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What Makes A Good Beer?
Chris Roberts • 2020-09-22
Dylan Carnahan:Welcome back to the Simple Questions Podcast. I'm your host, Dylan Carnahan. Today's episode is called What Makes a Good Beer. But before we get into that, you probably noticed that the intro was a little bit different this time around. I'm going to try something new where each intro is going to feature a local artist from the area. This episode's song is Jump by Black Sampson. That's B-L-C-K-S-A-M-S-O-N, all one word. Black Sampson, also known as Brandon Williams, is a friend and teammate of mine. So make sure to give him a listen. I'll have a link to his iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud in the show notes below this episode. And if you or anyone you know that is an artist in the area wants to be on the podcast, send me a DM on any of the numerous Simple Questions Podcast social media accounts, whether that be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or visit the website and shoot me an email, and we'll show you some Simple Questions love. And in the off chance that no one does submit anything, I will become a local artist myself and I will begin singing, but I'd rather not do that because I think that will be less listener friendly. But you never know, maybe you guys are into Gregorian chant, which is the only thing I got in my sleep. All right, now that we got that out of the way, let's get into today's episode, What Makes a Good Beer. Hopefully after listening to this episode, you're going to gain a little bit of an understanding and maybe be able to answer that question for yourself, as well as you're going to hear a story of one of our own from the area. And who doesn't want to learn more about beer or talk about beer? So go grab a cold one, sit back and listen to the podcast. And if you're at work, it's fine. Just tell your boss, I said it's okay. They should allow it. Our guest, I've known him for several years and had the privilege of working with him. He's won several home brew awards. And now he is the co-founder and brewmaster of Red Crow Brewing Company, located in Olathe, Kansas, off of Parker and Santa Fe. And his name is Chris Roberts. All right, Chris, you're going to have to give me a little bit of a hall pass here. It's my first interview and I'm a little nervous. Okay, so let's just jump into it and start off with how did you start your voyage into craft beer? What was kind of the catalyst that got you into that?
Chris Roberts:This is kind of actually is kind of like a little bit of a lengthy answer. So anyway, you know, I kind of started like I used to never drink. Like when I was I was like a good kid in high school, like my friends were going out to parties and stuff and getting beer and getting liquored up. And I don't think I actually had anything to drink until I was a junior or senior. And then it was something weak, like, no, actually, I remember in fact, it was fricking it was a hot damn and RC Cola that my neighbor. But I didn't really have like any beer until I got to college. And it was basically just like Bud Light, Coors Light. And then fast forward, I was 21. I got this job at a liquor store and they had, you know, you didn't have craft, quote, unquote, at the time where we were doesn't go to college for a state. It's basically all we had was like German beer, because if you didn't drink like the local stuff, that's all you had. One of the guys in their dorm when I was a freshman kind of turned me on to Amberbach by Miklov. And I was like, Oh, this is pretty good. But it was like seven dollars for a six pack instead. And I get a 12 pack for seven dollars.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that price.
Chris Roberts:It's the price point.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah. Would you say that that kind of I mean, I know obviously I worked at Red Crow and that kind of shaped my like alcohol preferences. So that that job at the liquor store that kind of brought in your horizons a little bit.
Chris Roberts:Yeah. And so we all basically all we had like I worked at like a small like branch of this like the largest liquor store is called Kaiser's there in Hayes. And so they had a great big one. And then I worked with a small one in this small little strip mall. And so basically all we had was liquor wine. And then it was pallets of Keystone, like 30 packs. And then, you know, like Coors heavy bottles. And then we had some German stuff. And so like I started drinking like St. Polly girl in the green bottles because I can't someone told me it was good. And I tried it and I was like, that's not bad. And so that was like my splurge was like St. Polly girl, not knowing that it was skunk. You know, because they had the green bottles and it just sits in there and the light just pounds on it all day long. So but like my kind of voyage in the craft beer is, you know, we moved when my wife Misty and I moved up here. And then like our first year, we basically just didn't have any money. We just basically drank like whatever was the cheapest thing we could find. And then moved up here, bought a house, and then our local liquor store had like a door. It was like one door singles and they had all this different stuff. And then I was like, Oh, man, Boulevard Week, that's that's everyone's jam around here. Let's try that. And then after a few, you kind of get used to it. And then I was like, Oh, what's an IPA? It's India Paleo. I'm going to try that. And so I started actually drinking Red Hook IPA, which I think was like my kind of aha moment. Then they came out with this one called Longhammer. And I loved it. And so that's when we had like disposable income. That's what we drank. If not, it was like Bud Light or Mellow Light or Coolers.
Dylan Carnahan:So how do you kind of so you gain this this kind of taste right for craft beer? It's kind of you're amassing a little bit of knowledge. You're getting exposed to stuff. What's the transition to say, Hey, I want to I want to make this, you know?
Chris Roberts:So so the transition was I've worked in corrections for a while. And then it was just wasn't paying the bills. It wasn't kind of panning out. My original my degree is in criminal justice.
Dylan Carnahan:OK.
Chris Roberts:And I was trying to get a job as a cop. And so at one point, I'm like, screw it. It's time to start like, you know, paying off bills. It goes from the point and the things you want to do to things you have to do and getting a CDL and driving a truck for a living. So part of that, I got a job at Cisco Foods. One of our customers was 2323 Brewery there in Lawrence. So she showed up one day. There's nobody there, but the door's unlocked. I brought everything in, dropped it off. I kind of knew where it went. Nobody's there. I'm calling my buddy who's their normal driver. I'm like, hey, man, what do I do? And he's like, oh, you see, you see this car in the parking lot? Yeah, he's like, he's just getting cigarettes at Hy-Vee. He'll be there in a minute. So apparently this guy was just kind of jacking around or whatever. And so I went ahead and gave myself a self-guided tour of the brewery. I was like, oh, man, this stuff is cool. And basically from there, I went home and started kind of looking into stuff. You know, like before I changed my major to criminal justice, I actually went to college to be an engineer. So I'd always love like building stuff. And I get a lot of satisfaction in doing my own thing.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, putting putting something out there that's yours.
Chris Roberts:Yeah. And whether it's, you know, in my garage or or whatever, like I'm kind of like that cheap bastard who, instead of actually going out and buying the thing that does X, I'm like, I figure out the way to make X work with all these other things. And half the time it looks atrocious. But yeah, and that's the best way. Like I am a farm engineer by training. So I am the duct tape and bubblegum and JB. Like our Keg Washer is basically two by fours and wood screws, but it does pretty well. I'm actually getting ready to automate it. But, you know, I just like looking at things and figuring out how to make it work. And like we didn't have a whole lot of money. And I think that was the biggest thing. It's like I love IPA, but I could literally get a six pack of IPA or I can get like a 30 pack of Keystone. And so at that time, it was like, you know, the wife's gonna be mad if I come home with just a six pack. So I was like, and then at Cisco, we actually had our own grain. And so I could pretty much make two cases of beer for the for the price of buying a six pack.
Dylan Carnahan:Really? So you saw that you got that price benefit there.
Chris Roberts:Yeah, yeah, the cost of goods were super low. It's the end package. The end product is what cost them us. And so I ended up kind of I am like now I call myself the king of Craigslist because I can always find something on Craigslist to use. Like my wife's uncle used to work at Pepsi. And so he would get me. They're called Bala kegs. And they're designed like for like the wonder bar thing that everyone uses like in a liquor store. That's what would go through. It was basically like concentrated syrup that would get mixed with water and you get pop soda found. And so he would like bring over like 20 of these things and I would clean them up and I trade them to people for stuff.
Dylan Carnahan:So you're turning the paper clip into a house on Craigslist to try to get all this stuff.
Chris Roberts:That's essentially what it was. Yeah, he gave me my first cooler that I use for a mash ton. And I think we'll probably get in that. But you know, like I got like one of it was like an all sport mash ton. It was black and like lime green. And I built the manifold in the bottom, separates the grain from the work. And like I literally did like one what's called extract, which is like a kit beer. It's like the easiest way to make beer. It's basically like it's like concentrated malt sugar. You put it in a pot, throw some hops in there, boil it, throw it in the fermenter. And then two weeks later, you may or may not have something.
Dylan Carnahan:So how did how did you find all this information? So obviously you kind of you've gained this exposure. You're kind of like I have this knack, you know, this engineering, like putting things together.
Chris Roberts:Where do you go?
Dylan Carnahan:Where do you go to, you know, learn more about craft beer and be able to make it?
Chris Roberts:So the making part, like I just like Google, like, you know, I don't even think you had Google at the time, but like, you know, Netscape navigate to. I found this. It's called homebrewtalk.com and it's just this massive forum of recipes and recipe development. And then just like, hey, this is what I do, you know, and then started finding books and they're like, OK, this is there's like a beginners forum. It's like, these are the books you need.
Dylan Carnahan:So you were able to kind of through that website. They had kind of like a way for you to.
Chris Roberts:But the HPT is fantastic. I mean, it's like a little community and I don't participate in it so much. Now, because it's so full of people and with the way the Internet goes now, it's like for every great person you meet on there, you meet 30. So, I mean, it's just like it's the same thing. It's like it's like Facebook now. And so, like I like now, I haven't been on it for a while. There's a couple of columns on there that I do follow, like the automated brewing stuff, because I mean that, like I said, I originally went to college to be an engineer and it's actually electrical engineering. And that stuff still peaks my interest. And a lot of that, like I have Carrie over here, like I don't have the ability to sit down and write a program. Like I use a couple of things like an Arduino, which is a small process board. I can't write my own code, but I know enough knowledge. I have enough knowledge in the ability to take that product and find a code similar to what I need and basically hack it and slash it and make it do what I need it to do. And so I've got a couple of little ones that I use for... PID is this type of controller. So you know what a sous vide is? It's like a crock pot with a brain in it to where it'll keep the water in the crock pot at exactly 130 degrees, plus or minus a quarter of a degree.
Dylan Carnahan:I don't know what that is, but I get why that would be important for brewing.
Chris Roberts:And so I've got a couple of those little programs that these guys have made and because it's open source, they typically will put their programs on the internet. And all you do is download them and then you can use them at will because it's open source. You know, there's no, it's not like if you took Microsoft.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that unlicensed 2010 Microsoft or Photoshop.
Chris Roberts:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're not, if you use an Arduino, if you take someone's Arduino code and modify it, you're not going to Federal Prison. So, you know, there's a couple of guys out there that are like kind of nerds like me, but like with a higher skill set. And there's a bunch of programs that you can get to use. And, you know, it's like basically it's open source. And so there's you don't have to pay any license fee unless you're like using a commercial scale. And so those things have always fascinated me. So like we're getting ready. We use a product called the BCS460 from Embedded Concepts. And we're getting ready to actually add it to our Brew System. Our Brew System is very simple. We use it right now to control our fermenters. We're getting ready to add it to our hot side in order to just have an instant reference on, OK, this is what temperature the brewer is at. So I have an idea like when we're going to hit boil.
Dylan Carnahan:You have that added information that you're going to get. Yeah.
Chris Roberts:Instead of like stopping what I'm doing and going over there and looking at it and like getting the thermometer out and waiting for it to come up to temperature, you know, I can have instant access. Like I'm using the bathroom, I can pull it up on my phone and see exactly where we're at. Like, holy crap, it's getting ready to boil. Let's make sure that X, Y, and Z.
Dylan Carnahan:You're not going to have that constant observation. You know, you're going to be able to monitor that, you know, at home. It's going to open up a lot more of your time. So what, so how long, how long was the experience of brewing at home? Like, I've obviously you have a brewery now, but.
Chris Roberts:So, yeah, I know. I think so. I think so. This Christmas would be 12 years I brewed my first beer. Oh, wow. And so, so 12 years.
Dylan Carnahan:Was it good? Was the beer was the first?
Chris Roberts:You know what? It wasn't horrible. It just wasn't a style that I cared for. And so what I ended up doing was getting like the least expensive kit they had to make. And so it ended up being like a Hefeweizen. And Hefeweizen is just not a German wheat beer. It's just not a style that I never really cared for.
Dylan Carnahan:Was it made out of like your knowledge at the time? Like that was the easiest thing to do?
Chris Roberts:That was part of it because like the thing with hops, they're the first thing to fade if you do things incorrectly. And so it can affect more hops. The more hops you have in a beer, the more difficult it ends up being to get a successful batch out of it, especially when you're looking at a homebrew scale and all the other things that kind of go into it. You know, like with an extract kit, it's literally just dumping sugar syrup into a pot and then boiling it and throwing some hops in there to bitter it. And then when you're done, you just dump it in a bucket and throw some yeast in it and put it in your closet for two weeks.
Dylan Carnahan:So that's just the most basic introductory thing.
Chris Roberts:Yes, that's the most generalized way you can do it. But then there's also a lot of things as far as chemistry that go along with it. Like if you put, if your water is, you know, as a pH of 7.5, for example, and you put that in there and you put the malt extract in there and you throw your hops in there, well, that's not where, that's not as upon a professional scale. We look at a, we want our pre-boiled pH or pre-hopping pH to be around 5.4, because above that you get a lot of like phenol extraction and you get a lot of additional bitterness. The efficiency goes up, but it rips out of the hops these flavors that you don't want. So you get like soapy characteristics and you get really astringent and really sharp bitterness out of the hops. And those are things we don't want. I mean, you can literally get... There's processes that you can extract every single ounce of whatever is in those hops out, but that doesn't necessarily make for a higher quality product.
Dylan Carnahan:And as you're starting out, you're probably... You may not be checking the pH of your tap water and saying, this is Kansas hard rural tap water or whatever. You're probably just going in there and you're like, oh, this tastes, you know...
Chris Roberts:Yeah. And honestly, we use... The water that I use in our first batch is the base water that we use in every batch since then. The only difference is we adjust it using acid, either citric or lactic acid. We adjust the water pH down, and we also send it through what's called a granulated active carbon water filter system. And so what that is is essentially it's coconut shells that are treated specifically to take out chlorine and chloramine. So the water companies have to, by law, make water stable for drinking. And so I think they add chlorine to it and ammonia at the station. I believe those are the two chemicals they add. But what those do is when they combine, they form a product called chloramine, which is essentially why you're supposed to, like if you have goldfish or whatever, you're supposed to either get reverse osmosis water or treat it with these things are called Candem tabs.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, because they can't really live there. It's not really...
Chris Roberts:Yeah, no, no. The chloramines are toxic to fish. So if you just took a guppy and threw it in some tap water, it's dead after a minute. The same thing with brewing. If there's chloramine in the water, when you strike with it, when you add it to the grain, it actually produces a particle chlorophenols, which, you know, when you were a kid and band-aids came in those really thick plastic, they were pink plastic, and then they were in the metal container.
Dylan Carnahan:Okay.
Chris Roberts:So that smell, like you can... I say that and I'm sure you can remember. You may be old enough. You're kind of a little spry still. But remember, like the band-aid brand, they came in the little metal containers.
Dylan Carnahan:Yes. Yeah. Open them up. Altoid kind of.
Chris Roberts:Yes. Yes. And so, like, can you remember that smell? So that, if there's chloramine in your water, when you do an all malt beer, you can actually get that same aroma.
Dylan Carnahan:Which is obviously not good when you're going to smell that.
Chris Roberts:When you want to drink it, you don't want your bunch of beer tasting like, you know, band-aids from when you were eight years old. So, but, you know, it's weird. It's a weird thing. It's just like how it's like the metabolism of it because there's some actual bacteria and some yeast that can actually mimic those same. They make it through a different pathway, but make that same. You can get it in sour beer as well. So certain guys, if you use an anaerobic bacteria, you can get those same chlorophenols by using the wrong sour yeast.
Dylan Carnahan:So it's 2008. You've made your seven pH water. You put it in there. You got your band-aid, smelly beer that you're not all that into. You keep at it. And how do you transition from that to, hey, I now have a brewery? How do you go from there to there?
Chris Roberts:Just kind of like the same thing. Just kind of kept plugging along and was anal retentive enough to kind of, it's like the scientific method kind of a thing. It's like, you know, conduct an experiment and then see how it turns out and then figure out where you screwed up and then try it again. You know, and that's we actually started getting pretty lucky. Like we started to learn some things, started using Camden tabs, then actually started just filtering the water and it turned out pretty good. Ended up winning a few awards. I mean, nothing like major going forward. And then one day it was Mithy's, my wife's sister, at one point lived a block over from us. And so they were over at the house and we were drinking some of my home brew and her parents were over the house and we were getting liquored up. And I think they were over for a birthday party or something. And Joe, my father-in-law was like, you know, I always wanted to have a brewery. He went through this big, long story about how there was this place in Junction City that was like right around the corner from where he used to work. And we're like, yeah, that's a great idea. It's like the next day, like I asked Missy, I was like, do you think Joe was serious? He's like, oh, yeah, he's like for even before you started brewing. That was like something that he wanted.
Dylan Carnahan:Oh, wow.
Chris Roberts:And so we were just kind of chit chatting one time. I was like, are you serious about that? He's like, yeah, figure out how we could do this. And that was kind of like the rise of like what they kind of called the nano brewery. And so like a couple of guys, like I was all over homerudetalk.com and a couple of guys are like, you know, quote unquote, going pro. And basically what they were doing is they were making one barrel batches, which a barrel is like been to a keg party. The full size keg is a half barrel.
Dylan Carnahan:Oh, really?
