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Skip Schwartz joins me this week to talk about

0:03

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This is Beersmith Podcast number 287, and it's

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late August 2023. Skip

0:45

Schwartz joins me this week to talk about barrel-aged

0:47

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2:16

Today on the show, I welcome Skip Schwartz from

2:18

Weldworks Brewing. Skip is the head brewer

2:20

at Weldworks. And today he joins us to talk

2:22

about the Barrel Age Beer Program.

2:25

Skip, it's great to have you on the show. How are you doing today?

2:27

I'm doing very well. Thank you. Thank you

2:30

for having me. I'm excited to talk to you about some barrel

2:33

age stouts. Yeah. I've had Neil.

2:36

Neil and I are friends way back. And of

2:38

course, Neil's been involved in Weldworks I think

2:40

is one of the founders. But

2:42

I wanted to find out a little bit about you. How did you get involved

2:45

in brewing and how did you end up as

2:47

the head brewer at Weldworks now?

2:49

Well, originally out of college, I did

2:52

an internship distilling and I thought I wanted to go down

2:54

that route and make whiskey and

2:55

distill. But I quickly

2:58

found out that that wasn't for me. There's not enough.

3:01

The turnaround times are too long and it

3:03

wasn't as much creativity as I wanted. So I

3:06

got a job working at a

3:08

small brewery and I was doing some sales stuff and

3:11

kind of helping out here and there in production. And

3:14

over time I slowly took over more and more and

3:16

more of production to where I became pretty

3:19

much the only person doing production

3:22

at that brewery. After that

3:24

stint there, I was there for about three and

3:26

a half years. I went to Black Project,

3:30

Spontaneous and Wild Ales down in Denver,

3:33

who unfortunately has closed. And I was the

3:36

production manager there for

3:39

I think it was about a year and a half, maybe a little,

3:41

a little under two, two, I

3:43

think two years there. And then I

3:46

came up to work at Weldworks and I was

3:48

hired on originally, as

3:54

a, it's kind of a weird thing. I

3:56

interviewed for a senior brewer position

3:59

and me. And another fellow

4:01

by the name of Derek Gold, both

4:04

were hired for the lead,

4:07

it was lead brewer, lead brewer job, but

4:10

Derek was the better fit for lead brewer, so they hired

4:12

me on as just, we'll figure out what he does.

4:15

And so I became known as the special projects

4:18

person, so I would

4:20

do research and development, I'd do all sorts

4:22

of different things, I'd work with the barrels,

4:25

do some of those things, and

4:27

then slowly I took over the barrel seller,

4:30

and then I was, my title at that point

4:33

was, wooden seller innovation

4:35

lead, something crazy like that, so I was

4:37

working on kind of finding out the

4:39

next innovation, what we were gonna do, and then that

4:42

kind of transitioned into me taking

4:44

over as head brewer, so I'd do a lot of the

4:46

tank scheduling. And Derek, who,

4:49

like I said, started at the exact same time as me, who

4:52

got the job over me for lead brewer, is now

4:55

our senior director of brewing operations,

4:57

so together him and I kind of come up

5:00

together at WeldWorks, we're almost

5:02

at our five year mark, we started a week

5:04

apart, and we worked

5:06

very closely together for the last five years, and

5:09

kind of, so that's kind of my

5:11

journey here at WeldWorks, and how I got here, and

5:15

I guess Neil trusted me to

5:18

take over as head brewer, and

5:20

those are quite the shoes to fill.

5:22

That's awesome, well congratulations to you. Thank

5:24

you, thank you. Were you ever into home brewing,

5:26

or did you start out with any formal education,

5:29

I guess, or?

5:30

Not brewing formal education,

5:32

I did go to college, but I did

5:34

quite a bit of home brewing. One of

5:36

my things that I wanted to do was, when I

5:38

was home brewing, is I really wanted to be a professional

5:41

brewer, and I would brew one

5:43

gallon batches of beer, and I'd brew

5:45

the exact same IPA recipe almost

5:47

every day. My goodness. And

5:50

one gallon at a time, and I would do it, it's

5:52

about six days a week, and then on the seventh day, I would usually

5:54

brew a five gallon batch of something different.

5:56

Wow.

5:57

And it was just, I wanted to learn.

6:00

consistency and that was the biggest thing that

6:02

I when I was reading everything I was reading

6:04

and learning self-ad self-taught

6:07

educated was Consistency

6:10

is the biggest thing to being a production

6:12

brewer And so that was my biggest

6:14

focus as a home brewer was being

6:17

able to brew Have a

6:19

six-pack of beer all from a different batch and you

6:21

not be able to tell that they were not brewed

6:23

the same day

6:24

That's a that's a good piece of advice because when I

6:26

started brewing I started brewing all these day Yeah, every

6:28

time I brewed I'd brew a different kind of beer, right?

6:30

And I finally figured

6:33

out it wasn't really learning much

6:34

by doing that, you know

6:36

You learn a lot

6:38

more by brewing the exact same thing time in and

6:40

time out and then I end up working

6:42

in a pretty big production facility that

6:44

makes juicy bits, you know

6:46

three or four times a week, so

6:49

Where it's it's very good to have

6:51

those that that that background and that set

6:53

of skills to be able to go Oh this this little

6:55

things off. Let's tweak this

6:57

It definitely picks teaches you how

6:59

to tweak recipes and and such. Yeah

7:01

Yeah, the other thing I found out is my beer never got any better

7:05

Again

7:08

Consistency comes from learning those little

7:10

those little things that you could tweak it. I think

7:13

I think I'm sure you make great beer

7:15

Well, yeah, this is many years ago, but

7:17

yeah So

7:19

I want to ask you before before you jump into stouts

7:22

talk about some of the innovation gone going as well

7:24

works I know one of your titles was innovation

7:26

manager at one time

7:27

Yeah, so one thing that we

7:30

always try to be innovative with and

7:32

stay Current with this hops

7:35

as a brewery that is, you know, we

7:37

do make a lot of barrel-aged stouts and we will talk

7:39

about that Like you said, but one

7:41

of the things that we've always kind of hung our

7:43

head on is our as our IPAs as well so

7:46

one of the things that we do innovation wise

7:48

is we're part of a lot of like breeding

7:51

programs and We

7:53

got to work with some of the So we're

7:55

actually a lot of them are in New Zealand, but

7:57

we're part of the Brax brewing program which

8:00

is a program put on by the NZ

8:03

Hops. And we're

8:05

part of their program, so we get to test

8:07

out some of their early hops and we have to write a bunch

8:09

of their descriptions,

8:11

help them with descriptions, help

8:13

them use it in commercial testing.

