Taproom-Focused Brewing: Creativity Without Chaos (with Niko Tonks & Steve Finnie)

Welcome back to the Scarman Labs podcast. The show where we break down fermentation science for brewers at every level. I'm your host Richard Priest. Today I'm on the road here at Little Thistle Brewing Company. I'm going to be doing an interview with owner Steve Finney as well as head brewer, Nico Talks. I'm going to learn a lot about what they're up to here in Rochester, Minnesota. This episode is brought to you by a Scarman Labs delivering precision and yeast and passion and craft from clean loggers to the juiciest of IPAs. Our mission is to help you understand and control the variables that matter most. Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode. Okay, thanks for having me here, Steve and Nico. I guess there probably are decent number of people listening at home who have never heard of Little Thistle. So actually I was just going to ask Steve first if you give a little bit of an overview of the brewery out here in Rochester, Minnesota. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for saying. Rochester, Minnesota, we're about 70 miles south of Minneapolis. And a town of 120,000, home of the male clinic. And so I worked there for many years. And so it's a reasonable size town. But as we were talking earlier, about 15 years ago or something, there was a large kind of gap where there wasn't any breweries here in town. And so about eight years ago, or maybe a decade ago, I was dreaming a lot about beer. More than I do now, I suppose I was a home brewer and all that kind of stuff as many of us started off. And we always thought about doing something. So the, and I'm from Scotland originally. So the Thistle is the flower of scholars, our national symbol. You being from Canada, you probably are familiar with that. I feel like Canadian sometimes have a, oh, be careful here. A little bit more geographical knowledge. No, no, no, no, the scholarship got co-founder from Nova Scotia. It's fine. You can throw some shade. Yeah. So, but really the focus here was when we opened and still is is the tap room. We do a fair bit of distribution now, you know, since the landscape has changed a fair bit since the pandemic. But we have a large tap room, large outdoor space. And the main focus is really kind of similar to being like the British pub is a very, you know, friendly atmosphere and a place where anyone is welcome to come. And when the weather is nice, you can, you can be outside here on the patio too. So showing soccer games, football games, rugby games and all that kind of stuff. But obviously focus on high quality craft beer and great customer service, all that kind of stuff. And speaking of high quality craft beer, you've got Mr. Nico Tonks in the back of house. I promise to come up with a bio for Nico. So, I'm going to give it my best shot. Nico's grew up in Maine, if that's correct. Yes. True. Hell yeah. Okay. I got that part. Went to school for not beer as many of us do and found himself brewing in a little, little brewery in Austin, Texas called Live Oak. So another, another alumni of the Live Oak. I don't know what you want to call it. Oh, a class of 2012. I think. Yeah. Basically, cool. Cool. And then moved on up here to Minnesota, founder, brewer of fair state brewing. So you did that for a long time and then cycled out of that. You were doing hop sales with Yakima Chief as well. So real expertise here in hops and then you just got the itch and came back into brewing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And did I nail it? You did. You know, started here in left fair state in fall of 2022. Started here in Little Thistle in summer of 2024. And that's when double elbow my little logger side project, Fiefdom, that we'll talk about also started at the same time. Fiefdom. Okay. I like this. So we have the same. So Little Thistle anniversary in August. Just so happens that the double anniversary double elbow anniversary lands basically on the same weekend. So a lot of synergy. The double elbowversary. Doubleversity. But yeah, this year's two. So yes, sweet. Okay. So that's super, super useful context, I suppose. We just tasted some interesting beers. And I'm reminded that this is the escarboned podcast. We do have to talk about yeast at some point. So why not, why not kick it off with that? This was really honestly really eye opening to me. So these guys poured me four different beers that are all made with the Pomona strain, the dry, lalbrew Pomona. And I think it's really interesting because a lot of breweries just use this strain to make IPAs and like specifically hazy IPAs. But what I was poured was a cream ale and American wheat, the hazy IPA with lactose and then a hazy IPA with advanced hot products. And like each beer was very different. I think it would meet a different consumers needs, wants and desires. And I don't see that in every brewery. So I think this is a, for me, a really cool story of, you know, how are you able to sort of get a lot of flexibility and utility out of a yeast like Pomona? Yeah. So I mean, I think so we have seven tanks. Everything's unit tanked. We have seven tanks. And so Steve, you can speak to this maybe in a minute. But like the emphasis I think in terms of beer when you started was sessionability, bringing in like modern modern US styles, but also some like traditional UK style beers. And so to my mind, with that many tanks or even more than that, it's becomes basically impossible to juggle more than three yeast strains at a time. And I just, you know, Yankee, frugality or whatever you want to call it. I just, I object to the idea of pump and dump like pitch and just dump yeast and move on. So I'm always trying to figure out how to, how to like group beers into threads and use the same yeast strain for all of them. So it just so happens that you're here at the right time where we had, we tried all these things with Pomona because we have like the UK styles. And then we have sort of like the other British inflected beers that would bleed into kind of West Coast IPA. And then we have the Hazy IPAs. And then we have Lager. Right. So I want to correct you. I'm not here at the right time. The yeast knows I'm coming. Like every time I go to live, every time I go to live, every time I go to live, there's fresh half being canned. Well, you know, that just happens. That just happens. Yeah. And we did. I mean, like, so yeah, we put on that the non lactose Hazy like 10 minutes before you should. Yes. Yes, it does happen. Yeah. Very cool. Pomona wasn't used for our cascade. Was it? No, it was another yeast that we want to mention. Yeah. Anyway, no, I think what Nico said there too is, I mean, it's also like the fun experimentation, right? It's like with with Pomona, we've used it a fair bit. And I don't know. Obviously it's versatile and it's, you know, seems like it would work. I mean, you know, I mean, it wasn't I don't think it was elementally a huge risk. It's it's it's also mainly from just like Nico was saying is we're a small brewery. We're trying to save a little bit of money in it. We have the yeast. Let's try it. And you you might end up finding that it works better than you thought. You know, well, one thing that told me on it was Richard when you told me that the the cross was Sack Toa and a Scottish ale yeast. That's that's what I was like. Yeah. We got to do it. We have to try it. So we actually did make a batch of brave women, the sort of Scottish export slash Amber ale that we make. We did a batch with Pomona. We don't have that on right now. So, but we have we've even branched out into the the dark beers with it too. So yeah, totally. Honestly, Pomona does work pretty nicely. And I prefer the house sale to be honest, but it does work pretty nicely. And like I say, we're max of three. That's all we can do. You know, you got it. The cream ale was super clear. Did you have any issues with with clarity on that one? I think it was mostly timing, right? So we do we do use findings. We don't have a filter or anything. And like I say, it's it's primarily unit tank. So especially for ails, it is literally just unit tank. And so all the issues that come along with that in terms of like for menor geometry and not being able to get yeast out fully. We do add bio fine. When we put that on tap so that the the sample that you had was four weeks in package. When we put it on tap, it was sort of mildly hazy kind of like basically where the American wheat was where you had now. I would I would lay that on on the the imprecise nature of findings and not filtering. But I think if we were going to if we were going to try to make that that beer with that yeast all the time, probably we would we would try to build like seven days of cold conditioning in. Yeah, I just I thought that was worth worth pointing out and just acknowledging because I think you know a lot of times we talked about this on the show a lot, but you know people see a hazy strain and think well I can never make a clear beer with this like London three foggy London. That kind of thing. It's like well, no that's an English ails train man like that's been used to make clear beer forever. It only really like the haze is an interaction between the yeast and the hops and the protein right. So if you don't have especially that like heavy hop component, you're not going to have the heavy haze. So you know even if a yeast is haze positive doesn't mean that you can't make a like a beer style that's supposed to be clear with it. No, and even that American wheat lose so we didn't find that beer. And now it's been on tap for three weeks now. And it's it's it's arrived. I think it like the right where you'd want it to be. So if I was going to do that again, I probably would find it just to just to drop stuff out faster. Yeah, that American wheat was really delicious actually. Could you tell me a little bit more about how it was made? - Yeah, so that's a beer that the brewery has made for the last five years. So the guy who was the previous, so Steve's previous title was head brewer. He's, he's ascended himself to director of operations. So previous brewer co-founded a music festival here in Rochester called The Rochester Thaw. And it's a beer called March Radness that we made every year for that. Prior to this year, it always had like an additional orange component, whether that be sort of essential oil or zester, an additional dry hop or whatever it is. But this year I thought I've always kind of wanted to make like a American wheat beer with a little bit more hop character. So basically you said you nailed it Richard, like make an IPA and don't dry hop it. - Yeah. - And so that's all it was. It was 25% or so, wheat malt, two different wheat moths. The rest of it was pilsner. It was about half a pound, 0.6 pounds per barrel of citra in the Whirlpool, a grand total of about 20 IBU and then fermented with pomonad 66 with a D rest up to 72. And that was it. - So super simple. - Very, very simple. Super fast, you know, it was a 10 day beer. - Yeah, it's one of those beers where I felt that the yeast character and like the other ingredients, like the hops and everything else like really kind of work together. Like I guess without the dry hop as well, you're getting less hop character, but like it's distinctly pomona in the aroma, like astroprofile, but also like there's hops. And like I found it very harmonious. Like seems like a beer that would be successful in the warm weather, be successful. - Yeah, easy, easy. And I mean, it's the sort of thing the tap room kind of cries out for you know. And I think, so you know, the first time I used pomonad I texted you I think on day two and I was like date mid firm pomona aromatics are bonkers. And by the time you make it, you dry hop it and everything, you make hazy IPA, it's still there, but I always kind of wanted to make a beer to let it shine without doing the additional dry hopping. So. - Cool. - Tell me a little bit about the hazy IPA's. I guess there's two of them. I thought it was cool that one of them, you had used lactose to kind of balance the sweetness because you know, that's one of the things that we hear about pomona sometimes is that it's just like two dry. I mean, I think I've heard that from you as well sometimes. So like two dry for you. - Two dry for you. - Maybe not for me, but you know. Yeah, I don't think it's a new concept, but just to remind, you know, people about the possibility of you have solutions like adjusting mash temp, lactose, multi-dextrin, et cetera with hazies. - Yeah. - So I'll let Steve speak to wetlands 'cause that's your baby. And then I can maybe talk about hands of science, the other one. - Well, and I think, you know, along with the concept, in the major concept we have here is a lot of sessionable beers. And so I like hazy IPAs, I really do, but kind of saw a need for something low ABV. So it's four and a half percent. So I don't think you still see too many of those. And it's been our best selling beer, I think, you know, but it's almost eight years would be an open. So it's been around a while, but then Citroe, Mosaic, Sultana. And yeah, the lactose isn't there, you know, giving a little bit more body and sweetness. And so that was there when we've used other yeast strains and some worked well, some didn't work as well. And when Nico came on board, it was like, let's try Pomona and it's like, well, why not, right? So I mean, I think even though it's one of our core beers, again, is, you know, with the track record of the folks making this stuff, it was like, okay, you know, let's give it a go. And if anything, it's just going to enhance the fruity character and it's only going to make it better, right? And so that was kind of what we did. And so, and also, again, is that that quest of trying to keep eight strain in a house that is flexible that you can use for different things. So I think it really works really well for the sessionable beer and we continue to brew with it. - I didn't even clock that it's four and a half percent. - Yeah, little guys. - That's the aroma for four and a half is like bonkers. Really great. I mean, I think, I think, I think this is a good, this brew is a good testament to like the importance of ingredient sourcing 'cause I think you have a lot of experience on the hop side too. - Yeah, it's some insider access. - Sure. - But I think that was true of wetlands before, also. And I mean, so wetlands existed before Pomona. And so when I started here, and then I think you hit me up about trying out Pomona, that was August of that year. So the first beer that we made with it was Hands of Science, which is the other hazy we just put back on. And I just, like, let's just try it out and see what it adds to wetlands. And I don't think it dramatically changed the beer. You know, I do think it sort of amped up some of the sort of stone fruit kind of peachy, tropical kind of aromatics. But it just slotted right in there. We didn't have any issues with moving over. - We were already, sorry, we were already getting a nice selection of hops. And Nico was helping us with that. Anyways, I mean, maybe the hop characters, you know, are some different batches where maybe a little more aromatic or whatever, but probably not. I mean, I think overall it was very versatile and work for us. And like you said, is I think for me, my personal challenge, you know, with making the beers we've made, is to make ones that are low-A-B-V, but super flavorful, right? So it's kind of a challenge, right? Is to make someone think, oh, like you just said, and we never told you that, "Hey, it's 4.5%. "But it's still got like the presence of a bigger beer." And that's kind of goal achieved in my head, if we can do that. - Yeah, I mean, I've been sort of shouting that from the Hilltops here on the show a lot about, you know, this latent consumer demand for full flavor low alcohol beers. I believe it exists. I just think that it's a, in many ways, it's more of a marketing problem or even just a accessibility problem than anything else. Like I think that's what people want. People want a 4% or 5% fully flavored beer. If they're gonna drink craft beer, I think it's a perfect position to be in. So I, sounds like your own local market response to that. - Yeah, I think, and part of it is like, it's not a trick. No part of this is a trick, but I do like what Steve and Don did when they started the brewery. They just called it an IPA. There's no additional appended, like, "Oh, all day," the session, whatever, it's just an IPA. And I think my friend Spencer, who's now the VP for Sales for North America, YCH, - Ray Liveo Colombo. - Yeah, another Liveo Colombo, class of 2012. When he was running his brewery in Texas, Oasis, they just made, it was called Metamodern, and it was the same thing. It was like a 12-plato, 4.5%, 5% beer, and they just called it IPA. And I was kinda like, "Is this really gonna work?" But it just, it delivers on all of the flavor targets that people expect, and it turns out that, yeah, that is kinda what we want. So especially if you're gonna build a brewery around the tap room, you know, hanging out here and having multiple pints of it, it just makes sense, yeah. - Yeah, exactly. I mean, save the 9% for like the, you know, - Gas station, call it cans, right? - I call it gas station IPA, that's a whole style. That's a style. - