also had, yesterday, we had-- - The pro-pilsner, yeah. - Yeah, but like a sip. - No, we had a pilsner. - Yeah, we had a pilsner. - We didn't only just drink one beer yesterday. You're like, we've been drinking like fucking fish. - No, I was under the impression that Chris bought one beer, like the pilsner and then tried to share it between all of us. - I also had one. - Oh, that was perfect. - Yeah, go to the source. They have a booth at GBF, but I honestly think, I think they're gonna be one of the sleeper breweries. - From what I taste, yeah, they're doing some fucking great stuff. - If you know even a little bit about typical German-style beer. - And traditional German beer. - Yeah, you are gonna fucking shit yourself. - How good their beer is. - It's so-- - All of it. - Goddamn clean. So we had several beers, like I said. I've been drinking the shit out of Russian River Blind Pig while over here. Me too. I drank a lot of Trinity's seven-day sour. - That was so good. It was really good. We also had 10 commandments from Las Dabi, that was three years old. Falling Rock, they did this like countdown to JABF, and they did a bunch of special tapings. - Like a highlight? - Oh, can I tell a story about the Falling Rock last night? - Yeah. - Yeah. - All right, we got hooked up pretty indirectly. Somebody made a huge mistake. - Oh God, you're gonna tell this story. - I'm gonna tell the story 'cause this is magic. No, you were there. No, you were there. I look at the beer menu at the Falling Rock, and I see Drifontan and Uggus. - Right. - And it's like $15 a bottle. Perfect. Yes, please, let's do this. So I asked the waitress, "Hey, let me get one of these bottles." She says, "Sure." Comes back, says, "Ah, shit, we're out." But we do have the creek. It's like, "Okay, great, go ahead and bring me that 'cause that's perfectly acceptable substitute." - Yeah, delicious. - Exactly. So she comes back. She doesn't have the creek. She has the Uggus golden blend. - Right. - She says, "Oh, we do have the Uggus." - Yeah, we do have the Uggus. - But she brings a 375 milliliter bottle of the golden blend. - Right. - Which retails for like $26 to $30. And if you get it at the bar, it's what? - Well, it's not on the list. Chances are with that kind of markup on that beer, I would imagine it's like $40 or $50. - Right. - She brings that out and I look at it and I'm like, "So how much is this beer?" And she goes back to the menu. "Oh, it's the Uggus, so it's 15." - Okay. - Awesome. - But so, yeah, we drank a lot of fucking beer. And for me, like some of the standouts, like I said, "Cricket stave" was amazing. Like all in the release. - Broly, this is the first night. Can you imagine where it's gonna be like tomorrow? - It's only Wednesday, yeah. And tomorrow, we're going to New Belgium, you and I, we're getting on a bus and going to New Belgium, Anastasia and I, with a bunch of other brewers from Whippin. - Mike and I are having Grant and Mike's excellent adventures tomorrow. - Yeah. - I think you guys are gonna quick and stuck in time travel. - We're gonna go to Cricket stave with Harvey, actually. - Oh, that's gonna be great. - I'll give you money when you buy me beer. - Yeah. - This mile high city, I can't stop hiccuping. - Yeah, it looks like everybody's shutting down right now. - I'm still going. - I'm gonna go, but I don't think you wanna hear the mic. - Well, I guess let's just close this out. I mean, we recorded about 20 minutes or so and I think that's fine. We're gonna do another recording every night just to talk about what we've been doing and so sorry listeners. - But how crazy is it Grant got recognized off the street by a couple of listeners, Stephen, and I forget the other guys. - They didn't even hear my voice. They must recognize me off of the pictures that you post. They're like, that's Grant. Stephen and Patrick, I think. - Patrick, okay. - Yeah, they're from Pennsylvania. - Yes. - I'm not recognized at a Brewers event for the podcast, not because I work for a brewery, but because I do a podcast. - This podcast is a big deal. - I'm an asshole and I'm talking about Dix and people recognize me for that. What the fuck? - Buffy did it, Tommy Arthur and us going, that's Tommy Arthur, both Mike and Sam Nguyen, we're like, nah, not fat enough. (laughing) But it turned out to be him, I just immediately started giving him shit. And at some point in the night, I see him walking out of the following rock. He's leaving and I go, hey, where are you going? And he goes, I'm leaving, it's getting cold. I'm like, cold. Yeah, he touches his head. He goes, eh, and I go, grow some fucking hair, Tommy. Fall in, you know? (laughing) People are just looking at me like, why are you being so mean to that guy? - Why were you being so mean to him? - I never met him before, but I was just a complete dick to him. - Can I ask a question? Who's brilliant/not-billion idea was it that we should record, wasted? - I don't know. Maybe we should do this earlier or something during the day. - No, I'm pretty sure this is good. This is fucking going. - This is a bit, I mean, for our listeners who are hardcore, sure, but this is fucking awesome. - No, no, no, no, no, no, baby, don't worry, your mic has actually been muted the entire time. (laughing) - No, we've been up to the seventh of the morning and it's 118 right now. - Oh, I'm sorry, who took naps? Raise your hand. - Oh, me. What's your name on the microphone? - I feel really good. - Don't reveal Michael Lambert. - Oh, that's nice, because I also woke up at seven. - Had to fly here. Had to take care of a baby all morning, too. - Oh, I'm sorry that you didn't wear a condom. - Don't get me wrong, you do look like shit. But-- - Your parents did not-- - But I'm really proud of you. - I know they didn't, but that wasn't their choice. - There's just all sorts of conversations going on. We should just stop for now and-- - Can we just not do this again ever? - Oh, we're gonna do another one tomorrow. Maybe not so late. Maybe not after we've been wasted. - So wasted. - We're so-- - Anastasia, people fucking paid us to come here. You are staying here because of that. - Right. - We're gonna record our shitty drunk thought every fucking night and make a mercy. You're robbing our fans of content. - Okay, so tomorrow is when the actual festival starts. I'm gonna take all the recording equipment, so hopefully we can get some interviews with people on the floor. - I have some work. - I know I hear that, it's terrible. Sorry. - I'm only working that one day, right? - No. - I think that's a word. But Thursday, Friday, Saturday, we're gonna be doing that. Like I said, Anastasia and I are going to New Belgium with the brewing crew over at the Whippin' and we're doing a bunch of other shit, so it should be good. - Fuck yeah. - Sweet. Thanks guys for listening. We're closing this fucking thing now. - Oh my God. - I hate everything. - It's sleep time. - I love everything. - Your mouth is just full of sadness and crackers. - Ahhh. - That was disgusting. - It was all disgusting. (upbeat music) - John Robino here again. I'm at the brewery's booth and I'm here with Tyler King. How you doing? - I'm all right. I'm by yourself. - Good. It's been bananas. - Yeah. - This is actually my first time here at this session. I've been doing farmer table, I've been doing beer events outside, so it's actually my first time like really here at JABF. - Crazy. - This year. - How's it been treating you? Been good? - Yeah, I got it so far. You know, we didn't win any medals today, but you know, it seems that the lines kind of show that people like our beer, so. - Absolutely. - It makes you happy. - Oh yeah, absolutely. So what are you guys pointing at? I see, you know, some like Tarda darkness and old Tarda. - Oh yeah, Tarda darkness. Says on, Tarda leery. We're pouring chocolate rain, our Black Tuesday with an Alabama cacao nib. And we're doing U-Tard with cherries and sour in the rye with peach. - I noticed you guys like switching to a bunch of really cool sour beers lately. Can you tell me about some of those? Like there are a lot of people that are starting to do that now, but what was your impetus to start doing that sort of thing? - For sour beers, we love 'em. It's just, that's what Patrick and I love to drink for my first sour beer when I was 17 years old. I don't know, it's just kind of a passion of ours. We love to drink 'em, so why not make them ourselves? - Yeah, no shit. You guys do like reserve society, you know, you have a reserve society, a hoarder society, all these things. - Preservation society. This is a society for your special releases. How does that work out for you? - I mean, 'cause I know that there are a lot of other people who don't really do that. They just like first come first serve, but you guys have these awesome little clubs. - Yeah, I mean, we really like it. We love making beers for them. I don't really get a deal that much with them, so I don't really know what goes on in that, but I know they enable us to make beers that we probably wouldn't be making if we didn't have that society. And on my side, I like that. I like making new beers constantly and making available to them. They seem to really appreciate it. It's a fun give and take, I think. - So what are some of those beers that you get the opportunity to do because of the society? - For example, pretty soon we're doing a blending