Latest / The Brewery Underground Podcast | Craft Beer Interviews, Reviews and Beer Travel / Northern Row Brewery & Distillery: Cincinnati Craft Beer, Lager Heritage & Taproom Experience | Episode 116
Transcript
- 0:01Stand by for the Brewery Underground podcast.
- 0:39Hey, Steven, Scott's back on the Brewery on the Ground podcast.
- 0:42You know, Scott, we are in Nashville, TN where it's a
- 0:46little warmer, but today we're going to go up north where
- 0:49perhaps it's a little colder. Yes, I will say, yeah, I will
- 0:54say before we get there, it was 70 something yesterday and 70
- 0:57something late before a little cooler today, man.
- 0:59It won't last February. Still, man, we're enjoying it
- 1:03right now. I think we hit a record high for
- 1:05Nashville. It was it was wonderful.
- 1:07But. We had ice two weeks ago.
- 1:11Absolutely. It is our pleasure to welcome in
- 1:13some folks from Cincinnati. One of them is our Cincinnati
- 1:15correspondent, Liz. Every day I'm bubbling on social
- 1:19media, my Westside cousin, always glad that you're here and
- 1:24it's going to be a fun time. Thanks for having me guys.
- 1:27Yeah, Thank you. Thank you for joining us.
- 1:29Well, we have on today, we have on a really good brewery that
- 1:35that Liz and I visited in early December, Northern Row Brewery
- 1:38Distillery and Tap Room in the Over The Rhine section of
- 1:41Cincinnati. We have general manager Josh
- 1:44Lively here and also their head Brewer, Justin.
- 1:48Justin, go ahead and tell me how to pronounce your last name
- 1:51because I'm not. I'm going to try.
- 1:52I'm going to mess it up. Sure, go ahead and tell me how
- 1:54to pronounce your last. Name.
- 1:54Yeah, it's it's Devilbis. Love it.
- 1:57Yep. Cheers.
- 1:59I got it. Now I got it.
- 2:00Now I would have got it. Everybody welcome guys.
- 2:03Thank you guys for being on here.
- 2:05Absolutely. Thanks for having us.
- 2:08So you guys, it looks like you're coming from the old tap
- 2:11room there, right? Yeah, we're, we're in the
- 2:14production space today. We got some private events going
- 2:17on out in the tap room. So figured what better place to
- 2:21do it the next to these fermentors here be next to this
- 2:24year. Awesome.
- 2:26So what are you guys starting off drinking on this podcast?
- 2:31So right now, just earlier today, we canned up our
- 2:33Hellerbach, which we brewed in anticipation of Box Fest, A very
- 2:39local, very raucous, very fun, a little beer event that we've got
- 2:44going on downtown in Cincinnati. Yeah, it's it is something truly
- 2:48special. You were talking about the
- 2:50weather. Cincinnatians kind of get fed up
- 2:52at a certain point with the weather.
- 2:54And many, many years ago, I think we're almost close to 30
- 2:58years of Bach Fest, they decided that they were going to ward off
- 3:04the bad weather and they were going to have an event to have
- 3:07fun. It was in retaliation to a
- 3:10snowstorm in 2008 that kind of jeopardized the entire beer
- 3:14festival. Few, you know, a few, like,
- 3:18really dedicated folks still came out amid the snow and,
- 3:22like, pushed these barrels of, you know, barrels of beer down
- 3:27the streets of Cincinnati. But yeah, in retaliation, they
- 3:31came up with the idea to burn the effigy of a snowman.
- 3:35So. Yeah, yeah.
- 3:37So precipitation retaliation is really how we kick off Bach Fest
- 3:42every year. And I'm not a Cincinnati local.
- 3:45I'm from West Virginia. So when I first moved here, the
- 3:49first event that I went to was Bach Fest.
- 3:51I had a friend that was like, hey, like, should come out for
- 3:53Bach Fest. And I was like, wasn't really
- 3:55100% sure what that entailed. But the Friday before it,
- 4:00there's a gentleman that builds a paper mache snowman.
- 4:03It's a very important procedure to ensure the weather is good.
- 4:07Every year we burn a snowman out in the parking lot and we do
- 4:12poked beers. We got some wood fireplaces
- 4:15outside. This guy right here pokes beers
- 4:18like no other. So we put hot iron into Bach
- 4:21beers and which caramelizes the sugar and really gives it a
- 4:24different taste and different drinking experience.
- 4:27So we're looking forward to it this year for sure.
- 4:29I have a beer poker. We're in my Amazon cart right
- 4:32now. I've swear to God I had.
- 4:34I don't know why I haven't pulled the Troy every year.
- 4:36I keep hearing about this and I haven't done it yet.
- 4:38I've got a Are you? Yeah.
- 4:40Are you guys involved in the parade that happens of the
- 4:43opening night of Bach Fest? We have been in the past.
- 4:46It's kind of a, you know, one of the, the Spirit of Bach fest is
- 4:50almost very cobbled together and thrown last minute.
- 4:54So we have marched in the past. We may, we may just wind up in
- 4:59the in the parade on Friday. You have to be determined.
- 5:02We we're an official Bach Fest hall.
- 5:05So there's 3 halls that kind of have the largest concentration
- 5:09of events. So in order to be a Bach Fest
- 5:11Hall, you have to, I believe, carry 12 different Bach beers
- 5:15from around the city. And so a lot of breweries are
- 5:18participating. It's a citywide event that
- 5:21really kind of pays homage to the German history of
- 5:25Cincinnati. And often the less celebrated
- 5:28and beer style as well. You know, yeah, really kind of a
- 5:32privilege to be ruin these Brewin these sort of beers and
- 5:36having so many people I don't know, excited to drink them at
- 5:39least for one weekend. Yeah.
- 5:42And so the event this year, I guess it's like it's 24th year
- 5:45and it's going to be March 6th or the 8th this year.
- 5:48And you guys are like one of five breweries that are hosting
- 5:50Bach Fest. Is that right?
- 5:51Absolutely. I can say I've been before.
- 5:53I've also seen the time honored tradition of crowning the
- 5:56sausage Queen. If you haven't been to that
- 6:00event, that's that's that's entertaining.
- 6:02We have a we have a sausage Princess preliminary right
- 6:07before I hopped on this podcast, I was in a meeting.
- 6:10I'm with the person that throws throws it and we're doing a
- 6:13theme this year. Last year was our inaugural year
- 6:16of being a venue for the sausage Princess, and it might have been
- 6:21one of the most fun nights that I've ever worked here.
- 6:24The shenanigans re is at 1000 times.
- 6:27We will be having a pole on stage and we have a theme of
- 6:31Cowboys and sausages this year really tie the room together.
- 6:35So bring your spurs, bring your spurs.
- 6:37How does one get to be a Princess that I'm asking for a
- 6:40friend? You have to you have to really
- 6:43go all out. You have to envision, envision
- 6:46in your mind what a sausage Princess or a sausage queen,
- 6:50what that what that's made of and let your imagination run a
- 6:54little bit further beyond that. And that's what it takes.
- 6:57I'll say this. Last year, our sausage Princess
- 7:01that wanted our venue, she won by chugging.
- 7:05She was hula hooping. She chugged A Bach beer and ate
- 7:09a brat while hula hooping. And that one or the crap.
- 7:13Yeah. Liz, do you think you could do
- 7:15that? So you guys could also enter
- 7:18because from what I remember, Jenner does not imply everybody
- 7:22as long as you come up with a gimmick and a talent and a way
- 7:27to represent how you think being the sausage future queen should
- 7:32represent so. And you are very correct.
- 7:35Full shenanigan, Ray. Yeah, I will say that.
- 7:38The crown is heavy. You're expected to carry the
- 7:41regal status of the sausage queen should you win year round.
- 7:46It's not just a weekend things. You have to do a tour as the
- 7:50sausage queen. If you become the sausage queen,
- 7:53you have a tour after Bach Fest to go.
- 7:57You know, show your nobility around town.
- 8:00You're really treated well. I've seen them March in the
- 8:03opening day parade for the Reds, so they they do represent the
- 8:07Bach fests and its entirety year long afterwards.
- 8:12Yeah, I'm already wearing my red shirt because, you know, spring
- 8:14training has just got underway and so, you know, trying to be
- 8:18excited for another Cincinnati Reds season.
- 8:20We'll see how it goes. Absolutely.
- 8:23We're kind of in that dark period that in six weeks of no
- 8:27sports, well, I mean, I guess we still have hockey.
- 8:29We've got a whole bunch of advance, the Olympics, whatever,
- 8:32I digress. Josh, do you plan a lot of plan
- 8:38out a lot of different beers for Bach Fest?
- 8:40Is it something that you spend time making sure that when
- 8:43people are coming in, man, they're getting the best of the
- 8:45best there? Yeah, absolutely.
- 8:48I work closely. Our sales manager handles a lot
- 8:52of that type of navigating. I work closely with him to
- 8:57really hand pick some of the best of the city breweries.
- 9:00I mean, breweries that are super good and that we've done
- 9:03collaborations with that are, you know, our closer friends go
- 9:09on tap first a little bit and then we bring in different Bach
- 9:13beers from around the world and to enjoy that weekend.
- 9:17So it's really, really exciting. Doppelbock is one of my favorite
- 9:20styles of beer in the world. I'll say it gets you in trouble
- 9:23sometimes, but that's OK. I like being in trouble, I
- 9:27guess. So having having four or five,
- 9:32eight Doppelbox on draft at one time, really just the experience
- 9:37is wonderful and everyone is so excited.
- 9:40It's like no matter what the weather is, it doesn't really
- 9:44matter. Everyone's there to have fun.
- 9:46It makes sense though, too. And you talked about the the
- 9:48snowman thing, but it's really kind of when the weather could
- 9:51possibly start to break right and start getting some spring
- 9:53fever and you want a reason to get out.
- 9:55And man, that's that's just kind of a perfect.
- 9:57That scenario, this at, at that point, everybody is pretty much
- 10:01fed up with the weather. They're ready to, yeah.
- 10:03They're ready to break out, yeah.
- 10:04Yeah, get a little bit of sunshine and let's go.
- 10:07And mud on their, mud on their shoes.
- 10:09And then it's yeah, your night for an.
- 10:11Like in the past, how many how many people do you know like
- 10:13attendance wise has shown up just at your place just for for
- 10:17this event? Man.
- 10:19Quite a bit. I'll say this, we are a, we are
- 10:22a Bach Fest hall. Our neighbors down the block,
- 10:25Rhine Geist are also a Bach Fest hall.
- 10:27We've been doing it for two years.
- 10:29Bach Fest went through a change. It did have a hall at a certain
- 10:32point, but it kind of transitioned to more of a larger
- 10:36taproom space vibe throughout the years.
- 10:38And Rhine Geist, obviously we've all heard of them.
- 10:42They're they're a bit the game. They had their busiest weekend
- 10:46that they've ever had in their tap room.
- 10:48We had the busiest weekend that we've ever had in our tap room.
- 10:53I mean, it just continues to grow.
- 10:55It's infectious. Once you go once you don't want
- 10:57to not go again. So we'll expect probably, I
- 11:02would think 5 to 7000 people coming through our doors that
- 11:05weekend. That's awesome and you know it
- 11:06is. And again, it's for a festival.
- 11:08It's early season, right? It's kind of the early, early
- 11:11season beer festival, man. Let's get up.
- 11:13Let's go. Let's get excited.
- 11:14Yeah, we're really fortunate. It's it's a really fortunate
- 11:18event for craft beer in general. It gets people more excited
- 11:22about it than ever, gets people into space, and allows for us to
- 11:27have fun as well. Well, I'm drinking, I didn't
- 11:29want it to go unnoticed. Is the the Hellas lager?
- 11:33Nice. Yeah, courtesy of our friends
- 11:35the Hill Tappers, who brought us down for the for us so we'd have
- 11:38some during this podcast. So fantastic beer.
- 11:41Cheers, everybody. Steve, what have you got?
- 11:44That is actually one of my probably my favorites.
- 11:46Hell is the logger, the logger from there.
- 11:48It's probably my favorite. Now I I've got the supporter,
- 11:51the blood orange culture and it's my first one and I've been
- 11:57sipping on it for a little bit now and I can tell you it is
- 12:00damn good. Nice.
- 12:01Well, thank you much. I think that the next week we're
- 12:03making a real fresh batch of that to kind of get us ready for
- 12:07the FC Cincinnati MLS season. So we actually kind of have that
- 12:12one as a staple in the TQL Stadium.