8:16

That's been a program that we've been a part of for two years

8:18

now since I started. Really enjoy

8:20

that. We recently were

8:23

added into Freestyle Hops, their

8:26

hop connection program. And

8:29

that's very similar, we were testing out some of the

8:31

hops for them in a commercial setting, getting

8:33

customer feedback, getting our

8:35

own feedback. It's, that's

8:38

really just been a really big, good

8:40

thing for us. We wish that more

8:43

brewers, we were able to do that with more

8:45

hop companies.

8:47

But yeah, so we've been working on that.

8:50

Another thing that we get to do is

8:52

work with yeast companies. So we've worked

8:54

with Omega Yeast Labs for quite

8:57

some time. They're our house

8:59

yeast strain. We're working with their, we're

9:01

gonna be one of the first people to

9:03

do a large commercial scale with

9:05

their new DKO, which is the diacetyl

9:07

knockout yeast strain. Oh, interesting.

9:10

Tell me about that. I haven't talked about diacetyl

9:13

knockout, although we did. We did have

9:15

Stan Hieronymus on a few episodes back talking

9:17

about New Zealand hops. He just returned from a trip

9:19

there. So probably working with me the

9:21

same companies you are, but. Yeah, probably. Yeah.

9:24

But tell us about the knockout hops.

9:26

Yeah, so the diacetyl knockout, the DKO is.

9:29

Yeah, yes, yeah. The diacetyl knockout yeast

9:32

is a new thing that, well, they've been working on

9:34

it for quite some time and we've had some of their tests,

9:36

but we're moving to it for a

9:38

full commercial use and

9:41

hopefully switch over our house yeast. So

9:44

what they've done is they've been able to genetically

9:46

modify their yeast strains

9:49

to produce the same enzymes

9:52

as ALDC, which

9:54

has become very common to be used

9:57

with hoppy beers, especially

9:59

the hazy ones. that we're seeing in HopCreep. So

10:03

to already have that enzyme in the Hop means that we

10:05

don't have to add additional product like the ALDC.

10:09

So we're pretty excited to test that out and see how

10:11

it works and see how, if it continues to

10:13

carry over generation after generation

10:16

and they're pretty confident with their testing

10:18

that it should work and we're really excited to

10:20

see that.

10:21

And I know it's- Is this the mainly fight HopCreep

10:23

then, I guess, or?

10:25

Yeah, it's the fight HopCreep

10:27

and just help with lower,

10:30

some of the British strains of

10:32

yeast do produce a little bit of diacetyl.

10:35

I think it's pretty common to taste a

10:38

small amount of diacetyl in

10:40

most hazy beers, but as

10:43

somebody who absolutely hates it,

10:45

I would like to not have to worry

10:47

about it. And if we don't have to pitch ALDC and

10:49

yeast at the same time, it would be really

10:51

nice to just use one product.

10:55

But I know when we talk about innovations, the funner

10:57

things are talking about hops or phantasm

10:59

powder or some cool

11:01

new fruit or something, but the innovations

11:03

that are less glamorous

11:06

or stuff

11:09

like that are really exciting to me is something

11:11

like this DKO yeast. And I'm very

11:13

excited to be working with Omega and

11:16

hopefully the commercial scale

11:20

is everything that we hope it is. That's

11:22

awesome. Well, great.

11:24

Yeah. Well, today you wanted to focus on barrel aged

11:26

stouts. Why don't you tell us

11:28

a little bit about first the barrel aged stout

11:31

style and how it's distinct

11:33

from some of the other styles of stout people may

11:35

be familiar with.

11:37

Yeah. So, I mean,

11:38

usually most

11:40

breweries, I mean, I could speak on, so

11:43

WeldWorks does barrel aged stouts very

11:45

different than probably most people. You

11:48

know, the stout style is usually most people

11:50

just take an Imperial Stout and then age it in a barrel

11:53

for a different period of time. At

11:56

WeldWorks, we actually treat the barrel as

11:58

an ingredient.

11:59

So... when we're, when we're

12:02

the media noche that you taste in the market,

12:04

which is our barrel aged out, um, is

12:06

not, you'll never taste a non barrel aged version

12:08

of that beer. Cause we're, we, we treat the wood and

12:10

the time spent in there as an ingredient. So

12:13

it's a lot, uh, we, we aged a lot

12:15

longer, but, uh, we make it

12:17

different, very different beer. So we do three,

12:19

uh,

12:20

three matches on our,

12:22

and on our stout and a very

12:24

extended boil. So anywhere from 20 to 30 hour

12:27

boils is what we're doing. Wow. Why

12:29

do you do the complex mass schedule and boils

12:32

in there?

12:33

Um, so the biggest reason is we want to have

12:35

a very viscous product. Um,

12:37

that's like the biggest thing we don't,

12:40

I mean, clearly the easiest way to reach

12:42

these high, um,

12:44

starting gravities would be to,

12:47

um,

12:48

just add sugar, you know, add, we could add

12:50

simple sugar. We could add complex

12:52

sugars. We got LME DME, any of those kinds

12:54

of things to, to, to reach this

12:56

high. Just like, just like us, we

12:58

have, you have limitations on what you can put in the mass ton,

13:01

right? Sure. Right. And, and, and

13:03

we have limitations of how much grain we can put in. And,

13:05

and, and, you know, when Neil was writing this recipe and

13:07

coming up with how he wanted to approach

13:09

barrel aged stouts, um, he did not want

13:11

to add sugar in at all. And we wanted to

13:13

all be a hundred percent from grain. Um,

13:16

and that's kind of just the

13:18

mindset and the mantra that

13:20

we, we, uh, follow here. So

13:22

we've just carried it on. Um, and when I say high

13:24

gravities, um, I'm talking like 30

13:27

to 40 Plato starting gravities. So,

13:29

I mean, like we're talking monster monster

13:32

beer.

13:32

Um, yeah. That's a,

13:35

what's the alcohol on that? It's gotta be quite high. It

13:37

really depends. Um, so some fermentations

13:40

are clearly better than others. And that's something that you

13:42

don't have to deal with when you're looking at over 1100 starting

13:46

gravity. Is that right? I

13:47

do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um,

13:50

uh, but yeah, so we're looking at like, um,

13:52

1120 is what, what I

13:54

rough number is. Yeah. Play that gravity.