event with our hoarder society. - Oh, cool. - So we're gonna invite them in. We're gonna give them beers to sample. They kind of get to create their own blend, and then we're gonna go back and do that on the large scale. That's kind of fun. We gotta bring our customers in our brewery, blend a beer, and then package it for them. - I haven't really heard of very many people doing that. - No, only a few breweries do it and-- - It's just crowdsourcing. - Yeah, we might find out why pretty soon. It might be a pain in the ass, but we're gonna give it a shot. - Seems like it's worth trying. - Yeah. - My appreciate talking to you. I'm just gonna talk this real quick. We're trying to hit as many people as possible, and I'm really happy to have talked to you. - Oh, thanks for coming by. - Thank you so much. - Cool. (upbeat music) - Hey, John Rubio here again, and I'm standing at the Russian River booth with Vinny. How you doing, Vinny? - I'm doing well. How about you? - Oh, man. I've been having such a blast at this festival. Yeah, this is my first time-- - I was just gonna ask you, it's your first GABF. - Yeah, unfortunately. I've been trying to come for the last five or six years, but everything always gets in the way. - Yeah, yeah. - And finally, it worked out. And I've been pretty overwhelmed by just drinking every day since Monday. - Yeah, it's an unbelievable event. - It is. And I've been drinking a hell of a lot of your beers, too. I'm very, very well-- - One ounce at a time. - I know. Well, actually at the falling rock, I've been drinking-- - Oh, yeah, yeah. - I'm being pig and blind, of course. - Yeah. - Yeah, we actually, Chris Black's back here right now, I think, from falling rock. - He's a really nice guy. I got to hang out with him for a while. I met him through a friend of mine, Bill. Really sweet guy. So what are you guys pouring here to him? - So we're pouring five beers, like most other breweries. Of course, we're pouring plenty of the elder. We always bring that, no matter what. - Of course. - Then Hoptime Harvest Dale, which is a wet hop beer, so we get locally grown hops near Sonoma County. We'll get them off the vine and in the kettle, four hours. Then that's pretty cool. And the flavors of a wet hop beer is totally different than a regular beer. - Absolutely. - And it's good either way, but it's the comparison I like to make is it's like cooking with fresh basil or dried basil. And when you cook with fresh basil, you got to use more because of the moisture content. And it's a totally different flavor profile. And then we're all supporting Shadow of a Doubt, which is an imperial porter. - Which is one that I've been wanting to try for a long time. - We can pour that for you now. - Oh, great. - And propitiation. That was a one-off brew pub beer that we had about six months ago when we were signing up for GABF. I just thought it'd be something cool and different. So that's a sour Baltic porter. And then the final beer is a Framboi. We call it Framboi for a cure. - Which is delicious. - We do a big breast cancer fundraiser. My wife, Natalie, puts it on. So we've got it on tap at the pub right now. And we like to bring it now every year. And it's a great beer, but it's a great cause as well. - That's really wonderful. And one of the things that you guys are known for, I mean, you guys are known for a lot of stuff, you know, your hoppy beers, but also your barrel program, which is just fantastic. I've had a lot, we did a show on a lot of the TION beers. - Yeah. - And it was really nice to try them all side by side. Tell me a little bit about how you started doing the barrel stuff. - We started with the barrels at Corbell, so our breweries history is that we were at a winery. Corbell Champagne Sellers for the first six years of the life of our brewery. So our restaurant for brewery's been open for 17 years now. This is our 20th GABF for Natalie and myself. It's 17 with Russian River. And a couple of years in the Russian River, I wanted to take my favorite component at a lambic beer and working into a beer using barrels from local wineries. And so we started with temptation, which is the blonde, aged and chardonnay barrels. It was just with Brett. And then eventually we just got into other bacteria's that sour the beer. And, you know, just like everything else, a hobby got out of control. - Of course. - And in brewing, my hobby got out of control for barrel beers. It was just the style I liked. And it, you know, started with two barrels and now we have 600 wine barrels. - Wow. - And it's always about 10% of our total volume production. You know, the idea of pairing certain beers with specific wine barrels started with the Chardonnay barrels. And then we did supplication, which is with pino barrels and consecrations with cab barrels. - Right. - You know, I have a wine making background. So that probably where a little of it comes from, that I like, you know, that mindset, that idea. It's easy to do these things quick, but you really have to have patients to do them right. Takes a long time, show off the subtlety and the finesse of them. You know, we're still doing some one-offs, like the propitiation, the porter that's sour. We do another one called compunction. That's using a fruit called a pluot. - Oh, I love pluots. - That's the crust in a plum and an apricot. Those are all like one-off beers just for the pub. We've got some other things that we've, and we've gotten our mind to brew, but we haven't even brewed them yet. We're out of space right now, so... - Well, I can't wait to hear about those later, but I appreciate you talking to us. - Yeah, absolutely. - I know you're busy, so I'm just gonna cut your time straight. - Hey, thanks. Appreciate it. - Thank you so much, man. - Thank you so much, man. - Shut up. (upbeat music) - Okay, it's the second day of the Great American Beer Festival of our recordings of it, because we recorded something yesterday, which I may or may not put up, because it was a complete... - Oh, man. - It was a fucking train ride. - But somehow we're all alive, so I think that's a point in our favor. - The thing that sucked, yeah, it was like 1.30 in the morning, and we were all exhausted and wasted, and it just wasn't good. - We were all in our underwear. - Yeah, we were. - And you guys kept commenting about me going to the window, and I was like, you guys don't have to say that on mic. - Yeah, he was like leaning up against the window. - Really seductively. - It was disgustingly beautiful, if that makes any sense. But we're sitting here right now, we just got off the festival floor, and we kind of snagged Steve Gonzalez from Stone Brewing Company. - Research and Small Batch Manager here, judging, and Saturday night, I'll be hosting Brewer's Pavilion event on barrel-aged beers, so having four different barrel-aged beers, they were all brewed in 2011, for the most part. - Oh, nice. - I finally got to have that Imperial Russian stout with the Templeton rye barrel, and she knew that she was good. - Did you let it warm up a little bit? - Yes. - Okay. - Always do. - And the rye came out a little bit more. - Yeah, that was really nice. - Somebody described it like a melted chocolate fudge pop, and I thought that was a really accurate description. - That is a really good description. I mean, the amount of vanilla that I was getting off of that barrel, the nose of it especially, was phenomenal. - Those guys at Templeton were kind of cocked teases though. I asked them for more barrels. I was like, we loved them, they were great. They gave eight of them to us for free, and they were like, we can't give you anymore until December. - No, no. - A little disappointed. - It's almost December, that's what I know. - Yeah, they should put out with cock. - I'm kind of an impatient guy, which is kind of weird that I age a lot of things in barrels 'cause I have patience when I have that, but I want the barrels now. - It sounds like you're glutton for punishment, Steve. (laughing) I mean, I've only met you twice, but goddamn. - Yeah, kind of. - Like I said, we're at the festival today. The floor was packed with people. - Oh man, they just kept pouring in. This is the Comic Con of beer. (laughing) - That's his point of reference. - But the lines actually are really quick. - For the most part. - I mean, you're not really chatting, I think, as much with all the people that are pouring the beer. - Yeah, and some of them might be the brewmasters, but some just might be volunteers. - Volunteers. - Right, have any things stood out for you guys? Like Steve, have you had any beer? I know you've been drinking. - Yeah, the, okay, so I judged beer to guard today. - Oh Jesus. - And it wasn't a medalist round. It's category 70, subcategories C, beer to guard of, I think it's French ails, and it was nine beers we judged, mind-blowing, all nine of them. - Really? - Yeah, well that's tough. - We were able to kick three out, and then it was like, where do we go from here? And so we got to the point where we were saying, okay, let's just write down everybody what their four favorites are, and those were the, out of those, we were able to pick three that were able to go forward, but I'm really excited to see who actually medals in that category, 'cause it was frickin' amazing. It made me wanna brew a beer to guard style. I never had any real interest in, and more, I say, song guy, but it was a little