Latest / The Brewery Underground Podcast | Craft Beer Interviews, Reviews and Beer Travel / Nashville Brewery News & East Tennessee Beer Travels | Episode 87

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Nashville Brewery News & East Tennessee Beer Travels | Episode 87 · The Brewery Underground Podcast | Craft Beer Interviews, Reviews and Beer Travel

• 0:00
  Hey, Scott. Hey, Steve.
• 0:02
  Hey, you know what? We are so happy today to kick
• 0:05
  off this episode with our sponsor, Nashville Brewpass.
• 0:09
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• 0:11
  I see your background. It says Nashville Brewpass.
• 0:14
  It's very creative of you, Sir. Steve Nashville Brewpass has got
• 0:18
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• 0:25
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• 0:27
  Yes, we've talked about them before.
• 0:29
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• 0:34
  That's a deal. Get your stamp when you're
• 0:36
  there. You could go get you a Lovebird,
• 0:38
  or they've got a new Jackalope light logger which I've had
• 0:41
  recently. I just had that recently too.
• 0:43
  This light logger from Jackalope is very good, yeah.
• 0:46
  When it's 105° outside, that actually is a very nice beer.
• 0:50
  Very nice. There's another one too, East
• 0:53
  Nashville Beer Works, the one on Trinity Lane in East Nashville.
• 0:56
  Free 5 oz taster on your first visit when you get your stamp.
• 1:00
  Awesome. Just got to bring your passport
• 1:02
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  You got to do it crazy gnome free 5 oz taster when you buy a
• 1:09
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• 1:16
  At Nashville Brew Pass, you discover the best craft brews in
• 1:20
  Music City. It says it on the back or you go
• 1:23
  in, you get your stamp. It also has the cideries here in
• 1:27
  Nashville as well and a few other places, right?
• 1:31
  Absolutely. There's some distilleries on
• 1:34
  here we've made mentioned before.
• 1:36
  Yep, some displaced. Spice Rice.
• 1:38
  Spice. Yes, still waiting to get over
• 1:40
  there. That's going to be epic.
• 1:42
  So a lot of good places in here. All right, well, the only way to
• 1:47
  do this though, to get your natural brew pass is to go on
• 1:51
  their website at naturalbrewpass.com or go on
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  their Instagram page. Yes, and if you use the code
• 2:00
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• 2:03
  That's awesome. And it's free shipping instead
• 2:06
  these places we mentioned you and I go anyway.
• 2:09
  We go, yeah, that's all right. Places anyway, so we're going
• 2:12
  now. We're just getting additional
• 2:13
  savings we weren't getting before.
• 2:15
  We are and we will do it again with Nashville Brew Pass Bam
• 2:21
  Bam. Hey Steve, something else we
• 2:23
  haven't talked about yet, Nashville Brew Pass is having
• 2:26
  another beer event. Are they?
• 2:30
  Beer Flight Night at Bar Jackalope, September 10th from
• 2:34
  5:00 to 8:00 PM. It's going to be a great event.
• 2:37
  Second time they've had it there.
• 2:39
  As always, if you have a Nashville Brew Pass, you don't
• 2:42
  RSVP, you just show up. Just show up with your Nashville
• 2:46
  Brew Passbook. That's right, if you don't have
• 2:49
  one, get one or just RSVP on their website or the link, the
• 2:54
  social media link and you're in. That's you don't even have to
• 2:58
  have the brew pass to get in for the flight.
• 3:02
  The fine folks at Nashville Brew Pass, they make it very easy and
• 3:05
  very simple for it. So Steve, check out some of the
• 3:08
  places around town like Rice Vice.
• 3:09
  You get 20% off multiple places with buy one, get one, freeze
• 3:14
  half off pints around town, all sorts of things.
• 3:17
  Just go check out all the places in the Nashville Brew Pass.
• 3:21
  Lots of deals with Nashville Brew Pass.
• 3:23
  We love them. Thank you for being our sponsor.
• 3:29
  Stand by for the Brewery Underground podcast.
• 4:05
  Hey, welcome back to this, what we think is a very special
• 4:09
  edition of the Brewery Underground podcast.
• 4:11
  You know, they're all special Scots are on, but this one, you
• 4:14
  know, we had already recorded something, the summer travels
• 4:17
  edition of the Brewery Underground podcast.
• 4:19
  We will get to that. But there's a whole lot of other
• 4:22
  things that just happened. This is what we call breaking
• 4:25
  news in the Nashville area just in the last couple of days.
• 4:30
  And you, my friend, you knew about this.
• 4:32
  You found out about this recently.
• 4:34
  You had told me, you had told a few other people.
• 4:37
  It wasn't confirmed. Now it is.
• 4:40
  It's confirmed. Do you want me to take the lead
• 4:42
  on this? Yes Sir, I'm setting you up.
• 4:44
  Take the lead on this. For those that have been living
• 4:47
  under a rock for the past 24 hours and in this area, it's big
• 4:51
  news and I don't know if it is regionally or nationally.
• 4:53
  However, we know a lot of people love these breweries.
• 4:56
  Zul out of Knoxville, TN will be taking over Southern Grist.
• 5:01
  Two major breweries. Taking over, which I'm assuming
• 5:05
  is purchasing their their words were taking over both locations
• 5:09
  in Nashville by the end of this year.
• 5:12
  Yeah. And I think to say that this is
• 5:15
  a big deal in the beer market, in the beer community, in
• 5:18
  Nashville, in the brewery community of Nashville, I mean,
• 5:21
  it's almost another statement. Yes, Southern Grist has been one
• 5:26
  of the leaders of breweries in Nashville for quite some time.
• 5:29
  We are huge fans. We are huge fans.
• 5:32
  We're we're big fans, huge fans of Zul as well.
• 5:36
  We know that the two of them have been working together over
• 5:39
  the last few years doing collabs and things like that.
• 5:42
  But now it's official is going to be taking over Southern Grist
• 5:48
  in Nashville and taking over the locations.
• 5:51
  Southern Grist at the locations there are going to stay.
• 5:56
  They're just going to be owned by Zool.
• 5:57
  They're going to be Zool. We don't know if the grist name
• 6:00
  is going to stay. We don't know any of that that
• 6:02
  none of that's come out. But one of the locations is
• 6:04
  their manufacturing. So for us in this area, we are
• 6:08
  excited about the fact that they might be making Zool in our
• 6:11
  backyard, which also means we hope to be getting that
• 6:15
  fantastic beer as it comes off the brewery, right, Like
• 6:18
  Delight. If people go to Knoxville and
• 6:20
  stand in line for two or three hours for the releases, we hope
• 6:23
  that happens here. So that's what we are excited
• 6:26
  about, to be have access to that Zul beer right here where we
• 6:29
  live. Yeah.
• 6:30
  And the timeliness of all this is the fact that for me
• 6:33
  personally, I just went to ZUL for the first time recently.
• 6:37
  And later on in this podcast, what we already had recorded, I
• 6:40
  talk about my trip to Zul. So it's very timely.
• 6:44
  And you're going to ZUL in the next couple of days.
• 6:46
  You're. Going in like 2 days, I'm going
• 6:47
  yeah, yes, yes, yeah. So it, it's big news.
• 6:51
  It's exciting news. It is.
• 6:53
  We're very excited about it in a good way.
• 6:55
  Like, I really like this thing. I don't know what's going to
• 6:58
  happen to the grist thing. I guess we'll wait and see about
• 7:00
  that. But Zul is here, people.
• 7:02
  It's in Nashville coming. We love it.
• 7:06
  We love it. I mean, there's a lot of
• 7:08
  details. It sounds like it's going to be
• 7:10
  hammered out from the statements that we're seeing out there.
• 7:13
  They're going to be releasing more information down the road
• 7:16
  of what this all means. It does sound like, which was
• 7:20
  something I read was it sounds like the people that work at
• 7:23
  Southern Grist are gonna remain. Yep.
• 7:26
  So that's certainly good news as well.
• 7:28
  The fact that again, this is a little bit of speculation, but
• 7:31
  the fact that there's these two have been working together for
• 7:34
  the last couple of years on collabs and things like that, it
• 7:37
  sounds like hopefully it's going to be a somewhat seamless
• 7:40
  transition. It sounds like in in what they
• 7:43
  were saying was Southern grist and you can look up on Zul's
• 7:47
  social media and Southern grist. They both have post out.
• 7:50
  That's why we can talk about it like this official.
• 7:52
  It's coming from them. Other grist was looking at their
• 7:55
  next 10 year plan. They've been in business 10
• 7:57
  years. They look at kind of their next
• 7:58
  10 years plan is as was Zul and Zul was looking to expand.
• 8:01
  I know they were looking to come here for a while.
• 8:05
  In their words, luck and fate has come to the beer industry
• 8:08
  for this epic change. Yes, it sounds like it's a win
• 8:11
  win for everyone in my opinion. I hope the Grist brand sticks
• 8:15
  around in some capacity. Yeah, we got no control over
• 8:18
  that. We'll see what happens.
• 8:19
  Yeah, I mean, we both have been Grist fans for years.
• 8:22
  You know, one of our phrases been, you know, any, anytime
• 8:25
  somebody says you want to go to Southern Grist, well, of course
• 8:27
  I want to go to Southern Grist. Yes, What time you going?
• 8:31
  What time you going then? And then, you know, two years
• 8:35
  ago or three years ago. I know for myself when I started
• 8:38
  seeing Zul around town at tap rooms and other places, you
• 8:43
  know, in breweries and getting their beer, I was like, this is
• 8:46
  some damn good beer. And then when I went to their
• 8:49
  tap room and brewery in Knoxville just recently and I
• 8:54
  went, yeah, you know, I'm going to be again, because we're
• 8:57
  recording. Part of this podcast was already
• 9:00
  recorded. You're going to hear more of me
• 9:02
  in a little bit talk about my trip to Zul.
• 9:04
  But. But again, as we said in the
• 9:06
  beginning, to say, this is a really big deal for the brewery
• 9:10
  community and the brewery industry in Nashville, it really
• 9:13
  is. Yeah, and if you're jealous
• 9:15
  because you don't live in Nashville, So what?
• 9:19
  Come visit. Come visit it's it's going to be
• 9:22
  awesome. I really think it's going to be
• 9:23
  awesome. It is going to be awesome and as
• 9:26
  we find out more information, we will certainly release that
• 9:30
  information out there and talk more about it on the podcast.
• 9:33
  And we cannot wait to see what's going to happen when Seoul comes
• 9:36
  here to Nashville. Yeah, I think everybody's
• 9:38
  waiting with breath to kind of see what comes next.
• 9:42
  I think, I mean, the end of the year is not that far away.
• 9:45
  I'm talking three months. It's about to be September.
• 9:47
  So yeah, we're going to see some movement, I think.
• 9:50
  So I stay tuned with us and social media because it's going
• 9:54
  to be all over the place. Well, stay tuned and again as I
• 9:56
  said in the beginning, we have re recorded this as part of this
• 10:00
  podcast episode because we felt it was that big of an
• 10:03
  announcement to start out with. So now on with the show.
• 10:08
  Now we are sort of in that mid to late summer range now.
• 10:12
  And you know, I, I think you probably have had a few summer
• 10:15
  plans. You've been out and about, I
• 10:17
  know during the summer, right? Yep, went soaking up the sun.
• 10:20
  Yep. Yep.
• 10:21
  Went and did a few things, did some stuff around town.
• 10:25
  Yeah, went to, we'll talk about, went to a new brewery that that
• 10:28
  opened up here recently, so we'll get into that here
• 10:30
  shortly. But yeah, we've run into each
• 10:32
  other a few times. We've made some plans, we've
• 10:36
  done a few things. You've done some things.
• 10:38
  I've done some things, we've done some things.
• 10:40
  We have done have done a few things this summer and we're
• 10:44
  going to do a thing today. We are basically kicking off
• 10:47
  this episode. Just you and I, you know, we've
• 10:50
  had a lot of guests in the last couple of months, but man, we
• 10:53
  got a lot to talk about going on here in the Nashville area and
• 10:57
  other places. But you know, there is something
• 11:00
  that is happening during the summer time for me, it is that
• 11:04
  West Coast IPA tour that I'm on that I'm going to talk about a
• 11:09
  little bit and I'm kicking it off today, kicking off a beer.
• 11:13
  You know, what better brewery to kick off a West Coast XPA source
• 11:17
  tone from our friends at Berek. That's a wonderful.
• 11:22
  Beer. That's a great beer, doesn't
• 11:24
  that The XPA is kind of cool, right?
• 11:26
  Extra pale ale, I believe, is what that is.
• 11:29
  Or extra. What is that?
• 11:30
  Yeah, XPA, I guess. I have not.
• 11:33
  I have not had it yet so looking forward to it.
• 11:36
  It's awesome. It's awesome.
• 11:37
  OK, believe it or not, I started with the skyline chili beer that
• 11:42
  I made. Oh my.
• 11:43
  It's been sitting there for a good six weeks untouched and I
• 11:46
  went back and revisit it and it's it's a little better.
• 11:49
  So we'll revisit that. However, that was just to try it
• 11:52
  out. But in honor of your West Coast
• 11:55
  tour, I have a West Coast IPA and it's maybe the ultimate.
• 11:59
  I got plenty. The elder nice, yes.
• 12:01
  So all right, I'm going to be cracking that here in honor of
• 12:05
  your continuing trip. Continuing trip.
• 12:08
  That's right. And I did get this wonderful
• 12:10
  Bereaq West Coast XPA at Main St.
• 12:13
  Liquors in downtown Nashville. I was just there a couple of
• 12:15
  days ago. Nice, very nice place.
• 12:18
  We love that place. So cheers, cheers.
• 12:21
  And by the way, thanks for taking the time out to work up
• 12:23
  the intro from your tour. You know you'd work away, and
• 12:28
  you did it while you were on tour.