13:57

Yeah. So, um,

14:00

What, uh, sorry, what was the question?

14:02

Oh, I was saying you started, you started like an 11, 20 starting grave.

14:05

It's quite high, right? It's a right. Yeah. So

14:07

probably 11, 12% beer or something like that.

14:10

Yeah. So our, our ABVs are anywhere between 12

14:12

and 13. We've had some, uh, if

14:15

we add in, you know, coconuts or something

14:17

and say later on, um, they,

14:20

they might go down to 10. Yeah. We

14:22

usually say the safe, safe bet. They're going into barrels

14:24

around 12 to 13. Wow. We've had some

14:26

up, up into the 16 range. Um,

14:28

the 16 range ones usually get blended back

14:31

with something a little bit, um, lower

14:33

gravity from our barrel stock, but, um,

14:35

just cause 16% we think is a little too

14:37

high. Yeah. Yeah.

14:39

I mean, you're almost at a barley wine, but correct.

14:42

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

14:44

So, um, so you really start with

14:46

a giant Imperial start still, right? But you're,

14:48

and you're going through a long, now you did

14:50

talk about the long boil and I guess you're using

14:52

that to get the,

14:54

to get to where you want in gravity, right? Uh,

14:56

with, with a fairly, start fairly, uh,

14:58

lower, much lower starting match gravity probably.

15:01

Um, but what are you doing? You mentioned

15:03

a melt, multi-step mash or something like that as

15:05

well. Um, so we're, so we're doing three separate matches.

15:08

So we'll do on the first day, we'll

15:10

mash in of turn.

15:12

Um, we'll, you know, do the standard

15:14

mash rest and then, um, from there we

15:16

will, we'll do what we call rinse instead

15:18

of a full on sparge. So we'll rinse, um,

15:21

for about, uh, you know, a quarter

15:23

of what our normal sparge volume would be. And

15:25

that's just to make sure we're pushing all the sugars

15:28

out of the mash ton and we'll run that into the kettle.

15:31

And then as soon as that's done, we'll get the, the grains

15:33

out and then we'll start a second mash

15:36

and then that'll get us up to our kettle up and we'll do the

15:38

same thing. Well, we might sparge a little bit longer

15:40

on that one. We'll probably go closer to half the

15:42

volume on the second, um, sparge.

15:45

So that way we get up to a, a, a

15:47

kettle volume that we can boil overnight

15:50

without it, um,

15:51

you know, going too low or, you know, so,

15:54

so we'll, um, we'll do that and then we'll boil

15:56

it overnight. And then the next morning we'll come in and we'll

15:58

run and add a hundred. 100% normal mash.

16:01

And those are usually, we're maxing out our mash ton

16:04

each time. So that's around 1800 pounds

16:06

of grain

16:06

per mash. Gee,

16:09

yeah, that's quite a process. And then

16:12

you mentioned boiling for almost 20 hours and you're concentrating

16:14

that work way down to get

16:17

the high gravity you want.

16:18

Right, and so what we've seen for the most

16:20

part is we have shortened it. It originally

16:22

was 36 hour boils. We've slowly

16:25

shortened them. I mean, clearly the

16:27

stuff that you're boiling overnight is pretty much

16:29

unferminable. So that's why

16:33

we do the third mash on the second

16:35

day. And that's basically where most of our fermentable

16:37

sugars are coming from. Right. And

16:40

that's why we treat it like a normal one. So we have this huge

16:42

concentrate of like

16:45

basically syrup, for

16:48

lack of better terms, a syrup

16:51

that's that boiled overnight. And then we

16:53

pump in the fresh runoff

16:56

to make something fermentable.

16:59

Yeah, I would imagine there's some effect

17:01

for boiling it that long, right?

17:03

Correct, correct. Caramelization and

17:05

so on going on, right? Yeah, correct. Yeah,

17:07

interesting.

17:08

Okay, so what does

17:10

the grain bill itself look like? What's the composition

17:14

to get this big and pretty stout? Yeah,

17:16

so our grain bill is, it's

17:19

a little bit more complex than probably it needs

17:21

to be, but we, you know, base

17:23

is just pale.

17:24

We also, we use

17:26

a lot of different chocolate malts. So we use

17:29

regular chocolate malt, we use chocolate rye,

17:31

we use pale chocolate, which is my personal favorite.

17:34

I recommend anytime that we do a collapsed out,

17:36

we always try to include

17:38

pale chocolate. And of

17:40

course the pale chocolate's on the edge of that harsh

17:42

zone, so you're getting some of that complexity too,

17:44

right?

17:45

Right, correct. And then we use

17:47

a mix of different crystal

17:49

malts. So it's usually 40, 60,

17:54

and then the equivalent of 150, I

17:57

think that it's the DRC from.

17:59

another one of those harsh malts, you know, kind

18:02

of like a special, probably close to a special B, right?

18:04

Correct. Yeah. And then, um, we do use

18:06

roasted barley. Um, but that one

18:09

that we use in such a low amount that I don't

18:11

even really consider us like,

18:13

cause because of how harsh roasted barley can

18:15

be, we use, um, it's less than a bag

18:17

between all three turns. So, and

18:20

then we use a little bit of Carafa special

18:22

to, which is also a little bit harsher. Um, but

18:25

that's, that's pretty much the, the,

18:27

um,

18:29

what we use, um, like I said, the

18:31

ratios, uh, we get a little

18:33

more specific if we wanted to, but it's mostly

18:36

pretty low. Um, but the, the chocolates

18:38

we go pretty high on.

18:39

So how, uh, so what percentage of specialty

18:42

malt overall, you're running like 10, 20% somewhere in the,

18:44

close,

18:47

close, closer to 15. Yeah.

18:48

Yeah. That's still, still, still quite

18:50

a bit of special. Yeah. Especially

18:53

when we're doing three turns, it's, it's the flavor going. Yeah.

18:56

I will say that, uh, we are not the most efficient,

18:59

um, people when it comes

19:01

to barrel aged doubts. Um, I like

19:03

to say that we make irresponsible barrel aged

19:05

doubts. Yeah. Yeah.

19:07

Uh, what about the hops? What are you doing for hops?

