Latest / The Brewery Underground Podcast | Craft Beer Interviews, Reviews and Beer Travel / Streetside Brewery’s Garrett Hickey Talks Barrel-Aged Stouts, Hazy IPAs & Cincinnati Craft Beer | Episode 129 | Part 1

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Streetside Brewery’s Garrett Hickey Talks Barrel-Aged Stouts, Hazy IPAs & Cincinnati Craft Beer | Episode 129 | Part 1 · The Brewery Underground Podcast | Craft Beer Interviews, Reviews and Beer Travel

• 0:04
  Stand by for the Brewery Underground podcast.
• 0:14
  In Nashville's whoever wise crops and brews will need the
• 0:19
  skies Steven Scott they lead the way brewery underground night
• 0:25
  and. Day.
• 0:37
  Hey Steve and Scott, we are back in Nashville, TN on the Brewery
• 0:42
  Underground podcast. And Scott man, we're excited as
• 0:46
  we always are because today we are going to Cincinnati.
• 0:50
  We are talking to Garrett Hickey.
• 0:52
  He is the owner and head Brewer at St.
• 0:56
  Side Brewing in the Cincinnati, OH area, my hometown.
• 1:01
  Garrett man, thanks for joining us.
• 1:04
  We appreciate it. Yeah, no problem.
• 1:07
  Yeah, thanks for this Was a quick turn around too.
• 1:09
  I think we reached out to, we got this booked in like a week
• 1:11
  or two or something though. It was pretty great turn around.
• 1:14
  So thanks for being interested. Yeah, this is it's always, this
• 1:20
  is right before fest season, so this is a good time to to get
• 1:24
  something to end. Not that we're not that we're
• 1:27
  going down to festivals or out to festivals on a Wednesday, but
• 1:30
  it is one of those things where once it gets into the summer,
• 1:34
  the timing starts to get a little iffy.
• 1:36
  Yeah, You know, the, the weather's turning right.
• 1:39
  It's everything's getting nice. Everybody's outside.
• 1:41
  And, you know, you guys are probably already planning some
• 1:43
  stuff for the fall, I would imagine too.
• 1:44
  Not just events necessarily, but you know your beers.
• 1:47
  You got to look that far out, don't you?
• 1:49
  Yeah, I mean, we've got, we are actually.
• 1:51
  We're just talking about our fest beer yesterday, deciding
• 1:54
  how much we wanted to make and like what our what our logger
• 1:59
  plan was for basically after, I guess after the fest Bureau,
• 2:04
  like how we want to, how we want to run the rest of the year
• 2:07
  because we know we're going to make the fest beer and how we'll
• 2:09
  run like the last three loggers of the year.
• 2:11
  Like if we're going to go fest beer nothing.
• 2:14
  And then like our the, the like a darker logger that we always
• 2:20
  release like January or December, January, or if we were
• 2:23
  going to run just like try to get 3 out around that time.
• 2:27
  And because we've done, we have a couple loggers that we haven't
• 2:29
  done in a minute and I want to, we've been trying to run them
• 2:32
  back, but it's busy and you know how it goes trying to get the
• 2:36
  beers that pay the bills out there so.
• 2:39
  Well, Speaking of beer, you know we have to thank you because you
• 2:45
  sent us, you sent us some really great beer and Scott's, Scott
• 2:48
  and I are going to talk about one we just had at this house
• 2:51
  last night. But you brought, you brought us
• 2:54
  and you sent us the Spring Breaker, which I am actually
• 2:58
  drinking right now. And ironically, this is one that
• 3:02
  we you, you did a collab with New Groove and we just had them
• 3:06
  on our podcast not long ago. You have a good connection with
• 3:10
  them. That was that was unintentional,
• 3:12
  but I'm glad it worked out that way, Yeah.
• 3:15
  That was perfect. Those guys were great.
• 3:16
  We brought you up in the conversation too, so we might
• 3:18
  get a little bit into that a little bit more during this
• 3:21
  episode, but it was cool. We kind of brought you into
• 3:23
  that. So very nice.
• 3:25
  I've got the one and Steve and I met up last night and he shared
• 3:28
  what he had that you had sent the.
• 3:33
  Yeah, the our, our New England, our New England that we're
• 3:38
  brewing the 88th batch of over the last 10 years next.
• 3:44
  Week. Holy shit.
• 3:45
  Really? Yeah.
• 3:46
  It's, it is like a full, it's a full tenth of our production
• 3:51
  over the last 10 years. Does the recipe change or has it
• 3:56
  changed over those years? Or does the beer just vary a
• 3:58
  little bit even though it's the recipe might be the same?
• 4:01
  It the only thing that's really changed is the the base malt.
• 4:06
  So the base malt has progressed to a like a lighter base as
• 4:11
  people's visual palette has changed.
• 4:15
  Back when we opened, everyone really wanted that like orange
• 4:19
  juice looking New England, and now you're kind of getting more
• 4:23
  to that towards that pale. Yep, there you go.
• 4:26
  The the straw pale looking beer. I think we still it's a still a
• 4:32
  little bit probably darker than your average, but we're trying
• 4:37
  to keep it trying to keep it somewhat true to the to the
• 4:42
  original recipe. Other than the the base malt
• 4:44
  though, it is 100% everything's still the same.
• 4:49
  So if I could read a quick description of it, it says
• 4:53
  flavor leaves with soft mango and pineapple Peach in light
• 4:56
  darkness and then it's rounded out by soft fluffy, almost
• 4:59
  creamy body. Yeah, that that that description
• 5:03
  is like 9 1/2 years old, so it could probably use some
• 5:05
  updating, but I. Well, I'd say I haven't tried it
• 5:10
  yet, but but it's all those things visually.
• 5:13
  Yeah, definitely. It's definitely, and it's
• 5:15
  definitely gotten more like as we've as we've brewed more and
• 5:19
  more of it, we've kind of learned, I mean, we have learned
• 5:21
  a lot through this has been like a big year of secondary
• 5:29
  learning, I guess tertiary learning for me where I started
• 5:32
  listening to a lot more podcasts.