- 12:14We've got some support from one of the supporter groups you.
- 12:18Know I was going to say, this is a collab, right?
- 12:21This is a collab. The pride of the pride of
- 12:23Cincinnati for FC Cincinnati that you said?
- 12:27Yep, Yep. So they actually, we've had an
- 12:29ongoing partnership for a few years with them since the since
- 12:33the stadium was built and they start their March from here.
- 12:36And you know, Josh, Josh here probably has a little bit more
- 12:40to talk about with that. Yeah, they, we're pretty
- 12:43fortunate with our proximity to FCC Stadium.
- 12:47We're about, I don't know, four or five, six blocks away.
- 12:51So the supporter group, the Pride, which is the largest
- 12:54supporter group of FCC, they kind of congregate here before
- 12:58the games and just spend time with us.
- 13:01They're pretty integral part of our year as well.
- 13:04We're very fortunate, you know, to be to have them and to be
- 13:08where we are. So they love the supporter.
- 13:11They came in and worked with us closely to kind of figure out
- 13:16what beer makes sense for them, and they're all beer drinkers as
- 13:21well. They love Colch.
- 13:23Beautiful thing about Cincinnati is there is a lot of German
- 13:26heritage here, so German beer really kind of reigns supreme
- 13:31for a lot of people. So they're very familiar with
- 13:34Colch. They love our Colch.
- 13:35So we decided a blood orange Colch for them.
- 13:39Their colors are blue and orange.
- 13:41Kind of just makes sense, you know?
- 13:43Isn't amazing, isn't amazing just real quick the soccer thing
- 13:47isn't amazing. How quickly that season sneaks
- 13:49up on you. Like it?
- 13:50They're playing in February. It's nuts.
- 13:52Wow, Yeah, yeah, it is crazy. You know, I feel like I just
- 13:57got, I just got done catching my breath from the end of the
- 14:00season and I'm looking on the calendar and if February 21st
- 14:06starts the season again, I'm like hell, how the hell is this
- 14:10possible? Somebody asked me the other day
- 14:13if I was going to the Nashville game.
- 14:14I go. No, it's February.
- 14:15Are you crazy? Crazy.
- 14:18Not yet. Sorry, Liz.
- 14:19What have you shipping? Yeah.
- 14:19Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
- 14:23February's are not the busiest months in the tap room.
- 14:26January's are not the busiest months in the tap room.
- 14:29So any type of padding to get some people through the door,
- 14:32we'll take it any day. Yeah, for sure, Sure.
- 14:37Liz, what are you sipping on? Well, OK, I'm double fisting, so
- 14:41obviously I just got done with work.
- 14:43So I have my Lacroix and my signature brewmate because, you
- 14:46know, I have a problem with those cool canisters.
- 14:48But for my Northern Rail friends, I have up next my
- 14:53Cincinnati Gin, which is a collab that they did with lots
- 14:58of cool Cincinnati locals, Molly Wellman, Chrome Conservatory,
- 15:02and then I'm blanking on the artist's last name, but it was
- 15:05Robin something. Robin Caron.
- 15:08Thank you. This is like my all time
- 15:11favorite gin. I tell everybody they need to
- 15:13buy some and yes, anytime people come over and they have gin at
- 15:16my house, they get poured this and they're converted
- 15:18immediately. So TNT.
- 15:21Nice. I love it.
- 15:22Yeah. That gin, it's a beautiful
- 15:25expression. I tell people all the time that
- 15:27say, well, there's a common misconception about gin.
- 15:30A lot of drinkers think that they don't like gin, but gin is
- 15:34very diverse and there can be a lot of flavors outside of
- 15:38juniper Berry. People kind of think of the
- 15:41classic Christmas tree, and you can get a lot of wonderful
- 15:44flavors out of the gin. Outside of that.
- 15:47Love that gin too. I do represent the distilling
- 15:50part for you guys. Yeah, yeah, sure.
- 15:51Absolutely. And that's such a great product,
- 15:54you know, product project. You know, Molly is obviously
- 15:57great. She's well done throughout the,
- 15:59you know, Cincinnati coptailing scene.
- 16:02But then you know, kind of the added Crown Conservatory
- 16:04element, if y'all are ever visiting Cincinnati Crown
- 16:07Conservatory is a fantastic stop.
- 16:10And, you know, we, we were inspired by botanicals that are
- 16:13housed in that greenhouse that's kind of make something a little
- 16:17bit other than a typical juniper forward Gen., even though it
- 16:21still has a juniper element. So, yeah, it's admittedly what,
- 16:25you know, I, I kind of deal mostly with beer, but it's one
- 16:29of the prouder products that we've actually come out with.
- 16:31And I, yeah, you know, I love it to death.
- 16:34Yeah, it's, it's true. Cincinnati in a bottle.
- 16:37Lots of wonderful collaborations.
- 16:38Like Justin said, Kern's Conservatory.
- 16:41If you're ever out in this way, definitely take an hour or two
- 16:44and stop by. It's been open since the 80s.
- 16:48Some it's been open, I believe. Hundreds, I want to say.
- 16:52I'm not sure, but it's been open for not historian, not
- 16:56historian. That's all right.
- 16:59Been open for a long time, long enough to get some really cool
- 17:02freaking plants, I know that. There you go.
- 17:04There you. Go.
- 17:05I can tell you it was on our list because I was making Steve
- 17:08a list of Christmas things that we should hit up while he was in
- 17:11town. And we didn't make it very far
- 17:14because we ended up hanging out with you instead.
- 17:16So it was like one of those like really cool, like blessings in
- 17:20disguise that we were ecstatic to spend the majority of our
- 17:24evening hanging out and exploring what you guys have.
- 17:27Yeah, you guys, you guys got to go down to our down to our
- 17:32basement that day, which is very historic.
- 17:35We're in a building 1895. It's an original loggering
- 17:39facility for Christian Moore line.
- 17:41So it's a really cool space to go super deep underground back
- 17:45before refrigeration where you had to try a little harder for
- 17:48the loggering process. Yeah, it was truly amazing.
- 17:53And I'll tell you, I also, because I put a video out when I
- 17:56came back in Nashville, because that night we were about to
- 18:00leave and I said to the the girl that was working there, I said,
- 18:02hey, about this brewery Underground sticker, any chance
- 18:05we could put it up someplace? And she walked over to you.
- 18:08You walked over to me, man. I handed it to you and you
- 18:11basically christened it for us. And then you said you got about
- 18:1410 more minutes to stick around. And I'm like, heck yeah, I do.
- 18:18And, you know, and, and Liz and I got to take that tour, man, It
- 18:21was, it was fabulous. I mean, what do you know?
- 18:24I mean, what, what are the, some of the stories you've heard
- 18:26about the history of that? Where you all store that now?
- 18:30Well, yeah, we, we know that the, the building was built in
- 18:341895, basically functioned as, as Josh was saying, as a
- 18:38gigantic refrigerator. So the building itself is five
- 18:42stories, 5 1/2 stories tall, built out of brick.
- 18:46You know, the, the walls are about 3 feet thick.
- 18:50It's really kind of a, you know, it's got a certain beauty to it.
- 18:55It's, but it's a very industrial and very purpose built.
- 18:58The the person that founded it, Christian Mooreline, was a
- 19:03Bavarian immigrant. He came over with something to
- 19:06the tune of about $40.00 of modern currency from from
- 19:11Bavaria, barely survived the trip, started digging tunnels
- 19:15underground for cents per foot, and then turned it into one of
- 19:19the largest beer empires in the United States.
- 19:22So it's a really, it's a really incredible story.
- 19:26And the legacy of Moreline kind of encompasses, I don't know,
- 19:30three to four city blocks maybe. Yeah, northern Cincinnati.
- 19:35So, you know, we're we're part of that story.
- 19:38So we've, we've kind of leaned into that as a foundational
- 19:42thing with our brewery paying homage to the loggers and maybe
- 19:47the beer styles that were historically produced, even
- 19:50though admittedly we're using modern techniques and doing
- 19:54modern interpretations thereof. But you know, where other
- 19:58breweries were focusing on more contemporary and trending
- 20:01styles, we decided that leaning a little bit more into history
- 20:06and doing. Traditional traditional
- 20:09interpretations of style was important to this particular
- 20:13brewery and kind of adds the fabric of what makes up of the
- 20:16great patchwork of Cincinnati breweries.
- 20:18Which the building is super interesting.
- 20:20If you guys have never, never checked it out, definitely come
- 20:23check it out. The tap room something's truly
- 20:26special. Our owner, Dave Berger, did a
- 20:29wonderful job. It's a work of art, honestly.
- 20:32He really put a lot of time and energy into making our tap room
- 20:35special. And a little bit more history of
- 20:37the building after prohibition, obviously this area was a little
- 20:42destitute. So this building laid dormant
- 20:45for about 20 years. And the gentleman, his name's
- 20:50escaping me right now, but a gentleman from Germany and then
- 20:54he's escaped Nazi Germany and made his way over to Cincinnati
- 20:59and started a company called Apex Furniture.
- 21:02If you ever, you ever see the side of our building that says
- 21:07Apex, that's the furniture company.
- 21:09And he started a furniture company here that started doing
- 21:14pull out couches at that time. That's very innovative in the
- 21:171940s, right? 19 fees, you can have a couch
- 21:20and a bed. Who doesn't like that, right?
- 21:23Unless you have to sleep on it, then it changes you're.
- 21:26You're he was going to say my Porsler years or.
- 21:28Sit on it. It's not the most comfortable
- 21:30thing, but started a company with the founder of Big or
- 21:35sorry, Value City Furniture, who's from Columbus, and they
- 21:40started in a giant enterprise here and it was really cool to
- 21:46learn that story. We didn't really know the
- 21:49history of Apex Furniture for a long time, couple years that I
- 21:53worked here. I didn't know what Apex
- 21:54Furniture like Foundation was. It wasn't until the son of the
- 22:00original founder came in and sat down at our bar and was like,
- 22:06hey, I worked in this building for 40 years and I was like,
- 22:10what? And his dad is the one that
- 22:13started the company and he told us the whole history of the
- 22:16building, what they did really cool.
- 22:18They're actually the ones when More Line was operating in the
- 22:21building. There were no windows in here.
- 22:24The purpose of it is a giant refrigerator.
- 22:26The last thing you want is windows.
- 22:28So there's no windows in here. So the furniture company is the
- 22:32one that cut the windows in here and he was telling me about
- 22:34that, which really interesting. As Justin said, we have 3 foot
- 22:38thick brick walls, so that is no easy feat.
- 22:42So yeah, a lot of history here in the building.
- 22:44It's kind of a working, it's a working museum I would say.
- 22:48There's artifacts. We have a rowboat called a shell
- 22:52actually from the 1936 Olympic crew team.
- 22:56It's their practice vessel, really interesting stories, lots
- 22:59of history in here. So if you love history and beer,
- 23:02come check it out. Yeah, yeah.
- 23:05Your back bar back there is from like 18 O 9 when it was
- 23:09manufactured, is that right? Back Bar is beautiful.
- 23:12It's from 1919 O nine. It was made by the Brunswick
- 23:15Company. Cincinnati.
- 23:17Went out to Golden Co for 100 years.
- 23:19Came back when we purchased it from the Wooden Nickel downtown.
- 23:22Yeah, that's, that's fantastic. It is beautiful, pretty sure.
- 23:26Yeah, the Brunswick, Brunswick Billiard Company, you know,
- 23:29they're the ones famous for making billiard tables.
- 23:31I think they actually invented or created the Magic 8 ball as a
- 23:36marketing, really as a marketing.
- 23:38Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, what a good idea.
- 23:43That's amazing and. It was something I was, I was
- 23:45curious about the first time I came in there.
- 23:48I think Scott and I came in there like 8 years ago or
- 23:51something and I remember walking in there and I'm always
- 23:54fascinated. Buy older buildings especially,
- 23:57you know, we go, go and visit breweries.
- 23:59They've been converted, right? Like it used to be an older
- 24:02building. I'm curious, like you all open
- 24:04in 2020 I believe and how do you know how long it had been vacant
- 24:10or had it been vacant for a while before you guys took over?
- 24:12I want to say that the owner of the building bought it sometime
- 24:17in the 90 early mid 90s, OK and had done some sort of
- 24:22renovation. We're we're A5 story building.
- 24:25So we have tenants on the second, third, fourth floors.
- 24:28So it's been in some period of renovation for 30 years.