19:10

Hops? We're just doing, uh, after, so

19:12

after the full boil, um, we'll

19:14

pick a, you know, whatever time we're set for,

19:17

uh, within 60 minutes,

19:19

we'll add in a little bit of just,

19:21

uh, magnum, uh, just to get

19:23

a bitterness, uh, usually ends up being around 50

19:25

to 60 IBUs, depending

19:28

on if they're actually dropped right at

19:31

all that high for the gravity you're using probably. Right.

19:33

Correct. It is fairly, fairly

19:35

low considering that's probably true to

19:37

like a normal Imperial or Russian Imperial

19:40

style that even might be low for that style

19:42

as well. So, um, it's, it's, it's,

19:44

it's fairly low. Um, but it's,

19:47

it's, uh, yeah, most

19:49

of the times they probably, because like I said, we're boiling

19:51

for so long, it probably goes in closer

19:53

to 90 minutes or even, you know, 120. So it, it,

19:57

the bitterness kind of fluctuates depending on when

19:59

the hops are actually.

19:59

dropped by whoever's brewing. Yeah,

20:02

yeah.

20:02

Are you doing anything special with the water? Are you using

20:04

a special water profile? No,

20:06

we're not doing anything with the water. We might

20:10

add some baking soda to the mash

20:12

prior, but that's really rare. That's

20:14

kind of something we do with more of our

20:18

Imperial stouts and milk stouts rather

20:21

than our barrel aged stuff.

20:23

And then what about yeast and

20:25

fermentation? How are you managing the initial

20:28

fermentation?

20:29

Yes. So you got a very high gravity starting,

20:31

you know,

20:31

correct. Yeah. So one of the hardest things is

20:34

actually with such a thick and high gravity

20:36

beer is getting the correct oxygen

20:38

into it. So we

20:41

try to run it off slow. But like

20:44

I said, our oxygenation stone has

20:46

struggles pretty hard to get in.

20:49

So it kind of, you see bubbles of, of

20:51

O2 going through it rather than, you know, a normal,

20:54

you see little streams of small bubbles.

20:56

Sure. In our challenge giant

20:58

bubbles going through. So it's pretty hard for

21:01

us to hit those, the

21:03

same oxygen. So we do pitch

21:06

quite a bit more yeast.

21:08

We're putting in a 15 barrel batch, we're putting

21:10

in, I think it's three kilograms

21:12

of yeast, which is about double

21:15

what we do on a normal stout or

21:17

normal, or normal, you know, us O5

21:19

is what we're using for that dry yeast. And

21:22

that's just because we can't repitch it. So there's

21:25

no point in using, you know, something wet

21:27

or

21:28

kind of keep the costs on that part.

21:30

So you're using us, us O5. And I remember off the

21:33

top of my head, but is it a high gravity? Is it tolerant

21:35

alcohol tolerant? It

21:38

is tolerant enough for what we're trying to accomplish.

21:41

Like I said, we have gotten up into the 16s before

21:44

or 16% ABV. Yeah. There's a

21:46

lot

21:47

of, a lot of beer. Yeast won't

21:49

tolerate that much alcohol. Right. And

21:51

yes, for some reason it's worked for us, the

21:53

USO5. But like I said, we're already dealing

21:55

with a really hard

21:58

beer to ferment anyways. And when we...

21:59

When we're doing collabs, we tell people these things,

22:02

they're like, well, how much attenuation are you seeing? I

22:04

said anywhere from 60 to 40%, depending

22:06

on what the beer is and how healthy

22:08

it is. On stuff, when

22:11

we're up in the 40 plateaus, which again,

22:13

we don't do those very often. We

22:15

do probably one batch of those a year, just

22:17

as a blender for extra,

22:19

just for different projects. But what

22:22

we're usually looking for, or sorry, on

22:24

those higher ABV ones, the next day, usually

22:26

day two, we're actually going to add more oxygen

22:28

into the bottom of the tank. That's one of the questions I

22:30

was going to ask you. It's very common of

22:32

high gravity meats, high gravity wines,

22:35

even some high gravity beers to add a second dose

22:37

of oxygen at 12 hours

22:38

or so. Are you doing that

22:41

as well?

22:41

Yeah, usually somewhere between 12

22:44

and 24, sometimes maybe twice in

22:46

that timeframe. We

22:49

do treat it more like a wine or a meat

22:52

because of that.

22:53

And

22:54

again, I'm not really scared of, because

22:57

we're going to put it into a barrel, I'm not scared

22:59

of oxygen

23:02

ingress occurring at

23:05

any step of the process.

23:06

I'm sure we'll

23:08

talk about that when we get into the actual barrel.

23:11

Yeah, but with a high gravity beer, actually the oxygen

23:13

doesn't really hurt it that much. Correct,

23:16

correct. At least in the first 24 hours

23:18

or so, and it can still process

23:20

a lot of that and

23:22

absorb a lot of that oxygen. It

23:24

almost none of it will end up in the finished beer.

23:26

Exactly. Overall,

23:30

that's kind of what we're looking at. But like I said, the

23:32

fermentation is about

23:34

as rough as we probably would like it in

23:36

our brew

23:39

house. It's the only beer that we accept for

23:41

fermentation

23:42

parameters.

23:47

If it's a little bit rocky,

23:49

if it's slow, if it's...

23:51

That's the only one that we kind of just let it do

23:54

its thing. Do you do anything special with the yeast,

23:56

like preparing it? Because one

23:58

of the big concerns with the gravity of that...

23:59

is osmotic shock, which is where you take

24:02

yeast cells, especially

24:04

dry yeast cells, and throw them right into a very high

24:06

gravity beer and you have problems. Do

24:08

you take some time to acclimatize the yeast before

24:10

you pick it?

24:11

Nope, nope, we do not. Nope, it's kind of one

24:14

of those things where. One of those things you might wanna

24:16

try in the future. I don't know. No, no, no, we

24:18

have tried using liquid yeast and

24:21

different things and harvested yeast from

24:24

second generation yeast. But

24:26

honestly, what we found is kind of like, don't fix

24:28

what isn't broken type thing. And I know that

24:30

it's not the

24:33

best thing to say, but it's just, we've

24:35

tried these other things and they've kind of come

24:37

to the same conclusion. And even some of the second

24:39

generations have actually petered out

24:41

when we've seen USO5 continue forward.