• 5:33
  I had gone through a long time of just kind of not not delving
• 5:37
  into the craft as much as I had just being busy and not kind of
• 5:43
  just, I mean, just being in the in the muck of every year in and
• 5:49
  year out. You kind of go through phases
• 5:50
  where you're you're learning and then you kind of like let
• 5:54
  everybody else kind of do the the legwork on, on research.
• 5:57
  And then right now I'm in the I'm ramping back up.
• 6:01
  So I've I've made some tweaks procedurally to that beer and to
• 6:06
  all of our New England so that I think it has really helped.
• 6:10
  Well, I know you said that it's delicious.
• 6:11
  You were brewing today. Yeah, you said that you were
• 6:13
  brewing today. Did you bring anything that
• 6:16
  you're drinking on the podcast? I went to my parents house and
• 6:18
  helped them re season their Blackstone and then I came home
• 6:21
  and did some gardening. So I am drinking water right
• 6:24
  now. Yeah, it's been busy.
• 6:25
  So we had it was busy day brewing and we had tanks clean
• 6:31
  and some barrel aged projects that we were working on and then
• 6:35
  I had busy busy personal stuff. So it is definitely we are, I'm
• 6:41
  ramping down right now. Well, thanks for fitting us in,
• 6:45
  truly. Yeah, no problem.
• 6:47
  Yeah, we'll take it easy on you. The other the other beer before
• 6:50
  Scott and I get to the one that we've already had.
• 6:53
  I also have with me the Coconut Beach side.
• 6:58
  Would you like to talk a little bit about that one?
• 7:01
  Yeah, sure. That is a that is a collab with
• 7:04
  a local restaurant, better beer store, better beer restaurant,
• 7:09
  Hop and Vines. As you could see on the back of
• 7:12
  the can, It's a we originally brewed it in 2020, I think.
• 7:16
  So like right in the midst of COVID it is or 2021, I can't
• 7:19
  remember it was, but it was definitely like right there.
• 7:22
  Everything was kind of shut down.
• 7:23
  It was that the original version is a Key Lime, Key Lime Pie
• 7:27
  milkshake IPA for their anniversary this year.
• 7:30
  We, we did a variant, a big batch of a variant.
• 7:33
  So we did coconut Key Lime Pie. We'd done a small keg only batch
• 7:37
  of that last year. They enjoyed it.
• 7:39
  They asked us to scale it up to production size.
• 7:41
  That's what we did. Key Lime, bunch of vanilla
• 7:44
  probably. I think it's like 7500 lbs of
• 7:47
  coconut between toasted coconut and just like raw normal coconut
• 7:52
  that you would get out of like when you're whatever you see at
• 7:55
  a store. I believe we put a little
• 7:56
  coconut cream in there as well. We didn't put a whole ton of it
• 8:00
  in there because of we want the head retention to to remain be.
• 8:04
  We really want to push that coconut to to the forefront on
• 8:08
  that beer because Key Lime is a very strong flavor and it's hard
• 8:11
  to, it's hard to overcome it when you're trying to like match
• 8:15
  it with something else. So you got to really push the
• 8:17
  other. Yeah, the limits on the other
• 8:19
  ingredient that you're adding with it.
• 8:22
  I know Steve was excited about that can because when he got
• 8:24
  when he got the cans, he was like, do you mind if I keep this
• 8:27
  one? Because he was really looking
• 8:28
  forward to drinking that here. Yeah.
• 8:31
  That's how we used to make a lot more milkshakes.
• 8:33
  So that's we, I don't know if we call it like our specialty, but
• 8:37
  it was like something that we did a ton of and we've done as
• 8:43
  sales have gone down on milkshake IP as in general we've
• 8:45
  definitely done less and less, but we'll do like three to four
• 8:49
  a year. And that's that's when we almost
• 8:51
  always do for the spring because that's their Anna Hobbenby's
• 8:55
  anniversary is in April. So we almost always have it for
• 9:00
  the start of whatever start of spring, middle of spring,
• 9:04
  beginning of summer. Because those types of beers and
• 9:07
  those sales of those beers have gone down.
• 9:09
  Are you still kind of expected? I know you say you make 3 or 4 a
• 9:12
  year, but you still kind of expected a street sides to still
• 9:14
  make those certain people like hey you, you kind of overdue
• 9:17
  from what we're looking forward to the next one.
• 9:20
  Yeah, I think like if we don't, if we weren't brewing like
• 9:25
  specific like John Lennon, John Lennon is our December
• 9:29
  milkshake. It's always lemon, lemon
• 9:31
  meringue milkshake. IPAI feel like if we didn't do
• 9:33
  that one, there would definitely be some comments for sure, like
• 9:37
  when we when we've retired popular beers, you do we do hear
• 9:41
  about it. I think we've had we had a guy
• 9:46
  come in last week to do a barrel pick.
• 9:49
  He won in an auction and he told me like his his daughter, her
• 9:54
  favorite beer was one of the milkshakes that we don't make
• 9:56
  any more. I said, well, maybe we'll now
• 9:57
  that I hear somebody talking about maybe it's maybe we'll go
• 10:00
  back on the list. We used to make a ton of it and
• 10:02
  now I don't even know. It's probably been three years
• 10:05
  since we made it last. So I don't know sometimes if if
• 10:09
  you talk about enough or if I see it online or whatever,
• 10:12
  there's always a chance it'll, it'll get in my get in my head
• 10:16
  and I'll throw it on the brewery list just because it's it
• 10:19
  whatever. I feel like it's something that
• 10:21
  we haven't done in a minute and we have improved brewing
• 10:24
  processes that we could probably make it better.
• 10:26
  So. Well, Scott and I being brewery
• 10:29
  guys, you know, we just love to try anything.
