EPISODE S.4, E.26

Heather (00:09):
Welcome back to another episode of The BrewDeck Podcast. I am your host, Heather Jerred. I am joined right now by Adam Wilson. How’s it going, Adam?

Adam (00:18):
Oh, it’s fantastic. How about yourself?

Heather (00:20):
So far, so good on this lovely November day, out on the West Coast. It’s a little rainy out here. I don’t know what you-

Adam (00:27):
It’s doing the same thing right here. But-

Heather (00:30):
It is the perfect weather to talk about barrel-aged beers. Yeah, we’ve got a really great episode today. We’re going to be talking to Sean Sasscer from Cigar City Brewing in Tampa, Florida, where it’s probably not cold and raining. As well as John Laughman from Martin House Brewing in Fort Worth, Texas.

Adam (00:49):
I dare to say this will be a barrel of fun.

Heather (00:54):
And the dad jokes keep coming. And this is why we love having you as part of the team, Adam.

Adam (01:00):
That’s the main reason why I’m here, Heather.

Heather (01:03):
Both of these guests are going to talk to us about sourcing barrels, barrel maintenance, general things on you might need to know to get a barrel program up and running at your brewery. So take a listen. All right, before we jump into our episode, we want to talk about the Pink Boots Hop Blend again for you. And today we are joined by Sydney [inaudible 00:01:28], the technical brewer for Yakima Chief Hops. Welcome, Sydney.

Sydney (01:30):
Hi, how are you?

Heather (01:31):
I’m doing pretty good. How are you?

Sydney (01:32):
Good.

Heather (01:34):
Can you tell us a little bit about your role with YCH and your experience with the Pink Boot Society?

Sydney (01:40):
Yeah, yeah. So what I do at Yakima Chief is I work with our R&D and sales team to produce beer using our experimental hops and products for onsite evaluation through our sensory program, as well as industry events like CBC. I also work with our brewing partners to help execute trials and collaborations using those new experimental products and hop varieties. So I make beer for my coworkers and our industry peers to drink and yeah, try out fun new products coming out of our R&D lab.

Heather (02:18):
So I was going to say, you kind of have the coolest job ever.

Sydney (02:21):
It’s pretty sweet. Yeah.

Heather (02:25):
Yeah. Awesome. Well, can you tell us a bit about the Pink Boots Hop Blend this year?

Sydney (02:29):
Yeah, so this year’s Blend includes El Dorado, [inaudible 00:02:34], Idaho 7 and HBC 638. So internally, we have found that that blend comes off with some strong berry, orange and stone fruit notes, and then there’s also some floral and earthy, more noble like notes. So it’s a pretty neutral blend, which is really exciting and I think that’s what they were going for this year to see it across multiple different types of beer styles.

Heather (03:03):
Oh, that’s so cool. Have you got to work with it at all yet?

Sydney (03:06):
Not yet, no. I am working on planning a International Women’s Day brew here at Yakima Chief with the ladies that work here. And yeah, I’m really excited about that. But yeah, I got to smell it and it smells awesome.

Heather (03:20):
Oh, wicked. Well, as you have the coolest job in the world, being the brewer at YCH, so you get to spend your day coming up with really cool recipes to highlight all the products that you have there. What beer styles are you excited to see this hop blend go into?

Sydney (03:35):
Yeah, yeah, obviously it’s going to work really well in those Hazy Pale Ale and IPA formats. West Coast and Cold IPAs are having a little bit of a resurgence and I think it would be good in that format as well, but anytime I can find a way to brew a lagger, I will.

Heather (03:54):
Yeah.

Sydney (03:54):
So I would like to see it in a longer format. I think the more out there styles that would be fun for this blend would be ESB, that would be pretty cool to see it in there, since it has some of that earthy and herbal floral character to it. It might be a nice fun twist for that style. And then another one of my personal favorites is sours. So any sort of sour, maybe like a [inaudible 00:04:20] would be cool. Yeah.

Heather (04:23):
Oh, there’s a lot of cool things that this can be used for. I love that ESB suggestion. I think that sounds absolutely fantastic. But yeah, I’m always down for a good lager as well, so I think to be able to really highlight all the really cool aspects of this blend, that would be really, really cool. For everybody listening, we have limited availability of the hop blend this year. It is very much a while supplies last, so make sure you pre-order so you don’t miss out. Reach out to CMG or YCH to pre-order. Thank you so much for joining us today, Sydney.

Sydney (04:58):
Yeah, thank you.

Heather (04:58):
We are now very lucky to be joined by Sean Sasscer from Cigar City Brewing in Tampa, Florida. Sean is the brewing manager at Cigar City. Sean, could you introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your role at Cigar City.

Sean (05:13):
Absolutely, yeah. I’m Sean Sasscer, I’m the brewing manager at Cigar City Brewing. I focus a lot on innovation and barrel aging projects, so innovation of new beers, the tasting room innovation that can come out for distributed beers. And I still, from my early days as a seller and barrel manager, have held on to the fun role of putting together blends of barrels and creating a lot of our projects.

Heather (05:42):
Oh, that’s so fun. I literally told Cheyenne and I’m like, “I feel like a blender is a job that I want to do.” I feel like that is a really, really fun job. Am I completely wrong?

Sean (05:53):
It’s a incredible job. I have a lot of fun with it because each barrel’s going to express differently and each barrel is going to be unique. And so a lot of the times you can approach it two ways, if you start out with a blank canvas, you can blend the beers to fit a unique and fun profile that may be new or exciting. Or if you have a predetermined project in mind, a lot of the times you can meet those goals by finding different complimentary barrels.

Adam (06:28):
That’s cool. And you guys have your own barrel program, obviously called El Catador if I’m not mistaken?

Sean (06:36):
That is correct.

Adam (06:37):
Pretty good. [inaudible 00:06:38] my Spanish. Pretty good there. That was good.

Sean (06:40):
It was perfect.

Adam (06:41):
Thank you. Can you give us a little bit of rundown on the program, and some of the trials and errors you go through and some of the success stories.

Sean (06:49):
Awesome. Yeah, so El Catador Club has been our barrel-aged club. We are currently on Club 17.

Adam (06:56):
Oh, wow.