24:44

Yeah. So as weird as it sounds,

24:46

for some reason it just works. Well,

24:49

maybe the USO5 is more tolerant, I don't know. Yeah,

24:52

I mean, USO5 is a workhorse and

24:54

I would recommend that for anybody who's

24:56

just doing anything that you don't need

24:59

flavor from yeast. We

25:01

use that yeast quite a bit in house.

25:04

So do you let it, do you have a particular temperature

25:06

profile, do you let it free rise? Do you

25:08

just hold it to kind of a mid

25:11

range temperature? Yeah, we're usually around 68,

25:14

which is optimal for USO5. And

25:17

we just kind of let it do its thing there. And

25:19

fermentation temp is, yeah, it's pretty standard.

25:22

We don't really have to worry about diacetyl

25:24

too much in this.

25:27

Usually we don't see too

25:29

much diacetyl, but even if we did through the extended

25:32

aging, that kind of goes away

25:34

anyways. But we do keep it in

25:36

the fermenter for 20 to 22 days.

25:39

So that's a good period of time to let

25:42

it age out, right? Yeah, correct. And I seem

25:44

to be pulling it off the yeast at that time as well.

25:46

Correct, we're constantly dumping yeast

25:49

pretty much daily, dumping off the bottom.

25:52

Sometimes we'll do a little bit heavier. I mean, right

25:54

before we go into the barrel, we're clearly gonna do a

25:56

really heavy dump on it. But

25:58

yeah, so try. trying to get as much yeast out. It

26:01

will crash around day 20, usually

26:03

goes into barrels around day 22.

26:05

Wow, so it does go directly into the barrel then

26:08

from the fermenter, huh?

26:09

Correct, yeah.

26:10

Interesting.

26:11

And you just do that based on time,

26:13

I guess 20, 22 days roughly.

26:16

Yeah, usually it's basically, I mean,

26:18

clearly, usually by day 12 to 14, you're

26:22

seeing it's pretty much done fermenting.

26:25

And so the rest of it is kind of clean

26:27

up, make sure some of the yeast drops out. But

26:30

yeah, for the most part, we make sure it's

26:32

stable clearly before we're putting it into the

26:34

barrel. If it's still

26:36

fermenting, we can hold it out longer in the tank

26:38

until it's done. But we've never, at 22

26:41

days, we've never seen, or even day 20,

26:43

we've never really seen fermentation moving in

26:46

a beer that sweet.

26:48

That's cool. That's awesome. Well,

26:51

I guess we ought to move on to barrels now. We could easily

26:53

take up a whole show talking about barrels. Yeah.

26:57

But what type of barrels are you using just sort

26:59

of at a base level and how are you

27:01

managing them over time?

27:03

Yeah, so we use,

27:06

90% of our barrel warehouse is bourbon

27:09

barrels. Usually oak, just

27:15

American, Kentucky bourbon barrels. We

27:19

get them from all over America, but mostly Kentucky. And

27:23

the organization of that is quite a

27:26

task. I would imagine.

27:29

So at our biggest, we had 650 oak barrels

27:33

filled in our warehouse. And we

27:35

sit around around 350-ish now. That's

27:39

kind of where we found as our sweet spot. So it's quite

27:41

the tasks to make

27:44

sure we're keeping eyes on all of them. But we

27:46

have a spreadsheet that

27:48

has a lot of hard data on

27:50

it for each barrel, with

27:53

stuff like ages, gravity, starting gravity,

27:58

calculated alcohol. I like to say,

27:59

because we haven't ran it through our Alkalizer

28:02

prior to going into the barrel. Right.

28:06

You know, batch numbers, all

28:08

that kind of stuff. And then each barrel itself

28:10

has similar data printed

28:12

in a sheet hanging on the front of it. So that way we can walk

28:15

through and look at stuff and look

28:17

at those numbers. Spreadsheet

28:20

clearly with, you know, how long

28:22

it's been in there is a little bit more accurate because it can

28:24

automatically update itself to tell you it's at blah,

28:27

blah, blah month instead of doing the math, but math

28:30

is fun too. And

28:32

then for kind of managing

28:34

it, we do have a dedicated warehouse

28:36

that does have humidity control for the wintertime.

28:39

Since we live in Colorado, our winters are extremely

28:42

dry. So it does have humidity control for

28:44

winter. And then it also has heating

28:47

and a little bit of air conditioning. The

28:49

air conditioner does go out sometimes, which

28:53

is okay. I'm a very, I

28:55

kind of adopted this philosophy from Neil

28:58

when he was kind of overseeing all the barrel

29:00

stuff. And it's to kind of let it go through

29:02

the seasons. We want it to experience the

29:04

changes of the season. Clearly

29:07

the heater in the wintertime

29:09

is just so we don't freeze. It

29:11

doesn't really, I wouldn't say the room can

29:14

be warm and some of the barrels will get warmer than others.

29:16

But the biggest thing is we want to make sure that we

29:18

are keeping them from

29:21

freezing. And that's 100 percent it. We want to see

29:23

it go through the cycle of

29:25

every season and in the

29:28

winter, it's contracting

29:30

and pulling the beer into the wood

29:32

versus the summer. It's kind of expanding

29:35

and spitting the wood out. So we

29:37

want to go through those cycles of going in and out

29:39

of the wood. That's something that's really big

29:41

for us. But twice a year,

29:43

we are going in two to three times, sometimes

29:46

more. We're going in and we're reorganizing

29:49

all of the barrels to make sure that they

29:52

are in a certain order that we have. So that

29:54

way when we go to pick them for blending

29:56

stock and to actually produce the final

29:58

products, we're able to. to get to

30:01

the ones that we need to as easy as possible and not

30:03

lifting through all of the brand new filled ones

30:05

first. Um, and all the old ones are in the bag.

30:08

Cool.

30:09

Um, before we dive into that, how, how do you

30:11

manage the barrels themselves? Are you reusing them

30:14

multiple times? Uh, are

30:16

you, um, you

30:17

know, how do you manage the barrels from batch to batch?

30:20

Yeah. So, um, we are only currently

30:22

using barrels one time per, single

30:26

use. Yeah. Single use. So it does add a little bit of

30:28

cost into, um, the way that we're doing, but like I said

30:30

earlier, um, I would say we're very irresponsible

30:33

with how we produce barrel aged out.