Chris Roberts:They were basically. Yeah. So the big kegs that we have, like the big metal ones were half barrels. So they're 15.5 gallons. So in a barrel, so a barrel is 31 gallons. And it's just an old kind of antiquated. Like a lot of the stuff in brewing, like the terminology is just like throwback type terminology.
Dylan Carnahan:As that roots in like the history.
Chris Roberts:Yeah.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah.
Chris Roberts:You know, like we still call it hot liquor, even though it's hot liquor, it's just hot water. Which I don't know. It's like in Kansas, liquor is anything that's not like cereal malt badger. So wine is liquor, beer is liquor, liquor is liquor. It's the weirdest thing. It's just government. And you have certain rules that you have to abide by. But anyway, so there's a couple of guys, like certain states have different rules. Like there's a guy, two breweries I was following, one is Hess and one other one, and they're in San Diego, and now they're pretty big. But that guy started, he was like a financial advisor or something. And he just, you know, went through the application process and the government doesn't tell you how big your brewery has to be. You just have certain other rules. It's mostly taxation that you have to follow. And so this guy basically just started making like three kegs at a time in the, you know, the spot next to his financial advising firm. And then these guys out in Pennsylvania, I think it was called Breakside or something like it, Breakaway, their garage was detached from their house. And so they got their garage licenses, brewery in Pennsylvania, you know. And so they started making beer in their garage on the weekend and selling it to local beer bars and just took off. And now they have like a very big tap room. So, you know, we were looking at doing like the same thing.
Dylan Carnahan:Had a model, a model to look at how to do that.
Chris Roberts:And then just doing like draft sales and then building from there. But, you know, so we were kind of planning all these things and we're going to do X and we're going to do it out in Chapman, which is Missy's hometown because property was pretty inexpensive. And we kind of hemmed all around it and kind of like, you know, drug our feet. And then I was looking at Tallgrass had this thing. It was like how to brew day. And it was at their old location. And so we signed up for it. And it was supposed to be like all of us. At the time when we were like, yeah, we're going to do this brewery. It was like Misty and I and then Joe and Loretta. Those are my in-laws. And then it was Missy's brother and his wife. And then it was there's more Melissa. Oh, no, no, no. So it was supposed to be like eight of us. And we had signed up for this how to brew day thing. And no one else can make it except for Joe and I. And so we had these specific instructions. It was Saturday and my father-in-law, he works every other Sunday. And so he had to work the following day. So we go to the tall grass, how to brew day. And I want to say it was 20, pretty confident. It was, that was 2011.
Dylan Carnahan:Okay, 2008, first batch, 2011.
Chris Roberts:Yeah. We go to this, we go to this how to brew day thing. So we go through the deal and we had very specific instructions. We were to go to this, we were supposed to behave ourselves because on the way back, we were going to go to church because Joe had to work the next day. So we were just going to catch church there in Junction City on the way home. So long story short, we ended up getting face drunk, drinking beers with their brewmaster at the time, Andrew Hood. He was from California. So he's like, you guys are awesome. He was pulling out stuff like his parents from California would send him, like Lost Abbey and we drank some Russian River. So like stuff that people used to kill for around here, we were drinking and he was telling me about all these other things. I was like, oh, that's awesome. And so at one point, Joe's like, I don't think I'm going to make it. And I'm like, okay, okay. And I'm like, you know what? I don't think I can drive home either. And so I ended up having to call Misty and her and my sister-in-law came to pick us up. And we were still drinking. Misty basically had to drag us out of there and she was pissed off so bad. But the whole ride home. So Joe rode with my sister-in-law and then I drove with Misty and the whole way home. I guess both of us were like, we're doing this is so great. You know, I was like, we want this. And we basically made it back. We kind of sobered up a little bit. We had dinner. So we missed church. And then Joe actually had to call him sick of work because he was so hungover. But we basically the whole that whole time, once we got home, like around eight o'clock or something like that until like eleven, we kind of hatched this plan. So fast forward, like my brother-in-law, he wasn't able to do it. They were young family. Misty's sister and her brother-in-law, excuse me, her husband, he ended up joining the army. And so he got deployed, you know, twice.
Dylan Carnahan:So your numbers are dwindling here.
Chris Roberts:And so after he got back from his last deployment, we were pushing, and this was the end of like 2013. We started pushing pretty hard to find a space. We talked about doing it in Chapman and that just wasn't going to work. So we decided to move it up here. We were going to do a production brewery because the rules in Kansas are a little bit wonky. Looked in some stuff and then started running the numbers and this, the numbers weren't there. And so we decided that maybe what we could do is look in Kansas City, Missouri, because on the Missouri side, the rules for breweries are a lot more, I wouldn't say lacks, but the requirements as far as what you had, the hoops you had to jump through as far as numbers are.
Dylan Carnahan:And I can imagine based on the fact that Kansas now has full beer as of like the last couple of years. So I can imagine just brewing the beer would be a little more difficult on Kansas City.
Chris Roberts:Well, see, that's where the crux of it is. The brewing part is easy. It's the selling it and how you sell it is where the hang up comes. So at one point, we couldn't find anything on the Missouri side or anything that really kind of fit us like Misty and I and Joe and I. Because at that point, Misty's brother-in-law, our brother-in-law decided that he was going to make the Army his full-time career and they just weren't going to have the ability to participate as much as they anticipated. So they decided to no longer be part of the business. So it's just at this point now, and this is about January, I'd say 2014 or so, maybe 2013, like the timeline, it's been so long. And so we at that point just kind of hammered down and started trying to figure things out. We looked all over KCMO and could not find anything that fit us or fit within our price range that met all the things we needed. And so we decided that we wanted to open it up in Palatha. And so that's where kind of the monkey wrench kind of got thrown into things, because the way Kansas law is set up, after prohibition was repealed, when they made it legal to have alcoholic liquor in the state, you could have it, but you had to belong to a social club type thing. So like, you know, Eagles Club or whatever. So you had to pay a fee, you had to wait 10 days, and then you could go in and drink beer. But you couldn't have it at like a bar. You couldn't go, there weren't actual quote unquote bars or like, you couldn't go to a restaurant and a hamburger and get a Bud Light with it. Until I think it's 1989 or 1991, where what they did was they attached it to the state constitution and allow each individual county to decide how they want it. So you could either be completely dry, which you can't sell any alcohol, but you can have it if you go outside and bring it in. You can even manufacture it in a dry county. You just can't sell it.
Dylan Carnahan:Wow, that's just so unique. Like that's, yeah. Well, I even think now like $1 drink at Applebee's, you know, like that's just so common, you know, just the consumption of alcohol like that, but not at the time.
Chris Roberts:Oh, absolutely. And then so you either were a completely dry county, and this is all on a vote. So you had to do it on a ballot that either had a congressman being elected or congressperson being elected or the president. So every four years, essentially, is the only time it could be on. It's got to be on a specific ballot measure. It's my understanding. And so you could be either completely dry, completely wet, or what they call wet with a 30% food rule. Johnson County elected to be wet with a 30% food rule. And now what that means is we're obligated to sell 30% of our on-site sales have to be comprised of food. And the state essentially defines food as anything you put in your mouth. It's not alcohol. So it's pretty, it's nice if you look at it. They're very simple. I mean, I think our license law only has like four lines to it or six lines.
Dylan Carnahan:Really?
Chris Roberts:Yeah, but then they have all these other kind of requirements. So it's good and it's bad. And so at one point, I called and spoke to Ron Shaver, who is the city attorney for the city of Lepa. And I said, Hey, I just had a question. This is what we're wanting to do. I'm looking at this licensing and this is what it says. And I went through in a Reddit line by line. He pulled it up on his computer and read it line by line. I was like, so now if I sell any food, like this law doesn't dictate that I have to have a kitchen, right? Nowhere in there does it say that I have to have a kitchen staff and a head chef and this and that.
Dylan Carnahan:It's not the emphasis isn't on the production, like you're saying. It's on the actual selling.
Chris Roberts:Correct. And so I asked him, I'm like, so the way I read this is if I sold donuts that I bought from Dunkin Donuts over here, as long as I sold, you know, a thousand dollars of, you know, I had a thousand dollars of sales in a year, but 70% of them came from alcohol and 30% of them came from whatever. Yeah, that would mean I would be in line with this law. Yes. I was like, is there anything in this in the city that says anything different? He's like, no, we actually are models after the state one. So as long as you have 30%, he said, you know, a couple of requirements here, there and the other that as long as they won't give us our license until we're certified by the state, but we apply for them at the same time.
Dylan Carnahan:Okay.
Chris Roberts:So it's we just basically have to send the stuff that we send to the state to the city. I was like, are? And so we started looking around Olapa, found a space and then end up kind of getting coaxed away to Spring Hill by a gentleman. So we end up starting the brewery in Spring Hill and we opened up October 15th or 17th. God, I can't remember which one of 2015.
Dylan Carnahan:So that's quite the journey, just literally not having any skin in the game, just kind of I kind of didn't really like beer all that much to, okay, this is my profession.