• 10:33
  So, you know, if you walk in, we haven't had it, we're likely
• 10:36
  going to get a try it. But there is one more beer.
• 10:40
  And when you, when you sent that beer to my house on Saturday,
• 10:46
  Scott was out of town. He was in Asheville on a beer
• 10:48
  trip, and so I went over to his house last night and I brought
• 10:53
  this beer over and we did a beer share on his porch.
• 10:56
  Then we made a video and we'll put that out soon.
• 10:59
  But Scott, would you like to talk a little bit about that
• 11:02
  one? Yeah, too.
• 11:04
  First of all, the plan was to drink and share two of those
• 11:08
  beers last night. And we and we started with this
• 11:12
  one. It's he was like, I got to
• 11:14
  drive. We're not going to do 2, we're
• 11:15
  going to do just the one. Yeah, we live.
• 11:18
  We live about 1/2 hour from each other.
• 11:20
  Yeah, and the beer is decadent. Speak of the devil.
• 11:24
  And it's 14 1/2% and it's an imperial double stout and it was
• 11:28
  freaking amazing. Let me give a quick description
• 11:31
  if I can. Toasted coconut, cashew,
• 11:34
  almonds, bee pollen, Indonesian W Papa vanilla beans, and it was
• 11:38
  aged and apple Brandy, Maple syrup barrels for two years.
• 11:42
  Incredible. And it was all of those things,
• 11:46
  including 14 1/2 percent. Yeah, that is, that was the, I
• 11:50
  think that was probably the most popular, maybe second most
• 11:55
  popular of our Speak of the Devil releases this year.
• 11:58
  We had a couple single cans leftover.
• 12:00
  So I, I got down to you guys. That is actually another New
• 12:04
  Groove beer that they did it. I don't remember what beer they
• 12:07
  did it, but I saw it when they were doing their release.
• 12:10
  I think it was for their Black Friday event this past year and
• 12:13
  I was like, well that sounds pretty good.
• 12:15
  I'm going to steal the idea. So I think I have even says it
• 12:18
  on the description where I said it's inspired by inspired by
• 12:23
  those guys. So you guys got 2 beers that
• 12:28
  either were brewed with or inspired by New Groove, But yeah
• 12:32
  that. Absolutely.
• 12:33
  I mean, it's they, they do a ton of barrel aged stuff, a ton of
• 12:37
  great barrel aged stuff. If you like, if you have the
• 12:40
  opportunity to borrow from a friend, it's always, it's always
• 12:45
  a good idea if you can. But yeah, we, that's one of
• 12:49
  those ones. Like normally if I'm, if I'm
• 12:51
  looking for new ideas, I'll, I'll pop on on tabs and I'll
• 12:53
  scroll through, see what like go through the the top, top raid
• 12:59
  stouts on that top rated list. Just go through and Scroll down
• 13:03
  and see what other people have done that has done well.
• 13:05
  And that's kind of some of them. Some of the beers that we do are
• 13:08
  inspired by that. Some of it is beers that we've
• 13:11
  done obviously in the past that we're bringing back or variants
• 13:15
  of different stouts that we want to do with the new stout, new
• 13:19
  base. Some of it is just like straight
• 13:22
  up, just steal it from somebody else.
• 13:27
  I do feel like when you and new group get together, it's like
• 13:29
  these two great minds come together that do really well.
• 13:33
  Both of what you guys do is you do it very well and you come
• 13:35
  together and do it even Better Together.
• 13:37
  It's so, yeah, so cool. Yeah, yeah.
• 13:40
  They, they, we've done, we've done some, some good stuff with
• 13:44
  those guys and I'm very appreciative of, of the help
• 13:49
  that they've given us and the invite to Woodstock this past
• 13:52
  year and all that. So.
• 13:54
  Back on that beer real quick. We had last night, We we poured
• 13:57
  it in, Steve. Good.
• 13:58
  What's the first thing you get? I go.
• 13:59
  It's the Maple syrup. You got the syrup, right, Right.
• 14:02
  Right on the nose. And it was incredible.
• 14:05
  Yeah. And.
• 14:05
  And he tasted all the way through, too.
• 14:08
  Yeah. So those barrels, we do AVIP
• 14:11
  event before all of our stout releases and those barrels have
• 14:16
  been tasted a couple times by the the people at the VIP event
• 14:20
  and they're always super popular.
• 14:22
  It's just like everyone's like when are you gonna release that?
• 14:24
  When you gonna release everyone? When are you gonna release that?
• 14:26
  So that was the year that we released all the speak of the
• 14:29
  devils. We still have a couple, a couple
• 14:31
  of those barrels just tucked away with just like barrels that
• 14:34
  we're using for blenders. They're not going to, they'll
• 14:37
  probably never see the light of day as like the, the brand
• 14:41
  that's written on the barrels, it'll probably get blended into
• 14:44
  your demo organ to speak of the devil or if we, I know we're
• 14:47
  releasing one of those barrels in a blend that we're releasing
• 14:52
  for July 4th. So we have a couple left,
• 14:56
  they'll get blended in the next couple releases.
• 14:59
  So you'll still get some of that, some of the benefit of
• 15:02
  those barrels which are great in future releases.
• 15:05
  Yeah, the and the other thing I was going to say is I, I can't
• 15:08
  speak for Scott, but I can speak for myself that that is my #1
• 15:12
  rated beer so far this year on on tap.
• 15:17
  We we said last night that we just did a kind of mid review
• 15:21
  thing, you know, best beer so far and then we do a year end,
• 15:23
  you know, best beers of the year and we, we both said that is
• 15:26
  going to end up on the list. So we're very high on the list,
• 15:29
  that beer for both of us. That's yeah, it's it was like I
• 15:33
  said, it was super popular. I think we still have it on
• 15:37
  draft, but we are all those the Speaking of the devil this year
• 15:42
  is way more limited than it has been in the past.
• 15:44
  So we I would expect almost all of the speak of the devil that
• 15:49
  we have here to to be gone here shortly.
• 15:52
  Like I know we still have couple cans of the least or the less
• 15:56
  popular variants, but then the draft should all be gone next
• 15:59
  year. It'll just be all new stuff on
• 16:01
  tap next, like when we when we do our next release.
• 16:04
  I know you've been brewing for a while and you've been at it for
• 16:06
  a while, but and when you have a beer like this and you feel like
• 16:12
  you've nailed it as it's going out, is there some high fiving
• 16:15
  going on with you and some of the other people there that the
• 16:19
  some of the other employees like?
• 16:20
  We have freaking nailed this one and we cannot wait to get it
• 16:24
  out. Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's
• 16:28
  honestly it's a little bit it's not even not it's not stressful,
• 16:30
  but it is like if we wanted to put this into a competition,
• 16:35
  it's actually more it's causes a little consternation on our end
• 16:39
  because like FOBAB is until until later this year and it's
• 16:43
  not like we want to hold on to this specific variant for
• 16:48
  however many months, you know, I mean we want.
• 16:50
  So I think we're going to end up redoing same variant with
• 16:55
  everything with Demogorgon that would release on Halloween this
• 16:59
  year. So like it is nice because we
• 17:01
  now have, we know we were going to do one, we know one variant
• 17:04
  that we're going to do this year out of however many barrels.
• 17:08
  Like last year I think we did 8 or 98 or 9 variants.
• 17:11
  So it is nice. It's nice to have like something
• 17:14
  that we know that we can fall back on if we want to make a
• 17:17
  beer that people really like. But yeah, I mean, like for the
• 17:21
  most part, most of the guys, we were more excited about the
• 17:26
  nochino barrel that we had that was like a Ohio distiller, their
• 17:35
  black walnut liqueur. We were pretty excited about
• 17:38
  that one that was just straight barrel.
• 17:40
  Definitely not like the most beloved on untapped, but it is
• 17:45
  sometimes you just got to do some do one for you, you know, I
• 17:48
  mean. Yes, Yep, and I bet you still
• 17:51
  had some people out there that really appreciated that too with
• 17:53
  untapped or not. Yeah, for sure.
• 17:56
  Especially those styles aren't for everyone.
• 17:57
  And you know, we've talked about this all the time.
• 17:59
  Somebody might not might check it in, not like the style, and
• 18:02
  not really appreciate that beer for what it is.
• 18:05
  Yeah, it's and it's like because it's such a a big fixed out
• 18:09
  without any adjuncts in it, you're getting you're getting a
• 18:13
  ton of stout and you're getting a ton of barrel, especially when
• 18:16
  they age for two years. So you really have to be like,
• 18:19
  if you don't love, if you don't love that barrel or you don't
• 18:22
  love the the base, it's really tough.
• 18:24
  I'm sure to to check it in. It's not that's not my it's not
• 18:27
  my thing, but I understand that like that's a that's a big thing
• 18:30
  for most consumers is to is their check insurance.
• 18:33
  So. I I appreciate you guys and New
• 18:37
  Groove still, still doing that. You know, there's a lot of, you
• 18:40
  know, we're kind of getting away from that.
• 18:42
  People are going to beer flavored beer and you guys do
• 18:44
  some of that too. We're talk about it, but you
• 18:46
  guys are still keeping that alive and you're doing a really
• 18:48
  good job of that too. Yeah, it's, I mean, the, the
• 18:52
  market in Cincinnati is still like we do.
• 18:55
  We have our our beer flavored beers.
• 18:57
  The market's still there for sweet stouts.
• 19:01
  I mean hazy Ipas I think have almost become like that's, that
• 19:06
  is beer flavored beer at this point.
• 19:07
  But West Coast Ipas are, I mean, West Coast pills obviously like
• 19:11
  that what you got. West Coast Ipas are are making a
• 19:13
  comeback. It's probably like if you look
• 19:16
  at our brewing schedule, it's probably like out of I typically
• 19:21
  order in like 6 beers at a time. It's when I'm ordering it's like
• 19:29
  2 Ipas or two New England's, one West Coast or something like
• 19:35
  more like more perceived bitterness, affirmative sour.
• 19:39
  And then like probably something for like the the OG beer fans,
• 19:44
  whether it's like an amber, which is we do an ESB and just
• 19:50
  call an amber. It's easier.
• 19:51
  It's easier to describe it that way, or.
• 19:54
  Sells. More, yeah, it definitely sells
• 19:55
  more than saying an ESB or doing like or mild or brown ale or
• 20:01
  anything like that. We're trying to do that's like
• 20:03
  the the last one, just to make sure that we have something on
• 20:06
  that that appeals to everybody. Yeah, I was sitting there last
• 20:11
  night as we were drinking the Decadence and I said to Scott, I
• 20:13
  said, you know, and we've been to a lot of breweries in
• 20:16
  Cincinnati. I think it's one of the things
• 20:19
  that really makes you all stand out because you're not probably
• 20:22
  going to walk into a lot of breweries in Cincinnati and see
• 20:25
  something that's 14.5% on on the board.
• 20:29
  There's just not as many breweries doing super high
• 20:33
  stouts. I mean it's just super high baby
• 20:35
  stouts. I think it's less of a need for
• 20:38
  them. Whereas like our market and our
• 20:41
  crowd is still like looking specifically for that kind of
• 20:45
  that kind of beer, like you're not going to Mad Tree and and
• 20:48
  getting a 14% period. Their crowd is definitely more
• 20:52
  looking for that drinkable like everyday beer, whereas like we
• 20:58
  have our releases, we have our Tevor buy stuff, we've got our
• 21:03
  festivals, we got to, we do have to have that stock of of like
• 21:08
  air and beer isn't the way to say it, But like the the premium
• 21:12
  product that is like that you would sell for $22.00 a two pack
• 21:17
  or whatever we're selling, selling the beers for nowadays.