more, little more malt, some Brett character in some, noble hops, and it was, it was amazing. You know, it really opened my mind a little bit to a new style that I didn't know much about. - After drinking that much beer today already, I'm surprised that I'm salivating as you described that. I want more. - We hit so many booths, it was stupid. Like, we started out at one corner and just worked our way up and down the aisles, and I think we got most of the way through. - What's it up for you then? - Oh, for me, I loved going back and having that Avery litticoi. It's a white rascal, it's their-- - Oh wait, we've had that before though. - Yeah, yeah, we had it at that beer dinner. - Yeah. - 'Cause they're white rascal, but with a bunch of pureed passion fruit. It's really rich with the passion fruit. It's almost like fruit juicy, passion fruit. And the sourness from the passion fruit tarts it up really, really well. - Although I thought that was one of those beers that was really good with a food pairing. - Yeah. - I think it would just be so strong with no food there. - I still loved it. - Okay, there was a beer I had at the festival. You guys have probably had this before, but I think I got the last remnant of the pitcher, but it was high a lie with white oak. - Oh yeah. - Had a lot of raw oak kind of flavors to it and vanilla is amazing. That was my favorite that I was able to try at the fest itself. - The white oak highlight. Okay, so last night we were at Falling Rock. - Yeah, and they had all five. - Yeah, so Garcia, they had highlight five ways. And it was white oak. It was the humidor IPA peach. They had a ginger lemon grass and the regular house. - Just a regular, yeah. - And the standouts for me were the white oak, the peach and the ginger lemon grass. Like those three were just awesome. - The ginger lemon grass smelled so incredible. - That smelled awesome, but the peach one tasted amazing. - Yeah, that ginger lemon grass one, like the ginger smelled like fresh ground ginger. Like you had just ground it and put it up to your nose. It was so badass. - It was so awesome. What about you Mike? Any interesting standouts? - Well, the standouts for me were the highlights. Those were awesome. Today, while we're drinking each little rubricite. - Yeah, we forgot to mention that. (laughing) Mike brought up a bottle of atrial rubricite to give to somebody. - I was gonna give it to Chris Black originally. - Yeah, Bill was gonna bring him a bottle. And then I was gonna give it to Sam Nguyen. - Yeah. - Sam. - I'm a total asshole to Sam, apparently. No, but I'm gonna send him. - He's been chasing Popeye for years. - I'm gonna send him one. So he's still gonna get his atrial. - Yeah, Sam Nguyen looks like Bluto from the Robert Altman Popeye movie. (laughing) Yeah, we just decided, hey, let's open this up and drink it with Steve here, 'cause why not? It's really an excuse for me to drink more of this. (laughing) It is so fucking good. Like the raspberries are so bright. This is the batch one. I guess they released it, what, two months ago, something like that? - Something like that. - It's such a slow zipper. I wanna take big gulps of this. I wanna savor it over a long stretch of time. - You think it's peaked or do you think it'll age? - I think it's gonna age a little bit more. - Okay. - Because, I mean, just tasting the difference between where it is now versus where it was when it was a lot younger. It's starting to get a little bit more earthy funkiness. And just in touch of it, it's starting to show up. Whereas before, it was just clean raspberry puree with more like lactic acid. Now, it's exhibiting a little bit more earth character. And I kinda like that. - I love the taste, but I'm not actually a fan of the nose. - Is it too much of that? - Every time I smell it, I get, (grunting) - Is it too much of the raspberry or you're the pulpy, seedy thing? - Well, I'm kinda losing it now. - It's got like a green note, just a hint. - Yeah. - But I don't mind that at all. - I think it's such a good beer. I mean, I'm so glad that we were able to get a few bottles of that because, Jesus. - Yeah, it's nice to revisit every single time. - Okay, so this morning started with me waking up after sleeping about three hours. And then I scrambled. - Did we all get about three hours? - Yeah, yeah. That's what happens when I'm drunk though. Especially as drunk as what we were last night. There's just a certain point where you wake up and you're like, "Oh fuck it, I'm up." - Yeah, then I scrambled across downtown with Anastasia to get on a tour bus. We went straight to New Belgium. And we didn't eat before. I didn't even drink any water before I left. So I was just like dog shit. I felt terrible. - Oh man, this morning was pretty rough. - Sweating, I drank a ranger because they had a bunch of beer on the bus. So I'm drinking the ranger. And I'm like, "Oh, I gotta switch to shift." Because they don't have water there. So like, "Oh, something more aqueous, let's do this." And then I get there and I'm feeling all right. I'm feeling fine. And we're doing the tour. And the tour was like an hour and a half long. - Wow. - It was thorough. It was like a VIP ticketed tour thing, right? - You actually drew a whole batch with that. (laughing) - But they took us throughout the whole place. And on the way out, after I did the slide, because I did the slide, because of course, I rolled my ankle. So I'm like limping this limping fat mess that's sweating. There was a food truck and I got chicken and waffles, which was delicious while I was eating it. But afterwards, just sent me into a coma. And I'm on the bus going in and out of sleep, sweating, thinking there's no way I'm gonna go to the festival. There's no way. What, they drop us right in front of the convention center. And I'm in line, and I go up, get my pass, and then I'm in the fucking festival. That's when I met up with you guys. - Yeah, you didn't seem that bad when-- - Yeah, you were a trooper, at least, compared to the text messages you sent me earlier. - I was fucked. (laughing) Seriously, like on the way back, I'm like, there's no way I'm gonna go out. There's no fucking way. I'm just gonna go home and die. - You got better. - I did get better. (laughing) - We went this morning and checked out Cricut Stave. - Yeah, we also felt pretty rough, but we went to a place that had a bakery, so they're selling different types of breads, so we got some croissants, and then they had a nice coffee shop and tea. All in this place called, what was it called? The source. - Yeah, the source. That's where the Cricut Stave taproom is, and it's this really weird, Eurotrashy hipster. I don't know, it's all metal slats. - I think it's kind of nice. - It is cool. - It's kind of like some little yuppy one-stop station, where you can get your tacos and your fancy breads and wines, and then art. - Yeah, you get some art there, too. - I guess. There's a butcher shop, and yeah, it's weird. I didn't know what to make of it. I walked in, I was like, what is-- - It's a new commune. - They're these weird slats that cover all the spaces, and they're kind of painted on either side of the slats to have the name of the type of place that is underneath those slats, right? So one of them says bakery, one of them says coffee, but you can't really read what they say unless you're like three quarters view. So if you're looking directly at it, and the brewery's directly in the back, I walked in, I'm like, what is this fucking place? Is what? And then I'm looking around, and I don't see anything that's as quick as Dave or brewery because I'm looking directly at it. - Yeah, they don't even get to have, like, their logo right by the beer. - No, there was no indication of where anything was. That first day that we went, and there was nobody there when we got there. So I was like, what is this fucking place? - Yeah, we were really close to the front of the line. - Yeah, why is there a window with dead meat animals? Like, where are we? We found out when we got there that it was cash only for the bottle release. So we walked to a fucking corner store. The ATM wasn't working when we got there, but this place is fucking weird. We passed by one dog groomer place, and then across the street, there's another dog groomer place. It's like direct competition in this nothing part of town. - Yeah, it's like the weird warehouse district. - I didn't know what the fucking bakery, but do they have wars? Like, I was like, yeah, don't go to the curly sandwich dog place. Go to the barking pride or whatever. - It's just a nightmare. It was weird, but the beer was really fantastic at Kirk and Stave. I really dug it. What about, what kind of events did you go to? I know that you were talking about that there was like a stone event that you went to yesterday. - We had a barrel-aged event. Actually, it was just World of Beer barrel-aged beers, and it was not a stone-specific event. There were a bunch of Sierra Nevada folks there. - Okay. - And then, after that, Munk, Cheeky Munk. - Cheeky Munk. - Yeah, variation on the theme of Cheeky Monkey. And it was pretty cool. They actually had chicken wings four ways, paired with four different stone beers. - Nice. - My favorite were the Sriracha and Sesame seed wings. They had some coffee and chocolate wings as well, which I believe repaired with suede porter, and they were kind of mole-style. - That