Chris Roberts:Oh, yeah.
Dylan Carnahan:No.
Chris Roberts:And it's a little bit. That's kind of like the thousand foot view of it. There's a lot more that kind of went into it. Like, I mean, it was it was every waking hour. Like I would go to work and I work, like I said, I worked at Cisco at the time. I would work between 50 and 60 hours a week. Then my weekends were making as many beers as I could to kind of come up with the batches that we're going to have and then doing as much learning as many things as I could and then figuring out how to apply them to a much larger scale.
Dylan Carnahan:So I'm going to go back to something you kind of mentioned earlier. You mentioned the word nano brewery. There's a lot of terms that I've heard like micro, nano, obviously probably synonymous. What's the difference between something like that versus like what Bud Light has going?
Chris Roberts:So those are just kind of like, nano brewery is just an industry-wide kind of like, one of these term catchphrase, but that's just kind of where it started. Like a lot of these guys without having to basically get a massive loan, you could go out and either source equipment or find equipment. And basically nano brewery is something like you're making like three barrels or less per batch. And that originally started out with guys were making like, between like 15 gallons and 30 gallons at a time.
Dylan Carnahan:So we're talking about the quantity being produced. That's what we're really talking about.
Chris Roberts:And so you had like your macro brews, which would be your Bud Light, your Coors Light, your Miller Lights, and all those companies like that, the guys you see everywhere. And then you had your micro brews, which would technically at the time, so like mid to late 2000s, would have been like your micro brews would have been your Boulevard, your New Belgiums, your Tall Grasses, because they were operating on a larger scale. So the Nano Brew, I'm not really sure where the threshold is. I think the Brewers Association now has kind of like, it's less the size of your brewery, it's more the production output you have and how you get classified. And Nano Brewery now is kind of gone by the wayside a little bit. There's still some guys out there, but they still, there's so many companies out there manufacturing equipment, that's a lot bigger.
Dylan Carnahan:And so, you know, changes the classification.
Chris Roberts:Yeah. Now the Brewers Association has been smart enough about it that they, or smart about it, and they, excuse me, they classify more so based on your production, is how much you produce in a year. That dictates the size, quote unquote, the size. You know, they're small. I don't even know. Because it's like stuff that doesn't really apply to me.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, currently.
Chris Roberts:Yeah, like back in the day when the craft boom, this cycle of the craft room started, like Nano Brew would be someone making between, I'd say, 15 and, you know, 15 gallons to two barrels at a time. So between 15 and 60 gallons at a time. And then you got to guys that kind of took the next step up and bought like purpose built equipment, which would be in five, you know, a five barrel, which, you know, sometimes you had guys finding stuff in like Canada or Europe and importing it cheap, or they were modifying equipment that was out there to suit their needs. That's kind of where we ended up, like I said, kind of circling back to that engineering. There was a gentleman named Tom Hennessy who owns a brewery. I think there is two breweries now in Colorado. But he's owned, I think, like somewhere in the neighborhood, like seven or eight that he's built and then sold off. But he made a, and you can find it on YouTube, he made a video called Franken Brew. And basically he kind of the same thing as us. He had owned like a pizza joint down in Arizona, I think, and then kind of got the bug to make his own beer and just went out and found equipment wherever he could and just modified it to his means and ended up building this thing. And it's kind of inspired a lot of people. Now he even runs like a small school in Colorado that kind of teaches you, it's like an immersion type course where you go for two weeks, teaches you the ropes, like the down and dirty.
Dylan Carnahan:Kind of like what you and your father-in-law kind of went into.
Chris Roberts:Yeah, but you know, he's, you know, it's kind of like life lessons. And so there's less trial and error because he's like, these are the things you need to do in order to be successful.
Dylan Carnahan:Less of a workshop and more informative.
Chris Roberts:Yeah, like it's really a great setup. Yeah, you're not, you don't have, like, it's, you're supposed to, your company's supposed to bring two people. And like one person, this is how you brew. This is what we do. This is how you do it. This is the best, like, way we've learned on, like, a small scale kind of production type setup for like, it's mostly like pub type setup or tap room mentality. And then one other person does like all the business type stuff, like these are the records you're supposed to keep. This is how long you have to keep.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that's really in-depth. Like, you know, that covers pretty much all facets that you'd need to know right there.
Chris Roberts:Yeah, and it's like a two week little deal. And now he's got to the point where he's had so many people gone through the class, like a friend of mine's actually taking the class. So the gentleman that owned Smoke Brewing, he's gone through it. And he told me that he didn't even go to the Colorado Boy. That's the name of Tom's breweries now. He went to, like, one of his students, actually. They offer like kind of like satellite programs.
Dylan Carnahan:Wow. There's all these options.
Chris Roberts:Yeah. And so he's got all these people, you know, and so that have gone through his course that have been successful. And then they basically bring him in and kind of teach him. You know, it's like it's like old school karate or something like, you know, that student becomes a master kind of thing. And then they pass it on to somebody else. But yeah, we use a lot. He wrote a book a couple of years ago and we have that book. And, you know, we do a lot of the things that he speaks about, like our mash ton is actually an old dairy tank. And so that we end up having a thousand dollars invested in it, where if we were to purchase it brand new, it'd be somewhere in the neighborhood. Like the least expensive one would be like around twelve thousand dollars. So right there, right out of the gate, we've already sold ourselves, saved ourselves like eleven hundred or eleven thousand dollars. You know, and so just little stuff like that. I think kind of like I said, that's like old school, like American ingenuity kind of a thing. It's like, you know, you have a problem, you figure out what that problem is. And like how do you move those obstacles that are getting, keeping you from your destiny?
Dylan Carnahan:Let's let's kind of root back into the actual brewing itself, because obviously that's your forte. You know, we've talked a little bit. It was mentioned a little bit earlier about, you know, how you made your first batch. But what are kind of like the general steps to making beer?
Chris Roberts:So like I said, it's pretty simple. So basically, all we do is we add, and we have most of the stuff we have, we have calculators. For us, we have, I have such a tight controller, such a working knowledge of our system. So we traditionally will use X amount of grain. And I know with X amount of grain, I need X amount of water and X amount of water, X amount of temperature. And so we have a lot of standardization we use. It just makes life easy for me. You know, we have a starting gravity for some of our beers that we try to hit, and we may vary certain things on that. So what we'll do is we'll mill the grain. And so we'll send it through. And it's not even really milling like in the traditions. It's just cracking it. So we take the grain. It's whole seed grain. We put it through a mill. It basically goes through some rollers and it cracks it open, and it exposes the inside of the grain. So we take that grain. We put it into what's called a mash tun. Mash tun is just basically a big vessel with a grate in the bottom with small holes in it. And what that does is we soak, we steep those grains in the mash tun at a specific pH, a specific temperature for a specific amount of time, depending on what beer we want out of that. And so depending on what beer style we're making, it'll sit in there between 60 minutes, either 60, 90 or 120.
Dylan Carnahan:And that's not much variety right there.
Chris Roberts:I mean, the time will actually that you get to a point where as far as like the timing goes, like it's kind of starts dropping off exponentially. We have the sweet spot that we're trying to hit as far as time and anything after that, like the returns, the diminishing returns, essentially the diminishing returns. Yes, that's what I was trying to. So after a while, just it starts dropping off. There's other things that we can do to boost those efficiencies as far as just letting it sit in there longer. So we could actually, you know, amylase enzymes to it just to get more extracted.
Dylan Carnahan:So once you hit that sweet spot, whatever that is, 60 minutes, whatever, then what?
Chris Roberts:So what happens is when it goes through the mill, so it's funny it's called a mill, what it does is it basically smashes the grain and the husks on the grain say pretty much intact, but the inside is crumbled up and crushed. So the funny thing is the husks of the grain are actually, once they become waterlogged, become heavier than the inside and they fall to the bottom. And so they actually develop this natural filter bed. So after 90 minutes, you know, 60 minutes, 90 minutes is what we typically do. We go through a process called Vorloff, and basically it's a big fancy German word for taking crap off the bottom and put it on top. I don't know if that's the actual definition, but that's what we do. So we open the valve at the bottom, we have a pump attached to it, and what we'll do is we'll recirculate it, because when you do crush the grain, a little bit of like flour essentially is made, and that's to make its way to the bottom. And what we want to do is suck all the flour out and redeposit it on the top. And so what that's doing is those holes are making their way to the bottom where the grate is, and so it's acting as a filter bed. So it's like a natural process where the endosperm and whatnot are inside and they're floating kind of towards the top, and all the holes are down at the bottom and they act like a natural filter. And so you vorlop just to keep some of that grain out of the kettle. And so we'll work that for a little bit and we'll check our temperature, we'll check our mash pH, make sure it's all in spec. Then we'll stop it, let it sit for a minute, and then at that point we'll take it. Instead of pumping it on top, we'll transfer it over into the kettle. So once we hook it to the kettle, we'll open the valves up, let it start flowing in naturally at first. At that point, what we're going to do is we're going to start sprinkling water over the top of the mash and the mash ton. And that's called sparging. It's kind of weird. It's all these words. So it's lot where, excuse me, let me back up. When we hook the mash ton to the kettle, that's called launching. So we're launching at this point, which is basically just draining from one kettle or one vessel to another.
