Spyglass Searches for Unique Modes of Balance in Hazy IPA and Mexican-Style Lager

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. It's episode 499 of the Craft Beer and Bring podcast time Jamie Bogner and joining me from Nashua New Hampshire, John Wagner and Danny Sump, John Wagner's co-founder and Danny and co-owner and Danny Sump is a director of production for Spy Glass Brewing. Welcome to the podcast, Danny. Thank you. Thank you. And welcome, John. Thank you, Danny. So in our new logger issue, which is out now, you all sent us a beer for review your Ahuevo Mexican logger and it was our top score, scored a 98 in the issue. And so I figured, hey, now is a great time to have this conversation. And it's funny because it goes back away. John, you came to one of our brewer's retreats in Austin, last decade. Yes, pre-COVID, even. Yeah, eight years ago, just before we opened our brewery, our smaller brewery. Yep, I went out there and had a great time and came back and ended up being head down ever since. And then you opened up a brewery and yeah, you know, and then lots of things happened between then and we'll cover that history. And here you are now with, you know, I saw you're the second highest rated brewery in New Hampshire on untapped. You've obviously got this high scoring high scoring Mexican logger with us. You guys make all sorts of beer, but you also do really, really well with high hazy IPA. So we're going to talk about Mexican logger. We're going to talk about the many faces of hazy IPA and the many iterations that takes because you brew all sorts of hazy IPA from flagship hazy IPA into more saturated and intense iterations. We're going to talk about what that looks like and know what that current state of hazy IPA feels like to you all up there in the kind of center of you are in New England making New England style IPA. And so that is constantly evolving and your process is constantly still changing and everyone is always working to stay at the forefront of that and figuring things out, you know, it's a still dynamic even after all these years. We're going to talk about what that looks like, you know, how your fermentation and selling processes have been adapting and evolving, you know, how you approach hops and all of those things. But we're going to talk about Mexican logger first. Before we dive into today's episode, a quick word for brewers out there, staring down a broken chiller. 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PackTech helps brands stand out while staying sustainable. Trusted by Craft Brewers Nationwide they offer a smarter sustainable way to carry your beer. To learn more visit packtech-opi.com that's p-a-k-t-e-c-h-opi.com. All right John why don't you give us a little bit of your background we'll get some of Danny's background and then we can kind of put you know give me your background in some of the spyglass origin story. Yeah so well I was an engineer it's a typical story and I have three partners we were all software guys together and you know we got tired of making easy money I guess so we decided let's open a brewery but I was a home brewer and I got one of my partners in the home brewing and you know we were to the type that would withdraw to a tree house and stand in line for four cans of beer and that was updating myself there but um and then we decided you know we can make pretty good hazy and there's not you know in in Nashua it's a good spot where a lot of people are into that so we thought let's let's do it you know it was kind of supposed to be an early retirement gig and it's anything but a retirement gig trust me and so that's how we got started and we opened a small place in 2018 I guess and we had you know 40 seats tap room and a 10 barrel system and you know we rode through covid pumping out cans and selling them out the back door in a car line and then post covid we built out our new new it's new to me still I guess we're four years here on our fourth year at the innovative way facility and now we have a 300 seat tap room and 20 barrel system and yeah that's where we are yeah good stuff good stuff well it's nice to have expanded to to that kind of thing and you know and certainly in that area the it's fascinating to see the ambition of breweries that make great beer and just how they can like you know you've got treehouse that has a golf course and humongous get that's it which is actually not that far down the road for you all you know no tootsbury we were they opened just before we opened this new facility and we were like oh there's not going to be anything within reach and then treehouse open like whooped but it doesn't seem to be a problem perfect perfect you know a little bit of diversity is the spice of life there so Danny tell me about your beer history and your beer arc yes so I graduated college with a degree in exercise science and I started working in physical therapy right after college came to the point where I needed to make a decision whether I wanted to go to physical therapy school or do something else and there was a local brewery in Norfolk Virginia called O'Connor Brewing Company that was looking for somebody to pack out on their bottling line and so I took that job for free work to six months for zero paycheck free beer free beer and ended up getting hired on as nighttime sellers so I ran a playing frame filter you know starting at 11 p.m. every night cleaned a few tanks transferred some beer then got promoted up to a brewery position there we ended up expanding the facility a little bit more and that upon a 30 barrel four vessel system brewing a lot of beer kind of hit a wall there we were we're brewing the same thing every day but I ended up working at Wickedweed in Asheville at their brew pub this was as they were building their production facility so I was brewing a lot of sour beer there mostly work for sour beer did a little barrel work in the funcatorium but mostly this is shift for shift for work did that for a while and then got hired on by green flash this is pre Wickedweed by up got hired on by green flash ended up working at their Virginia Beach facility pretty much the entire time it was open so went into pretty much high capacity very automated brewing at that point it was fine it was it was it was a it was a lot different than the manual brewing we had done before right done before but yeah they ended up closing that facility lean everybody off and I kind of had to reassess what I wanted to do in the brewing industry at that point I ended up finding a brewery in North Adams Massachusetts called Brad Ideas Brewing there were small brewery seven barrel brew house I was I was just myself and another assistant brew there that's where I started to get full creative control and started to really define kind of how my brewing style was going to be I ended up working there for six years as their head brewery that ended up directly. Dr. Brewing Operations, we ended up opening a production facility in Westfield, Massachusetts. So I got to do the build out and get those beers going. And then I got the opportunity with Spyglass and I took it and I've been at Spyglass now two and a half years. So nice. Nice. So John, tell me about Spyglass. You guys wanted to start a retirement kind of fun project, which I imagine has become even more intense than your first career ever was in terms of pressure and stress and yet so much less financially rewarding. Yeah, you know, we make choices in our life like sometimes you just want to do what you want to do. But you know, so what your thoughts then when you guys got together to start the brewery was we go and buy this beer and you know, we think we can make great versions of this. But then you open up a 300 seat place and now the calculation is like, we need to make lots of different kinds of beers that lots of different kinds of people drinking. I should also state that those other large breweries, whether it's Trillium, Treehouse and some of these kinds of leaders in New England, like they all do the same. You know, like I mean, last time I was at that Treehouse golf course, I had a Gurujiska, you know, and then they were making historical logger styles. It was way too high in ABV, it was a five percent beer, it was far too