EPISODE S.7, E.7 East vs. West – The IPA Divide.

Brittany Drennan (00:09)
Welcome back to another episode of the Brew Deck Podcast. I am your host, Brittany, and we are joined by our co-host, Matt Sprinkle. How are you? I’m good. We have a full episode, so we are gonna get straight to it. do you want to talk about who’s joining us today?

Matt Sprinkle (00:17)
Hey, I’m good, Brett. How are you doing?

Oui,

⁓ today we are speaking with two icons in the world of IPAs. And we will discuss the differences between the two West Coast and East Coast. ⁓ from the West Coast, we’ve got Winslow Sawyer from Pure Project out of San Diego. He’s the founder and brewer of Pure Project. And from the East Coast, we’ve got Geo Wenzel of Industrial Arts Brewing. He’s the director of brewing there, and they’re out of Beacon, New York.

Brittany Drennan (00:57)
Let’s meet and get straight to it.

Brittany Drennan (00:59)
welcome to the BrewDuck podcast. we have two, I know I promised I wouldn’t say this, but I’m just gonna say it, legendary IPA makers ⁓ on the pod today. today we’re gonna be kind of talking about East Coast work versus West Coast IPA styles. and

Geoff Wenzel (01:06)
Mm-hmm.

Brittany Drennan (01:15)
We have from the West Coast Winslow Sawyer from the Iconic Pure Project Brewery, founder brewer in San Diego. Hi. Thank you for being here. And is it do you want us to go by JAF or GO?

Winslow Sawyer (01:24)
Thanks for having me.

Geoff Wenzel (01:29)
whatever’s more comfortable for you. My friends call me Gio and I we’re friends now, I think. Yeah.

Brittany Drennan (01:32)
You Geo works for me. Perfect. and

Matt Sprinkle (01:35)
DO.

Winslow Sawyer (01:36)
G O.

Brittany Drennan (01:37)
from the East Coast, we have Geo ⁓ from Industrial Arts Brewing, director of brewing in is Beacon, New York. Is that right? Okay, which is t maybe for the listeners, give us a little bit of New York geography.

Geoff Wenzel (01:44)
Yeah, speak in New York. Yep.

So everyone knows where New York City is, I’m assuming. That big giant concrete jungle. They’re about an hour south of us, right on the Hudson River. So yeah, if you head up the Hudson from from New York City, we’re about mm sixty miles up.

Brittany Drennan (02:01)
Yeah.

Matt Sprinkle (02:02)
cool.

Brittany Drennan (02:07)
That’s nice. And then are you kind of close to like where all those waterfalls are and stuff? It’s like really beautiful in central New York.

Geoff Wenzel (02:13)
⁓

there’s waterfalls all over the state. we do have some big ones here, but you might be thinking of like the Finger Lakes region or ⁓ western New York. there’s a lot of like gorges and waterfalls there. but we’re really close. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. right. a lot of fresh water here. ⁓ but yeah. we’re pretty close to the

Brittany Drennan (02:21)
Okay. Yeah.

Winslow Sawyer (02:26)
Man, it must be nice to have water. We just have the salty stuff.

Brittany Drennan (02:26)
Please.

That’s cool.

Geoff Wenzel (02:37)
Catskill Mountains and the Hudson Highlands and the Hudson River, so pretty

Brittany Drennan (02:41)
You both

kind of live in locations where you get the best of both worlds, I feel like, where you have the ocean and the mountains in California and you also have the big city and the beautiful nature regions where you’re at New York. So that’s pretty damn cool.

Geoff Wenzel (02:57)
It’s not bad.

Brittany Drennan (02:57)
I live in Houston, so

Matt Sprinkle (02:57)
Yeah, Winslow, I actually just ate lunch at

a customer, and the bartender there came from Pure Project. His name’s Chris. Yeah. cool, yeah. Yeah, he’s in Charlotte now. Yeah.

Winslow Sawyer (03:04)
okay. ⁓ awesome. Yeah. He was just out here. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. I’m

I heard he’s killing it, so I’m really proud of him.

Matt Sprinkle (03:14)
Yeah, yeah.

Brittany Drennan (03:14)
That is so random. I love it. And that’s how small our industry is. Okay, perfect.

Matt Sprinkle (03:20)
Yeah. If and ask enough

Geoff Wenzel (03:20)
Yeah.

Matt Sprinkle (03:21)
questions, it’s pretty small.

Brittany Drennan (03:23)
all right, guys. Do you want to maybe introduce yourselves? tell us, you know, where where you work at, tell us a little bit about each brewery and what you think ⁓ the listeners would love to hear.

Winslow Sawyer (03:33)
Doctor Gio, you’re first.

Geoff Wenzel (03:34)
Doctor G I did go to college long enough to have

Brittany Drennan (03:35)
Ha ha

Matt Sprinkle (03:35)
Yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (03:37)
a doctorate, but I do not.

Brittany Drennan (03:38)
I’m sick.

Geoff Wenzel (03:39)
my name’s Jeff Wenzel, or Geo as a lot of folks call me. the director of brewing at Industrial Arts Brewing Company. I’ve been brewing for twenty three years now, at various breweries. we’re in Beacon, New York.

Yeah, that’s the good stuff. That’s the the the general.

Brittany Drennan (03:55)
How long has that brewery been around?

Geoff Wenzel (03:57)
Industrial Arts opened in two thousand and sixteen. ⁓ our first look co yeah, this is our ten year anniversary, actually. Our first location was down in Garnerville, which is a little further south from here. It was like in an old mill factory. They actually dyed like all the uniforms for the Union for the Civil War there. yeah, but it was haunted as hell too.

Brittany Drennan (04:03)
Okay.

Winslow Sawyer (04:04)
ten years.

Brittany Drennan (04:18)
What?

Winslow Sawyer (04:19)
Wow.