sounds great. - It was awesome. It was really cool. - So, where are we going to eat tomorrow? (all laughing) - So, tomorrow, are we gonna take a little break-in excursion? - Well, hopefully we're going to Boulder. Hopefully, we're gonna have Avery. - That's sweet. - What I'm hoping we're gonna do. - Need lots more Lilacoy. - That stuff is delicious. So, I think that we're gonna do that tomorrow. We'll probably hit the convention floor again. - I don't have tickets for that. I'm gonna do something else. - Okay. - Probably just park it at Falling Rock. - It looks like you're making a nest, a green nest around you of weed. (all laughing) I mean, it's already started. - I know, I know, I can see that in front of you. - Mike, it's at Stone Knight at Falling Rock tomorrow. - Ooh, nice. - What are you guys gonna have? - Tiger Cub say song. I believe we're gonna have enjoy-by, probably suede, and three or four other things. I'm not sure. It might be reasonably damned also, which is a new one for us. Abby Ale, aged in red wine barrels. - Ooh. - I think it's gonna be there, I'm pretty sure. If it's not there, you can still get it on the convention floor. We will have it there. - Check it out. - Yeah, and I have a few other things. - What do you have planned for tomorrow? - Tomorrow I am judging Abby Ale's in the morning, so starting with a lot of things will probably be average percent alcohol content, nine percent somewhere around there. - Excellent. - What did you tell me about, I texted you, I was like, "Hey, what are you doing? "You're gonna go get some beers?" And you said, "No, just judged. "What was it, how many rounds of?" - Yeah, no, I actually, I've judged a lot of metal rounds, I've judged three metal rounds this time, which is pretty amazing. - How'd you end up getting into judging? Is that part of the, like, passing the system? - No, I've never, ever had to take a test. I actually been trained, and I was a sensory scientist for Miller Brewing Company for a few years. - Okay. - So detecting defects and really super ultra naked beers, like those beers don't have any flavor. There's nothing there. - They don't have anything. - Yeah, so Sue Thompson, she's Miller's Head of Sensory, she's done so much work with them that I just got kind of grandfathered in. I was like, "So what are the next steps? "What test do I have to take?" And they're like, "None." (laughing) You actually train people how to taste beer? I think you're good. I think it was kind of how it went. So yeah, they reached out to me and I've been on the books to judge JABF for seven years. - Nice. - And this is the first year I was finally able to make it out. So I'm subbing in for Mitch this year. He's got a couple other big trips he's doing this year, so I'm taking his spot. - Very cool. So what other things do you have in your background? I mean, okay, I've been in the brewing since college, which was, you know, early '90s. Got my first brewing jobs here in Nevada Brewing Company. Took a bunch of brewing classes with a bunch of folks that are here, like Lee Chase, good friend of mine. You guys make it out to San Diego, check out his pubs, Tiger Tiger, and Bland Lady Alehouse. - Okay. - He was a former head brewer of stone. That's my connection to stone. But yeah, work for Sierra Nevada Brewing Company for a few years, quit that due to chronic back pain and just having a week off in three years was just not really. I needed a little more work-life balance, which they got, still really close friends with them. And I worked for Miller for five years. I worked for Gallo for five years. A lot of quality management. A lot of R&D too, a lot of product development. Primarily though, I'm a brewer. - Right. - So now I get to make beers that are four beer festivals for small markets, for special events, all that kind of stuff, which is fucking awesome. - Yeah. - I say it all the time. I'm very, very lucky to be one of the few brewers out there that actually makes a living wage. - Right. - A lot of people sacrifice a lot of things to get into this industry. And let's try to give them a shout out for that. I always acknowledge that. I know it's tough people. - It's a tough road. - Yeah. - People sacrifice a lot, you know. - Well, you're good. (laughing) I'm good now. - Yeah. (laughing) - It had to be a hell of a fight, you know? - Yeah. - Cline your way up to a living wage. (laughing) - I finally got there. - Yeah, it's like every comic book artist I know. (laughing) - Yeah, there's a lot of similarities there, you know? It's why a lot of my friends are artists, you know? Kindred spirits in that sense, you know? Wow, that sounds really hippy, but... - Hey, let me introduce you to Mike Lambert. (laughing) - Hey, how's it going? (laughing) - I'm sure he'll play you some fish later. (laughing) The next episode that we record when we get back is gonna be the six quignente beers. How do you pronounce that last word? - Millilitre is how I was told to pronounce, that it's pronounced the very first time I ever went on the radio, they actually asked me how to pronounce it, and I was just like, I don't actually know. (laughing) But fortunately I had our copy editor there with me. She's like, quignente millilitre. And I probably butchered that too. - Right. - But yeah. Yeah, that's how it's pronounced. - Quignente, or is it quignente? - Quignente. - Quignente. - Quignente. - Yeah, quignente. - No, no, no. - Quignente. - I'm just gonna call it Bob Ross. - That's fine. - I'm on the show. - I like it, I'll spell it. - Yeah. - But I'll butcher it. There's no way I'm gonna remember anything. - When I'm sending emails out, I usually just put 500 mill and, you know. - You should just take and cut a little snippet of audio from this episode, and paste it in that episode. (laughing) - That was drinking me. Quignente. Billignente. (laughing) - Me, me, me, me. That's great. Yeah, I'm looking forward to having those, because the only one that I had before that was that 11, 11, 11 Asian red wine barrels, I think. - That was the white wine wine. The white wine that I sent, yeah. That was a cool, frickin' beer, right? And the red wine version versus the white wine version were really interesting companion pieces. 'Cause to me, when I tasted them side by side, the red wine barrels, that beer had green chilies and cinnamon. The base beer itself wasn't my favorite epic. - Right. - But the white wine kind of lifted the chilies up a little bit more, just barely. And the cinnamon was a hint. The red wine kind of did the opposite, and the cinnamon was a little more pronounced. - Yeah. - I just thought that was really cool. I like making beers that are companion pieces to each other, not dialectical opposites, but just sort of complimentary. - Yeah, complimentary, exactly. - So when you're brewing barrel-age beers, is there a research and development process before you'll go into a big batch? Like do you-- - Yep. - You'll sit on some for a couple of years, so there's some that are like already-- - Yeah, there's a bunch of different things we try. You know, there's bench-scale trials, so you know, spiking it with a little bit of bourbon and some oak chips, seeing what'll happen. We come up with a concept first. For me, I really like the way Willamette, East Kent Goldings, those British hops pair with oak. I also really like the biscuit-y flavors that I get from Maris Addermaltz. Those traditional pale ale flavors seem to go really nicely with oak, in my opinion. - Of course, your imperial Russian stouts are a no-brainer. - Yeah. - Those coffee flavors, when you get those vanilla notes from bourbon, it's very additive. So we know we have a great Russian imperial stout. Now we have two of them. We did woot stout too, that age well in bourbon barrels. But what else can we try? So bench-scale trials, and then when we get ready to try something sort of radically different, we can just put some in one barrel, taste it after two months. - Okay, so you'll wait a little bit shorter. - Well, it'll, it gives you enough to go on. It'll give you an idea of what direction it's going in. - Okay. - So everything from, I describe it as bench-scale trials, which is to say, you know, a bunch of 650 milliliter bottles, to a pilot-scale trial, which is okay, let's burn two bourbon barrels, or a couple wine barrels, and see how those flavors marry in. And then there's a production trial, which is, let's brew a 150 barrel batch of it, and see what happens. There's some obvious choices for me. You know, I just talked about some of the flavors that I really like with bourbon barrels. Belgian yeast and wine barrels just go hand in hand. - Yeah. - And it's just awesome. That marriage you get, especially if you get some native bread, and you usually will get some native bread. There's a reason why the winemakers are selling you those barrels for 30 bucks a pop. - They don't want them anymore. They're totally infected. - And just get them away from the liner. - Now, how many times do you guys use a wine barrel before you call it neutral, and use it for something else? I mean, 'cause I know that, yeah. You know, you guys are using some of those wine barrels to impart some of those wine flavors into some of those beers too. - It's a funny thing. You get really vibrant with a red wine barrel. Like, for example, you get really super ultra-vibrant cherry flavors. - Cherry and currant. - Yeah. And