EPISODE S.3, E.19

Earlier this month, we packed up our podcast gear and headed to Denver for the Great American Beer Festival. We’re excited to be able to take you along and share the experience with you. First, we stop by our Colorado warehouse to visit our friends, and we took over 1Up Arcade Bar for our annual event, the Texas Brewers Guild. Then we take you along on the festival floor for opening night. Finally, we close out the trip at our party, at Little Machine, with our friends from Five Star Chemicals. Before we get started, we wanted to take a minute to recognize and celebrate all of the award winners at GABF. If you won a gold medal this year with great Western malting or Canada malting base malts, we want to hook you up with a customized Filson vest as part of our gold medal program. Contact your sales rep to learn more and request your vest. Without further ado, let’s get this party started.

Man, I missed Denver so much.

Right? It’s so crisp up here and dry and not humid.

Yeah. I was trying to… We were talking last night at dinner. We were chatting about the comradery and what we miss about coming out here to Denver, getting to see breweries, our customers, and really having that time together that we’ve all missed over the last three years. So it’s great to be here.

Absolutely. Yeah. Good to be back in Denver for GABF after a hiatus. So we’re going to do it big this year.

Damn right. Damn right. Well, today is, what is today? Thursday?

Today is Thursday.

All right. So start at GABF, I think the first session is tonight, but we were absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to stop in at one of our 13 distribution centers here in North America. Here in… We call it Denver, but it’s technically Aurora. Right, Tony?

Correct.

Yeah. That’s great.

Yeah, so we’ve been excited to, for one, we thought it was a good excuse to send the podcast stuff up here to the warehouse. That way we could twist Tony Lanzarin’s arm to come on and join us. He’s been with CMG for quite some time. He is the distribution warehouse manager up here, and he’s been with CMG for quite some time. So we’re happy to have him on the show. We’re sitting out here at the warehouse. We’re actually looking at the dock doors as we speak right now. So happy to have Tony join us. He joined us for dinner last night. And I don’t know, did you probably recalled us asking you to come in, but you were hoping we didn’t show up, right?

Oh, no. It’s always good to have you guys in. I don’t mind showcasing the warehouse.

There you go. Well, one thing I can tell you, and this always comes up when I step in this warehouse, it’s immaculately clean.

Absolutely.

I mean, I could eat off the floors.

Yeah, yeah. Well lit, clean. Everything’s on racks. That’s how we do.

And compliments to Tony and his team, and quite honestly, not only Tony, but all of our other DC leads and all the other distribution centers are just the same way, real adamant about cleanliness. It is our customers’ product that we’re storing for them here and we want to make sure and they make sure absolutely, that everything is immaculate, spotless, organized, and easy in and out. So it’s enough talking for me. Let’s introduce Tony Lanzarin. Hey, Tony.

How’s it going? I appreciate the invite, but yeah, as far as cleanliness, it’s huge for all of us. It’s hard. It’s our face out there and our customers walking in. Of course you want to showcase a nice clean warehouse.

Yeah, I mean it’s the same for probably our craft brewers out there listening. It’s the same way when you have people come back into your cellar or whatever. You know, take your floors real seriously. Well, so do we.

You’re right. Walking into to a brew house that is not clean is not real-

No, it’s not appealing.

… appetizing. For the beer side.

Sticky floors. No, you don’t want that.

There you go. Well, cool. Tony, tell us a little bit about how you got in to the business and with CMG. I know you’ve spent some time and some other DCs as well. So tell us about how you got to start and how you wind up here in Denver.

I started with the company in 2016 and I just followed up on an ad, applied for the warehouse manager, and I interviewed a couple times, and got the job. Took Bob’s place over in Oakland. So I ran that facility for about a year and a half. Then I came out here. I have a purchasing background and inventory background, so I did a full audit on our third-party warehouse that was out here. So they flew me out here. I did a full audit on them and, of course, the numbers were all kind of-

Sure.

… skewed. So I talked to Shatoon and then we just, hey, we need to open up our own facility out here. So during that time, I got to look around and I liked what I saw. So-

Right on.

I told boss that, hey, I want to open up Denver.

That’s great.

Came out here in 2018 and we opened up June 25th, 2018. Okay, so coming up on five years already.

It doesn’t seem that long.

I know

Fast.

It went by quick.

But I mean it was absolutely crucial. I mean, ever since you opened up Denver, just pickings or any kind of problems that we had with shipping, just really improved. I mean, to go from the 3PL to us launching Denver five years ago has just been huge for Country Malt and for our brewers. Just better service all around. Yeah.

Oh, I agree. I mean, nobody’s going to take care of our product the way we would, so it was just something that we really had to do.

Absolutely.

Before you got into warehousing at CMG, I mean, you’ve been a craft beer aficionado for a while.

So yes, it was actually my siblings got me into it. I was always drinking the Bud Light and Miller and stuff, and they were always craft beer and kind of got me into IPAs and then I got into the business and just surpassed all of them. And I love it. Just being in the industry, just the industry and the industry people are the best. I mean, hands down from any other companies I’ve worked for. This is a great industry to be in. I love working with the customers, out at customers places.

Hitting up breweries and-

Breweries, dropping off for customers. I go out and brew with certain customers.

Oh, that’s cool.

You go above and beyond, then. It’s awesome.

I love it. And industry, it’s great.

I’ve been out with Tony out and about in the prior years and we go in to visit customers and everybody knows the guy.

Yeah, right. It’s pretty cool when the brewery knows the warehouse manager that’s actually building their orders and their buds. It’s awesome.

Yeah, it’s like we’re flies on the wall. Nobody pays attention to us. It’s all about Tony and team there. But there’s obviously perks, too. I’m sure you’ve had the opportunity to try a lot of beers and I’m sure there’s some gift bags that come your way from will call customers, et cetera. So what are you enjoying these days? You mentioned IPAs, but is there something that stands out as far as a brewery, your kind of favorite beer right now?

As of right now, nothing really stands… It depends on the style of beer I’m looking for. I know if I want a good Kölsch, I know I’m going to probably go to Joyride. If I want a good Mexican lager, I’m going to go to either Little Machine or Westbound. A West Coast IPA, it’s going to be Comrade. Yeah, Comrade and Superpower, More Dodge Less Ram. Both gold medal winners.

More Dodge Less Ram.

Great name or greatest name.

So they got that name… That was a Dodge Ram that flew through their brewery and hit one of their tanks while they were brewing Superpower. And they just-

Oh, that’s funny.

I mean, it’s too ironic not to joke about.

And so the last time we were together at the award ceremony in 2019, they had both of those beers won gold medal and they won small brewery of the year that year, too.

That’s awesome. That’s cool.

And I do like some New England styles and that would probably be Outer Range with their New England styles, their hazys. I like that hops just to smack me in the face and-

That’s cool.

That definitely does it for me.

Well, you had the opportunity to join us yesterday to visit with the folks over at Odell’s and yeah. It seemed like you were really enjoying the Strata.

Strata [inaudible 00:08:46]

Their fresh hop beers, right out of the can.

That was killer.

Yeah, it is. It’s very good beer. The first time I had, it was a few weeks ago and it was in a can, and right when I tasted it, it was a great beer. I had it a couple days after, it was at Wet Hop Fest, and it was on tap and I didn’t get that same feeling, that same taste and bite that I had on when I opened up that can. But yesterday, when we opened up those cans-

Straight from the source.

Straight from the source.

And it was just… That initial, that first time that I opened up that can, it was a great… It’s a great beer.

And we definitely need to send a shout out to Scott and Eli over at Odell’s for having us. They just took care of us and it’s great people, great beer, and had the opportunity to look at their wine operation they got going.

That’s right. Yeah. They kind of expanded and built out that facility next door. The really cool thing about that… I mean, we do malt, we do brewing and all that, but some of the stuff translates over to wine. And what Eli was telling me yesterday is they do their own crushings and stuff there, which is just awesome. It’s not like they’re buying a big bag of juice. They’re actually doing the whole wine making process, really. They’re getting in totes of whole cluster grapes and making just neat wines.

Somewhat locally, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

That’s really cool. Well, one of the other things, Tony, I’ve noticed is y’all get a… I mean, I know it, but you got a bunch of SKUs. Bunch of SKUs. I mean, just the sheer magnitude of all those products that are sitting back in the warehouse and probably just the complication of trying to manage all that. So outside of that, what are you seeing right now is your biggest challenge?

So I think Tony and I have great communication. I mean we’re-

Tony Little.

Tony Little. We’re on the phone daily pretty much, and we’re discussing where our stock levels were at, what we need. And he’s pretty good at going out and talking to our procurement and letting him know, hey, this is what we need. So we do have a couple of trucks. We got a truck in today. We have a truck backed up right now. So trying to get the stock levels back up. We’ll just have to give them a little nudge and let them know what we really need or what’s moving, because they were only sending us a few pallets at a time of our pure Idaho, but now it’s taken off.

Absolutely.

Now we need… Send me at least a half a truckload. So I believe that’s what we might be unloading right now.

I like that. Euro-pils is one of those too. Yeah, he’s bringing a little bit and all of a sudden, the demand’s going up.

Well, talking to Scott yesterday, Scott was telling us that he’s the one who originally started using that pure Idaho. Well, he was calling it Idaho pils.

Pocatello pils.

Pocatello pils.

Yep, the malt, where it’s made up in Idaho. Yeah. Yeah. So Pokey pils, for short.

But we’ve seen a lot more of our customers using that product and it’s good.

Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Cool. I’m looking forward to the next few days because Tony typically joins us and has the opportunity to get out there at GBF, the festival, and say hello to customers. So it’s always good to have him. And you’re running a tight ship up here and cheers to you and the other DC associates. Not only here in Denver, but the other facilities, too. Yeah, I mean, we as, you know, sales people couldn’t do it without y’all. And really, having that product when the customer needs it, where they need it, and y’all going above and beyond is very, very… From the deepest part of heart, I thank you because we wouldn’t be able to service customers without you and your team.

I appreciate it.

Thank you. Well, cool. Tony, again, thanks for your time and thanks for joining us and thanks for all you do and I guess we’ll touch base here in the next several days.

Yeah, for sure.

Looking forward to it.

Yeah, right. I think we’re going to head up with your friends at the Texas Guild-

That’s right.

… event.

It’s going down.

That thing’s awesome. 1Up, I’m in a good place.

Go over to the arcade, drink some craft beers.

And then Friday, forgot about Friday. We can’t forget Friday. Little Machine, little industry party that Tony Little and Five Star takes care of over at Little Machine. So let’s get back to it, Grant. Cheers. Thanks Tony.

Thanks Tony.

No problem.

Bye. So another fantastic stop we’re making out here at GABF area.

That’s right.

It’s this annual party that we put on… I think we’re working on 10 years, right? Huh, Grant?

Not quite. I don’t know. I can speak for six of those 10.

Yeah. Well, it started when I came on 10 plus years ago. So here at the 1Up. Is it the 1Up or 1Up?

1Up Arcade. LoDo.

Pretty awesome. We’re literally standing in the midst of a bunch of arcades and we do it alongside the Texas Brewers Guild, right?

That’s right. Yeah. We throw it with the Texas Brewers Guild. Always have a pretty good turnout. We’re kind of like here, kind of finishing up, a couple stragglers here. The sessions starting soon. But yeah man, always a good time at the Country Malt party.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to it, for sure. Well, we also want to bring on the show, and he looks extremely nervous, Tony Little, which by the way. We got to thank Tony for being very hospitable to all of us out here.

That’s right.

He’s our territory manager, based here in Denver. So Tony, welcome, buddy.

Thanks for having me. And nervous is probably a fair word.

Yeah.

Well, thanks for hauling us around and being our Uber driver.

Thank you. Five stars, Uber driver.

My pleasure. It’s good to have the crew here and beautiful part of the world, and yeah, really, welcome to Denver, I guess.

I will thank you for the water in every door of your Kia decked out vehicle.

Thank you.

No, pleasure. It’s good to have the appropriate wheels to get around the state, so happy to have you.

Well, it’s interesting. We’re rolling around town with Tony because everybody knows the guy.

Yeah. Hey Tony, what’s up?

Yeah, so thanks, Tony. We also ran into… I say ran into. We’ve been hanging out with him for about two days now. It’s Tanner Davies, with YCH, but also lives here in Denver. What’s up, Tanner?

Not much, man. Just happy to be hanging out with you guys. It’s great to come out and support you guys and I know you guys support us so it’s always a big family out here.

It’s like old times. Yakima Chief are kind of our partner, sister company, whatever you want to call it. But yeah, man, thanks for coming out and partying with us.

Of course. No, it’s always great to have you guys out in our little part of the world.

Yeah. So Tony, how long have you lived in Denver?

Been here for coming up 10 years now. So yeah, 10 years.

And Tanner’s fairly new, right? You moved from the Pacific Northwest?

I did move from the Pacific Northwest, but I did grow up out here in Denver. Moved away about 20 years ago and then just moved back about three years ago pre-pandemic. So it’s nice to kind of come back out and meet a lot of the people out here. It’s been wonderful.

Man, I’m super excited about actually being able to attend GABF again.

Right on.

So for sure. So what Tanner, for you specifically, the times you’ve been here, what do you thinks changed, and obviously during the pandemic, as far as the overall turnout? I’ve heard some stats from BA of kind of what we can expect as far as the sessions are concerned.

Yeah, I mean everything I’ve been hearing is that they’ve kind of reduced capacity. Normally we’d have the entire convention center. I think they cut that back by, God, I want to say by a third almost. So I think it’s going to be a little bit more intimate. Hopefully… Well, obviously less tickets, but overall, I think it’s going to be a good turnout. I think everything’s sold out so far except maybe the session tonight. So overall, I think the energy’s going to be great and it’s going to be a wonderful turnout for the event.

Anybody in particular you’re looking at trying tonight at the session? Any beers that you’re like, I got to make sure to stop off?

Nah man, I can’t name my favorite kids. I mean, that’s just not appropriate. Not a good question, but no, I mean, there’s so many brewers that I’ve met over my years in the industry and I’m excited to go see them. There’s a lot of people I haven’t seen in two, three years, especially East coast guys, West coast guys. It’s just going to be great to see everyone again.

Yeah. What about you, Tony?

Nah, same as Tanner, actually. That’s a bit of a loaded question and-

We got to do it proper.

I’ll get myself in trouble there. But as much as I’d love to name you but-

Well, we had some Denver spots with you today, Tony.

We should call them out, for sure.

Went to Joyride, went to-

Hogshead.

We went over to Hogshead, Joyride, both great places in their own rights.

That gold medal-winning Kölsch at Joyride.

Yeah. Yep. Exactly. So no, we’re lucky enough to get over there and hang out and have a few beers. So yeah, if you get a chance, make sure you get over there and check those couple of places out like we did today.

Yeah, absolutely. So Tanner, I’m going to put you on the spot here, because majority of what we do is on the malting side, albeit we certainly are partners as far as YCH is concerned, but you just got back from a long, long harvest out in Yakima. So overall, what’s the hop market looking like right now? Or harvest?

I mean, hops were looking good this year. I think there was some definite mite pressure on some of the brands, but really that doesn’t overall affect quality or anything. There might be some decreased yield, but overall, nothing that’s going to really affect contracts. Total amount harvested is still good. So I think the market’s overall going to be great. Just kind of depends on what we see with contract and people getting stuff out there. But harvest overall was really great. Things got off to a late start with a cold spring, so things didn’t start jumping out of the ground until a little bit later. So harvest was pushed back a little bit with some things. But overall, harvest was great.

Nice.

Any standout varieties that you rubbed and sniffed this year that you were just particularly like, I need some of that?

I’ve been a huge proponent of Idaho 7 for probably the past three years.

Hell yeah.

Yeah, HBC 1019.

1019? I don’t know about that one.

There was some good stuff that was being poured and just rubbing it on the table. It’s got these wonderful peach ring candy.

That’s 1019 that does that?

1019. Yeah, I mean that’s something I’m kind of excited about coming up. Some of the fresh hop things that are coming out. A lot of fun stuff like-

Frozen fresh hops.

Frozen fresh hop. Yeah. Yeah, I mean some of those things that people are doing. We’ve got a great group of brewers that have been trying it out. Just a lot of stuff that looks really good out there.

We got another guy just… He’s still hanging out with us.

We basically coerced a bunch of stragglers here-

That’s right.

… that are from Texas to come join us on the podcast. We got one here.

Coming to us from Flix Brewhouse. Yeah, go ahead and introduce yourself.

Hi, I’m Wes Burbank. I’m the head brewer at Flix Brewhouse in San Antonio.

Right on.

And I also supply beer up to our Round Rock location.

Oh nice.

Thanks for kind of jumping on. We put a mic in your face. All gas no brakes.

Shove it in his face.

Along for the ride, right.

Thanks for it all. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, what are you getting into while you’re here in Denver at GABF?

Not much. I only actually have tickets to the award ceremony, so I’m not even going into the actual event.

Fair enough.

Just kind of here on kind of vacation. I grew up here and I brewed here in Colorado for a lot of years, so this is kind of fun hangout kind of week and going to a concert tomorrow night.

Ooh, nice.

Yeah, Revocation’s in town. So I think a lot of the metalhead brewers are going to be playing hooky tomorrow night.

And I think there’s a hell of a lot of overlap of metal music aficionados and craft brewers.

Absolutely. Yeah. It always seems to be a lot of this… You always get some nice acts coming through at GABF now because everyone kind of knows the metalhead and the brewers all just kind of-

That’s right. So I had the pleasure of meeting your partner earlier that said you’ve won some awards. Is that correct? I’m trying to pat you on the back here. Like some brewing awards, right?

Sure. Yeah. No, this is my 11th year brewing professionally.

Oh, nice.

I’ve won… I’ve been fortunate enough to work at some pretty nice breweries throughout my career. I started in Colorado. I brewed at Backcountry up in… Almost Brecken. I think they’re Highside now. Went over to Left Hand, Dry Dock, Crooked Stave. That was my Colorado career. That was my first six-ish years. So then I spent the last five-ish years in New Mexico at Rowley Farmhouse in Santa Fe.

Okay.

And then down at Ex Novo in Albuquerque and Portland. And then I sold out now to do this movie theater brewery things.

Yeah.

Yeah. It’s been an interesting profession.

San Antonio treating you pretty well?

Absolutely. Yeah. It’s a nice city. I don’t necessarily agree with everything that goes on in Texas, but yeah, San Antonio’s a nice… It’s a big city. Everybody’s been super nice to me.

Like we say, don’t agree, it’s the weather, for sure that you don’t agree with it. You’re looking at two Texans.

Just the fact that you guys have ice houses that you have to drive up and get ice at. When I was out in Texas last, that’s all I need to know about that.

It was like 53 days in a row or something like that of 100 plus degrees to start the summer. It was terrible.

Brutal. Well, it’s cool that you were able to jump on with it. Thanks for visiting us here at 1Up, but I need to come down to see you, for sure. There’s two of my favorite things right there that you’re dealing with, movies and beer.

And we do brewer’s beer dinners, too. So sometimes just pick a movie. So I’m trying to push for Pulp Fiction and [inaudible 00:22:49].

There you go.

Special menus, special beers, and stuff like that. It’s a fun concept being able to-

So show Pulp Fiction and then serve a Royale with cheese.

Absolutely. What is that?

Right. Yeah, it’s great.

I mean, I feel Pulp Fiction needs a nice juicy hazy IPA with it or something like that.

Yeah, I can see that.

That’s the cool part about being at Flix. We can actually do these theme nights and stuff like that.

How big’s your system up there that you’re working with particular?

We have a seven barrel system, essentially each movie theater. So we have a lot of ability to produce theaters for being able to do stuff and also just operate as a brewery, not just that we feed a theater.

Oh nice.

Yeah, it’s a pretty cool, unique setup. Again, it also allows us to be able to do themed beers for these bigger things.

Yeah. Cool. You got any beers entered for the competition?

Yeah, I think I entered eight.

All right.

Yeah. Whatever the max was.

Whatever the max was.

I got those corporate dollars. Yeah.

Can’t win if you don’t play.

So is there one of those that just really stands out to you? That you’re super proud… I mean, obviously proud of all of them, but is there something that, yeah, that’s great.

What would you drink of those? What’s your favorite?

I’m pretty proud of the lineup that I was able to submit. This year, my assistant, Rob. But I think our oatmeal stout is really good this year. Our oatmeal stout, it’s called Forged in the Heart of a Dying Star.

That’s like a Marvel reference.

[inaudible 00:24:21] minimum work.

A little shorter. Yeah. Yeah.

I’m really happy with that. And I estimated three sours, too, so we’ll see how the sours go. But you never know where this stuff is.

Yeah. Well, good luck.

Good luck to Flix.

We’ll have some of us there at the awards.

That’s right.

Ceremony. So we’ll definitely listen out. I can already tell you it’s better listening cause we don’t have the skee ball going right behind us, which sounded like-

It’s ambiance.

… construction.

If anybody from Flix wins anything, you guys get to see my Flix black and gold C.

Yeah.

Nice. Let’s do it.

Hopefully my coworkers can come through and win some of these.

Cool.

Well, appreciate you joining us man. And yeah, good luck and I look forward to coming seeing you at your place when I make me way south.

Please do.

Yeah, absolutely. Take care.

Have a good one.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, guys.

Well, we got one more individual I want to bring on. We’re flagging her over.

Me?

Oh there we go.

There we go. Here we go.

It’s the one and only Alli Nimik.

Hey crew.

What’s up?

Living the dream.

LTD.

Pretty excited. This is my first GABF, being from Canada and all, having come down for this. Pretty excited.

Yeah, we’re excited to have you. I’m surprised they let you in-

I know.

… to the country.

I’m surprised, too, but that’s okay.

With your rap sheet and all.

Yep. You know.

So what are you looking forward to the most, Alli?

You’ve seen the setup and from what I understand, it’s kind of all divided out by region. There’s a lot of beers that obviously we don’t get in Canada. So just kind of seeing what’s cool in different areas, what’s top priority for some breweries. So just-

They are actually changing it this year. It’s actually going to be set up alphabetically.

Oh it’s not by region?

Completely alphabetically. Not done by region this year.

Oh, man. Tanner with the deets.

What the hell? I’ve been wanting to-

Yeah. How does he… Well, he lives here.

I’ve got some information every now and then. I do know what I’m talking about.

I’m going to need a tour guide then, so… Figure out who’s from where and what, But I’m excited. Everybody here is pretty happy to be here, you can tell. Haven’t seen faces in a while and see what’s new.

And for those that don’t know Alli, Alli’s been with our company for quite some time. I think she out does this all by probably many year.

Probably.

Yeah. So Allie, tell us how you got started with CMG.

You know what? I moved to Calgary and actually started with a temp agency as the receptionist at Canada Malting in our malt plant. So that was a mere 14 years ago. 2023 will be my 15th year with the company. Great people. Feels like a family. Absolutely love it. And I’m just happy to be here with everybody.

Oh nice.

Anyways, cool. This is a great little recording. Grant, thanks for setting this up as usual here at 1Up and it’s a fantastic event and we’ll plug these mics up here pretty soon and give the listeners some inside info and intel here at GABF live.

Absolutely. Let’s do it.

So what do you think, Grant? I mean we’re wrapping up the Thursday night, first session this year, at the GABF.

Yeah. Putting the first session in the books. Oh you know, it’s good.

One thing that I really notice is… I was a little bit concerned coming in here that we wouldn’t see that many people here, but it’s really packed.

It is. Yeah, it’s getting back to kind of how it was pre terrible COVID pandemic and it’s a good thing.

I think so. We had the opportunity to stop at several different breweries and there’s obviously quite a few standouts in… Don’t want to name anyone here, but maybe we will. But no, it’s really great. It looks like they’ve condensed the coverage area. I used to enjoy looking up and seeing the color coded categories of the certain areas of the US. You could see yellow was southwestern US, so you could head to that area. But right now, it looks like everything is alphabetical.

Yeah, it just a 100% alphabetical. I think we went Z to A this evening. Yeah man, I was digging it, like WeldWorks was just putting on a hell a booth.

That is true.

It was just good time as always.

And I will say WeldWorks had a interesting… And I like it. They had a line just for brewers. I got a giant sign for the brewers and sponsors.

That’s right.

I don’t think the line was moving very fast because it was so busy.

It was pretty busy.

Russian River had a giant line, which they do every year.

No surprise there.

Yeah, right. Had a good chance to go to your alma mater, St. Arnold.

That’s right.

And taste the H style pils, I believe.

Yeah man, that’s kind of like my go-to pils beer living in Houston. That’s what I go for.

Is that pure Idaho?

Pure Idaho beer.

That’s good stuff.

I’m a fan.

Really good stuff. But I’m looking over here too and I can call out a bunch of different breweries just looking at them, right. So we’re in the B section at Beachwood, Bear Republic, Belching Beaver, Bent Barley.

Yeah.

A lot going on here.

So right now, Toby, I’m drinking Velvet Revolution from Austin Beer Garden. It’s the Czech pils. They won gold a few years ago and it’s just… I mean, every pils they make, they crush it.

Yeah.

Really good.

Yeah, I’m excited. I feel like we’re back, Grant. I feel like GABF is back.

We’re getting back.

I think there’s not as many crazy outfits that I’m used to, but maybe that’s because we’re here on a Thursday instead of Saturday

There’s been some good ones. Saw some Jack Sparrow guys around. Man, some of these folks never break character, you know what I’m saying?

And I will say I’ve seen a lot of jogging… It’s a silent J. Jogging, jogging suits.

Yeah, that’s the thing, I guess. I don’t know, I guess is… Maybe that’s a Colorado thing. You wear an ’80s, like, ski outfit.

Loud colors. Ski outfit, yes.

’80s ski outfits are in. Yeah.

It’s been a great opportunity to come back and finally be walking around here at GABF, checking out our awesome customers and I’m glad we’re back standing and back in business so it’s good to be here.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. First session in the books. Looking forward to tomorrow.

And for those that have not had the opportunity to come out to GABF, just make the trip. We met some people from LA. We met some people from all over the US that take the trip and spend a few days here. Denver’s an awesome city and then obviously GABF is just icing on the cake.

Absolutely.

Hey, we are here at Little Machine Brewery here in Denver. It is the Friday of Great American Beer Festival 2022. This is an industry event that Country Malt Group puts on. Oh, we’re working on seven years probably. Right? It’s very loud, if you can’t hear it in the background, but we’re trying to make this work. So Alli, how you doing?

I’m doing great. Credit to Five Star as well on their… This is joint.

That is awesome. We’ll get Emily Lovato on who’s here and helps us sponsor this thing. So it’s… God, there’s probably 200 people here, right? Looking at you, Alli.

There are a lot of people here from all over the country. It is a great time.

That is true. We actually had to step outside to record this, because it is just a rocking party in there.

Yeah man. He’s just a reggae guy with the loop pedal, slapping the bass in there. That’s pretty rad.

Yeah. Okay. We were talking about that earlier. He’s pretty talented. I’m looking at him. He’s dancing right now and singing.

He’s getting down.

Yeah, it’s really good. It’s always an awesome party here. And one of the consistent… I want to say, I don’t want to speak for you, Emily, but it’s typically a sponsorship between ourselves and Five Star, right?

Yeah.

We’re working on year seven or eight here?

Yeah, this I think is our seventh year doing this show. Obviously COVID has put a little wrench in that, but yeah, we’ve been doing this consecutively for a while.

So I want to talk about Five Star. Emily and I go way back. You’ve been around… Well, it’s got to be… I’ve been with CMG almost 10 years, almost 11.

This is my 14th year with Five Star.

Right on.

Yeah.

And so what are you doing with Five Star now?

So right now, I am a key account manager and technical sales manager as well. So I do a lot of the key accounts and do a lot of the technical questions, training, education, all of that good stuff.

Wear a lot of hats.

Yeah, absolutely. And I love it.

It. We had Emily join us at CBC to help educate our team, which is really awesome. We have a bunch of different vendors and industry reps. But Five Star is definitely supportive, always out to help educate our crew, and ultimately arm us with the knowledge base that we need to get out to our customers and talk to them about Five Star, so for that we’re greatly appreciative.

Incredibly craft beer oriented chemical company.

For sure. And Emily is a wealth of knowledge. That’s for damn sure.

Absolutely. Yeah. I love our brand. I love what we stand for and the chemicals we make are specifically for this industry, for craft beverage making in all. And we make chemicals that are going to protect your equipment and protect your craft. So I’m very proud to work with this company.

Very nice. So we’re proud to be a part of us helping distribute your products. And secondly, to thank you guys for ultimately always coming in halfsies, if you will. I think it’s halfsies. But anyways, for supporting in this awesome event here at GABF. It’s industry event, but anyone’s welcome. And it’s couple 100 people here, for sure. In and out.

I don’t remember exactly how many years but I mean I’ve been coming to this thing for five years or four years at Little Machine and it’s just always an awesome time. It’s just a great little Denver craft brewery. Not too fancy. They’re over here, pretty close to the convention center, but they just make great beers. Doesn’t matter what it is, lagers, everything. And they always put out. And on this at our party today we’ve got this awesome collab beers featuring some new malts and…

Yeah, that’s right.

Little by Little.

That’s one of them, right? That’s with the new Euro pils.

That’s right. Yeah.

The new Canada malting?

Yeah, they made kind of a paleo cold IPA. Some people don’t like the term cold ipa but yeah, the Euro pils from Canada Malting. Just great head on it. Little bit hazy on purpose and fantastic.

Yeah, it was really good. What’s the other one? I saw someone drinking it and it looked like a smoothie I get.

I think it’s a smoothie sour with a couple different… There’s blueberry. I think there’s-

Raspberry.

Raspberry in there. Yeah, it’s called a wildberry sour with some lactose. Not really my jam, but I hear it’s good.

Did you throw jam in there on purpose? Because it’s kind of… Pun intended.

Killing me.

No pun intended, right?

So Emily, what do y’all have going on there at Five Star? So I know you’re very widely known in the industry from the home brew shops where I think, really, I think a lot of people know your products when they start home brewing and as they work their way up the ranks and start to be professional, they’re familiar with the awesome product that you guys have and they work into bigger formats. So yeah, what’s going on over there at Five Star?

So yeah, thank you for that. We still support home brew and we support craft heavily. Obviously home brew’s our bread and butter. That’s where we catch those really devoted craftsmanship of home brewers who want to develop it into a professional business. They get hooked on our products and we transition that into a professional environment.

(36:10)
So in terms of Five Star and what’s new, obviously we’re still immersing ourselves in home brew. We’re still immersing ourselves in craft. We’re creating some new products for the environment, such as in the PBW family, specifically with PBW liquid and PBW tablets. And just really just trying to sustain this industry, both home brew and craft, and really be a one-stop shop as best we can for them.

(36:37)
Any and all ideas are welcome. So if anybody has any ideas that they would like us to create, please send that our way. Otherwise, we’re going to continue to innovate and support this industry as best we can. We have a couple new things in the making. Saniclean. For those of you who are familiar, we’re reformulating that patent and we’re coming out with something if, let’s say, if Saniclean and peracetic acid were to have a baby is what it would create.

Yeah.

So we’re coming out with some new things, some innovative things for this industry, to help keep your equipment sustainable, to help keep your craft up to date and to the quality that you wanted. So I mean, Five Star is just hanging on and supporting this industry as best we can. Yep, 100%.

One thing I’d like to call out about Five Stars, something I’ve noticed is it seems like a lot of your chemicals have more of an environmentally friendly skew to them versus some of the other suppliers. I think it’s something really cool that y’all do.

Yeah, yeah. We definitely try to make sure that if for anyone disposing of our chemicals into the standard septic system, or sorry, thanks to me-

You thought I was reaching for something.

Yeah, sorry, my mic wasn’t so close to the mouth. For anyone disposing of our chemicals into their standard drainage system or into a septic system, we’re trying to make our chemicals as environmentally safe as we can and giving education on how to neutralize those products as they go into those environments. So for anyone that has questions on how to do that, please reach out. We’re happy to give you information and steps on how to do that, so that it’s protecting not only you but the piping system that you’re using and the environment that you’re putting it into.

Yep, absolutely. Yeah. But speaking of sustainability, you’re a veteran like I am as far as GABF and all the sessions and stuff. For the listeners, what would you say is the best course of action for sustaining here, the four days, of everything you’re going to partake in, the beers-

Water, water, water. I know it seems like the enemy, but it is your best friend. Liquid IV, those are great. Those obviously weren’t around 10 years ago, right? We were like jacking our kid’s Pedialyte, doing anything that we could. And now they’ve made these great supplements for adults, not humans, but for adults that we can take to help bounce back. But my key advice would be water, good, sustainable food to get you through. Power yourself through. Think about it as it’s a marathon, not a sprint. You want to make sure that you fuel the body to get through these couple days. So that’s water, water, water.

Water and Five Star Chemicals.

Yes. Star Stan all day. Sprinkle yourself in it. You’ll be fine.

No good.

Star Stan.

Emily, we really appreciate your contribution and Five Star’s to this awesome event every year. We couldn’t do it without y’all and really happy to have you jump on with us and thanks for your support with Country Malt Group and obviously their products are available through Country Malt Group and we’ve got the direct contact with Five Star and they’re always open for questions, even comments, or just if you need some technical resources, they’re right around the corner.

For sure. Five gallon buckets, just kind of size chemicals stocked at all of our warehouses. Ship them with your malt. Save on shipping. That’s what we do. That’s the partnership.

There you go.

Yeah, absolutely. And if you guys are ever looking or have questions on where to purchase or what distribution channel to purchase through, please reach out. I mean, Country Malt has supported us from the beginning and they’ll support us through the end and vice versa. So any questions you have, please feel free to reach out and we’ll point you in the right direction, 100%.

Awesome. Thank you. And for those of you have not had the opportunity to come out to GABF, put this on the bucket list for next year.

Yeah, don’t sleep on Little Machine.

These guys are awesome out here and thanks to them.

100%.

Cool. Well, let’s enjoy the rest of the weekend. Thanks, Emily.

Yeah, you’re very welcome. Thank you guys.

Thanks.

(40:41)
So we had the pleasure of being joined by the one and only Brett Williams. What’s your nickname? You just told me, I just forgot. I’m sorry.

People in the beer biz usually calling me Brettman.

Brettman.

It’s kind of like Batman.

I like it.

Wasn’t my choice.

No, no, it’s a good one. No, I’ve been hounding you for the past two hours to come join us, but you always get pulled aside, yanked beside someone who wants to talk to you and then it’s no surprise because up here at Little Machine, you guys do some really kick stuff and for that we thank you.

Thanks.

Right. Yeah, so I want to talk to you. This is probably our seventh or eighth year doing the CMG industry event alongside y’all and it gets bigger and bigger every year. So yeah, thank you, first of all.

Yes, thanks for being here.

Yeah, yeah. Well, let me talk about a couple of the beers that you brewed, which are awesome. I’ve probably had more than my fair share of the Little by Little, which is another interesting conversation with the name there. But I think we sent y’all some of the CMC Euro pils, right?

That’s correct,

Yeah. What’d you think? How’d it brew?

Yeah, it’s a super cool malt. So we wanted to showcase that as the new product for CMG in this beer. And this is probably the most inspired series of pale ales that I’ve been making in a while. And Tony Little from Country Malt wanted to showcase this malt in it. And I think it’s perfect for it because we make these beers super dry. So even though there isn’t a whole lot left in it after fermentation, that Euro pils has enough earthy character and complexity to still shine through in the finished beer.

It like reduced modification that kind of leaves some residual sugars there.

Exactly.

Right on.

One of the things we’ve heard, and I don’t have any experience because it’s so new, but Grant, you actually brewed with the Euro pils at home and just pretty sizeable head on there. It’s a little bit higher in protein than most of what we’re seeing from here?

Yeah, it’s a little bit less modified at the S/T ratio is like 38 versus a typical pils, which is like 42, for a really well modified one. And I think that’s what really makes the head retention come through on that malt. Is that kind of what you found, Brett?

Yeah, definitely. And we still got a great yield with it, too.

Absolutely. Yeah, the extract is really nice on it. When you physically look at the kernels, right, they look a little short, but they’re very plump. Yeah. Is that kind of… Yeah?

Yeah. They’re pretty fat little berries.

Pretty fat little berries. I like.

Well, that’s just one them, The second one that we’re showcasing here, Brett, is the Groove Juice, which blueberry, blackberry, raspberry and vanilla sour.

Yeah. So I’ve got to be full disclosure here. When we do this event every time, Country Malt pays for the ingredients to make two beers exclusively for this event.

For sure.

We donate.

Yeah, Donate, sorry. So naturally I’m going to make the most expensive beer possible.

That’s expected.

I mean, that’s what I would do if I were you. It’s all good.

So that’s why we put 340 pounds of blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, and vanilla.

No, I haven’t seen that bill yet. I guess we’re going to-

It’s all those Oregon fruit purees?

Right, we’re fully at eight and a half barrel yield. Yeah. So yeah, it’s Oregon Fruit Products is the puree, which are single ingredient puree. There’s nothing else added to them.

Cool.

That’s good stuff. I’ve seen people walking around with it and it looks… I haven’t had it but I need to go try it.

Yeah, the base beer of that is similar to our Razz Against the Machine, which is sort of our signature beer. It’s a three-time major award-winning fruit beer. So it’s a pretty similar base to it, but we switch it up for different styles. And this is actually a series of similar but tweaked ones we’ve been doing to just try to keep with the times, to stay a little more modern, where they’re super fruited but because they’re super fruited, we add that vanilla to kind of round it out and then they’re unfiltered as well, even though we’ve traditionally been pretty heavy on filtration. But I mean you just be pretty psychotic to try to filter that beer.

Yeah.

You got to, yeah. You just be a glutton for punishment.

Wouldn’t work.

Filter that.

Yeah. Well, I’m super stoked of the growth we’ve seen just in the short time we participate in this event every year and you guys are doing things. So I appreciate y’all every year hosting Country Malt Group and Five Star and really putting on this party, because it’s a lot to deal with. I mean, your crew in there that’s back behind the bar and working with the customer base, I mean, they’re kick ass and they’re making this thing seamless, so thank you.

Yeah, they’re doing okay.

What? They’re going to listen to this and be like-

I look forward to your Marzen every year that I’m here for this event, because you always have it on tap because kind of tis the season and yeah.

Thanks.

Man, that’s killer.

Yeah, I mean I actually think we’re one of the best in the state for that beer. Not to brag about it, but there’s just not a lot of small breweries putting the effort into lagers the way we are. And that’s a proprietary fermentation schedule that… My first few years here, we messed with a bunch of different yeast strains and a bunch of different schedules and took probably two years to really dial that yeast strain into the way we like it. But at this point, our lagers are just on point.

Can you share what yeast strain?

It’s Augustiner.

Yeah, I’m with it.

But a lot of people use Augustiner I think because they think it’s relatively user friendly and it’s not really the reason we use it. We actually treat it right. So it’s like 50% attenuation. We raise the temp three degrees, 75% attenuation. We raise it another then after it’s complete with Diacetyl rest, we drop it two degrees per day until it hits 40 and we log it at 40 before we crash it.

And put in the work.

Yeah, it’s not like a two, three week beer.

No, no, no, no, no.

That’s one of the things we were talking about a couple days ago. As that segment gets a little bit more and more popular, which I enjoy, thank you. But I think it’s rushed. A lot of people rush those and they put them out too quick. It takes time. Yeah.

Yeah. I haven’t been to GABF sessions yet, but I was told that last night that like it was pretty clear they like lager’s the new king. Maybe taking over IPA down at the festival. And there’s a lot of people doing it, but I don’t think there’s a lot of people with the pedigree in it at this point. But it’ll get there.

It’ll get there, yeah, like every other kind of beer trend. Yeah. It’ll take at least a year for people to key in on how to do it.

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, yeah, you were saying you treat the Augustiner yeast right and you get rewarded by just this malted creaminess from it. It’s just beautiful.

Exactly. It has maybe a little bit of its own characteristic. I think the one thing you could distinguish from that yeast versus other yeast strains is maybe a little bit of a stone fruit ester, but it kind of depends on the fermentation temp. And we do different beers at different temps, so it’s like if we’re pushing out a steam beer with it, we’ll push it a little higher so it gets a little bit of that apricot ester. But when we’re doing our Mexican lager, we keep it super cold.

Which is what I’m sipping on.

The two of us are. Great. Look at that.

Right.

And I’m telling you, it’s awesome. It’s so good. Yeah. Well Brett, appreciate you again for jumping on. I know you told me you’re a bit tired and this time of year, probably, especially with GABF, is one of those where it’s pretty taxing on you, I’m assuming. Because I was out here, we drove around yesterday dropping some stuff off. Y’all had a big NFL event out here, right?

Yeah, so-

Giant.

We had an Amazon Prime video private tailgate yesterday with 262 social media influencers.

Jesus.

During GABF week. So it was pretty funny. It’s just our proximity to the Bronco Stadium.

Oh yeah. You could see it from where we’re sitting.

Actually, my favorite party yesterday, which we were at crazy capacity all day. Our biggest day we’ve ever had is because GABF is in town. We’d have a few straggler brewers stopping by. And they’re just sitting in the bar, what is going on in this place right now? Stopping in for a casual beer, but it’s not what’s going on at the Bronco Stadium this time of year.

For sure. Well, hey, I appreciate you jumping on and thank you again for your support of this every year with Country Malt Group. I know it takes time out of your schedule and your team schedule. And thanks for the patience on us bringing all these people in and-

Yeah, right on.

… terrorizing your place.

Let’s look forward to it next year, too.

And your beer’s awesome.

Yeah, all good.

Yep. Appreciate it, man. We’ll talk to you, I guess, this time next year if you’ll allow us back.

Great. Yeah, we’ll see you guys next year.

All right, buddy. Thanks.

Well, that’s a wrap on the 2022 Great American Beer Festival. Thanks for joining us. We’ll be back in two weeks for our regularly scheduled programming. Cheer.