EPISODE S.3, E.20

Grant (00:09):
Welcome back to another episode of The BrewDeck Podcast. I’m your host, Grant Lawrence. This week, we’re talking all things big beers, and I’ve got my other hosts on with me. What’s going on, Heather?

Heather (00:21):
No, not much. Enjoying the chilly weather, the big beer weather.

Grant (00:26):
The big beer weather, indeed. Yeah. So yeah, as Heather just mentioned, it is the season for big beers. Expect a lot of craft brewers out there are all making their winter warmers, their imperial stouts, just the barley wines, imperial all the things, 10% plus or 9%, whatever you’re into.

Heather (00:50):
The bigger the better.

Grant (00:50):
The bigger the better.

Heather (00:50):
Yeah.

Grant (00:52):
Well, speaking of that, Heather, we’ve got a couple of products out. The Country Malt hasn’t had in years past, or hasn’t cared as much of in preparation for big beer season. Namely, we have the best roasted malts that came out this past winter, but they’re still relatively new in the malt world from Germany. Got three of them, and they are all just debittered, not turned into drum. They’re roasted with air. They’re just fantastic. We’ve talked about them in some of our other episodes, but we have those in stock this year in time for big beer season.

Heather (01:30):
Yeah. Like you said, they come in three different varieties. So we have the chocolate, the black and the black X, so some really nice options there for making those big stouts and for the season.

Grant (01:42):
That’s right. Yeah. And got some high ABV yeasts as well. The Fermentis has the HA-18, I believe is the number for it, but it’s similar to San Diego Super Yeast, just a great high ABV, kind of all around. It’s a West Coast yeast, but it just works great for big styles, can easily ferment over 10% ABV. Yeah. In addition to that, I guess we’ve also added refined cane sugar as well, which can boost your ABV if you’re making a big beer. Yeah. Let’s get into it, Heather. Let’s go ahead and talk about our guests we’re going to have on the show today. We’ve got Matt Kenny and Chad Ellis from Tatamagouche in Nova Scotia.

Heather (02:30):
Nova Scotia. Yep.

Grant (02:30):
We’ve also got Kevin Burton on from… Well, he’s formerly of, I believe, Midnight Sun and Glacier in Alaska, but he’s currently at his own place called Matanuska Brewing Company. Kevin is just an accomplished big beer brewer, so really excited to talk to him on his segment.

Heather (02:51):
Mm-hmm. Let’s jump in.

Grant (02:51):
Let’s get into it.

Heather (02:51):
‘Tis the season for some big beers up here.

Grant (02:55):
Right on. Well, we’ve got some awesome guests on today. Our first guest, Matt Kenny and Chad Ellis. They’re joining us from Tatamagouche Brewing. Really happy to have them here. Matt Kinney is the owner, brewer, and Chad Ellis is currently the head brewer. So, thanks for joining us guys.

Chad (03:17):
Yeah.

Matt (03:17):
Hey, happy to be here.

Heather (03:18):
Right on.

Matt (03:18):
Thanks, guys. It’s going to be fun.

Grant (03:19):
Yeah. We always start this off similarly. Tell us a little bit about your brewery, about yourself, about your brewery.

Matt (03:25):
Sure. So yeah, it’s Matt here. My wife and I are the owners, like you said. We opened up in 2014, so just over eight years now. The idea was this tiny little brewery in a seasonal community, crazy in the summer, and then nice and quiet in the winter, but that quickly changed. After about a year, we realized this thing’s really taken off. So we got in a good time as far as the Nova Scotia market goes. We saw a ton of growth early on and haven’t really looked back since then.

Grant (04:03):
So, it’s up there. One thing, first off, you guys immediately popped in our head and Heather’s head when we were talking about brewers that excel at big beers. Y’all have quite a bit of awards around some of your higher ABV beers. Do you think that’s at all related to your climate, the weather? It seems like brewers up north tend to make higher ABV beers. Would you agree with that? Is that you’re clientele like?

Matt (04:33):
Yeah, it’s funny how we got into it. When we started, we had pretty simple lineup, just like a pale ale or red, slowly got into a cool style and an RBA and then really focused on consistency and getting that going. But then we’re also doing a lot of traveling and seeing what’s up, what else is out in the market and just other regions. We’re coming across these eye-opening gears like barley wines and imperial stouts and barrelage things, and immediately got back to the brewery and started working on these things. So I’m not sure if it’s as much our climate or our area, but just seeing the rest of the world and what’s out there was just a bit of a game changer.

Grant (05:18):
Gotcha.

Chad (05:20):
Yeah. Chad here. I joined in around 2018 after I finished school. I was lucky because the big beers are pretty well already dialed by that point. Matt already taken a bunch of awards for his big beers. So it kind of something’s not broke, you don’t fix it. So I just try to keep the torch rolling and really just take everything. We keep learning and keep applying all the new… Just dialing in into packaging, anything we can do process-wise. But as far as recipes goes, luckily things were already set up in a good way, so just try to keep executing properly.

Matt (06:06):
Yeah. How we started, too, with our core lineup and focusing on consistency and just solid seller and the whole process, we built that foundation for the early recipes and process on these big giant beers, we call them. So I think it gave us a good foundation. Now, when we were designing bigger beer, it’s just really easy to build off those. So we can take a new ingredient or a new flavor that we want to drive and we can build off that because we know we’ve got that base that we’re really confident.

Grant (06:42):
Yeah. Heather, you were saying before we kicked the show off that you have some of these beers in your fridge right now, some of these bigger beers from Tatamagouche.

Heather (06:52):
Well, I have one left, and this is going to be my humble brag to everybody that my coworkers are better than anybody else’s coworkers because every year for my birthday, our Eastern rep, our Eastern Canadian rep sends me a big box of beer from a brewery in his area and I got some from Tatamagouche this year. I actually got some a couple years ago as well. And so, I still have the Two Rivers Baltic Porter in my fridge.

Grant (07:18):
Nice.

Heather (07:18):
This is the one that won silver this year in the Canadian Brewing Awards and gold at the Canadian Beer Cup just this past weekend. So, I’m saving it till it gets a little bit chillier up here, but I did get to try the wheat wine that you did a few years ago, the Chai Wheat Wine.

Matt (07:36):
Oh, big one.

Heather (07:38):
Oh my God, that was so good.

Matt (07:38):
Yeah. Talk about a dessert beer.

Heather (07:38):
Yes.

Matt (07:38):
Yeah, big time.

Heather (07:45):
Yeah. What is the biggest one beer you’ve made in your Giant Beer Series?

Chad (07:55):
That would be Man-O-War. When I joined the brewery, that bottle was out and it was a huge, huge, almost like a barley wine ferment, but pushed even further. It was one of the first times we would’ve played with kveik, right?

Matt (08:12):
Mm-hmm.