then, you know, with a peanut oil barrel, you might get some guava, you know, almost like a rose, you know, you get those hints of the red. The second time around, it's a little more nuanced. It's more strawberry flavors and that kind of thing. And the oak comes out a little bit more. What I really, really enjoy doing is taking a mix of second and first use, blending that. - Right. - That's kind of my wine, token winemaking background coming in. - Sure. - That's a lot of fun. And then, yeah, by the third use, it's pretty neutral. One thing blew my mind. There's something called recouping, where wineries will actually take the staves off the barrel and they'll take the heads off of it. So, the tops of the barrel, and they'll actually shave the barrel and then retost it. That'll give you more of those barrel flavors. That'll give the barrel a second life. So, actually, I did that with six barrels. It's not cheap, you know, it was like 100 bucks a barrel plus transport and all that. These were barrels I really, really liked. I did two uses on them and it was, it ended up having beer in them for damn near two years. - Right. - So, I was like, okay, I want these to just be, just the oak flavor. And I got them back and they fucking smelled like wine. It was like, the wine penetrated so deep that even the beer being in there for so long, just shaving, you know, quarter inch off the inside of the barrel and then re-charing it, re-charing it, brought out. And that re-charing too gave some jammy notes too. Like, so you're kind of cooking that wine, that residual wine that's in there. - I couldn't believe it, it was just really interesting. So, definitely want to play with that a little bit more. - Yeah, that sounds cool. - Yeah, it's really, okay, so I've been doing this stuff for about 18, 19 years, something like that. And every so often, something like that just turns everything I thought I knew on its head. - Is that something that you would market on the beer? Like, it's a, I don't know. - However, you termed it revitalized barrel or whatever? - I don't actually do any marketing, but. - No. - Potentially, I don't know, I think it'd be cool to call it out, for sure, you know, like call out the blend. - It was recouping the barrel. - Recouping is the term. - Okay. - Yeah, and there's some cool YouTube videos of barrel recouping. Phil Burton is the guy that does it for us up in Napa Valley. And if you type in barrel recouping on YouTube, it probably will be Phil Burton that comes up. He's got a couple of videos. His master Cooper, I don't think he ever remembers who I am, but I actually worked with him on a big barrel recoup project when I was working on a winery. And his name is Yawn, I believe. I probably shouldn't say what his name is, but he's awesome. - We'll call him Yawn. - It's a, there's a couple interesting things about him. Like, you know, you see him like working on the barrels and like hammering the staves in, 'cause it's a very manual process. You have your barrel tools, which are just hammers and hoop drivers to drive the hoops in. The metal rings hold the barrel together. So these old Coopers are like half deaf 'cause they're banging barrels all the time. And they weren't wearing no hearing protection. So he was trying to talk to them about something and he didn't understand what I was saying. And he was like, "Oh, I went to a trade school in France." - Oh, that's, that's why it's so expensive. I mean, you guys have Mexicans in San Diego, right? I mean, that's who does our recoup work. - We're really cheap. We're really inexpensive. - No. - Just go to Home Depot. It'll be great. - It's just funny. I was like, "Hanny really smells like B.O. and cigarettes." She's like, "I hate the stereotype, but awesome guy." - He's perfect. (laughing) - Perfect specimen. - Sorry, French people. (laughing) - No, no. You know what it's sure you're on. I mean, he was listening to this fucking nonsense. - They apologized to us. - Dear Zabiris, we are very sorry for stinging. (laughing) For being a stinky and stealing all of your cheese. (laughing) I want that email so bad. French people, please. - So do you have to pour out a lot of beer is that happen frequently? - The beer going bad and barrels and all that. - Yeah. - You know, it's kind of a funny thing. Tasting barrel age beers, doing some work with an analytical lab up in Northern California. They're analyzing certain oak compounds for me. And I'm kind of finding that you're getting about 80% of the oak compounds, especially with bourbon barrels, out after about three months. And that kind of correlates really well with our sensory data. And the microbiological stability at about three months is really good. I mean, we did Wootstout. That was 159 bourbon barrels that we used. - Wow. - And none of them failed micro. - Wow. - After about a year, past rate, not so good. - Wow. - You know, it can be 15% or just like, okay, that one maybe kicked that out. So I'm kind of finding that almost not worth it to age your beer and barrels longer than maybe six months if it's bourbon. Wine's a little bit different. It seems to nothing really there at three, four months. About seven months, you get some of those wine flavors extracted and maybe they penetrate a little bit deeper. Maybe they're Wootstout a little bit more. I don't really know. Maybe it's the charring versus toasting. So spirit barrels are charred, which means they're lit on fire on the inside. And there's actual like chunks of charcoal that come out of them. - Which looks really cool when it's done by the way. - Again, barrel charred, it looks awesome. Awesome YouTube videos on that. Whereas wine barrels are toasted. So if you open them up, it's not black on the inside. It's just, you know, a very light tan or small layers of black on an extra heavy toast. - So do you scrape out like the charcoal parts before you bring it in there? - Nope, no. - Oh, you leave that? - Yeah. - It's like any bourbon whiskey is aged on that charcoal. I mean, it's aged in those burnt charred barrels. - That's how it picks up with flavor. - Or at least the color. - And the color. - Well, in the carbonized wood as well, you know, it has some charcoal filtration. - Yeah, it's a filtration. - Yeah, it can maybe, I'm not sure with beer, but I know with spirits, it'll help clean it up a little bit. I'm still on the fence on whether there's any additive properties from the barrel char itself, the carbon part of it. So what a lot of technical stuff there, sorry. - No, no, it's not too much. - I love this shit. Some of our listeners may fall asleep, but I don't care about them. I actually, I just did a barrel seminar with the, who's the guy from "Paint House" again? - Joe. - Joe Billfeld. - Yeah, up in Philadelphia. And I was the last one that presented after lunch and after people started cracking beers open and stuff. And it was like a lot of technical stuff. And I looked out there and it was a lot of nodding heads or people just like straight up asleep. I was like, all right, I'll better wrap this up. - Is there a lot of communication then among different brewers about like techniques you all are using? - For now, it's pretty open. I think it's gonna stay that way for the most part. - Yeah. I wonder, maybe in the future, it won't be as open. I'm not, I don't know. - It's really amazing to me. The difference between, 'cause I come from a cigar background. I'm a big cigar enthusiast. I know a lot about cigars. I know a lot about the manufacturers, the history, all that stuff. And it's amazing to me how insular each of those cigar producers and blenders are, they do not give any of their secrets away. They don't give any of their information away all the way down to rolling techniques they don't share. It's amazing to me that that has kind of helped them thrive in that industry, whereas I think if brewers did that, it would just stagnate things. - Yeah, I'm really open about sharing whatever data I have. If I do send stuff out to other people, I'm like, if you share this with someone else, or if you wanna share it with someone else, just let me know in advance. I've got a presentation on the docket for CBC. It hasn't been approved yet. Craft Brewers Conference, that is. I've sent some of that data out and I'm like, that might be a sensitive issue. I'm not sure, take a look at it. If you want me to explain anything in there, I will, but just don't post it on the public forum or something. - Sure, yeah. - I gotta present the data out later. - So what are you working on right now? Can you talk about anything that you're in the process of doing or? - Yeah, so Greg, he has two of the first cases of this year's punishment, which is bourbon barrel aged double bastard. I believe the ABV is above 12%. - Oh, Jesus, man. - With a lot of chili peppers added to it. - Oh, man. - So the chili peppers we use are super exotic ones and some jalapenos, it's a little over two pounds per barrel, but the super exotic ones, some of them analyze in at 2 million Scoville units, whereas a habanero is about 300,000, 350,000, something like that. So they're like ultra mega-hot, but you get these really crazy tropical notes. - Yeah, that's a citrus. - Yeah, if anyone want that. - Yeah. - That's awesome. - We're bottling enough for a big national release of that. - Nice. - We're doing, and these are Quark and Cage bottles. They're Quangente, Millilitres, they're 500 mil. - They're 500 mil. - We took a little hiatus from the 2013 series. We just started doing the batch numbers. So we do batch one through six and we're gonna do batch seven and eight and nine. - Nice. - So Southern Chard, Crime and Punishment will be the next ones you see out. Then we're working on one more. I suppose I can talk about it. It'll be a super limited release, probably the stores only, but we're still trying to come up with a name for it, but it'll be vertical epic 12 to 12 aged in red wine barrels. - Nice. - It's gonna be a tiny run, maybe 300 cases, something like that. I actually wanted to name it after this frickin' awesome intern we had. His nickname was Sparky. So, who had all these winter spices in it? And he went to Germany for his next internship. I wanted to call it Sparky's, I forget the word for it. If I'm in a Swiss market or something. - It means like German Christmas market beers spelled B-I-E-R, but. - I was kind of hoping your intern's name was Jeff or something. (laughing) - Super lame. - It was Bernard, but he goes by Ben and we called him Sparky. - Okay. - How's that sound? - Good for him. (laughing) - But no, it'll probably be something along the lines of epic ending or something like that, or epic finale. You know, the epic series is done. It's a totally different beer. A lot of the winter spice notes died down a little bit. Some really took off, re-fermentation in the barrel from some Brett. So you're gonna get a lot of really interesting complexity in there. I'm excited about that. - That sounds great. - So that'll be batch 10 for 2013. The new barrel warehouse we have, we should be able to do a lot more national releases for barrel age beers. - Well, thank you. Well, is that barrel age double bastard? Is that coming to Texas? - Probably. - Yeah, 'cause he also handles distribution as well. (laughing) - No, I think so. I think so. Probably an allotment will go out there. That'd be fantastic. - Thank you so much for taking this time to come talk with us. - I feel like I talked too much. - No, it was great. I mean, you do sponsor the show. (laughing) Every time these motherfuckers mention that, guy yell at them. Well, I did give you-- - You did it here. - I know, but it's just funny. - I did give you 10 bucks to come to JBF, so I am a sponsor. - Yeah, you did. - Technically, he donated 10 bucks to us. (laughing) And that paid for Grant's hat. I just-- - It's good looking at it. - I said, at least slammed your hat. I'm sorry. (laughing) - You're a dick. - I know, I know. We've gone through this. - Thanks for having us on the show. - Fuck you, Mike. (laughing) But yeah, thank you so much for coming out. - This Chester King beer is amazing. You guys are lucky to live in Austin. - I mean, I'm lucky that they showed up and started making beer, 'cause-- - I tried to seek out their booth and found out they didn't have one. - They don't. - Which they're sounds. - They're in sounds. - They're here. I'll find them. I'll fucking find them and I'll bring them to you. (laughing) Anyway, thank you guys so much for listening. We're just gonna go and do other things now. The festival is still happening outside and we are inside and that's not good. - That's the party. - Oh yeah, we're going to a left-hand party. - Yes. - And another thing with like surly and three fluids and real ale and whatever. - All the medals. - Medal, there'll be medals. (laughing) - Absolutely. (upbeat music) - Hey everybody, it's John Rubio here. We're on the floor of the Great American Beer Festival on Saturday. It's the day session, I guess. You know, and I'm already drinking a lot and I feel it. (laughing) And we just went out for a smoke break and we stopped by hopping frog because hopping frog is delicious. And I had a beer here and we're talking with, what's your name? - Lee. - Lee, okay, yeah, Lee, one of the head brewers there. - Head brewer, they're at Hoppin' Frog. - Okay. - You're gonna want to talk right in front. That's fine. And I got Ryan Messier with us. We just stumbled into him in the smoking section and he's gonna talk to Lee for me here. - We were, my wife and I were recently visiting your brewery on our honeymoon. And we saw that you guys had a new brew pub. So congratulations. - Thank you, thank you. We're enjoying having it there. - Anybody in the Akron area, you should definitely check it out. We had maybe our most memorable visit of any brew pub in the greater midwest was Hoppin' Frog. We really, really liked it. - Thank you, that means a lot. - And you guys are really, really well known for your stouts. - Yes, we actually, standing here at the JABF, it's a great time to mention that in both 2008 and 2011, we won gold medal here. And I mean, it's won various awards over the years. Another one we're very proud of is a gold medal at the 2012, I believe, World Beer Cup. - Oh wow, what was that for? - For the barrel aged Boris. So just that same Boris barrel aged. And then just today at the JABF, we won bronze medal for that same barrel aged Boris. - Congratulations, thank you. - So we were actually talking to one of your other brewers in Kamadur's goose who said that Boris was difficult to brew. - And Boris is definitely very difficult to brew. First of all, we're a very small brewery. Small mash done, everything is hands on. We stir the grain into the mash by hand. - What size is your mash done when you say small? - The brew system is a 10 barrel brew system. We have a much larger mash ton than what the brew kettle would normally have come with. When we do Boris, it's a ton of grain. Much more, I mean, I'm not gonna use specific numbers, but for anybody else's stout, it would blow your mind how much grain we use on this beer. And we stir it all in by hand and it's incredibly thick. I mean, you're stirring in the thickest concrete you've ever seen and it'll wear you out. We can't even have the same person stirring in a whole batch. It would take like three different shifts trying to stir it in, it's that tough. And it's basically our flagship. Consumers choose your flagship based on what they like and people tend to like Boris. So it takes up a lot of our production. So it's kind of funny that one of the hardest beers we do is also the beer we do most. It kind of speaks to the amount of effort and work you put into it and paying off in a great flavorful beer. Yeah, and when my wife and I visited, we had your Irish barrel aged version and we also had a Natasha stout, which was a rice stout. And we also had a chocolate wheat stout. So you guys do a bunch of different collaborations with different breweries around the country. Can you talk a little bit about how you met up with those breweries, where they're done, how they're done, et cetera? The owner of the company, his name's Fred Karm, he's a brilliant brewery, he's been in the industry for a long time, picked up a lot of metals. He's met a lot of people along the way. The year 2012, he went to Europe and did three collaborations with three different breweries over there. It's been a long day, I'm gonna have a hard time naming those breweries. But in Europe, especially, we sent a lot of beer to Europe. Europe especially, they kind of view us as that American brewery that goes crazy with the big huge, bold beers and they know Boris, they know Doris are double meal Russian Imperial stout. And they kind of have this idea that we're gonna brew these massive, crazy beers. So when they do a collaboration, that's kind of what they're looking for. You mentioned Natasha was the rye stout that you had. Incredibly big, incredibly bitter. The rye was very out there in your face and we did a couple more just like that. But we do tend to do pretty good with our stouts. You mentioned the-- - The chocolate wheat was one of my favorite scents you guys have ever done. - Oh, thank you. - I was just blown away by that. You also mentioned the Borrelios, which is the Irish whiskey aged Boris. That's one we're incredibly proud of. We scored some Jameson barrels. I didn't say that. We didn't list it on the label, but that's what it is. We don't like to tie it to any one thing, but there are Irish whiskey barrels and we love Jameson's work. We scored those barrels and it came out absolutely beautiful. It's one of the stouts that I'm most proud of. I mean, we also, you know, Doris, you had that double oatmeal rush of barrels stout. We just did a barrel-age version of that. So you come into the tap room and people are sometimes surprised when half the beers on tap are these incredible stouts. But it's what we do. - Another thing that I have to mention about your brewery that, again, out of our honeymoon, we visited at least 12 different breweries. And the reason one of yours, those are favorites, is not only did we love your stouts, is that we had five or six of them. We bought a bottle, we bought a glass, and we left and we only spent like $30. - Oh really? - The fact that your tap room actually sells beer, what has to be cost for you guys almost. I mean, it was really nice. So often you go to breweries and you see the cost being really amplified or you're spending downtown Chicago or New York City sort of prices. We love the fact that when we visited you guys, everything was like two to three dollars for a taster. And we were having really world-classed outs that were barely aged and it was awesome. - I mean, the benefit of having a tasting room to sell directly to your customers is that you don't have to mark it up to make your money. I mean, you go into any other bar and they're going through a third party distributor and the bar is only making a small margin. There's no reason a brewery needs to mark their beer up that much. It just gets to be greedy at that point. - That was really wonderful. Thank you so much for your time today. - Oh, thanks for coming to talk to me. I appreciate it. - You're definitely a beerist favorite and we're happy to have you on here today. Thank you so much. - Thank you very much. ♪ When a fire starts to burn ♪ ♪ Right, and it starts to spread ♪ ♪ She gon' bring that out into a hole ♪ ♪ No more to do nothing with the light ♪ ♪ When a fire starts to burn ♪ ♪ Right, and it starts to spread ♪ ♪ She gon' bring that out into a hole ♪ ♪ No more to do nothing with the light ♪ ♪ When a fire starts to burn ♪ - Welcome to the beerist live from GABF. I'm Grant Davis, your host. It wouldn't be my support and it's off. - Anastasia Grant's telling lies, Kelly. - What is happening? - I don't know, I'm just mucking my clever. - John Rubio, what the hell? - Wake up, guys, it's time for another episode of The B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B-B! - You know, I'm actually pretty good right now. I'm surprised that I'm functional because we've been drinking all week. - Five days straight, at least some of us. - I mean, you all have been drinking since, what, 30 some years ago? - No, that's also true. - So, I think you have a lot of experience. - Yeah, but we're here on Friday night and we did a lot of cool things, you know, between the last time we touched the microphones last night and this morning. - Indeed, we went to a bunch of really awesome places today. - We sure fucking did. - Fate, brewing company? - Okay, yeah, well, let's back up for a bit because we first started out the day going to Boulder, right? We went to Boulder, Colorado from where we are in Denver and we hit up fate on the recommendation of John Harvey. - Yeah, that's right, had some really amazing beers. I think we got, what, 19 different beer samples? - It was something like that. We got three flights of five each and then we got some other, like, pints afterwards. - 17, yeah, so a lot. - It was crazy and they were all fantastic. - All of them were great. - I was so impressed. - There's a couple there, yeah. - Even those were totally solid. - Sure, I thought so. - Anastasia was making poopy faces. - Am I? I think that's just gonna how my face looks. - Face is a little creepy. - I think she's right. But there was some really awesome stuff there. I mean, there was a watermelon colch that was delicious. - Oh, yeah. - And the regular colch was also really good. - Oh, yeah. - And the coffee IPA. - That one? - Coffee colch. - Oh, coffee IP and coffee colch. I actually like the coffee colch better than the IPA. - I agree. - They had an ice block, which was 12% that tasted like it was 8%. It was super clean, really nice and fruity, multi. It was awesome, it was awesome. - I ended up getting this collaboration beer that fate did with, I'm not actually sure who they collaborated with, but it's Apollo Sai. - They collaborated with, I believe his name is Kyle Hollingsworth of string cheese incident. - Ah. - I'm sorry, I remember correctly. - It's a tea beer that tasted like a dream sickle. - Totally tasted like sherbert, like some kind of fruit sherbert. - They could still get the oral gray, tea notes. - Was it a rocker? - Yeah. - So this was recorded after Grant made that video of him still chugging that crooked stave beer? - Yes. - How you doing over there, man? - My heart's racing a lot. - Yeah. - I don't know what's up with that. - Nothing happening to you a lot. - I should quiet it with some beer. - Yes. - I think that's a heart attack. - I was too, I'm 30. - Grant's heart attack live, brought to you by the Beerus. - Oh no, if he has a heart attack, I'm leaving it in, just so you know. - That's the heartbeat I thought so. - And so we stayed there for a while and we had some pretty good food there too. After these 17 samplers that we had, we ended up going to Avery, which was awesome, fantastic. Their tasting room was reasonably not packed for being Friday for GABF. They had a bunch of special stuff on tap and we sampled a bunch of stuff. - They do amazing barrel-age sours. Every single one that they've made so far has been pretty amazing. - And speaking of which, they have a really cool barrel room. It just has a ton of barrels back there and... - Yeah, they opened up to the public. They've got a little tasting counter there and everything. But in the front where we were, they were just pouring all sorts of great stuff. I had this tequila barrel aged beer with lime and salt. I forget what the fuck it was called. - Carmorita. - Carmorita. - Carmorita. - And what was that other one? That other sour that we got? - Eremita. - Eremita. - Eremita. - That was also really great. It had all these awesome cinnamon notes and yummy, yummy, yummy fucking stuff. And I don't know how much we drank, but at the last minute, Grant ended up getting this wristband, which they were giving to industry people that let those people with that wristband drink in the tasting room for free. So we ended up getting a bunch of our beer knocked off of the tab. Lucky happenstance. - It was awesome. - And afterwards, we drove back, well. - (laughing) - I just have to say, on the way there, the whole trip we were listening to shitty 90s music that was amazing. - Amazing. - It was a party. And we were driving through traffic and dancing. - And you almost had everything. - I almost hit everything. Part of that is the beer, but most of that's the dancing. - You were sober. - Yeah, mostly. On the way back, I was not as much. - Well. - We came back here and we dropped Anastasia off at the convention center. And what did you do? - I almost had a panic attack. - Why? - I don't like crowds. - Was it really crowded today? - Yeah. - I mean, I know that it was crowded yesterday, but it wasn't-- - It was more crowded. - Really? - I'm getting hot flashes right now. - That's because you're almost 40. - Did all the bros show up? - Yeah. - And they're backwards hats. High five each other and chugged. - It was all collegey fret boys and-- - I don't know. It was like lots of people. - You even drink, bro? - I had to shut my brain down because I couldn't handle it. - That's how you mingle with the beer bras. (laughing) - The beer bras. - Aren't those just bras full of beer? - My bras full of tits. (laughing) - You're wearing a bra right now? - No. It's a bro. - It's called a bro. - I'm firm and perky, it's fine. And when we got back, Grant had this great idea to record a video of himself chugging one of the rare beers that we picked up at Kirk and Stave yesterday. - It was the best idea that I didn't get to witness 'cause of my panic attack. (laughing) - I don't know what you were thinking because we spent the day drinking. You're like, I'm gonna chug this beer. - Yeah, it kicked in after I chugged it. Yeah, if there's a little trick for chugging, you can chug in a bottle of beer if you'd have a straw. And the place we're staying at happened to have straws. So I was like, ah, yeah, I should do this. - Yeah, I like you. - So you kick off our YouTube page. Now we have a various YouTube page where we can make more videos for it. - And we're like right now. - Do you like that? - I just slurred all those words into one big one. - You did. - Yeah, it was great. - Well done, sir. - So we're gonna be going in a bit to falling rock again because stone is having a tapping and we're gonna go try some of those beers. There's a beer that I'm really excited to try, this wine barrel aged beer that Steve Gonzalez worked on. I'm really interested in trying that one. - That'll be really good. - I have Rick Astley stuck in my head right now. - Why? - I don't know 'cause I just have Rick roll. - Oh, because you fucking played that shit. - Yeah. - I was getting ready this morning and then I hear from the other room, Rick Astley blaring. That was just the start of all the shitty music we listen to. - So you've been anastasia roll. - You went from that to like Backstreet Boys and then-- - So I guess in a way, thank you, Rick, because we would've had such a good time driving up there. - Are you just thinking Rick Astley? - I think I might be, oh, I'm gonna die, right? - We should tag him in the post. - He'll say his name one more time or he'll show up and you'll die. - There's shit. Hey, so last night, actually, after we ended up recording, you guys went out to a metal show, right? - Oh, that's right. - That's right. Holy shit. How did I forget that? Oh, right beer. Yeah, we went to this metal show. It was Real Ale Brewing Company from Texas, from Blanco. It was surly, three Floyd's, and true. Yeah, and they were doing this metal show at this fucking place called, I don't know what the hell it was. - Summit Music Hall? - Summit, yeah. And it was all this death metal and awesome. Which sludge, it was great. And we were just drinking three Floyd's all night. I got the last zombie dust for what I thought was the last zombie dust before you found another one. - I actually got the last zombie dust. - Oh, it was you? - The bartender found it. - So that was nice. - You guys couldn't smuggle it back here for