(upbeat rock music) - Hey everybody, John Rubio here. We're at the Grant and I. - Yeah, how you guys? - Are at the Texas Craft Brewers Festival here in Austin, Texas at Fiesta Gardens. And we were invited to come over and maybe talk to a few brewers and just trying to break in our field recording equipment thing. - Yes, we have fancy new equipment here. It's this travel mic set and it's actual two mics. It can go up to four. - Yeah, we can plug four microphones into this thing. It's pretty badass. - I know a couple of things I can have four plugs in them. This microphone being one of them and it's impressive. - But that said, Anastasia isn't here. - Nope, that was good Megan. - And Mike isn't here, but it's just me and Grant. We're gonna be walking around the festival grounds and hopefully get some interviews with some people. - Shootin' the shit with some brewers. - Yeah, a bunch of Texas brewers are here at this thing. I hope it works out. There are a lot of people here that already know who we are, but some who have no fucking clue. We're just gonna barrage them anyway. - No one knows who I am actually. - No, no. You're incognito. You've got some really awesome-- - I'm a wild card. - Awesome orange sunglasses that are just amazing. - I feel it gives me some cred. - In a place that has, so the festival shirts are like these khaki green things. In the middle of this weather, which is 95 degrees. - I feel like I'm swimming. - It's 90% humidity right now. It's so crazy. So everybody has these awesome Titswet patterns under their shirts. And I think Grant is posted a picture of it on our Facebook page. - I did. You guys gotta check that out. - It's great. We might just include that as the artwork for this mini extra or whatever this is gonna be. - If we end up with pneumonia from all the humidity and liquid we're breathing into our lungs, we'll post this up pretty soon. - But yeah, we're gonna move into there and start drinking some more beer. We've been here for about 20, 30 minutes and we've already had a few-- - We're pretty shit-faced already, yeah. - Yes. (upbeat music) - All right, we're at the Texas Craft Brewers Festival like we've mentioned and we're here with Ron Extract of Jester King. How you doing, Ron? - I'm great. How are you, John? - Dude, I'm fucking good. I've been here since like 11, 30 drinking. - That's an awesome way to spend a day. - Isn't it? You know, I really wish it was less hot than it is 'cause it's fucking horrible. - Yeah, I agree. I think we ought to try to do something about the next legislative session. - Yeah, yeah, no shit. I just wanted to touch face with you for a couple of minutes. I noticed you guys have announced some really fucking cool beers coming up. - Yeah, we have some new stuff in the works that we're really excited about, including a couple of new reformatations with fruit that we'll be releasing at our Funkin' Sour Fest on October 27th. - So tell us a little bit about those. I know that you have that strawberry beer coming out. What's that one called again? - It's called omniscience and proselytism and that's a sour barrel aged beer reframented with strawberries from Fredericksburg, Texas. We add the strawberries to the mature beer. We let the yeast and bacteria in the beer ferment out all the sugar in the fruit and ferment it out to dryness, but then we get a lot of the aromatics from the fruit which become kind of intertwined with the beer flavor and aroma and produce something that I think is interesting and unique. - I can't wait to try that beer. So I was able to get a bottle from you guys and I'm gonna open it up on the show in a couple of weeks. So that should be interesting. - Oh, so you did score that bottle, huh? - Yes, I did. I went over to Jeff 'cause I came over to Ron and he's like, "Let me find it." And you jungle Jim throughout the whole thing and I wish I got pictures of it because that was amazing. Just feats of acrobatic prowess. And you guys just announced your blackberry beer. - Yeah, that's right. It's a same process. In this case, the base beer was RU55, our sour red ale and then we added some Texas kaiwa blackberries to let the sugar and the blackberries ferment out. Same way we did with the strawberries and omniscience and proselytism and same way we did with the raspberries, nature of rubricite. Blackberry re-fermentation is called Nocturne Chrysalis. It's also gonna be released at Funkin' Sourfest. - That's great. That was just announced a couple of days ago and I'm really excited for that one too. - Yeah, that's right. So the Texas laws just changed, right? How has that