Dylan Carnahan:Simple enough.
Chris Roberts:Yeah, and so that's launching. So then we'll start what's called sparging. And sparging is basically just sprinkling hot water on top of the mash. That works kind of, like, remember when you were a kid and you had those little things that were like oil and water mixed together, you know, because the oil is lighter than the water. So essentially the same process, you know, after the sacrification is what it's called, where those starches, the enzymes in the grain on the, or excuse me, the enzymes that live on the grain naturally are activated by the hot water. They go to work on the starch in the grain, and they convert it from starch in the sugar. And so the sugar is just like anything. It's just maltose basically. It's heavier than the water. So as you sprinkle water on top of it, the water is lighter. It kind of resides on top, and it kind of acts like a plunger and helps to push it down.
Dylan Carnahan:Oh, to get that into the other tank.
Chris Roberts:Yeah. It works just like a, almost essentially like a plunger is the best kind of analogy.
Dylan Carnahan:Just pushing it down to get it into the other tank.
Chris Roberts:And so also what it's doing is because of osmosis, you still have some sugar that's trapped in those grains. And so it's, once you get to kind of homeostasis within the mash, you can't extract any more sugar out of the grain. Now with this fresh water coming in and sprinkled on top, that sugar can move from the grain into the, that sparge water, and then you get a little bit more extraction out of them. So you can kind of get as much without grabbing, you know, basically bringing out all the water, all the sugar, excuse me. Your spear, it's just using osmosis.
Dylan Carnahan:In your favor?
Chris Roberts:To migrate from, yes. And so we do that until the kettle is essentially full to where we need it to be, and then we shut everything off and the rest of it kind of goes down the drain, turn on the kettle. Once we hit a certain level, turn it on, boiling starts, once the boiling starts, we add in, depending on what beer we're making, depends on how long we boil it. And then when we add hops. So for us, with our water profile, we typically like a beer that doesn't, isn't really hopping. So like Isabel, is a beer I'm sure you've served a lot.
Dylan Carnahan:The Belgian Blonde.
Chris Roberts:Yes. So it basically just gets a, what's called a bittering charge. So once it starts boiling it now, there's little things in there. Once the boil starts on it, it goes for a little bit, we give it a bittering charge. That's just to balance out how much sugar is left in it after attenuation. So the beer doesn't taste like sheer water. And then so like our hoppy beers, we typically hit those in the whirlpool at the end. And so that just, we get extraction. We put a lot more. So for example...
Dylan Carnahan:Is that bittering charge, that's the hops, right?
Chris Roberts:Yes, yes. So we put, like I said, depending on what type of beer we're making, depends on when we put the hops in and how much hop we put in. So like Isabel, for example, is 30 IVUs, and that's kind of international bittering. So that's just kind of a measurement of how bitter it is and how... And so it's 30 IVUs. We do, I think it's actually 30 ounces of our bittering pop at 60 minutes. So that will go into the beer. It'll be boiled for at least 60 minutes until we shut off the fire of the kettle and then let it steep for a minute. So like Francis, which is our pale ale, it's also 30 IVUs. But instead of getting just 30 ounces at the beginning, it all goes in at the very end, at the whirlpool stage. And it gets, I have to look at my notes, it's between four and five pounds at the end. So you have to use almost twice as much to get the same amount of bitterness at the end first at the beginning, because it's called efficiencies. Because it basically is extracting out more of that bitterness as it boils.
Dylan Carnahan:Once again, that timing is going to be important when you put that in. And you've mentioned whirlpool, so I'm assuming that's happening after you've boiled it. What's that kind of...
Chris Roberts:So whirlpool is, it's just a matter of separation. So we're throwing all these hops into the boil. So what happens is at the end of the boil, we shut off the fire, we let it kind of settle for a minute, because it's just been at 212 degrees for at least an hour. At whirlpool, what we do is we hook... There's a port on there that will pull the wort out of the bottom of the kettle, and then it'll pump it right back into it, but it goes in at an angle. And what that does is it causes the entire mass in the kettle to spin in a circle. And as it's spinning in a circle, it's also kind of forming like an upside down tornado, is the best way to explain it. And so we have all these processes that happen in the boil. So we have what's called the cold hot break, where all the proteins from the grain that are kind of viscous. When they boil, they basically come out of suspension, essentially, and they coagulate together. And so it kind of looks like egg drop soup. In the, in the, like, before the boil starts, like you'll get all this foam at the top, kind of like in a regular beer, but it's, it's kind of almost like a meringue. Because it's all protein and it's all this stuff that kind of floats to the top. And then once the boil stop starts, all of that kind of coagulates together and firms up. And then it's, you can see it kind of just, it's like these big flocks of protein just floating around in the boil the whole time. So we obviously don't want that into the fermenter. After, after the boil's over, I said we start this whirlpooling process and we let it go for about 20 minutes. And then it spins, you know, around in circles and then like an upside down tornado. And what happens is everything kind of bunches up and drops to the bottom in middle of the boil kettle. And so at the end, once it rests for a while, what that allows us to do is siphon off as clean a ward as we can and get it through the heat exchanger, which is what cools the beer down to like pitching temperature. We start at 212 degrees. We put it through the heat exchanger. We don't want the hops going through. We don't want the hot break and the proteins going through. It just gums it up. And so by spinning it in the Whirlpool, it allows it to clump together in the middle, and then it all will form up. We use a couple of processes, a couple of ingredients that we throw in there that actually kind of act as almost like a magnet essentially and group everything together and fall down.
Dylan Carnahan:And you used the word ward, was it?
Chris Roberts:It's wart, W-O-R-T.
Dylan Carnahan:So that's the final product you're going to get from after the Whirlpool stage and boiling and all that.
Chris Roberts:Yes, so wart is technically, wart is any sugar, water, it's anything that we create, minus the grain, before we add yeast to it. So legally, quote unquote, once we add yeast to it, it's beer at that point. Wart is the unspoiled sugar water that we're creating.
Dylan Carnahan:And so you've cooled this wart, and then I'm guessing you're going to have to ferment it, right?
Chris Roberts:Yeah, so it goes into the fermenter, and then at that point, we inoculate it with a yeast strain, depending on what type of beer it is. We have several that we use. We have a couple of house yeasts, and then we have a couple of specialty yeasts that we pull in every now and then. But yeah, so once you inoculate it with your yeast, it's technically beer at that point, even if no fermentation. It's just weird US government regulations. So depending on what yeast we use, we have a fermentation profile. Depending on X, we'll do Y. So our IPA, for example, we started out at 65 degrees and then let it go there for about two days, and then we let it free rise up to about 71 degrees at the point where it stops its terminal gravity, which we know just from experience, we'll pull the yeast off the bottom of the cone because our tanks are coned at the bottom. So we'll chill it down just a little bit and that yeast will actually group together the same way, kind of similar way that it does in the oil kettle and fall to the bottom. And we'll pull that off and we'll reuse it. And at this point, we'll actually add yeast, or excuse me, for our IPA, we'll add dry hops to the top of it and then allow those to sit in there for, typically we do three to four days. Then with same thing, we'll let them fall to the bottom. We'll pull those off, chill the beer down to get any residual, either hops or yeast to flocculate to the bottom of the cone. And then we'll pull that out, move it into what we call a bright tank. And then the bright tank is basically the same as the fermenter, except for their round bottom. And we have a stone in those that we inject CO2 into, and that's how we carbonate the beer. So it'll go into the cold room, or sometimes we can actually use our other fermenters if we're short on space. But then we'll inject CO2 into them, we'll carbonate them in the tank. And then once they hit a certain volume, typically it's like 2.3. So for every, essentially for every gallon of beer, I have 2.3 gallons of compressed CO2 dissolved into those. Put a special adapter on to the tank, and we'll put it into Keg's, and we'll put them online and sell them, or we'll get to our distributor, and they'll sell them to the market.
Dylan Carnahan:That's pretty complex through a lot of different variables.
Chris Roberts:Well, I mean, and the part of it is, it sounds complex. It's just one of those things. It's like anything. It's like driving a car. When you start out driving a car, you're scared. But then after you've done it for five or ten years, you get to that point where crap, I just don't remember the last ten years.
Dylan Carnahan:Now I'm going 85, like it's nothing.
