Cory Buenning of Fritz Family Focuses on Highly Attenuated Lagers With Perfect Proteins

This podcast is brought to you by Craft Beer and Bring Magazine for those that love to make and drink great beer. To learn more or to subscribe visit beerandbring.com or find us on social media at Craft Beer Brew. This episode is 457 of the Craft Beer and Brewing podcast. I'm down in Naiwa, Colorado. For this week's episode and joining me is Corey Beuning of Fritz Family Brewers. Welcome to the podcast, Corey. Thanks for having me, Jamie. I love that I get to have this conversation within driving distance of my home and office. Popped down here. It was a beautiful day to stare at the mountains as I drove down here. We've got this little cloud layer over here that's blocking some of the direct sun. So it's cooler and darker in the foreground. But then that sun's just hitting the mountain tops out there with this beautiful peachy tones on the whites. No, it's pretty spectacular. Nice. Yeah. Well, Fritz Family, you go all are known for logger brewing here. But you as a brewer have spent a lot of time out here in the mountain west up in Jackson Hole, Snake River, a little bit out east for a little while. And you decided, but you actually went to school down here in Boulder and came back over here if I get the story correct, right? That's correct. You can tell the whole thing when we get into that segment of the podcast. But for those of us that know, Fritz Family is a favorite. Those who are hardcore podcasts listeners may realize that we have recorded one other podcast episode here at Fritz Family a number of years ago, Stan Heronimus and I met up and used the back to record his, oh, it was the critics list episode that I did back then. And you know, it was a nice halfway spot between the two of us. And that was a, you know, beautiful time. And it was really fun to come and drink your beer here. And now we have the conversation with you. Fritz, well known for loggers amongst those here in Colorado. And you know, of course, this is a state with a lot of good loggerburs. So to stand out in that kind of environment, um, takes some work. But like I said, you've been doing it for many decades now. And, uh, you know, I've earned that reputation. So we're going to talk about logger brewing. We're going to talk about, uh, Colch, because that was one of the beers that Stan put on his personal critics list, uh, from you. And, uh, you know, maybe even by the end of it, we'll talk about this crazy intersection of logger brewing and IPA, which you are here for. Before we do that, Hey, Brewers, Justin here from G&D chillers, you know, we're all about solving problems in the brew house, staying ahead of the curve and building chillers that work as hard as you do. That's right. G&D's new Elite 290 micro series runs on a natural refrigerant with near zero global warming potential. Built for Brewers who care about sustainability and performance. 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I just was thinking about that G-A-B-F outside. What are you before you showed up? That's what we were talking about. Yeah, everybody's talking about it, right? G-B-F outside. How do you feel about that, Corey? I don't know. I have heard a lot of people are questioning the BA's decision on that, but I feel like they have a little bit more experience organizing the G-A-B-F than us outsiders. And I like outside beer fest. My wife pointed out, most beer fest are outside. We can only think of a handful that are inside CoLab Fast and G-A-B-F-B and the only two that I've been to. I'm all for it. I'm open-minded. I will assume the best until proven otherwise. I think that they are good at setting these events up and know the challenges that they're getting into. I will say we have run a Minnesota craft beer fest at the Convention Center in Minnesota and the prices are so outrageous now on Convention Center rentals. They have just continued to increase and increase and increase. The week can no longer afford to do that at the Convention Center and have looked for other venues. Don't have a plan for this year. It may not even happen because of that. I completely understand the challenges that the B.A. is going through. It's hard to second-guess them on that. Yes, it will be challenging, but I should also mention also in Minnesota. You've got the winter grower where they do it outside in February in Minnesota and 6,000 people come and drink beer, even at double the single digits at teen temperatures. If we're hearty and we can handle it, I just want the out-of-state brewers to show up. That's the key. I think these are important. I've had this conversation with a number of brewers. These rituals that we engage in, they are meaningful and they are important and it is great to see people all in one place at CBC in the spring and at GABF in the fall and that kind of community coming back together. It is really, really important. I agree with you. We want to see everybody. It's important that we don't lose that or that somehow this gets lost in this negative narrative. Now Saturday, Sunday, outdoors, that's going to be different. I'm going to miss that Thursday night where everyone's excited. The crowds aren't too crazy yet. I'm going to miss that Saturday afternoon metal session where brewers are wearing their medals around the night. We're going to make some new traditions this year. Anyway, that was just on my mind. You're close to it. You're wearing your World Beer Cup fleece right now. You're in the mix on all this stuff. We will see. I'm cautiously optimistic. I think we're signing up. We're going to have a booth this year. That's good. Tell me your story. Your story spans several different states and a number of different decades now. It goes back to the 90s. Before we started, we were reminiscing. I think I went to that brewery worked for Snake River of Jackson Hole. You started working there in 1997. You go way back. Tell me that kind of arc through brewing. Tell me your story. Jamie, I'm going to go back even a little bit further than that to late 70s, early 80s. I grew up in Waukeshaw, Wisconsin, which is outside of Milwaukee. I've been to Waukeshaw. I come from a beer drinking family. My mom has nine brothers who are all farmers in South Dakota, John Heritage. They would inevitably come out to Milwaukee to visit us. We'd take them on brewery tours. They'd be Miller, Schlitz, Paps. Paps still at a brewery back then. It was the whole city smelled like a brewery. I just remember being a little kid. I don't know. Probably, you know, sixth, seventh grade walking along these brewery tours, especially the Miller one. You'd go down to the caverns and it just, it'll movie and it just like, I don't know. It did something to me that I don't really know exactly what it did, but fast forward my freshman year at Boulder, 1992, 1991, I walked on the hill. They had a homebrew shop. I just remember walking by it going homebrew. I can make beer at home. I walked in the next day, gave them my 40 bucks or whatever it was. I got my plastic bucket, five gallon bucket, extra started homebrewing