- 24:33I want to say sure. And it continues, you know, like
- 24:36there are, there are drafts of things down in the, you know,
- 24:43things down in the basement and on the 5th floor and all of this
- 24:46that are enough to make my head spin.
- 24:48I'm just like, I'm here to make the beer y'all, you know?
- 24:52The building is, it's a really interesting building with a lot
- 24:56of personalities in it. Problems.
- 24:59Yeah, problems. Elevators that don't work.
- 25:01Things like that. It's an old building, that's
- 25:03what comes with it. But we're, we're kind of lucky
- 25:07this area, you know, 30-40 years ago, I mean, I'll even say 20
- 25:11years ago, I mean, even a little bit, you know, even further
- 25:16along than that. This area wasn't a super popular
- 25:21area in town would just say that it was kind of left dormant for
- 25:25a long time. People didn't really come over
- 25:27to this area, which is actually wonderful for today because they
- 25:33didn't tear the buildings down. So you, you're walking through,
- 25:37you know, cities that have had different industrial projects
- 25:41where they tear buildings down and have some sort of, you know,
- 25:44brand new apartment complex come up.
- 25:47All those things didn't really happen in this area as much.
- 25:51All the development was happening in other areas.
- 25:54So if you're walking through this neighborhood, a lot of it
- 25:57looks like 150 years ago. There's wonderful architecture.
- 26:02Buildings remain the same. There's ruins of other
- 26:05buildings. And this area was one of the
- 26:07largest producers of beer in the United States.
- 26:10It wasn't just Christian Morlan. There's Jackson Brewing that's
- 26:13up on the hill, Giant space as well.
- 26:16There's Cliffside Brewing down the street as well, which is now
- 26:21Sindev Cincinnati Beverage Company.
- 26:23They're they're kind of holding, they're they're kind of keeping
- 26:26the torch for Christian Mooreline's name.
- 26:29They make Christian Moorelines beer.
- 26:31They also just accumulated taps, taps.
- 26:34They they do a lot of cool stuff.
- 26:35Lot of the Cincinnati Heritage Loggers.
- 26:37Yeah. Little Cadence, Beautiful.
- 26:40So on and so forth. They make a lot of those down
- 26:42the street in another old. Brewery.
- 26:45Which is really cool that we're not the only ones that are doing
- 26:47this. Rhinegeist is also in a
- 26:50Christian more line building. So you have a lot of people that
- 26:54are restoring these buildings and bringing them new life, and
- 26:58it's really cool to see in this. Neighborhood.
- 27:01If you have a really good arm, you can throw us throw a Pebble
- 27:04off of our rooftop and hit probably two or three other
- 27:07breweries. Yeah, definitely.
- 27:08Have you tried it? See how strong your arm?
- 27:11I've done it all right. And Liz, you can echo that
- 27:15because living, living there and I'm from there too, you know,
- 27:20the over the Ryan area 2025 years ago was like what?
- 27:23And now you go through it, as these guys said, it's, it's
- 27:26amazing the the transition and the turn around.
- 27:29I live down here. Completely revitalized.
- 27:32And, you know, I think a lot of that we owe to the craft brewery
- 27:34scene, just, you know, coming into the area and bringing
- 27:39people to the neighborhood and, you know, for the love of beer.
- 27:42And I know I tell you guys all the time, throw a rock in
- 27:44Cincinnati, you'll hit another brewery.
- 27:46But you know, it's, it's really cool, especially when you're
- 27:49centrally located it, you know, especially the FC, you know,
- 27:53some other breweries in town and your guys's favorite mode of
- 27:57transportation that you took all around Cincinnati.
- 28:00Yeah, it's Streetcar. And all the different spots.
- 28:04Yeah, we're very fortunate to be right next to the streetcar.
- 28:08It's something that is just wonderful to the downtown area
- 28:12that I do wish more of the Greater Cincinnati population
- 28:16utilize a little bit more. It's something that we utilize
- 28:19all the time. Red season is a beautiful time
- 28:22here because we are one streetcar ride right away to the
- 28:26Red Stadium. So we're able to get off work
- 28:30and just hop on the streetcar, go down to the Red Stadium, hop
- 28:33on the streetcar, come back up here.
- 28:35We don't have to deal with any type of parking, any type of
- 28:38issues like that. More people in the area looked
- 28:41into it and kind of understood how it works.
- 28:44It's free. First of all, all you have to do
- 28:46is hop on it at Ryan guys and it dead ends at the red Stadium.
- 28:51So it's super easy. Highly recommend it.
- 28:54It's really fast as well and just really easy to utilize, so
- 28:59we're very fortunate to have it there, not just for other
- 29:02people, but for us as well. And also when you see it passing
- 29:05by our window, you know you have about 5 minutes to finish your
- 29:08drink. Or.
- 29:10Order another one. I was just thinking, could you
- 29:13guys like, I don't know, like I don't know, vote or ask them if
- 29:17they can like carry beer on to the truck and then you don't
- 29:19have to finish so quickly, you can just take it with you.
- 29:22You know, like the. It's not Dory.
- 29:24Yet. And areas around have created
- 29:27Dora designated outdoor recreation area, you know,
- 29:30basically open container areas. We'll see if we can talk, you
- 29:35know, to making the entire downtown Cincinnati.
- 29:38Yeah. You know, step at a time.
- 29:41Just float it out there. Strict ignore is a very popular
- 29:45decision making I. Don't believe we do not condone.
- 29:48That we do not condone that at all.
- 29:50I hate to even mention it. I'm just saying I've heard
- 29:52tales. Yeah, but see, the other thing I
- 29:54was going to say is and Scott and I come up, but you know, he
- 29:57I come up for family stuff, but he also, he and I come up about
- 30:00once a year and do brewery tours and Cincinnati games.
- 30:04That is actually the most favorite thing that he likes to
- 30:07do is get on the Cincinnati streetcar.
- 30:10We. Talked about the.
- 30:11Podcast episodes. He's from there and he's never
- 30:14ridden. I had to talk him into getting
- 30:16on the thing. He's like, well, Are you sure?
- 30:18He's like, can we just Uber? I go, it comes out the front
- 30:20door. All you have to do is walk out
- 30:22the front door. Steve's defense, they used to
- 30:24charge, so I don't think I know Josh said earlier that you know,
- 30:28it's free, but I still. Charge for Ubers too.
- 30:30It's free. Yeah, it's free.
- 30:32We were going to pay for an Uber.
- 30:34It's also it's not like you know a bus system where you have to
- 30:37figure out a route and where to go.
- 30:39It's a loop around the city. If you if you fuck up, if you
- 30:45mess up. Don't you worry, we're leaving
- 30:49it in. Don't worry, you can.
- 30:52You wind up right where you start you.
- 30:54Can just stay on it depending on how many beers you actually.
- 30:58There's a rule. There's a rule that you can't
- 31:00take more than one consecutive loop around.
- 31:03They're going to kick you off. So you.
- 31:04Don't come with a. Switch.
- 31:05You're just going to have to get the next.
- 31:06Streak OK, but if you've had enough beers you'll you'll find
- 31:10a new bar, I promise. Well, and the, and the great
- 31:13thing is, I think for us, the great thing for us is the fact
- 31:17that it's actually added content for us.
- 31:20Hey, we're on the streetcar and now we're going to be talking
- 31:22about our experience. So, you know, we've become
- 31:25advocates for it, man. Yeah, they're doing a podcast
- 31:28from it. Yes, you did.
- 31:30You guys went live? It's super.
- 31:32Clean as well, super clean and it's there's no issues with it.
- 31:37It's one of the best modes of public transportation I've ever
- 31:40taken in my life. Like, they do a really good job,
- 31:43it's safe, I enjoy it. Yeah, it's extremely efficient
- 31:48too. Like it's.
- 31:48Let's talk about expanding that. Expand you have we needed to go
- 31:52up to Clifton in the old incline.
- 31:56And keep adding to it, yeah. That'd be awesome.
- 31:59Yeah. Guys, consider you guys are a
- 32:01logger Ford brewery. Are you set up, is your brewery
- 32:04set up maybe with the equipment and stuff differently than most
- 32:08breweries? When I say that because your
- 32:09logger forwarding is you know, is it glycol chillers and versus
- 32:13other breweries who put out a lot of Ipas and maybe an
- 32:15occasional logger. So yes, in some ways, in some
- 32:19ways we are and in other ways we still have things to build upon.
- 32:23As you can see behind me, we feature unit tanks which are not
- 32:27necessarily logger focused fermentation vessels.
- 32:32That being said, we do have a very, very bulky glycol chiller
- 32:36and fermentation temperature and fermentation profile is one of
- 32:40the forefronts of what what we do here.
- 32:44Having kind of a strict regimen on that is pretty forefront.
- 32:48You know, some other things that are pretty important to us here
- 32:51are water treatment. So differentiating because we
- 32:55have so many loggers and many of those are in the blonde scale,
- 33:00right. How do we differentiate between
- 33:02an American like logger, a German pilsner, A Czech pilsner,
- 33:07even, you know, other similar styles like our Kolsch, when I'm
- 33:12kind of using similar ingredients, like the same, same
- 33:16malt, same pilsner malt, similar noble hops, Like how do we
- 33:21differentiate and, and create different profiles and different
- 33:25flavors from all of this? And water profile, obviously
- 33:28yeast and then fermentation profile are the three things
- 33:32that I can really lean into and use to influence these these
- 33:35things. So, yeah, to answer your
- 33:38question, yeah, we do have a few things and a few other other
- 33:43things like time, you know, we we kind of have, I'm constantly
- 33:47battling with sales and packaging and all of that and
- 33:52saying, no, the beer is not ready yet.
- 33:54It's out of the way. And we're, we're currently
- 33:57butting heads right now, you know, this week with box coming
- 34:01like knocking on the door, right?
- 34:03I love, I love everybody that I work with.
- 34:05But we're having some very terse conversations right now, you
- 34:10know? We're a family here, so
- 34:13sometimes family, especially if the whole objective of your job
- 34:18is to sell, sell, sell, and the objective of this guy's job is
- 34:23to put out the best beer possible.
- 34:25Sometimes the the sales can wait a little bit in order to make
- 34:30the product. And we do here.
- 34:33I have seen us really crank out some wonderful loggers and I've
- 34:38seen us pour beer down the drain.
- 34:40And I think that that's important to admit because not
- 34:44every beer is going to turn out. There's going to be issues.
- 34:47And we had our glycol crash two years ago and cost us some beers
- 34:51just out of our hands. And instead of putting it into
- 34:55the market, I watched it go down the drain.
- 34:57And it's the dedication to the craft, dedication to loggering.
- 35:02We do have some larger tanks than some of those breweries
- 35:05that churn out a lot of Ipas. You have a smaller brewery with
- 35:09what, 6 barrel, 8 barrel, whatever it is.
- 35:12Yeah, you can change everything size based on me.
- 35:17Is is OK? So before we hit the record
- 35:20button, Justin, you were talking about me.
- 35:22Was Josh. You're sitting next to a certain
- 35:23tank that's fermenting right now, some Oktoberfest, some
- 35:28Oktoberfest and I go, you guys are getting ready for the fall
- 35:31and you go, no, this is a year round beer for us.
- 35:33Talk about that and talk about that thought process, because
- 35:35Steve and I have talked about many times, we wish we could get
- 35:37Oktoberfest all year round. Right.
- 35:40So you know, one of the things like both the limitation with
- 35:46not necessarily only making loggers but kind of focusing on
- 35:49loggers is you do have to, you do have to figure out how you
- 35:53differentiate things. And we decided at a very early
- 35:57point that a Mertzen or Oktoberfest or Fest Beer lager
- 36:01was one of the things that we wanted to kind of feature.
- 36:05As a As a flagship. Beer we don't necessarily like
- 36:08sometimes. Sometimes people attach an
- 36:12unnecessary seasonality to some of these beer styles that
- 36:16otherwise why wouldn't I want to drink a malt forward but still
- 36:21somewhat sessionable lager below 6% ABV any time of the year.
- 36:26Sometimes I want something a little bit sweet, like do I?
- 36:29Do I write off slice of chocolate cake because it's
- 36:32July? No.
- 36:33So, so we figured that why not? And instead of instead of just
- 36:38going along with a trend of saying, well, we only do this
- 36:41seasonally or if there's a big festival happening in town.
- 36:45No, let's let the beer speak for itself.
- 36:47And it's it's good. It has it has potential and
- 36:51pairing possibility with food and especially in colder
- 36:57climates, colder weather, we need that malt.