full. They did a, they did not do a great job at the Gurujiska, but you know, anyway, but I might be a very fine tuned critic of that particular style. That's neither here nor there, but but anyway, you know, this, this idea, there's not a monoculture, you know, a beer monoculture in New England just because it's well known for easy IPA, everyone, you know, makes and enjoys lots of different styles of beer. But so what was your goal then with, oh, a spyglass, and how is that evolved now into what it is? Yeah, that's true. So, when we started spyglass, yeah, I mean, our goal was, you know, we really like TZ IPA, and so when we opened, that's what we brewed. We also opened though opening day, we had an Irish stout in a sazon in a couple of IPAs and I have something else, and so, you know, we fully intended to be a well-rounded brewery, but people really enjoyed the IPA, and so you of course end up having to brew that again and again because they keep drinking. So you just, we had four fermenters. So we were pretty limited in the variety we could have. So yeah, like I, I don't know that we fought through what was our goal. But certainly we did some thinking ahead of time though before we opened, we were going to open with a seven barrel system, and we had, of course, being engineers, all kinds of numbers and spreadsheets, and the day we were going to pull the trigger on the system, we calculated, wait a minute, what if we had a 10 barrel system? And boy, the difference in profit is huge. With very almost no cost difference, it was minimal. So we were really lucky we thought that and did that, because then when we hit COVID, oh, those bigger tanks were really helpful when we brought the mobile counter in, we could hit the minimums easy, they'd come every week, we just got lucky there, I keep saying that every year. But yeah. So. There was something to this idea, and I keep coming back to, in fact, I was just this past weekend down at Keeping Together in Santa Fe, and was talking with Avery and Pat down there, and they've built a little over 300 capacity tap room for that brewery, and it's a very ambitious project. There is something to going into the concept that is bold and ambitious, but also a place that people want to go to is probably a better predictor of success than simply managing your risk. I think sometimes you overly manage your risk and try to keep your exposure low. You actually don't go and create the kind of place that draws people in, and so thinking about it in those terms, doing the thing and committing to it actually can actually be a bigger predictor of ultimate success. Yeah. It's painful when I see people open with really small systems and like, man, you're going to beat yourself to death, making beer. They just can't make a profit that way, and it's like, I know it's hard when you've got to take a loan, but sometimes if you've got to do the calculation, for just a little more money, can I double my potential profit, right? That was what it was like when we looked at it. Yeah. Hitting a certain number for it to be an actual business, drive enough, or to be a real thing after that. Yeah. Can I make a living? Yeah. Right. Also, having a big tap room is like, now we have a big one. And man, that was a really good thing because people, they just like going to places that are big, I think, for some reason. But B, you can always find a table, you can always find a seat, that way. Yeah, we were full most of the time in the old place, but also they can bring up, hey, we have a 50th birthday with 55 people, can we have a space, like, yeah, we can do that now. There's not a lot of places in town that people can do that. So that's, you know, there's my business advice. Go bigger. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. And like we saw it in Meanwhile in Texas, they built this brand new brewery and they spent quite a bit of money, you know, building this. But you know, you go there on a weekend and, you know, it takes five food trucks to feed all the people that are out there in that beer garden, you know, and you can easily see a thousand people outside in this giant, you know, organic, organic beer garden. And, you know, and so some, there is some case of like, you know, build it may have a great product, but have a great experience and, you know, building it with that kind of intention can help create a thing that, you know, can actually, you know, be the level of business that you want it to be. Yeah. Interesting stuff. So Hazy IPA was, and you were, you guys went in on it, I want to talk about, actually, let's talk about Mexican logger before we talk about easy IPA. Just to make those, you know, those IPA folks keep listening. So before we do that, Oregon hop country is having to world class logger varieties and Indie hops is proud to have introduced Oregon's newest logger hop, Lorian in 2022. Lorian isn't a growing list of beers that have found their way to the podium and more importantly, into the hearts of logger lovers across the country. Discover Indie hops. In side effects may include RAM, infestivity, sales, bumps, and exceeded expectations. Indie hops life is short. 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So you guys are a hazy IPA brewer, and yet you send us a Mexican logger for the logger issue, which hey, I appreciate, I appreciate you got to prove that you can do more than one thing. Danny, tell me about the kind of creative process behind this Mexican logger. Obviously, people come to the brewery who are not uber beer fans, and the first thing you're going to ask for is do you have something like Budweiser, do you have something like Kors Light, and so you have a Mexican logger, that's something people know is easy and accessible, and that's, I think, one of those reasons why craft beers have embraced it. Yeah, so this was a synch with a myo release. I really just wanted something incredibly trickable, and that was the number one goal of this beer was make something light, make something balance, make it as clean as I can get it, and make it so that people could drink 50 of them. If that's what makes me, at least in the United States, that's how Mexican loggers, I know the Mexican brews have much more nuanced views on it, but for me, I still wanted to make it really great beer. So yeah, it was mostly just looking at, this was our first batch of alweibo. We had never brewed it before. For me, I was looking at, okay, six row because we need corn. Corn is like the number one thing, number one malt there, I should say, grain that we put into Mexican loggers. So six row because of the amylase to help that conversion of the flake corn, I did look into getting local corn. Unfortunately, in early March, it is not corn season in New Hampshire or New England, it's still, they're still snowing. So I was not able, unfortunately, because the season to acquire local corn, though there are a few farms in New Hampshire that I now have contact with, you know, for summer beers of corn, but yeah, for this, I did have to go with flaked corn from BSG, but we did bra six row and just a little bit of chipmult just for head retention. And then for hopping, chipmult such a New England hazy IPA brewer trick there and we ordered by the palette. I could talk about that later. I mean, that makes sense, though, because I know when I wrote my review, that beer felt like it had a boldness to it, despite the lightness. And I think that now that you're mentioning Chipmalt, it does make some sense there. Yeah, and I agree. Both that head retention was fantastic, and it just, you know, but it almost felt to me, and I think I wrote, you know, felt like a, you know, a logger that actually had some citrus notes, some of that lime, but also felt like you'd already put some salt in there to kind of, you know, that old Midwest logger trick of dropping that little salt in to make that beer, give that beer a little more, you know, feeling of body, and, you know, but I, but you know, so Chipmalt tracks, that's, that's quite much, like Chipmalt's in general in this. There is 9% Chipmalt. So 9%? Okay. Yeah. Very exact. Yeah, and it's funny. And six row. I mean, a lot of people aren't using a lot of six row these days. We, I think this is the first time we've ever used it, and like I said, I was kind of thinking about the corn, and, you know, just the, like the amylase that the six row brings into it so that you know, get a little bit of conversion from the corn. So that was the big, that was the big reasoning on that. But yeah, it's funny. You mentioned salt. We have very soft water profile, air chlorides are pretty high, naturally here. I may have, in fact, I did, I know I did, I, I did add a good amount of calcium chloride to soften even more, a little bit out of the playbook from Mexican logger. But the way, I, I, I like loggers to feel a little more soft. And there's other ways to get sharpness, mostly with fermentation stuff. But I, I like to keep the water profile still a little bit soft with our loggers. And I think it played really nicely with our way bow in this case. But yeah, we, we also, we hopped a sauce. I thought the floral, let's talk about mashing before we get into the hot side stuff. You know, now obviously using flake corn. So if you're reaching out to local corn producers now, that means you're thinking about cereal mashing in the future. And you know, even though you obviously didn't have to do that with this one. But you're also your goals to try to get, you know, a pretty dry and fully attenuated beer because the Mexican logger talks to me about that kind of, you know, that mash process. It's as simple as it gets, a single infusion patch. We could, we cannot decoct on our system. It's, we've done kind of the pseudo decoction where you send over a portion of your work to your kettle, boil it, send it back over to our mash. We actually did that with the guys we did collab with wander back brewing out of New Jersey. Really great logger brewery out there. So Brian came here and we kind of messed around with that with a Marzen pretty decent results on that. But with this Mexican logger, I wasn't looking for that kind of complexity with them all. I'm mostly just looking for a very clean, malt profile with that. So pretty simple, single infusion mash. I think we matched at 150 to keep it pretty dry. But yeah, just, just mash results as normal. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty simple, pretty straightforward mash process on this. And the, the six row performs, you know, just as you would expect it without a two row. We actually, it's funny, we actually had better efficiency on this than we've had a lot with a lot of our two row beers. Yeah, it was a little bit unexpected, but it could have been, it could have been just the way we milled it. Who knows? I mean, we didn't really make mill adjustment. I think it was worth adjusting our mill, doing a siv test and adjusting our mill just for one beer like that. It was a, we, at the time, we're like, oh, it's probably going to be a one off. So it's like, let's just, we get what we get and we'll figure it out from there. Now, now I have to match it, so definitely, definitely brewing again. So see, if you're successful with it, now you got to make it again, but I suspect it sold well also for you and, and, you know, and if it came out of that, think of it in my own time. And of course it did. Well, let's, let's talk about then this hot side process. You know, you then, you know, you mentioned you hop this with saws. Yeah, so we have three hop additions, we did a 60 minute of 15 in a whirlpool. Actually, quite a bit more hops than I think most people expect. I mean, we did full 22 pounds in a 20 barrel batch. Just layered. It only came out to about 15 IBUs, but we do have a second kettles. We have two kettles. The second one we use as a knockdown tank, so we actually did cool it and whirlpool hop in there. But yeah, just a long bull, whirlpooled some saws in there. Oh, yeah. All right. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it has short contact time. It's a, we, we send it over to the knockdown tank about halfway through the knockdown. We'll add the hops and then we only do like a five minute whirlpool and then cool, and then send it out, let it rest and then send it out to the knock it out to the tank. So yeah, it's, it's a pretty quick contact time overall, but yeah, we whirlpooled some saws in there. I thought that helped with balance. So yeah, of that, of that kind of hop load, you know, how much, what percentage is like earlier in the boil versus your mid boil versus whirlpool? It was so six pounds at 60 minutes, four pounds at 15, and then I believe there is 12 pounds left for whirlpool. Yeah. Well, still a pretty hefty whirlpool with that. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's big enough. Our pills, nurse, we're usually doing like our textile pills, we're, we're doing like 15 to 16 pounds in the whirlpool, so it's not far off from there. You know, now since you're using saws in this, yeah, and yeah, it's pretty easy to use a lot of it and still get very low IBUs just from the nature of it and I was just looking at the, the latest rub, checked saws, reports from top hops and they're like, yeah, it's going to be even lower IBU year for saws. So it looks like, you know, this is going to continue to be the, the way for this coming, you know, crop year, but is there something also to the, that like larger volume of green matter in this that you, you know, that adds something to the beer more than just the hop flavor and those IBUs? Like, I mean, you know, there is some textural component to this. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean, definitely, I mean, I feel like you're, you're getting just a little bit of vegetable, but it's not, it's, this has seemed that bad for us, honestly. I mean, we, we do, we do the rub in the, the sniff when our, we don't, we don't select our saws, obviously. I mean, we, we're just getting what we can get. We don't, we don't brew enough with, uh, saws to really get anything for, um, contract or anything, but yeah, we're, we're doing the rub in sniff and, um, no, I mean, I felt like this, this, uh, these lots that we were getting are, are really just high in the floral end. Um, we're not, I don't think we're getting anything crazy for like, like any green matter of an hour or so. So. Sure. So, uh, you, uh, whirlpool this for a real short whirlpool contact time and then get into fermentation, talk to me about how you fermented this. Yeah. So we knock out at 53, um, and then, yeah, we, uh, we maintain, we don't, we don't diaspora rest our loggers, um, we do use ALDC, um, actually, I'm thinking, we may not have used it in this one, we had a, we, I'm not sure if we use the ALDC and I'm thinking about it, we use it now, I wasn't sure if we use it when we brewed this actually for our loggers. Anyway, um, no, we, um, no, we knock it out at 53, um, we, we maintain 53, we spund it at a certain point, um, why do you not diaspora rest, um, so, um, I found that if you just give it a few extra days, um, I mean, it takes a little bit longer in the tank, but we don't, we don't, we do force D rest or D tests and we don't really pick up the acid on and we haven't really had an issue with it, um, but we found if we just give it a little bit extra time, it'll clean itself up, um, I'm not a big fan of raising temperature, if you don't need to. So you do a D rest, just don't raise the temperature. Yeah, it's a D rest, but not raising the temperature yet. We're not, we're not, we're not bumping it up, um, any higher than 53, um, but we do spund it, um, about halfway through fermentation, um, we, we get it mostly carved with the spund, um, but yeah, at that point, uh, it sits until the past D tests, um, we start yeast. What yeast are you using for this? Uh, for this one, we used the K Boino from Imperial yeast, um, so we actually used, uh, we don't brew enough logger that we actually harvest yeast, I mean, we just, the timing never works out. Um, so we were able to use fresh pitch pretty much anything and this one, you know, I could, I could use something that was very specific to Mexico logger. So yeah, we used the K Boino from, uh, Imperial yeast is really nice. Yeah, so, uh, ferments out, uh, once it passed, uh, uh, D tests, we, uh, dropped the temp to 50 and then we do two degrees a day until it hits 30, um, we start dumping yeast usually around, uh, 40 degrees and just dump every day until there's no yeast and literally it just sits until we transfer order bright. How long do you let it, uh, condition after, after it's off yeast? Um, so for this, uh, for a wave, oh, I believe we did four and a half weeks, um, a lot of it's just, uh, we, we have a rough schedule like I usually plan out like, okay, I think this is where we're going to transfer and this is when we're going to package, but a lot of times the logger's just tasting them and seeing where they're at. Um, big thing is getting, getting it out of the fermenter into a bright as soon as we can, uh, which, we have 120 barrel bright. So we have to plan it so nothing else is coming out and that way we can clear it up in that bright, anything that's left, we can clear up in that bright and that's when we really get a good taste on it. But, um, yeah, it's usually, we've done up to six weeks on certain loggers, um, but from those parts we tuned for in six weeks for us. Yeah, I love it. That extra conditioning time makes some sense with this whole DAS little program. Yeah, it's just, you know, I mean, ultimately they will clean themselves up and this is why, you know, you can do that if you are willing to give it that time to make sure that it cleans itself up. You know, I'm curious. I think like I noted some citrusy notes in it, even though there's obviously no citrus in this pier. You know, I don't know if you all noted that in some of your sensory, you know, but I'm just curious about that. You know, how did you all think about this flavor and what you got from it? - Yeah, so I think the citrus may have been picked up because we, I did make it a little more acidic. We used a lot of the acid hot side. We knocked, we our mashed pH was a little lower than when we go on our hazy. I mean, we're only a five two. I mean, it's pretty normal range, but we're a five two, but our knockout pH was a little bit lower and that kind of gave it that little bit of acidity, which may have lent itself this citrus, but yeah, most of our sensory, we were getting more of like that floral spicy. I don't know if anybody picked up citrus in it. We did pick up some salinity that was noted in our sensory, but for the most part, it was the malt notes that light, bready, crackery, malt note with a balance with that floral spicy hot character. And, you know, just how clean that beer came out was always noted in the last couple of sensories we did on it. So, yeah, cool stuff. Anything else to us before we move on to some hazy IPA? - Pretty simple beer. We're definitely gonna brew it next year though. Definitely, for sure. So. - Well, let's then, let's transition and talk about some hazy IPA before we do this episode is brought to you by Weist Laboratories. Some strains define an era. These three refuse to stay in just one to kick off their 40th anniversary celebration. Weist is celebrating some of their most iconic strains, highlighting the history and impact that each one has had on craft brewing. These strains each earned their place in this collection the same way, not by trending, but by staying essential decade after decade from home brew benches to commercial brew houses. 1056 Americanale, 1318 Londonale 3 and 2124 Bohemian logger are the proof that quiet backbone's pines some of craft beers most familiar pines. Visit weistlab.com/most-iconic to learn more about each of these iconic strains. So John, you guys started on the hazy IPA train from day one, but I'm curious then in the Danny era over the last two and a half years, you guys have continued to work on these and tweak. It's not as if you have now, you've found it and you are just kind of riding it off into the sunset. Hazy IPA for you guys is a process of constant iteration, constant testing. And so it's still a moving target even after all these years. - It is, yeah, we're never satisfied. We're really critical of everything we make and we're constantly, I go out and get, you know, comparables from well-known hazy breweries known to be great and we do blind tasting with the team and see where we're at and we just sit and say, you know, what do we like about it? You know, where do we want to go here? I mean, we've definitely in the past couple of years since Danny Seared gone, gotten it more hazy, you know, and more hazy. - No, we've changed. - We're hazy. - Yeah, we've changed malt, we've changed processes. Yeah. So it is constantly moving and you'd think eight years into it would be where we stop, but no. (laughing) - All right, Danny. So when you came in, maybe we can talk about, you know, kind of a core flagship IPA, you know, the kind of, you know, IPA that you make in quantity rather than, because if we get into more specialized piece, which I would love to talk about what that is later on, obviously the answer to that is, like, will we change it every single time? 'Cause, you know, you can on these small and so I'm curious. When you, you know, where were you all with, like, kind of core flagship hazy IPA? When you came in and over the last two and a half years, outlined some of the kind of, like, if there are some, like, landmarks, you know, some kinds of significant changes that you guys have been implementing to try to get that exactly where you want it to be. And it's not to say that it was wrong before. And I don't mean that at all. I think that this is, it's a moving style category for everyone, and everyone is still figuring out that it can be things, certain things, and what people want from it continues to evolve. And so it's not putting a value judgment on what it was. It's just, I'm just curious, where it was, and what are some of the kinds of levers that you've pulled to, you know, keep moving it forward? - Yeah, so I think we're on version 10.0, since I've been here of state of state-maskine Citro, which is our flagship. I keep track of every iteration, but that's just recipe. That doesn't even include process. But, yeah, when I came in, state machine Citro, was actually Citro and Columbus. So it had kind of a dank feel to it. And one of the first issues, I really, I don't call it an issue, one of the first things I really identified was that our, there's so much variety in what Columbus can give to a beer. And we were, we had some Columbus on contract, but not nearly enough to supply state machine for the years. So at some point halfway through the year, we had to get, we had to get spot Columbus, and it was kind of just whatever. Back then, you couldn't really select lots on your spot hops now, almost everybody's doing, which is great, but. So it'd kind of be random what we would get. And between batches, you could definitely tell a difference between the Columbuses and each batch. I thought it was a good opportunity for us to move to strictly Citro. At that point, make it a true single hop Citro IPA. As far as the malt goes, we started adding slowly, adding more and more oat malt to it. We used Thomas Bosset oat malt. We liked them a lot. Great, great protein in them. But yeah, we started adding a little bit more oat malt, and then we started introducing a local malt, Blue Ox malt house up in Maine. They have a very, very light Pilsermall. I think it's 1.2 SRM, Pilsermall. So we started doing kind of a half and a half with base malt for Blue Ox Pilsermall, as well as RR2 row. But we slowly added a little bit more Citro to it. It's not much different, total hop wise, than it was when I came in. But we've changed a lot of processed stuff and just overall with all of our IPAs since I've been here. Namely, we started counting yeast in underpitching our yeast. That's really helped with the hay stressing out the yeast ever so slightly. We did change our yeast strain too, actually. I think about it. We went from, yeah, we went from Omega British 5 to Imperial Juice A38. We don't know if that's a stream change, but it's a brand. Yeah, it's a brand change, it's basically same thing. You're right about that. But yeah, we made some bigger adjustments in process, but as far as like recipe and how we approach the beer now, I mean, it's definitely juicier. We select our Citro, we go to Yakima now and select our Citro, which has made a huge difference in my opinion. We're getting top tier Citro that fits what we're looking for, which has