30:35

Um, but, uh, we

30:37

do use them once. Um, if they come in and they're a little dry,

30:39

we will, um, hammer the,

30:42

uh, we'll do a hoop hammer on them and, uh, hammer

30:44

the hoops in place a little bit more. Um, and

30:47

then we'll do something called a bird bath, which is where you're going

30:49

to put eight, um, hot water, hot liquor,

30:51

uh, whatever you want to call it on top

30:53

of the barrel, um, on the barrel head,

30:55

and that'll help swell the staves around it and

30:58

kind of get it back to tight. Um,

31:00

we do not put any liquids in

31:02

the barrel. Um,

31:04

just so that way we're keeping that bourbon flavor. Um, since

31:07

we paid for the bourbon flavor, uh,

31:10

and the oak flavor, we want to see

31:12

that come through in the final beer. Um,

31:14

so by, by rinsing it with hot, hot

31:16

liquor or hot water or whatever, like I said, whatever you

31:18

want to call it, um,

31:20

you, you know, you're going to remove some of those flavors

31:23

and the biggest thing is to try our hardest to

31:25

keep those flavors intact until

31:27

they can reach the beer. So, um, the

31:29

goal would be to not do anything at all to

31:31

the barrels, but sometimes they come in in a little

31:33

bit less than ideal shape.

31:35

So we have to, yeah, I mean, you also can't leave them

31:37

dry very, very long either, right? Correct, correct,

31:40

correct. Yeah. You got to use them pretty quick when they come

31:42

in, I would think. Yes. Yeah. We, we, we

31:44

the longest we usually try to leave the things empty

31:46

would be three months. And that depends on how long

31:49

they've been in a warehouse prior to, um, we

31:51

work with a lot of people that get us barrels really

31:53

quickly. Um, and the, our,

31:55

our brokers have been really good to us. So, um,

31:58

we usually get them within a couple of weeks of them getting. them.

32:00

So that gives us that three month window. Um,

32:03

if they've had them in their warehouse, it's, they

32:05

usually let us know how long they've been. And then we'll adjust

32:07

our production schedule to fit,

32:09

um,

32:10

to make sure that we're not leaving them empty from

32:12

the distillery to when we fill them for longer

32:14

than three months. We will make exceptions,

32:17

but we try not to.

32:20

Now I'm managing the barrels as there, as

32:22

you're going through, uh, aging, do you, uh,

32:24

do you top them off as you go? Do you,

32:26

uh, how do you, how do you handle that?

32:28

Cause obviously you lose a little bit of volume

32:30

over time.

32:31

Yeah. So, um, we do not top

32:34

off our barrels. Um,

32:36

it's partially because, uh, we

32:38

don't in Colorado, we don't lose a terrible

32:40

amount. Like I said, it's dry, but the way that

32:43

it works is that we're actually at an altitude

32:45

to where we're actually not losing as much angel

32:47

share as say somebody may be in Texas

32:49

or somewhere else. Um, so because

32:51

we're not losing it, we're not, um, you

32:54

know, we're not super worried about keeping it. The

32:56

other thing that, uh, this is a personal belief of

32:58

mine and that's kind of how we've done the barrel age

33:01

program is, um, we're not really worried about

33:03

oxygen ingress at all.

33:04

Um,

33:05

we move our barrels when we have to move them, we

33:07

don't top them up. If we didn't want

33:10

some oxygen character, ox, you

33:12

know, um,

33:13

oxidized character in the beer, we wouldn't

33:15

put it in a barrel. Um, yeah.

33:17

The nice, the nice thing about getting a little bit oxygen

33:19

and something like an Imperial stout, it's going to add more

33:22

of a Sherry type finish to it. And so

33:24

instead of the paper cardboard thing, right?

33:26

That's right. And, and, and that's the big

33:28

thing for us is that, I mean, we make a sweet product

33:30

on purpose to hold up to those, those, those

33:33

oxygen, uh, ingress and,

33:35

uh, those, those flavors that come from, come

33:37

from that. And, uh, the biggest thing

33:40

for us is that it's part of our belief. And, and I,

33:42

I know people get really worried about their

33:44

barrel aged outs, getting too much ox oxygen.

33:46

And, and it's just not something we worry about. And, um,

33:49

like I said, if I was super worried about it, I wouldn't have put it

33:51

in a barrel to begin with. That's not something

33:54

that keeps oxygen out. So, uh,

33:56

instead of fighting it and trying to,

33:58

you know, I've heard of people. like, oh, they purged

34:00

the barrel before they fill

34:02

it with stout with, they purged with CO2. And

34:05

I'm just like, I don't understand because by the time

34:07

you're done, I mean, move

34:10

it into the resting space. It's that all that space

34:12

is oxygen again. Anyway, it's just, like

34:14

I said, I, that's, that's one of those things that I've always

34:16

kind of seen. Like I'm on the outside, um,

34:19

of the overall, um, Brewers

34:21

or professional brewers. Uh, when I

34:24

say that I don't, I genuinely don't

34:26

fight it. I embrace it. I like oxygen,

34:28

um, being involved in our

34:30

barrel aged stouts. Yeah.

34:32

Um, well, how do you go about determining when the beer's

34:34

done? Uh, do you have a certain amount of time

34:37

that you work with, uh, you know, leave it in the barrel

34:39

or, or do you taste it periodically? How

34:41

do you manage that?

34:42

Um, so the first thing is that we have

34:44

an 18 month minimum and that was kind of just

34:47

based off of, um, the initial

34:49

tastings that Neil had done with these

34:51

beers over time. And so

34:53

we won't taste anything before 18 months.

34:57

Um, and then when we're going for a project,

34:59

we're more looking to fill what

35:02

our project did demands. Right. So

35:04

if we're just doing a non-adjuncted

35:07

barrel aged stout, um, then we're

35:09

clearly, we're trying to blend for a flavor

35:11

profile that we have in our head. Um,

35:14

or blending because we want to

35:16

use, like, let's say we have our, our W12,

35:18

which was aged in all well or 12 barrels. Um,

35:21

we're going to blend those to kind of fit what

35:23

we think, um, does a really good job

35:25

of showcasing the well or 12 flavors. So

35:29

you say, and then, um, go ahead. I'm sorry.

35:32

Well, yeah. So, so we're, we're, we're, we're 18

35:35

months minimum, but, uh, we kind

35:37

of blend for the project. So yeah.

35:39

So are you tasting it periodically

35:41

then after the 18 months to maybe say, okay,

35:43

this is kind of in the ballpark or what?

35:46

No, not really. We're, we're like I said, we're more

35:48

tasting dependent once a project

35:50

has been put on the plate and we go through, we look through

35:52

the spreadsheets and kind of feel out what

35:54

we're looking for. Um, and before

35:56

we walk into a room full of 350 barrels. Let's

36:00

say if we have 350, there's probably half

36:02

of them are above that age. So I don't

36:04

need to go through and taste 150 plus beers, 175 beers

36:06

of barrels to do that. So

36:12

we have to kind of narrow it down based on

36:15

our knowledge of what those beers taste like. I

36:17

mean, at this point we've been doing it for seven years.

36:20

So we know kind of what a gravity

36:22

plus a pH plus that barrel,

36:26

what that will do over time. So we

36:28

have a starting point. We kind of look at

36:30

that starting point. We pick out barrels based

36:32

on that, and then we'll go to that stack and

36:34

we'll taste through probably that

36:36

stack of barrels and then go, okay, these two are

36:38

really good. Let's mark them. And then that's

36:40

it for the day. And then we go do it again. But again, when we're

36:43

talking about blending huge

36:45

amounts of barrels, it makes it really

36:47

hard to just go in and taste a ton of barrels.

36:50

I say after three or four, maybe

36:53

even maybe if you're lucky, you get

36:55

five really good tastes in before you

36:57

blow out your palate and you can't taste

37:00

as accurately as you were at the beginning.

37:02

Yeah, especially, especially at that alcohol level,

37:05

right? Correct.

37:06

Yeah. So you mentioned blending a number

37:08

of times. I assume you're doing, you know, you are

37:10

blending the beers in some way. Is there any kind

37:13

of rule of thumb you use for determining

37:15

what the blend you blend good with bad? You

37:17

only blend good with good. How do you work in that?

37:19

I mean, so yeah, sometimes

37:21

you want to blend in. I mean, so

37:24

the thing with bad is

37:25

bad is

37:28

so subjective. As long as you're not

37:30

talking about all flavors, right? Yeah.

37:32

Yeah. Yeah. So

37:34

just because I like something might be more roasty and like

37:36

to me, a heavier roasted imperial

37:38

style might not be as good as say like

37:41

a smoother chocolatey or one.

37:43

But that doesn't mean that together they make something really

37:45

great. So yeah, it's just again,

37:48

it mostly depends on what the project is. If we're

37:50

going to add coconut to a beer, I'm

37:52

looking for stuff that has really big coconut

37:54

from the wood flavors or from the spirits,

37:57

which does happen quite a bit. Vanilla is another. flavor

38:00

profile that you're gonna see a lot in our barrels.

38:03

So we're just kind of looking for that. But

38:05

yeah, if we get lucky

38:07

and all of them are deemed really like

38:10

grade A, class one, best

38:12

of the best, and we can make a blend with that, of

38:14

course I'm gonna do that. But

38:16

you know, like I said, each one is gonna have its own little,

38:19

maybe what I call flaw.

38:22

But it's not necessarily a flaw, it's

38:24

just like, oh, this stands out a little differently than

38:26

this. But if we do find a barrel

38:28

that's like, hey, this barrel right here is something

38:31

special, we'll take that barrel and release

38:33

a single barrel. Usually it's draft only, and

38:36

we'll release something special with that, with that

38:39

really cool, unique

38:42

flavor profile, or just this is grade

38:44

A example of what we want.

38:46

So can you combine certain flavors, maybe

38:48

to make a better beer in the end?

38:50

Sure, yeah. We do that all the time. And that's usually

38:52

the goal of our blending, is to take

38:55

a bunch of different elements and

38:57

put them together and make something nuanced

39:00

and complex that otherwise might be

39:02

more like, oh, this is just chocolate, or this one's

39:04

just roast, or this one's a ton of bourbon,

39:06

and this one's a ton of oak. But if you add

39:08

them all together, you can get all those flavors. And

39:11

I think the sums usually are better

39:13

than just the parts.

39:16

So you mentioned you had 350 or so barrels

39:18

in the program. Are they all barrel-aged

39:20

stout, or are you using them for other things like sours

39:23

and so on?

39:23

We currently have no mixed

39:26

fermentation. We do have a

39:28

couple of kettle sour, quick sours,

39:31

in barrels, but not much. Yeah.

39:33

And barley

39:35

wine, we have probably less

39:37

than 10.

39:38

Oh, wow. So it really is focused

39:40

on the stouts, I guess. Correct, correct.

39:42

It is really mostly focused on stouts.

39:45

Our barrel program pretty much revolves

39:48

around the barrel-aged stouts.

39:50

We were lucky enough to win. Within

39:53

our second year, we won a GABF gold

39:55

medal for barrel-aged stout, and then that same

39:57

year went on to win a... Festival

40:00

of Barrel Age Beers Gold as well, or

40:03

excuse me, a silver in that one. So we've

40:05

been lucky enough to win some awards for it and that kind

40:07

of pushed us into, well, let's

40:10

just run with this.

40:12

That's awesome. Well,

40:13

good. Yeah, thank you.

40:15

Well, what are some of your tips? Let's

40:17

take it down to the homebrew scale now for a minute. What

40:20

are some of the tips you might have for a homebrewer

40:22

looking to make a great barrel age

40:24

talent?

40:26

So the biggest thing would be working

40:28

on sourcing barrels. I know

40:30

that trying to fill a 53 gallon

40:32

barrel seems intimidating, but there

40:35

are some great ways to do that. There

40:37

are also great ways of doing smaller

40:40

ones that fit the size system. I

40:42

would recommend searching for local distilleries.

40:46

Some of the smaller distilleries, you're using smaller barrels

40:48

and they'll part with those.

40:51

And if you end up getting a big barrel and you're

40:53

in a homebrew club, sometimes

40:55

it's really fun to get everyone to brew a

40:58

five gallon batch or 10 gallon, whatever

41:00

their size system they're working with, whatever kit they're

41:02

on, and then kind of blending

41:04

them all together and putting them in the barrel. And instead

41:07

of emptying all 53 gallons, kind of make it into

41:09

a Solera project. And whenever

41:11

you empty out, you fill back up with

41:14

a new brew and that kind of becomes more easy

41:16

to keep going. Of

41:19

course, over time, you will lose some of that spirit flavor, but

41:24

I do think that working in a group of people is always

41:26

fun, having different systems and

41:28

maybe even different recipes adds complexity into

41:30

it.