Chris Roberts:Yeah, you didn't realize that you know. It's like, well, normally, where the hell am I? You have that like last like that autopilot. And it kind of becomes like once. And that's one of the things like we, I think that's kind of like my bit of my science background. It's like try to not change things, like do things the same each time. Or if you change things, only change one thing. Don't change like five things and you don't know what you don't know where you're at or what.
Dylan Carnahan:Why the end result is the way it is.
Chris Roberts:And so, you know, we rarely change anything. And if we do, it's only one or two things. And those one or two things may only be like one thing may be in like a hot side, like on the on the brew side. And the other thing may be on the other side. And then if it doesn't quite come out the way we anticipated, just name the beer, give the beer a different name.
Dylan Carnahan:So I'm going to I'm going to cut back before the brewing process real quick. So what are our core ingredients in making a beer?
Chris Roberts:So the four ingredients in beer, there's water, malt, yeast and hops. And so technically, it's not you can have water, malt and hops, but they're not beer until you put in the yeast.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that's the legal, legally speaking.
Chris Roberts:Yeah. And then there's some weird little rules on that, too. Like the percentages, like certain things are like you has to be like a cereal malt grain. And so it's just not malt. You can use rye, wheat, you use quinoa. Yeah, yeah, I think isn't couscous technically a pasta?
Dylan Carnahan:Yes, I think it is.
Chris Roberts:So you I think you could actually use it, but you'd have to use it like an ancillary ingredient. Couscous is a dish.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah.
Chris Roberts:It's a steam-baked, crushed durnwheat in semolina. So yeah, you can actually technically make beer out of couscous.
Dylan Carnahan:Yes, they may have to experiment with that.
Chris Roberts:You might have to get what we call a formularity approval by the government to be making some couscous liqueur.
Dylan Carnahan:We've talked about, you know, the process and all this stuff. And it obviously, as we've mentioned, it varies based on what style of beer you're going for. I know that there are two different types or categories of beer. You have the ale and a lager. And so what kind is the... Obviously, you know, there are different things that fall into each one of them, but what are the kind of main distinctions between the two?
Chris Roberts:So technically, the only real main distinction is the type of use. And I'm going to butcher these. So all yeast comes from... I think it's the family or genus. I don't know. Like I failed biology. But their saccharomyces is what the yeasts are called. And so saccharomyces basically translates into sugar fungus. And so saccharomyces are a non spore producing yeast. And so you have two types of saccharomyces that are acceptable for use in the brewing application. You have saccharomyces cervaceae. I said, I'm going to butcher these. And then it's like saccharomyces alpastorius.
Dylan Carnahan:So you have these two different types of yeast.
Chris Roberts:And actually, they're just kissing cousins. And so one has been essentially genetically groomed through evolution to work at a higher temperature. And then so you have like saccharomyces alpastorius, basically longer yeast. And so way back in the day, they didn't have the automatic control of temperature like we do now. And so they would traditionally say in Germany or the Czech Republic, they would only, there was only a slim window in which they can make beer. Because if it got too hot, typically it became, they didn't have the pasteurization techniques that we have today. Obviously, they didn't have the aseptic techniques. And so essentially they got dudes with buckets dumping wort into vessels and they rolled them into caves. But the larger yeast, they would throw a buttload in there and it would over, it's just like, it's like the idea of like the big fish in a small pond. And so the more yeast they had in there, the greater chance of success they had that the other like beer spoiling organisms. So the anaerobic or aerobic bacteria that are going to be fighting for the, to live in the wort, you know, they have certain temperature ranges that they are more active at, typically higher, like in the 90, like bacteria, typically like the same temperature, like we're at. So like the 95, 96 degree range. So if you take a huge pitch of yeast and then, you know, like so they're keeping it in wooden buckets and stuff back in the day.
Dylan Carnahan:This is really super clean.
Chris Roberts:Yeah, super clean. But then you throw a bunch of it in there. And then if they're keeping it cold because they're storing it down in caves, you throw it in there and then you start it. It does take a little bit of time to get going. But because now it's in a the conditions are more beneficial towards the breweries than they are towards the bacteria that would spoil that beer, they outperform and then you end up getting a beer. It may not be as good as like a beer that, you know, polliners producing today. I mean, but, you know, back in the 1500s, you get what you get and you don't throw a fit.
Dylan Carnahan:You're not going to have as good quality control back then.
Chris Roberts:You know, I'm pretty sure that these guys are just wanting to live to be 25. So, you know, and the same thing like you get, we get yeast strains that actually have genetic markers. And like American, like we use a yeast on occasion. It's called American Ale yeast. And so it's a similar, it's like you're kissing again, a kiss and cousin to the same yeast that they use at Sierra Nevada. And now I don't know where they source this yeast, but it has a certain range, a temperature range that it works best at. And now just from like knowledge or just experience and having stuff go sideways for us, I know that it says between this number and this number, but if it goes a little bit above that or a little below that, I kind of know where it's going to land. Same thing. We use a yeast that's sourced from England that if, because of experience, if it gets above or below that, if it gets below it, it's going to go dormant and not finish fermenting. And if it goes above that temperature, the beer is going to taste like hell. And a lot of that is just, you know, it's like pure Darwinism. It's the result of the environment. So, you know, the environment when they only brewed in Germany during certain times of the year, because basically when summer hits, it's too hot. And you boil those beers, you know, in England, they have a more temperate climate because of where they're at, you know, with the North Sea and stuff like that works a little bit cooler. And so their yeast, they basically ferment in gigantic oak barrels at certain temperatures, you know, same thing at certain times of the year, but they would get different. They were able to use these ale yeasts and ferment them out because the day to day temperatures were a little bit lower, you know.
Dylan Carnahan:OK, so the main distinction is the what heat the yeast requires, right?
Chris Roberts:Yeah, I mean, and that's the biggest thing. Yeah. And actually, what they're finding out now, too, is that done in the right manner, lager yeast, like certain lager yeast, you can use at a much higher temperature. And so we've been actually been experimenting with that. And some of the lagers that we produce, actually, we ferment at a much higher, more of like an ale temperature than the traditional lager yeast that we use is different than Casey Beard uses. And Casey Beard uses traditional methods. And so they're fermenting at like 55 degrees for like six weeks. We're using a different yeast that has a wider range. And we're fermenting at like 62 degrees. We start a little bit lower or higher. We have a little bit. We have a kind of specialized schedule that takes a lot more attention. But we're able to start at a certain temperature, drop it and raise it back up. And then we get a similar beer. Granted, it's a different flavor because yeast will produce different esters and phenols. But we're able to produce, you know, quality lager beers in much less time than they do over a case of beer.
Dylan Carnahan:Lager is typically the lower heat, whereas the ales typically higher. But you're finding now that that lager, you can add a little more heat to it than previously thought.
Chris Roberts:Yeah, you know, and there's a lot, you know, and that's the nice thing about kind of the boom in craft beer right now, is there's so many companies out there vying for market share, not just at the brewery level, but all the ancillary suppliers like the yeast guys, the hop guys, all that stuff. You know, the more research they do that we get access to, the better things kind of become.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that competition, you're going to benefit from that.
Chris Roberts:Yeah, the market's always going to adjust itself. And it's kind of one of those things, it's like, it's a great time to be alive kind of a mentality, because we're learning all these new things. Now, you say, like, ale yeast and lager yeast, but now they're actually coming out with different, there's all these different kind of groupings. Like now, it's so funny, every time it's like, it's kvick strains are from Norway. And every time I say it, it's like, kvick is so hot. But like from Zulander, but like we have a beer going right now, we're using this yeast strain called Salmonitis, which is actually from Lithuania. But traditionally, like, ales are fermented in the neighborhood of, say, 62 degrees to 72 degrees. So they kind of have a narrow band. And so kvick strains are traditional Norwegian farmhouse strains that were used and then only used like once or twice a year for, like, say, Christmas or, like, weddings or, like, funerals. And so you had these house strains that were like family. Like, they have these names and they're typically named after the farmer. And they have, like, their traditional way of doing it. Like, their filter bed was made out of, like, spruce branches and stuff.
Dylan Carnahan:So it's like grandma's recipe, like, what we had, our family had around.
Chris Roberts:And I'd even go so far as saying, like, the idea, like, the advent of, like, San Francisco sourdough bread. You know, like, you would put it out on a windowsill or, like, let the dough proof. And then just the flora fauna kind of a thing with it blowing into the window. There's some bacteria that lands on that bread and sours it just a little bit while you're waiting for it to proof. And then you bake it and it has, like, this nice, like, flavor to it. It's kind of that. It just happens to be what's there at the time. You know, and I'm sure probably some of it comes from, like, me making. I don't know how they ended up like this. My only thought is, you know, what you would do is you'd make this beer in the morning and then you would throw, like, 20 logs on the fire and then you'd go out and do your chores in the middle of, you know, minus 20 because you want your house to be here. It would ramp up and then cool off a little bit by the time you got home. Anyway, these beers would ferment at, like, 90 degrees, which for traditional brew yeast, like, if you fermented some at 90 degrees, it would taste like fingernail polish.