Sean (06:57):
So we’ve been doing it for quite some time. The club turns twice a year and there’s seven barrel-aged beers released per club. You get two 500ml bottles during each release, so a total of 14 bottles in six months, plus other discounts and stuff in the tasting room, which were little perks. But yeah, no, we try to approach each different club with a loose theme, and which helps drive the blends and the creative process behind what beers that we’re going to produce. So we’re in Club 17 right now, so we chose to pick, it was an NC-17 horror movie theme, so we went to a lot of classic horror movies and developed beers that would relate to those spooky classics.

Adam (08:04):
That’s amazing. Give me an example.

Sean (08:07):
So we have a beer based off of some of the werewolf movies out there. So we made a black forest cake stout. Yeah, some of those early myths stemmed from Germany and from the Black Forest region. And so we decided to pay homage of that by making a chocolate cherry, really rich fudgy stout.

Adam (08:38):
That’s awesome.

Heather (08:39):
This is making me hungry and thirsty all at the same time.

Adam (08:45):
So I mean, being doing this program down in Florida, what are some of the issues that you typically run into?

Sean (08:55):
Well, the weather is not the best for barrel aging beers, but there’s a lot of ways that you can go about circumventing typical barrel aging temperatures and making the best of a hot and humid situation. We do a lot of barrel turning, which is taking stacks of barrels and rotating them. So as we know, heat rises and the top of the warehouse is often much hotter than the bottom of the warehouse. And so we try to give each barrel sometime up top, sometime in the middle, sometime at the bottom, so we don’t have a segment of barrels that are just cooking all year. And the segment of barrels that had a better, more hospitable temperature. It requires a lot more careful blending and a lot more sensory over time. Instead of having a perfect 60 degree climate controlled warehouse, where a lot of times you can age these beers for two to three years without getting too [inaudible 00:10:04], too oaky, too spicy.

(10:11)
I try the barrels, not every barrel because we have usually between three and 400 barrels going at a time. I usually pick a representative sample of each project and go through them once a month to see where they’re at and then make the call from there. And once I feel they’re ready, I put them in front of our sensory team, and we can start going through and figuring out like, okay, this beer probably needs another two months, or if we give this another two months, it’s going to be a tannic mess. We got to get it out now.

Adam (10:41):
Got you.

Sean (10:43):
So yeah, it just takes a lot more focus and care when you don’t have the luxury of climate control.

Adam (10:52):
Yeah, fair enough. So that’s just to do some quick math there. You say you have about 300 at any one time and you test about once a month. So that’s on average, 10 tests a day. Do you ever go home sober?

Sean (11:06):
Oh yeah. No, I do. They’re like half ounce samples, so I’m just giving a rough approximation of what it’s doing. Yeah, no, it’s days like today where we have a collaboration brew that we’re blending, and we invited the collaborating brewery to come over and try them with us that I’ll be consuming more-

Adam (11:31):
Right.

Sean (11:31):
Than a half ounce. So we can really nitpick, go in, and then we’ll be doing several different blends and putting it in front of people. And so yeah, it’s going to be a little more heavier consumption even though it’s only eight barrels we’re blending, but it’s the fun of it.

Adam (11:49):
Yeah, I was going to say, if you can’t have fun when you’re doing a collab, I don’t know why you’re doing the collab then.

Sean (11:54):
Exactly.

Adam (11:55):
So you guys mentioned on your website that you conduct frequent sensory panels on all the beers that you’re aging in barrels.

Sean (12:02):
Yes.

Adam (12:02):
Can you tell us about how you organize that panel and what you’re looking for in the barrel-aged beers?

Sean (12:09):
Absolutely. So what I’m looking for in each beer varies between the projects, varies between the style, the type of barrel. We have a phenomenal sensory team that we’ve put together over a number of years. I believe the shortest tenure of a person on our sensory team is five years here. So we’ve been doing it together for a long time and we’ve learned each other’s sensitivities, learned each other’s weaknesses, and learned what each person prefers in a barrel. And so yeah, we take eight to 16 barrel-aged samples, and we will go through, make detailed notes on each barrel and then compare our notes at the end. And most of the, 80% of the time we are pretty much in concurrence with each other. We definitely disagree on certain things. There’s a couple of people who really want a boozier barrel-aged beer. Some of us want it to be a little bit softer, some of them be more full-bodied, some of them be a little bit more “drinkable” by not being some sickly sweet 17 finishing Plato stout.

(13:33)
So it just depends on the preference, which makes it much easier when you have a project in mind to guide everyone because we can say like, “Hey, I really like this barrel, but it doesn’t fit in with this project.” So most of the time I’ll earmark it in a list and say, “All right, perfect. I know what this is going to be good for in a couple of months.” And so I’ll put that aside. We’ll come up with our final blend. We’ll try it several different times. And then once we empty the barrels, we’ll obviously give it another sensory. We’ll run through all our lab specs to make sure it’s all clean and good to package. But yeah, our sensory team does an exhaustive job of going through each barrel, pointing out its pros and cons. And trying to figure it out, because a lot of the times you can have a barrel that is too much of something, and you can have a barrel that is too little of something, but they’ll have different attributes that are positive.

(14:43)
And putting them together definitely creates something that’s greater than [inaudible 00:14:50] of its parts because they’re not only giving new things, but they balance each other out. And I think it takes a while to genuinely begin to understand the interplay of flavors, especially flavors that are as complex and barrel-aged beers. So that’s why our team is, it’s not small, it’s six people. But yeah, I trust them all implicitly because we’ve been doing it together for a long time.

Adam (15:26):
That’s really cool. What are some of the things you’ve learned from experimentation with this barrel-aged program?

Sean (15:38):
I’ve learned what barrels go with, what styles and how to push certain beer limits. The biggest thing I’ve learned is what people want and what people don’t want. And you can only learn that by putting out products and seeing the reaction to them. And then gauging your process to make a final beer that is as accessible to as many people as possible. We still put out some very esoteric and polarizing beers because if you’re just playing it safe all the time, what’s the fun in that? But a lot of the time, yeah we go through, we do our blends of different barrels, different types of beer, and we come out with something that we believe is going to be very well received by the public. Most of the time we’re right. Some of the times we are very wrong. And it’s just learning from those. We’re lucky that we on average put out about 20-ish barrel-aged beers a year. So we have a lot of feedback, constant feedback on what’s working and what’s not.

Heather (17:06):
Do you have any examples of the ones that don’t work? [inaudible 00:17:11].

Sean (17:11):
I’ve learned real fast that people do not want fruit in their imperial stouts. I absolutely love them, but if you look at rating sites and get some feedback from our fantastic tasting room staff, people are not into them. There is obviously the Barleywine is Life movement still moves strong. But a lot of people, I mean you could ask Kevin that. We love putting up barley wines and we really hang our hat on the barley wines that we produce, but it’s still a more polarizing style than just your Plain Jane imperial style.

Heather (17:56):
Yeah.

Sean (17:58):
So especially the way we push different barrels and different barrel blends is we try to create something very unique. And that’s not for everyone. But some examples. Yeah, barley wines, fruited stouts, definitely a no-go. Yeah. And then certain adjuncts that we’ve put in different beers go over really well. I mean, coconut’s always going to be a hit, but hazelnuts a little bit more polarized and we’ve done that a lot before too. Coffee is definitely an adjunct that, while it sounds great, can be very polarizing on how you treat your process because if you are not careful, it can get into that peppery, green pepper jalapeno notes that a lot of people can’t pick up, but when you pick it up, it’s bad. Some other successes that we’ve had have definitely been, I would say the majority of it is blending different barrels, they’re going to have different profiles. Blending a bourbon barrel with a port barrel, with a cognac barrel to get the different complexities of each, creating something that is definitely unique but also inviting.

(19:35)
But you really have to balance how much of what you’re using and how they interplay because it’s really easy to get muddled.

Cheyenne (19:45):
So when you’re doing your barrel blending, this all sounds really interesting in talking about different types of barrels that you are blending. Can you talk to us a little bit about what components go into determining what barrels you’re going to blend with each other and then a follow-up question to that. When you’re doing your blending, are you blending back any sort of fresh beer into barrel-aged product as well?

Sean (20:12):
Yes. So what goes into our determining what we’re going to blend is the style of beer and the barrel itself. And then if we know of any adjunct that will be added post blending. So we’re picking out stuff that if we’re adding adjuncts, we’re picking something obviously that’s going to be complimentary. We have some stouts are old ales or the like that we purposely focus the malt bill to be nuttier, to a bit more toasty if we’re adding things like hazelnut or peanuts to the beer. If we are going for something a little bit fruitier, taking something that’s going to be a crowd pleaser like a bourbon or a rye, and then adding something that’s going to bring in some bright estery or Venice characters. Like we did a Baltic Porter that was in these amazing Pinot Noir barrels from the Pacific Northwest, and they imparted these really rich raspberry lavender notes to the finished product that we were hoping for, but we weren’t necessarily expecting them to be as pronounced as they were.

(21:49)
So knowing what I’m getting out of it, and that’s another reason of tasting them so often is to start picking up early on in the process of where beer is going. And so knowing the next club is going to be nine months away, by the time it gets to that period where this barrel will be needed, it’s going to be fully developed and I have a good idea of where it’s going in its maturation. Yeah, so it’s really just knowing your product, trying everything constantly. And nine times out of 10, the barrel and the beer will show you the roadmap of where you’re going. It’s up to you then to push it in the right direction in terms of blending. Because yeah, the barrel’s going to be unique and they are going to, yeah, they’re going to show you what they are. And yeah, it’s up to the blender to make the most out of what it’s giving. In terms of the second question, depending on the type of barrel we will, we did a couple years ago, a mezcal barrel-aged imperial stout that was absolutely phenomenal.

(23:30)
Again, a very polarizing beer because if you’re not [inaudible 00:23:34] smoke, earthy, a little salinity, a little vegetable, like some cucumber, almost like spa water kind of aroma. Yeah, so when we did the final blend, we were like, this is awesome, and absolutely no one is going to drink it. So yeah, we had to take some other unbarrel-aged imperial stout and tone everything back in a way that was still making the beer very barrel forward, but not to the point where it was so overwhelming that most people would pick it up and go, this is just too much for me to even wrap my head around.

Cheyenne (24:24):
That’s really interesting. And like you said, the barrel’s going to do whatever the barrel’s going to do. It is like a, you’re along for the ride type of process [inaudible 00:24:31].

Sean (24:31):
Absolutely.

Cheyenne (24:33):
But it sounds like blending back some fresh beer might give you a little bit more control on that final product.

Sean (24:38):
Definitely, yeah. And then, yeah, just knowing you’re barely stuck. And there’s been a couple of times where we’ve done a project, blend it together, put it in the bright, and we’re like, all right, this is good, but it’s missing something. And so I’ll dip into another project and be like, all right, if I throw this in there, I think it’s going to round out the whole thing. And a lot of the times it does. But yeah, if you don’t know what you’re working with and what you got, it’s hard to just pull something out of a hat and be like, all right, this will work.

Cheyenne (25:21):
That’s very cool. Can you tell us a little bit about how you go about sourcing barrels?

Sean (25:27):
Sure. Yeah. Sourcing barrels is very important and luckily easier than it’s ever been. We use a number of different brokers. Going through barrel brokers is by far the easiest way to get the barrels that you need because you can order as many or as little as you want. As opposed to saying, developing a relationship with a distiller direct, you might be able to get full truckloads, and if you don’t want 200 wooden barrels at a time, that might not work for you. Yeah, these brokers give a lot of flexibility, and the quality of the broker has improved vastly over my 14 years of doing this. It’s definitely a much easier process. And because a lot of times if you aren’t a jerk and you order some barrels from them, a lot of times you can call them up again and be like, “Hey, I really like these barrels. I’m looking for something in the same vein.” [inaudible 00:26:48] Or you can start describing the profile that you want and they’ll be nice enough to tell you because obviously they want their business, but you start to develop a relationship and that trust with them.

(27:01)
And a lot of times what I found is a lot of the brokers themselves used to be brewers, and so they know the interplay between a barrel and a beer. And so they have some firsthand experience of being like, okay, this bourbon is really spicy, it’s going to be a little drier. But this one is going to be more what you’re looking for, more of that vanilla coconut chocolate. So yeah, as the whole industry is about, is developing relationships.

Heather (27:45):
So when you’re going into it and you’re calling your broker, do you know you’ve pre-planned like, I want bourbon and these are the aspects I’m looking for to come out of the barrel? Or are you kind like, I’ll take what I can get at this point in time, or has that changed? Like you said, it’s gotten easier. Was it previously, I’ll take what I can get and now it’s like I know exactly what I want, can you find this for me?

Sean (28:12):
It’s a mix. So previously, say 10 years ago, when you get cool barrels, but you had to go through what, two or three guys that may or may not have them, and you still had, I don’t know, 10 years ago what 3,500 breweries that are looking for them. Today, yeah, it’s a much easier because there’s dozens of barrel brokers, all of decent quality. So yeah, you don’t have to worry quite as much about not finding what you want, because nine times out of 10 you can find a broker that’s going to have what you want. There may be a new broker for you, and Googling things is easier to [inaudible 00:28:52], so a lot of times you can find out on the internet what the stock they have and using your internal resources of other friends in the brewing industry, you reach out to them and be like, “Hey, I know you’ve done a similar thing that I’m looking to do something along the same line. Who did you go through and can give me the contact information?”

(29:18)
Yeah, and we definitely, I approach purchasing barrels kind in two ways. A lot of the times I have some project in mind, so I’m going in with some intent. But every time I talk to a barrel broker, I ask what unique barrels they have, because a lot of the times they’ll surprise you. And he’ll say something off the wall that you’d never expected to hear. And a lot of times I’ll just purchase them on the fly. I won’t order a lot of them, but I’ll order enough to get an idea of what they’re going to do so I can put out a small tasting room batch with them or use it as a blending beer into a different project that I don’t know what’s the, I don’t know that project may be. But then I know I have this in my arsenal when I’m looking for something to add complexity to something else.

(30:25)
So yeah, I mean, we got some really cool [inaudible 00:30:32], orange liqueur barrels a couple of years ago that we, I had no idea what to do with until we decided to make a chocolate orange barrel-aged beer. I was like, wow, this is cool. And had I not asked the question of, what new do you have and what is off a beaten path? Yeah, I would’ve never known that they had those. So-

Heather (30:53):
You can’t always go in with exactly what you want in mind. You got to try and see if there’s something cool and new out there?

Sean (30:59):
Absolutely, and I think that’s, especially in the competitive beer market that we are in currently, I think that mindset benefits everyone in every aspect of brewing, and beer making and beer selling is that you really need to go into it with a open mind and be ready to pivot.

Heather (31:24):
Can we talk a bit about barrel maintenance?

Sean (31:27):
Sure.

Heather (31:28):
Yeah. What does it take to maintain your barrels?

Sean (31:33):
So we try to fill it up as quickly as possible. We do an inspection on them, making sure that they’re relatively closed up, yeah, that they’ll hold beer in them. So we might do a small half PSI pressure test and spray it with some liquid to see if there’s bubbles coming out. We might give it a quick fill with some hot liquor, see if anything leaks. If there’s any question though about the integrity of the barrel, we do have a little portable sanitary steam generator that we’ll hit the barrel with for a little bit, but that is not as big of an issue anymore because of the quality of the barrels that the brokers are getting now. And the demand for barrels is so high that they’re not sitting in warehouses like they used to for months at a time drying out. The worst thing a brewer can find and receive is a completely dry barrel, and that’s becoming a harder and harder thing to receive because the quality of what we’re getting is definitely improving.

Cheyenne (32:50):
That’s good.

Sean (32:52):
But yeah, we have the tools to repair a barrel, but every time you steam, you’re ripping a layer of flavor out of that thing. Every time you rinse, you’re rinsing out potential good qualities from the barrel. So we try not to, and that’s again, going back to having relationships, knowing that and setting your expectations with a broker and being like, “Hey, I’m ordering this from you because I know it’s going to hold.” And yeah, with the demand, with a lot more scrutiny than there used to be about barrel quality, the brokers know that they have to show up and they have to provide a product that will be as advertised.

Cheyenne (33:50):
Do you ever do second use barrels? Do you ever empty a barrel and then reuse it for a different project, or is it a one and done type situation?

Sean (34:00):
99% of the time it’s a one and done situation.

Cheyenne (34:02):
Got it. Is that just because you use up a lot of the flavor attributes the first time around or is it a quality thing?

Sean (34:11):
Yeah, a lot of the times, it’s a little bit of both. If we did, and when we have done second use barrels, we have definitely given them a thorough rinse, a steam, and then fill them back up again. But there’s diminishing returns in adding beer to a second use barrel, it’s not going to be as potent as the first use, which may be something that the brewer blender is looking for. We definitely try to stick with one use if possible, but there’s a lot of brewers who use two use, and [inaudible 00:34:57] having success and good for them. We are in the fortunate position where we don’t have to. But, yeah, and we also, we now have a little still, not a little still, it’s a large still, but it’s not, I mean, it’s not huge, but that our head distillers making some really cool spirits in. So these second use barrels are perfect for giving to him.

Cheyenne (35:31):
That’s very cool. It’s like a Bruce distillery type situation. We have a lot of listeners who are in that same position, so that’s very cool to hear.

Sean (35:38):
Yeah, it’s perfect for us.

Cheyenne (35:40):
Awesome. So you have a very well established barrel program. Do you have any advice that you can share for anyone who is wanting to start a barrel-aged program?

Sean (35:51):
Absolutely. Go in with intent. Barrel-aging isn’t going to fix anything. You can’t put bad beer in barrels and hope that it’s sellable. It’s not going to happen. Go in with intent and know what you’re trying to accomplish, but be ready to make changes if the barrel expresses in a way you didn’t predict. Start small. If you make a ton of barrel-aged beer right off the bat and have, especially in a smaller market that a lot of these smaller breweries might be in, you may not be able to sell it all, or you might not be able to package it all. And yeah, barrel-aging is an expensive endeavor, so I often tell some of my friends who are opening smaller breweries or even larger breweries that establish yourself, know your audience, know your clientele, get the feel for your area, and then go and make beers that you’re going to be happy with, that are going to meet the audience needs. And yeah, plan for that instead of just going in blind.

(37:25)
A lot of times it’s easy for brewers to, especially brand new breweries where you may have your license to brew before your tasting room is open and you’re trying to figure out something to do, so why not order some barrels and make some barrel-aged beer and throw it in there, and then you might be two months from opening. That’s just another two months of aging on something you can sell quicker than you might have if you waited until you were completely open. Some people have success with that, some people don’t. I would say start small. Start small. We didn’t start here with 400, 500 barrels. We started with 30, we started with 20. The early, early, early days we had like six, and then we found what was popular. We found that our audience was asking for it. Despite how hot it is in Florida, there is a very unique draw to big beers here.

(38:37)
Yeah, we started small and grew as the need grew because yeah, you don’t want to go in with some type of hubris thinking that you’re going to be the best brewer in the world, and make a ton of product and then end up spending a lot of your resources on it that could have gone to something more beneficial early on in the brewery’s life. And if you’re an established brewer, you already know your audience, so cater to them. I feel like a lot of the time young brewers are still very driven by making product that they want, and that’s great, but you still need to have an audience that’s willing to buy it too. So yeah, it’s making something that people want. And then you can always do beers for yourself, just maybe not all the time. I’m not saying that there’s going to be quality differences. Just suck up your pride. Make good beer that is also profitable, especially in the early years because you don’t know what the future may hold. It’s not 2009 anymore that no matter what you make, people are going to drink it.

(40:00)
The customer has a much more discerning palette, and they are much more, well-versed in what your community offers. So they can find, if there’s 30 breweries in your area, there’s 30 different options for barrel-aged beers or just beers in general. And if you’re not making what they want, they’ll find someone who is.

Adam (40:23):
That is, I just took down so many notes. That was pretty awesome. Thanks for that, Sean.

Sean (40:28):
Of course.

Adam (40:30):
As we wrap things up here, can you give us one or two things that Cigar City fans might have to look forward to over the next month or two, whether from the Barrel age [inaudible 00:40:43] program or just in general?

Sean (40:44):
Absolutely. So it’s going to be announced soon, so this may be a little spoiler, sorry marketing. We have a really, really, really fun project we’ve been working on that comes through to fruition on November 25th, which is our family reunion project. We have collabed with 15 breweries that have people either running, brewing, marketing somewhere in a senior role in those breweries that came from Cigar City and had a meaningful impact on Cigar City. We’re very lucky to have a very successful group of people who have cut their chops here. And so we did 15 collaborations, five of which are barrel-aged. So five barrel-aged bottles will be coming out all on November 25th. The parties, there’s no tickets, it’s open to the public. We will have probably 20-ish beers from other breweries and our own collaborations pouring there. We couldn’t be more proud of what we have accomplished with this because it’s so much fun to bring your old friends back.

(42:08)
It’s so much fun to collaborate in general, but also collaborate with people that you genuinely care about. And it’s been an absolute pleasure to be working on this project and to be so close to everything coming out. I’m very excited for it.

Adam (42:23):
That’s so good.

Heather (42:26):
Well, awesome. Really, really great to have you on, Sean. It’s been just, you’re a wealth of knowledge on this topic, obviously, and if anybody’s kicking around in the Tampa area, make sure you pop into Cigar City and go see them. Thanks so much.

Sean (42:39):
Thank you so much.

Toby (42:41):
All right. I’m looking forward to having this individual on today. John Laughman. He’s the Brew Master and head of production over at Martin House Brewing out in Fort Worth. What’s up, John?

John (42:54):
What’s up? What’s up?

Toby (42:55):
I’m glad that you and I touched base several weeks back at one of the Texas Guild meetings that you all hosted at your place. And I will say that Martin House has always done a really, really good job and been very supportive of everything local, including the Craft Guild here in Texas. So I’m glad that we got to catch up briefly out there. John and I really appreciate what you and Martin House does with supporting the local Guild. Because I think it’s important, especially post-COVID, right? To get all of the fellow brewers out and a lot of the industry folks together in one spot, and I really had a good time. So thank you all for hosting that.

John (43:41):
Yeah, thanks. It was a major rager. Lots of fun.

Toby (43:43):
Well, it’s awesome to have you on, John. I do got to compliment your Croc collection. Actually, if you haven’t met John, and next time you’re in town, go meet him, man. The guy, he’s extremely unique. He’s got a great personality, but his Croc collection and vest for that matter. Man, you’re killing it with the-

John (44:02):
Oh, shucks. Oh man. I’m blushing. I’m blushing.

Toby (44:06):
Yeah, I think the last one I saw was all fishing gear attached to your Crocs.

John (44:11):
Yeah, the [inaudible 00:44:13]-

Toby (44:11):
So awesome.

John (44:13):
Crocs man. Pride of my collection, pride of my collection.

Toby (44:17):
Oh, and Heather, the Canadians know about Crocs, right?

Heather (44:20):
Yeah, Crocs have made it north of the wall. So yes, we do know about Crocs.

Toby (44:25):
Sweet.

Heather (44:25):
I don’t know if I know anybody that has a Croc collection though, but I did hear about John’s before we did this recording. A little curious about it. How many pairs of Crocs do you have?

John (44:38):
I’ve only got four pairs of Crocs.

Heather (44:40):
Okay.

John (44:41):
That’s a funny thing. Everybody thinks, I’m not the kind of guy that buys every pair of Crocs. I only buy the really cool Crocs. So my collection is, yeah, a little bit more the premium level.

Heather (44:54):
I feel like you’re going to need to define really cool Crocs for me.

Toby (44:57):
Oh, these are cool. You got to send us a picture, John.

Heather (44:59):
Yeah, I’ll need photos.

John (45:01):
Oh [inaudible 00:45:02]. I’ll make that happen. I’ll make that happen. Yeah, they just, Crocs does a lot of collabs, so the ones he’s talking about is with a Japanese company called BEAMS. So they’re fishing vest inspired, so they have these little mesh pockets on the front, nice little coin purse kind of built in. So yeah, they’re pretty gnarly.

Toby (45:24):
Yeah.

Heather (45:24):
Multi-purpose Crocs.

Toby (45:25):
There you go. [inaudible 00:45:27].

John (45:26):
I got some with lights on them.

Toby (45:29):
I think I saw those.

John (45:31):
Yeah, I wore those to the Guild meeting, I think.

Toby (45:33):
[inaudible 00:45:34].

Heather (45:34):
For night [inaudible 00:45:35] . For when you’re doing night [inaudible 00:45:37]

John (45:37):
Night [inaudible 00:45:38], yeah. Yeah.