• 12:29
  I know it, I know it. While I was all all across the
• 12:33
  West Coast, I had time to fly in a team of experts to also help
• 12:38
  out with our new intro. For those of you that are not on
• 12:42
  Spotify, because we do video on Spotify, if you're on some other
• 12:45
  platforms, you won't be able to see it there.
• 12:47
  You'll probably see it on YouTube as well.
• 12:49
  YouTube. So yeah.
• 12:50
  So we we're just trying to mix it up and do some creative
• 12:54
  things here on occasion at the Brewery Underground Park.
• 12:57
  Yeah, you know, we had, we had some intro music and we're like,
• 12:59
  what's what better way to make the the opening better?
• 13:02
  And we'll add some video and some pictures and some stuff
• 13:05
  that we've done and it's really cool.
• 13:06
  It's actually nice, really, really nice touch.
• 13:08
  Yeah, Well, thank you, Sir. It's a lot of fun doing all
• 13:11
  those kind of creative things every once in a while.
• 13:13
  And we, we have enough content out there now.
• 13:16
  We have enough videos, we have enough pictures with people that
• 13:19
  you know, why not share it with the world?
• 13:22
  No, I know we got and then you and I were talking throughout
• 13:24
  the process. You like we're both like, hey,
• 13:26
  have you got this picture for that thing and that thing for
• 13:28
  this and have you got this? Where's that?
• 13:29
  Cuz we did that and it was cool and you got a whole bunch of
• 13:32
  good shit in there. Yeah, and it could be a work in
• 13:34
  progress. I'm sure at times we'll change
• 13:36
  it up and we'll do some other stuff.
• 13:38
  Yeah. I think the way that platform is
• 13:40
  and you did it on Riverside, Yep, easy to customize if you
• 13:44
  want to pull some in, pull some out and just replace in there
• 13:47
  and you could kind of customize it for a particular podcast if
• 13:50
  you wanted to or just change some stuff up.
• 13:52
  So I think it's, I think Riverside lends itself to being
• 13:56
  a, we'll call it easily customizable.
• 13:58
  Easily customizable. Love it.
• 14:00
  Well, we'll, we'll be talking more about that in the in the in
• 14:04
  the distant future as well. And we had just previously
• 14:08
  talked about some of our summer travels and something I'm going
• 14:11
  to talk about in a little bit was a recent summer travel that
• 14:15
  I made to Bristol to see for the Speedway Motor Classic.
• 14:21
  Actually, it was the Speedway. It was the baseball classic
• 14:23
  between the Cincinnati Reds and the Atlanta Braves that's coming
• 14:26
  up. That's that's one heck of a
• 14:28
  story. Yeah, your stories always seem
• 14:31
  to have some kind of twist. Remember the Michigan story
• 14:34
  coming back from Michigan? Yeah.
• 14:36
  Well, yeah, I think everybody has though.
• 14:37
  There's airport stories though. I think we've all been there.
• 14:40
  So yeah, Yeah. Well, you know, we want to talk
• 14:44
  about some breweries here in Nashville because there's been a
• 14:47
  lot going on this summer. But first I want to talk about a
• 14:52
  brewery that you have been to. And it was really the only,
• 14:56
  almost the lone brewery in Nashville that had eluded me.
• 15:00
  In the Nashville area, there's some other outliers, but in the
• 15:03
  Nashville area, I had not been to Broadcast Brewing and I know
• 15:08
  you had been. They opened, I think they opened
• 15:11
  what about two years ago, Is that right?
• 15:13
  Think about that. Yeah, I think they had a two
• 15:15
  year anniversary if I remember maybe.
• 15:18
  So I went to Broadcast Brewing a couple of days ago and it's
• 15:22
  funny because Mike, the owner, he's a great guy.
• 15:24
  We ran into him at the Preds Fest over the summer and got the
• 15:28
  chance to talk to him for a while.
• 15:30
  And the, what was really funny was.
• 15:32
  So I, I'm walking up and I hear somebody Call My Name and that's
• 15:36
  our buddy Kyle and his wife who were sitting out on the, on the
• 15:40
  and you reminded me after, afterwards, after I texted you
• 15:44
  later in the day. And I'm like, I went to
• 15:45
  broadcast brewing and I ran into Kyle and like, were you guys
• 15:48
  singing the national anthem or anything like that?
• 15:50
  I'm like, no, I totally forgot about that.
• 15:52
  He's your. Duet partner.
• 15:54
  He's my duet partner. Yeah.
• 15:55
  There was a there was an episode about a year or so ago.
• 15:58
  You would you had caught US1 night for some reason.
• 16:01
  We were at a friend's house. I think there were a couple of
• 16:04
  whiskey pours and if for some reason we started singing the
• 16:07
  national anthem, which I rarely if ever sang.
• 16:10
  So I must have been a couple of whiskey pours that night.
• 16:12
  There was, and then we dropped it.
• 16:14
  We put it the beginning of the episode that dropped July 4th,
• 16:17
  and I don't remember what episode that was, but it was the
• 16:19
  perfect intro to that episode. It was, it was really funny.
• 16:26
  And luckily maybe we weren't doing video back then.
• 16:29
  So thank God I have video but the video does not exist out on
• 16:33
  social media or on this platform so.
• 16:36
  Nor should it. I think we've all been there,
• 16:39
  you know, on a there's. Nothing wrong with the video.
• 16:41
  There's really nothing. You and Kyle are just standing
• 16:42
  there singing just. Singing, you know, just singing
• 16:46
  that, that's something I do very much so it.
• 16:48
  Was good. Good time it was.
• 16:50
  Good. Well, it was what was really
• 16:52
  funny about that when I walked up and as soon as I walked up
• 16:55
  and they saw me, Mike, the owner came out and he and I said,
• 16:59
  yeah. I said something like, I'm
• 17:01
  finally coming. I promised I would come.
• 17:03
  And he said, well, you've been here before.
• 17:05
  And Kyle was like, you've been here before.
• 17:06
  And I started laughing and I said, no, I haven't been here
• 17:09
  before. And they're like, yeah, you
• 17:10
  have. And I'm like, well, you know,
• 17:12
  maybe, maybe I had and I just didn't remember it.
• 17:14
  But I, I think I would remember you definitely.
• 17:17
  Remember, because it was always on your list of places to go, I
• 17:19
  think they probably just have seen you around town enough it's
• 17:22
  just assumed you had been there. Well, The funny thing.
• 17:25
  Is when I. I was outside and I went in and
• 17:29
  I got a beer and I went back out and I went in and got another
• 17:32
  beer and Mike looked at me when I came in and goes you know, he
• 17:35
  goes you're right about that He goes it wasn't here I actually
• 17:39
  ran into you at Predsfest and I said that's OK, man.
• 17:41
  I mean, you know, so many people and so much time.
• 17:44
  You only have so much time on your hands.
• 17:46
  So yeah, no worries. I'm.
• 17:47
  Glad you got over there because we, you know, we've talked about
• 17:49
  them before and I've been, and you've met Mike and I've met
• 17:52
  Mike and he's such a nice guy. He's such a nice, warm,
• 17:55
  welcoming guy from day one when we went in there when he first
• 17:59
  opened, and he's remembered us every time we've gone back and
• 18:01
  seen him out stuff. So expect to hear him on this
• 18:04
  podcast one day. We just got to we got to nail
• 18:06
  him down. Yeah, I know.
• 18:08
  He's fairly new to the to the brewery world and is trying to
• 18:11
  grow his business. And I know when I went there, I
• 18:14
  had a couple of beers. One of them, yeah.
• 18:16
  I feel like there was a conversation that we had a while
• 18:19
  back that you don't, at least I don't, I don't drink too many
• 18:23
  cream ales. And I'm not so sure how many
• 18:25
  cream ales you see on on a tap menu or when you go to
• 18:28
  breweries. Maybe it's a little unique to
• 18:31
  some, but you don't always see a lot of cream ales.
• 18:34
  And I saw one that he had. It was the Waveform Supernova.
• 18:37
  And I looked at that and I said, you know what, that sounds like
• 18:41
  a good idea. I am going to get the Waveform
• 18:44
  Supernova Cream Ale. Basically it's was with, you
• 18:50
  know, vanilla and cherry notes in it and I thought it was
• 18:53
  really good. I really I really enjoyed It's a
• 18:56
  good job Mike and also I had his pale ale called the Echo.
• 19:02
  So I thought those were two great beers and those were my
• 19:05
  starter beers at the Broadcast Brewing and he's doing good
• 19:09
  stuff over there and I can't wait to get back to Broadcast
• 19:12
  Brewing. He's got a Really.
• 19:13
  Good reputation in this town. Yeah.
• 19:15
  We're making good beer. Yeah.
• 19:17
  I think anybody that drinks craft beer in this town that
• 19:20
  knows anything about it knows that Mike makes good beer.
• 19:22
  Yeah. And.
• 19:23
  Certainly a great location because it's over near it's
• 19:26
  Yodis Park, which is for people that are not familiar with the
• 19:29
  Nashville area, it's a Major League Soccer stadium over
• 19:32
  there. And because you guys have gone
• 19:33
  over there a few times and just it's what blocks away, you can
• 19:36
  walk from broadcast brewing to everything we did.
• 19:39
  Yeah, I. Think the first time we went
• 19:41
  might have been around the game or maybe afterwards, but then
• 19:43
  we've we've been before Game 2 and then we've gone afterwards.
• 19:46
  We went in there one time. Stokes and I went in there one
• 19:48
  time. They were playing that singo.
• 19:49
  Yeah, I know you have to. It's bingo board, but they're
• 19:51
  they're playing songs and might. We're just standing there and he
• 19:54
  gives us both the board and they've been halfway through the
• 19:56
  game and he just said that was been played, that was the place.
• 19:58
  So he was helping us out on the boards.
• 19:59
  Yeah. It was a good time.
• 20:02
  We didn't win, but yeah, that's OK.
• 20:04
  But yeah, but he's a nice dude and nice guy and yeah.
• 20:08
  He'll be on here. Well, and it's good to.
• 20:10
  See a small brewery that you know, has only been around for
• 20:14
  about two years. It's good to see them doing
• 20:16
  well. And you know, I'm sure he'll
• 20:18
  have a lot more success going forward.
• 20:20
  My friend, I have not been there yet.
• 20:23
  There is another new brewery that just opened in Nashville.
• 20:27
  I know you went to the soft opening.
• 20:29
  I plan to get there soon. We are so excited for the guys.
• 20:34
  Ladies and gentlemen, it is Stoke House.
• 20:37
  Talk about them Scott, talk about your experience there.
• 20:40
  I think their official. Name is Stoke House Brewing and
• 20:43
  BBQ. Yes, and.
• 20:44
  It's. Awesome.
• 20:46
  And like you said, I went for the soft opening.
• 20:48
  It was last Thursday, August and dude, so they had 4 beers out
• 20:52
  already. They had an ESBA dark ale, a New
• 20:55
  England IPA and a West Coast IPA too.
• 20:57
  So you need to get over there and get that one.
• 20:59
  Yes, Sir. I will be and we know.
• 21:01
  So the owners are Chad and Mike from Tenfold and if anybody
• 21:05
  didn't know that, and if you know anything about Tenfold, if
• 21:07
  had Tenfold beer, you know how good that beer is.
• 21:10
  This beer is just as good, if not better like it is.
• 21:12
  It is, you know, it's those guys making it.
• 21:14
  So it's, it's it's their stuff. It is phenomenal.
• 21:18
  Yeah. Like, I don't think I gave
• 21:20
  anything less than a 4.3 over there for those.
• 21:23
  Yeah. And the one I love the most was
• 21:25
  one called, it was called Reserve.
• 21:26
  And it was a West Coast IPA to 4 1/2.
• 21:28
  I gave it at 7%. Man, it is stellar beer as you
• 21:32
  can imagine. Well, and the, and the, the cool
• 21:36
  thing is that like I said, I'm going to get there.
• 21:39
  I was actually hoping to get there because a couple days
• 21:41
  later, you know, I thought, I don't know if they're open yet
• 21:44
  on a Sunday, but I'll get to go to Main Street liquors anyways
• 21:47
  and get some West Coast Ipas. And they're right next to Main
• 21:52
  Street Liquors because they're in the old, the old Crazy Dome
• 21:54
  location. So I went down there on a whim
• 21:57
  thinking maybe they'll be open on a Sunday.
• 22:00
  They weren't yet. But you know, as we're as we're
• 22:02
  recording this now and this is going to be at least they're
• 22:05
  going to be open pretty much for full service hours.
• 22:08
  And so, you know, I'll be there. But yeah, we're so excited for
• 22:13
  them. Like I said, they're in their
• 22:14
  old crazy gnome location there and really talk about their
• 22:19
  space and how much they've changed it.
• 22:20
  Yeah. So first of.
• 22:21
  All so I mentioned the BBQ. Yes, they've got a food truck
• 22:25
  out outside, but it's their food truck.
• 22:28
  It's Stoke House food truck. It's not a guess one it's there.
• 22:30
  So that's basically their kitchen out there.
• 22:32
  I think Mike handles the food and Chad's handling the beer on
• 22:35
  the inside. But man, they've got brisket,
• 22:38
  pork ribs, you know, Mac and cheese at coleslaw, you know,
• 22:42
  everything that goes with BBQ. They had and it and it looked
• 22:46
  like the platters were coming out.
• 22:47
  Remember the old when you're in the lunchroom and you got your
• 22:49
  tray? Yeah, it was ever big as big as
• 22:52
  that. I mean, it was in a full tray.
• 22:54
  We just loaded with food when it would come out and it was just
• 22:57
  stellar and it smelled fantastic in there and space is really
• 23:00
  nice. They, you know, they got it
• 23:02
  decked out on their decor and their colors.
• 23:04
  You know, when you would walk in the door the the bar was pretty
• 23:06
  long. They actually shortened the end
• 23:07
  of the bar a little bit. And when I saw Grace in there,
• 23:11
  he said he wished his it was that way when he was there
• 23:14
  because they have a hard time getting a pallet through when
• 23:16
  they were trying to come through the front door and get a pallet
• 23:18
  through so they don't have a hard time.