Chad (08:13):
Yeah. So that was cracking into that new world before it became a big, hoppy, hazy yeast, just known as a workhorse. And that was aged in what? Brandy barrels?

Matt (08:26):
Brandy barrels.

Chad (08:27):
Yeah. Yeah. I joined not being a huge beer connoisseur. God, tasting that down to some of the sours and the barrelage stuff, I quickly got my mind blown there.

Grant (08:44):
What kind of ABV we talking about here on the Man-O-War?

Matt (08:47):
15.2 or six?

Chad (08:48):
15.2. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (08:54):
I think we did ferment that one out to probably 13%. And then we picked up a few. These barrels that we’re using with the spear barrels are quite fresh, so we would’ve picked up a few points there too.

Grant (09:07):
Wow. Okay. So a kveik yeast barley wine aged in brandy barrels.

Matt (09:13):
Yeah.

Grant (09:14):
Right on.

Matt (09:15):
Yeah. Sounds about right. Pretty well. Yeah. A little more on the English style, there was no real… The bitterness was there from the hustle. It wasn’t a big hot presence. It was more to showcase that barrel flavor. It was actually an experiment with the heat, because like Chad said, we never really messed around with anything that big before, but it was a beast.

Grant (09:40):
Wow. Is kveik yeast your go-to big beer yeast, or you use all kinds of different ones or…

Matt (09:49):
Yeah, we’ve used a fair amount, dependent on the style. I think we are going to go 12% less kveik.

Chad (09:58):
12% less. Yeah, that’s kind of a number.

Matt (10:00):
Something you can rely a little more on, say, like Two Rivers or our imperial stout. So we’re just using our regular ale yeast for the stout and we’ve got a lager yeast that’s a pretty good workhorse for the Baltic porter and a little cooler ferment for that one. Just nice and clean, but still dry, some of the fruity flavors.

Chad (10:22):
Yeah, nice, low and slow.

Matt (10:25):
But yeah, just depending on the style. Sometimes if it’s a totally new beer, just we want to try to see still, let’s see what it can do.

Grant (10:34):
I know there’s a lot of different strains of kveik or however you prefer to say it. I’m not saying that I’m… Yeah, I think there’s a lot of strains out there, but I mean, is there a particular one that y’all like, that y’all use?

Matt (10:51):
I believe for that here was the horn and doll.

Grant (10:54):
Horn and doll. Right on.

Matt (10:56):
But we have messed around with a fair amount. Now, when we’re starting to talk about the hazies or some different pale ales, I don’t know if I could pick a favorite. I don’t know, Chad, if you’ve got. Yeah.

Chad (11:10):
No, not off the top of my head. Geez. I mean, mostly just had lots of success with what does [inaudible 00:11:19] has to offer. I can’t remember the names off the top of my head, but now they’re amazing yeast. They just crack open other flavor profiles out of the hops that you can’t get.

Matt (11:31):
A little nervous. A little nervous when we saw the temperature [inaudible 00:11:36].

Grant (11:36):
That was [inaudible 00:11:37].

Matt (11:36):
They’re warming your hands on the fermentor. Yeah.

Grant (11:42):
I mean, if you don’t mind me asking, are you using a similar kind of fermentation temp profile, you’re doing free-rise, that sort of thing across a lot of your big beers using these using kveik or are you have dialing stuff, one method?

Chad (12:00):
I was trying say, because I actually wasn’t around for that first kveik Man-O-War ferment, but as far as say the RIS or the Baltic porter, it’s really just a matter of trying to find that balance of low and slow, especially on the Baltic porter. But you want to bring out a little bit of that fruitiness of the yeast, but you don’t want to get in the way of the malt. So just a really nice, smooth, controlled, firm and support the yeast with all the nutrients you think they’ll need down to the line. Yeah, you’re just trying to make their jobs happy, clean and easy, and really just trying to get out of the way to let them malt shine, really just let the malt come through.

Grant (12:47):
Especially in something like you were saying, low and slow for a Baltic porter that would-

Chad (12:52):
Big time.

Grant (12:52):
… I guess, traditionally be lager, right?

Chad (12:55):
Yeah. Yeah.

Grant (12:57):
Okay. So just going on the cooler end of the kveik fermentation spectrum.

Chad (13:03):
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Even a lower a seven, eight-ish percent porter, we just recently did a cold firm with an American ale yeast. Man, the profile that came out, it was amazing how much it stepped out of the way and let the malt come through in a really clear way. I was really impressed by just a little bit cooler.

Grant (13:28):
Gotcha.

Chad (13:28):
Really came through nice.

Grant (13:30):
Okay. So, obviously, the yeast strain you pick is important, the temp profile, what you’re going for, but is there any other considerations or things you do special in your brewery for these beers that are pushing 10%, 9% beers?

Chad (13:53):
Pretty much just everything you would normally do, double it, like double your yeast nutrients, gun your oxygen like you’re doing a lager, anything you can. You just treat that yeast really nicely and hopefully it treats you back the same way.

Grant (14:10):
So just increase the nutrient a little bit. Is there particular nutrient that y’all prefer?

Chad (14:18):
We found strand with a couple, just the supplier sometimes up and down, but I’m trying to think.

Matt (14:28):
Just one thing too is all of our beer are certified organic, so that determined what we could use as far as nutrients goes.

Chad (14:36):
Big time. Yeah.

Matt (14:38):
So that was one thing early on while we’ve switched around, but there’s two or three suppliers that we’ll go with.

Chad (14:44):
Yeah. Yeah.

Grant (14:45):
Got it.

Chad (14:47):
I think we’re running Servomyces right now. It’s pretty rock solid.

Grant (14:50):
Gotcha. So just all natural, like a dry yeast nutrient. Cool.

Chad (14:56):
That’s it. Yeah. Enriched with zinc, so pretty well that’s all we need.

Grant (15:01):
You were mentioning aeration. At least when I was brewing, I mean, we would just use extremely filtered, compressed air during knockout, going into the heat exchanger at power. Is that what you’re doing as well for aeration?

Chad (15:23):
Yeah, we have medical-grade oxygen and flow through a stone and… Yeah.

Grant (15:29):
Just in line as you’re knocking out or-

Chad (15:32):
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Right after the heat exchanger there.

Grant (15:36):
Cool.

Matt (15:38):
One thing, if you go back to Man-O-War, a lot of the techniques we were using back then is totally just from brewing network. I used to listen to podcasts nonstop back a bit, so The Session, Brewing with Style, all that stuff. One cool thing that we did with Man-O-War was about 12-ish hours into fermentation, adding another blast of dextrous with aeration, just really getting that thing going. It seemed to work well with that beer. So we’ve tried a few different techniques that depended on the beer as well.

Chad (16:18):
Yeah, we get that with Solitude as well.

Matt (16:20):
Yeah. Yeah.

Chad (16:20):
Yeah.