• 21:20
  I think that's that's one of those things where like there's
• 21:24
  some brews that do it, some brews that don't.
• 21:26
  It doesn't like one way or the other, it doesn't really matter.
• 21:30
  Like as long as you're making money and selling beer, it's
• 21:32
  it's all good. Yeah, that's that's, that's a
• 21:35
  lot of it, I would think. Let's go back.
• 21:38
  You were talking a little bit before about untapped.
• 21:43
  How much do you use untapped as a resource?
• 21:47
  Probably more than I should. We, I look at it, if we release
• 21:53
  a new beer, I like to check it to see like what people are
• 21:56
  saying about it. If we release like a like a
• 21:59
  brown ale, which we were never going to do, we've got 1 brown
• 22:02
  ale and that's the only brown ale that we're going to do
• 22:04
  because it doesn't make sense to have multiple brown nails.
• 22:08
  Like I'm not going to, I don't care.
• 22:09
  I don't care what people check in as because it's, it's not a
• 22:11
  style that's going to rank highly.
• 22:14
  It is I'll check to see like what people do on style.
• 22:17
  So I'll check to do see what people are rating for New
• 22:21
  England's and then other than that, it is what it is.
• 22:23
  For the most part, I was, I am curious every time we do a West
• 22:27
  Coast pills just because it's a newer style and I want to see
• 22:30
  how people are receiving it. But the for the most part I, I'm
• 22:35
  really only in there on on the bike hype, the hype beers.
• 22:41
  You know, I mean, I want to see, I want to see what I want to see
• 22:43
  what people are saying about the beers that I perceive Like I, I
• 22:45
  think that people should be hyped about and see if they
• 22:49
  agree with me. So like we just did, we just
• 22:52
  released a double New England IPA on Tuesday.
• 22:56
  Curious to see how it, how it does on, on that.
• 22:58
  I haven't checked it. We weren't super busy last
• 23:01
  night. So wait was last night Tuesday?
• 23:04
  Yes, we did on Monday. Really still on Monday.
• 23:08
  So it's been on sale for almost 2 days now We so it'll be
• 23:13
  interesting to see like how that goes throughout the weekend.
• 23:15
  We're releasing another New England on Friday.
• 23:19
  So those two, those two I'll check up on throughout the
• 23:22
  weekend, see how they go. I'm hoping the double does well.
• 23:25
  It's a, it's one of the, it's in that 10 year series that we did
• 23:29
  with new Groove. We've done with, I mean, we're
• 23:33
  halfway through. So we're, we've done a bunch.
• 23:35
  We did Mad Tree at the very beginning.
• 23:37
  We did Voodoo at the very beginning.
• 23:39
  This month we are brewing with Dorothy Lane Market, which is a
• 23:42
  grocery store in Dayton and Mason doing a Galaxy dry hop
• 23:47
  season with honey. So that'll be our June release.
• 23:51
  But it's always that one I care a little bit more about because
• 23:55
  we're putting it behind it the the 10 year collab series.
• 23:58
  So I'm always a little bit more on top of those as well, even if
• 24:02
  they are like boring styles or whatever.
• 24:05
  So obviously the better when it comes to untapped ratings, but
• 24:09
  what's like satisfactory for you what you're looking at?
• 24:12
  Or anything. Well, 39 is probably like the
• 24:16
  lowest I like to see. I mean, it also depends on the
• 24:20
  style, you know what I mean? Our loggers, our loggers are
• 24:23
  never going to hit. If we got a 38-ON logger, like
• 24:27
  it's killer. Like might be like the best beer
• 24:29
  we've ever done, but on like a stout, anything below a 415 is
• 24:37
  not great on New England. It's like 4395 is probably what
• 24:41
  I'm looking for, which sounds kind of ridiculous when you look
• 24:44
  at when you think about the scale is out of five.
• 24:47
  But that's just kind of like where we're, it's kind of where
• 24:49
  we're at. We can, I can tell you this and
• 24:52
  it's not, we're not cheating. The, the beer we had last night,
• 24:56
  I gave it a 48. Steve gave it a 49, so.
• 25:00
  Oh yeah. So I hope that was pretty good.
• 25:04
  I'm sure, I'm sure they'll drag it up because I'm there were I
• 25:07
  mean, because it's not like because it was limited.
• 25:09
  Yeah. It's one of those things where
• 25:11
  it's not, it's the each, each really high rating drags up that
• 25:16
  that overall, which is nice. Yeah, I, I like the fact that
• 25:20
  you usually untap for, for research to going back and just
• 25:23
  finding stuff in there too, because it is a great tool for
• 25:25
  that. And you know, as a Brewer, I
• 25:27
  know you guys look at it differently from your side than
• 25:29
  our side. Yeah, it's one of those, I mean,
• 25:31
  like it's at this point, like it's hard to keep track of
• 25:35
  everybody's releases. Like I don't, I don't know what
• 25:37
  everybody's doing anymore. It's it's there's so many
• 25:41
  releases and there's so like even like people that I'm
• 25:43
  friendly with or I'm friends with or whatever.
• 25:46
  It's just like I don't follow, I don't follow breweries on my
• 25:50
  personal account for the most part on my personal Instagram
• 25:53
  account. So I'm not seeing what other
• 25:54
  people are doing in my whatever I'm doing air quotes.
• 25:58
  I don't know if my my box goes out that far, but in my quote UN
• 26:01
  quote personal time, I'm not doing a whole lot of like seeing
• 26:06
  what releases are doing. So are going.
• 26:08
  So like if I'm not, if I'm not on the brewery account, the
• 26:12
  brewery Instagram account or the brewery Facebook account, I'm
• 26:14
  not seeing what other breweries are doing.