• 23:19
  So they'd shorten that up. But anyway, it's pretty.
• 23:20
  It looks kind of the same, the bar layouts the same, the table
• 23:23
  seating, but the colors and stuff in there are different to
• 23:26
  theirs. And let me tell you, man,
• 23:27
  testament to this beer community in this area, the who's who of
• 23:32
  the craft beer world was there. Local craft beer world was there
• 23:35
  that night. Yeah, man, Carl Meyer from Black
• 23:38
  Abbey was there. Well, let me.
• 23:40
  Let me just say for that, that makes perfect sense, of course,
• 23:44
  because Chad got his start at Black Abbey under Carl with Carl
• 23:50
  and you know, then went on to tenfold and now is owning a
• 23:53
  brewery with Mike. So that that beer, that beer
• 23:58
  history tree, the craft beer history tree extends far and
• 24:02
  it's really, really such a fantastic thing to see.
• 24:04
  It is, man. And and you know, we saw Grayson
• 24:07
  Miller there who, like you said, that was the previous crazy
• 24:10
  gnome location. He's the supporting them there.
• 24:12
  He's there for the soft opening. Yes, Anthony Davis, East
• 24:15
  Nashville beer works. He was there.
• 24:17
  We saw Adam Smith from Music City Brew Hop.
• 24:21
  He was there. Good old Adam.
• 24:22
  Yeah, Yeah, Sean. From National Beer Geeks, I met
• 24:26
  the guy that owns Wanderlinger out of Chattanooga and he
• 24:29
  actually lives here, but to the the brewery is in Chattanooga.
• 24:33
  He was there, Nick from 10 Lakes out of Lebanon was there.
• 24:36
  So Adam for excuse me, Anna from Blackstone, yes, was there.
• 24:41
  So seeing people support each other in this industry in this
• 24:45
  city is amazing. I know we've talked about it
• 24:47
  before. Yeah.
• 24:49
  And here's another example of it, man, and people and look,
• 24:51
  and that was Thursday. I think there were more people
• 24:54
  there that went Friday that weren't there Thursday.
• 24:56
  I saw some pictures and some different faces from that I saw.
• 24:58
  So, man, we know Nashville pretty well and we know how
• 25:02
  supportive each other are in this in this city.
• 25:05
  I hope other cities do that to each other.
• 25:08
  And I don't know, we don't know them as as well.
• 25:10
  But man, if everyone's doing that in the craft beer
• 25:12
  community, it's it's lifting everybody up.
• 25:14
  And I hope other cities are doing it as well as Nashville's
• 25:16
  doing. Yeah, I hope so.
• 25:17
  Too. And you know, the the example
• 25:20
  that I bring about was when we recently had on Esoteric and
• 25:25
  Cincinnati and they have, you know, their owner has ties to
• 25:29
  Matt Tree. They were talking about the
• 25:31
  support that they get from Matt Tree Brewing up there.
• 25:34
  So it is really good to see because the beer community, it
• 25:38
  is a somewhat small community. It's a it's a tough business.
• 25:41
  It's not an easy business. But I'll tell you the thing that
• 25:44
  really, you know, as you said stood out for me was the fact
• 25:47
  that these are two guys that have been at it for quite some
• 25:50
  time. I know they're going to brew
• 25:52
  beer, good beer, and the space is great.
• 25:54
  And I love the fact that, as you said, the food options
• 25:57
  different, but it's not just sometimes you go to a brewery
• 26:00
  and it's just like, oh, OK, you know, you, I'll have your pizza
• 26:03
  or maybe maybe some other things.
• 26:05
  But it's different. And it also that's Nashville
• 26:08
  because that's what Nashville is about, the food options.
• 26:11
  It is, yeah. And it's it's a really good.
• 26:13
  And you know how Tenfold would pair their food with the beer?
• 26:16
  Yeah. Like if you look at the menu, it
• 26:18
  would say this pair is well with this beer.
• 26:20
  So I haven't seen a menu there yet.
• 26:22
  But they're going to pair their food with their beer.
• 26:24
  That's, you know, it's part of their game plan, I think.
• 26:26
  Yeah, but he can do it better than these guys.
• 26:28
  That's right. They do it very well and they're
• 26:31
  going to be fantastic. They already had to go cans in
• 26:34
  the cooler. You can already they get get to
• 26:36
  go stuff. They did.
• 26:37
  If anybody remembers, there was the outside area.
• 26:39
  They built a fence basically between the parking lot and then
• 26:43
  like the gym. And you probably saw it when you
• 26:45
  were there. So they got a fence built up.
• 26:47
  So it's more like a secluded kind of outdoor area.
• 26:50
  It's just just it's a little different.
• 26:51
  It's it's it's cool, but it's it's a wonderful spot and they
• 26:54
  maximize the space they got in there for sure.
• 26:56
  Yeah, they will do. Well, so they're going to do
• 26:58
  well. I think, I think the city is
• 27:00
  really excited as a whole for them to be open.
• 27:02
  Well, yeah. And anytime you get a new
• 27:05
  brewery that's going to open in Nashville in this and this time
• 27:09
  where we know it's not always easy, but I think these guys are
• 27:13
  going to do well and we start to look forward to seeing their
• 27:16
  progress down the road for sure in.
• 27:18
  Their official grand opening day, which this will have come
• 27:21
  out already, but it's August 16th.
• 27:23
  So by the time anybody hears this, they will be open
• 27:25
  officially. So you should be able to stop by
• 27:27
  and during their normal regular business hours, whatever those
• 27:30
  are going to be. So stop by.
• 27:33
  It have. To go back anyway, because I
• 27:35
  didn't get a sticker the first time.
• 27:36
  I was just so busy mingling with everybody and talking to
• 27:38
  everybody. I was like, oh, gives me a
• 27:40
  reason to go back. I know it.
• 27:41
  I'm. Going to be there too, so we'll
• 27:43
  probably have to hit the hit together and I'll coordinate a
• 27:46
  time to do that. Well, by the way, one more.
• 27:48
  Thing on that you know you know they had the big cooler door
• 27:50
  when you walk in the front door and had all those stickers on it
• 27:53
  yeah a good part of those are gone but guess what ours is
• 27:56
  still there yes there was there was something I don't know
• 27:58
  something removed a bunch of them in the middle but our
• 28:01
  sticker was still there so just just letting you know that we
• 28:03
  still exist out there awesome. Awesome.
• 28:06
  The Brewery Underground podcast. Follow us and look for a
• 28:08
  sticker. Look for a.
• 28:09
  Sticker everybody and look for a sticker.
• 28:12
  Hey, you know, you had mentioned because they were a tenfold for
• 28:14
  a number of years and they left tenfold and tenfold just
• 28:18
  announced just recently that they also have a new program.
• 28:21
  Yeah, we met. Him briefly at the Prince Beer
• 28:23
  Fest, if you remember yes, in that VIP section.
• 28:27
  We went back, he was there and and we had we had met him and
• 28:31
  that we spoke to him for a couple of minutes and I want to
• 28:33
  say I don't know that's AI think he told me that tenfold is in
• 28:35
  good hands. I think tenfold.
• 28:37
  Is in good hands and they brew a lot of good beer and you know, I
• 28:42
  it it would be hard to fail with the business model the tenfold
• 28:45
  has. So we're certainly looking
• 28:47
  forward also to seeing what else comes down the road for them.
• 28:50
  Yeah, for sure. It's a place we need to get back
• 28:53
  to soon too. It's hard to be in all these.
• 28:56
  Places at once, you know, we just can't be at all at once.
• 28:59
  But we were there not. Long ago for the Nashville
• 29:01
  Brewpass event. So you know make make sure that
• 29:05
  you follow our good friends at Nashville Brewpass.
• 29:07
  Nashville Brewpass. Yep, that's where we got our
• 29:10
  first stamp in the book too, by the way.
• 29:11
  Yeah, Bam. I think you were presented the
• 29:16
  book that day, weren't you? Didn't you get your book that
• 29:18
  day yet? Yes, I.
• 29:19
  Was, you know, in fact, hold on. I still have my book right here.
• 29:24
  I'm ready to get more stamps. OK, but what?
• 29:26
  You didn't do is followed my advice on our last intro or our
• 29:30
  our last ad. As far as keeping it in the car,
• 29:33
  I know. But I'm going to do it from now
• 29:34
  on. But I had it here for podcast
• 29:37
  purposes. That's why it's here today.
• 29:39
  That's fair. Very fair.
• 29:40
  OK, that's an easy catch. For me today, but all right,
• 29:43
  there's no, there's no one. Pulling over your eyes, is there
• 29:45
  no try? Not to try not to, you know,
• 29:48
  there seems to be and there also seems to be a lot going on also
• 29:52
  at another brewery in Nashville, and that would be bearded Irish.
• 29:56
  Yes, they. Officially, when I say
• 29:59
  officially, it's been made public that they've been bought
• 30:01
  by Wiseacre out of Memphis, TN. So I don't know, listening and
• 30:06
  and reading comments and things, it sounds like this was in the
• 30:10
  works for a long time. I don't know all the details,
• 30:13
  but we don't know what's going to happen in happen in town with
• 30:16
  their locations. I don't know that they were
• 30:18
  brewing here, brewing beer here in a while anyway, from what I
• 30:23
  read. But they're gonna have
• 30:24
  manufacturing here. Wiseacre is what they do with
• 30:26
  these spaces. I don't know.
• 30:28
  I haven't heard much. Yeah, we don't know.
• 30:30
  That yeah, they have two locations over in West Nashville
• 30:32
  and then the one over in Germantown.
• 30:36
  Yeah, Germantown, Germantown, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 30:38
  And the manufacturing I think is in Germantown, at least the
• 30:41
  tanks and stuff are all there so, well, it'd be interesting to
• 30:44
  see what they do with that. I didn't know why Zaker was kind
• 30:47
  kind of that big. Maybe they are, but they bought
• 30:49
  a good brand. It'll be interesting to see what
• 30:51
  they do with it. Yes, and don't.
• 30:53
  Get rid of Homestyle IPA please. It's one of my favorites.
• 30:57
  You can't. It's what?
• 30:57
  Made it's what made bearded iris yeah, I mean, if you.
• 31:00
  Really did if you think of bearded.
• 31:02
  Iris, you think of homestyle? Yeah.
• 31:04
  You really? Do surely they?
• 31:05
  Got to keep the brand alive. It's a good brand.
• 31:07
  Hopefully so and they've. Been they're one of the older
• 31:10
  breweries, you know, in Nashville and they've been doing
• 31:13
  good things for a number of years.
• 31:15
  Absolutely. It'd be interesting to see what
• 31:16
  they do and I don't know, maybe hopefully sooner than later so
• 31:19
  we can see what changes are coming, yeah.
• 31:21
  Absolutely. Well, there is something near
• 31:24
  and dear to my heart that's happening.
• 31:26
  At least it looks like it's happening soon.
• 31:28
  It's been announced on their website and I heard, I heard
• 31:31
  about it not long ago. Mr. Brews, you know, it's one of
• 31:35
  my favorite tap rooms in Murfreesboro.
• 31:37
  You go in there and they got a lot of great beer on tap.
• 31:40
  They got a lot of great food. You've been.
• 31:42
  I've been several times and of course I live South of
• 31:45
  Nashville, so it's a little more convenient for me to get there.
• 31:48
  They are going to be opening up a location in Smyrna in the old
• 31:54
  casual Pipe location and I am so happy about this because it's
• 31:59
  right. Not right right down the street
• 32:01
  from where I live. You know, one of the sad parts
• 32:04
  sometimes is that philosophies change or business plans change.
• 32:08
  And when the casual pint there in Smyrna had come about, it was
• 32:12
  servicing an area that needed it for a craft beer.
• 32:15
  And I just think over time, maybe a lot of things change
• 32:18
  with ownership. I think we had heard that the
• 32:20
  owner had actually moved away and was no longer living in
• 32:23
  town. And you could kind of tell that
• 32:25
  there were just a lot of different changes there that
• 32:28
  didn't help their business model.
• 32:30
  So Mr. Brews going in there is going to be, I think it's going
• 32:34
  to be perfect. It's a growing area anyway.
• 32:36
  I mean, they're, they're building so much up in the, in
• 32:39
  the Smyrna, TN area. Murfreesboro.
• 32:41
  I mean, I think Rutherford County where I live, I saw the
• 32:44
  other day is like the like the 5th part, 5th largest growing
• 32:48
  county in Tennessee. So come on.
• 32:51
  More breweries. You need to get here.
• 32:53
  Yeah. And you said it, man, Smyrna
• 32:56
  needs something and Laverne needs something and casual plant
• 32:59
  was good for a bit. Mr. Brews is going to be that,
• 33:02
  that place, Yeah. Look, I don't know how many taps
• 33:05
  they're going to have. I remember that Casual Point had
• 33:08
  a bunch. I mean, it had to be a couple
• 33:10
  dozen if they stick with that. So if you get a couple dozen
• 33:13
  taps in there and we know how good Mr. Bruce is in
• 33:15
  Murfreesboro with the selection they've got.
• 33:16
  So yeah, if it's half as good, it's they can clean up in that
• 33:21
  town. There's nothing else there for
• 33:23
  craft beer. And it's my understanding too, I
• 33:26
  think that they are going to serve food there.
• 33:28
  So that'll be a a good thing. It's so funny.
• 33:31
  The other day I saw somebody post that they, they were at Mr.
• 33:34
  Brews and Murfreesboro and they were excited because they had
• 33:38
  the PB and J Zool on tap there. And I kind of laughed because I
• 33:42
  think they've had it on tap from about the past year.
• 33:44
  Every time I go in there, it's it's usually on tap.
• 33:46
  There's, you know, they they are, they are certainly on the
• 33:49
  Zool train like so many others are for sure it'll.