Grant (16:22):
Right on. So when you’re hitting it with this pure oxygen, are y’all doing any kind of like pitch rate counts? Are you pulling a sample, looking under a microscope, count cells, that sort of thing, make sure that you’re hitting some kind of target or are you just-

Chad (16:44):
We actually only recently got our lab properly up and running for that kind of thing. At this point, we’ve already had so much experience on what has worked. So we really just go back to what we know has worked and base it off of that.

Grant (16:59):
Sure.

Chad (17:00):
At this point, the microscope is mostly just for we were curious to check what we were doing that we knew worked, kind of like, okay, go back and see what were we actually doing. We knew it worked, but what was actually going on? So going forward, we’re looking back, checking our cell counts and stuff, going, “Okay. What are we actually doing instead of just basing it on this many bricks for this many hacks, yada-yada? But yeah, that’s something we finally had time for this past year and moving forward.

Grant (17:36):
It’s pretty neat when you get to that stage and you start really compiling all the data and analyzing it and looking back and being like, “Oh, maybe that’s why this one took a couple extra days.” Yeah.

Matt (17:50):
Yeah.

Grant (17:50):
Cool.

Chad (17:53):
It’s definitely a bit of that.

Matt (17:54):
Oh, yeah. We’ve lost some sleep over some stock ferments and just like, “Oh God, what’s this thing going to do?” Yeah, the old Belgian stall.

Grant (18:03):
Right. Oh, the Belgian stall. Yeah.

Matt (18:05):
Every time.

Grant (18:09):
One of those Abbaye yeast are tricky sometimes.

Matt (18:14):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s take a little-

Grant (18:19):
And then you free-rise them up to, I don’t know, 80, well, I’m thinking in fahrenheit. Let’s see. What is it? What’s the conversion?

Chad (18:29):
I was going to say, yeah, because we always free-rise our beers in the last bit, of course. I guess that would be for us getting them up into the low 20s.

Heather (18:35):
Yeah, that would be around then.

Grant (18:36):
Low 20s?

Chad (18:36):
Yeah.

Grant (18:38):
Okay. There’s so many pitfalls once you start… At least I see, once you get over about 10%, it’s just like your yeast are poisoning themselves.

Chad (18:48):
Yeah, that’s it.

Matt (18:50):
Yeah, it’s kind of business as usual until you get to that like 9-ish, nine, 10% mark. And then from there, that’s when things can get a little weird and you need to beer gods on your side.

Grant (19:02):
Beer gods. Right. I think that’s Gabe Brunus. Yeah.

Matt (19:11):
Yeah. But the barrels can definitely do a lot for that beer too.

Chad (19:14):
Oh, big time.

Matt (19:15):
If we’re designing a beer that’s just going to be in stainless, that’s probably going to be a little different than a beer that’s going to go into barrel, or we might have something in a barrel that’s like it’s almost there and maybe we need to blend in a little bit of stainless beer with it. So each project’s got its own little tool belt.

Grant (19:36):
Just to get it right. Yeah.

Matt (19:37):
Yeah. Yeah.

Heather (19:39):
So you mentioned that you had brandy barrels. What other types of barrels do you have in-house?

Chad (19:44):
All right. Now, we’ve got some really nice round barrels we’re excited about. We’re going to pull those soon. Yeah. We usually rotate a few, like a bunch of bourbon barrels, usually switch them out maybe every two, three turns to get a little more flavor back in there. We have some peated scotch barrels that we’re on the second turn of those. Those are tasting pretty nice. Tempest, that beer came out those. We still have some cognac barrels taken around, but actually, we played with some… We actually threw a lower alcohol, like a British mild into there for one turn, and now an Irish out in there, just adding a little bit of complexity and stuff, some bread in there, kind of turning into some… Yeah, they turn out pretty cool. You get some real cool flute fruity flavors out of the bread with the dark malt and stuff.

Heather (20:43):
Oh, for sure.

Grant (20:44):
Interesting.

Chad (20:45):
Yeah. And that’s just the dark beer, sweet. We have quite a few other ones too.

Heather (20:50):
Yeah, you’ve got a nice sour series that’s coming out of the barrels, I believe, that I have drank.

Matt (20:54):
Yeah. Yeah. It seems like we’ll start with maybe some more intense beer barrels, get a few turns out of those, like Chad was saying. Once they’re a little more neutral, they either get retired or we’ll move them over to the sour beer, or we don’t really need that spear character, or you don’t want impart too much of the barrel and spear onto that more delicate sour or whatever the funky beer is. But the sour side is mostly wine or neutral, a few different spirits. Chad just did one with gin, which turned out really nice. Yeah. We’ll play with just about any spirit though. That’s fun. It’s a smaller batch. It might end up being two to four barrels worth. And then it’s not a huge amount of volume. You can either package it all or you do a little bit of blending or…

Chad (21:50):
Yeah. No, I find barrels are a good point of inspiration because you’re always working with the same four ingredients. But when you get to go barrel shopping, you get all these ideas start springing into your head, how to use them differently. You have a base that you can trust and then you can then steer that, tweak it in certain directions and you tweak it based on what barrel you’re pairing with. I find that the most fun when you have one ingredient as your inspiration point and you build off that and you just keep driving for a certain direction you’re picturing.

Heather (22:30):
Are you getting the barrels from the wineries and distilleries out in Nova Scotia?

Matt (22:36):
Yeah, there is a winery down the road that we get a lot of red wine. We actually can get some grape skins from them, which has been nice, few little projects. There’s distilleries down of Lunenburg. That’s actually the first spirit barrel we played with was a dark rum.

Heather (22:53):
From Ironworks?

Matt (22:53):
From Ironworks. Yeah, you got it.

Heather (22:53):
Got it. Yeah. Love that place.

Matt (22:53):
Yeah. Yeah. Amazing stuff.

Grant (23:04):
It sounds like your rum barrel’s fresh, because at least whenever I’ve worked with rum barrels in the past and they come from Jamaica or somewhere in the Caribbean, I mean, they are just beat the hell.

Matt (23:17):
Really?

Grant (23:18):
I mean, they’re so annoying to use. So it sounds like you’re getting these from a local distillery and not really having that problem with your rum. Correct?

Matt (23:29):
No. Yeah, they’ve been pretty good shape. Yeah. I mean, I think really the only issue we’ve had with the barrels that we have had in stock have been just if we didn’t fill them quick enough, you can run into a little dehydration. But for the most part, we’re getting these things, they’re still spirit in them.

Grant (23:48):
Yeah. Right. The freshly dumped, the better.

Matt (23:51):
That’s it.

Grant (23:52):
Yeah. Because I mean, yeah, once they dry out it all, I mean, you’re just starting off on one. Okay.

Matt (24:03):
No, that’s it. There’s always going to be that little bit of oxygen ingress for anyway. So if you’re starting with a barrel that’s any dehydrated at all, then you’re just looking for it.

Grant (24:16):
So when you bring in the freshly dumped barrels, is there any kind of standard way that you rehydrate them? I mean, I guess walk us through the first few steps of your barrel intake process.

Matt (24:32):
I mean, we’re really just doing it based off our brewing calendar. We just ordered barrels today for the next three, four projects. So some will get filled immediately and then some might be coming from either a [inaudible 00:24:50] or a new project coming down the pipe. So really they’re not going to be sitting around too long. But yeah, it’s maybe in order once or twice a year and then we’re just refilling barrels that we already have on site.

Chad (25:05):
Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much just timing things so that just no more than a few days empty, make sure they’re purged. But as far as new barrels go, you pop them, you give them a good look with the flashlight and give them the old sniff test. Yeah. Usually, they’re pretty good. Yeah, we really don’t like to do too much initial hot rinsing or anything because you’re just rinsing out a lot of good stuff.

Grant (25:34):
Absolutely. That’s how I’ve always felt too about that. It’s like that.

Chad (25:38):
Yeah. No.

Grant (25:39):
Cool.

Chad (25:42):
You get the odd leaker here and there, but sometimes the sugar seals it and sometimes it doesn’t. You have to get the wax out, but that’s the way it goes.

Grant (25:51):
That is the way it goes. Yeah. Dealing with the wax is definitely-

Chad (25:56):
Oh, it’s terrible.

Grant (25:56):
Avoid it. Yeah.

Chad (25:56):
It’s awful.

Grant (25:57):
We avoid it every time. So for our listeners out there, walk us through a little bit. I mean, I take it you’re firming a beer normal and stainless. You’re letting it get below a certain amount of yeast cells and suspension and then you’re going into a barrel and then back into stainless. Did I get that right or… Yeah.

Matt (26:24):
Yeah, you got it.

Grant (26:25):
Okay.

Matt (26:27):
Yeah. Basically, everything you said, if it’s just straight up barrel to stainless and then into package, then that it is as easy as that. If it is getting blended, we might have a couple different tanks on the go that we’ll need, but for the most part, that’s the process. If it’s getting fruit or if it is getting blended, then there might be a couple extra steps, but basically just monitoring oxygen and treating the beer as best we can at every step. Yeah.

Grant (27:03):
Gotcha.

Chad (27:04):
One big thing too I learned from Matt was just simply time and stainless, it’s something you’ve always sworn by and it’s really makes a difference, letting those flavors round together, or you’re blending two batches together, two different types of barrels, it’s amazing what a month, two months in stainless can do to a dark beer. Yeah. Not really sure the exact science on that, but it’s hard to argue with what tastes good.

Grant (27:35):
For sure. You mean like when you’re racking back out of the barrels, going back into stainless, just giving it time?

Chad (27:42):
Yeah, big time. Yeah. I think if you have the time available, and that’s why we do it over the winter when we do have a little more space, if you have it, just get it stainless and let it do its thing. And then when it is time to package, same idea, we might sit on a bottle gear for six months, not because it’s bottle condition, just straight up, just to give it more time in the bottle. With these years being a very unique experience to try fresh, but also a very unique experience to try two years, three years, six years, whatever it is down the road, it’s a totally different experience.

(28:24)
We’re keeping that in mind when we’re designing recipes and building beers that we want this to hold up 10 years down the road. Now, you have to do every step along the way has to be done really well, and that takes time too. I don’t know if our first batch of barley wine would taste great out of the bottle right now, but I am really confident that this Two Rivers that we brewed last year or the year before is going to be totally fine in 10 years.

Grant (28:55):
Yeah, that’s awesome.

Heather (28:57):
Have you held on to any bottles to get to do some verticals?

Chad (29:01):
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Our production manager doesn’t love that we chew up that free taste in the warehouse, but we do have a case of… I don’t think every batch of these big beers we’ve done, but there’s a fair amount of cases over there.

Grant (29:18):
Yeah.

Heather (29:19):
I’m just planning my trip when we come to Nova Scotia next year for the Canadian Brewing Awards.

Chad (29:23):
Oh yeah, we can read that seller.

Heather (29:26):
That sounds like a great time. Obviously, you guys are really well known for making these beers now. Do you see a big market for it? Do you have people that are anxiously awaiting for these things to be released every year? Yeah.

Matt (29:41):
Yeah, there is a beer blog in Atlanta Canada that does a really good job of promoting every brewers’ beers. So that crowd of people that are subscribed to that, they’ll look over that. Beer people, when they’re in here, that’s the fridge that they gravitate towards. But I still find that these certain styles are very unique. If someone, just a general, someone comes in looking for a pale ale and they see barley wine in the fridge, they don’t know what that is, so they’re probably going to steer to something that’s a little more comfortable to them. So it’s really a fun experience when they do try a beer like that or dip their toes into something they’re not used to. But yeah, I think there’s still a long way to go on getting the general public entity styles.

Heather (30:32):
Yeah, I think that’s always the way I think. I know beer nerds love this. We all know barley wine is life. We’re all heavily involved in this, but I’ve mentioned to friends that I sell our beers or that I’m moving onto stuff or how high alcohol this one specific beer is, and just their minds are blown. I’m like, “You guys don’t just know this stuff? This isn’t general knowledge to you?”

Matt (30:54):
Well, it’s hard for them to picture sitting down on… Maybe they’re at the cottage or whatever and they crack a bottle of 10% of beer, sure, go for it, but it is meant to share with friends or share with a meal. So, that’s one thing, you got to process them as well.

Grant (31:13):
Yeah, that’s it.

Heather (31:14):
These are for bottle shares, special occasion beers. Yeah, for sure.

Matt (31:20):
I mean, good luck if you want to crack a 750 milliliter, but definitely better to share.

Heather (31:26):
Yeah. Awesome. Well, I think that’s all I have. Is there anything you want to let us know? Anything else going on at the brewery? Anything you want to plug coming up?

Chad (31:39):
Well, I think one cool thing that I wanted to bring up was going into this winter season, where we start brewing more of these high ABV beers, we’re going to be brewing on the new brew house. So we’re super excited to have the tank size and space to really push some limits. We were restricted on grain bill or the size of what we could actually fit in our old mash down.

Matt (32:05):
Oh God, yeah. Having to hamster that with the paddle. Paddle is just bending. You’re waiting for that thing to snap. Yeah. Oh yeah. I’ve had malts spill over the edge of the mash down a couple times.

Chad (32:19):
We didn’t have rakes in the old mud. It was quite manual system, so it makes slaughtering a little more difficult, mashing in more difficult.

Heather (32:26):
Yeah, for sure.

Grant (32:28):
You were doing a 15% beer with no rakes.

Chad (32:31):
No rakes.

Matt (32:32):
And you had to run upstairs to nail the other two-thirds of the batch while you’re mashing.

Heather (32:40):
Oh, Cheyenne and Grant were former professional brewers, so I feel like they felt that way.

Chad (32:45):
Respect. Respect.

Cheyenne (32:45):
I can feel that pain.

Matt (32:50):
It’s a good workout.

Grant (32:51):
I was spoiled. My rakes didn’t just spin. I could control the up and down.

Matt (32:56):
Oh, wow.

Chad (32:56):
Wow. Geez.

Grant (32:57):
It was nice.

Chad (32:59):
Yeah, very nice.

Heather (32:59):
Fancy.

Grant (33:01):
Our lauters were still hell for those big beers like that.

Matt (33:04):
Oh, totally.

Grant (33:04):
I mean, about how long is the lauter for you guys?

Matt (33:10):
Yeah. I mean, it used to be on the old system as what? Like an hour?

Chad (33:14):
Hour 20.

Matt (33:16):
Hour 20. So these beers were taken closer to two and we’re cutting the volume in half. We’re not getting a lot of volume out of it, so way more labor for way less volume and less volume at every step of the way too. So it’ll be nice this season of brew a full batch, fill up our single from enter, and hopefully a little smoother during the hot side process.

Heather (33:44):
Yeah. Yeah, that’s awesome.

Grant (33:46):
Right on. Well, good luck with the new brewhouse. It’s very exciting.

Chad (33:50):
Yeah, thank you.

Matt (33:51):
Yeah, thanks.

Heather (33:52):
Well, thank you so much for joining us. I’m looking forward to seeing you in your home province next year.

Matt (34:00):
Yeah, Halifax, come on now. Yeah.

Heather (34:00):
Halifax.

Matt (34:02):
I think they just changed the date to 1st of June now?

Heather (34:06):
Did they actually?

Matt (34:08):
I believe so, yeah.

Heather (34:09):
Oh, good, because my Nashville liver didn’t know if it could do both. That’s exciting. Even more exciting. Halifax is such a beautiful place to be too, so very much looking forward to it and looking forward to seeing you again. Thanks again.

Chad (34:23):
You got it.

Matt (34:23):
Of course. You got it. Thanks, guys.

Grant (34:26):
We’ve already taken you out to the East Coast of North America. Now we’re going to go out to the West Coast of North America. Our next guest is Kevin Burton with Matanuska Brewing in Alaska. Did I get that right, Kevin?

Kevin (34:39):
You did.

Grant (34:40):
Right on. Thanks for joining us. And then I’ve also got a special Country Malt guest on this week. I’ve got John Burkett, our Alaskan sales rep is joining us, but he’s on the road right now. How’s it going, John?

John (34:52):
Fantastic.

Grant (34:54):
Cool. Yeah, I just wanted to talk big beer this week. We’re getting into that season. It’s winter warmer season. I know there’s a lot of 10% plus ABV beers up in Alaska, so Heather and I are just excited to hear about how to brew them, the pitfalls of them and that sort of thing. Kevin, can you tell us a little bit about Matanuska Brewing, the background and all that?

Kevin (35:22):
We’re a production facility with the 40-barrel brewhouse. We’ve got about a 20,000 barrel capacity. We have a small pilot system, a five barrel pilot system as well for big gravity stuff for oak and things. We’ve been around for five years now. Prior to that, I ran Glacier for us for 20 years, where I started making the Big Woody Barley Wine, which was pretty successful. And then before that, I came up with the Arctic Devil over at Midnight Sun. We’ve had some good luck up here. We’ve got really good water and it’s really good weather for drinking barley wine if I could.

Grant (36:01):
Barley wine is life, as Heather says.

Kevin (36:05):
Yeah.

Heather (36:06):
Well, I didn’t invent the saying, but…

Grant (36:09):
I agree with it. Barley wine is life.

Heather (36:12):
Well, I often think of John Burkett when I think of barley wine because John, don’t you go to a Barley Wine Festival every year or organize a Barley Wine Festival every year?

John (36:20):
Well, I helped found the last Barley Wine Festival. We started almost 30 years ago. Basically, a good friend of mine who was the actual promoter, I took him to GABF and I said, “We need to do one of these.” And so, we put together a GABF-like event and then actually merged with another one. And then it became the Great Alaska Beer & Barley Wine. We started judging barley wine, which Kevin has won. And then we added in Winter Brew. That’s the only thing that we judged. Kevin also has won that with his ice box. And then Kevin started over 20 years ago, the 12 Days of Barleywine at Glacier Brewhouse. He would have three to four different barley wines every single day. They’d be different every day, and they were all his own. They were just aged differently. And then he’d have an unannounced 13th day. I looked one year, it cost me $700 to get my free T-shirt.

Kevin (37:30):
You get a T-shirt if you get them all.

John (37:32):
Yeah, you get a punch card. I mean, it’s real competitive. When I was with Odom, I’d take all my sales crew up there and we’d be there right at the beginning every day and we would do this special ritual, where we’d get this snifter glass, ask for a half pour for three of them so we could be warming them as we go. And then we got more sophisticated that the bartender would give us a snifter full of hot water from the coffee machine, and so we’d set one sideways on top of that. We’d usually start with the cast, which was warmer anyway. So that was huge every year and it was what’s Kevin going to come out with. The shirts, because Kevin’s a big Stones fan, would be like a two more T-shirt, where it would list all the barley wines for every single day.

Grant (38:23):
Love it.

Kevin (38:25):
We had as many as 40 different ones at those times. It was an endurance thing. About the eighth day, a lot of people would miss a day because they just couldn’t take it. I asked one guy, he was there every day. I said, “What does your wife think about the 12 Days of Barleywine?” He said to me, “My wife doesn’t know about the 12 Days of Barleywine.”

Grant (38:48):
It’s like a barley wine advent calendar. That’s awesome.

Kevin (38:55):
For most people, it just takes the edge off of Christmas shopping.

Grant (39:02):
You mentioned Arctic Devil too, so that was your recipe.

Kevin (39:06):
Which one?

Grant (39:07):
Did you say Midnight Sun’s Arctic Devil?

Kevin (39:10):
Yeah, Arctic Devil. Yeah. The first year, we made 69 bottles of it and I signed and numbered each one. I still have number one if somebody wants to buy it.

Grant (39:22):
Awesome.

John (39:23):
I have an empty one. I don’t know what number it is.

Grant (39:27):
It’s different for all.

John (39:29):
That one won a GABF gold medal. I think I went up [inaudible 00:39:34].

Kevin (39:33):
Yeah, it did. It did there, Tornado and a bunch of places up here.

John (39:40):
I accepted that medal at GABF. Kevin just now released. So at Matanuska, because he’s huge Stones fan, it’s Sympathy For The Devil and he just released that.

Kevin (39:52):
Yeah, we call it a beer of wealth and taste.

Grant (39:58):
Cool. Awesome. Well, we have certainly come to the right place for this episode.

Heather (40:03):
Yeah, it would seem so.

Grant (40:04):
Yeah. So walk us through a little bit of some of the challenges of brew and these high ABV beers. These are easily over 12. I mean, for example, what’s your highest ABV barley wine you’ve put out?

Kevin (40:19):
Oh, the highest one I ever made was probably 13.5. The higher you get… I don’t know. I like them around 10. I think they taste better.

Grant (40:27):
Kind of a sweet spot.

Kevin (40:29):
Yeah. Yeah. I’m older now, but when I was 34 and Michael Jackson was up here, I knew he was coming up before he passed away, I brewed a 34 Plato barley wine because I wanted to brew my age, like when you golf your age, so I brewed my Plato age. So, it was huge. He liked it. I liked it. It was different. But yeah, there’s a lot of challenges. You start out using twice as much malt for half as much beer, so it’s expensive. You got to use good stuff. And then there’s all kinds of adjuncts you can use, honey and molasses and different kinds of sugar to get it up there. And then you got your three or four-hour boil. And then yeast, you got use a pretty hardy yeast. I usually pitch twice as much as normal just because it won’t make it if you don’t either-

Grant (41:40):
Something like-

Kevin (41:41):
Huh?

Grant (41:42):
… two million cells per milliliter per degree Plato.

Kevin (41:47):
Yeah, per degree Plato. Yeah. And then increase the oxygen and then the fermentation usually takes quite a bit longer. Sometimes you got to rouse the yeast. Sometimes you got to do a second pitch. So a lot of work for a little bit of this stuff. And then we age him on oak for at least a year, so you don’t know if you were successful for a while.

Grant (42:12):
Wow.

Heather (42:14):
That’s a commitment.

Grant (42:18):
It’s a lot to unpack there.

Kevin (42:21):
Yeah, in a nutshell. Yeah.

Grant (42:21):
So, a year. So all of them for a year.

Kevin (42:26):
At least. Yeah, at least. So, a lot I did was five years and I didn’t even know if I’d be alive for that one, but it worked out.

Grant (42:38):
Are you going into spirit barrels or are you putting oak inside the stainless steel tanks, or how are you going about that?

Kevin (42:46):
No, no, I’m strictly barrels.

Grant (42:48):
Strictly barrels.

Kevin (42:49):
Yeah. You don’t get that magic little bit of oxidation that you need on the tanks, I think. I like the barrels because the surface area to the beer is perfect on a whiskey or a wine barrel, 52, 53 to 65 gallons in range. So yeah, I don’t do any of that in tank. I’ve done experiments with that. I just didn’t get the results that I wanted as far with the oak. Barrels used to be cheaper than stainless. Now, it’s the other way around.

Grant (43:26):
Good point.

Kevin (43:27):
When I first started doing it, I think it was ’97. I cold called to cooper in Napa Valley. To this day, a friend of mine who comes up here and visits and his name is Phil Burton, no relation that we know of except for bad jokes, but I went down there and saw him and spent a week down there. He showed me the ins and outs of coopering. I would always get his one-off that he would get samples from. So we’d have Ukrainian barrels and hung all these weird places that made different oak barrels.

Grant (44:04):
European oak and stuff.

Kevin (44:07):
Yeah, he’d give me all this weird stuff, so I always had cool stuff going on. I’d get used wine barrels from him. He didn’t have bourbon or whiskey barrels, so I get those back heat from back yeast freshly dumped, but yeah, all the above.

Grant (44:22):
Cool. You said entirely in barrels. Are you still firming and stainless and going into a barrel or are you-

Kevin (44:31):
Yeah, that’s what we do.

Grant (44:31):
Okay.

Kevin (44:33):
We don’t do any sours. We don’t infect the beers in the wood. It’s just all straight up beers, barley wines, strong ales, big stouts, porters and whatever else you can think of that has high alcohol that we created.

John (44:52):
Tell them about the Arctic Colt 45.

Kevin (44:56):
Well, that one actually didn’t go and up. There was a bar north of here called the West Rib in Talkeetna, a little town with one-stop sign at the end of a road. They called me up one day, [inaudible 00:45:09] us, and said, “Hey, could you make us a high alcohol beer that’s light in color?” I said, “I know where this is going. You guys, just get Colt 45.” They said, “No, no, we want you guys to make it.” I had just got a bunch of 2,000 pounds of honey dirt almost free, so I said “Yeah, I could do that.”

(45:31)
So I made them this 20 Plato, 9% light colored, easy drinking, mess you up beer and set it up there. They called it Ice Axe Ale because it’s where the climbing community gathers to go up to a climb Denali where the little airplanes take off from. That first night, I guess three people wrecked their cars. There’s only one-stop sign in this town, right? It’s so small, so it’s hard to do. Nobody got hurt.

Grant (46:02):
That’s good.

Kevin (46:03):
So the next day, they limited you to two pints of that unless… And they have a climbing wall in there because it’s a climbing community. You can do the climbing wall up to the ceiling, sign the ceiling, and get back down without falling, then you can have a third one.

Grant (46:21):
I love that. I mean, it sort of sounds like a trip ale, but I’m guessing you used… Instead of a Belgian yeast, you used just a lager yeast or something?

Kevin (46:31):
Yeah, good old 1056.

Grant (46:31):
1056. All right.

Kevin (46:33):
The Wyeast, the Chico ale use.

Grant (46:36):
Oh, okay, okay. California yeast. Yeah.

Kevin (46:39):
Yeah. It’s just a-

John (46:41):
Kevin cans it now. I mean, it’s called Glacier mass level. They do all the packaging for Glacier Brewhouse, so he packaged that. It’s just called Imperial Blonde, I think, in a can.

Heather (46:55):
Oh, I saw that on the website. It was like 9.5% golden ale.

Kevin (47:00):
Yeah. Well, we also make one called Magnitude 9.2 that’s high up. That’s named after our bigger earthquake in ’64 up here, which was 9.2, and that’s the double-sitter sale. It’s just easy drinking, kind of grape, fruity, tangeriney. It’s one of our top sellers. First time we were canning, it was I think three years ago in November. Right during the can run, we had a 7.2 earthquake that lasted 45 seconds. It shook the hell out of the building. In the tap room, the taps were flopping open. One of my guys, Woody, he runs in there and starts playing Whac-A-Mole, trying to keep them all closed and we’re all yelling, “Woody, Woody, get out of there?” He goes, “No, I’m saving the beer.” And then the earthquake ended and we continued packaging, not knowing how messed up Alaska just got. The freeway was broken. I mean, just all kinds of crap. 20-minute drive took me four hours to get home, but the brewery was fine. The brewery actually was… The building was built in the ’50s and made it through the ’64 earthquake.

Grant (48:17):
Wow.