Toby (45:40):
Hey, John. So tell the listeners a little bit about yourself, how you got started over there at Martin House and what you’re doing these days.

John (45:49):
Yeah, cool. So the story goes way back. When I was in high school, I actually hit up Martin House and I was like, “Hey, I really love you guys. What can I do to work for you?” And they just said, “Turn 21.” So a week after I turned 21, I started volunteering. Back in the day we had a nice little volunteer program. So I’d come over here on Thursday nights and pour beer, and they just paid me a beer, which was a lot of fun. I miss those days. So I volunteered for about a year here, went and helped open up another brewery called Parker County Brewing Co, just a little bit west of Fort Worth. I was the assistant brewer there at first, got promoted to head brewer. And then after two years being there, Martin House had an opening for a night shift brewer, took the leap, came over here, did night shift for about six months. Then I got moved to the AM brewer, did that for another six months, and then got the opportunity to be the head brewer.

(46:53)
So that’s when I made my transition into the office. I was still on The BrewDeck a lot back then, but I was starting to write recipes and order ingredients. And then a little over a year ago, my boss moved on to become a tattoo artist. So I took over the position of Brew Master and Head of Production. So I currently run the whole show on the production side along with my buddy Rowan, who’s my co-head of production.

Toby (47:24):
Nice. Nice. [inaudible 00:47:26]. If you’re not familiar with Martin House, you should be, right. They’re doing some pretty wild stuff. And really that’s been you all’s forte, right. And maybe not purposely, but maybe some of it purposely, John, but you guys grabbed a unique audience. You all make some kick beers, first of all, but you really grabbed a different audience at some stage of the game when you all were continuing to be unique and creative with what you all are brewing out there, right?

John (47:58):
Yeah, yeah. When we first opened up, we were definitely more of a classic craft brewery. I mean, we have a double IPA, we had a blonde, Daybreak, the breakfast beer was weird in the market, but nothing compared to what we do now. We did a couple tap room only releases and, man, people just went nuts. So we just never looked back. Yeah, just now, that’s what we do. It’s crazy beers for sure.

Toby (48:31):
Well, tell us about some of those, because I can name off a list, but I’m sure it’s not even a quarter of what you all are actually doing out there.

Heather (48:40):
Yeah, you’re going to have to talk about the Pickle Beer.

John (48:42):
Yeah. Oh yeah, we’ll get into Pickle Beer, I’m sure. And that’s another one of those ones that, with Pickle Beer, we just made, it was for an anniversary. I think we made one keg of it as a joke, and people just went, I mean absolutely crazy. So we started to think, well, maybe this is something we could bump up in scale. And thank God we did, because that Pickle Money really has helped our overall expansion for sure.

Heather (49:13):
The Pickle Money.

John (49:16):
Pickle Money.

Toby (49:19):
Yeah. That’s with Best Maid, right? And Best Made-

John (49:22):
Yeah, yeah.

Toby (49:22):
Is a local, yeah.

John (49:23):
Yeah. So yeah, Best Maid’s down the street. They’re like 100-years-old, and it was a good partnership with them. They’re really good homies with us. Other people can use Pickle, can use Best Made, but we have an agreement with them that nobody else can put it on the label. So even though there are some other Best Maid Pickle Beers out there, we’re the only one that is advertised directly as a partnership.

Toby (49:52):
Yeah. Well, God, there’s all other stuff too. We will talk about the Pickle beer here in a second when we talk about barrel aging. But Spiced Beet Sour, and what’s this I hear about, well, you all did a Hot Dog beer, which in itself is odd. We had [inaudible 00:50:10] on-

John (50:09):
Yeah.

Toby (50:10):
I don’t know, a couple years back to talk about some of the marketing, some of the product, and then what’s this Buffalo Wings beer?

John (50:18):
Man, yeah, I mean, we’ll get into the crazy stuff. The original crazy beer, the original craziest beer was Azathoth. It was a menthol and squid ink beer that was 16%, tasted like mouthwash. It was wild. It was this weird green-gray color. But people loved it. I mean, it was just so crazy. There’s nothing else out there like it. And yeah, we’ve done mayonnaise seltzer, hop dog seltzer, mustard-

Toby (50:49):
I’m sorry, what? Mayonnaise.

John (50:54):
Relish, pickle juice. Mayonnaise, yeah, that was a fun one. I’m the inventor of mayonnaise seltzer, so that’s cool.

Heather (50:56):
Can you explain what that tastes like to me? Did it actually taste like mayonnaise?

John (51:04):
So funny enough, it smelled like eggs-

Heather (51:08):
Okay.

John (51:09):
And tasted a little bit like Play-Doh-

Toby (51:17):
Mmm.

John (51:17):
If you can imagine that.

Heather (51:17):
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Kind of salty-

John (51:17):
Yeah.

Heather (51:17):
Not that I’ve eaten a ton of Play-Doh, but everybody’s eating Play-Doh in their day.

John (51:18):
It’s kind of salty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was kind of, somebody was like, well, it doesn’t really taste like mayonnaise. Mayonnaise has lemon in it. Did you put any lemon in it? I was like, no, mayonnaise doesn’t taste like lemon, dude. We just put a bunch of mayonnaise in it, and spun it up and canned it.

Toby (51:39):
Right. What else do you want?

John (51:42):
Yeah, I mean, that tends to be where we go if we want to test something out. We just recently did a spicy sweet chili Dorito beer. Step one, buy as many sweet chili Doritos as I can and throw them in the tank, and then we’ll go from there. We’ll see how the product is at the end, and then we’ll work our magic. So yeah, nothing’s really off limits. We’re working on-

Heather (52:13):
Okay. But have you put some stuff in one time and it was absolutely terrible, it was just completely missed the mark?

John (52:17):
No, not a whole lot. Now, there’ve been a couple times where our vision for the beer, the final product is a little different, so we have to pivot.

Heather (52:24):
Mm-hmm.

John (52:25):
But as of right now, we haven’t really put anything in and ruined a beer. One year we put too many spices in a beer, and when we tried it, we were like, dang, this tastes like [inaudible 00:52:39]. So we bought some Red Bull, threw it in there and released Flavormeister into the world. So, yeah, as far as, we really don’t screw up and dump stuff down the drain very often, but we do have to pivot from time to time.

Toby (52:56):
Yeah, yeah. And you all have a smaller system that you can trial stuff on, or do you think you all are put together enough where, hey, we could go on the full size system here, and make two and pivot there?

John (53:14):
Yeah. So we have a five barrel, so we have three systems. We have a 60 barrel, a 30 barrel, and a five barrel. And the five barrel is supposed to be our R&D pilot system, but it’s really more so just do we want to produce less of it and get real crazy. We trust ourselves fully. We’ve been doing this for a long time, so a lot of times we just go straight to the big, if we think it’s going to do well on the big scale, we’ll go for it. But yeah, every once in a while we’ll try some stuff out on the pilot. But like I said, most of the time it’s just how crazy do we want to get and how much do we want to produce of it?

Toby (53:55):
Absolutely. What’s the strangest thing, well, subject at hand here, talking barrels.

John (54:00):
Yes.

Toby (54:00):
What’s the strangest thing you all have put into a barrel?

John (54:04):
I love this. We were talking about it right before the podcast started and we were both scratching our chin. For our 10 year anniversary we released Rum Ham, which was a rum barrel-aged ham sour. That’s probably got to be the weirdest thing we’ve put into barrels, I think.

Heather (54:25):
So you put ham in-

John (54:29):
Yeah-

Heather (54:29):
At what point in time?

John (54:31):
We put a couple of honey hams in the boil.

Heather (54:35):
Okay.

John (54:35):
Yeah. And the hams weren’t that good afterwards. The bitter, the hops made it bitter.

Heather (54:39):
Yeah.

John (54:40):
So, we didn’t really eat a whole lot of the ham. But-

Heather (54:42):
Boiled [inaudible 00:54:44] honey ham.

John (54:44):
Yeah. But it actually turned out, I mean, it really did turn out really well. The meatiness didn’t really come through a whole lot, but that sweet honey glaze worked really well with the beer.

Toby (54:58):
And then Pickle Beer, you all have done several iterations in the barrel of that thing, right?

John (55:04):
Yeah.

Toby (55:04):
And then I know you all have an Imperial Stout. That’s awesome. And I’m sure you all do several versions of that, peanut butter Golden Stout, Cookie Monster.

John (55:17):
Yeah.

Toby (55:18):
What’s your favorite? I’ll ask you that. And then two, we talk about just the customer base, when you all release these things, is there just a line out the door waiting for them?

John (55:33):
Sometimes, yeah. Yeah. So that talks to our barrel program. So we have a large distro barrel program. I might be getting ahead of myself here, but-

Toby (55:43):
No, no, please do.

John (55:46):
We release three new barrel-aged beers a quarter. So we have 12 distroed barrel-aged beers a year. That’s about 720 barrels worth of beer. So we barrel-age what a lot of smaller breweries produce in a year. But we also do a lot of taproom barrel-aged releases as well. It’s less frequent, but yeah, sometimes if we’re doing, we’ll sell single cans of barrel-aged beer out of the tap room and those are pretty sought after for sure.

Toby (56:23):
All right, well, going back to the first question there, which one has been your favorite?

John (56:27):
Man, that is a really tough question. All of our stouts are fire. So yeah, Queen Of The Mist, or Queen De Minthe this year’s version of the Cookie Monster. So it’s just a liquid thin mint that’s like 13%.

Heather (56:44):
That sounds delicious.

John (56:47):
Absolutely love that beer. It’s so amazing. We also do a lot of barrel-aged sours. So, we just released Silent Blue earlier this year, which is a whiskey barrel-aged blueberry and lactose sour. I’d have to say that both of those probably hold my top two favorite.

Toby (57:09):
That’s awesome.

John (57:10):
But they’re all, I mean, they’re all fire. Like I said. I mean, we have a really good stout program, so every barrel-aged stout we do is just amazing.

Toby (57:22):
Yep, absolutely. So when we talk about all these unique beers you’re already doing, is there a process where you look with your crew and say, all right, this particular beer, we’re going to try to put this in a barrel because this has certain characteristics we think might pair well with getting some face time with the barrel? And then secondly, is there a specific SOP or whatever that you guys say, hey, we’re going to use a tequila barrel for this? We’re going to use, I don’t know, cognac or whatever. Is there something you’re thinking about prior to dumping it in a barrel?

John (58:05):
Yeah, so this gets thrown back. You mentioned [inaudible 00:58:09] earlier. He’s our brand manager and really he is Mr. Martin House. So everything we do, he thinks it out in a marketing standpoint. What does he think sounds good, what looks good on a label, what can he get excited to sell? And then he comes to us and says, “Hey, I want this.” So as for what rhyme or reason he picks, I really don’t know. We do like to keep it fresh. So we have a tequila barrel-aged fruit punch sour coming out Q1 of 24. And I think it was just, we’ve done a lot of whiskey barrels lately. Let’s just throw a tequila barrel in there. Queen Of The Mist has been historically in wine barrels. So we’re bringing that back, throwing that in the wine, but it’s really just what we think is going to taste best and really accentuate what the base beer is.

Toby (59:11):
Yeah. I’m bouncing around here a little bit, John. So just thinking about it, what are your biggest challenges when it comes to barrel aging?

John (59:25):
It’s a lot of work.

Toby (59:26):
Yeah. Time.

John (59:29):
Yeah. Sourcing barrels-

Heather (59:33):
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. Where are you sourcing your barrels from? Do you deal with a broker that does all that, or are you going direct to wineries and distilleries looking for these barrels?

John (59:44):
It’s a little bit of all of it. I have four brokers that I hit up, and I just tell them what I want and then they’ll let me know. Two of them won’t have what I need, so they’ll get knocked out. And then the other two, they can tell me what they have, and pricing and then I can just choose from there. So yeah, just cast a wide net and then reel it in. We’ve tried to go straight to distilleries. Most of the time they want to work with a broker. They already have deals with brokers, so a lot of times we’ll go to someone and they’ll direct us back to someone we already work with. But a couple times we tried to source Sockeye barrels last year, really hard to find Sockeye barrels.

Heather (01:00:33):
Yeah.

John (01:00:33):
And we actually managed to find one of the 36 we were trying to get. So we just did a one-off Sockeye barrel beer. But for the most part, I just hit up those guys and they let me know what they have.

Toby (01:00:49):
Yeah. Let them do the legwork.

John (01:00:51):
Yeah. And even to go deeper in that because I’m sure you’re probably going to ask the question. A lot of people are like, “Oh, what kind of barrels?” For whiskey, we’ve gotten really good results, just getting generic whiskey barrels. So I’ve got one of my sources, she gets me really cheap whiskey barrels freshly dumped, and it tends to be a mix of Jim Beam, Heaven Hill, Wild Turkey. We really aren’t sure if it’s worth the price of trying to get the nuances of a more expensive whiskey barrel. [inaudible 01:01:31].

Toby (01:01:31):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

John (01:01:34):
Yeah. I got mad respect for people that can do that. But when you’re buying 36 or 54 barrels at a time, I just can’t go and get the craziest whiskey. We can’t get Pappy Van Winkle barrels and-

Heather (01:01:48):
[inaudible 01:01:48] all the name brand barrels.

John (01:01:48):
Yeah, yeah.

Toby (01:01:51):
Yeah. So for the listeners out there that may want to jump into barrel-aging and they don’t have a whole lot of familiarity or confidence in it, what are some of the things, that you would suggest to jump right into it? Or what are the things you need to look out for? Or for instance, first receiving that first barrel, what do they need to do with it?

John (01:02:20):
Yeah, so I mean, I think the important thing is to get freshly dumped barrels. You want to get them nice and wet. It’s always nice when they got a little bit of juice laying around in the bottom. And once you get them you want to, I mean for us, we have the ability to steam them. If you can’t steam them, fill them up with boiling hot water, just try to get them swollen up so they’ll hold liquid, try to make them clean and sterile for the beer. But yeah, I mean really the big thing is just get them and get them filled as fast as you can so they’re not sitting around. You let them go too long, they get dried out, there’s a higher chance for infection. Those barrels will open up and they will dump beer for sure. So yeah, the biggest thing is just get good barrels that can hold liquid and try to make sure that they’re sanitized.

(01:03:15)
And like I said, boiling water. I know there are some products you can put into barrels for that, but we have a steam wand, so we just steam them. Yeah, I mean that’s really the key there.

Toby (01:03:29):
Yeah. Do you all get multiple uses out of some of your barrels or is it a single use?

John (01:03:34):
Sometimes we do, a lot of those tap room only releases we will get two uses out of them. Most of the time when you get, especially with beer, if you’re going to reuse them, you’re probably not going to get any liquor flavor. You’re going to just get that wood. So sometimes we do, but not all the time.

Toby (01:04:00):
Yeah.

John (01:04:01):
Sometimes to cut costs. So that’s another thing to touch on is if you’re going to reuse a barrel, you want to make sure you empty it and fill it up. You don’t want to let it sit around. So sometimes what we’ll do to kind of help cost of a beer, we’ll do half the batch in second use barrels, so we’ll get the woody character and then we’ll do the other half in fresh barrels. That way we can still get some of that boozy goodness in there.

Toby (01:04:27):
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And when you’re aging the barrels and it’s hot as hell here in Texas, right.

John (01:04:34):
Yeah.

Toby (01:04:35):
So they’re obviously not, well, they are ambient temperature, right. So in that sense, when you’re throwing stuff in a barrel in Texas heat, it’s like a rollercoaster, but that’s what unique about barrel-aging, right?

John (01:04:49):
Yeah. Yeah.

Toby (01:04:50):
So yeah, just curious if there’s something specific you do or do you all just throw it in the barrels and let magic happen?

John (01:04:58):
We do have a barrel room that’s climate controlled to a point, I mean, it is Texas and it’s attached to our warehouse. So definitely during the summer there are some swings, but yeah, it’s temperature controlled.

Toby (01:05:12):
Okay.

John (01:05:13):
It’s about 72 in there. But yeah, I mean really it is just fill them up, tuck them away, and just try not to touch them, come back to them as late as we can.

Toby (01:05:26):
Yeah, awesome.

John (01:05:28):
We have a shorter barrel-aging time than a lot of other breweries do, just because of the volume, we need the space. So unless we take a beer out, we can’t put another one in. So we shoot for six to eight months, but a lot of times we’re closer to that four or five month range, but we still get great results. Whether that comes from, I think it probably just comes from the fact that we get really wet barrels. But yeah, the temperature swings probably play a good part in that as well.

Toby (01:06:02):
Yeah, really cool. Well, John, hey, I appreciate you jumping on as discussed, and I can’t say it enough, you all are doing some really creative and cool stuff, and I commend you all for sticking to what you all want to do and being creative. And I imagine as a brewer, it makes it a little bit easier to get up and go to work every day when you all get to do some cool creative stuff, right?

John (01:06:25):
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It’s the dream and yeah, we keep it fresh. I don’t really get bored very often.

Toby (01:06:32):
Yeah. Well, hey, we appreciate you coming on John, and for those that are in town, Martin House over in Fort Worth, Texas. I appreciate you all coming on and chatting with us a little bit and looking forward to trying some of that barrel-aged stuff that you mentioned.

John (01:06:46):
Yeah, thanks. Yeah, can’t wait for you to try it. Next time you come by, we’ll hang out and crack some open.

Toby (01:06:53):
I am interested, just go out and see John and the folks at Martin House. So I appreciate you coming on John. Yeah, we’ll talk soon.

John (01:07:00):
All right, awesome. Thank you so much.

Adam (01:07:03):
Big thanks to John Laughman from Martin House Brewing and Fort Worth, Texas. And to Sean Sasscer from Cigar City in Tampa, Florida. With that much information, what a fantastic episode.

Heather (01:07:15):
Yeah, I feel like I could start my own barrel program.

Adam (01:07:17):
I think you should.

Heather (01:07:18):
Maybe I should-

Adam (01:07:20):
You should, why not.

Heather (01:07:22):
Maybe I should. Just a reminder, it is the Pink Boots Hot Blend presale is going on now, so make sure to reach out to your sales rep to get your pre-sale in, there is limited quantities available this year, so make sure you get on top of that before it’s gone. And make sure to subscribe to the BrewDeck Podcast wherever you’d like to listen to your podcast, and we will see you next time.

Adam (01:07:43):
See you next week.