been great. To find that for me, what is top tier Citro, it's what you're looking for, because, yeah. Honestly, you can put 10 brewers in a room, and you probably get seven different selections for their favorite Citro. I was gonna say it's subjective. Top tier in our minds. Yeah, so I would say it's subjective to us. But the Citro that you need for Hazy IPA and a New England context might be different than the Citro, that brewer and San Diego needs for, they're bone dry, less, like, super-free, less-caused IPA. So for you, when you're selecting, what are your kind of goal posts? Yeah, so we're looking for, obviously, high citrus. We're looking for high tropical on ours. Those are the two main ones. The last, the 2025 batch, all of them had a woodiness to 'em. We felt like, so we actually do have a lot of wood in the one we have. It actually plays out pretty nicely in state machine, but we're looking for low grassy, low herbal, low spicy. We don't want anything detracting from the tropical and citrus for the most parts. That's really what we're looking for is that clean, that clean citrus, clean tropical, not much else in the way, but that's the big thing for us. We don't, we don't-- You're okay with a little bit of dank, obviously. Yeah, a little bit of dank. Yeah, Columbus in this before, so. Yeah, we had Columbus in it before, but yeah, we're okay with a little bit of dank, but yeah, for the most part, we're just looking, we're looking for that clean citrus, clean tropical flavor aroma coming from the hops. We don't care as much about alpha acids here, mostly because we're not, we're not throwing any hops in above 180. I mean, I think we knocked down to 165, and that's the hottest the hops ever see. So-- Oh, well, okay. I know, I know. Wild. Before we talk about, are there any other kind of oils that you, you know, kind of flag when you are looking at some of these, you know, looking at some of these hop lots? We don't, we don't get that in depth. not to add nerdy yet. All right. Well, let's talk a bit, let's talk about, you know, walk through kind of process, starting with this, you know, this mash, and so you're blending some craft pilsner for ultra-like craft pilsner from Blue Ox with some standard raw or two row, and then also Oatmolton, like, you know, where are you at in terms of, like, Oatmol percentage these days? Well, man, all right, so for state machine, we are around 20%, so we're on the, yeah, we're kind of on the higher end, but we've gone higher on other beers, but yeah, we're about 20% of the Oatmol, Titmol, we're at 15%, and then we do use some flaked oats in state machine as well. The percentage is pretty low on those, I think it's below 10, but can't remember the exact percentage, but yeah. But that's still quite a lot of non-base malt in this, by the time you add your oat malt, your chip malt, and your flaked, you know, I mean, you're at 40%, that's not base malt, you know, pretty easily right there. Yeah, we have a, we have a pretty wild grispil, honestly, and we've, this is on the safer end for us too, which is kind of strange to say, which explains our efficiency. Yeah. How crazy does it get on the craziest end? Tell me what is the, I've gone up to 40% oat malt, so our wildest, how man, all right, so our wildest grain bill we've done, I believe was 40% pilser malt, 40% oat malt, and then 10% wheat, 10% chip malt, and that was the entire grain bill. It was incredibly pale, incredibly hazy. It was, it was, it was too much protein, our efficiency was garbage in the match-tun. I think we were in the low 70s at that point, but we ended up with a really, it's a pretty nice beer. We ended up with a pretty nice beer that was, I guess, that's super hazy, that the hops just jumped out of it, so much protein in there for the hop oils to stick to. It really just jumped out of the glass, but, yeah, it's a dipah. Yeah. That's super pale color that is so hot right now amongst, you know, a certain cadre of, you know, hazy IPA fans. All right, so, so you go, you know, through this match process, and you are going to, I imagine, match this a little bit hotter because you want to hold on to, or, I don't know, I shouldn't assume. You tell me what you do from there. Yeah, so we match at 152, and yeah, yeah, it's 152. We go a little bit drier match as well, but yeah, it's, once again, single-infusion match, and then, yeah, we, we've wore a lot for 20 minutes and then start, start collecting. Nothing crazy. Our pH is high. We're usually around 5.4 for pH. We shoot for 535 to 545. We usually end at 5.4, but there's a little bit of leeway sometimes, but, yeah, so it's just a high pH low, low liquor to grist ratio, a little bit dry, 152. What is it about that lower liquor grist ratio that, you know, we tend to get a little bit better efficiency on it, and that's what we found, so just a little bit better. That's the big, that's a big difference. Purely efficiency and no other kinds of impacts. Yeah, for us at least, that we've noticed. So, so then you come out of the mash and then, you know, get into hot side on this. Talk to me about that. Yeah, so we do, we do a full hour boil, and we do nothing, and other than yeast nutrient, we do nothing in the boil. So, we cool it down to 165 into our second kettle. About 300 gallons in, we'll start adding our whirlpool hops. So, we do anything, we've done up to 33 pounds in the whirlpool. We try not to go much higher. We've used some flow bowls in the whirlpool as well. So, we're big fans of Dynabuse right now. We get so much aroma from our Dynabuse. I mean, we're knocking out, it just smells like a hot bomb already. We have used Inkagi to in the past. The prices have really gone up on that, so we've kind of really stuck the Dynabuse, but we haven't had a reason to change from it yet. It's not every beer that we use Dynabuse. It's a lot of our, kind of, what we call triple dry hoppers. But yeah, we have specific varieties. You find work well in Dynabuse in the whirlpool, or maybe almost. We almost exclusive use citra, almost exclusively. Yeah, we've done citra, we've done mosaic a little bit, but it's almost entirely citra, and our dry hop is usually where we see a lot of our other hops that are introduced. But yeah, it's a 15, we have sugar at this point too. So, we use Dextrose, sometimes in Bruce Crystal's others, depending what we're looking for. So obviously Dextrose will dry it out a little bit more. Bruce Crystal's have still a little bit of residual sugar that's not going to get fermented. So, depending what we're looking for, and what beer it is, we'll kind of go between the two of them. But with our, with our brewhouse efficiency, it's for double IPA. It's definitely difficult for us to hit our gravities without sugar. So, yeah, we usually add a bagger to in the whirlpool there. But yeah, it's a 15-minute whirlpool, 10-minute rest, and then we knock out. But yeah, we knock out 67 oxygenate high. We pitch yeast halfway through our knockout. We also add ALDC, and we've just started adding a little bit of firm cap to our knockouts to try to prevent. But we begin a lot of yeast blow off. So, this is kind of, we were kind of pushing CO2 through the racking arm, like day two of fermentation, but we found that it just made a bigger mess. So, we've kind of, you move on to firm cap. So, you oxygenate high, but you are deliberately, as you mentioned earlier, deliberately underpitching now to also create some stress. So, you're helping yeast, but you're also holding it back in another way and creating this kind of dynamic. Yeah, so we yeast sell count, everything. For the most part, yeah, we are, we're not super underpitching. I know I've heard of other breweries that really like to stress the yeast out, but from our experience with that little bit of stress, it does retain haze a lot better in the final product. So, we do stress it out a little bit, but it's nothing too crazy. So, when you say underpitch, how much are you underpitching on there? So, we're underpitching about, I'm trying to think of the measurement that makes sense, though. So, we're calling for like 750,000 cells per milliliter per degree plato. We're doing 700,000. So, not that much. So, maybe a 70% kind of underpitch, nothing too crazy. Yeah. Makes sense. So, and then you're using the A38 juice now. Yeah. We were having some haze retention issues. A lot of our summer beers are coming out clear. We figured it would be, let's just try something different. We ended up talking to Imperial about, you know, how to treat the yeast and things like that. We ended up, you know, we haven't had much issue since we've moved to them. So, we've been on a bunch of other things, too. We've done a bunch of them. I mean, it is a great company. No, no. We still get a lot of yeast from mega, too, that is not, that is not true. But I think a lot of it was just, we were changing the way we were doing things. We thought maybe, you know, let's try different, you see what happens and go from there, you know, and we haven't really looked back. So, what do you, what do you describe the more haze-ness, too? Because you're not using New Zealand hops in this, which would be the other kind of lever I would expect a brewer to pull to, you know, be more haze-positive. If you're just using Citra, now you've got to use the protein and you've got to use fermentation to make this happen. Talk to me about, you know, how that is evolved in terms of like achieving more haze-ness in the beer itself. And then with that, like, what the goal is, the goal can't just be like, oh, it has to be thicker, you know. I'm sure it also has some other flavor implications for you. Yeah, so, I think protein, for us at least, is the biggest thing for haze stability. So, what we're looking for with the haze, part of its mouthfeel, and the protein really helps with the mouthfeel. And the second thing is, it needs to retain that haze throughout its shelf life, whatever. We are still determining how long our beer really lasts. I mean, it depends how it's stored most of the time. But yeah, you know, we taste our beer six months later and do sensory. We still want it to be as haze-y as it was day one. We do notice some haze dropping over time. It's not a lot, but a lot of times it is the yeast more so dropping out. So, yeah, I think it's a combination though, but of yeast still kind of lingering around and then protein, but it's mostly protein that we're really want to focus on, you know, giving the positive attributes of the haze and the mouthfeel that we want in our beer. And that just you know, super, super high-out content, you think is helping create that right kind of protein that is small enough to stay in suspension and not, yeah. Yeah, we've, we've found that definitely the more oats the, the hazier the beer is. So, yeah, it's worked for us. Cool, cool. Well, yeah, so then you go through fermentation with your A38 and you know, talk to me about that, like, you know, you're adding ALDC so you're staying away from, you know, some of the challenging, you know, kinds of things that this kind of hop load that, you know, can produce. But you know, talk to me about that initial fermentation, you know, period, how you, because you also, you know, you are putting a lot in hops in here. You don't want to lose all that aroma to, you know, blow off obviously from cap helps keep more of that in the beer itself rather than it bubbling up and volatizing off. But you know, talk about some of that process and then we'll kind of segue into dry hopping. Yeah, so we, we ferment at 67 when it hits, hits 10 to 11 Play-Doh. We, uh, diastyl arrests, so we bump up to 70. Once it starts to slow down, we do what we call a head swap. So we're hooking up CO2 to our spray ball and then blowing CO2 through the top to make sure it's not going to suck up any oxygen essentially. So we're basically purging oxygen out of the top of our headspace while it's still bubbling a little bit. So we do, we do a head swap to make sure we don't have any Dio hang, or it doesn't, doesn't create any Dio at the end of fermentation. But I know we, we can't really dry hop, um, fortunately before fermentation, before before fermentation is over. Um, we do harvest off of state machine pretty much every time we brew it, um, because it's one of the few single IPAs. We have, we brew mostly double IPAs. Um, so we do have to harvest yeast off of it usually. Um, so we are, uh, once we harvest yeast, um, it's gravity stable, we'll diastyl test it, um, and then fast diastyl test will, we'll knock it, we'll, uh, crash the attempt at our cool attempt down to 59, um, and that'll be ready for try hop at that point. So 59. Yeah, we, we've experienced it a little bit. We've done up to 65, and we found we were getting some diesel leaf flavors coming off with the hops like, you know, rocket fuel essentially. So we, um, we find to get a cleaner hop flavor at 59, um, but we do some other things in the process to a little bit later on that kind of help with the getting hop, uh, hop contacts in the beer. So that seems extremely cool and somewhat inefficient for hazy IPA brewing. Yeah, yeah. Um, we, like I said, we've, we've kind of, we've tested a couple temperatures and, uh, 59 is, is where we've landed for, for getting what we want. Um, but yeah, we, when we dry hop, um, on day two, we, we do 10 PSI through our racking arm and bubble it for 15 minutes. And then day, day three, we are dumping hops out the bottom. And then we're doing another head swap, make sure everything's clear up top. And then we hook up to the bottom and below CO2 for another 15 minutes from the bottom. And we tend to get pretty good hop contact at that point. Um, and then we'll start every day after that, we just dump. So it's crashed and dumped. So, and I imagine you're doing this somewhat gently so that you're not pushing too much, you know, hop aroma into that headspace and then out of the, of the tank. We're, we're literally doing it, um, just enough to get a bubble in nothing more. So we're, our 40 barrel tanks, we're, we're running 10 PSI and anything lower than that, we're not really getting a bubble up top. But yeah, we're not really losing much aroma on that. But yeah, it's, it's a gentle blow, same with the racking arm, it's a gentle blow just to, just to get, just to get the hops moving. But yeah, sure, sure. So then how many, uh, uh, at what point do you take all the hops out of there? So, uh, usually, so say day ones dry hop day two would be racking arm day three would be crashed and that's where we start dumping. We actually do a hop dump initially. Um, and then we dump every day after that until we transfer over to, uh, or rack over to bright. So, so easy to, yeah. So yeah, what's this in the bright? Uh, yeah, we just transfer it over. We actually, we used to use, um, uh, like mesh, um, I don't know, we call them, um, screen filter. Yeah, screen filters. Yeah, they're really screen filters, but yeah, it's six screens. Yeah. So we used, we used to use screens, uh, to stop any hot matter for potover. Now we are sending over a little bit of hot matter with it, um, and it does settle out in the bottom of the bright, um, over the course of the day. Um, so usually we're transferring it over, we carve it and then we'll pack it to the next day. So it's pretty quick. That hop material coming over, uh, you know, and along with any yeast that might still be hanging out there gets credited with that dreaded idea of hop burn and, uh, you know, and so I know that's something that you all are trying to control for, yeah, and that one day of settling is enough to kind of pull that out. Yeah, it's not a lot. Um, I mean, we are pulling from the rack in arm. Um, it's, we, we don't see when we actually, we can, we, when we do sensory, one of the things we're looking for is solids in our, in our beer and we, you know, most of the time do not see anything. Every now and then we'll pull a can from like the end of the candy run of the gum and we probably should end this a little bit sooner, but it's rare. We're pretty, we're pretty on top of that. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, we, we do keep track of it and yeah, we, we, uh, we, we don't really see much of the hop burn at this point. You know, I mean, you know, we, it crashes for like five days, right? We're dumping every day. So yeah, there's not much left there in the ferment or the rack. Yeah, cool. Um, on the more extreme examples, uh, you know, how, um, you know, do you change that cold side hopping process for, uh, you know, your triple dry hop, uh, you know, kind of, uh, you know, big boys. Um, hopping process doesn't change too much. Um, every now and then we will, we will dry hop right at the end of fermentation. Um, we've done that a few times. We've had some pretty good results. Um, but other than that, it's mostly we start introducing flowables, um, our dry hop, uh, quantity increases quite a bit. Our, our, our crisp bill changes slightly too. I mean, that's where we're, we're packing more oats in. We sometimes with the, those beers, we're using just the pills or malt from, um, blue ox because it's light. It's so light. That's where you get, like, part of the, getting the super, super, super pale, uh, color. Um, but yeah, mostly our, our dry hop process pretty much stays the same as this. We're just starting introducing flowables and cryo in New Zealand home. Then lots of New Zealand hops. Yeah. So we, we, we kind of, we, we, we use other than Citra, looking at our numbers. It's, it's like, okay, after Citra, it's Nelson, then Mattoek, uh, then Rekau, and then Galaxy for like our, our next, like five most utilized hops in our purge. So, um, but yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot of New Zealand hops. Well, you know, if Hayes is your goal, then that's, uh, I mean, you might as well use these hops that, uh, produce it in great flavor. Yeah, like, yeah. I think, like, when you use like Rekau and something, it really adds just such a great, um, you know, second dimension to it. Yeah. Yeah. So we, yeah, we layer them pretty nicely. Um, we definitely, a lot of the new flowable hot products have been really cool that they're coming out with New Zealand. So we've been, we've been playing around with a lot of those recently. So, like what? Tell me about using them. Uh, so yeah, we use, uh, we use hopkey quite often from freestyle. Um, we've been playing around with how much to use because he kind of would be careful, uh, sometimes on, um, you know, how much you're using, because the kit effect had retention and things like that. It's adding that much oil. But, uh, we have a, uh, I guess you call it a series now, because we've done a few of them. But, uh, the single IPA version is called multi agent. It's a single IPA. It's usually one hop. Um, and then it's basically like all the forms of that hop that I can get. So like, for like, sitr, for example, it was like, Reg, that's like our two, so we had two different selected lots of citrus. So we did two, two, two lots of citra, then we did incognito, then we did hyperboost, um, we did cryo. And it was just like all the fours you can get. And we have a double it IPA version coming out this week, um, called an agent swarm. And it's all sorts of every, every flowable, like, when I have your flow, like a fine, but a lot of it was, uh, it was citradina boost and mosaic cryo in the whirlpool. And then the dry hop was citra, uh, uh, Matueca from garson farms out in New Zealand. And then, uh, nectar on hyperboost, um, rewalk at ample fire oil and then Maui Nelson hopkey. It's insane. It's the palest juiciest, most expensive beer we were making. So thanks. Yeah, no problem. But yeah, it's coming out later. That's coming out Friday, um, this week. So yeah, it's, uh, that's a wild one. But yeah, we've been, we've been playing around with them. We like the, the, the, the aromas, especially are what we really like in coming off those, those beers is that they really, they really pop like out of the glass. He's take your face and they're, he just hits you, which is amazing. So, uh, we're big fans that, that, um, you know, are yields are a little bit better on those, our final yields so. Is there, are there any tricks to, I mean, obviously you've got lots and lots of protein already in this, are there any other tricks to like, holding on to it, you know, because you are talking about, you know, these flowable products, you know, getting that intensity to stick around in them and getting that fully integrated into the beer, you know, for giving what you're paying for a must to be a primary goal? Yeah, so one of the things we do when we dry hop, we're bubbling the beer as we're dry hopping, let's again, that kind of light bubble. That definitely, it's really to break, you know, for the regular like T90s, it's to break up like that hop-a-lily pad that's on top, but with the, with the flowables too, we notice if we throw them in, especially near the end, they tend to sit on top. So we've actually been, if we have a dry hop with like two flowables and a, you know, then we have T90s as well, pull through the flowables in first while it's bubbling, get the T90s in, we find if we throw, put them in first, they tend to mix in a little bit better, but for the most part, I mean, I feel like they just, they just mix in really well and they kind of just hang out. So it's worked well for us, so. Are there some specific hop combos that you found that just sing for you in this kind of triple dry hopped context? I feel like they're all the, the ones everybody does, you know, Citroen Elson. You know, Motuweka, Nelson Citroe, you know, he's dribbling, yeah, it's like, I don't know, I feel like everybody's done every hop combination and they're all kind of the same as far as, you know, I don't, I don't think we have anything different than anybody else. I mean, we have our favorite beers for various reasons. We definitely have like our, at least I have my favorite hops from favorite hop farms, like New Zealand, and sometimes I'll start pairing some of them, like I think freestyle does Nelson really well and the Roque is really nice, but I like Garsten's Rakao better. So we'll start mixing in some of my favorite, my favorite hops from certain breweries together and I feel like those, those beers always do better, but yeah, I don't know, it's, I feel like there's, it's, we're not, we're not doing anything crazy on that. And as far as hop combination goes, what do you love about the Rakao from Garsten? I'm curious about that one. It's very cherry forward, but not medicinal. So it just, it's so bright, it's, it's a different, like, very character than I, I've gotten from other like Rakao from freestyle or Clayton Rakao or anything like that. So no, I think it's just, I think they just, they, they grow it in the right place and they pick it at the right time. So that's the only thing they go for, but yeah, they, it's a very expressive Rakao. I feel like it's, it's definitely, it's, it's a little more bright than I've, I've had from other, other lots or other hot farms. So. And what do you love about the freestyle Nelson? It is tropical, it is, it is so tropical. You still get that seven young Blanc character from it, but they, they have done a really good job about with, with identifying those lots that are just more tropical and really, really hitting those and, and focusing their growth and those, those areas on their, and their, to a while, you want to be used that word once spent, uh, yes, so that was the fill. He's, that was the challenge now. So though they done a really good job of, um, of identifying where, where they're, uh, they're hops, at least they're Nelson specifically, you, you get that tropical flavor that really separates it. Yeah. Yeah. Are there any, uh, kind of interesting outlier hazy IPAs that, uh, you have made just, uh, you know, as either as an experiment or just, uh, test a theory or that, uh, you know, I've kind of pushed or expanded, uh, the way that you look either at hops or at hazy IPA in general. So spoke earlier on the, the, the beer we did with, uh, 40% oat malt, that was definitely pushed. That's inference engine. Uh, that's, uh, um, double IPA with Citroa, Matouek, uh, we have, who Matouek, a hop keyf in it as well. I think about it. I'm trying to remember all the hops now we use, but, um, no, that, that one definitely pushed it a little bit, um, with the oats, um, like I said, that, it came out, it was, it was, and it was really nice saturated beer though, um, and then the new one we have come out agents form, um, that's with all the liquid, um, so much, so much flowable and that big dimper. So the other way we think of we hop dipped, um, we did a double IPA with Citroa Nelson. Are you familiar with hop dipping, it's, um, it's, we're basically, you're knocking out hot, like 110 degrees, but you're knocking it out into a tank. The fermenter that's already packed with pellets, um, so you're knocking out, we did a hundred gallons and then let it sit for a half hour, and then we knocked out cold to get to our fermentation temp, um, in pitch yeast, um, and we found that our, uh, the hop care to get from that is really nice, the Roma's really good, um, but it's a pinnacle to do, um, and it, yeah, it's just, it's just something that I, it's one of those things, oh, this is really cool, but I don't think we can do this very often. So we've tried that before and that was really cool, that worked out nicely for us. We've brewed it a couple of times now, we haven't brewed it in a while, but, uh, we can't harvest off that tank either because there's already, it's already packed full of hops, but, um, but yeah, I think those are the, the big ones I get to go up top of my head. I don't know if you can think of anything. I don't know, I, I feel like all our double IPAs and triple IPAs at least are the product of all past, you know, beers that, this is crazy. Let's try this. Now we just do it every day. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're still, we're still looking to push some limits. I think we've slowed down a little bit, um, just because it keeps getting more and more expensive every time we want to do something, at some point, we're just going to price ourselves out of making money if we just keep pushing the bush, we're there and better there. We're there. Okay. So we'll see. I mean, I definitely, we have some plans, I, I have some plans that I haven't even told you about yet. I know, but it's cost more money, but, um, yeah, we'll, uh, we're, we're going to keep pushing things and, and definitely, uh, sensory has, our sensory program has really taken off our, um, our, I call them panelists, um, but they're, they're, they're definitely getting better and better at sensory artist scriptures are getting better. We're starting to pick up more on certain things and, um, that only helps us, um, make better beer because we can then pick up where our flaws are and okay, where do we make this change? Let's do it. I was talking to my crew this morning about, um, harvesting yeast slightly differently and they had a lot of good ideas. So I think that's the next thing we might look at, but yeah, what kind of, uh, what kind of changes? Um, mostly just how we do it, I mean, right now, um, we don't have a yeast sprink, um, so we, we pretty much, um, with, with, uh, imperial juice, you have a very short window, uh, to harvest yeast where our, um, our viability is not complete shit. So we are talking about getting a brink, um, and harvesting on Mondays for the beers we need and then, you know, just, just storing that yeast so we don't have to try to rush and do it the morning of every time we, every time we try to harvest yeast for, for that, so, um, it's myself and our lead burlowing two people that really do yeast cell counts and, uh, one of us is, or one of us is not sick and other person's brewing, um, it, it becomes difficult in our yeast that morning. So that's one of the reasons, but the other, the other reason is I think we can get healthier yeast by doing it in the brink at the right time in the, in the, in the, in the small window that we have and then just pitching off of the brink. So yeah, it's, it's simple things. This is, these are things that, uh, most breweries already do, but, um, we haven't had too many issues, but now we're, we're thinking, okay, we can just do this better. So sure, sure. Well, let's, uh, let's zoom out as we finish here, uh, you know, the, you, John have been doing this for a number of years is now changed from, uh, you know, casual, uh, retirement project to, uh, uh, something that is far more involved and, uh, far more expensive and also more ambitious than you had initially planned, uh, you know, what are the hopes for you and your partners and everyone for the next few years of spyglass, uh, where, where do you see this going over the next three to five years? Um, really like, I think, you know, we're in a good place now. Danny's been a lot of work on consistency. So we can keep things going consistently and maybe expand production a little bit. Um, we're kind of out of physical space here. So, uh, and we have more tanks than we ever thought we would have. Um, and so I've, you know, we've, we've, uh, achieved lots of our goals. And I think basically, I'm always looking to raise, you know, the, not just the quality, but the, um, yeah, maybe you can say it's a quality, uh, of, of the beers, make it even more, you know, more aroma or, you know, more tropical, you know, we're always looking to say, well, what, what can we do better? Uh, we're not really satisfied to stay where we are, um, but, you know, one of the things we've done here is people think of us as a double IPA brewery, really, and we never intended to be, but since coming to our new place, now we brew lots of other stuff like Mexican logger and, uh, nitro stout and, uh, so, you know, I'm glad we have a, we have a customer base that enjoys the variety now, um, and now we have brewers that enjoy making it. So, um, yeah, I think, you know, just to continue working on the, the quality and work on the consistency. I think that's always the goal. Yeah, it never adds. So those double IPA drinkers can still get the beers that they crave. From there from their local brewery and absolutely. I imagine you can still get some of those Massachusetts folks to drive a little further up and Come see you right there in Nashua too from time to time for sure for sure That's about a half our customer base Yeah, yeah, well if you can get them to drive past treehouse and drive to you guys in Nashua Then that's that's saying quite a bit and that is a great place to bring it to a close G&D chillers is there to help whether you're a small brew pub or a large full-scale production brewery Berkeley Yeasts fresh Chico is now available dry Pack-tex handles are made from 100% recycled plastic and are fully recyclable Indyhoff's lorien is found its way into the hearts of logger levers across the country The my dea 50/50 flex can convert to all fridge all freezer or half and half with just the touch of a button and Join why yeast and celebrating some of their most iconic strains if you've enjoyed this episode Go to beer and brewing.com click on that subscribe button and become a subscriber so that we can send you things like the logger issue with the 98 rated Mexican logger a Huevo from spyglass right here and You know interesting things this is gonna come out the friday before our brewers retreat Bringing it all full circle John the first place. I met you in Austin This one's gonna be up in Yakima and hop country and couldn't be more excited about it Some of you may have also noted that this is episode 499 Meaning next week's episode is gonna be that even 500 is some arbitrary milestone that we've just set out in our heads But I would say that this combination of the brewers you treat and an upcoming episode 500 probably has something special in store for us next week. So stay tuned for that John if you want to learn more about Spyglass both in real life come visit you in the tap room, but also check out your beers out there in the digital space Where can they find you? Yeah, where our website is byglassbring.com and As far as Instagram. Yeah, I'm sure if you search on spyglass brewing you'll find this. It's just spyglass brewing And then yeah in Nashua itself in Nashua. We're right off the highway off exit one on spurt road Up the hill behind the big shirt and hotel The 306 innovative way Yeah, that's the address All right, all right Well next time I'm out that way I'm gonna stop by and have some beers You can see I appreciate you joining me for this episode of the podcast and fund a pick your brains about Haze the IPA and Mexican logger and more congratulations on that 98 cheers. You'll share yourself. Thank you. You're sting 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 or to subscribe visit beer and brewing.com or find us on social media at craft beer brew