impacted the brewery? I mean, I know that you guys are using the tasting room now and able to sell your beer on site. - Honestly, it's a change in the law that's really made it possible for us to do these things because under the old law, as a production brewery, we couldn't sell beer, we could only give it away. And for us to do something that was really a ridiculously small batch, we're talking about less than 500 bottles of these beers, for us to do something that was that small of a batch, we really, our choices were either to sell it to maybe half a dozen customers and seriously piss off everybody else who we didn't sell it to, or to just give it all away for free at our tasting room. And when we invest a lot of money in making something special, it's kind of hard to just give it away. But now that we can actually sell beer at our tasting room, it makes it possible for us to do these super small production batches, do things that are really special and to be able to subsidize it. - Now, as somebody who's been to bottle releases at breweries before in other states, I gotta say that the way you guys did yours worked out really well. - Thank you. - They took reservations online and then did your allocation based on the response that you got. - We really tried to do it in a way that would be fair and enjoyable for everyone. Our brewery is a little bit outside the city. It's about half hour drive from downtown. The last thing we wanted was for people to be showing up at five a.m. and waiting in line and then not get the beer they came for. And even worse, maybe coming from other cities, just not what we wanted to do. So we thought that even though it meant that we might have fewer people out there and ultimately sell a little bit less beer, it's better to kind of let people know ahead of time what they were gonna get and what they can expect and make their decisions on that basis. - Oh yeah, and it was great because you could just be on site and pick up your beer at any point in time during the day. There was no line, no headaches. There was actually a giant bottle share that happened there that was really awesome. There was a huge amount of bottles there. And we just kind of leisurely walked up and got our bottles at any point during the day that we were there because we had reserved our time earlier in the week or in the month. And I just love the way that worked out. It was the most easy, painless bottle brewery release that I've ever been to. - Well, thanks. As you know, in order to do that bottle release and in order to be able to sell bottles to go at the brewery, we had to change our licensing to a brew pub. - Yes. - What that means really is just that we got the ability to sell bottles to go. We were able to do that because we're very small and there's a 10,000 barrel production cap for brew pubs were well under that, making about 1,500 barrels of beer per year and don't see hitting that 10,000 barrel mark anytime in the foreseeable future. But bigger breweries still don't have the ability to do that. So bigger craft breweries can sell beer to drink on site but they can't sell bottles to go. - Right. And I just got to say that Jester King is probably one of the most exciting breweries that we have going on in Texas. And I'm loving everything you guys are doing. - Just one of the most exciting. - Yay. - Don't get too far in yourself. You know, Ron. - I'll take it. (laughing) - Thank you so much, Ron. We appreciate it. Ron, extra act from Jester King. - Thanks, Ron. - Appreciate it, buddy. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - So we're here under the beer tent of Austin Beer Works. I'm feeling a little bit drunk. You know, we're hanging out with Will Golden. - I'm the head brewer and co-founder of Austin Beer Works. - That's beautiful. That's a really, really nice place to be. You guys have been doing some great stuff. - Absolutely, yeah. We're having a lot of fun. We've been experimenting with the new series this year called the Heavy Machinery Series, which is a new IPA every other month. - And I've been a giant fan of it. I just tried the wet hop IPA. - Yeah, yeah. - I bought three, four packs of that after I tasted it. - Well, thank you. Dude, it's awesome. - Thank you, yeah. It was a fun beer to make. We did something kind of cool. We worked with Crosby Farms in Oregon. Normally, you know, wet hop beers that are outside the region. You'll have the hops picked overnight and then you'll brew with them the next day. We actually had them pick them that morning, put them on a Southwest flight. We got them that afternoon. - Wow. - And we brewed with them the same day they were picked. - Immediately. - Yeah, I stayed overnight and just knocked out a 90 barrel batch of the wet hop IPA and it turned out really well. - That's awesome, man. - Yeah, yeah. - Wow, hell of a thing to do, especially in Texas, you know. Grabbing something from a farm somewhere outside of state, putting it out a plane and brewing with it the same day. - Oh, yeah. It was an experience I'd never done one before because I used to brew in Maryland. It was something new to work with and thank God Josh Wilson from the draft house, let us borrow a piece of equipment that he had laying around and we used that to put our fresh hops in. - So what hop was it? Was it Centennial? - It was Centennial, yeah. - That's what I thought it was. - From Crosby Farms, yeah. - Very cool. And it seems like you guys gonna be doing a special tap in a vine horn, a beer that I'm always super excited to drink. - It's the Gatorade of Beers as we refer to it at the brewery. - And I know that you guys are saying that we'd have to do another build out at the brewery to do that year round, but fucking do it seriously. - Oh, it shuts down our brew house for a full three days to do a single 90 barrel run of it. So it's very time consuming and kind of a really hard beer to make, but-- - Work it out. - You never know. - I am so in love with that beer. Texas is dying for a year round Berliner vice. - I agree. - And that is a really fucking good one. - It fits the nine months of hot weather for sure, like just perfectly, you know. It's one of those beers that is so refreshing that it's kind of unbelievable that it's actually beer, but I think you're right. - It's brilliant. - We'll figure it out. - It's brilliant. - So the heavy machinery series, tell me a little bit more about what you guys have been doing with that. - Sure, so the heavy machinery series is super cool because it's not only just a way to do a different IPA every other month, which people seem to be super crazy about in Austin, but also we're trying to educate people on the difference between hot flavor and hot bitterness. - Yes. - So we've brewed, like our double IPA was 45 IBUs and by brewing standards, that's very low for a double IPA, but people had no clue that it was that low and we just dry hopped it and it wasn't bitter but it had tons of hot flavor. Same with the half IPA, less IBUs than a typical Pilsner, but it was dry hopped like a double IPA. So a lot of people, they would always ask what IBUs, how many IBUs, how bitter is this beer, how bitter is this IPA? And I was like, it's not about that. You know, it's more about flavor and the way that you balance the beer out and all the IPAs I've ever done in pale ales have always been kind of an exercise in balance versus how many hops can I throw into the boil and how bitter can I make it, so. - And I'm really glad that it seems like industry-wide people are sort of shifting in that direction and it seems less like the arms races. How bitter can you fucking get it and now it's becoming more how well can we showcase the hop. - Absolutely, absolutely. - Even somebody like Stone has been doing stuff like their enjoy-by series, which is a lot of that sort of same thing and I've been digging the hell out of that and you guys do that very, very well. - Well, thank you. - Do you want to tell us a little bit more about the other beers that you guys do? - Sure, yeah, I mean, we do our core four beers, which we have a German style Pils, which is called Pearl Snaps. It's currently our best-selling beer. It's a pretty hop forward Pilsner, we dry hop it, so it's untraditional in that aspect. But we didn't expect to take off as the best seller. You know, we expected maybe like Peacemaker, which is our, we call it an anytime-ail. It's less bitter and it's kind of an easier bitter drink. It was kind of based off of an English-style summer ale. And then after that is our American IPA, which is the Fire Eagle. You know, that's got a lot of centennial hops in it and some magnum and warrior and things like that. But again, it's not super bitter. It's just a really flavorful IPA. - And you guys took a medal for that Peacemaker, right? - We did, we took a super medal, our first year. We had the doors open for four months, I think, and went to JDF and pulled a silver medal for the Peacemaker and we were unbelievably delighted that that actually happened. - I bet you it was a huge shock and just like, what? - Yeah, we had aspirations, but no expectations. And it was just, it was amazing. We, we stayed out very late that night after we won the medal. - I could imagine. - Well, cool, man. Thank you so much for talking to us. - Yeah, no problem. - I got one more question for you. - Sure. - Now that we're done with the full interview. - No problem. - Mr. Sparkle, this is the pro snap, correct? - Absolutely. - With glitter in it, yes. - I'm wondering, what's next? Confetti, rhinestones, perhaps? - You never know. There are rhinestones involved in our future and you'll see that if you're gonna be at the Great American Beer Festival. So, just keep an eye out for that. - Get your digest and ready, listeners. - Yeah, you won't be drinking them, but you will be all in inspired by them. (laughs) Thank you very much. - All right. - Oh man, I've always wanted to bedazzle my piss. (laughs) - Turdbling. (upbeat music) - So, we bumped into this guy, Chris Troutman. He's with the Austin Beer Guide, which is probably, you know, you probably haven't heard of it. You're outside of Austin, but if you're in Austin, that fucking shit is everywhere and it's really great. Thanks, Chris, for standing here to talk to us. - Thanks for the kind words, John. - No, man, you guys are doing a really good thing. I've been really impressed by how effective the guide is. Like, it actually is a good guide to beer. - Effective in meaning, like, it's good for tourists. Is what you're saying? - No, not just good for tourists. I know a lot of people who are just fucking saying what you mean, man. Is it good for tourists or just say it? Just say it. - Yeah, it's mainly good for tourists. - All right, all right. - Okay, so, this Austin Beer Guide-- - You be mad if I just dropped the mic and walk off now. (laughs) - Are you gonna cut me out? (laughs) You fucking asshole. So, I've done a couple of covers for you guys. And I really have, and they've been great. You saved us in a pinch. Last winter, it was a great fucking cover. I think we emailed you, like, three days before we went to print and you delivered one of our favorite covers. - Oh, man, I was really worried about that. - No, we loved it. I don't know if you did it on purpose, but we claimed that the hand was John McLean of the Die Hard series. I don't know if you meant that, but that's kind of what we were going for. And it worked perfectly into, you know, what we were going for for the season. - I'll say it was because that's a better story than it was just my hand. - Dude, I have an action star hand, I guess. - Is it John McLean or McCain? - McCain is a president. No, he was, he's a congressman. No, Senator? - One of the action guys. - We're in a beer festival, right? - One of those guys got P.O.W.D. and the other one got-- - He walked us some fucking glass, barefoot. - You got Alan Rickman. - Yeah, who would you vote for president, right? - John McLean. - Exactly. - John McLean. - You be KIA. (laughs) - But there's Austin Beer Guide. I do really appreciate it because one of the things that I have-- - But I appreciate the beerists. - Oh, let's throw that back at you. So we're on level ground still. - But I get a lot of debate from people talking about how we're approaching a craft beer bubble. It's one of those things where I don't think a bubble is a possibility when it's a growing market. And I think that you guys, aside from just the tourists, you know, you're gonna make that fucking joke, but people who are just getting into craft beer on a day-to-day basis need a place to start. You know, need a place where they can look at something-- - Oh, so we're a starter guide. We're a starter kit for craft beer. - In a lot of ways, sure. - You know, and that's a really good fucking place to be. You drop the mic. (laughs) No, but I mean, you do get the fact that it's a great repository for information for any level of beer consumer. You know, for somebody who may not know where to go to get something good, you guys list all the breweries, you have write-ups about them, talk about what styles they do, and then you give recommendations for what to try. - Right, yeah. I feel like that's kind of the no-brainer part of the guide. What we've been trying to do for the last second year, it's taken off, you know, I guess like we've grown as the, I guess the quote, the bubble has grown. - Right. - You know, and we sell advertising. It's a, you know, a high-quality print publication. We sell advertising, so we have a lot of pages for editorial, and we've been trying to fill those with a lot of first-hand, not investigative, but more intense accounts of what's happening as far as trends and movements within craft beer, mainly in Austin. But, you know, we usually, you