and that became more and more serious and eventually all grain, you know, the story. And I got a job at the home brew shop. And when it came time for me to graduate, see you with a degree in biology. My choices were go for more schooling, get a, you know, doctorate or a master's if I wanted to do anything in environmental biology, or start brewing. And at the time, I was like, I don't really, I'm kind of tired of school, I've been going to school for a long time. And I'm really, really into into this brewing thing. So, so customer, it's the mid 90s at that point or mid to, yeah, a lot of half of the 90s. 94, 93, 94. It wasn't as if they were like, crap worries growing on trees. And, you know, like it was, I mean, it was a, if you were going to think about brewing, you think it probably would bring a large brewery is a simple sort. Yeah, there was a customer of ours at the home brew shop, what's brewing Caleb, who worked up at Tommy Knockers and Idaho Springs. And he said, we're hiring, you know, we're looking for someone to work for us. And on the bottling line, I was like, yeah, that sounds good. So I went up there and I think I worked on the bottling line for a total of three days before I was in the brew house. And that it was, yeah, it was a lot of fun, learned a lot about commercial brewing. And we knew a guy, we got this guy that knows how he used to works. So let's, you know, let's put him to work. Yeah. So I was going through some stuff, personal stuff at the time. And the head brewer there, who's still there, Steve Aruney, he used to work with a guy, Chris Erickson, who was the head brewer up at Snake River. And he knew they were looking for a brewer up there. And he knew how much I liked fly fishing and snowboarding and Jackson would probably be a good fit for me. So we drove up there and I interviewed for a job up at Snake River and got that job and packed up everything I could in my Chevy S10 pickup, moved up there, not knowing one person slept on the Teton pass, woke up the next morning and showed up for work and spent 17 years snowboarding and making beer up at Snake River. Hell yeah. And I loved it. I loved every minute of it. The winter started to get a little long for my wife and my wife's sister and husband were in the process of opening a brewing Kentucky, Louisville, Kentucky. And I was kind of consulting for them, helping them with hot contracts and brewing equipment and stuff like that. And you know, when you've been brewing the same place for 17 years and all of a sudden you're coming up with brand new recipes for a brew that's not even open yet. Like the wheels started turning and next thing, you know, I'm like, yeah, I'll I'll brew for you. So I left Snake River and we moved to Kentucky. And we should say like in that 10 year at Snake River, there are lots and lots of G.A.B.F. medals, lots and lots. I looked it up before I came Snake River is a whole from start to the current time, which is not the entirety of your tenure, you know, 40 40 G.A.B.F. medals. And more than half of those are going to be, you know, in your tenure there, maybe, you know, significantly more than half. It was a different time back then, Jamie. Some of those logger categories, only had 30 entries versus nowadays, or it's 230. But yeah, it was still how them in the 20 teens, there are still a number of them. And you know, but I think, you know, there was that kind of focus on well executed classic beers. And you know, in some ways, like because they around and in state current, yeah, even though they were these classic beers, like, you know, they kept resonating with judges and stuff. Anyway, just wanted to point that out. So yeah, we moved to Louisville, Kentucky. Started that we took us a long time to get that brewery, that brewery going. I drove for Uber for a little while and actually ended up bartending for a minute because I started brewing when I was 19 home brewing and basically have only had a job in the brewing industry. And I'm in my 50s. And now so I didn't really have too many marketable skills besides brewing. So yeah, it was bartending beer tending and driving for Uber brewery finally open. Didn't work out. We sold our share. Me and my wife sold our share. And we moved to Colorado in March 2020. So right during the beginning of the pandemic. And like I said, all I know what to do is brew. No one was really hiring. And I wasn't really looking for a job. So we just were going to hang out and I got a homebrew set up back to home brewing, just going to hang out in Colorado for a while. And then we had some friends tell us about a park in Nihwatt, people's parks. So we came here and drove by this place at a for sale sign on it. And I was like, huh, that kind of looks like a brewery. So we kind of drove over to the parking lot and I peaked into the window and I saw some tanks in there. And I was like, it's a brewery for sale. All right, all right. So through connections, I found out it was bootstrap. And they had moved locations to Longmont. And this building was for sale. And we had no plans on really opening a brewery quite yet. I mean, it was still very much pandemic times. But it seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up. So I mean, my wife put together a business plan, got a loan, bought the place and opened up in Oh boy, 20 to 2026 now. It's time flies. We've been open for it'll be five years in July. So that would be 20 21 July of 2021. Okay. Yeah, easy times to open a brand new brewery. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, this was the old bootstrap location looks a little different now than it did when bootstrap was in here. And I did come here when it was bootstrap. But you put a new brew house in there, new brew system and everything. What did you take to get it back up and running as a brewery again? Well, they had drains in the floors. And that's basically the only thing that we really kept. Move the coolers around, they had already sold the brewing equipment. So we bought brand new equipment. Exactly how I wanted it, set it up, you know, small, you know, it's 77 person capacity. We do about 325 barrels a year. But it's awesome, you know, like when we moved here after after working at gravely in Kentucky, you're just like, when you're your own boss owner, Amber, it was kind of tough to think about, like, oh, I'm going to go apply for a job and like have a boss. So it's just it's tough. Sure, sure. But then, you know, coming at it with also that kind of front of house as well as, you know, brewing experience, you've kind of got this set up with hospitality in mind, a big bar that's built for for regulars and for socializing big community tables. And the things that people were probably going to hear in the background as we talk, these kuku clocks that are just offering, you know, nice soft tones every now and then, you know, in the background. But it is this kind of fun feel of like, you know, contemporary, but also like rooted in this kind of classical, you know, but kind of cool sense. Yeah, when we bought the space, we got an art, I know my limitations, I'm not a designer, not an architect. So we hired an architect, we hired a designer. And the designer came in and I said, I just have this idea, I just want to get like, line the walls with kuku clocks. And she looked at me and she said, I love it. And then she came back the next day and just sent me a whole list of just different, like a lot of classic ones, but some other, you know, avant-garde modern looking ones, just to mix in. And yeah, so she let me kind of have my kuku clock thing. Super fun. So let's talk about the beer. I want to talk about, you know, obviously this, you know, as we have already mentioned, you're well known for the logger beer that you make. And, you know, and also we're kind of, you know, timed along with that, you know, as logger has grown amongst craft beer crowd coming out of the pandemic, you've been here. And, you know, with this kind of like, hey, this is a drinkable beer that we can, you know, drink several of and everyone's got a drive to get around here in Colorado. There's a small population in Nawa, but it's, you know, there's not that many people that can walk here. And anyway, you know, so for that, for that standpoint, and then a lot of it with this kind of scale of production, there are some kegs that go out to select places around the state, but really on the front range, but not a ton, like distribution is not a big part of what you do. A lot of it's just based here on the tap room. So when I talk about those kinds of beers you make and how you started building that beer program, coming at it fresh, fresh with a, you know, clean slate. 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Okay, so it's a logger, for sure, and German-focused loggers in particular. I kind of forgot to mention back when I was embolder home brewing that I got involved in the home brew club here, quite a bit, hot barley in the ailer's. There was one gentleman in particular, Bill Hessey, who goes by fog and other names, kind of a celebrity. He introduced me to loggers back at the home brew club, and he was into brewing them and got me into brewing them, which was pretty easy to do because I have the German heritage and always like just drinking beers, yellow beers. So I got into logger brewing back when I was even home brewing and snake river. I was pushing loggers there every brewery went to. I was like, I want to do loggers. I want to ferment them colder. I want to make loggers. So when I got a chance to make my own brewery, I was like, you want to take our tanks and you want to tie them up for those beers that people are going to want to paint less for. Great. Sure. Would a good business idea? Well, it turns out that the whole seems like the whole industry is kind of coming around to it now at this point, but yeah, I was always into the loggers. So when I got to make my own brewery, yeah, I was like, logger focused. I do have limited space here, so I can't go too crazy. I don't want to have a bunch of horizontal tanks. I'm going to tie up for super long time. So, but I do have the capability of doing some stepmash in. And for me, one of the most important things in logger brewing is, well, there's a lot of little tiny things that are important, but a big one is I like to knock out cold. So I knew that right away. I was like, I'm going to have a cold liquor tank. So I do have a dedicated cold liquor tank, even though this time of year, the water is coming out around in the 40s. So I set it at 35 in my cold liquor tank and I can knock out my loggers into the, you know, high 30s. I usually shoot for 40, 44. Knock out really cold air rate, moderate. What is it about that really, really cold knockout and start, yeah, that does it for you? It reduces the the esters, you know, it keeps the yeast during that that first stage. And then the other thing it allows me to do is I like to drop the cold break off the bottom of the cone the following day. So I'm a one man show here. So I can't come in after I finish my brewery. I can't come in six hours later and drop the cold break. I have to wait till the next morning to come in and do that. I mean, I don't have to, but I do have a life. So I come in the next morning and if I knock out cold, fermentation should just be starting. Couple bubbles coming out and it's not rip in to where the cold break and the pH is drop it and the cold breaks, you know, in suspension and dissolve back into the beer. So I'm able to drop that cold break out. It gives it a nice. And if the yeast is healthy and I'm really, really in the yeast management, just having a really good healthy pitch of high viability yeast cells and you can knock out cold and it should start should start from any the next day. And I just think that makes for a nice clean beer to start. Start with a clean slate beer is not yeast is healthy. It's going to do its job. It makes the beer, you know, the yeast is the most important part. And I like to focus on that. Yeah, tell me more about this system and I want to, I will should definitely come back talk about yeast and fermentation. You are, you were a biology major after all. So, you know, there's something to talk about there. But you know, as you mentioned, yes, you don't have lots of horizontal loggering tanks. You're brewing on a small pub scale with, you know, with some tanks that are pulling multiple duty here. You know, talk about the system as a whole, but you also have oil heated, oil-jacqueted system. I do. I mean, oil-jacqueted system, which has got some pluses and some minuses. Two weeks in a row with brewers from from Jaron and now you with the oil-jacqueted systems from from the actual same product producer. I think it was just the right timing because the boiler I had in Kentucky, we had like a $3,000 repair because some of the tubes started leaking and the boiler manufacturer said the water treatment wasn't correct and the water, I had a guy coming in with four water treatment, a professional who set it up and he's appointed at the boiler manufacturer and so both of them point their fingers at each other and I got the bill. So, I was kind of the steam boiler maintenance thing was, it just was a little overwhelming. So, I decided to go and the oil is electric. So, it's electric heated. It's a reservoir with electric heating elements inside of it. Yes, okay. It has a reservoir of oil, thermal oil. I can heat it up. The heat transfer isn't quite as good as steam. So, I have to run the temperature a little bit hotter on the oil than you would on low pressure steam, but it's been really good and we were sold on it because it's electric. If we want to, which if we ever get the money, we're going to do it. We can get solar panels and become a lot more sustainable and kind of produce our own energy here and so that's kind of the plane. Well, you go there rather than say a direct electric heating element and this is not a small, I mean, this is not a three or five barrel system, your Bruno. No, I feel like you have to have the temperature of the elements really high and I think you're going to get some scorching. So, I'm trying to keep the heating medium as close to possible as to