• 26:16
  Mostly just because like I'm trying to, if I can get a little
• 26:20
  bit of time away from looking at beer stuff when I'm not
• 26:23
  listening podcasts or whatever. Oh, and I, and I run the, a lot
• 26:29
  of the social media anyway. So like I am very often on
• 26:33
  there. But yeah, I try not to, I, I
• 26:35
  just don't see releases quite as much anymore.
• 26:37
  So it is really nice to be able to like get on there, especially
• 26:40
  top rated. Obviously click on see what the,
• 26:44
  the best breweries in the, in the world are doing.
• 26:46
  I think I, I leave it all the way up to world.
• 26:49
  I don't even narrow it down to the US.
• 26:53
  So sometimes it is like you see this esoteric brewery in Finland
• 26:58
  that just did like a crazy hazelnut style with some stuff
• 27:02
  that like I, we can't even get in the US.
• 27:04
  And now I have to like be like, all right, well, I don't know
• 27:06
  what I'm going to do with that. But you just go and Scroll down
• 27:09
  to the next one and see if it's a good idea or not or whatever.
• 27:11
  Can you imagine feeling, I think about some of those Scandinavian
• 27:13
  countries and I know because I've seen and done some like
• 27:16
  some of those weird, you know, whale blubber ingredients with
• 27:20
  such and such, smoked something like.
• 27:24
  I've seen there was something somewhat recently that I got
• 27:27
  pushed to my in like in my algorithm I saw some weird,
• 27:31
  something weird. I was like that.
• 27:32
  That's I'm glad that we have some kind of constraints here
• 27:37
  that don't allow people to do that.
• 27:40
  Are you? Are you the one that has those
• 27:42
  constraints? I, there is stuff that I, I
• 27:47
  mean, I, yeah, I do. There are some, there's some
• 27:49
  things that I, I, I've said no to that I don't, I don't, I
• 27:54
  don't really like, like I'm not a big fruit in stout person.
• 28:00
  So that's one of those ones where like you won't see a whole
• 28:03
  lot of those from us Pepper. I'm not a big pepper, pepper and
• 28:07
  stout person. So those are the two we've done
• 28:10
  them, but not a it's not as it's definitely not one of those
• 28:13
  things that we do a whole lot of.
• 28:15
  So you, if you see it, I mean somebody won an argument or it
• 28:19
  might be or it might be a collab that was really passionate about
• 28:22
  doing that, that style. How many people are involved in
• 28:26
  these conversations besides yourself?
• 28:29
  It's really just me and our production manager Steve does,
• 28:35
  he's kind of in charge of like the execution of my ideas.
• 28:40
  So like a lot of times I'll be like, all right, I want to do
• 28:42
  this and then he'll go off and he'll be buying the ingredients
• 28:46
  and he'll do the actual dosing and everything.
• 28:49
  But Speaking of the devil, it was kind of like equal parts
• 28:52
  him. And I feel like we were just
• 28:53
  like very busy during the time that April was a incredibly busy
• 28:58
  month for us. So we had a lot going on leading
• 29:01
  up to basically from Saint Patrick's Day till the end of
• 29:04
  April, we were, we were jam packed.
• 29:07
  So I, he and I both like really were like X like by ingredients,
• 29:15
  dosing everything, getting it going, packaging, and then just
• 29:19
  keep, keep going, keep doing that with like there was for the
• 29:23
  sub raw day that we did on 4/18, we packaged 3 variants in a day
• 29:28
  just to, just to get it. I mean, it wasn't, it was that's
• 29:31
  45 cases. It's not a ton of cases, but it
• 29:33
  was like you got to flip the tank, you got to get the new
• 29:35
  beer and you got to dose the new beer and then you got to package
• 29:37
  it. So it does, it was a long day, I
• 29:42
  think. And we're just, I mean, it's
• 29:44
  just one of those things where like you're just banging out
• 29:47
  beers trying to get them ready for releases and we're slowing
• 29:52
  down now. We don't have any events planned
• 29:54
  for quite some time. So we don't have to, we don't
• 29:57
  have to worry about that as much.
• 30:00
  But now we're now we're ramping up big production, not like
• 30:04
  small, small production runs for limited releases.
• 30:07
  So now's now is the time where whatever I'm, like I said,
• 30:11
  brewed this morning, I'm brewing on Friday and then brewing again
• 30:14
  on Monday. So and then I think on Memorial
• 30:17
  Day, I already have, I'm, I'm scheduled to brew on that day as
• 30:20
  well. We have two Brewers, 2 1/2
• 30:23
  Brewers ish. So if somebody's out of town or
• 30:26
  somebody wants a day off, it typically falls to me.
• 30:28
  So that's why I'm, I am getting loaded right now because not
• 30:33
  loaded with drink, loaded with loaded with production.
• 30:36
  Because our guy, the guy who is the is the second Brewer, he has
• 30:42
  a lot of days off scheduled in May.
• 30:45
  So I get the pleasure of brewing many, many beers this month.
• 30:49
  We can't forget from beers. I agree.
• 30:53
  I know you have a sense of humor because in December I was in
• 30:57
  Cincinnati up for the holidays visiting my family and they all.
• 31:01
  I'm from the West side of Cincinnati and right down the
• 31:05
  street from where my my sister and brother-in-law live there's
• 31:09
  a marathon gas station has a little tap room.
• 31:12
  I've gotten some St. side on their taps before and they sell
• 31:16
  St. side and I I looked up and I saw some St. side and the name
• 31:23
  alone of this one got me hooked me in.
• 31:26
  I bought a four pack of this shit is bananas.
• 31:32
  I brought it back. I gave one to Scott.
• 31:34
  Can you describe this beer and are you the one that was behind
• 31:38
  brewing this one? I don't think I brewed it, but
• 31:42
  it was that was my naming, my name.
• 31:45
  Although I mean, if you look at a beer, typically it's named by
• 31:47
  me. It's like 99% of the beers are
• 31:52
  named by me. Yes, that was me.