know, we'll sit down and we plan it, and, you know, of course we do like the listing of the breweries and the beers and all that. Then we also want to, you know, we have a couple features, and we try to do some stuff that'll appeal to the guy who picks it up at a Kirby Lane, and also stuff that appeals to the guy who, you know, gets it at a, you know, a tap room at Jester King. Some of it gets really, really fucking nerdy, you know? - No, but it's still accessible. I mean, it's still something that I can pick up as somebody who might not know a lot about beer and get a lot out of. - Right, yeah, yeah, we keep it accessible. But, you know, we also want to give something that, you know, I feel like there's content in there that you're not just going to read on a blog or whatnot. There's, you know, it came from Aaron Chamberlain who did Craft Austin, and I came from Beartown, Austin. We have a lot of relationships, so we draw on those to get a lot of first-hand accounts, and a lot of brewers will either break news, or they'll give a lot of backstory or in-depth information about what they're doing and what's going on, you know, in features and different things that we do with them, as opposed to just something you could find on, like, a Google search or whatnot. And we try to do that because we don't want to just be, like, a simple, it's a guide for a guy picking up in a hotel and town or whatever. We want people to know that they can go there and find information about, you know, what went into the Brewers Cut series at Realel, or, you know, the Heavy Machinery series and why they're doing that and how they're doing it. - Yeah, and you guys go far back, you and Aaron. Go pretty far back in actually just doing that on your own personal time. You guys each had your own blogs, talking about similar sorts of things, and I guess you guys kind of joined forces, and how did this come about? - We both just kind of got tired of blogging, and we, I've got a Masters in Mass Media Journalism, Aaron works in publishing. We just wanted to keep doing what we were doing, but we wanted to make it a little more professional. We were tired of running around as bloggers, and we felt like Austin was ready for, you know, it was a higher class of beer, we thought it needed a higher class of media, and we wanted to do it, and we did it. - Yeah, it's really good stuff, and actually I learned about Jester King first on your blog. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, back when they were just giving you guys bottle tastings out in the middle of serious ranch. - Oh yeah, oh, we were like fucking brewing with them in their backyard, and there's a video out there of Jeff explaining what their, you know, we were home brewing in their backyard of what they were brewing, and in the background, Michael is cooking up some burgers on the grill, and they start to flare up, so Jeff, without a break, continues to go in to what he's brewing in the malt bill, while Michael is extinguishing some fires on the grill in the background. - Yeah, and at that point you realize that they're gonna be good brewers. - Yeah, you know those guys are gonna go places. - Yeah, but I really appreciate all the stuff that you guys have been doing, covering the local scene. - Oh, thanks, John. - It's been absolutely wonderful to see you guys do your thing and grow with it, and I go to every one of your new releases, you know, 'cause you guys release issues quarterly, and every time you release an issue, you guys throw a release party. What's the next one? It's coming up soon. - October 3rd, next week. - Very cool, I'll be there for that. - We look forward to it. - Man, thank you so much for talking to me, Chris. - Anytime, John, I'll talk to you anytime. - I love you, I wanna have you on the show at some fucking point, man. - I would totally fucking do it. - Yeah, I think it fit in. - I would cussle on and maybe drink too much. - We are all horrible people, you would do really well. - All right, don't expect a lot as far as beer commentary, but I'll get loud and cuss and drink. - You know, we've had other people like that. - All right. - Thanks, man. - All right. (upbeat music) - All right, listeners, welcome back to the Texas Craft Brewery Festival. I am here with, I'm sorry, Chad. - Chad, I'm Chad. - I'm Grant. - Grant, nice to see you, man. - Yes. - This interview's going well. (laughing) What's in this? Is there alcohol in this beer? - We have from the Big Texas Beer Festival. - Yes, sir, yes, sir. - Tell us about the Big Texas Beer Festival. You guys are based out of Dallas, correct? - We