me. No. - We smuggled it in our bellies and you just chose not to drink of our loins. - I still, I still think I got some. It's mic condition now, but you know, you can have it. - I don't know if you know, but mic is actually charred barrel on his inside. - Yeah. (laughing) - So for the next video, Grant will be drinking out of the toilet bowl. - Or straight from the tap. - How much less shame can I have in these videos? - You could have been naked. - Straight away. - Next video. But yeah, we spent a bunch of time there and we were drinking, I was drinking a lot of gumball head. I just kept on drinking gumball head because I love that fucking beer from three Floyd's. And I don't ever get the opportunity to do that. - Do you think they still have some over there? - They might. I mean, there was still some when we left. - You're in alpha king, right? You drank a bunch of alpha king? - Oh yeah, I had a bunch of alpha king. - So I was on three hours of sleep. I think we all were on like three hours of sleep yesterday. So we were wrecked. I mean, absolutely just fucked. And we left that metal show, went across the street to falling rock. And I was just done. I just sat on a chair and stayed there for like 20 minutes before I was like, "I need to go." And that was after the new Belgium tour that we went and I rolled my fucking ankle on a speed bump. - Also. (laughing) - 'Cause I mean, that's what happens when you're walking too fast over a speed bump. You roll your ankle. - When you're drunk as shit. You have to be drunk as shit for three days. - And it cripples you for the rest of the fucking trip. So I've been limping around like the living dead for the rest of the shit. - I'm sorry, I didn't mean to laugh so hard. - You're a cunt. - I just realized that I was a speech before. - Yeah, are you laughing? 'Cause I don't go fast. - No, I'm just laughing because you're a person. (laughing) - You're not a guy. - I'm pretty sure that's the first time you've recognized me as a person. - I appreciate that. - So what are we drinking? - Yeah, we are drinking an L Smith X, extra pale L. We've had this on the show before. It's five and a quarter percent. And we found one in a bottle shop that we went to a couple of days ago and we were finally drinking this thing and I love L Smith so much. It was bottled on August 8th of this year. - It's drinking great. And I actually just finished my class 'cause I guess I'm an alcoholic now, I don't know. Maybe that's what Denver's done to me. - Now? - Denver? - Okay, you miss pronounced life. (laughing) But I actually feel pretty good right now. - I'm not tired like I was yesterday. I'm a little bit brain-addled. - I'm on my seventh or eighth wind, I think. (laughing) - Ruby, do you remember how we started with the Beerus actually as an intervention for you? (laughing) - Is that how it started? - Is that how it started? - This into talking about beer each episode? - One thing that I haven't really talked about on the microphone is how much I've been farting on this trip. - Oh man. - It's just non-stop farts. - I don't know. - It's the Mile High City. Everyone, their stomachs are condensed and now we just can't hold it in anymore. - No, it's thousands and thousands and thousands of people just drinking beer. - How does that make me fart? - We've had so much beer. - Last time I came up to Denver, I didn't drink really that much beer. - Non-stop farting. - Really? - Yeah, it's still farted? - Denver just makes you fart the elevation shift for us. - What the hell? - We're at sea level there. - I seriously farted like every 10 minutes on the dot. My butt's all blown out. (laughing) - I'm farting right now. - That's the best thing about walking that convention floor. It's like I can just fart whenever I want. And that's what 12,000 people are all thinking at the same time. - It fucking shows. - And let me tell you, that toilet paper in the convention center is not good. - No. - It's not good. - When I have to walk up to Las Abi and go, why does everything smell like a fart by your place? Like dude, it's everywhere. That's not our beer. - Yeah, you fucking lucked out when you walked in, you went straight to the brewery and you got that duck duck goos. - Oh yeah, at Las Abi. - I went there and I also went over to the brewery as well and hit up, I got something to really get out my bubble. - There's another sour, wasn't it? - Is it like the sour and the rye with peaches? There's definitely like that. - That's what it was. - Yeah. - Damn. - That's a good one. - I was really surprised that the lines were moving so fast at the show. I mean, there were huge lines. I mean, that place is crowded as hell. But the lines move relatively quick. - Yeah, when I got there early, my barometer for like, where should I go? Oh, look where everyone else is forming up in huge lines, jumping those lines. 'Cause it's not like I've been doing a beer show where I should know where to go. But there are so many breweries there, half of which I've never heard of 'cause they're all small. It's just, a lot of the requires literacy. And I'm like, ugh, we're gonna read all these signs of like the names of these places. Just gonna look for where the other crowds gather. - What was that Goose Island beer that we had the Sophie? - Sophie Paradisci? - That was awesome. - Yeah. - It's Sophie, which is a-- - Belgian ale aged in like wine barrels with a little bit of bread and some orange peel. - It's a pale, very great. - Yeah, Sophie has orange peel, but the Sophie Paradisci had grapefruit zest or something, and it was awesome. You got in the line for that like several times, didn't you? I did the same thing, but with a litticoy. I got in the line a couple of times for that. - Yeah, I did that to everybody. - I can't have enough of that beer. The lillicoy is so good. - It's a white rascal with passion fruit puree. - Maybe your bodies are just passion fruit deficient right now. - Like the people who just eat chalk. - I can tell you what, I'm not deficient in pancakes because I've eaten a lot of pancakes on this trip for some reason. You know, when I drink, I like to load up on fatty things and bread and pancake breakfasts are awesome for that. Like pancakes and I had eggs and sausage. And I think Anastasia is made of eggs benedict right now because I think you have that at every-- - Every single breakfast place. - Every day, yeah. - Fucking eggs benedict bed. - It's my jam. - It's the worst thing you could eat. - Me too, actually. - You mean the best thing you could eat, full of fat and carbs and eggy goodness? - And also topped with fat and it's delicious. - Exactly. - When we went to that breakfast place, we went to snooze. - Snooze. - Damn. - Damn, it feels good too. (laughing) - You had eggs benedict there and that was fucking phenomenal. And I had this French toast-- - This is stuffed French toast. - With mascarpone stuffing and-- - God damn it. - Burmont syrup and strawberries and-- - That plates made the best pancake I've ever had in my entire life. The last trip that I was here, Alyssa and I ended up going to snooze on the very last day and we were just still drunk. And the waiter, he looked at us and he was like, oh man, you need a pancake. I'll be right back. - You need several pancakes. - And he came back with something that had like candied bacon and chocolate chips. - Rainbow. - And caramel, like salted caramel. Like it was ridiculous. - And hope? - Yes. (laughing) - I remember what hope used to taste like. - Yeah, it tasted like that and lasted about as long as that pancake. (laughing) - Yeah, we've just been running around and drinking in all these different places. And I actually wanted to go to this beer dinner with Prost. You heard on one of our last little recording things. They do a lot of German style, straight German style stuff and that half of us in that we drank was really good and their Pulitzer was fantastic too. And they had a beer dinner tonight for 45 bucks a head but we ended up coming over here and editing shit. Really? - We need to go get food. - I need to go get food. - Food sounds pretty good actually. - I just want one of those euros again on the way of the falling rock. - Oh God, yes. - I hope that guy's still there. - Yeah, there was this dude selling euros. - Oh my God, yes. - Did you just remember that happened? - I don't know what you guys are talking about but I'm fucking excited. - There's a guy selling euros right outside of the falling rock last night. - Okay. - They were super delicious. Do you guys want to just go now? - Yeah, let's do it. - We haven't recorded very long but you know that there's still more beer out there to drink it. - You get to the falling rock before making you start lining up outside of England. - And they will be out here. - That sounds good, let's do it. Bottoms up. - Bottoms up. - Drinking. - Yeah. (upbeat music) - More information on the Beerists Podcast including show notes and pictures. Visit thebeerists.com. Email us your feedback, comments, questions, and suggestions at info@thebeerists.com. Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/thebeerists and follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/thebeerists. Intro music was provided by Ian Butcher and his band Deflated Balzmacher. Follow him on twitter at twitter.com/Ian_Butcher93. I'm John Rubio. Thanks again for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