Dylan Carnahan:Really?
Chris Roberts:Yeah, because that's just one of the off products. Like, if you get yeast too hot, it'll start leaking out these off flavors, and that's one.
Dylan Carnahan:Really?
Chris Roberts:But with these yeasts, because they were forced to work at such high temperatures, then they, in essence, get, like, through Darwinism, like, accustomed to that climate.
Dylan Carnahan:And then you can use that to your advantage.
Chris Roberts:Absolutely. So we do, we have two beers right now that we make. One uses Simon AS., one uses Torre Garden. Simon AS., we ferment at, like, 90 degrees, and the Torre Garden, we actually ferment at, like, 103 degrees. And then they're just, like, beasts. Like, the Torre Garden beer ferments out in, I think, four days, and then the Simon AS depends on how big of a beer it was.
Dylan Carnahan:So we have these two different distinctions, right? We have the lagers and we have the ales. What are going to be some common styles that fit within each of those categories?
Chris Roberts:So, like, with lagers, you know, you have your, like, if you want to go, like, macro, then, like, American light lager, which essentially what those guys have done is figure out ways to cut their cost of goods by using, they use, you know, they use grain because you legally have to, but then they add some type of other simple sugars into them, whether it be corn syrup or rice-solid syrups or not even syrups. They may take them and actually use corn. And then you can use an amylase enzyme and you can go through, you can mash it separately and then combine those. It does change the flavor. And then ale yeast is essentially 90% of the market. So, well, I'd say 90% of the craft beer market because obviously the big guys make, I mean Anheuser-Busch probably spills more water out of their water fountains than craft beer produces in a year. But when you're looking at everything else, I mean you have, I guess technically like Sierra Nevada, or not Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams is no longer technically craft beer. And the majority of their stuff is lager based. But like Sierra Nevada is the largest brewery in America. Craft brewer in America. And I'd say 90% of their stuff is ale based. And so I'd probably say some of ours is, when we do some faux lagers, the grist that make up the recipe, and then just how we use the yeast. And so it just produces a beer that's really bright, really crisp like a lager without the esters. So like we have American Light Lager that we actually use an ale yeast in it. But we lager it, which that then makes it a lager. Lager also means to store cold. And so that's just, so we lager that beer, we let it sit cold for an extended period of time, and then all the yeast drops out of it, it's super bright, because it's super bright and really the lower body that makes it really crisp and drinkable. So essentially the same way that like some craft beers.
Dylan Carnahan:We talked a lot about personal preference, playing a big role in brewing. What is the process of say, I'm going to make a pale ale or whatever? What is the decision making process to say, I'm going to make this type of beer?
Chris Roberts:Well, some of it for us, because we kind of operate like in a pub type model. It's just like what we have on tap. And so we typically don't kind of get caught up of having like a bajillion things on tap. We try to have like nine or so. But there's like kind of for like our customers, like I want to make stuff to help bring customers. And so I have, you know, you'll have breweries out there that all they have on tap are IPAs. Or all they do is sour beers. And for us being a tap room model, that's where 99% of our revenue comes from. I don't want to just make IPAs. I'd love to just make IPAs, but I also need to bring in other customers. I can't just bring in the guys that drink 20% of the beer, then I'm losing 80% of the potential customers. In the same sense, I have to have something that... I've got a couple of beers that I personally that we make that I like, but I don't go and get a pull of them every day. Yeah. But then I have customers that if they're not, they're pissed. Your customer base is so wide, we want to make sure that everybody from the left side of that customer base to the right side of the customer base, there's something in there that they can drink, to the point that we actually now include... We sell wine and cider as well. And then we do a margarita now.
Dylan Carnahan:I could see where that would be advantageous to kind of have a little bit of everything.
Chris Roberts:And I mean, we're even looking at adding some other stuff. I mean, especially with the COVID thing right now, you have to be dynamic. And then you have to try to have something that brings... I mean, I don't want to call it a gimmick or being kitschy, but I have to, you know, I have X amount of seats. And we've had to pull out a lot of seats because of COVID. And so I need to make sure that before the whole idea, like with a quote unquote restaurant, was 75% of seats being pulled every night or you're going to be loaded with money. It's not so much 75% of seats every night. I got to hit a certain percentage throughout the week. And I know this day is going to be low, this day is going to be low. Okay. And how do I profit more on these days? And so what things do we focus on these days when people more have to come out? Like right now we're filming this and I'd rather be outside because it's fricking beautiful. But we've been really busy and yesterday we were really busy. And so those are the things that kind of we kind of gear up towards now. And then with with Cory on the food truck, that's been another kind of blessing like moving from just a straight food truck model where we have rotations or have a rotation to having a consistent menu all the time has been actually fantastic.
Dylan Carnahan:And you kind of briefly brought it up. You say, oh, it's so nice outside. What that kind of lends its hand to those seasonal beers, you know, that you you want to have on tap. It's summer. We might have the tropical pale ale, you know, things like.
Chris Roberts:Yeah. And so like and actually that tropical pale ale, I actually brew that the other day. So because we get such a good return. But I mean, we we released our our fall beer, which is an alt beer. So it's kind of similar to like an Oktoberfest. It's just an ale. OK. And so we released it yesterday to a pretty good response. I was here yesterday kegging another batch of beer and they literally blew through the first keg and I think a good three hours. So really, it had a really good response.
Dylan Carnahan:So in your opinion, what what makes a good beer?
Chris Roberts:And see, that's I like a preface it with my opinion, because that's like the craziest thing because it's I honestly think like I have an opinion about what makes a good beer. But my opinion only matters for my beers. OK, we drive to do the very best we possibly can. And I said before, like we don't change things unless something's not working or something's not right. And so we're always kind of like striving for the like idea. Like and I had this idea once for like a like a mission statement for the brew house. And it was like everything for a reason. And then I Googled it and found out that was another brewery's. Much more than we are. Their motto, I think it's for Alma Gang. But I mean, we try to do everything the best we can with what we have. You know, it's I remember it's like someone told me it's like it's like racing a car. Like you can put you can take some schmuck who can drive a car and put him in a race car and he can't do it in it. Yeah, you can take a race car driver and put him in a Honda Civic and then they can they can make it. No one else can. Yeah, it's kind of thing like I always strive to be the race car driver in the Honda, knowing that we're not a massive company with investors and millions of dollars of backing and stuff like that. And try to but still try to take what we have and make the absolute best product with it. And these are kind of some of my things like generalized, like clean beer, where it doesn't matter what it is when you drink it. There's a flavor where it kind of the flavor in my description kind of bounces to the back of your palate and back toward again. Okay, lingers for a bit and it's gone, you know, and so there's no residual flavor left in it. And I think that's really it. It's like a weird little thing like I can I love all beer, like as an art form. There's all that technical part about it where, you know, it's like I've had good beers that are sounding like theory, but in execution, they have not been so great. Like, and I'm not a huge sour beer, but I literally yesterday drank probably the one of the greatest beers I've ever had in my life. And that was from, you know, my friends at Sandhill. And it was just like the perfect amount of tartness. It was like the perfect amount of back sweetness from the fruit they put in it. It wasn't overly carbonated. It was just so good.
Dylan Carnahan:So that that tasting experience, is it mutually exclusive to it? It's applicable to any style of beer.
Chris Roberts:I absolutely think so. I do like I typically like lean towards IPAs just because I love the flavor of hops. I love that bitterness. And it's one of those things. It's like the more you get. And I think you get it with sour like sour beers, too. Like the more you drink a bitter beer, the more you kind of want it. It's kind of weird. But like I love a good hoppy beer. That's not like overly bitter where I can taste like all the nuance in it, like a little bit of them all. But mostly I want the hops and the hop flavor. And then it's dry hop properly where the dry hop aroma is always there. And that's one of the things like we change our process to see how we can keep as much of the hop aroma in a beer as possible without having to go and shoehorn, you know, but you can you can put a ton of dry hop in it, but it doesn't you don't necessarily come out with a better beer, in my opinion. Like there's a lot of things that can go sideways when you put too many hops in a beer. And it's kind of like a balance between too much and less is more.
Dylan Carnahan:OK, I did think it was interesting when I was just kind of looking in the beer in general. And I found out that, you know, hops are like a relative of like marijuana. And I kind of make sense, like the aromatic, like strong kind of flowery quality in both both things is like, oh, it's completely obvious. I can see the connection made there.
Chris Roberts:And then you can even find some hops that literally like old school, like Columbus hops smell like they use a descriptor. It's kind of I think dank is the best way. I've been in places where they've been chopping up or like part parsing out Columbus and it smells like straight weed. Really? And you get a couple. Yeah, there's a there's a new kind of like offshoot. They're called Neomexicanus, and these are actually wild hops they found growing in like the Four Corners region, like down around New Mexico, Arizona. And they've started cross breeding these with American hops, and they get they're like really earthy and dank and like like there's a new one like Frank Zappa kind of help push it. And so it's called Zappa and it's like sweet weed. It's like it's like modern day weed, like Pineapple Express kind of a really you're like officer.