boiling so that I don't get a lot of those my or reactions and scorching and whatnot and try to like a really pale logger beer and I'm trying not to pick up color. So, the hot, this was a good alternative. Sure, sure. And so, it gives a nice even heat like steam does. It just you have to shoot a little bit differently in terms of where the temperature goes in order to keep it there. Yeah, exactly. And one, this is just a total tangent here, but one weird benefit of the oil heater is I make my own sourgut in house and the sourgut strain I have, I got from Vine Steffen because even though I have a biology background, I don't have a lab here and I don't really feel comfortable going just pure grain dust technique. I couldn't isolate a culture so I'd spent the money, had them ship it out from Vine Steffen, but this this lactic culture likes to be warm. It likes to be at 118, 120 to really start producing lactic acid. So, that's two good things about that is I don't have to worry about cross contaminating anything because it won't grow below like 90 degrees. So, if I get some in my beer, it isn't it isn't going anywhere. It needs to be warm, but to incubate it, to ferment or you know create lactic acid with it, I need to keep my kettle at that temperature. And I can set my oil at 122 and it'll keep my you know I'm doing basically a kettle sour, but I'm creating a sourgut and then I'd never ferment it. I just fill it with fill kegs of it and put it my cooler store for a couple months and use it in each batch. So, that's how I naturally acidify all my all my loggers. So, yeah, tell me about that. This is instead of using a lactic acid addition to say adjust mash pH. You then use this lactic acid that you have made yourself. Yes, exactly. And how else does it show up in the brew process or is that it? That's it. I basically just adjust my mash pH with it. I used to adjust the pH in the kettle with it. I'm still not 100% rhinheidsca boat. I will throw a little bit of food grade lactic in. We will. It's okay. But yeah, I'd like to use a little. Those rules don't count here. I know. I like to use a little bit of sourgut in the mash. So, why go to the trouble of making your own sourgut instead of in the mash or for use in the mash? versus the lactic acid that you may also use later in the process. Other than the romantic attachment to the Orion Heights, come on. I think the romantic attachment is a big component of it. To be honest, if I tasted a beer made with food grade lactic acid and one with my sourguit, I would be hard pressed to tell that there was a difference. But I also feel like there's a hundred little things that you do to make logger beer that if you changed one of them, you wouldn't notice the difference. But all together, they combine to make a better beer. So I think everybody's got their little hill. They like to die on some people. I'm going to triple the cock my beer. For me, it's like I'm going to make my own sourguit in-house. So then you make it every month or two and then just to cag it up. Or I guess maybe not even every month or two. It's about every two months probably. I make just enough for five kegs. I inject half a keg into each batch. My mash schedule, I'm really shooting for maximum attenuation, is kind of what my goal is. Almost every beer I make, like the Pills, NERS, Dortmunder, Helless, I want attenuation in the 82 is okay. But I'm shooting for more like 85 percent attenuation. Why? It comes to drinkability for me. If you have a beer that has a lot of dextrins in it, this is just personal taste. I might have a beer and that's good. But it's a little heavy and now I'm a little full. So I'm shooting for a beer that is really light on the carbohydrates. Because I think it makes it more drinkable. And then I want to create body through proteins, not through carbohydrates. So I focus on malts that are moderately modified with protein between 9.8 and 10.5 and a cobalt around 38, 39, 40 right in there. And that gives you the mid-size proteins that is going to help create mouthfeel, but not carbohydrate. You know what I'm saying? It's like a different type of body. It's a protein-derived body, not a starch or carbohydrate or dextrins-derived body. Yeah, explain the cobalt index. That's a soluble protein over total protein. So it's just like an indicator of the modification of the malt. And there's just a sweet spot there for the protein level. And then a amount of modification that gives you the mid-size proteins, right? The big proteins kind of create a little bit of Hayes problem. The small ones are good for yeast nutrition, like the fan, but you don't want too much fan. And you hit that sweet spot and you get just the right amount of protein in there. And creates a nice, what do you guys say? You guys don't say mouthfeel. You guys don't like that word. You guys say texture. I do love texture. It gives you the right texture. And we should say it works within the rest of the process, which Ubrouin. There are those purrs that want less modified malt because they're going to run it through a decoxion process. It's also going to bust up some of those proteins. And so, you know, again, it's how you're trying to solve this problem using different kinds of approaches and technology and process in order to achieve it. But you're not decoxing your stepmatching, but then you're going to stepmash with a regimen that's with this malt deliberately designed to produce the kind of the size of starch and protein molecules that you're looking for. Yeah. And it comes back to just the drinkability and the crispness and those mid-sized proteins also help with the carbonation. Like I carb the hell out of my beer. Like they're all around three volumes, all my logger beers. So they're really carbonated. And it's all natural. You can call it spoon. Do you not use a spoon, do you, and valve. I know my beers are going to finish and I just cap it or shut the valve on it. And it's part of the matrix of the deere. I don't need a spooning valve to tell me when it's where at this point, I know when I can relieve the pressure and keep it where it needs to be. Well, I do force fermentations on all my logger beers. So I like to know exactly where it can finish. Right. So I'm not guessing, hey, and I know if it's about a play, though. And again, I'm not, I don't have someone here 24 hours a day. So 10 barrel system, right? Seven, seven, and you do seven, even worse. And you do force fermentation tests on every batch of logger. Yeah, I mean, I'm only brewing once a week. So it's not, it's not that much. I put it up in my wife's office. It's a little warmer up there, walk by it, give it a swirl, tell a bartender to go up there, give it a swirl. And it takes three days. And I'll know exactly what that beer will finish at. But I think people would be surprised. If you do a diacetyl rest and you're finishing your logger's up in the mid fifties, you probably don't need to do that. You're going to get there, right? But I wait, I start cooling it when it still has a couple of tents to go, which is scary, right? You're going to risk, there's diacetyl risk there. But if you're used to healthy, you don't go too crazy to drop it a couple degrees. That helps with getting the carbonation level up there because it's CO2 is more soluble and colder. So you got to start dropping it a little bit lower so you don't overpressurize your tank. And I know exactly where it's going to finish. So I know exactly when to do that. And I can kind of monitor the end of fermentation because I know exactly what 10th it can get to. Usually what that then requires is the proper amount of loggering for that potential re-uptake. And so you're also giving those beers the time that they need from that perspective. Yeah, when fermentation's within about three tenths of terminal, I'll take it from 48 degrees down to 46 and then 44. And then I usually give it 10 days, seven days at 44. I do a forest VDK. And again, being the only brewer. It's a little scary because it's just me and I'm really sensitive to diacetyl. But when you start heating samples up and cooling them down, they always kind of smell and taste a little funky, a little cooked. So I mean, I think that I've gotten pretty good at it. But it's not the same as detecting diacetyl and like a regular sample of beer. Well, this is a lot of logger discipline for a seven barrel pub system that serves mostly a tap room right here. But we'll put that craziness aside and kind of try to talk about more on that kind of fermentation piece using yeast, yeast health, yeast viability and whatnot here in logger beer and kind of get into strain or strains and how that works from a biological perspective. Because again, you bring that background to it. Before we do that, brightly software, a Siemens company partners with organizations at every stage of their asset life cycle journey. Brightly is a complete asset management and operations software that enhances organizational sustainability, compliance and efficiency through data driven decision making streamline maintenance simplify capital planning and optimize resources with solutions uniquely designed to support long term goals learn more at brightly software dot com. And tickets are on sale now for the annual craft beer and brewing brewers retreat August 23rd through 26th in the hop country of Yakima Valley, Washington. There is nothing like this fantasy home group camp experience as you grew in small groups led by some of the most inspiring brewers in the world. Folks like Vinnie and Natalie Russian river been from breakside Henry and Adriana of Monkish Kelsey from North Park Whitney from Grandfur, Sean from Lawson's finest and more. This year will be brewing under the binds at bail breaker and it is sure to be an unforgettable experience tickets are on sale now and going fast at brewers retreat dot com. Right, Corey. So let's you know, so you go through this mash was anything before we you know get and talk about fermentation anything to your step mash, you know, in particular in the way that that interacts with the the malt that you use. Yeah, so some trying for max number tenuation and the last couple years the you know, 20. 2023 and 2024 the crop out of Germany has had a really high gelatinization temperature they had a really hot end of the summer during grain fill and it really affected the gelatinization temperature. So if anyone hasn't listened to your list on my podcast with Dmitry Stalin's of depth and we talked at link about that same issue and like he was like banging his head against the wall like with the malt purveyors there. Yeah, I mean there's nothing they I mean it's tough because it's just a climate thing it's only going to keep getting worse is it keeps getting warmer. Yes, he had some arguments about that and yes, it is a climate thing and yes, there are other barley varieties and other ways to grow and you know and whatnot where they can start getting ahead and mitigating knowing that this is going to continue to be a problem but I digress goes into that episode. Okay, so. to help mitigate this problem. I've come up with an interesting little mesh schedule. So I will actually strike a little bit warmer, like 149, 150, give it like 10 minutes to try to get as much gelatinization as I can. And then I will inject my cold sourgut into the mesh and bring the whole mesh down to like 144, 145. I'll rest it there for 50 to an hour or 15. And my thoughts are at 150, I'm really hurting my beta amylase. It doesn't like it up there. But if it's short, hopefully it's still, some of it's going to hang in there and it's not there for too long. And I get as much of the starch gelatinized and in solution and then bring it down to beta temperature and let the beta even at a weakened state, if I give it long enough, should get a decent conversion. And I bring the whole mesh up to 160. And I do a glycoprotein rest, which also helps with mouth feel. It's releasing some proteins at that temperature. And I go into, I don't do a mashout. So I'm leaving it at 160 during, do like a 10 minute rest there, then Vorloff. So Vorloff's at the same temperature. So that rest ends up being 30 minutes or so. And then just, yeah, transfer over to my kettle, start boiling, boil. Pretty gentle, you know, it's kind of the new school way. I'm not going for 8% evaporation. It's more like 4.5% evaporation. Gentle. Is there what's the why behind that? I just thermal stress. You don't want to over-quagulate the protein. You know, just just, don't want to pick up too much color. The moths these days, in my opinion, are malted to not have too much of the DMS precursor. Maybe it's the fact that I have a smaller system and I'm not quite a homebrew, but I do have a decent amount of surface area to volume the ratio is good. So I don't have to boil too hard. Just treat in the beer gently. 60 minutes, 90 minutes. What would it be? It would be 75 minutes. Split the difference. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our 15 hops, you know, I like to use a good mix of the new school German hops and the old ones. I like, you know, the Mitefru. I really like hers, Brucher. I know that a lot of people, I like Sophia. There's some a lot of, and I got to thank Firestone for that one because I feel like there's a lot of new school German hops that we can't get in the United States because no one uses them. But because of Pivo, I feel like Sophia is one that's kind of stuck and it's readily available. But there are other varieties that I would like to get my hands on from Germany that we just can't, we can't get. So in that sense, there are times where you'll have as many as three different German pills on at the same time here on drafts. So you are doing some work to differentiate these and explore different ideas even in something like pills. How, is that purely hop driven? Is that generally malt driven? It is mostly hop driven. It is definitely mostly hop driven. And then how do you think about that from a creative standpoint of building these, tell me about your envisioning different German pills process? It's more of just a curiosity. Like, what is a hersbrooker with tentman taste like compared to a mitifruis affair? They're all very similar, but it's fun. You could do that kind of stuff when you're a small brewery, and I feel like you're just taking the customer's on a journey with you. It's like, hey, let's try this and see how we like it. And some people like J. Ron can really distinguish the difference quite well on the different hop varieties. Personally, I'm not 100% sure I can, but it's fun doing it anyway. Have they settled into some lane that you really like in terms of hop blends for some of these German loggers? So there's like customer favorites and there's my favorites, right? Like customer favorite is Deeder, which is really mitifruid driven, which I do like to. And then my personal favorite is twice as nice, which is a very hersbrooker driven. I'm not sure exactly why that is. It's just, you haven't tried to like pull it apart as to what you like and why that's different than what your customer's like. You know, I think twice might be just slightly more bitter. I really like a bitter pilsner, and I'm really struggling with balancing like what the consumer expects and what I like. The old model of the breweries, brew pubs, there's always have like one light yellow crusher beer. So you could never really make a truly bitter pilsner if that was your only like light drinker because then you'd have someone go and what's the closest thing you have bud light. And if it's 45 I be used, you're in trouble. But I have the benefit of having like five or six just like yellow beers on it in a given time. So I can make a more bitter pilsner, but it still is a little tough for expectations when someone comes in. They think pills are they think Miller light. It's like, no, this isn't Miller light. So you don't have an American light logger for them. Sometimes I do, sometimes I do, but not not currently. Who is your, you have a coworker who I know likes really bitter. Oh, Joe Sting. Yeah. Yeah. Like a bitter pilsner. Joe, Joe and his like 55 IBU, Hans Pills from real ale. Like he's he's he's he is going to the mat supporting extra extra bitter pills. So I don't always agree with him on that, but I understand what he what he enjoys about it. Also like we're Americans. We love things that are heavy handed. Exactly. Exactly. I couldn't agree more. I'd like to take a blend of the old school traditional German techniques, but I am still an American. So I still like to over hop things a little bit. Well, I'll give you some morning. Joe will be here for our best and beer judging with Stan and Kate in probably September. So you just put that on the brew schedule now that 55 IBU bitter pilsner and we will just all come down here and enjoy it with you and Joe may never leave. All right. So then so so you know some some different kinds of varieties on the pilsner side. Talk to me about the the helleside now. You know, is there anything different in the way that you approach malt on helles versus pilsner? You know, again, you're trying to build a fullness without sweetness. So the not too much with like the mash profile. I use a fireman extra pale pilsner malt for the pilsners mostly because it's really light colored and clean and just gets out of the way. You saw like an IPA brewer now. I just have to have the palest pilsner malt that I can find. And for the helles, I've been playing around with different different moths for the helles. I used to use barka pilsner malt for the helles but I also use that for the dorkmunder which is the beer I make the most of. So I brew a lot of dorkmunder and just to differentiate my export helles from my regular helles. I've switched over to a floor malt and check pilsner malt. The one that bats were drinking right now has a shfee pilsner. Ashley got a palette of it down at beer shot and she doesn't use a full palette for a batch so she had some extra bags and she was able to sell them to me. But that's the malt sits in the helles right now. But I will switch it up. That's a good beer to just play around with a malt because it is basically just a single malt, you know, pilsner. Yeah, and high intonuation is still the goal there. But it's a little more malt character in that just by reducing the bitterness really is the only thing that makes it a little malt here. I don't mind a little bit of hop flavor. In a helles, the one thing about the helles is I do not use any high alpha hops at all because it isn't hopped very much. It's a lot of mitifru and hersbrooker intonang like all three two and a half alpha hops just to get enough vegetable matter in the beer and give it a little character. Then tell me about the way that you add hops. Is this a pretty traditional hop edition schedule or are you doing anything differently there? No, I'd usually do a first-wort hop, a 60-minute hop, either sometimes a 30-minute but usually a 10 and then a strikeout hop edition. You have a hop pack that you can throw a whole cone in but it's harder to get those these days. It is, it is. At least the German ones. I can get American hops and I used to really enjoy the American noble knockoffs, liberty and sterling and whatnot but I feel like 10 or 15 years ago, the hop packaging got a lot better and so some of the hops we're getting from Germany are actually more representative of what those hops are supposed to be versus in the 90s, you'd get these German hops. And now I know that those are probably five, six, you know, they're old hops you were getting, you know, they didn't really care. They just sent you over. You didn't really have control. - Yes, now also the, you know, the importers, brokers that are bringing those in are more exacting. Yeah, they know what brewers want and they're making sure that they get to brewers in that kind of condition. - It's definitely one of the benefits of loggers taking off in the craft sector is that it's been a lot better getting fresher German hops. - Sure, sure. Well, let's talk about fermentation. You know, again, coming out of from a biology standpoint, as you mentioned earlier, big, vigorous, healthy, pitched, lots of viable yeast, you're fermenting cold from the very start and then you're dropping it down colder. You know, we're not bringing it up for, you know, to boost things or a diastidal rest in that kind of fermentation process. So you need a lot, you need a lot of healthy yeast. Talk to me about the yeast choice and then, you know, again, how you treat it through that process. - Okay, so I think one of the most important things, especially for brewery my size is to pick a, pick a yeast strain and then learn it. Like know what it does, what it likes. It takes a long time. I'm only brewing once or twice a week. So it takes a long time for me to figure out what my yeast likes. But I know what day I can harvest it on. I know I'm figuring out how many kilos equates to what cell count based on how close to terminal gravity it is the day I harvest it. So I use 3470 from BSI. It's a shown rum strain of 3470. Two play dough before it hits terminal. I can get enough yeast off of seven-brill batch to pitch another. It's not ideal. I can barely get enough yeast, but I can. And a pinch, two play dough. I know if I get