- 37:00I've been railing against. You know, Bachfest is coming up
- 37:05and the Cincinnatians drink Bach Fest religiously for three days
- 37:11and then they kind of turn their turn their.
- 37:15All of us and. Then they just kind of turn away
- 37:17from it, probably because they indulged a little bit too much
- 37:21on Bach Fest. But but really the tradition of
- 37:25it is that it is part of the Lenten season.
- 37:29It was tradition, and there's an entire month to enjoy it.
- 37:33We also really love our fish fries.
- 37:35So what I can say to the people of Sympathy and beyond, if you
- 37:40love fried fish, grab yourself a Heller buck or a my buck or a
- 37:44doppelbock and chase it with that.
- 37:47I promise you it's going to taste delicious.
- 37:50And it's also going to stave off that cold weather that we know
- 37:53is coming again. Yeah.
- 37:55It's important. It's important, too.
- 37:57Don't let the 70° weather down in Nashville.
- 38:00You. Need sweet?
- 38:03Yeah, we know, we know it's coming back.
- 38:05It's, it's funny. We, we, there's a brewery here,
- 38:08Stoke House, they'd opened up not long ago and they, they are
- 38:13great. And they also do BBQ as well.
- 38:16And we've talked to those guys about the food pairings, so
- 38:19that's sort of a big deal. Is that a selling point for you
- 38:21guys too? As far as people come in?
- 38:22You're like, hey, boot pairing could beer.
- 38:25Yeah. We, we actually hosted probably
- 38:28around quarterly, we host different pairing dinners here
- 38:32that we really focus on our, our different, you know, spirits or
- 38:38beers in our portfolio. We have a little bit higher
- 38:41elevated menu. It's a ticketed event.
- 38:44It's a lot of fun. You get to come in, enjoy 5-6
- 38:48courses paired with beers paired with spirits, really
- 38:53accentuating the food is a, it's called prohibition is over.
- 38:58So it's a celebration of the end of Prohibition that we just
- 39:02continue to celebrate all year round.
- 39:05There's a tour guide that comes in that talks about the history.
- 39:08Cincinnati was a hub during Prohibition.
- 39:11George Remus is, you know, based out of Cincinnati, selling that
- 39:15good government liquor to everybody that would buy it.
- 39:19So he was able to really create an empire here.
- 39:23So there's a lot of history about prohibition in this area.
- 39:27So we celebrate that with pairing dinner, and I'll say
- 39:31this, the Brewer and which is the name of our American
- 39:34Oktoberfest style. It is always on that menu paired
- 39:39with something. It pairs with food better than
- 39:41any, well, I don't want to say any the Hells lager, you know,
- 39:45that's if you got a really flavourful dish, that's
- 39:47wonderful. But we use the Oktoberfest style
- 39:51the most in cooking. It's in our beer cheese, it's in
- 39:54our chili. We utilize it all the time in
- 39:56order to to cook because it has that malt sweetness that really
- 40:00brings dishes together. Really lucky to have that.
- 40:04It's one of my favorite styles. So when I started here.
- 40:07I could not have been happier. It's honestly the beer that I
- 40:10drink the most year as well. Just really good style.
- 40:12Well, and I did want to say that the night I came in there and I
- 40:16had a flight, I did get the northern row Oktoberfest.
- 40:20That was the first time I've had your Oktoberfest.
- 40:22Loved it. And the other thing that I did
- 40:25not realize is that you all have Oktoberfest out more during the
- 40:28year because usually, you know, we came in the early December
- 40:31and normally by December, a lot of breweries, you don't find it
- 40:34anymore, I think. Yeah.
- 40:37So it was great to get it. Yeah, if they, I mean, if you're
- 40:40not making it all year round and you'd have it in December,
- 40:43things have gone awry for you. Well, it's just like you said,
- 40:46after the bot fest, after Oktoberfest season, people just
- 40:48kind of turn it off for the most part.
- 40:50If you get burned off, you drink a bunch of it for the thing.
- 40:52Can I ask you this, how is because you guys have it all
- 40:55year? How are sales for that?
- 40:57Are they pretty consistent year round?
- 40:58Because people always think I can get it kind of anytime I
- 41:00want to. So, so surprisingly sales sales
- 41:03are really good for the brewery. We about a year and a half ago,
- 41:08just about a year ago, we kind of shifted gears and started a
- 41:13partnership with a statewide distributor to get our beer
- 41:16moved all through the state of Ohio.
- 41:19And our before that, our number one and #2 sellers were our
- 41:24Hellas Lager and our Heckler, which was which is our
- 41:28contemporary like hazy juicy IPA that was #1 and #2 premium
- 41:34beverage distribution out of Columbus kind of took that and
- 41:38the Mertzen, you know, our Brewer and our half of ice and
- 41:42became our number one and #2 sellers because of that.
- 41:45I'll say. That so yeah, it's been a
- 41:48success story in many ways. If you're a fan of 1/2 of Eisen,
- 41:52I know that I'm biased. I work here.
- 41:55I'm sitting next to the guy that makes it.
- 41:57You enjoy 1/2 of Eisen. I put ours against anyone's
- 42:03anyone's in Ohio. It's really delicious.
- 42:06Fatheads Gottes Hogger is a Fat Heads is Good is a legendary
- 42:10beer. That one's good, too.
- 42:12It's the one that I'm after, you know what I mean?
- 42:14I would love to beat it in competition one of these days.
- 42:17Maybe there should be an Ohio. Competition.
- 42:19All effects. To them, yeah, it's it's an
- 42:21amazing. Beer.
- 42:22That's one of our. Favorite, and I actually don't
- 42:25really love half of ice that much, but it is.
- 42:27I don't either. Yeah, yeah, it's not my favorite
- 42:30style, but yeah, Fatheads. Also the Headhunter.
- 42:34You guys figured it out and it's one of the best beers that I've
- 42:38ever had. But the one you're talking about
- 42:42is designer from you all right? Correct.
- 42:44Designer. Yeah, Yeah, I had that in 2024.
- 42:49And it looks like because usually I come up there.
- 42:52Yeah, I, I usually come up there about four or five times a year,
- 42:55do family stuff. And if I don't get to a lot of
- 42:58breweries, I'm always stop at a party source and I'm always
- 43:02looking for Northern Row beer at party source.
- 43:04Thank you. And that's where I that's where
- 43:06I picked it up from. Great.
- 43:08Good. Yeah, Yeah.
- 43:09Good, good. Yeah, I mean that's also a
- 43:11really great spot to find all of our spirits as well.
- 43:14You know, we're, we're starting to get a really good partnership
- 43:18with, with Party source and. We haven't been there.
- 43:21This coming? Is it this Friday?
- 43:24Thursday, Friday, something like that.
- 43:26I've had this. Singer, they're the only other
- 43:28place. So are bourbon.
- 43:29We do make bourbon as well. It's been a labor of love.
- 43:33It took a long time. A lot of people asking when it's
- 43:36going to be ready, much like sales with Justin, we're like
- 43:39just not ready yet dude, I'm sorry.
- 43:42And then like unintentional lies about when we thought it was
- 43:46going to be ready. Just speculation and just being
- 43:48like, I'm sorry it's just still not ready yet.
- 43:51Like you really have to wait. Let it mature.
- 43:54It's it's like BBQ like if you throw a brisket on your on your
- 43:59smoker, you don't really know when it's going to be done.
- 44:02Like you can have an idea of when you think that it'll be
- 44:05done, but you're really just waiting until it's reached the
- 44:09best of its potential. So it took us six years to drop
- 44:14a bourbon, and so they're going an event there.
- 44:17The only other place that you can get our bourbon is the party
- 44:20source. Other than here, because it's
- 44:21done in really small batches. We don't release a ton of
- 44:24bottles every year, just the best of the best of what we
- 44:27have. I think it's very respectable
- 44:30that you waited the six years and I know you said I had to be
- 44:32ready, but there's a lot of people that will put you hit
- 44:35that four year mark and it's out the door, right.
- 44:37That's kind of the two or three. You know, it's really young 4.
- 44:40It's kind of that that benchmark.
- 44:42OK, now we can go. You guys waited six years, which
- 44:44is not easy to do because that's two more years.
- 44:46You know you're just sitting on it.
- 44:48You know what made it easy, though, is that it tastes really
- 44:52damn. Good tastes damn good.
- 44:53You know, and that's, that's kind of one of the things that I
- 44:58really respected most about our like collective decision of when
- 45:01to release this and when we were actually ready is like, yeah, of
- 45:07course, of course we probably have some barrel sitting down
- 45:10there that is going to hit the 1015 year mark.
- 45:13That's that's going to be the best thing that we've ever made.
- 45:17We're very proud of what we've accomplished in that six years
- 45:21of arguing. Yeah.
- 45:25Yeah, one of the, I'll say one of the most interesting things.
- 45:29I love bourbon. I've, I don't want to call
- 45:32myself a connoisseur. I love bourbon.
- 45:34I've drank a lot of it. And say one of the most
- 45:37interesting things about working at a distillery as well.
- 45:41You know when you try bourbon a lot of the times, hopefully when
- 45:44you taste it, it is mature, right?
- 45:47You're like staying away from the cheap bourbon and you're
- 45:50buying some decent bourbon. Hopefully what you're tasting in
- 45:53the bottle has come to fruition and is delicious.
- 45:57An interesting thing here is tasting bourbon that hasn't
- 46:01been, it's not ready yet. I worked here for years tasting
- 46:05bourbon and happened to, you know, it tastes green, it tastes
- 46:09like corn still like really heavily.
- 46:12So been a really interesting process of, you know, working
- 46:16with it's all of us a really fun part of our job during tasting
- 46:21season, which traditionally is like 2 tasting seasons a year.
- 46:25You got your spring tasting season and you have your fall
- 46:28tasting season. We do it a lot more.
- 46:30We do it a lot more than that. But in those times, though,
- 46:35every Friday afternoon we get to sit around and we got our head
- 46:40distiller that has eight different bourbons and you're
- 46:44running through them and it's a blind tasting and you have your
- 46:48notes and you're writing like, is this bourbon, you know good?
- 46:52What are you getting out of it? Because not every bourbon is a
- 46:55single barrel. You know, you have to like
- 46:57isolate flavors from that bourbon.
- 47:00If something is just a brown sugar bomb, maybe it could be a
- 47:04single barrel, but maybe it's going to help this other bourbon
- 47:07that's like a little bit too perfumey.
- 47:10So you blend them together and you really get that final
- 47:13product that you're after. So I'll say like, it's very
- 47:16fortunate. Friday afternoons are really fun
- 47:19on the tasting season. A lot of work gets done, but
- 47:23it's just a different type of work.
- 47:25A lot of opinions are formed, I'm sure.
- 47:27You guys are going to taste everything and then go March in
- 47:29the Bach Fest parade. Porn samples.
- 47:33Josh, you're right about that though.
- 47:34It's that if this one in single barrels have their place and I
- 47:37and I buy single barrels sometimes, but to get that
- 47:39consistency, that's that, that, that blending, right, that's
- 47:43that we want the consistent product every time.
- 47:45That's where that comes into play.
- 47:47And single barrels are great too, because they can and
- 47:49they're not always great. Some are exceptional and and
- 47:52some aren't that great. Just because it's a single
- 47:54barrel doesn't mean it's fantastic.
- 47:56No, no it doesn't. And in the world of bourbon
- 48:00marketing, unless you can, you don't see very many companies
- 48:04that are outside of store picks. And we'll say you don't see a
- 48:09companies that are a lot of them that are just dropping single
- 48:13barrel after single barrel after single barrel because there's so
- 48:17much variance from barrel to barrel that if you really enjoy
- 48:23a bourbon and you're like, hey, I had this Maker's Mark single
- 48:27barrel or whatever it is, the chances of me tasting that
- 48:30bourbon buying it are very limited unless it's somewhere
- 48:35that has a store pick, like I said, that I go the same day and
- 48:38go get it. You're not going to have a
- 48:39consistent product. So single barrels are one of
- 48:42those things that are a little bit more limited, a little bit
- 48:45more special, you know? Yes.
- 48:47And, and if you trust that liquor store that you bought
- 48:49that from, like if you trust their palette, you know it's
- 48:52going to be good. Yeah.
- 48:53Absolutely. Right.
- 48:54And that single, that pic that they've done, guys, can we talk?
- 48:57Can we do a little deep dive into some of your beers, your
- 48:59core beers and seasonals And yeah, sure what not?
- 49:01Absolutely ask away. So one of them I'm going to jump
- 49:05right to seasonal beers. There's one of them and I think
- 49:06it's the greatest name ever, the Wanker English IPA.