• 33:51
  Be it'd be interesting to see what other stuff they get in
• 33:54
  there and what they what they keep.
• 33:55
  But that is a place because they change and have such a selection
• 33:59
  at Mr. Bruce. You could go in every day or
• 34:01
  every other day and find new stuff.
• 34:03
  So that's what I'm excited about because maybe we could go as
• 34:06
  regular as we used to go to Casual Pint.
• 34:08
  Yes, another. Reason to come to Rutherford
• 34:10
  County, I know. Battle the traffic, yes.
• 34:15
  Depends on what time you're going, depends on how good the
• 34:18
  traffic is or bad. I know that's.
• 34:19
  How I am, you know, I'm that way during the week.
• 34:21
  When it comes to Nashville, you know, they're the the closest
• 34:25
  brewery to Nashville to me is a tailgate down there and Tanger
• 34:29
  Outlets. Beyond that, it's like, OK, how
• 34:31
  much traffic do I want to sit on an I-24 just to get to a
• 34:35
  brewery? I could sit at my house and
• 34:37
  drink some of this beer. That's right, You got enough.
• 34:39
  Of it, that's for sure. I have enough of it.
• 34:42
  Another one that we heard about a few months ago, and I don't
• 34:46
  know too much about this place yet.
• 34:48
  It is a concept, it's called Smack Dab Brewing that's
• 34:52
  supposed to be opening in Murfreesboro at some point.
• 34:55
  And I don't have details of when they're opening.
• 34:58
  But from what I understand, from what I've read, there's a couple
• 35:02
  of owners, Jeff Bellamy, Brett Fagan, and I think his name is
• 35:05
  Noel, Noel Robbins or Noel Robbins.
• 35:09
  They're going to be opening up a microbrewery and a taproom
• 35:12
  concept basically right around, I think it's near the courthouse
• 35:16
  square area, that little square. Yep, that's what I saw in
• 35:19
  Murfreesboro. And again, Murfreesboro is
• 35:22
  another area that I I think they need more.
• 35:25
  They do. We've lost a couple and to see
• 35:27
  one come back, it's like, OK, let's let's bring a couple back.
• 35:31
  Yeah, I'm excited about that one too.
• 35:32
  I think they're home Brewers, or at least a couple of them were
• 35:34
  home Brewers and then they've, they found a location down there
• 35:38
  and they're making it happen. So we're, we're excited about
• 35:41
  that. Anytime we can open a new
• 35:42
  brewery, man, let's go. Let's go check them out and
• 35:44
  let's, let's, let's get the more the merrier.
• 35:47
  Yeah, exactly. You know, I, it was funny
• 35:49
  because not long ago I ended up, I was at Cedar Glade in
• 35:53
  Murfreesboro. I walked in there and I had a
• 35:56
  round. In fact, it was so funny.
• 35:57
  This was before the Speedway Classic and I was sitting there
• 36:00
  talking to somebody and then there was a young couple that
• 36:03
  was sitting there too. They were going to the Speedway
• 36:06
  Classic. Didn't run into them because
• 36:08
  there were thousands, thousands of people there that I'll talk
• 36:11
  about in a few minutes. But always love getting to Cedar
• 36:14
  Glade in Murfreesboro as well. And I got to get I got to get
• 36:17
  back there and Middle Ground Brewing, which is another great
• 36:20
  place. And there's a tailgate location.
• 36:23
  And of course, we can't forget our friends of Deep South
• 36:25
  growlers that also have, of course, we always.
• 36:27
  Hit them when we're there. You know what, I haven't made a
• 36:31
  trip up that way in a while. Let's plan on that in the next
• 36:33
  couple few weeks and get up there and I'll go your direction
• 36:37
  for a change. Yeah, the Southern.
• 36:39
  Loop. Absolutely, which I enjoy.
• 36:41
  We always, we have a good time when we do that.
• 36:42
  So hey, you know, so National Brew Pass just had another event
• 36:46
  recently that I went to yes and I'll talk about it real quick.
• 36:49
  It was back on August 4th and their event was at Black Abbey.
• 36:52
  We had mentioned it on an ad and I think on a promo or something
• 36:56
  and on Instagram. But anyway, I stopped by there
• 36:58
  for the for the free flight and it was awesome.
• 37:01
  You got 3 beers and one of them was brand new to me like I like
• 37:05
  they've given you really good stuff.
• 37:07
  And then so I go to get my my brew pass stamped and he goes,
• 37:11
  well, hang on. Once you order your next one,
• 37:13
  we'll stamp it because it's buy one get one free on top of that.
• 37:16
  So when you get your first stamp, you get a free beer after
• 37:20
  that. So I love it.
• 37:21
  Yes, I got a free flight. I bought 1 beer and got another
• 37:24
  free beer of anyone on the board that I wanted.
• 37:26
  So it was fantastic, wonderful. Turn out the place was was busy
• 37:31
  and I got there right at when the what about when they opened?
• 37:33
  We saw our buddy Robert Spivey, who we see everywhere.
• 37:36
  Yes. And they just when I got done,
• 37:40
  they people were just still coming in.
• 37:41
  So just a great event. Cool spot.
• 37:44
  I've been to two of the three so far and I hope the National Brew
• 37:47
  Pass keeps doing these because they're really cool events.
• 37:50
  Yeah, bringing people. Together in the beer community
• 37:52
  and we love it. Yeah, yeah, it's.
• 37:54
  Cool. And it look, I mean it's free
• 37:55
  beer, man. And you don't even now we want
• 37:58
  everybody to get the National Brew Pass, but you don't even
• 38:00
  have to have it for the event. All you do is register ahead of
• 38:03
  time. That's all you do.
• 38:05
  And you show up and you get your beer.
• 38:07
  And if you if you have 1, you get it stamped and you get
• 38:09
  another one. So anyway, extremely simple.
• 38:11
  Yeah, so there's a Really. Cool event to go to so hopefully
• 38:14
  they keep coming out with these monthly so hey, and one more
• 38:17
  thing before you get into your your story, yeah, your baseball
• 38:20
  story. You know how Spotify, sometimes
• 38:23
  we get on there and we like to check our audience and it's fun
• 38:26
  to see like who's listening from different countries?
• 38:28
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 38:29
  So just real quick, what our show right now is 97.9% of our
• 38:34
  audiences in the US. We got .4% Russia, .4% in
• 38:38
  Norway, .2% in the UK and .2% in Australia.
• 38:42
  And I put a little post out the other day taking a picture
• 38:44
  screenshot of that and saying something about it.
• 38:47
  But the reason I mention it is because last week I got Adm on
• 38:51
  Instagram and it was from a guy named JT and his Instagram
• 38:55
  handles JT Crafty at Under Score Craft Beer and Crafty is with A
• 39:01
  and he's from Brisbane, Australia.
• 39:03
  And he was driving down the road and he was listening to our
• 39:06
  podcast. Well, thank you.
• 39:07
  And cheers, Sir. Hi mate, Cheers.
• 39:10
  Yes. He took a picture of the
• 39:12
  navigation he took a picture of the screenshot where he's
• 39:15
  listening to us all the way in real time from Australia and I
• 39:18
  thought that was the coolest damn thing.
• 39:20
  So the reason I mentioned the the stats earlier is because
• 39:23
  it's like hey man that's actually those maybe those
• 39:25
  numbers are real in some way point 2% whatever that equates
• 39:29
  to but somebody really is out there listening maybe in other
• 39:32
  parts of the world. So just thought it was cool.
• 39:34
  Cheers shout out to JT Thanks man.
• 39:37
  We appreciate you and anybody else out there out there is
• 39:40
  listening That's right. And if.
• 39:41
  You are listening again from Antarctica.
• 39:44
  Yeah, let us know. It's going to pop up.
• 39:46
  One day, I just know it. One of these days.
• 39:49
  Somebody who's listening from Antarctica, I'm going to fly.
• 39:52
  To Antarctica and listen, just so we can get that stat.
• 39:55
  Yeah, I don't know if it'd even a register, but.
• 39:58
  My gosh, it'll make it happen. So that's funny.
• 40:01
  Well, I'm, I'm going to talk about my trip here in a couple
• 40:04
  of minutes to East Tennessee. Also, you know, we are basically
• 40:08
  now in Oktoberfest season. And I got a bit of an early
• 40:13
  start. Meanwhile, it's August. 13th But
• 40:15
  you're not wrong, I know. I got a bit of an early start.
• 40:18
  I've drank a couple of Oktoberfest beers, drank one on
• 40:21
  the Hop and Frog Podcast, their Oktoberfest, which by the way
• 40:26
  was a fantastic two-part episode.
• 40:29
  People, if you're listening to this and you haven't listened to
• 40:32
  the Hop and Frog Podcast and Akron, because we went up there
• 40:35
  a few months ago and we had a couple of those guys on there.
• 40:39
  They were absolutely fans, damn tastic, and they were very
• 40:43
  passionate about what they do. And that that is, it's a
• 40:46
  championship podcast right there.
• 40:48
  It really is. I've been editing this week and
• 40:51
  man, I can't get enough of it. I'm excited for people to listen
• 40:54
  to it. Those guys were awesome.
• 40:56
  Yes, very. Very awesome.
• 40:58
  So I had an Oktoberfest beer so far from them.
• 41:02
  And I also had an Oktoberfest beer when I went to Johnson City
• 41:06
  Brewing that I'll talk about in a second.
• 41:07
  But you've had some Oktoberfest already, right?
• 41:09
  Yeah. So.
• 41:10
  The first one what I had this year was on July 5th, so 4th of
• 41:15
  July weekend, I was over at Chris Finn's house and you and
• 41:18
  you say, well, how did you get an Oktoberfest that early?
• 41:21
  Well, you know, our friend Calvin, he stashes, he'll buy
• 41:24
  cases of the Sam Adams Oktoberfest at the end of the
• 41:26
  season so that they'll last him until the next season.
• 41:29
  Well, he was, he was getting close.
• 41:31
  So he's got to start drinking these old ones from last year.
• 41:33
  So the one I drank on July 5th was from last season's batch, if
• 41:37
  you will. But I was like, all right, so
• 41:39
  that was the first one I had this year, this season.
• 41:43
  But then, yeah, Deep South Growler had one.
• 41:45
  I was over there a few weeks ago and they had one called Leader
• 41:47
  Hosen, Leader Hosen, Leader Hosen by Cigar City.
• 41:51
  So that was probably my first official for this season.
• 41:55
  Oktoberfest. And it was a Marcin man and it
• 41:57
  was really good. And then since then I've had
• 42:00
  many National Brewing Company fest beers and not a lot of
• 42:04
  assortment. I have not bought gone out and
• 42:05
  bought a bunch yet to bring home, but that's that's coming.
• 42:09
  I mean, it's it's it's here and then.
• 42:11
  I, I also want to make mention because we have talked about it
• 42:14
  so much on this podcast about all the PB and J beers that are
• 42:18
  still out there, the new ones that are coming about.
• 42:21
  You know, I had a recent one from our friends at Tailgate
• 42:25
  Brewery. Actually, you were there.
• 42:27
  You were there. I.
• 42:28
  Witnessed it. Yes, the.
• 42:30
  PB and J on crusties sour snack and that one was that was a sour
• 42:35
  fruited from tailgate. That one.
• 42:37
  It was pretty good. I had one from common John that
• 42:41
  was also a a pretty decent one as well.
• 42:43
  I had that from Mr. Brews and then well, I guess I got to get
• 42:47
  into my trip. Here we go.
• 42:49
  I'm. Going to buckle in.
• 42:52
  Got it. Got to.
• 42:52
  Get into the trip. So it took a recent road trip to
• 42:56
  East Tennessee and my first stop now though the whole trip was
• 42:59
  supposed to be going to the Speedway Classic in Bristol, TN
• 43:03
  to see the Reds play the Atlanta Braves.
• 43:05
  But on the way, my first trip, my first time ever.
• 43:08
  You had been before I had to stop at the world famous.
• 43:13
  You have to. And so of course.
• 43:15
  It did not disappoint. Yeah, I got there on a Thursday
• 43:18
  afternoon. I can tell you it was about 110°
• 43:22
  outside when I got there. Yeah, that's.
• 43:25
  About right in the in the. Middle of summer.
• 43:27
  I mean, I, I just remember getting there and thinking I've
• 43:29
  been driving for a few hours and and this is going to be a
• 43:32
  perfect spot to get some beer. Not a lot of heavy beer because
• 43:36
  I'm driving. And now it's also time for
• 43:38
  lunch. And thank God they had some food
• 43:40
  there. But yeah, so when I did get
• 43:42
  there, I remember you were you were leading up to a couple days
• 43:46
  beforehand, you kept saying, you know, you're about to have your
• 43:50
  thousandth check in of a beer on Untapped.
• 43:53
  I think I was more excited. About it than you were.
• 43:55
  Well, you love stats. I love stats, yeah.
• 43:57
  Yeah, well, I know the thousand the 1000 is a is a pretty good
• 44:01
  number. So I was excited for you
• 44:03
  comparatively. By your standards and many
• 44:05
  others, it's not that high. But you know what?
• 44:08
  It's a high number. I guess it's a high.
• 44:09
  Number and it's yes, yeah, it's a high number.
• 44:12
  So it's it should be applauded. OK, well, thank.
• 44:15
  You thank you for applauding everybody but no I planned it.
• 44:18
  I said all right I got to make it special.
• 44:20
  So I went there. I got a flight and I made sure
• 44:23
  that my thousandth check in was the PB and J mixtape strawberry
• 44:29
  from Seoul. That's amazing and ladies and
• 44:32
  gentlemen, it did not disappoint.
• 44:35
  It did not. It did not disappoint I believe.
• 44:38
  Let me let me take a a quick look.
• 44:40
  I'm pretty sure though I know what I rated it on the old
• 44:43
  untapped app. I rated it a four, a 4.504
• 44:47
  point. 5 on on tap that is. Stellar.
• 44:49
  That. Is high territory.
• 44:51
  That is high territory, yeah. There aren't many.
• 44:54
  That get up in that range are there, yeah.
• 44:56
  I've had a few this year, I've had a few this year.
• 44:59
  You're drinking good beer. I'm drinking good beer.
• 45:02
  Ironically, a lot of them have been from Zool.
• 45:04
  Well, we're seeing a. Little bit more here, right?
• 45:07
  A little bit dribs and grabs here and then you getting there
• 45:10
  obviously helps that too. I think so, yeah, but it was a
• 45:15
  it was a good time, you know, got a flight from there and that
• 45:18
  was the only mixtape that I got that day because, you know, I
• 45:21
  was like, you know, we've talked about this before and I can't
• 45:24
  say if the strawberry would have been one that that some of you
• 45:28
  go. I only would want this on a
• 45:30
  flight. It's a little bit too sweet.
• 45:32
  A flight is fine. Maybe I would I would probably
• 45:35
  take that one in a 16 ounce pour, you know, 16 ounce can.
• 45:38
  I think that was pretty good. Look, you're.
• 45:40
  Running through the flavors aren't You've had.
• 45:43
  Yeah, right. You've had the regular, which I
• 45:45
  think is great. You've had strawberry, you had
• 45:48
  blueberry, you had blueberry last year.
• 45:50
  You're running through them all. You've had Peach.
• 45:52
  And I haven't even had Peach yet.
• 45:54
  Yeah, I know. Well, I also have to make
• 45:57
  mention, you know, in all fairness, it wasn't just that
• 46:00
  what I got on a flight. I got their Mexican lager, which
• 46:03
  I also liked and I was I got their American lager.
• 46:07
  It was couch time, which was pretty good and in New England
• 46:10
  crazy IPA small vices. So I really mixed it up that day
• 46:16
  on on my flight when I went to zoo and I really enjoyed my trip
• 46:19
  there. I don't remember.
• 46:21
  Did you take a picture? I'm sure you did, of the flight?
• 46:23
  I did, yeah. Probably a lot of color.
• 46:25
  Variation in there, right there was, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 46:28
  It has to be really good at that, by the way, especially and
• 46:31
  with what you described, like there's got to be some color
• 46:33
  variation in there. Yeah.
• 46:35
  And. And I got to say, I know at the
• 46:37
  end of the year when we rank our top 10 breweries new, the reason
• 46:41
  we've visited so far this year, I have a feeling that Sewell
• 46:44
  will probably be high up on that list.
• 46:46
  Yeah. Yeah, and not to not to throw
• 46:48
  out any rumors, but good chance we might see some more of it in
• 46:51
  town soon. You never know, never know.
• 46:55
  OK, we'll see what happens there.
• 46:56
  Yeah, you never. Know, but yeah, I brought yes
• 46:59
  and you brought me. Some back, which I appreciate.
• 47:01
  You brought me back tiny umbrellas.
• 47:03
  And that Betty, that Peach cobbler, The Betty's.
• 47:06
  Peach cobbler, yes, which I just had.
• 47:10
  I also ranked that at 4.50. That is, that is.
• 47:13
  Is really good. It's really sweet.
• 47:14
  It is really good on untapped. And as you talk about, you also
• 47:18
  had talked about a couple of the others that that I brought back
• 47:22
  to it's all good stuff from Zool and an observation from Zool.
• 47:26
  First off, some of the most friendliest people visiting that
• 47:30
  that that that I've ever been around at a brewery.
• 47:33
  Now most people, the breweries are all cool and everybody is
• 47:36
  just cheery to be there and everything else.
• 47:38
  And I had my shirt on representing.
• 47:40
  So that caught it had to be nice to.
• 47:41
  You talk about them if they. Yeah, you.
• 47:43
  Know yeah there were some nice people there and but but but I
• 47:47
  think I told you this observation that I had is I
• 47:50
  don't remember going to a brewery before where you saw
• 47:54
  people that had boxes sitting in front of them a beer ready to go
• 47:58
  like they you know they sell a lot of good beer at Seoul and I
• 48:02
  saw at least seven or eight people there had their boxes
• 48:05
  loaded up already and they're ready to take off with them as
• 48:08
  soon as they're gone and I'm like this place really really
• 48:11
  doesn't upgrade yes. Yeah, that, that is the ideal
• 48:15
  place for for that. You go in, you take everything
• 48:17
  they have in the cooler and you take it home with you wherever
• 48:19
  home might be. That's right.
• 48:21
  That's right. So I'm guessing a lot of those.
• 48:23
  People aren't from that area, just like, you know, when we go
• 48:26
  through there, it's like I got to get stuff to take home
• 48:28
  because I don't live here. Yeah, that's true.
• 48:29
  I mean, there were, there were a couple of people, there was a
• 48:33
  gentleman that the two guys that were sitting there, I actually
• 48:36
  asked them to take my picture in front of the Zool sign and they
• 48:40
  were from there. They say they didn't, they
• 48:41
  didn't get to breweries too often, but they love Zool.
• 48:44
  And then there was a, there was another couple who kind of
• 48:48
  talked my ear off for a few minutes.
• 48:49
  I, I wish I could remember their names.
• 48:51
  They said they were going to listen to their, to this
• 48:53
  podcast. So if they did shout out to you
• 48:55
  guys, I think they were from somewhere over towards the East
• 48:58
  Coast, but they were talking about the Nashville breweries
• 49:01
  and they've been to Nashville and they were asking me about
• 49:04
  recommendations as well. So really for me, what was a was
• 49:08
  going to be kind of a quick trip about an hour, maybe 45 minutes
• 49:11
  to an hour. It turned into about an hour and
• 49:13
  a half. But man, I enjoyed it and I
• 49:15
  loved every minute of it. Good.
• 49:16
  Another one was. Brewery experiences, right?
• 49:18
  Yeah. Oh, definitely.
• 49:20
  Definitely. We always loved the brewery
• 49:21
  experiences. So that was, yeah.
• 49:24
  So that was my field trip to Zool.
• 49:27
  To Zool. Man, another one you checked off
• 49:30
  the list and that was like you said, that was high on the list,
• 49:33
  very high on the. List.
• 49:35
  You know they damn. Locations in Knoxville, and I've
• 49:37
  never been to the other one. Hardin Valley, I've not been
• 49:39
  there. I always go to that downtown one
• 49:41
  that you went to. Yeah, yeah.
• 49:42
  So very glad to have gotten a Zool, and certainly I'm sure
• 49:47
  I'll be back there soon. But from Zool I was on to East
• 49:51
  Tennessee, way over to East Tennessee.
• 49:53
  Kept going. Kept.
• 49:54
  Going east, going well. There was, there was some plans
• 49:57
  on this day because I was going to meet up with some friends the
• 50:00
  next day. You know, we had an Airbnb and
• 50:02
  we were going to go do some things.
• 50:04
  But I, I had to spend the night in Johnson City, TN and I'd only
• 50:09
  been in that area once in my life.
• 50:12
  And so I planned it out. I wanted to go to Johnson City
• 50:15
  Brewing, the home of our good friend Eric Latham.
• 50:18
  Eric Latham. Yeah, the man who wears 1000
• 50:22
  hats and does 1000 things. And when he comes back on here
• 50:25
  again, we're going to talk to him about all those things.
• 50:27
  We are. We're.
• 50:28
  Going to talk to him all about it.
• 50:30
  But yeah, I didn't get a chance to see Eric.
• 50:32
  Now they've got a couple locations in Johnson City.
• 50:35
  There's one, the one that I went to in the downtown area.
• 50:38
  It's my understanding he's not in there as often as maybe as
• 50:42
  their other location and he's off doing a lot of other things
• 50:44
  as well. But it was cool going into their
• 50:47
  their, their downtown location. And it reminded me like a of a
• 50:51
  little cheers bar. There were so many friendly
• 50:53
  people in there. And The funny thing is there
• 50:55
  were some locals in there, but they're also people in there
• 50:59
  that were ready. They were there already, like I
• 51:01
  was getting ready for the baseball game, you know, that
• 51:04
  weekend that I got a chance to talk to you for a while and, you
• 51:08
  know, have a lot of share a lot of good stories with and drink a
• 51:11
  lot of great beer. Yeah.
• 51:13
  Yeah, he'd been in there. And I think I'd said this
• 51:15
  somewhere along the way that I'd forgotten I had been there to
• 51:19
  that location. And at some point I was like,
• 51:21
  oh, wait, I have been there at one time.
• 51:23
  So. And then I remembered it's a
• 51:24
  cool little spot in there. Yeah.
• 51:26
  Yeah. Yeah, it sure is.
• 51:28
  And we have to thank Eric because he gave us some beer
• 51:31
  while we were there. In fact, I texted him and I was
• 51:34
  like, hey, Eric, I'm at your room here.
• 51:36
  And I didn't think he was going to be in town.
• 51:38
  And then as I was leaving, the guy behind the bar so, well,
• 51:41
  Eric just called me and said, give that guy some beer.
• 51:44
  And I'm like, well, OK, all right.
• 51:47
  So and you gave me some too, so thank you.
• 51:50
  Got some? Beer.
• 51:51
  I got some beer. Thank you Eric for the.
• 51:53
  Beer. Yeah.
• 51:54
  Thank you very much. Yeah, I had some good beer from
• 51:57
  there. Had their Sea Salt Lime Lager
• 52:00
  also. We talked about Oktoberfest and
• 52:03
  I think we're going to get them on soon.
• 52:04
  They do a lot of different variations of Oktoberfest.
• 52:07
  Here's one I would have not have thought of in a combination.
• 52:11
  Butterscotch Oktoberfest. What a combination.
• 52:14
  I like the sound. Of it, yeah.
• 52:17
  What a combination. It was good, you know.
• 52:19
  It did not take away from what you would expect in Oktoberfest,
• 52:23
  when Oktoberfest beer would taste like, like, and you could
• 52:26
  taste the, or you could taste the butterscotch, but it wasn't,
• 52:30
  it wasn't like overpowering where it took over the beer.
• 52:33
  It was just right. And so, yeah, it was really
• 52:36
  enjoyable to drink that so that that.
• 52:38
  Would lend itself if it wasn't 100° outside to like a nice fall
• 52:42
  beer too, right? Yeah, I would think.
• 52:44
  Yeah, Sounds really good. Yeah.
• 52:47
  And. They've got some other
• 52:48
  variations, I know, and hopefully we'll be talking to
• 52:51
  him about that, of some other variations of some Oktoberfest
• 52:55
  beer. So I had the, I had a few of
• 52:57
  those and then that night I wanted to hit a couple of the
• 53:01
  other local places because I, you know, I'm like, I don't know
• 53:04
  when I'm going to make it back in the Johnson City or, you
• 53:07
  know, that area of Tennessee. So I went to a place called the
• 53:10
  Tennessee Hills, Bruce Tillery and I had a Mexican lager there
• 53:15
  and it wasn't too bad. I was not misled that night, but
• 53:19
  I thought they had some food there too.
• 53:21
  So I was like, I'm on my way. It's time to eat some food.
• 53:24
  You know how I get some time where I'm like, OK, get a little
• 53:27
  hungry. Got to top it off with a little
• 53:29
  food. That's right.
• 53:30
  Nice balance, a little balance. But went in there and, you know,
• 53:35
  broke bread with those folks had a Mexican lager and then that
• 53:39
  was that was pretty good as well.
• 53:41
  So and then I went to a place called Great Oak Brewing and I
• 53:44
  had a brew in there and had some food and it was kind of cool
• 53:48
  because they had a a sign outside that said welcome
• 53:50
  baseball fan. So it was like, yes, I'm in the
• 53:52
  right place. Yes.
• 53:53
  Can I? Tell you something funny, I was
• 53:55
  updating our map yesterday that ties to our website about all
• 53:58
  the places we've been. Yeah.
• 54:00
  And I was typing that in for you and I realized it was already on
• 54:04
  the list. I had been.
• 54:05
  I saw that. Yeah, I didn't know.
• 54:07
  That but but now thinking back, it was the same night I had been
• 54:11
  to Johnson City because again, it was every time I've ever was
• 54:13
  in Johnson City and I get bang, bang.
• 54:16
  And when I saw like, wait, I actually remember this place
• 54:18
  now. But until you had it on the
• 54:20
  list, I would never thought anything about it.
• 54:22
  Yeah, well, when I was. Going to the list and I was
• 54:23
  updating it and I was going to add a tab for that.
• 54:26
  Scott's already been here, so it beat me to it.
• 54:28
  I didn't. Realize it until I tried to put
• 54:30
  it on the map and it was already there.
• 54:32
  Yeah. So that was cool.
• 54:34
  Nice place. Though, nice place.
• 54:35
  So, yeah. So that was that was a quick,
• 54:37
  that was a quick night there in Johnson City doing that thing.
• 54:41
  And then the next day, you know, I was going to meet up with my
• 54:45
  my friends. I had some friends coming up
• 54:47
  from Atlanta. We had an Airbnb, but there was
• 54:50
  one other brewery I was going to try to get to before they came,
• 54:55
  which was going to be later in the day.
• 54:56
  And I was. Did you race on?
• 54:58
  Over to it, I raced on. Over I just tried to beat you.
• 55:01
  At the point I didn't even think.
• 55:02
  About that. But yes, yes, I went in.
• 55:06
  I went in turn 2 or whatever, whatever, whatever NASCAR
• 55:09
  reference I'm trying to come up with.
• 55:11
  I'm not much of A NASCAR guy, but I got out of my lane and
• 55:16
  yeah, you're getting. There, you're getting there.
• 55:18
  Yeah, I'm crashing and. Burning on this, we're finding
• 55:21
  it. Here we go.
• 55:22
  Here we go. I did a little research about
• 55:24
  the breweries in the area and I thought, OK, I may not get back
• 55:28
  here for a while. I'd only been in Bristol, TN
• 55:31
  once in my life, and that was 25 years ago.
• 55:33
  So it's like, what are the odds I'm coming back?