Geoff Wenzel (04:22)
But anyway, ⁓ it wasn’t super conducive to large scale production. So we kind of maxed out that space within the first like three or four years and found a location a little further north in Beacon, New York.

Brittany Drennan (04:36)
That is a wild fact.

Winslow Sawyer (04:38)
We have a similar story, just no Civil War background.

Geoff Wenzel (04:39)
Yeah, it’s a cool spot.

Brittany Drennan (04:42)
Well, yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (04:42)
Yeah.

Matt Sprinkle (04:43)
Yeah.

Winslow Sawyer (04:43)
⁓ I work at Pure Project Brewing. I’m one of the co-founders. We opened also in 2016. ⁓ after three or four years, we maxed out our first space and we ⁓ moved a little north to a brewery. ⁓ we bought another brewery.

called Iron Fist that’s now defunct and we that made that into a production facility. our ethos is beer for good good. so we’re about sustainability. We’re 1% for the planet company. We give 1% of our sales back to nonprofits and environmental initiatives. my background I’ve been brewing almost 20 years. ⁓ before Pure Project, I was at Boulder Creek Brewery, which unfortunately caught on fire and burned down.

⁓ it was up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was a really cool old brew pub. it was the 13th brewery in California. So it was it was open in the the early 80s, so a lot of history in the building. Lots of different head brewers had been through there, but sadly burned down. And that’s why I came to San Diego, met my business partners, and we opened the brewery in 2016.

we’re still self-distro, it’s still small. We’re making around ten thousand barrels, but we have a big focus on IPAs, but also seasonal ingredients, working directly with farmers and ⁓ integrating agriculture and sustainability into our products.

Matt Sprinkle (05:53)
Awesome. Cool. Well what ch what got you guys into brewing?

Brittany Drennan (05:54)
Love that.

Winslow Sawyer (05:58)
I couldn’t buy alcohol. So ⁓ when I was eighteen I started ⁓ brewing in my college dorm. and from there I did my senior thesis on the sustainability of the brewing industry. So ⁓ kind of wrapped it all together and went straight. As soon as I turned twenty one, became a brewer.

Geoff Wenzel (06:00)
Yeah.

Huh, I’m actually pretty similar. I legally couldn’t buy alcohol either. and in my senior year of high school a classmate’s cousin was opening a brewery in my hometown and needed some cheap labor. So that was me. And yeah, just kinda started out delivering beer and then I think a year in I was brewing.

Winslow Sawyer (06:16)
Yeah.

Brittany Drennan (06:27)
Yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (06:34)
pretty naively in hindsight. but yeah. Mm that was in two thousand three. So I mean, what eighteen year old kid doesn’t love beer?

Brittany Drennan (06:43)
do you remember your let’s go East Coast first. Do you remember your first East Coast IPA?

Geoff Wenzel (06:49)
The first one I drank. Ooh, it was probably I don’t I’m guessing actually, but it was probably Brooklyn East India Pale Ale. that was one of the few available back then. That was definitely twenty one. but yeah, I’d guess that’s the first. Either that or it was Hurricane or no, East Coast IPA. I’m sorry.

Brittany Drennan (06:50)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, fair.

Geoff Wenzel (07:13)
That’s kind of technically a West Coast IP hit. That was gonna be my next my first east coast or hazy IPA was Hetty Topper. it was probably a little more available out here. that was definitely it. I actually kind of remember it. It was a first date. And I showed up and she had Hetty Topper. I was like, that’s pretty cool. Yeah.

Winslow Sawyer (07:16)
Ha ha ha ha.

Brittany Drennan (07:16)
Well, that was so nice.

Sure.

Winslow Sawyer (07:33)
Was a good date.

Brittany Drennan (07:35)
Amazing.

Winslow Sawyer (07:35)
Yeah, I I think East Coast IPA meant something very different when we started brewing. Yeah. Yeah. my first one, I think it was Julius. So my ⁓ assistant brewer hired him the first year. He’s now our director of brewing operations, been with us 10 years. Jensen Atwood. He was a beer trader. ⁓ and he brought in some Julius and we’re like, huh, I think we should try and make something like this. We can’t.

Matt Sprinkle (07:36)
Sounds like a win.

Geoff Wenzel (07:39)
Yeah. Yeah. I was like, Yeah, was it made on the East Coast? Then yeah, of course

Brittany Drennan (07:40)
Fair, fair.

Winslow Sawyer (08:00)
There’s no one making anything like this out here. so it was definitely inspirational beer. And then Hetty Topper was the other one, kind of making circles. But I don’t know, kind of looking back at you know, the new the kind of new New England style, Hedy Topper doesn’t quite like fit into that realm anymore. It’s almost more West Coast now.

Geoff Wenzel (08:14)
No. Yeah.

Brittany Drennan (08:14)
Interesting.

Yeah, yeah. Well

Matt Sprinkle (08:17)
For sure, yeah.

Yeah. Some also some beers have to crawl so others can walk and run. So yeah. Yeah. We had Hetty Topper pouring in our booth at C B C this year. So it was a big hit. Yeah. Yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (08:24)
Shit.

Winslow Sawyer (08:27)
that’s awesome.

Matt Sprinkle (08:29)
⁓ well, okay, so in your opinion, and we can we can start with you, Gio, in your opinion, what makes an East Coast IPA? And then the follow up for Winslow is what makes a w good West Coast IPA?

Geoff Wenzel (08:40)
⁓ what makes a good one or what makes one? ⁓ to me it’s like kinda you know, it starts with a malt bill. obviously like a nice soft mouth feel. So, you know, a lot of oats or unmalted barley or unmalted wheat, a lot of wheat. I typically approach it like a wheat beer, really, to start.

Matt Sprinkle (08:42)
Or it just makes one in general.

Geoff Wenzel (09:01)
And that kind of soft mouthfeel accompanied by modern hops, I think, is kind of what makes it. Although I’ve been known to throw plenty of sea hops in my my hazies. but yeah, I think the backbone of that style is a is a soft mouthfeel mouthfeel, low bitterness, and extremely fruity. I find a lot of people also kind of lean on a high finishing gravity.

⁓ that’s tet that’s not usually our approach. but I’d say I’d probably say that’s the sign of the style. but I wouldn’t call it a linchpin, if you will. ⁓ yeah, I think it’s a lot about mouthfeel and and high profile and low bitterness.

Matt Sprinkle (09:38)
Bitterness. Yeah. Yeah. So are you bringing the bitterness even lower since you’re finishing at a lower gravity?

Geoff Wenzel (09:44)
well I mean not really actually. Our our hazy finishes at about sixty IBUs. We have a bit of a different approach than all than a lot of folks actually to to Hazy IPA. we’re relatively dry for the style, like two and a half Play Doh for our our for wrench, which is our our core Hazy IPA, or really our

our core beer. Or what are they what do they used to say? Flagship. That’s it. Our flagship beer. Remember

yeah, we finished around 2-5 Play-Doh, so it’s relatively dry. I always like to say we like take the hazy style and interpret it with kind of like a West Coast mentality. just because we were founded with some

⁓ pretty old school brewers. Jeff, the owner, has been brewing. I mean, he got a start at Drake’s and like worked in the Gordon Beers factory out west for years in ninety. I think he started in like ninety five. So kind of that beer making style is just kind of part of our our roots really and our just the way we we go about brewing.

So yeah, I don’t know if that answers your question, but ⁓ yeah.

Matt Sprinkle (10:53)
Yeah, abundantly.

Yeah. How about you, Wenslo?

Winslow Sawyer (10:56)
Yeah, so the other side, West Coast IPA definitely ⁓ distinguished by boiling the hops more rather than putting them all in the dry hop. dry, you know, finishing between one and two Play-Doh. Some of the more newer school West Coast, they’re more saturated or tending to finish a little bit higher. So you can put more hop load into them, somewhere around like three Play-Doh. but the ones that we like to brew are a bit drier.

Lean, definitely kind of inspired by our delving into you know craft lager. I think a lot of the the style started with you know two-row base beers, maybe a little bit of crystal malt in there, something like that, but over time they become leaner and leaner. so you know, we’re using Pilsner base malt for all of our beers now. maybe we’ll put it in a little bit of like oats or malted white wheat for body.

but I think that the traditional base would be two row with a little bit of carapils. That’s what you’re gonna see most of West Coast recipes being IBUs in the 60 to 100 range, depending on you know, ⁓ final gravity. And then a distinguishing feature is our water here in San Diego. We have one of the largest gypsum mines in the world here. so high sulfate. So our municipal water is around 150.

⁓ PPM and people take that up even higher. ⁓ I would say ours are probably somewhere around the 200 range, looking for that two to one chloride to sulfate to chloride ratio to get some of that ⁓ just crispy, dry, bitter hop character instead of like a lim lingering hop bitterness. definitely leaning into more old school hops, right? we didn’t have Citra and Mosaic around when these

Beers were getting designed. I mean, Simcoe was as fancy as you got. so you know, definitely we’ve even seen now we’re starting to integrate more like stuff like Centennial and Cascade into these styles, especially as we found the right grower partners who can give us the profiles that we’re looking for for more citrus forward, less pine hay. definitely getting more of those characters. There’s definitely a place in kind of new school.

West Coast IPA, where you know integrating New Zealand hops into them to get fruity, more fruity profiles. so we definitely like to alternate, but our kind of core West Coast IPA, pure West, it’s you know, strata, citra, centennial, a little hint of Nelson. so definitely relying on those more citrus, pine, and low background fruit instead of kind of the the tropical.

banquet of hazy IPA, which I also feel is more of a yeast reliant style. A lot of esters coming from whatever yeast you’re choosing, whereas West Coast IPA, you’re using a neutral ale strain. And a lot of people are actually starting to use lager yeast now for West Coast IPA. Yeah. A lot of people are using 3470

Geoff Wenzel (13:36)
Yeah, we moved to we move

Brittany Drennan (13:37)
Interesting.

Geoff Wenzel (13:40)
we moved to thirty four seventy for our west coast like two years ago actually.

Matt Sprinkle (13:44)
yeah, what what sort of fermentation schedule are you guys doing with the thirty four seventy with your IPAs?

Geoff Wenzel (13:48)
IPAs. we go in relatively warm for IPAs, like fourteen s sorry, in advanced almin metric. Break out your conversions. ⁓ it’s this

Matt Sprinkle (13:56)
Yeah.

Winslow Sawyer (13:57)
no. ⁓ I saw a little translate thing, AI translate

Brittany Drennan (13:57)
Yeah.

Winslow Sawyer (14:00)
thing that was on here that we could turn on.

Geoff Wenzel (14:02)
It’s the sub it’s the superior method

of measurement. I’ll stand by that. we’re at about 15, 14, 15 C knockout and firm. Then we do a little ⁓ a little temp bump for diacetal rest. There he goes. for so a bit like at the warmer range for 3470, but it still ferments out pretty clean.

Winslow Sawyer (14:15)
Fifty seven degrees Fahrenheit.

Brittany Drennan (14:17)
Nice.

Geoff Wenzel (14:24)
we did a lot of trials between that and Chico.

honestly wasn’t a ton of difference. ⁓ Chico is definitely a bit more estery, but not by much. to be honest, my recollection. The mouthfeel from using lager yeast was a bit improved. And don’t really I don’t want to say crisper, actually like kind of smoother and less sharp.

Winslow Sawyer (14:41)
Like crisper.