- 49:10Yeah, actually, you know, the other, the sister to this new
- 49:14one, we just, we just put the wanker on on tap today as well.
- 49:20So she's a little young. She's delicious though.
- 49:24Very, very good. So yeah, it's, you know, it's a
- 49:28spiritual English IPA. So while everybody is kind of
- 49:32going more towards the New England juicy styles and
- 49:36tropical hops and things like that, like the, the hops that
- 49:40we've selected for this one are, I mean, it's kind of a 5050
- 49:44split between traditional English hops and Slovenian hops
- 49:49that are presenting these really, really, while not super
- 49:53traditional with the English IPA style, quintessentially British
- 49:57like black tea, citrus zest, orange marmalade, things like
- 50:02that. We dry hop this IPA with that.
- 50:05So it creates this really kind of new and old variation of the
- 50:09English IPA. It still has that more
- 50:12structured bitterness malt forward profile, a little bit
- 50:16deeper of a caramel color than what you'll find with your like
- 50:22pale contemporary IP as. But yeah, just we just tapped
- 50:29it. We've got the two freshest kegs
- 50:32in the world of this on right now.
- 50:37Josh just threw out a brand new bangers and mash.
- 50:43We're kind of doing like a British invasion month for this.
- 50:47Obviously taking a break for Bach Fest, but but yeah, we're
- 50:52going to be playing some old like UK hits and serving up some
- 50:56bangers and mash and we'll see if some other specials and
- 51:01cocktails start to come into fruition and all of that.
- 51:04Yet another reason to just stop in and have some fun with us.
- 51:08We've got honestly, like we were talking about the Cincinnati
- 51:12gin. My personal favorite gin is the
- 51:14London Dry, which is kind of going against what what we were
- 51:18talking about in the juniper heavy category.
- 51:20It's it's a very classic gin. We both like Gin a lot.
- 51:26I like it all, you know, I love even though like the Dutch, your
- 51:29neighbors and stuff like that. But yeah.
- 51:33The London Dry is actually it's our most decorated bottle that
- 51:38we have in our spirit line with awards.
- 51:41It's won more awards than any other spirit that we have in our
- 51:44entire portfolio. It's something that like, you
- 51:47know, isn't our best selling product by any means, but it's
- 51:53it tastes freaking awesome. It's just, you know.
- 51:57Cincinnati Gin is also beautiful as well, but London Dry is also
- 52:01a special product. You know, every time I visit
- 52:04Boston, I go. I go and I buy a bottle of tea
- 52:09and I go to Boston Harbor and I dump it out.
- 52:12And. Winning a winning a medal for a
- 52:18London dry gin kind of gives me the same sort of warm fuzzies.
- 52:21Very satisfying, yeah. That's awesome.
- 52:25You know, Scott asks you about core beers.
- 52:27What's the criteria for you all that makes it a core beer that
- 52:31you want to put out? You know, that's, that's
- 52:33multifaceted, right? You know, I feel like, I feel
- 52:36like any tap room has to cater to all the different tastes,
- 52:41right? You know, especially when you're
- 52:43just dealing with beer where, you know, there are certain
- 52:46people that because of dietary restrictions, they just can't
- 52:49even have have this stuff. There are multiple, there's a
- 52:52multitude of tastes. There are multiple people that
- 52:54are getting into it for many different reasons.
- 52:58They might have been tied to their macro lager for decades
- 53:03and they want to branch out and or they got dragged there or
- 53:08they grew up in the time where hops were king.
- 53:11So, you know, we we look to build a balanced tap list.
- 53:16Yeah. But really, like, like I said,
- 53:18kind of leaning into the historic and more foundational
- 53:21things with our building and what makes us sets us apart and
- 53:25makes U.S. special. So, you know, like we probably
- 53:27do about a 60 to 70% lager and historic and classic styles.
- 53:35We reserve some room for contemporary, you know, but
- 53:40recognize like BJCP styles and then we maybe have room for one
- 53:46or two, you know, for funsies. Yeah.
- 53:49Log Yeah. Fruited or we've been playing
- 53:53around a lot with some coffee. We've got this really, really
- 53:56great Vietnam Vietnamese espresso.
- 53:59I don't know to call it a shandy is not the right thing, but we,
- 54:02we basically took some cold brew Vietnamese espresso and added it
- 54:07to our English style brown ale. It just, you know, we did a, we
- 54:11did a whole bunch of testing with a few of the styles that we
- 54:14had on tap and those two just gelled really, really nicely.
- 54:19Really good product, yeah. And that'll just be something
- 54:23that we make a couple of kegs of.
- 54:26It's also a collaboration beer with a Vietnamese coffee roaster
- 54:30down the street. Yeah, so you can get.
- 54:32A bowl of pho and then. Yeah, yeah.
- 54:37Well, I know you had mentioned when we were up and touring that
- 54:39you also like to do your Kolsch nights and that's a thing to
- 54:44highlight the Kolsch beer. And I know, Josh, you were going
- 54:47on how you could just drink the night away drinking Kolsch beer.
- 54:50Yeah, yeah. So we do traditional KOLF
- 54:53service every third Tuesday of the month.
- 54:56It's something we've done for a couple of years now.
- 54:58Super fun night, couple of beers, couple of beers, couple
- 55:03of years. These Bach beers, they they are
- 55:08awesome. By the way, sounds like it.
- 55:12Couple of years now and we do special features, different food
- 55:17features from all around the world.
- 55:19Nicole is such shape, great pairing beer pears with so many
- 55:23things. It's a great cooking beer.
- 55:25It's got a light profile, but you know, it's got a little bit
- 55:29of little bit of that malt sweetness in there that really
- 55:31ties everything together. We've really got a devoted group
- 55:36of regulars that absolutely love coming to it.
- 55:39I'll say this like once I see a new face, I see them every
- 55:44single coach night. It's just continued to grow and
- 55:48grown a cult following it's got. We really, really push the
- 55:54communal aspect of it. The beautiful thing about coach
- 55:57service is you don't need to talk to your server to get
- 56:01another beer. Another beer will just be
- 56:03presented in front of you until you put your coaster on top of
- 56:07it and that signifies that you're done.
- 56:09But until then, beers will just get dropped in front of you.
- 56:13Order food when you're ready. No one's pressuring you to do
- 56:16anything or, like, really talking to you very much.
- 56:20It's really about your conversations with, you know,
- 56:23your community. There's seen friendships blossom
- 56:26through Colts Tonight over the years to where the people who
- 56:29were perfect strangers that started sitting at the same
- 56:33stop, same table at Colts Tonight.
- 56:35So really special. We're very fortunate to be able
- 56:39to do that every month. Yeah.
- 56:40It's pretty. It's like one of those Brazilian
- 56:42steaks houses, if you've ever been to one of those, and they
- 56:45just keep bringing you the meat. Till you tell me stuff.
- 56:48Absolutely. Is this green or red?
- 56:51For sure. And every month, every month the
- 56:53kitchen comes out with another special they Josh has made my
- 56:59family's sour braten recipe, which is I think almost 100
- 57:04years old or something like that.
- 57:05And it's delicious. Every Christmas we do sour
- 57:08braten from the devil. This is.
- 57:11Yeah, he cooked that sounds. Delicious.
- 57:14It's wonderful. And I, I'm actually next month
- 57:17I'll be doing a, a deep dive. I'll be heading to Cologne for a
- 57:22couple of days to maybe bring back some, some inspiration for
- 57:28next year. He's he's going to hate like I,
- 57:30I'm going to get to taste all this stuff and I'll be like, you
- 57:32need to make this. Do it make it now.
- 57:35And see what I was thinking too on Cole Schneider, what you need
- 57:38to do is also tell these people, just point to the Brewery
- 57:41Underground podcast sticker that you put up and say listen to
- 57:43that podcast because we're on it.
- 57:46We're definitely going to be doing that.
- 57:47We're definitely we're going to promote the hell out of it.
- 57:52I mean, you know, open invitation, come up and film
- 57:56live that Cole Schneid some some.
- 57:59That would be remarkable, Yes. Just to see that in action would
- 58:02be cool as hell. Yeah.
- 58:03Yeah. There's another special or
- 58:06seasonal beer that's on your on your your website.
- 58:09And I bring it up because, well, and I'll let you know what it's
- 58:11called. The barrel aged brawler, BA
- 58:13Imperial Schwartz, Beal Beer. It's got a cool name, cool
- 58:17label. It's got the old kind of the old
- 58:19timey fighter. You know, he's kind of doing
- 58:21this. Absolutely, yeah.
- 58:22The cool things about it, it's it's in a bottle, at least it
- 58:24shows on the website. Like why is that in a bottle
- 58:27still and kind of everything else is canned?
- 58:29Well, you know, we we actually you must be looking at a this
- 58:33year's barrel aged brawler actually wound up in a can.
- 58:36But OK, it's just on the website.
- 58:38In years past, in years past, we have hand bottled that and
- 58:42actually the barrel aged conspirator, the barrel aged
- 58:45doppelbock that we're releasing for Bot Fest will be in glass
- 58:49bottles sometimes. Sometimes we just like the look
- 58:55of bottles and we take when we when we bottle, we hand bottle
- 59:00one single bottle at a time. We take ample time, like I want
- 59:05to say it took about four hours, 4 1/2 hours for us to do 120
- 59:10bottles of this barrel aged conspirator.
- 59:13So we take our time with it and it's, you know that those sort
- 59:17of bottles that are meant to be aged and cellared and we kind of
- 59:21expect for people to hold for an extended period of time.
- 59:26We want to kind of give the beer the best, the best possible
- 59:29scenario. And while right behind us, we've
- 59:32got a really nice modern tanning line that is very, very great
- 59:37for for delivering 95% of our beers.
- 59:41Sometimes just taking the slow route is the right way to go.
- 59:45So we just kind of burn labor for that day and say, well,
- 59:50we're, we're just going to sit here and crack open a couple of
- 59:55bottles and taste it, make sure it's all tasting good.
- 59:58And usually that's a Friday. Yeah.
- 1:00:01The Fridays are big there, right?
- 1:00:03Pretty sure. Pretty sure then.
- 1:00:04You guys. Need to show up on a Friday?
- 1:00:05Barely Sports beer, so and barely.
- 1:00:08Sports beer. I was going to say, if you don't
- 1:00:11talk to these fine folks for a minute.
- 1:00:13So I'll be back in a minute. Yeah, the barrel aged sports
- 1:00:16beer is something OK. It's really incredible.
- 1:00:20One of my I wouldn't consider myself a huge bourbon barrel
- 1:00:25aged or barrel aged beer fan. It's not my style.
- 1:00:29Personally, I love bourbon and I love spirits and I love beer.
- 1:00:33I don't love them together as much as a lot of people.
- 1:00:37I've had some really, really fantastic ones over the years.
- 1:00:40But it has to be truly something really spectable for me to
- 1:00:44really, really get behind it. And the rum barrel aged source
- 1:00:48beer is something that blew my freaking mind.
- 1:00:51Just the rum flavors coming through in that Imperial Source
- 1:00:55beer. Yeah, there it is.
- 1:00:56There's the label. Yep, that's cool.
- 1:00:59Looks really good. But we've got a really limited
- 1:01:01amount and still in the tap room, so any of the local
- 1:01:05listeners come in and get it, please.
- 1:01:07I just love the nostalgia behind it, whether it's the label or
- 1:01:10even being in the bottle. Or is just some of the nostalgia
- 1:01:12some kind of old world kind of thing to it?
- 1:01:15You know, the, the one thing that I thought we should have
- 1:01:17added was Hazard Charles, the Cincinnati Cobra, you know?
- 1:01:22Yeah. Local legend for sure.
- 1:01:25Yeah. The also Robin Carnes that you
- 1:01:28were mentioning earlier with our gin bottle is we've been
- 1:01:32fortunate over the years in order to get her a part of our
- 1:01:36team to design our labels. And she's a local artist that
- 1:01:40kind of sets up shop in here a couple times a week and just
- 1:01:44creates. Look at that.
- 1:01:47You'll walk over and you'll just see her hand sketching all of
- 1:01:52this stuff. I mean, that one's obviously a
- 1:01:56photo taken, but she'll drew that.
- 1:01:58Yeah, in a That's cool. No smoke in our.
- 1:02:01Tab just had that. One.
- 1:02:03Hey, there you go. I could Scott for the one.
- 1:02:05Fantastic. By the way, it's already gone
- 1:02:07so. Thanks.