closer to one play dough, I need exactly 10 kilos to get me a 15 million cells per milliliter cell count. If it's at one and a half play dough, that's more like 18 or 19 kilos to get me to that same 15 to 18 million cells. So I'm trying to get my cell counts dialed in to where I don't have to do a cell count on the slurry to figure out how many kilos to pitch. So in the process of doing that right now, I'm figuring out, but it'd be totally different with a different yeast strain. Like it would in a different brewery, right? Like it just is, this is how it behaves in my brewery. I'm gonna learn it. I know what day it's gonna be harvestable. I know like I brew on Tuesday. I can brew next Tuesday. Like it's basically a week. It's really nice. My fermentation schedule allows me to just brew like once a week. - And then you, you know, these are most of these beers are in the similar kind of starting and finishing gravity range. And so they're gonna behave consistently down there. And there's not a lot of hop impact, I guess, on this either. And so, you know, at least you can work within this tighter range. But there's still some variability, right? - Yeah, so my export logger might be 12 and a half play dough. My hellus is 11 play dough. Like that's basically the difference of gravity. So one I can harvest, the hellus I can harvest on day six because it's got less, you know, less play dough to drop. The door monitor takes, you know, seven days before I can harvest it. Yeah, that's it. - Any other kind of secrets or keys to yeast health in this process? - One thing I learned along the way is, like I was saying earlier, I spooned or cap or whatever and really captured a lot of CO2. Well, I was spooning a little earlier and harvesting off of a tank that would have a lot of CO2 pressure on it. And that creates a beer with quite a bit of sulfur and not really the good sulfur, the hydrogen sulfide. Yeast, the 3470 that I used does not like to be under pressure. It'll finish and you'll capture all that CO2. - The 5470. - Well, I mean, it'll ferment fine under pressure. - You know 3470 makes sulfur what he's talking about. - But it is better if, so what I do is I come in and the day I cap it, I wait like two hours and then I harvest yeast. Even if I'm not brewing that day, I harvest the yeast. Just get enough pressure to push it out of the tank, not creative vacuum, and then instantly chill it down. I bring it into my cooler, stick it into my water. If I'm not brewing that day, I give it some nutrients and a little bit of wort extract, PSI's little magic juice you stick in there. (laughing) And I vent it. I wasn't inventing the keg, but when you're harvesting the yeast and it still has a plate that will left it ferment, it's gonna create pressure whether I put nutrients and wort extract in there or not. It's gonna still continue fermenting. Even at 33 degrees, it's still gonna create pressure. So I'm venting that. - Pressuring that it then doesn't like. - Yeah, and it doesn't, well, it's still fermenting. It just is a different fermentation. So I'm just making sure it's not stressed. It's as like as happy as it can be. - You want to pour this big stinky sulfur and you know, yeast into your next batch. - It's got the glycogen reserves are good. The yeast, it doesn't have like a long lag phase. I mean, it has some because I'm knocking out at 42 degrees or 44 degrees. So it's gonna be a little slow, but it's happy. It likes its new environment. - Sure, sure, sure. Anything else to logger before we talk about Colch for a little bit? - Not that I can think of. - All right, well then let's talk about Colch. - Yeah, Colch being a hybrid beer, assume it's a different, you know, ill yeast strain, but still a kind of cold process around it. Where are your points of difference here with Colch? - Colch is, to me, it is the yeast strain. And if you are like me and you drink mostly logger beer and then you taste Colch, it tastes really fruity. It tastes like pear cider to me. It is like, yeah, it's like really pear wine. All those things come out to me because I'm used to drinking logger. So to me, it's really easy to distinguish. - Those esters are perfectly suitable and Colch and expected to some degree. - And if you do not drink loggers all the time, you wouldn't even notice, you wouldn't even consider a history, it's just me personally. It seems really estery to me. The Colch yeast, I use is W177 from BSI. A little bit of differentiation is, it is a little bit more of an acid producer. So I'll knock my loggers out at 5.1 pH. The Colch, I used to do that and I realized it would finish closer to 4.1 or 4 for a peak final pH is just a little bit lower. So now I knocked my Colch out at 5.3. I aerate a little bit more. So if I'm shooting for eight to 10 ppm for the loggers, maybe 12 ppm for the Colch, and what that does is it knocks the sulfur down. If you don't aerate enough, you'll get a little bit more sulfur and less esters. So if you want to boost the esters, just aerate just a touch more. I still knock out colder than fermentation. I ferment at 59, I'm probably knock out at 52. I do not do a long loggering on the Colch. The reason I make Colch is because it's an hail and I got a turn thanks. So the Colch, I ferment cold and I really only give it like a week at 30 when it's done, find it and then filter it. - What's the magic of making an excellent Colch? - Very similar to making an excellent logger. It's about attenuation. It should be light. It's not. - What's the finishing gravity on your Colch? - It starts at 11, 3, so I would have to pull out my phone. I get about 83% attenuation on the Colch, so it would probably finish at like 1, 8, 1, 9 in there. - Yeah, so nice and snappy and dry. - Yeah, and then same thing, carbonate it and just a little bit of wheat. - Same three-ish volumes. - Yep. Yep. - A little bit of wheat, is that what you're saying? - Yeah, just a little bit of wheat. I have to force carbonate the Colch a little bit because it's fermenting at a little bit warmer temperature so I don't get that. I can't capture it all naturally, which is unfortunate, but yeah. - Happens, happens. Well then let's also talk about, I mean, that was the quickest Colch Colch discussion I've ever had. But let's talk about IPA here. Before we started recording, as we were drinking some beer and talking about what we're gonna talk about, you made a comment to me that you didn't like old school American IPA, but you love this new iteration of Logger-inspired West Coast IPA, the Ultra Lean, Ultra Pale, Ultra Light with full hop saturation, but nicely balanced and primarily brewed with Pillsner, Malt and Logger yeast. And so this interesting iteration of West Coast IPA as it collides with Logger brewing and you are here for it. How does your Logger brewing impact the way that you now make West Coast inspired IPA? - It's really a similar process. I mean, the main difference is I use American Maltz, American Pillsner Maltz. So back in the 90s, when we would do-- - American Pillsner Maltz 'cause you can get them just as lighter, even lighter and-- - Lighter and