• 55:35
  Maybe not great. You got to hit a brewery.
• 55:38
  So Michael Waltrip, we all know in Nashville who Daryl Waltrip
• 55:42
  is. You know, he's he's a former
• 55:44
  NASCAR winner. Michael Waltrip is also a NASCAR
• 55:48
  driver and winner of the Daytona 500.
• 55:50
  That I know, that I know. So I got up, I got up the one
• 55:55
  morning on that Friday morning and I thought, you know what,
• 55:59
  They open at 11:00. I know because the baseball game
• 56:02
  is the next day. But I know Bristol is not the
• 56:05
  largest area in the world. This place is probably going to
• 56:07
  get hopping quick. So I was the first one in there
• 56:10
  at 11:15, sat down, got my flight, and as I'm sitting in
• 56:15
  there, it was the funniest thing that happened.
• 56:16
  I had sent you and the hill tappers a picture and you guys
• 56:20
  said, is that? Yeah, I said yes, it is.
• 56:23
  As I was sitting in there, I'm drinking my flight and two
• 56:26
  Bristol police officers come and they're sitting behind me at a
• 56:29
  table. And I'm like, not often do you
• 56:31
  see police officers sitting at a brewery.
• 56:34
  This is kind of. Interesting.
• 56:35
  No, they were not drinking beer. They were on duty.
• 56:38
  And no, I don't, I don't think I know they weren't drinking beer.
• 56:41
  They were. They had, I think they'd ordered
• 56:43
  Cokes or water and they were eating some food.
• 56:45
  But I just sort of laughed because I took a picture.
• 56:48
  And then you guys are like, there's police officers standing
• 56:50
  behind you. And I'm like, yeah, that is the
• 56:52
  patch. On their arm was pretty, pretty
• 56:54
  prevalent and I think it was made, she said.
• 56:58
  Is are those cops? Yeah.
• 57:00
  Are those police officers? So yeah, it was, it was, it was
• 57:03
  pretty funny. So you started drinking?
• 57:05
  Slowly, at that point, a little slower.
• 57:08
  Yeah, not that, not that I really had anything hard, you
• 57:11
  know, any hard liquor or any hard beer there anyway.
• 57:15
  I mean, I basically had, it was the Talladega Light, the Bristol
• 57:18
  Sunshine Tangerine Ale, a Peach ale.
• 57:21
  And then I also had a West Coast IPA there, which was actually my
• 57:25
  favorite beer on the flight. The Slide Job, West Coast IPA
• 57:30
  for Michael Waltrip Brewing, scored a four on the old
• 57:33
  unhappy. All right, Yeah, that's cool.
• 57:37
  Yeah, so. I stuck around maybe a little
• 57:39
  bit longer. Let them.
• 57:40
  Leave. Yeah, I had.
• 57:42
  Some food, Let them. Get the hell out of there, drank
• 57:45
  some. Water, you know, no, I was
• 57:48
  perfectly fine, but I just thought, OK, you know, I'll
• 57:51
  just, I'll stick around another 45 minutes and then chat with
• 57:54
  some of the locals and got to talk to a guy that was from
• 57:57
  Colorado that was talking to me about the Colorado beer scene,
• 58:01
  which we all know is fantastic. So that was really good.
• 58:04
  Yeah, that's cool. That's.
• 58:05
  Awesome. Yeah, just racking up beer
• 58:07
  stories everywhere and brewery stores everywhere.
• 58:09
  It's going on. It's going on.
• 58:11
  Well, The funny thing is I ended up back at Johnson City Brewing
• 58:14
  later that afternoon, and I ran into some Reds fans who are from
• 58:18
  the West side of town where I'm from, and we're talking about
• 58:21
  they were in town for the Reds game.
• 58:22
  We're talking about some of their favorite breweries in
• 58:24
  Cincinnati, like, oh, I don't know, Listerman, I think we've
• 58:27
  been. So, yeah, that was, yeah, that
• 58:30
  was a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun.
• 58:32
  You're both. You're always speaking the
• 58:33
  language. I'm sure we were, yeah.
• 58:35
  We were so totally, yeah. So that kind of that kind of
• 58:39
  capped off my my brewery experience there.
• 58:42
  So then we packed a lot in in. Those couple days before the
• 58:45
  baseball game and thankfully so, if I may say, yeah, yes.
• 58:51
  I'm not going to. Tell you a story, but well.
• 58:54
  You've heard it already, and I'm not going to.
• 58:56
  I'm not going to bore everybody with every solid detail of this
• 58:59
  story, but no. But actually but.
• 59:01
  Yeah, but give details because there was a lot of, there was a
• 59:03
  lot of stuff on social media. There are a lot of, I don't say
• 59:06
  rumors, but a lot of stuff floating around like was it
• 59:08
  good, was it bad, this and that. So tell us from your experience
• 59:12
  first hand all about it. I can confirm.
• 59:16
  Some of it, yeah. First hand.
• 59:17
  First hand. Well, so First off, I want to
• 59:20
  say this. And so the group of friends that
• 59:22
  I went with, I have a friend of mine.
• 59:23
  She lives in Atlanta. She and I have known each other
• 59:26
  like, 25 years, you know, back in our Nashville days.
• 59:29
  And she came up, she's a Braves fan, I'm a Reds fan.
• 59:32
  We've gone to games together. Her boyfriend came up, too, and
• 59:35
  then another friend of theirs from Frankfort, KY, and he's a
• 59:38
  Reds fan. So because we knew there were
• 59:41
  going to be challenges in this area because it is rural, you
• 59:44
  know, this from Nashville, when there's a big event, the hotels
• 59:47
  Jack up the rates. You could not find a hotel
• 59:50
  anywhere near the area. They were charging, you know,
• 59:53
  400 bucks a night for this, for this event, for this Speedway
• 59:57
  classic game. Which were they?
• 59:59
  They were they were expecting like 85,000 people there.
• 1:00:02
  So we got an Airbnb in a very rural area of Tennessee, a
• 1:00:07
  beautiful area. And I'm not even joking when I
• 1:00:09
  say this. It was very beautiful.
• 1:00:11
  Not much around there, but it was very beautiful.
• 1:00:13
  Called Limestone, Tennessee, but it's about a 40, about a 40
• 1:00:17
  minute drive from Bristol. So it's a bit of a haul, so.
• 1:00:21
  Yeah, go ahead. I was going to say probably.
• 1:00:22
  Anything around? There's going to be a little bit
• 1:00:24
  of a hall, right? Yeah, a little bit of.
• 1:00:26
  A hall, a little bit of a hall. So we knew, you know, we knew
• 1:00:29
  that there were going to be some challenges as we were planning
• 1:00:31
  all this. And then the day of, you know,
• 1:00:35
  we were going to leave fairly early.
• 1:00:37
  We weren't sure how long it was actually going to take us to get
• 1:00:40
  into Bristol and park and and stuff like that.
• 1:00:43
  And the fan zone that they had the fans own experience was
• 1:00:47
  really cool. I mean it really was outside the
• 1:00:50
  outside the track, outside the Speedway.
• 1:00:52
  They had tributes to a lot of the Reds players, you know,
• 1:00:57
  active fan zones. You've seen this kind of thing
• 1:00:59
  with hockey and other things like that.
• 1:01:01
  You've seen that. So that that sort of thing.
• 1:01:03
  So that was all cool. They have music and they had
• 1:01:06
  some food and thank God we got food there.
• 1:01:09
  We we got some, we got some food.
• 1:01:11
  We knew we were going to have to probably stand in line.
• 1:01:13
  We didn't get any merchandise because the line for the
• 1:01:16
  merchandise tent was probably about, you know, 100 hundred
• 1:01:20
  people feet deep. There was a long line for
• 1:01:21
  merchandise and we weren't going to stand in line that long for
• 1:01:24
  merchandise. So, you know, we hung out
• 1:01:26
  outside for a while. It rained a little bit on our
• 1:01:29
  heads, got a little soaked before the game.
• 1:01:32
  But we went in and I will tell you that the track was
• 1:01:36
  absolutely fantastic the way they had it laid out.
• 1:01:39
  And I'm not a NASCAR guy, I've never been to a NASCAR race in
• 1:01:43
  my life. But the way the track was laid
• 1:01:45
  out was really cool. The way the the ballpark, the
• 1:01:49
  field, everything was just was spectacular.
• 1:01:52
  I loved it. In fact, when I went in there,
• 1:01:54
  all I really wanted to do was just either sit or stand and
• 1:01:58
  just take in everything. I mean, it was just one of those
• 1:02:00
  events where you're going, I don't know if I'll ever do this
• 1:02:03
  again. So I just want to take it all
• 1:02:05
  in. So we went in and we, you know,
• 1:02:07
  we watch batting practice and our seats were out the outfield.
• 1:02:12
  But the good thing is we were undercover, which was a good
• 1:02:14
  thing. And we were sitting there for a
• 1:02:16
  while, went downstairs, decided let's get some food, let's grab
• 1:02:20
  a hot dog, let's get some beer. And this is when things went a
• 1:02:22
  little bit South. These were some of the.
• 1:02:24
  Rumors that we're throwing out right out there.
• 1:02:26
  Well, the food options. Were pretty limited.
• 1:02:28
  I mean, I got a hot dog that looked like maybe it'd have been
• 1:02:31
  sat on in a car or something with a bun and I was like, what
• 1:02:34
  is OK? And really no really great beer
• 1:02:38
  options. In fact, I, I think I told you I
• 1:02:40
  said I got a Michelob Ultra, which I was too embarrassed to
• 1:02:43
  even check in. I'm like, no, I'm not going to
• 1:02:46
  check this one in. No, we should check it.
• 1:02:47
  In because of the location. I think that would be cool.
• 1:02:50
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:52
  So, so the funny, so The funny thing is we did have a couple
• 1:02:55
  hours to kill. There was a Tim McGraw concert
• 1:02:59
  that was supposed to mean that that was going to be taking
• 1:03:01
  place. And as we were waiting for this,
• 1:03:03
  my friends, they went, they had not gotten food at first.
• 1:03:06
  So they went back downstairs and they're down there for a while
• 1:03:09
  and they come back up and they said they've run out of food.
• 1:03:12
  What? How do you run out of food?
• 1:03:14
  And my friend was on, you know, social media X Twitter,
• 1:03:17
  whatever. And he was noticing that a lot
• 1:03:20
  of people in the place were talking about that, that they
• 1:03:22
  were running out of food at the place.
• 1:03:24
  So yeah, we can confirm they were running out of food in the
• 1:03:28
  place. And the food that they had was
• 1:03:29
  not good. I mean, it was not good food
• 1:03:31
  options at all. And you would expect a lot
• 1:03:34
  better from a from an event like this.
• 1:03:36
  So if I can say. The racetrack holds 160,000
• 1:03:40
  people on race day. Yeah, if they got and I saw
• 1:03:44
  numbers up to 91,000, OK, that's 70,000 people less than a race.
• 1:03:51
  What happens? How do they feed and drink for
• 1:03:54
  those people and not for, you know, significantly less than
• 1:03:58
  that? Yeah.
• 1:03:59
  Well, I guess is that it's, it's it's, it's a different
• 1:04:02
  concession company is my guess. Baseball hired a company to do
• 1:04:06
  that and not to get to logistics, but that's my guess
• 1:04:08
  anyway. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:10
  So so that was that was really disappointing that that
• 1:04:13
  happened. And I heard other various things
• 1:04:15
  from people maybe in different parts of the of the of the track
• 1:04:20
  that maybe there were food in certain sections.
• 1:04:22
  But let's face it, you shouldn't run out of food for an event
• 1:04:25
  that's been advertised for like a year that was advertised as a
• 1:04:29
  national event. This thing's going to be on
• 1:04:31
  national television. We're going to have a concert
• 1:04:34
  before they're going to have Tim McGraw come in.
• 1:04:36
  I mean, they had a helicopter flying around filming the whole
• 1:04:39
  thing or watching it and drones. I mean, it was all done up.
• 1:04:43
  But you know, like big, like big time and going OK.
• 1:04:46
  So The funny thing is when and we were a little bit further
• 1:04:49
  away, we're in the outfield. So when Tim McCall came out on
• 1:04:52
  stage and he's playing, we couldn't really hear him.
• 1:04:56
  Now where is he? In relation to the field, is he
• 1:04:58
  on the field? Yeah, he's on the.
• 1:05:00
  Field. So there was yeah.
• 1:05:02
  So you you've got you know you had the stands like if you're in
• 1:05:05
  a ballpark and you've got the stands behind like home plate
• 1:05:08
  and all that and then he was up towards up towards the right of
• 1:05:13
  home plate. So toward the third baseline as
• 1:05:15
  where. As he was.
• 1:05:16
  Yeah. So where his where that stage
• 1:05:18
  was it was a little up. But The funny thing is we could
• 1:05:21
  hear the public address announcer, but you could not
• 1:05:23
  really hear the concert. And I said this to you and I've
• 1:05:26
  said this to a few other people. It was like if you're walking
• 1:05:29
  down the street and you hear like a concert going on or music
• 1:05:33
  being played at a park and you can go.
• 1:05:35
  You can go, oh, that's Journey that that band is playing
• 1:05:38
  Journey. You can just make it.
• 1:05:39
  Out enough, just sort of make. It out but I'm like we're here
• 1:05:43
  we're inside we're inside. I said that I said to my friend
• 1:05:48
  Jennifer, I said, it's almost like watching a concert in
• 1:05:51
  closed caption or something. I'm like, this is just this is
• 1:05:54
  just strange that we that we could not really hear the
• 1:05:57
  concert. Now, I'm not going to go all
• 1:06:00
  negative here on it because towards the end they had he he
• 1:06:06
  had coordinated music, which this was really cool.
• 1:06:09
  So they brought out the players and race cars and they all had
• 1:06:14
  their individual numbers on the race cars and they were in the
• 1:06:17
  cars and they brought them around the track a couple of
• 1:06:19
  times, the Braves and the Reds players.
• 1:06:22
  And then they got them out. They got them on the field and
• 1:06:24
  they were lighting off, you know, introductions, fireworks
• 1:06:27
  and all that. And then Johnny Benton, Chipper
• 1:06:29
  Jones, former obviously catcher for the for the Reds and Chipper
• 1:06:34
  Jones, former player for the Braves, came out to throw out
• 1:06:37
  the first pitch. Now this is when it all really
• 1:06:39
  went downhill. Because when they come out, I
• 1:06:42
  look across the way and I, I said, hey, is that just smoke
• 1:06:46
  over there by the lights from the fireworks or is that a lot
• 1:06:50
  of mist or am I seeing a lot of rain?
• 1:06:52
  And you could see on the Jumbotron, poor Johnny Bench,
• 1:06:55
  who's like 82 years old now or something is getting rained
• 1:06:58
  upon. And they threw out the first
• 1:07:00
  pitch and man, they got the tarp out on the field.
• 1:07:03
  It was about a 2 1/2 hour rain delay.
• 1:07:06
  They tried to start the game over again.
• 1:07:09
  It didn't work out and they called the game and that was,
• 1:07:12
  that was pretty much it. And then we had great parking
• 1:07:16
  near near the Bristol Motor Speedway.
• 1:07:19
  It was made maybe a 3/4 of a mile, maybe a mile that we
• 1:07:22
  parked. But we sat in the parking lot, I
• 1:07:26
  am guessing 45 minutes to an hour before we went out.
• 1:07:29
  And when we all got in the car, we were sitting there thinking,
• 1:07:32
  are we coming back tomorrow for this?
• 1:07:34
  And I think all of us were sort of almost a yes, even though I
• 1:07:39
  had planned to go home on that Sunday anyway.
• 1:07:41
  I was like, I don't know if I'm going to stay.
• 1:07:42
  And my cousin Kevin, who I've mentioned on this podcast
• 1:07:46
  before, he's a season ticket holder to the Reds.
• 1:07:48
  Him and his son Corey came to the game and I ran into him at
• 1:07:51
  the game. They had the, the, the closest
• 1:07:53
  they could stay at a was a hotel in Sevierville.
• 1:07:56
  And he called me and he, he asked me, did you guys get out?
• 1:08:00
  Yeah. And I said no.
• 1:08:01
  And they had parked a little bit away, so they were able to get
• 1:08:04
  out from the traffic. But he was saying there were
• 1:08:06
  other people because he asked me.
• 1:08:07
  He said that you guys didn't park in that field where people
• 1:08:11
  are get stuck in the mud or. Yeah, he said.
• 1:08:12
  No thank. God, my God, There might, there
• 1:08:15
  might still be people there trying to get out.
• 1:08:17
  Yeah. So.
• 1:08:18
  He said right away, he said we're not coming back tomorrow.
• 1:08:21
  And I think it got to the point that the longer we sat in
• 1:08:24
  traffic because we didn't get back to our Airbnb to 1:00 in
• 1:08:28
  the morning. And I know.
• 1:08:29
  So by the time I got back to our Airbnb, I was like, there ain't
• 1:08:32
  no way I'm getting up and doing this again tomorrow.
• 1:08:34
  That's the thing. Even if it's less people, it's
• 1:08:36
  still, it's still just as bad, right?
• 1:08:37
  Yeah. And can you?
• 1:08:39
  Imagine the the the food situation the next day that they
• 1:08:43
  had even planned for my. Friend's boyfriend said exactly
• 1:08:46
  that. He said, you know, if they
• 1:08:48
  didn't have food today, they're not going to have, they're
• 1:08:50
  probably not going to get food in tomorrow.
• 1:08:53
  I never heard anything about that.
• 1:08:54
  The next day, none of us went back.
• 1:08:58
  Now I'm going to say, I'm going to say this on a positive note.
• 1:09:00
  It was a great experience. I did expect people, people
• 1:09:04
  listening to this go. What did you expect?
• 1:09:06
  I know you, you do expect challenges at events like this.
• 1:09:11
  I would not trade that experience because I'm glad I
• 1:09:15
  went. I got to see some good friends.
• 1:09:17
  I got to experience it. But I will tell you this much
• 1:09:20
  right now, and I know Major League Baseball, they do this
• 1:09:23
  for all kinds of events. We see it in Nashville, too.
• 1:09:26
  They don't care how long it takes for you to sit in traffic.
• 1:09:30
  They don't care how much the hotels are.
• 1:09:32
  I get all that. But I do think that they could
• 1:09:35
  have made an adjustment to maybe starting the game earlier
• 1:09:39
  perhaps and getting the game. Because if they would have
• 1:09:41
  started the game at like 3 O clock in the afternoon knowing
• 1:09:44
  maybe there was weather coming, I think they could have gotten
• 1:09:47
  the game in and I'll be the devil's.
• 1:09:49
  Advocate here. Yeah, TV did not want that to
• 1:09:51
  happen. No, they didn't.
• 1:09:53
  No. And again, I live in the real
• 1:09:56
  world. I'm not naive.
• 1:09:57
  I know it's about network and I know it's about money.
• 1:10:00
  But and, you know, there's there's people that would
• 1:10:03
  absolutely go back. But I do think some of the
• 1:10:06
  things I just outlined, I think Major League Baseball should
• 1:10:10
  take responsibility. I think Major League Baseball
• 1:10:12
  failed on some of this stuff, yeah.
• 1:10:14
  From the outside looking in and watching on TV and and the stuff
• 1:10:18
  that came afterwards, everybody was painting a perfect picture.
• 1:10:22
  Yeah, from a high level, you know what I mean?
• 1:10:24
  Baseball had such a great event and all the other stuff.
• 1:10:27
  But when you talk about the stuff, when it gets down to you
• 1:10:30
  and I yeah, to to this level say, hey, man, it's, it's not
• 1:10:34
  the great, the logistical stuff sucked.
• 1:10:37
  Yeah, right. It's just, it's just, but some
• 1:10:40
  things could could have been prevented too.
• 1:10:42
  And that's, that's the stuff that's well, and you know.
• 1:10:44
  They'll do it again. You know they'll do an event
• 1:10:46
  like this again because 91. 1000 tickets to The Thing They Made.
• 1:10:49
  Money, they made money and it's all about making money and I get
• 1:10:53
  it again, I live in the real world.
• 1:10:55
  I get it. I I don't regret going and I
• 1:10:58
  don't regret the experience, but was I going to go back and maybe
• 1:11:01
  deal with that again the next day?
• 1:11:03
  No. Right.
• 1:11:04
  It's like, no. Yeah.
• 1:11:06
  Like, you know. Your time is worth something to
• 1:11:08
  after all that, like, Hey, I you, you were there, right?
• 1:11:11
  You didn't get to see the whole game, but you were there.
• 1:11:13
  You got to see some baseball. You got to experience.
• 1:11:15
  You got to see the the the pomp and circumstance that it was
• 1:11:19
  before the game even started. So you got to experience all
• 1:11:22
  that, which is exciting and, you know, when the stuff before even
• 1:11:24
  the game, the stuff you did days prior.
• 1:11:27
  So I can see how it would be a great experience.
• 1:11:29
  It's just the game part. The ultimate getting to see the
• 1:11:32
  whole game wasn't, you know, you didn't get to see that, but
• 1:11:35
  right. But otherwise, yeah, I, I, I
• 1:11:37
  concur. Look, I've been to not the same
• 1:11:39
  thing, but I've been to two outdoor hockey games and
• 1:11:42
  logistically not the greatest things.
• 1:11:44
  Yeah. It's just they're terrible.
• 1:11:45
  So but you go for the experience.
• 1:11:47
  Yeah, we were kind. Of joking the whole time because
• 1:11:50
  I had heard that I I think that they'd probably look, it's, it's
• 1:11:55
  nothing against Bristol, TN, it's just a smaller area.
• 1:11:58
  We had heard rumors, and I don't know if it's true or not, that
• 1:12:01
  they had probably rented out a hotel beforehand for the players
• 1:12:06
  in case this would have happened.
• 1:12:07
  And somebody said, imagine, because there's not a whole lot
• 1:12:11
  of hotels walking down the hallway of a hotel that you
• 1:12:14
  normally wouldn't walk down to going, hey, look, there's LA De
• 1:12:17
  La Cruz. At the heist.
• 1:12:19
  Machine. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:12:21
  Yeah, you like they probably had to make every concession, right
• 1:12:23
  to make in case anything happened, because anything
• 1:12:25
  happened. Where the hell are you going to
• 1:12:26
  go? Like you said, you can go all
• 1:12:28
  the way to Atlanta and then come back.
• 1:12:30
  Yeah, I I made. The joke that night, I said.
• 1:12:32
  I doubt Tim McGraw is staying at the Bristol Hotel tonight, I'm
• 1:12:36
  sure. He helicoptered the hell out of
• 1:12:37
  there. I'm sure he had his limo back to
• 1:12:40
  the tri-cities airport and had that, had that jet waiting for
• 1:12:44
  him back to Nashville. Probably landed, probably landed
• 1:12:47
  in his backyard. So, you know.
• 1:12:49
  Yeah. But no, honestly, no regrets.
• 1:12:52
  It was a it was a good time with friends.
• 1:12:55
  I had a blast. The trip was very entertaining.
• 1:12:59
  The baseball experience under those circumstances, I wouldn't
• 1:13:02
  do it again. Yeah.
• 1:13:05
  You know, you said it. They'll have it again somewhere,
• 1:13:08
  you know, and I won't say racetrack is the worst place.
• 1:13:10
  Maybe depends, you know, who knows?
• 1:13:12
  Look, that was the very first Major League Baseball game ever
• 1:13:15
  in the state of Tennessee. So wow, I didn't even think.
• 1:13:17
  About that. Ever OK, so so that's a you
• 1:13:20
  know, that's a claim to fame for Tennessee.
• 1:13:22
  We're trying to we're trying to get a team in Nashville, right.
• 1:13:24
  That doesn't hurt, right? That looks good for Tennessee.
• 1:13:27
  Hey, we want baseball here. So right.
• 1:13:29
  I would like to see them do it again.
• 1:13:31
  Hope they're better prepared next time.
• 1:13:34
  Is the location matter? Sure.
• 1:13:36
  But location is also the draw. Imagine that.
• 1:13:39
  Remember the the football game between Virginia Tech and
• 1:13:41
  University at that same exact track several years ago?
• 1:13:44
  Yep, it's a draw. Yeah, well, and see the other.
• 1:13:49
  The other bad thing was and I and I heard this is that and I
• 1:13:52
  don't know how. Again, you hear so many things.
• 1:13:55
  You don't know what's fact, you don't know what's what.
• 1:13:57
  But I heard on race, on race, during races, you can bring food
• 1:14:03
  in. For this event.
• 1:14:04
  You weren't allowed. Yeah, it's it's.
• 1:14:05
  Different management, if you will, because Major League
• 1:14:09
  Baseball took control of the event versus Bristol racetrack
• 1:14:13
  or whoever, you know what I mean?
• 1:14:14
  Like or NASCAR or whatever. So yeah, they, they were totally
• 1:14:17
  unprepared, like baseball should have been worked hand in hand
• 1:14:21
  with the other group that, you know, does it all the time.
• 1:14:25
  Yeah. So I'm going.
• 1:14:26
  To look at the camera right now and say, Rob Manfred, Major
• 1:14:29
  early baseball commissioner, you owe me a hot dog, buddy, and a
• 1:14:33
  good beer. I'm sure it's coming and maybe a
• 1:14:35
  couple of. Tickets to a couple to a game or
• 1:14:37
  something. All right, Yeah.
• 1:14:38
  What the heck is going on here? What's going on?
• 1:14:41
  Here, Who are these people? No.
• 1:14:42
  Well, I hate that you couldn't see the rest of the game.
• 1:14:46
  I'm glad you got to experience it.
• 1:14:47
  I hope they do it again with the just.
• 1:14:49
  I hope it's cool and hope it's just better next time.
• 1:14:51
  I would like to go. When I saw Bristol there I was
• 1:14:54
  like, I know there's one way in and one way out of that place.
• 1:14:56
  I don't know if I ever well if it happens.
• 1:14:57
  Again, you go and you report back.
• 1:15:00
  I'll do let me know if your experience.
• 1:15:01
  Is better. Because I'm not going against
• 1:15:03
  sacrifice the. Next one.
• 1:15:05
  There you go. But the the great thing about
• 1:15:08
  the trip, I got a lot of great beer except the Michelob Ultra,
• 1:15:12
  and that was a fantastic thing. I still think you should.
• 1:15:14
  Check that in because of the location.
• 1:15:16
  I think it'll be a cool thing. Nobody will make it shit.
• 1:15:19
  You get back dated if you want to on the app.
• 1:15:24
  I'll get right on it. Look, you got you got beer, you
• 1:15:28
  got new experiences and you got a great story out of hell.
• 1:15:30
  We got a whole podcast out of it.
• 1:15:32
  I know it. I know it.
• 1:15:34
  More. Content and I took a lot of
• 1:15:35
  great pictures yes and they're. Actually really good posts and
• 1:15:38
  really good pictures, especially with the pregame stuff.
• 1:15:41
  Yeah, I stopped. Posting during the posting,
• 1:15:43
  after a while when the rain delay happened, I just said the
• 1:15:45
  heck with this, I don't have anything good to say so you know
• 1:15:48
  it's raining. Still raining.
• 1:15:50
  Still. Raining everybody.
• 1:15:52
  I got nothing here, just waiting around.
• 1:15:55
  It was so funny on TV when they actually started the game.
• 1:15:58
  And I'll tell you, I feel sorry for the announcers.
• 1:16:00
  It's their job, I get it. But they had to feel so much
• 1:16:04
  time. They were repeating themselves.
• 1:16:06
  They were bringing in guests like they had to kill so much
• 1:16:09
  time. But I guess I forgot my point.