- 1:02:08Thank you. It's fantastic.
- 1:02:10She does a fantastic job and that's good.
- 1:02:12And designing our labels, we're very fortunate.
- 1:02:16Guys, how important is glassware, improper glassware
- 1:02:20for you guys? Like in the tap room, based on
- 1:02:22the styles you serve, there's something that goes into that.
- 1:02:25How important is that to you guys?
- 1:02:27I mean, I'm always yelling about that sort of thing.
- 1:02:30Yeah. Bring it, Josh.
- 1:02:33Bring it. We do a pretty good job.
- 1:02:35You know, like obviously like for Cole Schneid, we have the
- 1:02:39the classic Shdanga. We've got pretty differentiated
- 1:02:43glassware for our loggers. We actually have a side core
- 1:02:47check faucet that we kind of have a dedicated, dedicated
- 1:02:51glass for that as well. The Glencairns for our bourbon
- 1:02:55as well rocks glasses. It's really important to us to
- 1:02:59have the proper glassware. We literally, I just had a
- 1:03:02meeting, couple meetings last week just talking about ice.
- 1:03:06Just very like small integral things that really tie it
- 1:03:11together. Glassware is everything.
- 1:03:14I mean, because otherwise, why would you do step out of your
- 1:03:17house and spend spend the extra couple of bucks to drink it, you
- 1:03:22know, drink a drink here other than one, the experience and
- 1:03:26two, like the elevated, right like that, the experience with
- 1:03:30people and the experience with having something that you.
- 1:03:33Don't have? Yeah.
- 1:03:35Portfolio. Yeah, exactly.
- 1:03:36And maybe that's not something that the average person coming
- 1:03:38in thinks about, but it is something that you guys think
- 1:03:41obviously is pretty important for others that do.
- 1:03:44For sure, every detail that comes up is important, you know,
- 1:03:49and that's why we waited six years for the bourbon.
- 1:03:52That's why we're waiting for the Bach beer to fully logger before
- 1:03:57we sell it. If we're going to go through
- 1:03:58that much effort, why would we not put it in the right glass?
- 1:04:01You know, like that is I've gone into some.
- 1:04:04I just like making the sales guys.
- 1:04:07Yeah, why should they have it so easy?
- 1:04:08Give them hell. Yeah, they don't have to be here
- 1:04:11day in and day out grinding. That's right, they don't make
- 1:04:14anything. They're not cleaning the tanks.
- 1:04:17Right. That's right.
- 1:04:20They're at your mercy. But yeah, but you're right.
- 1:04:24Like I go in somewhere. Yeah, go ahead, Please go ahead.
- 1:04:26Yeah. Going through the effort of just
- 1:04:28hitting every now in the head like our products are, I really
- 1:04:33do think something special. So putting it in the right
- 1:04:37platform. I've gone to, you know, some
- 1:04:39breweries and I get it if the, if you don't have the money to,
- 1:04:43to put forth, sell everything in a pint glass, whatever, get your
- 1:04:47get your wind beneath your wings.
- 1:04:49But it is such an important thing if you take the, I'm
- 1:04:55drawing a blank. It's been a, it's been a while.
- 1:04:57So I've talked about if you take the Cicerone tests, they talk a
- 1:05:01lot about glassware on the Cicerone test.
- 1:05:03So it's something that is important all over the world.
- 1:05:05I love rolling in somewhere and getting that nice tall pilsner
- 1:05:09glass and getting that nice head on, especially if it's like a
- 1:05:12slow pour. That is such a cool experience.
- 1:05:14And you're seeing the carbonation go up the glass and
- 1:05:16the light coming through it, and it's such a cool thing.
- 1:05:20Yeah. And it's more than just a glass.
- 1:05:21It's more than just presentation.
- 1:05:22It serves the purpose of the beer.
- 1:05:24Absolutely. Yeah.
- 1:05:25Yeah, aromatics are real. Yeah, we actually have a
- 1:05:28glassware episode coming up soon.
- 1:05:30We're going to record. So we're and it's something and
- 1:05:33I'm like, you know, in the last couple years of my kind of my
- 1:05:35beer dirty. It's like I'm appreciating that
- 1:05:37so much more. It was nice, you know,
- 1:05:39everything was in again, like you said, like at a pint glass.
- 1:05:42You just get them and you really start realizing, oh, there's
- 1:05:43something more to this thing. For sure, yeah.
- 1:05:46Yeah, I was drinking a beer recently.
- 1:05:47I put in a glass and I'm like, this is the perfect glass of
- 1:05:50this beer. So it's like taking notes
- 1:05:52tonight for our future episodes. Moved a handful of times over
- 1:05:56the years and I've had to, you know, slowly start my glass
- 1:05:59collection. It's something that's very real
- 1:06:02in my house. I like to collect certain
- 1:06:06glassware and at this point in time I had a lot more at a
- 1:06:10different point in time. But you know, it's really
- 1:06:13important. Like the the delirium glass is a
- 1:06:16good example. Yeah, you know, it's got the
- 1:06:19elephant snout coming up it and it, it's perfect in your hand
- 1:06:23and it like tulips up. So it's got like it's giving you
- 1:06:28those nice yeasty notes in your in your senses.
- 1:06:32Really. I really like that glass right
- 1:06:34now. I don't know if you can tell.
- 1:06:36Yeah, it sounds. Well, look, you guys just poured
- 1:06:39the barrel age. You guys just poured the barrel
- 1:06:41age into some glasses right there.
- 1:06:43Can we see those glasses? Isn't that what you just poured?
- 1:06:46Sorry, what? Was that you just poured that
- 1:06:48barrel aged beer into some glasses right there too?
- 1:06:50Aren't those kind? Of the Oh yeah, yeah, we're just
- 1:06:52drinking snifters, yeah. Yeah, sure.
- 1:06:55Yeah, Yeah. You got to get a good news on
- 1:06:59that thing. You know, these came from this
- 1:07:02particular one where we switched up from bourbon barrels to
- 1:07:06Caribbean rum barrels for this most recent year and.
- 1:07:09It was the right call. It's the Imperial Schwartz beer,
- 1:07:14which is kind of, to my knowledge, maybe a style that we
- 1:07:17made-up. It might be a Baltic Porter.
- 1:07:22I don't know. You know what's in the name?
- 1:07:24Yeah. You know.
- 1:07:26But it's, it's close to 11, I think 11.2% Schwartz beer.
- 1:07:31Wow. And we, we aged it for about 14
- 1:07:34months in Caribbean rum casks. And it already has this like
- 1:07:39toffee rum ball sort of flavor in the bases.
- 1:07:43So it just kind of came about like we were we were ready to
- 1:07:48process this into some barrels and we were just going to kind
- 1:07:52of go with, because we're on the border with Kentucky.
- 1:07:55It's like we were just going to go with the bourbon barrel
- 1:07:59thing. But Kelvin Cooperage, who we get
- 1:08:01our new make barrels for all of our bourbon, just kind of said,
- 1:08:04Hey, we've got got an import of some Caribbean rum, you know,
- 1:08:09used barrels. And immediately I called up, you
- 1:08:12know, I kind of like talked with our head distiller and I was
- 1:08:15like, I want those. I want those for the short beer.
- 1:08:19Hopefully. Hopefully we can get our hands
- 1:08:21on some more for the next time we breathe this one.
- 1:08:24Yeah, really, really good. It's it's the only direction
- 1:08:27that I want to go with this with this particular.
- 1:08:28I think Liz will be in the front of the line for that one.
- 1:08:31Probably. Probably.
- 1:08:33The we actually sorry we announced that.
- 1:08:36No, it doesn't matter. Next Box Fest we'll have a
- 1:08:38really special bourbon coming out as well.
- 1:08:40Talking about parallel. You mean the?
- 1:08:44You should just mention it. So we there's, you know, there's
- 1:08:50a. Lot of how it works.
- 1:08:51There's a lot of different ways to approach barrel aging and so
- 1:08:56we, we talked about the Bach and we talked about the Doppelbach.
- 1:09:00We actually offer 3 beers for Bach Fest and we offer a barrel
- 1:09:05aged Doppelbach as well. Really special, really good.
- 1:09:09I know I said that like bourbon barrel aged beers aren't my
- 1:09:11favorite. That's also an exception.
- 1:09:13Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I just don't like Imperial styles aged
- 1:09:16and bourbon barrels as much, but the Doppelbach aged in a bourbon
- 1:09:20barrels. Wonderful.
- 1:09:22So we're we've dumped those barrels.
- 1:09:26Our distiller went down and hand selected some barrels.
- 1:09:30I tasted through them. They're really, really good.
- 1:09:33We have a Petito barrel that's going into it, which if you
- 1:09:36don't know what that is, that's essentially you have a.
- 1:09:39Lower proof bourbon usually under like 80 proof.
- 1:09:42Or so under 8 root bourbon that's aging in a barrel that
- 1:09:47you use as a blending bourbon to bring the proof down.
- 1:09:51Instead of utilizing water, you use a lower proof bourbon to get
- 1:09:58the proof down to you know, not 140 a 135 proof, but you.
- 1:10:05Still get lots of bourbon. Which I love that.
- 1:10:07I love that the most. That's not always.
- 1:10:12Sign me up right now. It's not a pretty.
- 1:10:15Funky, funky bourbon character. Yeah, different elements, but we
- 1:10:19are taking those bourbons that we blended and we're putting
- 1:10:24them into the barrel aged doppelbock barrels.
- 1:10:28So they're going to pick up some of those doppelbock
- 1:10:31characteristic. So they're going to sit in there
- 1:10:34for about a year. It's finishing barrels and the
- 1:10:38next Bach Fest. 2020, 2027 I don't even want to say that 2027
- 1:10:44doesn't seem like a real time frame. 27 yeah, we will. 27
- 1:10:51We're going to be releasing a really special bourbon that's
- 1:10:55been aged in doppelbock barrels. So take it down to Bach Bachfest
- 1:11:002026 next year. 27 is going to. Book your hotels come down.
- 1:11:06Yeah. Get it now Feeling.
- 1:11:07Like this is where we sign up for the exclusive release.
- 1:11:10Like I want to join the membership club now.
- 1:11:12Yeah. How do I get that?
- 1:11:14That's worth mentioning because we actually are about to start a
- 1:11:19we are about to launch an app for ourselves that's going to
- 1:11:24have a whiskey membership. It's going to have, it's going
- 1:11:27to have a few different categories, right?
- 1:11:29So you can have, we're going to have the 513, which is like
- 1:11:33local Cincinnati. You're going to have other
- 1:11:36memberships that are all over the United States for the beer
- 1:11:39side of the world. And then we're going to have FCC
- 1:11:46memberships, but we're going to have a bourbon membership as
- 1:11:49well to where you sign up. I'm not sure it it is a annual
- 1:11:57fee to be a member of this one. We're limiting it to 140 spots.
- 1:12:03140 people is what we can fit in our tap room.
- 1:12:07So we're limiting to 140 spots. And there's going to be a lot of
- 1:12:11special events. There's going to be Single
- 1:12:13Barrel picks, so our goal is kinda to do a lottery to where
- 1:12:19you get to come in here and have a single barrel experience just
- 1:12:24for being a member. And then that barrel is going to
- 1:12:28be just for members. And then you know, first dibs on
- 1:12:33some releases you get to. We'll do member only releases
- 1:12:38for back stock. So, you know, occasionally
- 1:12:42things get put in the wrong place and you might find 6 cases
- 1:12:46of a bourbon that it proved unloved.
- 1:12:50So you get some like back stock releases.
- 1:12:52It's going to be a lot of fun. I'm really excited to get this
- 1:12:55off the grounds honestly, because it'll it'll start a.
- 1:12:59Community for our space as well and our bourbon side.
- 1:13:02First time I'm hearing about this by the way.
- 1:13:05Will you think you can get one of those early bottles?
- 1:13:08I mean, hopefully, maybe I can, I don't know.
- 1:13:11Hopefully, hopefully you. Can.
- 1:13:13Hook a brother up. Guys, there's something on your
- 1:13:16website and it's a it's a statement or it's just a line.
- 1:13:20And I think it's really freaking cool and it's got a little
- 1:13:22history behind it that says we come from a long line of hard
- 1:13:25headed, free spirited hustlers who bent the rules and ignored
- 1:13:28the laws. Yet the only rule that matters
- 1:13:31around these parts is you indulging in the row.
- 1:13:35You familiar with that statement?