• 31:55
  That's banana pancake sour. I don't even remember the whole
• 32:00
  thing, but that was for our 98 hundredth batch of beer, I
• 32:04
  believe. No 900 because we're coming up
• 32:07
  on it'll be 1000 be just today's batch was actually 950.
• 32:13
  So we'll probably hit 1000 by the end of the year.
• 32:16
  But we yes, there are some of the some of the beers are are
• 32:23
  named interesting things. If you if you ever people don't
• 32:26
  but like if you ever read the description, sometimes I will
• 32:29
  sneak some interesting things in there as well.
• 32:32
  Some Easter eggs. You you're putting the Easter
• 32:35
  eggs. You never, yeah, you never know,
• 32:37
  Especially if it's like if we're if the label has to do with has
• 32:45
  to do with like a whatever popular culture.
• 32:48
  I'll try to sneak some some references into the the
• 32:53
  description if I can. I mean, it's Spring Breakers has
• 32:57
  a like, it's actually, it's funny because our creative guy
• 33:02
  was like this doesn't really jive with the label, but the,
• 33:07
  the label is very heartfelt and like talking about our, how we
• 33:11
  vacation in South Carolina. What like our, our family, the
• 33:14
  Hickey family has goes down to South Carolina like every year.
• 33:19
  My, my mom's down there right now.
• 33:21
  My dad's going down on Friday. So they we talked about how like
• 33:25
  South Carolina means so much to us.
• 33:27
  And then the label is, I mean, labels from the movie Spring
• 33:31
  Breakers, which if you've seen, it's pretty ridiculous movie.
• 33:35
  It's not really not really doesn't really jive with a like
• 33:38
  a heartfelt, heartfelt description, but here we are.
• 33:42
  Well, going back to that beer real quick because, you know, it
• 33:47
  says it's packed with banana, Maple, cinnamon pancakes.
• 33:51
  And for me it was like, I feel like I'm going into an IHOP and
• 33:57
  this is what I've ordered. But I also felt like if I was in
• 34:00
  a Willy Wonka movie, if you remember the old Willy Wonka
• 34:05
  with the golf shopper. And I was like this, this is
• 34:08
  absolutely incredible. And I mean, you guys nailed it.
• 34:12
  And to me, and I know Scott's the same way, you know, as
• 34:16
  brewery guys, you just love that kind of experience.
• 34:19
  Yeah, the, that, I mean, like I say it when whenever we do a,
• 34:25
  whenever we do a beer, like if I put that the, it tastes like
• 34:30
  something, I want you to be able to taste it.
• 34:32
  Like I don't want you to come from that experience of drinking
• 34:35
  it and say this doesn't taste like what I what, what the, what
• 34:39
  the label says. So it's a big one for me.
• 34:42
  It's always been a, that's always been like a pet peeve of
• 34:45
  mine from the early days when I was back doing beer shares and
• 34:49
  all that. Like when people would be like,
• 34:51
  oh, this is this and this and this, and then you taste it like
• 34:53
  you don't taste anything. I'd rather go overboard than
• 34:56
  underboard. You know, underboard isn't
• 34:58
  really though the way to describe that.
• 35:01
  But whatever I'm we're on, we're on minute 38.
• 35:05
  I'm I'm going to say some words that don't make a whole lot of
• 35:07
  sense. Well, that's OK.
• 35:09
  We got a we got a lot to get to. And I'm, I'm going to, I'm going
• 35:11
  to throw out one more at you because Scott was with me.
• 35:14
  We had that when we went the street side a few years ago.
• 35:18
  And my cousin was with me. And the other day he had text me
• 35:21
  something and I said, hey, we got St.
• 35:23
  Tribe Brewery coming on. My, my cousin lives over in
• 35:26
  Anderson Township and he goes, Oh yeah, I remember we and you
• 35:30
  had that. He called it the blue
• 35:31
  concoction. I had gotten a flight and it was
• 35:35
  the, it was the blue Monday, the ice cream beer, the ice cream
• 35:39
  beer. Let me tell you, something was
• 35:40
  really funny about that. We do a big Reds outing every
• 35:43
  year. My family do, we do.
• 35:45
  And the next day we had gone to the Reds game.
• 35:50
  My cousin there, Scott was there.
• 35:51
  And I, about 3 or 4 of my cousins come up to me and they
• 35:54
  said, I heard you had like this Wild Blue beer last night at St.
• 35:58
  Side. Yeah.
• 36:00
  So it's kind of a talk. It was talk of the Reds game in
• 36:02
  my family, man. Yeah, it was, that was a that
• 36:05
  was an interesting one that actually it was not supposed to
• 36:09
  be a full batch. It was supposed to be 4 barrels
• 36:12
  and I did bad math and like the the ice cream that we got was in
• 36:18
  a 5 gallon bucket they dump into their soft serve machine.
• 36:21
  That's how they make it. My math was way off and I dumped
• 36:25
  it into our 4 barrel tank, our 4 barrel like small, small release
• 36:30
  tank. Steve actually was like yo, this
• 36:32
  is not, this is not right. This is way too much and I think
• 36:37
  I may have gone out of town. Maybe I may have done it on like
• 36:42
  a Thursday and left for the like the weekend.
• 36:45
  It may have been the festival, may have gone out on vacation,
• 36:47
  unlikely vacation, probably festival.
• 36:49
  But I came back and he's like we got to do.
• 36:53
  He's like, we got not do whatever sour we were planning
• 36:56
  on doing and like put all of this together in a big tank and
• 37:02
  he's like, I don't even know that it's going to like taste
• 37:04
  right after that. He's like, you may have just
• 37:07
  added so much that like we need to do like a 20 barrel batch as
• 37:10
  opposed to like a 15. And then we did it.
• 37:13
  Obviously it was it was overly blue.
• 37:16
  I liked I like I thought it was a a fun beer, fun concept, but I
• 37:20
  don't think we'll ever do that one again.
• 37:21
  Unfortunately, that was. That's OK, I have a picture of
• 37:25
  it on my phone though so. Yeah, I do too.