• 1:16:11
  But just to watch it on Oh, I know what it was.
• 1:16:14
  When the game finally started and it wasn't long, it was
• 1:16:18
  pouring and they're out there playing.
• 1:16:21
  I'm like, it's just like how soon, I guess they try to get an
• 1:16:23
  inning. And I think ultimately is what
• 1:16:25
  they try to do is get one inning in or something because, yeah,
• 1:16:28
  like it was inevitable. They were going to.
• 1:16:29
  They were going to. Oh yeah, stop it again.
• 1:16:31
  Yeah. And I'll.
• 1:16:32
  Say, I'll bet those announcers didn't have any trouble getting
• 1:16:34
  good food. No, hell they.
• 1:16:36
  Were talking about the snacks that they had.
• 1:16:38
  They were running, they had snacks.
• 1:16:39
  I didn't. Get any snacks?
• 1:16:40
  Yes, there's no snacks. There's no snack basket for you.
• 1:16:44
  I don't know how many snacks they could just call down and
• 1:16:47
  get whatever they wanted. Not for you, no.
• 1:16:49
  Yeah, yeah. We didn't have any.
• 1:16:51
  Snacks couldn't get any of that so.
• 1:16:53
  On some of the stuff we saw were like if you got a hot dog, there
• 1:16:56
  were no buns or if you got nachos there was no cheese.
• 1:16:59
  Like the like that stuff went out first.
• 1:17:02
  I don't know how how the the buns don't match the hot dogs or
• 1:17:05
  whatever. And then there's no cheese for
• 1:17:06
  the nachos. Yeah, that was the first, Yeah.
• 1:17:09
  Yeah, I think. I told you when I went up to him
• 1:17:10
  and I asked him like, what are their beer options?
• 1:17:12
  And it was like Budweiser, Michelob Ultra, Modelo and it
• 1:17:17
  was something else. And I just said just give me a
• 1:17:20
  Michelob Ultra for God's sakes. And then you were like.
• 1:17:23
  God, well, at least we can watch a baseball game.
• 1:17:25
  Yeah. I'm watching all this and I
• 1:17:28
  don't even care. God, the beer.
• 1:17:29
  Sucks but at least we got baseball well and it was multi.
• 1:17:33
  Tasking because I'm going, I can drink a beer and I can hydrate
• 1:17:37
  at the same time. Yeah, so I need some water for
• 1:17:40
  $14.00. Or whatever the hell it was.
• 1:17:42
  Or was it more amazingly? It did not 'cause that, but
• 1:17:45
  that's probably why we thought the we thought it was going to
• 1:17:48
  be more expensive. No, I think it was probably 12
• 1:17:51
  bucks or something. OK, that's.
• 1:17:52
  Fair. Yeah.
• 1:17:53
  I mean, I say it's fair. It's crap beers.
• 1:17:57
  Yeah. So, well, we're glad you told us
• 1:18:01
  about the experience. It's official, it's down on
• 1:18:05
  it's, it's recorded, it's on tape.
• 1:18:07
  It lives forever. It lives forever.
• 1:18:09
  Now we got it out. Hey, Scott.
• 1:18:11
  So on this podcast episode, we had already recorded this one,
• 1:18:16
  but two days later, after we had this episode recorded, we
• 1:18:21
  realized we're going to have to jump in again and re record
• 1:18:26
  something else because we had some really, really big breaking
• 1:18:29
  and shocking news in the beer community.
• 1:18:32
  So it was a Friday night. It was a couple of weeks ago.
• 1:18:36
  And I'm sitting there and I'm checking my phone and I look and
• 1:18:39
  I read what I thought I read. And then I had to read it again.
• 1:18:42
  And it was Listerman Brewing in Cincinnati was going to be
• 1:18:46
  closing the next day after 20 years of existence.
• 1:18:50
  And I got to tell you, man, I texted you.
• 1:18:52
  I texted a group of US right away about it.
• 1:18:55
  I couldn't believe it. And I think the shock waves and
• 1:18:59
  the beer community is still out there.
• 1:19:01
  Yeah, it's. Mind blowing.
• 1:19:03
  It was very abrupt. As you said, to go 20 years is a
• 1:19:07
  feat in itself and to close after that is really a shame.
• 1:19:11
  You and I have a lot of memories there with a lot of different
• 1:19:13
  people. We do and.
• 1:19:14
  You know, I was thinking about this.
• 1:19:16
  Love our top ten lists on the Brewery Underground podcast and
• 1:19:20
  we put them out sometimes every year like here's our top ten
• 1:19:23
  favorite breweries or new breweries.
• 1:19:25
  And I think if we ever came up with what's our top ten favorite
• 1:19:29
  breweries of all time, I don't know if Listerman would make the
• 1:19:33
  top 10, but they certainly would be in the conversation of that.
• 1:19:36
  That's how I I think from my standpoint.
• 1:19:39
  And I think from your standpoint too, how important Listerman
• 1:19:42
  brewing in Cincinnati was to us as beer drinkers.
• 1:19:45
  Absolutely. I remember going there for the
• 1:19:47
  first time and admiring all the barrel aged stuff.
• 1:19:50
  Yeah, like the wall was just full of it.
• 1:19:52
  And then they would have bottle releases and I think we bought
• 1:19:54
  some bottles there one time from some, you know, barrel aged
• 1:19:57
  things that they had and that's kind of how I got to know them.
• 1:20:00
  And then, you know, you go back and everything was 10 or 12 or
• 1:20:02
  14% and you're like, this is awesome.
• 1:20:05
  It was. Yeah.
• 1:20:06
  And the, and The thing is we, we want to say is we're looking at
• 1:20:09
  beer drinkers and consumers as their overall body of work
• 1:20:13
  because we know there were changes that happened, you know,
• 1:20:16
  at Listerman over the years. We know about two years ago they
• 1:20:19
  got bought out. I mean, Dan Listerman had
• 1:20:21
  retired and and sold out to another couple and we don't know
• 1:20:26
  the reasons as to why Listerman abruptly closed.
• 1:20:30
  And we know, I mean I heard this too over a couple of years ago
• 1:20:33
  that I think because of there were so many changes that it
• 1:20:37
  happened at Listerman. There were some other Brewers
• 1:20:39
  that left and maybe there were some different things going on
• 1:20:42
  there as well. But I got to tell you from my
• 1:20:45
  standpoint whether there were changes or whether there
• 1:20:48
  anything that was going on from my perspective from the first
• 1:20:51
  time I went there about 10 years ago to the last time that we
• 1:20:54
  went there back in mid-May, I always enjoyed the space.
• 1:20:58
  I always enjoyed the place and each time I went, I always
• 1:21:02
  enjoyed the beer, Steve every time.
• 1:21:04
  We went and we went with different groups of people.
• 1:21:06
  People were always buying beer to take with them when they yes,
• 1:21:10
  we'd sit there for an hour or two, however long we were there,
• 1:21:12
  drink all the beers. And then it was always to go
• 1:21:15
  stuff because they always had good, such good stuff.
• 1:21:18
  And that happened every single time we were with different
• 1:21:20
  people in in ourselves. Yeah, definitely.
• 1:21:23
  And I, you know, I even thought over the last 10 years how many
• 1:21:27
  different people I was there with, with you.
• 1:21:29
  I was there, you know, a couple times with you and Matt and
• 1:21:32
  then, you know, crafty, good beer and pedal bound brews from
• 1:21:35
  Cleveland. We were there with them last
• 1:21:38
  year and then this past May, we were there with our friends, the
• 1:21:42
  Hill Tappers, our Cincinnati correspondent, Liz, she showed
• 1:21:45
  up as well. And in fact, Liz and I had gone
• 1:21:49
  there back in the March because we were going to do a Saint
• 1:21:52
  Patrick's Day episode. And The funny thing was I went
• 1:21:56
  there seeing on their website that they had some Saint
• 1:21:59
  Patrick's Day beers. It was like the Mint Shamrock
• 1:22:02
  Shake, which still I remember, still, you know, when we go
• 1:22:07
  through our top 10 beers of all time of, of, of 2000 or 2025 at
• 1:22:12
  the end of this year, that may still rank up there.
• 1:22:16
  So Listerman holds a lot of memories for me.
• 1:22:19
  I'm very glad we had the experience of Listerman.
• 1:22:22
  You know, you, you talked about the barrel aged.
• 1:22:24
  I remember the very first time I went there, it was a
• 1:22:27
  recommendation of you. You had gone through there and
• 1:22:30
  you had said to me, have you been to Listerman yet?
• 1:22:32
  I said no. And I'd gone.
• 1:22:34
  I'd gone there. I was in between some family
• 1:22:37
  stuff and I walked in and that was during the time that where
• 1:22:40
  they were doing a lot more high ABV stuff.
• 1:22:43
  And I looked at the board. I'm like, whoa, OK.
• 1:22:47
  As a matter of fact, Stokes had gotten there before me and I was
• 1:22:50
  coming back from somewhere and I got I got enough time to stop
• 1:22:53
  for one. It was the only place I could
• 1:22:54
  stop at coming through Cincinnati, and I stopped there
• 1:22:57
  and then I, as a matter of fact, I remember what I got there, or
• 1:23:00
  at least what I remember what I brought back.
• 1:23:02
  It was the lemon # cake. I very first.
• 1:23:05
  Check in was a lemon # cake. I had it the last time I was
• 1:23:09
  there, Tom at the Hill Tappers. I told him get the lemon # cake.
• 1:23:14
  I probably had had that thing about four times.
• 1:23:17
  In fact, I went on my Untapped app and now see, I had checked
• 1:23:21
  in the lemon # Cake back in 2020.
• 1:23:25
  That was, you know, even before I was rating a lot of beers
• 1:23:28
  consistently. I had checked in consistently
• 1:23:31
  since about 2020, about 21 beers from Listerman.
• 1:23:35
  I know I had a lot more than that, but I got to tell you from
• 1:23:38
  a rating standpoint, pound for pound, almost every beer that I
• 1:23:42
  ever had at Listerman, I would have to say that I would have
• 1:23:47
  gotten again. There was only one.
• 1:23:49
  There was only one and I knew when I bought it, I bought it on
• 1:23:53
  a four pack and I because I was from that area.
• 1:23:56
  I thought it was funny when I when I bought a four pack of
• 1:23:59
  Don't talk Shit about Norwood, which was a pale ham.
• 1:24:03
  I wasn't. I wasn't a big fan of that one.
• 1:24:06
  I didn't think I was going to be, but I love the name and I
• 1:24:10
  love the creativity. It just kind of went with the
• 1:24:12
  area, you know, and at the time. So that was a lot of fun too,
• 1:24:16
  Steve, Just that. Beer alone when we drive through
• 1:24:19
  that area and every time the sign, like we're driving down
• 1:24:22
  the road in Norwood pops up like on a sign, I just always look at
• 1:24:25
  you and say don't talk shit. Yeah, don't talk shit.
• 1:24:28
  About Norwood Every. Single time we see Norwood, I
• 1:24:29
  just say it because of that beer.
• 1:24:31
  Well. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:24:33
  And I just have to say, you know, Lister men for us, I mean,
• 1:24:36
  when we would go up there and when we would talk about what of
• 1:24:39
  our what are our favorite breweries in Cincinnati.
• 1:24:42
  To me, Listermann was in the top five of conversation.
• 1:24:46
  And they had been there for, you know, 20 years and they had
• 1:24:49
  started started out as one of the originals in the Cincinnati
• 1:24:53
  area. So, you know, we don't know why
• 1:24:55
  they they closed so abruptly. You know, that's unfortunate.
• 1:25:00
  I hate it. But I can tell you this much
• 1:25:02
  right now, as a as a beer lover and a lover, craft Beer
• 1:25:06
  Listerman holds a lot of great memories for me and I'm glad
• 1:25:10
  that we have them totally. And you just mentioned a few
• 1:25:13
  minutes ago about the Mint Shamrock Shake, coincidentally
• 1:25:17
  enough. And I think you saw the clip I
• 1:25:19
  found. We did a Saint Patrick's Day
• 1:25:21
  episode back in spring or March, whatever.
• 1:25:24
  We actually did it. And you were talking about that
• 1:25:26
  beer. And I found the clip from that
• 1:25:28
  the other day and posted it. Yeah.
• 1:25:30
  That exact thing, just that exact clip.
• 1:25:31
  You're talking about that specific beer.
• 1:25:33
  Yeah. And you know, it was perfect for
• 1:25:35
  on that, that time of the year, too.
• 1:25:36
  So. Yeah.
• 1:25:38
  And. Unfortunately, you know, only a
• 1:25:40
  day's notice. We weren't able to get up there
• 1:25:42
  and have a final beer at Listerman.
• 1:25:45
  One of the great things is that you know our our buddy Tom with
• 1:25:49
  the Hill Tappers, his daughter Beer Cat, who lives up there.
• 1:25:52
  She I was able to get there and have a final beer.
• 1:25:55
  So I kind of feel like in a way she, you know, we're all we're
• 1:25:58
  all in part of the beer community together.
• 1:26:00
  You know, I think she helped represent us a little bit when
• 1:26:03
  it comes to Listerine brewing and totally them going away.
• 1:26:07
  So yeah, someone. That we knew was able to get
• 1:26:09
  there that final day and clean up.
• 1:26:11
  I think she got a nice glass too, if I remember.
• 1:26:13
  Yeah, I think so, yeah. I think so.
• 1:26:15
  So yeah, we hate any breweries go away.
• 1:26:17
  And this one kind of a little special to us.
• 1:26:20
  It is for all. Those reasons you mentioned.
• 1:26:22
  Yeah, well, we felt. We felt it was important that
• 1:26:25
  even though we had already recorded an episode, we wanted
• 1:26:28
  to extend this one to talk a little bit more about the
• 1:26:32
  brewery that meant near and dear to us.
• 1:26:35
  So you know what? That's how we're going to end
• 1:26:37
  the podcast episode today.