their modification, And I don't know about all of them, but some of them, like the ones that the cool kids are using, like the Idaho, pure Idaho pills, and err, I don't know about the gambreenest. I have a feeling that one's probably a little bit higher modification, but you can get domestic mulch now that have mid-range protein and have that clobach in the right in the sweet spot, does make it a little tougher to get the old school tenuation. So back in the Snake River days, we were getting our mulch from Great Wester, which is overnight a hoe, and it is right in the middle of, A.B.s got a malt plant over there, Modello, it's big time multing. And back then, all that malt was a higher in protein and super high modification, and it was designed to be brewed with up to 40% corn or rice. It's a different malt completely, and if you brewed 100% with that malt, you'd have way too much fan, and the beer would be a little empty like, or some of our domestic loggers are. They just are a little bit empty tasting. Now, because there's so many breweries out there, making 100% malt beers, you can get domestic mults that are more suitable for all malt brewing. So you start with that, and then, you just hop the heck out of it. And so seven years ago, eight years ago, or something, there was like hop shortages. It was really hard to get hops. Nowadays, it's one of the, probably the only benefit of all these breweries closing and all this, it's really sad, but the hop brokers pay attention to all the brewers, even little ones like me. I can get sales guys. I can get people to talk to me about lots. So I can get pretty good selection of hops versus back in the day, just getting whatever I could. I'm small enough to wear. I have a chest freezer, and I can store two years worth of mosaic in that freezer. So if I find a good lot, I can buy 44 pounds, or 88 pounds, and that'll last me a couple of years. And in here in Colorado, there's so many good breweries, and everyone's, and I'm asking for so little, I can just call up the guys from liquid and say, hey, what a lot of mosaic do you like? And he'll just tell me, and I'll call my hop rep, and he'll ship it over. And so that part is nice. - When you say liquid mechanics, you mean, you're a liquid, you mean liquid mechanics? - Yes, yes. They're like the closest brewery to my house. - One of these days we'll get Josh on the podcast here. One of these days. So anything else to IPA before we wrap up here? You know, similar 3470 fermentation for you or? - Yeah, you know, and I'm pretty sure that's why the cold IPA was invented is because there was some logger brewers that had a lot of really nice use, they were dumping down the drain. If they didn't have dry hops in it, so you have access to this nice healthy yeast. So it makes sense to ferment with that, and I'm sure somebody can tell the difference. - This is the kind of also ferment on a warmer temperature. It's super flexible. It was much more flexible than any other people were giving a credit for before. - I would have a hard time telling the difference between Chico and 3470 fermented. I'm not gonna say warm like luke cool. I don't know what you'd call it. Like in the mid 50s, 60s, somewhere like that. - There's probably a little bit more of a sulfur kick in there, but like I'm pretty blind to sulfur 'cause I drink so many loggers. And if you mix that sulfur with some of those New Zealand hops, oh, yep, sign me up. - Sure, sure. New Zealand hops. Now you're speaking my language. Well, let's take a big picture of luke here. You've been brewing for, you know, since the mid 90s. That is a, you know, and here you are, now with your own small family owned breweries. Truly is, you know, family. Families in the name of the brewery and family is the story here. Very small business making exactly the beers you wanna make and sharing with people the way that you wanna share them. What do you hope for in the next few years of Fritz family? And, you know, what is your long-term goal for this brewery? - I mostly just wanna stay open, you know? Like, that's fair. - I wanna make a living. So, I mean, it still is a business. It's not a hobby. Like I have a mortgage like anybody else. Because we're so small, like the margins, or we just don't have, you know, a lot of extra expenses or cash flow. So it's just, but it's fun, you know? It is-- - You can't screw up. You gotta nail it each time. - Yeah, and it's, I truly enjoy coming to work every day. Like I try to make sure that I keep it fun. For me, it's a learning process. I try to keep learning every day, whether it's through books, through talking to various brewers, listening to your podcast. Just, I'd like to say, experiment at the brewery, but it's not like I have one variable that I'm changing at a time, because I only brew my biggest batch of beer. I brew a dorkmutter. I'm brewing it to 12 times a year. So there's not a lot of options for, you know, doing true experiments, but just little tweaks, little tweaks. - Well, that's fair. - That's fair, little tweaks, but little tweaks over time, you know, turn into great beers. That is a good place to bring it to a close. G&D Chillers new Elite 290 Micro Series built for brewers who care about sustainability. And performance, Berkeley Yeasts Dry Tropics London offers their best-selling liquid yeast strain with the ease of use of dry yeast. Pack-tex handles are made from 100% recycled plastic and are fully recyclable. 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If you are a professional brewer, subscribe to the all-access subscription and get both our brewing industry guide and craft beer and brewing and exclusive stories from Kate, Stan, Ron, even Ryan Pac-Myer, doesn't review submissions per year to Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine and three seats so that you can share it with other brewers on the team. Cory, if people want to learn more about Fritz family, say they're coming out here in March to do some early-round judging for the World Beer Cup, which is just down the street from you here. And they want to learn more, come try some of the years themselves, where can they find you all in real life and learn more about the brewing. We're at 6778 North 79th Street in Nihon, Colorado. You need to try our beers here 'cause that's about the only place you can get 'em. So hop in a new brewer, share it with your brewer friends who are also other judging. And yeah, if you're in Denver for JBF or any other things, you can pop up here as well. It's a nice little tap room in a beautiful little place and the mountains are just spectacular today. They just look beautiful, the light is so good. So anyway, it's been wonderful talking with you out, Logger Brewing and look forward to enjoying another one with you. As soon as we wrap this, cheers. - Cheers. (upbeat music) - This podcast has been brought to you by craft beer and brewing magazine for those who love to make and drink great beer. To learn more, we're to subscribe, visit beerandbring.com or find us on social media at craft beer brew. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)