• 37:28
  When we post, yeah, when we post some things about this episode,
• 37:32
  I'll have to find that one and and stick it out there.
• 37:35
  Yeah, it was. It was quite colorful for sure.
• 37:38
  It was, it was, it's, it's, I had a quite a few people texting
• 37:44
  me about that beer, especially like festivals or whatever,
• 37:48
  because it coated glasses and just kind of looked.
• 37:52
  It was not. It was just like it was a it was
• 37:55
  a fun idea that probably that obviously got executed on poorly
• 37:59
  by me and then we made it right ish.
• 38:03
  I think I would have to like to think real hard on how I want to
• 38:06
  do it again if I was to if I was to do it again.
• 38:08
  How did it, how did it end up ultimately?
• 38:11
  Did you sell through all of it? No.
• 38:13
  We did sell through all of it. I don't know.
• 38:15
  I didn't drink it. Honestly, I have no idea.
• 38:18
  I I had it once, I'm sure. Yeah, I was going to say Steve
• 38:23
  will have to save and maybe look back on your own debt rating and
• 38:28
  see what you gave it. Because it's it's not one of
• 38:30
  those ones that it's not one of those ones that I expected a
• 38:33
  whole lot of. I think it's.
• 38:33
  True, so true confession I did look.
• 38:37
  I rated it a 3.5 O. There you go.
• 38:40
  Yeah, I that's about right. If you look at the.
• 38:43
  I think if you look, I think if you look at the overall, I think
• 38:46
  that's probably about. And I don't, and I don't know,
• 38:48
  you asked, you asked, 'cause I don't normally will say that to
• 38:51
  her, but by the way, I mean, I don't.
• 38:53
  It was, it was all right. But you know what, again, it's
• 38:56
  what we said. It makes it makes the, the
• 38:59
  outings fun. I mean, it became a conversation
• 39:02
  of cousins at a Reds game, for God's sake.
• 39:04
  So you know. You'll take the 35, won't you
• 39:08
  Healy? I'll take the 3/5 and.
• 39:10
  Yeah. I mean, it's on especially on
• 39:12
  that one. It's it is what like again,
• 39:14
  it's, it was I, I knew it was, it was, I knew it was going to
• 39:19
  be hit or miss when we did it. And then after everything, it
• 39:23
  was even more hit or miss. So I'm glad it's one of those
• 39:27
  like it's one of those ones, some of some of these beers that
• 39:29
  we do. I'm just like, all right, I'm
• 39:32
  ready for this to be out in the world and out of my tanks.
• 39:37
  We've had a couple of those where I'm just like, who knows
• 39:39
  what people are going to think of this beer?
• 39:41
  Like I'm just happy that happy that I don't have to deal with
• 39:44
  anymore. When you when you get out of
• 39:48
  the. Beer go with God.
• 39:50
  When you get out of the back of the house and you get it gone,
• 39:52
  you're like, OK, it's your problem now kind of thing.
• 39:55
  It's the world. Sometimes, yeah, yeah, I mean,
• 40:00
  especially if it's something that somebody else wanted to do.
• 40:03
  And I'm just like, all right, well, you, this is, this was
• 40:05
  your thing. And I made it the best I could.
• 40:09
  And hopefully. Hopefully it sells.
• 40:11
  So that was actually wasn't that was like that was 100% me thing
• 40:16
  that was after talking with RAR, their Brewer was like you guys,
• 40:20
  you guys could do this pretty easy.
• 40:23
  I was like, all right, I'll try it and it it didn't it did stink
• 40:27
  over. Well, I don't know.
• 40:28
  Maybe I'll now that now that we're talking about, maybe I'll
• 40:30
  try it again this summer or. Something, well, you know, you
• 40:32
  learn from mistakes. With a little bit more
• 40:34
  restraint. With a little bit more
• 40:35
  restraint, a little bit more, yeah, just restraint really.
• 40:40
  That's all I need to do. And we've, we've changed our
• 40:42
  sour base too, which I think would help a lot.
• 40:44
  I think it also like dial back the sourness, use one of the,
• 40:48
  use one of the like a lacto blend that doesn't produce quite
• 40:51
  so much fuss or not phosphoric acid.
• 40:53
  Excuse me, Lacto lact, lactic acid.
• 40:57
  Hey, you got my support. You do it again, we'll bring it
• 40:59
  back on. There you go.
• 41:00
  Totally. And I love that you mentioned
• 41:02
  RAR because we've had some of those beers.
• 41:04
  We've had a lot of those beers. And man, you want to talk about
• 41:06
  colorful, We did a we did a an episode.
• 41:09
  We had flights of it. And three of the four that Steve
• 41:11
  had were white, three whites and a blue.
• 41:15
  They love. Their they love their ice cream.
• 41:18
  Oh, that's that he's he's he's helped me along with that one.
• 41:23
  We just don't do it a whole lot. They don't that style beer
• 41:26
  doesn't really sell well for us. We are going to do a like a
• 41:30
  smoothie sour release in July, July 18th, I think is what we're
• 41:35
  going to do. We used to do a series called
• 41:37
  Too Cool that we did. I think we did like four or five
• 41:40
  variants of and then I just kind of like, it was just like they
• 41:44
  sold well, but it just like it became too much.
• 41:47
  We like it. At some point you got to like
• 41:49
  kind of pair down the the things that you're doing, especially
• 41:52
  when you're doing, you've got all the other salaries that have
• 41:55
  to be released. So I just was like, yeah, this
• 41:58
  is too much. We can't do it.
• 41:59
  So we're going to bring them back.
• 42:01
  We're going to do a little, a little festival or anything, but
• 42:05
  like just a release day, like we do a sub route day or return the
• 42:08
  Mac day or whatever. We'll see how people respond to
• 42:10
  it. It'll be nice to to gauge
• 42:12
  people's interest in something that we haven't done in quite
• 42:15
  some time.