are. You know, I always kind of liken us to the largest craft beer festival in Texas. We have about 6,000 people out in Dallas. - So there's chump change here in Austin. - Why, yeah, I don't know if it's chump change. You know, I think this is about a 3,000 person festival. You know, it's big, right? - It is. - It's a big deal, but you've only got about 40 brewers, so you don't want to overwhelm the brewers 'cause you get too many people, too many brewers, or not enough brewers, I guess. - Sure, yeah. - Then you got lines that are out the door. So the lines here have been really reasonable all day, but we have about 80 brewers, maybe 90 brewers, for 6,000 person crowds. So we have double-- - Are we all texting this? - Not for that festival, no. There's only about 50 brewers in the state of Texas right now, so we don't have quite enough to fill a hall. - So where else do you pull in from then? - Well, we probably really from everywhere. So we pull in from Belgium, we pull in from Germany, we pull in from all around the US. You know, anybody who's a craft brewer, we're trying to bring that person in, we're really trying to track the widest audience possible to show people what craft beer is. So there's also a few non-crap brewers in the room, because maybe you bring somebody in and they've never heard of Sapporo or Kiran, or one of those guys, you know? So you'll see a lot of different brewers that are crappers and then a couple that are not crappers. - Sure. And wouldn't you guys do your festival? - So that festival takes place in April, first Saturday, every April. And then-- - Still a little bit cool out, it's hit or miss in the weather. - It's generally really nice. We have about 70 degrees usually. - You guys must be hitting that prime weather when we try to pretend we have spring here in Texas. - Yeah, it is a pretend spring, but we're indoors though. - Oh, even nicer. - Yes. - Why is this one indoors? - Oh no! - Oh man. - But we actually have a new festival coming up November 9th called Texas Revolution. And that is gonna be about 2/3 all Texas craft brewers. And then we've hand selected a few of US brewers that are the best, best of the best. - Yeah. - Like Firestone Walker, Ballis Point, some of the other really, really good craft brewers to show the Texas guys like, hey, this is some of the best guys. Let's see what you can do side by side. So that's what's going on November 9th. - You guys gonna have some sort of like Iron Chef brew off. Or you just make people just like face off to the death. - Exactly. There will be no death, but-- - You burn your beer and then you drink until you pass out. If you don't revive at the end, you lose. - Or die. - Yeah, you lose. Maybe die. - Yeah. (laughing) - Well, that sounds really great. Where is it just in Dallas, is it? - So we have this, I don't know if you guys have ever been in the state fair. - Oh, okay, it's at the state fair. - Yeah, so there's two buildings they do, the auto show in. - Yes. - We're in the Centennial Hall for the November event. It's about 80,000, 90,000 square feet, indoors, very, very spacious. - Oh, yeah. - But that event is gonna be limited to about 3,000 people. So it'll be tons of room to walk around, air condition, bands, probably 10 food trucks. It's gonna be a lot of fun. - Excellent. We're excited about it. - Well, thank you. Hopefully we might be able to make it up and test some of that out. - If you guys want to come up, we got media passes for you. We'll take care of you guys. - Sweet. - Yeah, perks of being the bearers. (laughing) Hey, thank you very much. - Cheers, man. - Yeah. - Have a good one. (rock music) - Just out of here with Eric Augerstock from Realale. - Hello. - How you doing? - I'm good, how are you? - Good, and you're the brewmaster. - I'm the brewmaster slash woodmaster general for Realale Brewing Company. - Awesome. - Awesome. So you're doing a lot of the mysterious barham stuff too. - Absolutely, that's one of my pet projects. - You know, I really enjoyed that there was a Realale dinner at Easy Tiger that we went to. - Yeah. - That had the Scots gone wild for the first time from the mother barrel. - Yes. - That was a hell of a beer, man. - Yeah, we have one keg of that left. - God damn it. - We haven't decided what we're doing with it yet. - Putting it in my mouth is what you should do. The barrel. - Easy. - Hey, hey, we just met. You know, I think you're attractive. You're a beautiful man. But tell us a little bit about what you're doing in Realale right now. - Oh, what aren't we doing over there? It's a great time to be a brewer in the state of Texas. We're, you know, like a lot of breweries experiencing another large year of growth for us. So a lot of it is, you know, construction. We're building our new packaging haul. We got our new bottle filler coming in in January. Trying to keep up with the growth of some of our more challenging brands like Devil's Backbone, Honspils, Lots Gold. You know, biting off more than we can choose and like pretty much our ammo. But we find a way to make it happen. - I mean, that's, that's where the exciting things happen for most breweries though. You bite off more than you can chew and then you're kind of forced to innovate. - Yeah, I mean, it's funny 'cause you just create more problems for yourself in a way. There's a lot of excitement along the way. And figuring out like, you know, we wanted to do this thing, brewers cut as a way to engage our younger brewing team and the recipe development so we could not just Tim and I doing all the recipes. So we do this project, it becomes a huge success. And now we're trying to figure out how to make beers fast enough in that series. 'Cause you know, we're all the way up to, we just brewed number nine. We'll work on number 10 pretty soon. And we're already, I had Tim come up to be the day. So we need to come up with the next four brewers cuts. And they're just like, holy crap, what have we done? - So the brews cut series has been really interesting. And you guys are kind of all over the place with style there. And the colesch that I had was one of the best colesches I've had ever. Like it was fantastic. - Thank you. Actually, you know, it's funny 'cause that beer, I didn't want for us to make an Americanized version of it. We wanted it to be something that you could think to yourself, your eyes close, that you might be a cafe and Cole and having. And I just actually had some interesting feedback today from a friend of mine who is from Cole. He said that it was like a colesch, a true German colesch, but the one difference would be that it maybe was not sweet enough, which I can take that 'cause, you know, we knew going in that was gonna be hop forward. And so I'm happy with that assessment of it. - Well, that's one of the things that really makes it work more in Texas than it wouldn't in Cole, you know, the fact that it's drier and works way better with this climate as a little leader colesch would do. - Well, that's one of the things, like, you know, when you talk about our climate, I would be remiss not to mention firemen's because we look at it as Texas's quintessential drinking beer. I mean, it has some things in common with the colesch, where even though it's definitely an American ale, but with our climate that we hear with, you know, basically no seasons and the type of cuisines that we have, we figure that it goes pretty well with all of those. And that's why it's been such a successful thing for us. - And I think you guys do a good job across the board, brewing for the climate here. I mean, you guys are pretty much only in Texas, right? - Yeah, we're only in Texas and we have no intention of going outside of the stage. I don't know, brewing a climate's kind of funny that you mentioned that because we were the guys who did release Imperial Stout and Doppelbach in July, so. - No, sure, sure, and there are those of us who really crave that sort of thing all year round, absolutely. And you guys even have a really great barley wine with sisyphus, and it's one of the beers that I trade a lot to people out of state, they really enjoy it there too. - For that beer, that's actually become a year round beer for us, due to popularity. We had it as basically a spring or early spring, late winter seasonal, but with popularity in the way it was selling, we opted to release it periodically throughout the year, so we brew it when necessary so that we always have some on the market. And that beer is designed so that when it's fresh, if people want a hoppy barley wine, they can have it. If they want to be able to sell it, they can, and it'll age well. - So I talked a little bit about the Scots gone wild, that misterium barium series beer. Tell me a little bit more about the misterium series. I mean, there's a lot of really cool things going on there. - All right, you want me to put the way back machine on? - Sure. - All right, well, the history of MV would go back to the old brewery where we always wanted to do some type of barrel beers, but we didn't have the ability to do them because of space limitations. So in the life of the new plant, there's only been six months where we haven't been in a constant state of construction. So that six month period, we bought our first four barrels, Aussie, Dio, Tony, and Geezer. Those were the first four, and we filled two with barley wine, two with scotchill. We let those age, those particular beers age for six months. And then they were released as the Kraken, and real, excuse me, Highlander. - Highlander, yeah. - Now, the whole goal of the project is to create neutral barrels, 'cause neutral barrels are good for making wild ale. You don't want this vanilla character and the other things that you'll get from oak early on. So our goal was, if you're gonna have neutral barrels to make them neutral, you might as well make some tasty beers to begin with, so that's how you started. - Oh, that's fucking cool. I didn't know that about that series. - So now that we've have plenty of neutral barrels, we're able to do beers like Scott's Imperium, which is a wild IPA that we've done. - That's so good. - We got more of that coming out, and then we'll have two more wild beers in the next probably six to eight months. One, that'll probably be out by October, possibly two in October, and then a third, will for sure be out in the first half of next year. - Very cool. - Very wild. - Very cool, man. Thank you so much for talking to us. - Thank you. - I appreciate it. Real Alberta Company. - Great stuff going on. - Thanks a lot, and thanks for your support of Craft Brewing in Texas. I've been doing this for 18 years now, professionally, and I had no idea that I would be able to have a career, so thanks for keeping us all-- - Isn't it crazy how it's exploded? I mean, seriously. - Yeah, it's awesome. This is, you know, when I got into this gig, this is what I wanted to see, and it's part of the reason why I returned home here in 2000 was to be part of a really vibrant craft brewing scene in Texas, and we've got it. So thanks for all your support. - Yeah, I was just at the South Austin-- - Yeah, Austin Beer Garden Brewing Company. - Yeah, yeah. I was just there yesterday, and that fucking place was so packed. It just opened a couple of weeks ago, essentially, and it is slammed with people. - You got two good brewers there, and you got a neighborhood that really wanted something like that, so when you had those two things mixed, you've got a very busy joint. - But it seems like you could do that anywhere in this fucking town, and it'll take off, which is crazy to me, and I love it, I love it. - Well, that's another cool thing about brewing in Texas is you get a lot of support. - Yeah, well, thank you so much for talking to me. - Thank you. - Cheers. (upbeat music) - So John Rubio here, once again, I-- I'm leaving the festival right now. Not that it was a bad thing, because the festival was actually really well put together. Lots of great breweries with their beers. Tons of really cool people. I really enjoyed my time there. The only problem is, is that it is fucking 95 degrees outside, and like 90% humidity, and I am done. I've been there from 11.30 in the morning, and it is 4.22 right now as I'm driving away. I'm recording this in my car, and I'm fucking done. My face hurts, like I'm sunburned, to high shit, I'm exhausted, I've sweat out far more than I've taken in, moisture-wise. And it's just not good. Grant came up to me just a bit ago, and he's like, "Uh, I think I'm gonna leave, and only I think I'm gonna too, 'cause otherwise we're just gonna stand here and die." And that's the only complaint I have about this festival, this year, last year I went, and it was actually quite nice. The weather was a lot better. It wasn't nearly as humid. The heat was still there, but it's way easier to tolerate when there's not this humidity in the air. Right now, it's fucking awful. The weather is absolutely terrible. And that's, you know, one of the gambles you take with an outdoor festival. But for all intents and purposes, everything here was great. The staff were very helpful. Lines moved very quickly. There was a lot of water on hand if you needed to get refreshed. Lots of porta-potties, no lines to the porta-potties. Tons of people, but everything moved very, very swiftly. It was an easy thing to attend, and I really appreciate the amount of care and effort put into this festival. It was a good experience. And I recommend to anybody who's in Texas around this time of year, check this festival out. The Texas Craft Brewers Festival, 2013, was a lot of fun to me. I had a lot of really good beer, and good people to talk to. Hope you guys enjoyed this little extra. Thank you guys, good night time. 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