- 1:13:36And, and I know it's kind of pre prohibition, it was kind of the
- 1:13:39attitude around that area around that time is they're pretty
- 1:13:42fucking cool. Yeah, absolutely.
- 1:13:44That's that really is an attitude, Yeah.
- 1:13:47It epitomizes the spirit of the place, honestly.
- 1:13:50Obviously everybody is welcome here.
- 1:13:53That's welcome. That's our mantras.
- 1:13:56Yeah, yeah. But definitely we we both love
- 1:14:04the Renegades and the folks that kind of maybe go a little bit
- 1:14:09against the grain. I feel like it just sort of
- 1:14:13epitomizes the spirit of this neighborhood and historically
- 1:14:17what and what it continues to be.
- 1:14:19I live right around the corner, love.
- 1:14:22I love to tell that I am from here, you know?
- 1:14:26In the in the craze of chasing OPS and Ibus, we were making
- 1:14:32lager and we've been doing it for a long, long time.
- 1:14:35We've been carving our own path for what we think is the best
- 1:14:39product that we can release. Cole Schneidt our it's a funny
- 1:14:43story. So we were talking about Cole
- 1:14:45Schneidt earlier. We got a review one time that
- 1:14:48said were to say like they wouldn't serve me anything but
- 1:14:52Kolsch and we got a one star review for that.
- 1:14:55And so we decided to screenshot that and post it on our social
- 1:15:00media. And that has what's gained the
- 1:15:03most traction for us in any social media post ever.
- 1:15:06I think we went through a phase of having yes, places that are
- 1:15:13just do whatever you'd have, whatever you want us to do,
- 1:15:19right? We don't necessarily think that
- 1:15:22that's our path 100% of the time.
- 1:15:25If we're having coach night and you come in here, you're going
- 1:15:31to be served coach. That's what we're serving
- 1:15:33tonight. But I think it's, it's important
- 1:15:37to stay true to who we are and genuinely do what we think is
- 1:15:44right. If you if it's not for you, you
- 1:15:48know there's other breweries down the street, right?
- 1:15:52I love, I love you putting that on social media because you
- 1:15:55really what you're saying, or at least in my mind, I'd be like,
- 1:15:58we don't have to tell you you're stupid.
- 1:16:00Everybody else here is going to tell you that you're stupid.
- 1:16:03Yeah, we, we had a lot to try after that post.
- 1:16:07We got our biggest coalition I'd ever so.
- 1:16:09That's awesome. If that doesn't say that just
- 1:16:12staying genuine and not trying to chase every trend that's
- 1:16:16happening. You know, granted, like you need
- 1:16:19to, you need to appeal to a wider audience.
- 1:16:22So we're not trying to be completely against the Grand
- 1:16:25Imperial Schwarz. Beer is not going to be a
- 1:16:27flagship, but being true to yourself and making sure that
- 1:16:32you're, you know, putting the best foot forward.
- 1:16:36That way you can have the same feeling all the time that you're
- 1:16:41authentic. Yeah, that's why everyone that
- 1:16:45works here kind of loves. Our turnover is basically 0 for
- 1:16:51the most part. We've had all of our employees
- 1:16:53have been here almost over a year, I would say front of
- 1:16:57house, kitchen, everyone. And we have veterans that have
- 1:17:00been here since, you know, at the very beginning.
- 1:17:02And I've been here for three years, which is kind of that's
- 1:17:07kind of rare for a tap room setting to have that type of
- 1:17:12longevity in which it says that we're doing something right,
- 1:17:16that if our employees are believing in us, they're getting
- 1:17:19passionate about us, they're buying into the culture, they're
- 1:17:23being a part of the culture. Everyone's a decision maker here
- 1:17:26in a way, You know, everyone can have ideas.
- 1:17:31My whole, I guarantee every day that I work here, there's 15
- 1:17:35people that come up to me with different ideas that they should
- 1:17:38do. This guy most of all.
- 1:17:41That's what's important though, because if it's something we can
- 1:17:44do, like, hell yeah. If it's something we can't,
- 1:17:47then, you know, hell nap. Yeah, it's, it's cool, right?
- 1:17:52You have a little bit of a free spirit, have a little bit of an
- 1:17:54attitude, but, you know, keep it between the lines, right?
- 1:17:57It's, it's, it's cool. You can express yourselves in in
- 1:17:59certain ways. For sure.
- 1:18:01Yeah, this, this team is, you know, I've, I've worked in four
- 1:18:06or five different brewery alcohol industry spots at this
- 1:18:11point. And this one is something
- 1:18:13special that I really feel drawn to.
- 1:18:16There is something magical happening right here, even even
- 1:18:22if it's just like a few, I don't know, normal people just trying
- 1:18:27to push the needle forward in this little town of Cincinnati
- 1:18:31and just make better beer. I don't know.
- 1:18:34It's. Harder.
- 1:18:34Yeah. I mean, we, yeah, we have a
- 1:18:37small team. I mean production by itself has
- 1:18:42three and a quarter, Yep, 3.25 employees.
- 1:18:46We got 3 full timers. We got a guy back here that.
- 1:18:50Splits his time. Between serving people up in the
- 1:18:53bar and delivering kegs and helping us out with canning.
- 1:18:57And, you know, he came from another brewery with some major
- 1:19:01acumen in the, you know, in the Cincinnati scene.
- 1:19:04Yeah, which? They're no longer.
- 1:19:06Yeah, yeah. RIP Listerman.
- 1:19:08Listerman. Yeah.
- 1:19:10Yeah, so we've got. A talented guy that's hauling
- 1:19:13kegs around for us, helping us out in every way that he can,
- 1:19:17you know? Hungry.
- 1:19:18Yeah, Hopefully. One of these days we get that
- 1:19:21guy up on the brew deck and yeah, we get we get like four or
- 1:19:25five people working under him and you know, like that's
- 1:19:28hopefully the the dream of this place is to expand it into
- 1:19:32something that is more significant.
- 1:19:34Like, you know, our our our neighbors, neighbors just around
- 1:19:37the corner. Ryan guys took done it already.
- 1:19:40And I think there's room for, there's room for that.
- 1:19:43And even our little humble city, you know, Absolutely.
- 1:19:47Yep. The fact that you guys are
- 1:19:49logger forward and have been since the beginning, have you
- 1:19:51seen a uptick in the last several years because the
- 1:19:55market's changed and everything's kind of going back,
- 1:19:57I mean? We've had, we've had a very,
- 1:20:00we've had a very interesting. Path opening up like in the year
- 1:20:06of the pandemic, our first year, we were selling more hand
- 1:20:10sanitizer I think than we were actual drinkable.
- 1:20:14Like. Alcohol.
- 1:20:16Yeah, exactly. So yeah, we've, we've seen like
- 1:20:20a slow but steady things getting better, you know?
- 1:20:23I would say it's difficult to tell in a way for us logger,
- 1:20:29like craft beer has like gravitated more towards logger
- 1:20:33focus. I'm one of them as well.
- 1:20:35I'll, I'll humbly say when I started here, I was deep into
- 1:20:41like sours Ipas, but it's, you know, your palate with beer
- 1:20:47circles, right? Yeah.
- 1:20:50So I had, you know, gone through an experimental phase.
- 1:20:54Milkshake Ipas, you know, brute Ipas RIP different different
- 1:21:02flavors of beer that were really trendy that were coming out.
- 1:21:06I was drinking all of them. And when I started here, I, I
- 1:21:11was really into hazy Ipas St. side shout out the street side.
- 1:21:15They they make some of the best experimental beer I've ever had,
- 1:21:19definitely the best in Cincinnati.
- 1:21:20And that's that's arguable. But I really at that time and
- 1:21:27still I really respect what they're doing there.
- 1:21:29Very different than what we do respect what they're doing
- 1:21:31there. And people are like you were
- 1:21:34going. To the ground, by the way, we
- 1:21:35might be working together in the near future.
- 1:21:38So nice. But when I started here, I
- 1:21:43started drinking more loggers and started drinking more
- 1:21:45loggers, started drinking more loggers.
- 1:21:47I go out to different tap rooms that have 30 taps and I'm like,
- 1:21:53I'll take the pills here. But it just slowly started to
- 1:21:56happen for me to where, you know, I started to really enjoy
- 1:22:00the nuances of different loggers.
- 1:22:02They're clean, they're refreshing, they're great with
- 1:22:05food. But for so for my palate,
- 1:22:08definitely loggers have transitioned immensely.
- 1:22:11But for our growth, with how the industry has went more towards
- 1:22:16loggers in the past, you know, handful of years, it's hard to
- 1:22:19tell because we're such a new brewery.
- 1:22:23We've been around for, you know, essentially five years because I
- 1:22:27mean, we opened in 2020. I tell people it's like really
- 1:22:3120/21 was our real start. You can't really take 2020 for
- 1:22:36anything. For 20/21 was really whenever we
- 1:22:41have like a full year of being able to to track things
- 1:22:46throughout the full year. But we've also did different
- 1:22:49things every year. Justin was talking about
- 1:22:53utilizing premium for statewide distribution, getting into
- 1:22:57Northern Kentucky with Party Source.
- 1:23:00So there's just so many different elements to our
- 1:23:03business that it's hard to really track if Logger focus is
- 1:23:08affecting our bottom line very much.
- 1:23:11In the tap room, we make so many loggers that people are
- 1:23:16naturally gravitating towards different loggers.
- 1:23:19I mean, I, I would say that we have become known in, in the,
- 1:23:26you know, city of Cincinnati for a spot to go for loggers and a
- 1:23:31variety thereof. You know, it's, it's our, it's
- 1:23:35our hallmark, right? We, we've got, we've got other
- 1:23:39stuff for everybody else. You know, we we make them fine,
- 1:23:42but. Loggers are what we're what
- 1:23:44we're. Really focusing on what what I'm
- 1:23:46really focusing on what I'm trying to for fact
- 1:23:51differentiate, try to try to add to the general, just throw,
- 1:23:57throw out into the realm of brewing like what the
- 1:24:01possibility is, right? There's nothing to hide behind
- 1:24:04with loggers as well. Justin does a great job of just
- 1:24:07making I'm making blush right here.
- 1:24:11He does a great job of making loggers that are clean, easily
- 1:24:16drinkable, no off flavors. So if you have a Hellis lager,
- 1:24:20you have different breweries that make Hellis lager.
- 1:24:23They're not all equal. And ours is our best selling
- 1:24:27beer that we have in our entire portfolio for years and years.
- 1:24:31So really says something about the beer.
- 1:24:33I want to I want to shout out my like brewing mentor Greg Larson,
- 1:24:39who was the previous head Brewer of this place and taught me many
- 1:24:44a lesson. He always.
- 1:24:46Mentioned that brewing a Hellis is like brewing in a Speedo.
- 1:24:49You, you can't hide behind anything.
- 1:24:52Every, everything, everything's out there in the open to the
- 1:24:55public and I've really taken that to heart.
- 1:24:59In a. Really.
- 1:25:00Fucking humorous way. I love it.
- 1:25:04So we we will not have a photo op I I will never physically.
- 1:25:08Get into it, you know to do this thing we'll.
- 1:25:10Get the I got the image. Heart every time I grew it, you
- 1:25:14know the the other the other beer that I will say puts me on
- 1:25:18it like that is the half of Iceland, because that one is AI
- 1:25:23start at I start at a very low degree.
- 1:25:27I mash it to oblivion and it's like a 5050 wheat and and malt
- 1:25:35recipe. It's kind of like a long louder.
- 1:25:39I don't know how technical we get with this with this podcast,
- 1:25:43but like it's kind of a hair raising louder.
- 1:25:46It's very slow. You might get a stuck mash if
- 1:25:49you do things wrong, but it's like this labor of love that
- 1:25:53turns into admittedly one of my least favorite beer styles.
- 1:25:57But it's like, but but like hitting the hitting the Marks
- 1:26:01and things that I don't like about drinking it, It's like,
- 1:26:04well, yeah, I I hate this flavor.
- 1:26:07And that means that I did it right, you know?
- 1:26:09Yeah, I was going to say, how do you how do you know that beer is
- 1:26:11good if you don't like it? Sometimes like the and and
- 1:26:16there's nothing that gives me more joy than hitting the marks
- 1:26:19on the half of ice and. It's you see it in.
- 1:26:22It's crazy, Yeah. See it in the faces of the
- 1:26:25people that drink it. I'm lucky enough to get to see
- 1:26:29some of the people that drink our beer and talk to them about
- 1:26:33it. You know, the people that love
- 1:26:35with beers and half of ice and weed derive beers, they, you
- 1:26:41know, they get a little sample of it.