Kevin (48:18):
It held.

Grant (48:18):
Big beers and big earthquakes.

Kevin (48:21):
Yeah. So anyway, that’s Magnitude 9.2.

Grant (48:26):
How are you doing yeast nutrients for these high ABV beers? Do you have-

Kevin (48:30):
I don’t use them. I don’t use yeast nutrients on these. I just double pitch rate and a little more oxygen and they do great. I don’t want them to ferment down and be real dry anyway. Anywhere between five and eight Plato finishing, I’m good with it.

Grant (48:46):
Okay. So I guess without using nutrients and stuff, are you using a fresh pitch of yeast every time? I know that’s a-

Kevin (48:56):
No. No.

Grant (48:56):
No? Okay.

Kevin (48:57):
I like to get the yeast up on step, so it’s not a pure yeast culture that I’ve propagated up right at that week or anything. I like to get it up on step, so it’s in really good shape. The 1056 works. I like the Wyeast 1728, the Scottish ale yeast, that one’s pretty hardy and it leaves you a little bulkiness to it.

Grant (49:20):
Interesting. Okay. So those are probably your two primary yeast that you use for Matanuska?

Kevin (49:26):
Even those are pretty hardy yeast.

Grant (49:30):
Okay. So once you ferment and stainless and before you rack it into barrels, do you have a number of yeast and suspension that you want to be at or under before you rack in barrels or-

Kevin (49:47):
No, we like to have it all drop out as much as possible.

Grant (49:51):
Much as possible.

Kevin (49:52):
I don’t want to put any yeast in the barrels, it’ll just die and then you get a yeasty flavor.

Grant (49:58):
Is there some number cutoff or are you just [inaudible 00:50:02]?

Kevin (50:04):
You give it a week or two chilling down.

Grant (50:05):
Gotcha.

Kevin (50:07):
We have a diatomaceous earth filter now, but it’s 20 square meters. It’s too big to be filtered that stuff. Sometimes I’d filter them when I was at Glacier because we had smaller filter before they went in the oak.

Grant (50:19):
Oh, really? Okay. So filter through DE, then go into barrels. Cool.

Kevin (50:23):
Yeah. But I do both, just time and temperature works too.

Grant (50:27):
Gotcha. So when you go into your spirit barrels, you mentioned bourbon. Is there any other? I take it you’ve tried different ones and you kind of-

Kevin (50:40):
Yeah. We’ve used brandy barrels. I’ve got some rum barrels going right now from plantation room with some stuff in them, some imperial stouts since we’re bringing out… At the beginning of December, we’re going to be releasing those.

Grant (50:57):
Okay. I guess probably not as big a concern for rum, but when you’re coming out of your bourbon barrels, you’re racking out of them when the beer’s aged, it’s finished, are you filtering the charcoal out some way, or are you-

Kevin (51:12):
We put a strainer in line to keep it from going into the tank and the packaging, but we don’t filter it. No.

Grant (51:20):
Just one of those long stainless ones with TC fittings on each end?

Kevin (51:24):
Exactly. I think we’ve got our GW Kent.

Grant (51:28):
Okay. Cool. Cool. Awesome. Would you say that you-

Kevin (51:31):
Do you guys sell those kind of things at Country Malt?

Grant (51:36):
Yeah, we don’t. No, we don’t, but they come in handy. Yeah. The reason I bring it up is I think there’s brewers that listen to this podcast that have maybe never played with bourbon barrels before. I know from doing it when I was brewing that when it comes out of the barrel and there’s bits of charcoal in it or something, I think that’s-

Kevin (51:54):
Yeah, The first use, there’s a lot of charcoal. Yeah.

Grant (51:57):
Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Really cool. Would you say that your consumers in general up there where you’re at… I mean, it sounds like you mostly brew big beers. I mean, is that just what your clientele wants up there?

Kevin (52:17):
No, we don’t mostly brew big beers, but we’ve got a couple in our main portfolio that we can that are big. And then the smaller system is where we grew all that, mostly the barley wines, the imperial stouts and things like that.

Grant (52:33):
Gotcha.

Kevin (52:36):
We have a small bottling machine. We can most of our stuff on a brewery canner, but we got a small bottling line that we do big stuff on, more exclusive with the… We used this fancy wax for the tops of the bottles that Country Malt sells.

Grant (53:00):
Right on. Just the wax. Yeah. I guess we have all the different colors of the wax beads.

Kevin (53:04):
Yeah. Yep.

Grant (53:12):
Okay.

Heather (53:12):
That’s quite a process though too, isn’t it?

Kevin (53:13):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We got a couple guys that just do that and they’re got all these cool techniques they do now and make one color around it and then they drizzle another color around it. They’re getting into it.

Grant (53:26):
Love it. Love it. I believe Maker’s Mark whiskey does that once a year for a seasonal release, where they do the different colors. They do school colors for colleges and stuff.

Kevin (53:39):
Yeah.

Grant (53:40):
We’ve covered quite a bit here, but do you ever have any concerns with barrel hydration? I know you mentioned rum barrels, like plantation rum barrels. It’s been my experience when I would get a rum barrel in to fill, they generally had a lot of leaks. They would leak like it’s a-

Kevin (53:59):
They’re beat to hell. Yeah.

Grant (54:02):
Yeah. Any tips for handling that?

Kevin (54:04):
Well, that’s a lot of stuff I learned that working with this cooper down in California, how to fix them, there’s different ways you can fix them. You can hydrate them. You can knock the hoops tighter that are around the barrel. If you really get into it, they have this stuff called flagging. You can loosen up the stage up a little bit and put that in between the stage and knock the hoop bag down. They got little pegs you can put in. They’ve even got this waxy stuff.

(54:42)
There’s all kinds of different ways to fix a leaky barrel, but the best way to keep them from not leaky is to keep them full of product. So we don’t let them sit around. When we empty them, we’ve already got a brew ready to go back into the barrel. In between rent, in between uses, same day, we’ll empty it. We’ll hot rinse, pasteurized real quick and then we’ll purge them and fill them back up. If they’re going to sit around for a week or two, we sulfur them. You just burn a third of a sulfur stick inside of there and it keeps anything from growing.

Grant (55:18):
Okay. But sulfuring, not sulfuring spirit barrels, right? Sulfuring like wine barrels or-

Kevin (55:27):
Well, whatever’s going to sit for a while, you want to take care of it.

Grant (55:31):
But that’s after the hot rinse?

Kevin (55:33):
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Grant (55:35):
Because if not, it’s kind of explodes.

Kevin (55:38):
You want to let it dry out, otherwise you’re making sulfuric acid.

Grant (55:41):
Okay.

Kevin (55:42):
Just the inside of it gets dry, then you do it.

Grant (55:45):
I’ve only ever used sulfur sticks on wine barrels, but good to know. So when you hot rinse them, like 180 degree water or something like that?

Kevin (55:56):
Yeah.

Grant (55:56):
Okay.

Kevin (55:58):
Yeah. Just to give it a fresh start. You don’t want to rinse it out so there’s no flavor left in the wood. I don’t want to kill anything that might have been starting in there. But usually with the bourbon barrels, there’s nothing growing in there when you get them. They’re even 27-proof stuff coming out them. If you’re really careful and we did this once, you can turn them over and we got about 50 milliliters of bourbon out of one time and we tried it and man, that was hot. You really got to put some water in it.

Grant (56:32):
Oh, for sure. It’s like barrel strength.

Kevin (56:34):
Yeah.

Grant (56:36):
Yeah. We used to get a lot of Woodford ones that were freshly dumped, Woodford Reserve bourbon ones. I think one of the reason we liked them so much is because there was a lot left in them. I mean, I think we’d get like 60 barrels in a truck and then it would be like… Gosh, we’d probably get out of 60 barrels like pulling off barrel strength from bourbon in them, maybe a gallon.

Kevin (57:03):
So who do you say that guy is?

Grant (57:05):
Woodford Reserve. When you do some of these bigger beers, do you do anything with spices or some kind of adjunct or anything like that?

Kevin (57:14):
In the barrel?

Grant (57:16):
Yeah. I guess my question is where would you add it? Do you do it in the barrel? Do you do it when it goes back into stainless or how would you handle that?

Kevin (57:25):
Yeah. I mean, sometimes we’ll use some fruit, like some cherry aseptic puree. We put in the barrel or we put it in the fermenter at the end of fermentation, but it ends up going a little bit into the barrel. And then what I like to do is when I was at Glacier, we did the Cherry XXXMas. It was Santa’s little helper. We aged that in the barrel for a year and release it. And then I’d fill that back up with an imperial stout and you’d get that cherry flavor next year from the previous beer, which was kind of cool.

Grant (58:00):
Yeah, I like that. Kind of like the second use, I guess like the cherry dregs, if you will, right?

Kevin (58:08):
Yeah. I mean, we rinsed it out and everything, but it’s still saturated in the wood.

Grant (58:11):
Sure.

Kevin (58:12):
So yeah, we’ve done that with different fruits.

Grant (58:18):
Is that the XXXMas?

Kevin (58:20):
Yeah. This year over Matanuska Brewing, where I’m at now, we’re going to do a Belgian triple, but we’re going to add cherries to it, so it’s going to be our cherry bomb kind of deal, and that’ll go on oak per year. And then we’ll have that one, that oak flavored. When we did last year that we just emptied, we did a double blueberry. We filled that one back. It’s triple block, so we’ll see that next with some blueberry flavor.

Grant (58:51):
I guess one, I guess the-

Kevin (58:52):
Just to clarify, you’re doing West Coast right now. Alaska is also the furthest east, just so you know.

Heather (59:02):
East and west.

Grant (59:03):
East and west.

Kevin (59:05):
Although the Aleutians thing crosses the International Date Line.

Heather (59:07):
There you go.

Grant (59:09):
Excellent.

Kevin (59:11):
We could talk during either segments.

Grant (59:15):
Well, I guess the last thing I’d like to leave it with is does Matanuska have any beers that you’ve got in the tank or anything coming out soon that you’re really excited about?

Kevin (59:29):
We have a whole bunch of oak-aged high gravity stuff that we’ve been releasing and we got some more coming out. Next week we got two barley wines coming out. One was aged in Evan William’s bourbon barrels and one was aged in Old Fitzgerald Larceny bourbon barrels, supposed to be available in bottles. And then a month later, December 1st, we’ve got four different imperial stouts coming out in bottles. It’ll be for sale. Those were all in oak for two years each. We got Evan William’s bourbon barrels, plantation run barrels, Elijah Craig 10-year barrels and some great brandy barrels that have a four different beers we would get.

Grant (01:00:16):
You got Elijah Craig barrel, 10-year-old Elijah Craig barrels, that sounds pretty hard to come by. That sounds awesome.

Kevin (01:00:21):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a whole nother segment on finding barrels.

Grant (01:00:25):
Sure.

Heather (01:00:26):
That’s actually not a bad idea.

Grant (01:00:27):
Yeah.

Kevin (01:00:27):
You want to get them freshly dumped and you want to get the ones you want that nobody else has, so it makes it cool.

Grant (01:00:36):
Right on.

Heather (01:00:36):
For sure. Well, it seems like you know how to stay warm in Alaska.

Grant (01:00:40):
Yeah.

Kevin (01:00:41):
Yeah. I’m going to Mexico Sunday. That’s how you do it.

Heather (01:00:43):
Yes, so true. Or if you’re John, go down to Texas.

Kevin (01:00:49):
Yeah. We also have direct flights to Honolulu, five and a half hours straight down.

Grant (01:00:53):
That’s hard to beat.

Heather (01:00:54):
It’s hard to beat.

Kevin (01:00:57):
Except when it’s 30 below here and you get there and it’s 85, it really shocks you.

Heather (01:01:02):
I bet. Yeah.

Grant (01:01:03):
I think that [inaudible 01:01:05].

Heather (01:01:03):
Grant, we’ve been doing this too long.

Grant (01:01:09):
We have. Yeah. We’ll leave it there. Kevin, thanks so much for joining us today and dropping some of your barley wine knowledge.

Kevin (01:01:16):
Well, thanks for having me. Drink more barley wine.

Grant (01:01:19):
That’s right, barley wine.

Heather (01:01:21):
Barley wine is life. Thanks, everyone.

(01:01:26)
Well, that is it for another episode of The BrewDeck Podcast. Great big thanks to our guests from Matanuska Brewing in Alaska and Tatamagouche Brewing in Nova Scotia. It’s great to have them on talking all things big beers. Did you learn anything cool, Grant?

Grant (01:01:46):
I did. They dropped some serious knowledge.

Heather (01:01:46):
It was awesome and it made me really thirsty.

Grant (01:01:49):
Yeah, for sure.

Heather (01:01:51):
Well, quick reminder, before we jump for the day, the Pink Boots Blend is officially available for pre-order. It started October 17th and runs until December 31st, so the end of the year. The blend this year is a mixture of Loral, Ekuanot and HBC 586. It’s a really cool blend and it’s kind of interesting, they only picked three hops this year.

Grant (01:02:15):
Yeah, a little bit less than in the past. I love me some 586, that’s that big fruit punch, fruit cocktail is how they describe it, but that is a great hop, really stoked to have the blend.

Heather (01:02:30):
Yeah, super excited to see what people can make from this this year. So make sure to get in touch with your sales rep to get your pre-orders in for that. We’ll see you in a couple weeks when we’re going to be talking all things Thanksgiving and beer pairings.

Grant (01:02:45):
That’s right. Yep.