41:32

There are plenty of websites that you can buy small

41:34

barrels on. Some of them don't have spirits. So

41:36

another thing I'd recommend, if you want the spirit

41:38

flavor, since you are homebrewing and you're not

41:40

selling this, you can add your own spirit

41:43

into it. So you could take a spirit that you personally

41:45

enjoy, have it aged in

41:47

that barrel for quite some time. Once

41:50

you take it, then you take the bourbon back

41:52

out or spirit back out and enjoy

41:54

a deeper barrel-aged expression

41:57

of one of your favorite spirits. That's

41:59

something that I enjoy. doing as a home brewer. And

42:02

then of course if you cannot get

42:04

any barrels, there's always oak

42:06

spirals or chips that you can play

42:08

around with to get some oak

42:10

flavor and that sort of thing.

42:13

But

42:13

that would be my tips is worried about mostly

42:16

of sourcing your barrels and

42:18

making sure that you're able to fill them to

42:20

start all the way to the top before

42:23

you let them rest. Again, you're going to lose some and

42:25

that is okay, but I think it's very important

42:27

to start all the way to the top because

42:30

you don't want to come out and empty your barrel and

42:32

it's only a quarter of the way full.

42:35

And I mean, do you recommend starting with a high gravity

42:38

Imperial Stout? Is that really the does

42:40

that seem like the base, the best base to

42:42

start with?

42:43

If you're going to try to reuse the

42:45

barrel, then probably not.

42:48

I think that if you do a high gravity Imperial Stout,

42:50

you're going to personally, I think you ruin the barrels. That's

42:53

why we don't clean them and use them again. But

42:55

if you want to do, I just grew a quick, why is that?

42:58

I was just wondering what the why

43:00

we don't know why. Yeah. Why how does

43:02

it ruin the barrels? I was kind of interested. I

43:04

mean, that dark flavor kind

43:06

of well, first off, we're aging are so long that there's

43:09

not much spirit flavor left and that's a big part

43:11

of what we're going for. Makes sense in our

43:13

expressions. So to reuse it, we're going to get a

43:15

lot of the oak, which is great. And I like oak, but we're

43:17

definitely want the spirit to be very

43:20

prominent in our in our final product. So

43:23

that's part of the reason. And then the second reason is

43:25

if we were to do a second beer, like let's say like

43:27

something lighter, a

43:28

lot of that,

43:30

like I said, when we're expanding and contracting into the

43:32

woods, a lot of that gets stuck in there and then it will

43:34

kind of taint the other beers and make them

43:36

a little bit darker than we probably wanted

43:38

them. So make sense. And

43:40

like I said, with us not doing very many barley wines

43:43

or or, you know, mixed firm or even,

43:45

you know, quick sour barrel aged

43:47

stuff, there's really no need for us to reuse

43:50

them without that spirit flavor. So

43:53

interesting. Yeah. Well, thanks,

43:55

Skip. I wanted to get where you are coming to the end

43:57

of our time, but I wanted to get your closing thoughts.

43:59

on on barrel aged stouts and

44:02

indeed you know anything you have to say

44:04

maybe his head brewer as well.

44:06

For me for barrel aged stouts and people

44:08

who want to try it at home I think the biggest thing is it

44:10

seems intimidating and I

44:13

would like to say it's really not and it's

44:15

really fun as somebody

44:17

who started in a distilling background I think mixing

44:20

those two worlds is really fun and

44:22

I think it's something that if it seems intimidating it's

44:25

not just remember you're making beer

44:27

it's supposed to be fun it's if

44:30

even if even if it turns out terrible you know

44:32

what try again I just can't

44:34

imagine if you if you do all the things that you know how

44:36

to do as a home brewer and get into a barrel

44:38

that's a good quality barrel you're gonna have a good

44:40

product at the end and don't get discouraged

44:43

if you don't on your first try.

44:45

Awesome also I almost forgot

44:47

but I wanted to give a chance to you mention your website

44:50

the location where people can find your beers.

44:53

Yeah so we're located in Greeley,

44:55

Colorado our website we

44:57

do ship merch all over the country we

45:00

don't ship beer but we do have distribution

45:03

all over the country right now. Okay. Since

45:05

we've been talking about barrel aged stout

45:08

we are releasing our second nationally

45:11

released I think it goes to 13 of our markets our

45:14

second barrel aged Imperial

45:16

Stout that will see distribution it's

45:19

our 2023 Media Noche and

45:22

that will be released I believe right

45:24

before GABF which is in September so I

45:27

think you'll see national by October

45:29

you should see it all over the country we're

45:31

very excited to share this again we

45:34

did our first national release earlier

45:36

this year and went really really well really well

45:38

received and we're really excited to bring another

45:40

beer barrel

45:42

aged stout to people all over

45:45

the country. I also want to give you a chance

45:47

to mention your headline beers because I know those

45:49

are white label juicy bits and some of the other

45:51

bits yep juicy bits is available in

45:53

all of our markets that we're currently in unfortunately

45:55

I don't know all of them off the top of my head

45:58

but yeah we're juicy bits extra extra juicy

46:00

bits should always be available rotating

46:02

through stuff. Our seasonal,

46:05

we do our quarterly beers coming up. We're

46:07

gonna have Peach Pie and Trans Mountain Diversion

46:09

is our double IPA. Peach

46:11

Pie is a sour and Trans Mountain

46:13

is a double IPA, like I said, brewed with our good

46:16

buddies Casey Brewing and Blending

46:18

up in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. And

46:20

we're excited to be able to bring those to

46:24

people all over the country for a whole quarter

46:26

of the year. Trans Mountain happens to be one

46:28

of my favorite IPAs we do every year. So

46:30

I'm glad that we get to get it out all

46:32

over the place.

46:34

Awesome Skip. Well thank you so much

46:36

for coming on the show today. Really appreciate you being here.

46:39

Hey thank you for having me. I enjoy talking

46:41

about barrel aged stouts so glad

46:44

you had me on to do it.

46:45

Awesome. Well today my guest was Skip Schwartz.

46:47

He's the head brewer at Weldworks Brewing.

46:50

Thank you again Skip.

46:52

Thank you. A

46:54

big thank you to Skip Schwartz for joining me this week.

46:57

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