Geoff Wenzel (14:47)
⁓

And that was just kind of noticeable to me personally, in panel. But I think a lot of people couldn’t even really tell the difference. I mean the hop loads pr pretty high. We’re at about two and a half, three pounds per barrel on our west coasts. So but yeah, it it made sense not only from a flavor standpoint, but also from a process standpoint, ⁓ having harvestable yeast.

around all the time. I mean we’re using thirty four seventy for four six or seven beers now. So it made everything a bit more streamlined.

Winslow Sawyer (15:18)
Yeah, definitely when you’re on production scale, you gotta streamline how many yeast strains you’re trying to manage. You can’t have that one beer that you brew like every other month that uses the the one yeast strain. You gotta buy it every single time.

Geoff Wenzel (15:23)
Yeah.

Matt Sprinkle (15:24)
Sure.

Geoff Wenzel (15:29)
Yeah,

Matt Sprinkle (15:31)
It becomes pretty expensive. Yeah.

Brittany Drennan (15:31)
Yeah, yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (15:31)
it’s not great for the cost of goods.

Matt Sprinkle (15:34)
Yeah.

Winslow Sawyer (15:34)
Yeah.

Matt Sprinkle (15:35)
Cool. ⁓

Winslow Sawyer (15:35)
We’re doing the similar

Geoff Wenzel (15:35)
But when

Winslow Sawyer (15:36)
thing with thirty four seventy, yeah. Knocking out round fifty seven, fifty eight, letting it free rise up into well, maintaining that for like the first day and then letting it free rise up into the mid sixties for dry.

Geoff Wenzel (15:47)
I’m actually thinking about I’m just teetering around with dropping the temp slightly, which I did for knockout. we don’t oxygenate, we aerate. so we it’s been tough to get enough O2 into the work just using aeration to build up a nice amount of biomass to continuously harvest. so just dropping that.

knock out temp a little bit and let free rise so I can get more O two into the wort just before fermentation grow up our pitches a bit a bit more.

This was supposed to be about hops. It all goes back to lager.

Winslow Sawyer (16:18)
Why are we talking

Brittany Drennan (16:20)
so funny. ⁓

Every brewer and breweries a little bit different. I feel like ⁓ you know, some people come on in our I think I send this to you guys in an email, but our our audience loves to hear the technical and some brewers are very tight-lipped about their processes and what they do. and then some are like, Why aren’t you asking us more technical questions? We want to really get into the nitty-gritty. So honestly, it’s all about you guys and what you do and like what makes your beer

Matt Sprinkle (16:49)
know, and cold IPAs have sort of been a trend over the last year or two. But I mean, maybe Britney can confirm, but you know, as we travel around, we’ll inevitably see a city that a beer trend is really popular and it’s taken off, and then we’ll go to the next city and nobody knows what it is. So, you know, hearing that

people are making West Coast IPAs or lager yeast may be a little foreign to some of our listeners. So, mean, this is great information.

Brittany Drennan (17:14)
Yeah, that’s very cool.

Winslow Sawyer (17:15)
Yeah, some

some breweries locally here have just completely shifted over, didn’t tell anyone. Their customers can’t tell. Yeah. But they like the but they personally like the product better, right? I think that it always comes back to that.

Matt Sprinkle (17:21)
Sure. Yeah. It’s kind of the

Brittany Drennan (17:22)
So while

Matt Sprinkle (17:26)
Yeah, it’s it’s kind of

it’s kind of the backwards approach of ⁓ you hear every now and then some people winning lager categories with USO five, fermented cold. it’s kind of kind of the backwards of that.

Winslow Sawyer (17:38)
Mm-hmm.

Brittany Drennan (17:39)
what would you say is one misconception about your styles of beers, your characteristic styles, per se?

Winslow Sawyer (17:49)
Think a West Coast IPA having to be bitter. there’s definitely some more new school style West Coast IPAs that are being produced that are more balanced bitterness. They’re definitely not on like the juicy side, but they’re more balanced as if you were, you know, pil pil Pilsner realm of bitterness, and definitely focusing more on the fruitier side. So imagine a you know, juicy IPA that you’ve

made drier and clear.

Brittany Drennan (18:16)
Yeah, it’s funny that you say that ’cause a a popular style, at least here in Texas, is the West Coast pills. I think just kind of like playing on people’s that misconception in people’s heads is i interesting.

Geoff Wenzel (18:28)
Yeah, our analytically our hazy IPA has higher IBUs than our West Coast style.

Brittany Drennan (18:33)
Interesting. Okay. And what what’s the misconception for you, Joe?

Geoff Wenzel (18:37)
I think I mean similar to that point, right? I mean it’s like bitterness is relative to the sweetness of them all, right? I mean you can get into the analytics of it, but it doesn’t really matter too much as long as it to me it it matters more what it tastes like and how it feels in your mouth, ⁓ and whether or not your customers like it. So I mean that just kind of

common misconception that Hazy IPA has no bitterness or there’s no bittering hops. I mean, to be honest, I think IBU is kind of an antiquated way to look at bitterness. But ⁓ that and also like high f as I mentioned before, like high finishing gravity in in Hazy, I don’t think is necessary to get s like a s a smooth mouth feel and

decent body in the beer. our approach is more about balance than ⁓ like blowing one de blowing one end of the spectrum out.

Because it’s you know I think people are more likely to drink more balanced beer than they are to drink, you know, ninety IBU. You guys remember the bitter I don’t know maybe I’m aging myself, but the bitterness wars, the IBU wars, there’s ninety IBUs. It’s like it my palate has never recovered. but honestly

Winslow Sawyer (19:40)
I be yours.

Matt Sprinkle (19:43)
IDV worse is a twenty ten.

Brittany Drennan (19:45)
Yeah.

The dogfish head hundred and twenty

Winslow Sawyer (19:46)
I was there five thousand years ago.

Matt Sprinkle (19:52)
Pallet Wrecker.

Geoff Wenzel (19:53)
Like I’m noticing my palate shift even to to less bitter things. but just because it’s high IBUs doesn’t mean the per se bitterness is high if you have enough sweetness and body to back it up.