Dylan Carnahan:I'm just a local brewer with some hops in my trunk.
Chris Roberts:Yes. No, I don't drive around with any of that stuff because anymore. But ours is it's not I mean, you look at it. It's obviously not the same, right? It's the way you package it, the way you dry it up stuff, especially in the pellets. It's like no one's like that is not hash cheese.
Dylan Carnahan:That is I got you. Let's see what else I can conjure up for you here. So obviously, like, you know, the brewing process in its entirety is important. But and you, you know, you mentioned like you have certain types of styles of beers that you like. What do you think is like one of the more important ingredients to you?
Chris Roberts:To me, I'm kind of like twofold. Like I like the expressiveness of some yeast. Like the house yeast we have now for all our ales is or for our American style layers produces a lot of like citrus notes, like a lot of grapefruit in like orange pith. And then I also like the new type of hops that are coming out. Like so like probably one of my favorite right now is this one called Grungeist, which is it's like German for like green ghost. And it's a proprietary hop that's grown for our main hop supplier. And it's one of the main things we look at. It's called Alpha Acids and that kind of helps calculate our bitterness. Traditionally, like American hops, especially American Aromahops, have been like in a mid-range. So like between like 10 and like 17 Alpha. And this one is like two and a half to like three and a half Alpha. But it's beautiful. It's like super like normally that oil content is what we look for as far as the Alpha content is what we look at to kind of gauge like how expressive it's going to be. But this one's super low, almost like a German Nobelhop, like old school hops. But then has this fantastic like it blends. It does well on its own, but I think it's better blended with other stuff. Like we use a beer. We do a beer with it and fuel melon. And it has like lemon, lime and green like cantaloupe to it. I freaking love it. But yeah, I'm searching for always looking for like new cool hops to use, especially like in the dry hop. We use one called Styrian Wolf that has like strawberry and rhubarb and like a little bit like earthy undertones and like some herbal characters. But it blends well with some of our American stuff. And I have this one right now that I'm getting ready to use in a beer called Lotus. And it's off the top of my head. Give me two seconds. I can kind of pull it up and tell you.
Dylan Carnahan:I have to say briefly that the green ghost or whatever green ghost strain of hop is sounds like marijuana. There's no way.
Chris Roberts:But hold on. Let me find the Lotus one is supposed to be really freaking nice. And I just kind of scored some like the last minute. You guys like, hey, I got some of this. You want it? I'm like, yeah. So it's got aroma specific is orange, vanilla, berry, tropical fruits. And then it's funny. It's like when they have like genetic origin and it's 50 percent Eastern gold, like 25 percent Apollo, Cascade and USDA like 90. So basically, it's half. It's basically made up of all these other hops that are like three dollars a pound if I were to buy it.
Dylan Carnahan:Really?
Chris Roberts:Yeah. And then they kind of blend them together and they make this fantastic, like beautifully smelling hop and this like nice. I mean, it's like that. It's like 13 to 17. And then like they give us like all the other like little little percentage of total and stuff like that.
Dylan Carnahan:in your mouth.
Chris Roberts:Yeah, yeah. Mostly in your nose. Because I mean, I'm like that one, it's like I always, we always see these people that are like, oh, this is the best beer I've ever had. And like, I'll get it. And I'm like, there's no hopper on.
Dylan Carnahan:And that plays a part.
Chris Roberts:I think that's the biggest part. Like, flavor obviously is a huge factor because you know, it doesn't matter what it smells like, it tastes like shit, you don't want to drink it. What did you say? Soap?
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah.
Chris Roberts:Yeah, I actually hate that. Like, and then the new thing, like with some of these new people in the IPA is you get guys that are making like, well, what are we going to do? Like, I'm just going to dump as much hops in this thing as I can. And the next thing you know, it literally tastes like soap or aspirin. And I'm like, eh, good.
Dylan Carnahan:It smells so good. I could use it as a Yankee candle or something.
Chris Roberts:Yeah, yeah. Dehydrate the thing down, you know, throw some whatever glycerol and glycerin in there. And next thing you know, you got a nice bar of soap.
Dylan Carnahan:So do you have any advice out there for home brewers that are kind of wanting to own their own place in the future or just getting into the nitty gritty of brewing beer?
Chris Roberts:Some people think that you're just going to start brewing beer and then it's, you know, it does essentially sell itself as long as you're doing, making sure you're using quality ingredients, using quality equipment and doing things right. You know, like you can't cut corners, but then you also, you're going to have to have some type of a partnership with somebody as far as whether it's like for us, you know, it's someone else to kind of help carry the water. It's like such a weird thing. Like we had anticipated that it would just be me doing almost everything and then Misty helping out. And then once we got going and we ended up doing way more than we ever anticipated, basically Misty had to come on and is essentially a full-time plus employee. I mean, she works just as many, if not more hours than I do. And honestly, if it wasn't for her, I mean, we would have probably had gone up belly up years ago.
Dylan Carnahan:Like it is quite the investment.
Chris Roberts:Yeah, and it's not just like a money thing. Like if you're smart about it, you can do it on a tight budget. We've gotten really lucky and like we're not stretched too far, but like some of that's just being smart and knowing where to look and knowing how to, like I said for me, like if I can't make it, very least I can fix it.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, that's where the experience comes in. I mean, you're talking about the equipment, you're altering that, saving some money there. I mean, you're looking at the ingredients, you kind of know, hey, this one has qualities of this, more expensive ingredient, but we can make that work in our favor.
Chris Roberts:Absolutely. And I think that's one of the things like we talked about with ingredients. I like yeast, like I can make hops pop a little bit more with the yeast I use, little stuff like that. But I mean, there is so many moving parts and it's one of those things. It's like the Brewers Association a couple of years ago put out a manual and they updated here lately, but in the old one, there was like that triangle. Like this is how business works. You can do things quickly, you can do things right, or you can do things cheap. And it's like a three-legged stool, but you only do two of those things at the same time. You can't do all three. And so you can do it right, which is what everyone wants. And so that one, you always have that leg. So then what it becomes is you can either do it quickly or you can do it cheaply. And so if you do it cheap, it's gonna take you longer. And so it's like a balancing game. It's like my time is, if I do it, I don't have to pay somebody else, but it's detracting from other priorities that I have around the brewery. So if something happens where, like a couple of my friends who have owned breweries, like some of them do it the way we've done it, some of them do it with a partnership, like a form of a partnership. I think that's definitely something that everyone should look at, is at least bringing someone into the fold that has, if you're the brewer as an owner, someone who has like the business aspect of it, or just at least, even if it's not like a business aspect, where there's something where you guys can figure that stuff out together, if there's another kind of leg out there that they can take, even if it just takes stuff off your plate, as far as dealing with the federal government, or your logging, or even if it's helping you in the back cleaning stuff, anything that you can do, where even if it's like kind of like a sweat equity type thing, look at forming like some type of a, I wouldn't say cooperative, but like a partnership, and then it's kind of spreads everything else out. There's always people that you kind of know that it makes you, it does help you out quite a bit, as far as like quality of life. Because I mean, like Misty and I, we've got three young kids and it does, there are days where it does get strenuous because we're doing stuff here. And then she's working up front and in her office work. And then we've got a hundred things because they've got stuff going on. So it does make things a little bit more difficult.
Dylan Carnahan:Yeah, you got a lot of moving parts. So just to have that person there to kind of accompany and alleviate some of that stress. Unfortunately, that concludes the interview with Chris Roberts. We learned a lot, we laughed, we launtered, we vorloffed, we splarged, we did it all. The process, the difference between ales and lagers, the main ingredients in beer, what different types of breweries there are, the different styles of beer, and the journey it takes to ultimately become an owner and brewmaster of a brewery. So go ahead and check out Red Crow Brewing Company on Facebook or you can go to their website, redcrowbrew.com and show your support for Misty and Chris and their endeavor to make craft beer. I've had several really good questions submitted and I'm still currently looking for someone in the area that can adequately answer those. With that said for next episode, is about a topic that I haven't put much thought into until recently due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. Somewhat polarizing and there's certainly a lot of different opinions about it and misinformation, but I hope that this coming episode provides a level of clarity that you wouldn't get otherwise. If you go to simplequestionspodcast.com, accompanied with each episode, there is a short summary as well as timestamps for key things talked about in the video, as well as I have also put links to some of the sources and things mentioned in each episode. And while you're there, you might as well just scroll down and submit a question that you have, or if you're a local artist and are looking to be in the intro, shoot me a DM or email. Thank you for listening and like always keep asking for it.