- 1:26:42I'm watching from the side or something and they're like, my
- 1:26:46God. And then they're like, I'll take
- 1:26:48a pint of that. And then you see him drink two
- 1:26:50more pints and you're like, wow. It's hard for me to engage in as
- 1:26:55well for me to have a bison's not my favorite.
- 1:27:00I like a Belgian styles or are my favorite styles of beer.
- 1:27:06It's just a little too much, isn't it?
- 1:27:08A little too much Ester A. Little too much.
- 1:27:11But but it is to to those traditional styles that you guys
- 1:27:14do, right. I mean, it's, it's, it falls in
- 1:27:16that that that catalog. Per SE, Absolutely.
- 1:27:19It totally holds its place, right?
- 1:27:21You know whether we like drinking or not, you know.
- 1:27:23It was our best selling distributed beer in 2025.
- 1:27:28Wow. So it really speaks through
- 1:27:31itself. It is a skew that is necessary
- 1:27:35for tap houses, places that you know, that have tin taps, that
- 1:27:40they really want to make the most of their tin taps.
- 1:27:43You got to have something for everyone.
- 1:27:46Hef of Eisen is a style that you know, people love people.
- 1:27:50It's a beautiful. Style we don't we don't mean to
- 1:27:52trash on hef of Eisen no, it's. Just wonderful.
- 1:27:54You know most don't like drinking, right?
- 1:27:56It's everyone's pal. It's one of the it's one of the
- 1:27:58best, best freaking. Styles.
- 1:28:01I mean, Von Stefoner is doing pretty good.
- 1:28:03Yeah, I've been doing pretty good for a while now, and that's
- 1:28:06a big beer for that. They're doing OK.
- 1:28:10I appreciate the fact that you guys do appreciate the style
- 1:28:13though, right? You know, it's kind of, you
- 1:28:15know, people do and it's it's yeah, for sure.
- 1:28:19I've got one more thing I think we might be wrapping up.
- 1:28:21I know these guys have a couple things, but I I saw something
- 1:28:24you guys were part of Loggerfest or Loggerfest.
- 1:28:28Did Botfest ultimately replace Loggerfest?
- 1:28:30Is that are their thoughts on bringing that back?
- 1:28:32Are they are they combined now? It.
- 1:28:36I'll let you start out with this one.
- 1:28:38Loggerfest was something that we started four years ago, believe
- 1:28:44so about four years ago. It was one of my first projects
- 1:28:47that I've worked here for four years.
- 1:28:50This guy has so many failed projects.
- 1:28:53I mean, I can, if I can make a list of shit that I've thrown
- 1:28:59against the wall that didn't stick, it would be long, you
- 1:29:03know, but it's a trial and error.
- 1:29:05You have to you got to put yourself out there.
- 1:29:08You got to keep trying. If failure bothers you in event
- 1:29:13coordinating, then you need to find a different profession
- 1:29:16because you're going to failure. So the Loggerfest was our was
- 1:29:24really the brainchild of Brendan Douglas, our operations man.
- 1:29:28Oh, throwing somebody under the shout out to Brendan for
- 1:29:32Loggerfest. So Loggerfest, it was a really
- 1:29:36cool concept. Maybe it was a little bit ahead
- 1:29:39of its time. Loggerfest is.
- 1:29:40Coming back, don't listen to this guy.
- 1:29:44I was hoping. So we'll we'll see who throw
- 1:29:48another one, but Loggerfest got replaced this year from a
- 1:29:52different festival and we switched it up to low and slow.
- 1:29:56Loggerfest was a lot of fun and we had a lot of fun with it.
- 1:30:00We didn't have quite the turn out that we would have hoped
- 1:30:02some years, which is OK because it was a really fun event and a
- 1:30:06lot of the people that did come had a tremendous amount of fun.
- 1:30:10So I mean, I do think that we'll do it again, but we switched it
- 1:30:13up this year with low and which was actually this guy's idea
- 1:30:17that we, like we spitballed around for about 6 months.
- 1:30:21And I had recently like, well, not recently at this point, but
- 1:30:25at that time I had a fire that kind of burned my apartment down
- 1:30:30South. This cat's got asthma.
- 1:30:36My cats got. Asthma it was, it was a whole
- 1:30:38ordeal. They were, they were safe
- 1:30:39though. It's all good, but I wanted to
- 1:30:42give something back to the fire department.
- 1:30:43So we brewed a beer and called Roughneck Logger.
- 1:30:47A rough is somebody that's not been promoted in the fire
- 1:30:51department with somebody that's just day in and day out
- 1:30:54grinding. They're saving lives, they're
- 1:30:55going to fight fires. So we brewed Roughneck Logger in
- 1:30:59collaboration with Local 48, A nonprofit here in Cincinnati
- 1:31:04that helps fire firefighters with any type of issues that
- 1:31:09they're having medically, like mental health, anything that
- 1:31:12insurance won't cover. They come to Cincinnati from out
- 1:31:16of town. It's a nationwide company.
- 1:31:17So if you're from, you know, Tallahassee, FL, you're a
- 1:31:21firefighter and you come here, they'll, they'll feed you,
- 1:31:25they'll put you out or let you take a shower in the Firehouse.
- 1:31:33They just hose you off in the machine.
- 1:31:35Bag they have showers with the. Hose.
- 1:31:40Yeah, exactly. So we did a BBQ competition and
- 1:31:44released that beer this year, had live music out and was able
- 1:31:49to to give back a little bit to the community.
- 1:31:51I think Low and Slow and Lager Fest will start to merge a
- 1:31:55little bit. Low and Slow is a super popular
- 1:31:59event and having Loggerfest kind of come in there as well for
- 1:32:03that will be awesome. Yeah.
- 1:32:05So Loggerfest still exists. Now we've got, we've got it,
- 1:32:10certainly. Does now you now you can.
- 1:32:12Touch a truck. It's it's evolving.
- 1:32:17It sounds like in some ways, yeah.
- 1:32:19Barbecue loggers. Who would have thought?
- 1:32:21Good. Combination.
- 1:32:22Great combination. Yeah, well, you guys got
- 1:32:25anything else for these guys? You know, for me, you know,
- 1:32:29staying on the loggers for a minute, really it's kind of cool
- 1:32:32to see you guys stay the course because I would say over the
- 1:32:35past year or so on this podcast, all all the breweries that we
- 1:32:39talked to, they really are getting back on the logger train
- 1:32:44and realizing that that that's become a big consumer demand and
- 1:32:48people are making better loggers.
- 1:32:49So you guys, you guys are have been ahead of the trend and the
- 1:32:54things are coming full circle again.
- 1:32:55It's really cool to see. You know, one of my one of my
- 1:32:58favorite little towns in the outskirts of Cincinnati is
- 1:33:01Rabbit Hash, Kentucky. And they have this, they have
- 1:33:04this little thing like they, they say that like backwards is
- 1:33:08forwards, you know, like sometimes taking a step back
- 1:33:11into tradition is a pathway into the new age.
- 1:33:16And this, this town's amazing y'all.
- 1:33:21They have a great mayor. Yeah, yeah, they, they've, they
- 1:33:24probably have one of the most uncorrupt mayors in all of in
- 1:33:29all of the United States. Mayor's a dog, you know.
- 1:33:34So. Just go down there, no matter
- 1:33:38who you are, and just experience the hospitality of that.
- 1:33:43A town of five people, because I think that is the official
- 1:33:48census. Yeah, but amazing.
- 1:33:55But yeah, that spirit, that spirit of inclusiveness and
- 1:33:59keeping things. Together, we love it.
- 1:34:01Loggers are for everyone. Loggers are forever.
- 1:34:04There you go. Well, I know when Steve and I
- 1:34:07wandered in and we got a tour and that was just by
- 1:34:09happenstance and luck that we got to meet Josh.
- 1:34:12But if anybody who's listened to this podcast and is going, wow,
- 1:34:16this place sounds amazing, where do they find you to sign up for
- 1:34:20a tour? Like how do they go about doing
- 1:34:22that so they can see the historical significance of this
- 1:34:25building and get to maybe meet one or two of you?
- 1:34:28I mean the. Best thing that you can do is
- 1:34:30just drop in, but probably one of our best partners is American
- 1:34:35Legacy Tours. They do a 90 minute crawl
- 1:34:40through all the historic area, you know, like the historic
- 1:34:46loggering tunnels and so on. We also we have we have our own
- 1:34:52tour system that you can find on our website if you want to go,
- 1:34:57like if you want to experience everything.
- 1:35:00It's really on the spirit side that this tour is focused.
- 1:35:04We talked beer, Cincinnati beer history in this tour as well.
- 1:35:10You can go. The only way that you can really
- 1:35:12go underground at Northern Row is through our tours and
- 1:35:18Eventbrite. Sign up through our website, hop
- 1:35:23on a tour there. You get to go on a tour with me
- 1:35:27and for right now, for the foreseeable future, you get a
- 1:35:30hop on a tour, I'm with me where I talk about all things
- 1:35:33Cincinnati. Want to talk about what we're
- 1:35:35doing here? I talk about our spirits, beer,
- 1:35:39everything. So yeah, go through Eventbrite
- 1:35:41and our. Website whatever this guy is
- 1:35:43charging and I'll do it for 5-5 bucks cheaper.
- 1:35:48Just hit me up, you know? Awesome.
- 1:35:52I will say I'm a born and raised Cincinnatian and I always love
- 1:35:55learning anything about this city.
- 1:35:58And I learned something new while we were on there.
- 1:36:01Several things, in fact. So, you know, you can never stop
- 1:36:04learning about where you're from.
- 1:36:06And it's always interesting to see, especially.
- 1:36:08I know you have an outsider perspective, Josh, to just to
- 1:36:10kind of hash back and forth. And yeah, I might take you up on
- 1:36:14the $5 off tour too. That actually wasn't true.
- 1:36:19I can't, I can't really do that, you know?
- 1:36:22No, he already said it. Yeah.
- 1:36:25But Josh is a great tour guide. Man, we really had fun that
- 1:36:28night. Thank you.
- 1:36:29It's. A lot of fun.
- 1:36:31Scott, did you have anything else?
- 1:36:33I think my next thing is I need to go pay them another visit.
- 1:36:38Yeah. It's been several years since
- 1:36:40I've been in there. I do remember the you talked
- 1:36:42about that, that that boat on the on the ceiling is it's like
- 1:36:4661 feet. Oh yeah, it's incredible.
- 1:36:50We're kind of in the wrong season of Olympics to be talking
- 1:36:52about it, but yeah. But yeah, it's an old day.
- 1:36:56It's got some history, you know, the Jessie Owens, the 1936
- 1:37:00Berlin Olympics. So if you all want to see a
- 1:37:04piece of history. Come on in.
- 1:37:06Yeah. It's great.
- 1:37:07It's a great spot. Grab a beer you.
- 1:37:09Probably there's a good chance that you'll see one of us.
- 1:37:12And we'll, we'll be asking. We'll probably give you a heads
- 1:37:15up. Yeah.
- 1:37:15That way you could escape. Absolutely.
- 1:37:17We'd love to. We'd love for you guys to visit
- 1:37:20Foxfest. Come on up.
- 1:37:22Well, I, I could, I could tell you that Scott and I, I'll be up
- 1:37:25there at some point soon. Scott and I'll be up there
- 1:37:29together come September for Oktoberfest downtown.
- 1:37:34I talked to maybe it. We'll be, we'll be there for
- 1:37:37that. So we'll, we'll definitely be
- 1:37:38stopping in your place too. Maybe we talk about you guys
- 1:37:40doing a live podcast here with someone else.
- 1:37:43Hey, you never know. Yeah, I may have to do that.
- 1:37:45We will do it. We'll bring our stuff.
- 1:37:47You guys can do it right here in this wonderful production space.
- 1:37:51That's yes, please, let's do it. Can we drink?
- 1:37:54Can we drink right out of the tanks?
- 1:38:00That'd be fun. All right, that.
- 1:38:02'D be fun. Write that down.
- 1:38:04Drink it from the tank. Guys, thanks for all the time
- 1:38:07tonight. We appreciate it.
- 1:38:09Thank you so much. Awesome.
- 1:38:12Can't thank you enough. Cheers you guys.
- 1:38:14Thanks for allowing as much time as you did for the.
- 1:38:17Conversation. All right.
- 1:38:18Love it. Thanks guys, The Brewery
- 1:38:20Underground podcast.