Winslow Sawyer (20:05)
Yeah, I think on that note too, right? Like we’re a more tasting room focused brewery, right? So we want people to come in and drink a full pint of our hazy IPA. we’re not trying to make something that’s gonna show really well at a can chair, right? Where people are drinking like one ounce pores. so we want we want that experience of of drinkable beer, not something that’s just like amazing beer, but I can only drink this much because it’s so intense in flavor.

Matt Sprinkle (20:30)
Yeah. And drinkability will get them to buy that second or third pint as

here’s an interesting one. Are are there any IPA trends that you guys are tired

Brittany Drennan (20:39)
IPA I mean IPA specific would be good, but if you you just wanna go beer general, that works too.

Winslow Sawyer (20:45)
a very experimental try everything style. So it’s a little tough because I I don’t think anything’s sacred in beer. ⁓ I’m definitely like a big history buff and I like looking at the old like, you know, brewing records from England and brewing a historical beer that only I’m gonna drink because someone else wants it. but I think everything should be tried and some things are really good. And I think, you know, when Hazy IPA was coming out and

A lot of the West Coast IPA brewers were like, that’s not IPA, that’s wrong. Why does it look like Trube? I was like, Hey, people like it and it tastes good. So like that’s all that matters. Like no one cares there are no rules. Like,

Geoff Wenzel (21:18)
Yeah.

Matt Sprinkle (21:22)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brittany Drennan (21:27)
what would you say is the trickiest part of brewing each of these styles?

Or is it not tricky at all and you’re just like so good at it?

Geoff Wenzel (21:34)
⁓

Winslow Sawyer (21:34)
I think hops

Geoff Wenzel (21:34)
I mean

Winslow Sawyer (21:35)
are the most important part of these, right? So getting good hops, you can’t just expect to go on Lupulin Exchange and buy some citra and make an amazing whether West Coast or East Coast IPA. You need to be able to have your hands on the raw ingredients. And even, you know, when we get a new crop year in, we’ve got to brew with them a couple of times to figure out how they’re going to integrate into, you know.

Brittany Drennan (21:37)
Yeah, yeah.

Winslow Sawyer (21:58)
Making sure core beers taste the same over the course of the year and the transition into the new crop year. we’re, you know, dry hopping of these beers really heavily, you know, three to five to six pounds per barrel sometimes. And when you know, eighty, ninety percent of your flavor is coming from the hops, that’s the most important ingredient. ⁓ obviously you can’t have any fermentation fermentation issues, any of that stuff, but just besides, like you could make an amazing

Brittany Drennan (22:04)
Yeah.

Winslow Sawyer (22:23)
Beer up until dry hop. And if you don’t have really well selected or sourced hops, you can just completely ruin the product.

Matt Sprinkle (22:30)
Yeah. Are you dry hopping your west coasts at that level? But three to four six times. Really? Wow.

Winslow Sawyer (22:33)
Yeah, we are. Mm-hmm.

Oui.

Matt Sprinkle (22:36)
I a customer from your beer.

Geoff Wenzel (22:36)
⁓ yeah, I

mean East Coast, I where do I start? it can be easy, like but everything’s as hard as everything you wanna everything’s as hard as you wanna make it, right? So we’re fortunate enough to have built our brewery to brew hazy IPA. so we have a nice wide laudon, we have a wet mill. but yeah, like starting with the lauder, ⁓

Winslow Sawyer (22:39)
No.

Don’t stick to match, first one.

Brittany Drennan (22:47)
Yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (22:59)
Very easy to get some of those things stuck. ⁓ a lot of protenaceous fermentables in there. I mean, like I said, it’s wheat beer, so we’re like upwards around 40, 30, 40, 50 percent wheat and oats. So I mean that’s that tech like from a brewer’s perspective, that can be difficult. ⁓ and then, you know, to Winslow’s point, yeah, rye or spelt.

Winslow Sawyer (23:17)
Hey, as long as it’s not rye, you’re you’ll okay.

Geoff Wenzel (23:22)
⁓ to Winsla’s point, like ⁓ selecting hops. You know, we spend a lot of money going out to Yakima every year to select hops. that’s just a huge huge part of our brand is hopy expressive beers. So that’s obviously very important. Fermentation. We don’t we don’t personally use London three, but I know we have in the past and there’s

Winslow Sawyer (23:22)
Yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (23:46)
A lot of people have issues harvesting it. So, you know, at production scale, reusing yeast, not to mention the want and flavor impact of some mid firm dry hopping is pretty crucial to to our aroma profile. and then and finally ⁓ like clarification.

or in this case, centrification, and making sure that there’s no residual yeast, which I don’t know, I’m sure you guys have had hot burn in your mouth before. It’s fairly

Brittany Drennan (24:15)
Ha ha ha.

Geoff Wenzel (24:17)
but yes, even with centrification sometimes we’ve seen some amount of hot material get through towards the end of the cone. ⁓

So making sure we’re on top of our cone dumps and we have nice good stable haze that’s not totally dependent on ⁓ n on flocked yeast. It’s more dependent on protein and protein from the wheat and oats, and also like the kind of like polyphenol structures that

that form around that from the large hop additions to kind of provide that smooth mouthfeel.

Winslow Sawyer (24:51)
Do you mind me asking what ho what yeast you guys are using for your

Geoff Wenzel (24:54)
we use SO four for our hazy, so they’re all pitch and ditch. ⁓ because we dry hop. Pretty early on, some beers around eight Play-Doh, some beers around six, some around five. so we’re we’re like at Kroisen for some of those dry hops. it’s fun stuff. We have yet to see the green dragon. we have a pretty good process lined up.

Winslow Sawyer (24:56)
Okay.

D’accord.

Sketchy sketchy.

Geoff Wenzel (25:18)
⁓ if I don’t know if you guys want to hear about it, it’s really crazy. We just we just throw a blow off tube on the the blow off arm and send it straight to the drain and dump one bag, close the cap real quick and let it blow off for five minutes. You know? ⁓ get a lot of that CO two out and then we’re usually pretty good to go.

Winslow Sawyer (25:21)
Yes, please share.

Matt Sprinkle (25:22)
Yeah, let’s

hear about it.

Geoff Wenzel (25:35)
We’re filling our tanks.

Winslow Sawyer (25:37)
Do not try at home, all listeners. Do not do as Geo does.

Geoff Wenzel (25:38)
And also there’s a product called ⁓ there’s

Matt Sprinkle (25:40)
Yeah.

Brittany Drennan (25:40)
Dislaimer

Geoff Wenzel (25:43)
a pro well, if you do make sure you have a proper SOP and you’re taking all the proper safety precautions as per OSHA. ⁓ which we do of course. No, we have a lift. We have a lift. We have a lift, fall protection, safety glasses, gloves. and yeah, we haven’t had an issue.

Winslow Sawyer (25:50)
And you’re not on a ladder and your safety harness.

Brittany Drennan (25:51)
No, definitely not a lotter. Or a

fork lift, yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (26:01)
works pretty well. We also use a product called HopAid, which is a hop derived anti foam. and that’s great because our tanks just like do not it makes your tanks bigger. and it’s relatively cheap. It’s actually like a hop by product, so highly recommend it.

Matt Sprinkle (26:14)
Do you see that affecting head retention downstream?

Brittany Drennan (26:15)
Three.

Geoff Wenzel (26:16)
not really, no. I mean ’cause we’re keeping the protein in as opposed to that blowing out.

Matt Sprinkle (26:17)
But yeah.

That’s good. Yeah, ’cause you know, some of the other anti foams, the silicone, the vegetable oil base, they’ll all affect head retention inevitably. So yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (26:21)
Yeah.

Oui.

Matt Sprinkle (26:29)
We we’ve got some breweries using that, the Hopaid, that really, really swear by it. Some larger breweries, so yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (26:35)
Yeah. Yeah,

it’s a it’s a great product. And again, it’s very inexpensive. ⁓ throw another throw another bag at and we’re not even close to the max dosage. I mean we’re not even halfway there. So it is not effective in the brew house though, I’ll say that.

Matt Sprinkle (26:47)
Yeah.

yeah. well ⁓ so sounds like we’ve we know how you keep your beer hazy. So Winslow, what do you guys do to I’m assuming your West Coast are brilliantly clear. So what are you guys doing to to ⁓ to bring clarity to the West Coast?

Brittany Drennan (27:06)
Yeah.

Winslow Sawyer (27:09)
Yeah, it’s ⁓ it’s definitely a difficult task, right? I think, you know, hazy IPA’s gotta be hazy. it’s it’s difficult to convince someone it’s juicy when it’s not hazy. we get a little bit more leniency in West Coast IPA. I think you can get up kind of to not, you know, fully opaque, but you can get some turbidity to it and still

⁓ get through just making sure you know using roll flock correctly we have a centrifuge as well that tends to help some beers are just clearer than others we find that when we use new zealand hops those can create haze every once in a while our core west coast IPA just is hazy so

managing those proteins, taking look of under COAs for our grain are is important and just trying to track where in the process that’s happening. You know, it’ll be the same recipe, ⁓ but just slightly hazier. So being able to figure out taking good notes, having good COAs for your ingredients and being able to track in the process where that’s happening is important.

Matt Sprinkle (28:14)
you doing any post centrifuge filtration?

Winslow Sawyer (28:17)
No, we’re not. No biofine. no filtration, just fuche. Yeah. Nope.

Matt Sprinkle (28:21)
No enzymes.

Nice. Yeah. Centrifuge is nice when you can get it dialed in like that.

Winslow Sawyer (28:26)
Yeah, yeah, definitely helpful.

Matt Sprinkle (28:27)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Winslow Sawyer (28:29)
It definitely is the best for the the hazy IPAs though. It’s a total game changer being able to remove all the yeast out of it. and we are also found out after we got the fuse that a lot of our issues with like foaming on our canning line was from residual like hop dust in the beer that was taking that wasn’t really falling out of solution through cold cold crashing. yeah, so getting out that really, really fine.

Matt Sprinkle (28:52)
Interesting.

Winslow Sawyer (28:55)
⁓ particular like, you know, finer than sand. ⁓ we were finding they were getting breakout on our canning line because of that. And the the fusion’s very helpful for that.

Matt Sprinkle (28:58)
Yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (29:05)
yeah, I mean it’s yeah, it’s it’s necessary I think, especially if you’re not filtering and even if you are, you you’re still gonna get some volume boosts. I mean, I don’t know how, but we’re only seeing like seven, eight percent loss to our

Winslow Sawyer (29:15)
Or lots of patience.

Geoff Wenzel (29:21)
BBT from our fermenter with a hazy IPA that’s dry hopped about three plus pounds per barrel. pretty proud of that. but yeah, yeah, we fugge everything. Again, I think like to me.

Matt Sprinkle (29:30)
Yeah, that’s your

Winslow Sawyer (29:30)
It’s really

Geoff Wenzel (29:35)
Especially with a hazy style. it’s a little disappointing at this point to get beer that has hot burn. I guess some people like it. I find it extremely off putting. but I I in my opinion a centrifuge is is a great tool to avoid that.

Matt Sprinkle (29:50)
Yeah. It’s pretty impressive when you calc out the ROI on a centrifuge too. just with the increase in yield. I mean, the brewery I used to be at, we were we were filtering through parallel lenticulars two hundred barrels at a time. ⁓ and it took us all day. you know, with six back flushes, tons of DO added.

Geoff Wenzel (29:55)
Yeah.

Matt Sprinkle (30:12)
but it’s you know, the growing pains of a quickly growing brewery back, you know, ten, fifteen years ago. And then we got a centrifuge and it cut our filtration days down to like four hours. cut our DO down to like, I mean, negligible. and the yield was the yield the yield went crazy. So I mean it it paid for itself in like seven months.

Winslow Sawyer (30:30)
I would say ⁓ that’s the one thing we didn’t talk about too, is DO is very important for IPAs. I think when especially when New England IPA was a thing, there was a lot of ⁓ orange colored beer. and I think that’s gotten a lot better. and you know, you’re not gonna have a good product a week later if you’re not paying attention to Dio. it’s an expensive machine to be able to test for it, but it’s really important if you’re packaging to to know what those numbers are and

being tracing through your your process to make sure you’re not having DO pickup because can all beer taste great in the bright tank. ⁓ but in a month, you know, what’s that c how’s it gonna show at G B G A B F when they judge it after eight weeks, you know?

Brittany Drennan (31:03)
Yeah.

Matt Sprinkle (31:09)
For sure. I’m assuming you guys have a C box. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, those are nice. Very helpful. What do you guys do? I mean, Geo, Winslow, do you guys do anything special to keep Dio down? Or is it just attention to detail?

Brittany Drennan (31:10)
Yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (31:23)
We actually have a nitrogen generation plant. So ⁓ we had one at our old facility we kind of bought actually I at the time that Jeff opened Industrial Arts, I was still working at New Belgium and Fort Collins. They had an N2 generator that they were like.

They had like a a bunch of containers of just like old equipment that never got commissioned that they were just kind of like selling off. and I saw it in the shop one day and called Jeff. I was like, You want this? ‘Cause Jeff and I have known each other for a long time. And he was like, Yeah, so they brought it into that plant and then realized its potential and not just like purging ⁓ cans on the can line.

We started doing I mean we’ve moved on to like pre purging tanks, put like beer push outs, line push outs. so we’ll basically when we purge a bright tank overnight, we’ll like purge it overnight, leave our N2 just kind of running at four C Fm or whatever, depending on the size of the tank, at a specific rate overnight, and we come in in the morning and it’s I don’t know.

ten ppb in the in the tank and then little CO two blanket and we’re good to go. So the low cost of making nitrogen, because right, it’s like what, seventy two percent of the air, really enabled us to be

Quite generous with our usage. I think I think we’re less, we’re either at or just under four pounds per barrel of CO2 for our beer, which is kind of below. I think it’s lower than industry lows. I don’t know, I haven’t looked at the the guidelines in a while, but yeah, we just we’re getting some DAW online right now too, which will help tremendously.

Winslow Sawyer (32:52)
that’s great.

Geoff Wenzel (33:05)
⁓ as you a lot of breweries use parasitic acid for sanitation, which is an oxidizer. So in my mind, like any residual in your tank or your line or your centrifuge is just driving oxidative characteristics up in your beer. So the ability to to push that out with DAW, I think, will be big for us too. Right. And we just kind of look at it like you can never be too low.

Matt Sprinkle (33:31)
For sure.

Geoff Wenzel (33:31)
So yeah. And just having the proper specs in place, doing our quality checks and I mean, obviously none of that means anything unless you can keep it low in the package as well. So, checking our package, you know, we have a great can filler. We invested quite a bit of money in a KHS counterpressure filler. and we pump N two into that thing as well. So

We’re hitting that thing with N two for our under lid gassing, our bubble breaker, and it just s allows us to apply it like quite liberally. Just and not have to worry about CO two usage and cost.

Brittany Drennan (34:01)
you two have any questions for each other?

Geoff Wenzel (34:03)
Hmm.

Winslow Sawyer (34:04)
How much beer are you guys

Geoff Wenzel (34:05)
last year we’re about twenty-two, twenty-three thousand barrels. We do some contract work, we do some non elk, we did some tea, we did some hemp beverage, but beer probably about twenty thousand. I think this coming year we’re probably about twenty two, twenty three thousand barrels. Yeah.

Brittany Drennan (34:22)
What about you, Winslow? ⁓

Winslow Sawyer (34:24)
We’re about ten, yeah. We’ll be maybe thirteen thousand this year. We have a fifteen.

Geoff Wenzel (34:25)
ten. What size what size brew house are you running?

Brittany Drennan (34:25)
Okay. Okay.

Geoff Wenzel (34:31)
Ooh, that’s a lot of beer for a fifteen barrel

Matt Sprinkle (34:33)
That’s a lot.

Winslow Sawyer (34:33)
Yeah,

Brittany Drennan (34:33)
Yeah it is.

Winslow Sawyer (34:34)
we’re yeah, we’re it’s a three vessel. We added a whirlpool onto it. But yeah, it’s an old pro it’s old premiere like old ⁓ like brew pub system with the combi HLT. So yeah, we’re definitely yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, rent rented mule.

Matt Sprinkle (34:35)
Is it a two vessel or you guys how are Okay, that helps a little bit, yeah.

Brittany Drennan (34:40)
Yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (34:41)
How many turns

Get getting your money out of it, putting it to work.

Matt Sprinkle (34:50)
Yeah, you’re cranking. Yeah.

Winslow Sawyer (34:55)
two to three, yeah. Two to three, yeah. Yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (34:52)
How many turns a day are you all doing? Two to three. Okay. Yeah, same.

Winslow Sawyer (34:58)
but something we recently installed was a CO two capture system. So we’ve been that’s been able to allow us to be more liberal with our CO two usage, because otherwise it’s just gonna go into the atmosphere anyways. ⁓ so that’s been a big help. It’s working out great. we’ve captured fourteen thousand kilos of CO two in the last like three months. Yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (35:01)
Okay.

Oui.

Brittany Drennan (35:10)
How’s that working for you? Yeah.

Matt Sprinkle (35:19)
That’s awesome. Yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (35:19)
Wow.

Brittany Drennan (35:19)
Was

are are those popular in your region? ‘Cause I I only know of one here in Texas and they’re still kind of like figuring out the kinks with it and everything.

Winslow Sawyer (35:30)
Yeah, so the ⁓ Russian River was the first one to work with this company in California, Dallum. They’re a ⁓ Danish company. and then Society here in San Diego just installed one maybe like a week or two ago. I haven’t followed up with them to see how it’s going, but it’s been pretty great. Yeah. I mean Russian River is producing more than they can use and they’re actually selling CO2 now. ⁓ but they’re they’re brewing a lot more beer than us. So we’re not quite at that scale where it makes sense to

Brittany Drennan (35:43)
that’s funny.

Wow.

Winslow Sawyer (35:55)
Test the CO two to get a COA to get a truck to come pick it up and drive it somewhere. ⁓ so

Matt Sprinkle (36:01)
Yeah. Have you figured out your ROI on that?

Brittany Drennan (36:02)
It’s wild.

Winslow Sawyer (36:04)
So we were fortunate because our one of our certification companies with one percent for the planet was willing to let us pay for it with our one percent for the planet donation. So it’s it’s like a day day one kind of thing for us. Yeah. But for most people, if without that, it would be about two years. Yeah. No, it’s not bad at all. We were using about seven pounds per barrel of CO two. So

Brittany Drennan (36:13)
that’s awesome.

Matt Sprinkle (36:20)
Not

Winslow Sawyer (36:26)
put in perspective for the f four that Geo is using. Nitro I think nitrogen can be a really good option for people depending on their process and what they’re using it for, right? If you’re doing a lot of bright tank purges, you guys are making a ton of different products, it sounds like. So you guys are cleaning and purging bright tanks like every time, right?

Geoff Wenzel (36:43)
Yeah, and also we use it like when we’re making tea, we’re using it to like scrub the liquid too, you know, any like still products. Even though we boil it and knock it out, like O two is still really high. So using it to like ⁓ you know, purge out liquid has been very helpful as well. but we have found out like using it exclusively

Winslow Sawyer (36:57)
Still there.

Geoff Wenzel (37:07)
As your head pressure gas, if you have any like decent tank residency time, it will actually displace. Like the pressure of the nitrogen won’t keep your CO two in solution. It’ll like the CO two will actually displace and come out, and you’ll have flat, like nitrogenated beer, actually.

Winslow Sawyer (37:17)
yeah. Mm-hmm.

Geoff Wenzel (37:24)
found that out the hard way. And it was like stratified too. So it was just like the top ten hectoliters of a tank. ⁓ that’s why we do our QA checks every

Winslow Sawyer (37:28)
⁓ boy.

Matt Sprinkle (37:30)
Interesting.

Geoff Wenzel (37:33)
You know, couple hundred cans.

Brittany Drennan (37:34)
Yeah.

Winslow Sawyer (37:34)
Yeah.

Brittany Drennan (37:36)
Well, the question that we like to end on is what what drink do you guys finish your day with? Doesn’t have to be beer. What what’s your go-to?

Geoff Wenzel (37:48)
Hmm.

Like the day like the work day? it’s been a day. It’s been a day.

Brittany Drennan (37:49)
Yeah, like it’s been a day. It’s it’s been a day. I’m grabbing this.

Winslow Sawyer (37:53)
That’s in a day. When it’s not straight bourbon,

Brittany Drennan (37:58)
Minus straight bourbon.

So minus straight bourbon on a rock. That’s mine.

Geoff Wenzel (38:02)
I mean I’m easy. I’m right now I’m on Fest Beer. we just released our Fest beer, so it’s like a nice lightly malted lager. I’ve just been in the lager world. I’m part of the Hi, I’m Je I’m Jeff. And ⁓ I have hop fatigue. so that and like, you know. A nice sixteen ounce can of of lager and a little J.

Matt Sprinkle (38:05)
Cool.

Winslow Sawyer (38:13)
Crispy boy.

Brittany Drennan (38:16)
Shocker. I yeah

Geoff Wenzel (38:24)
Feeling pretty good. After I put the kid to bed, obviously. Yeah. sure.

Winslow Sawyer (38:27)
Yeah. And no driving. something that

Brittany Drennan (38:27)
Of course, yeah.

Winslow Sawyer (38:29)
I’ve

been doing is ⁓ we just released an NA beer and a core pale ale. So what I do is I’ll instead just having one beer after work, I’ll actually blend the NA beer and the pale ale together, and then you get like a two and a half percent beer that tastes more like beer than NA beer. ⁓ and then I get to drink two beers then, which is nice.

Brittany Drennan (38:48)
Nice classic.

Matt Sprinkle (38:49)
I love

Winslow Sawyer (38:49)
Hop hot water is pretty good too. We don’t have a license to make

Brittany Drennan (38:52)
Well thank y’all so much for coming on and enlightening us on your ⁓ your legendary IPAs. We appreciate it. And yeah, hopefully we’ll ⁓ see ya see you out in the wild.

Winslow Sawyer (39:03)
Awesome, thanks so much guys. Hopefully run into you you know G B F C B C. Yeah. Yeah, bye

Brittany Drennan (39:08)
Make it happen. Bye guys.

Matt Sprinkle (39:09)
Yeah.

Geoff Wenzel (39:09)
Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Matt Sprinkle (39:11)
Well, that is a wrap on this episode of the East Coast and West Coast Showdown. Thank you to our guests for tuning in.

Brittany Drennan (39:19)
And a little update from the BrewDeck team. Moving forward, we are going to be shifting format for the remainder of the year. We will be bringing you more of our sales team voices across the country. So keep listening to hear your favorite CMG rep on future episodes. As always, thank you for tuning in. Be sure to like and subscribe to the Brew Deck Podcast so you never miss an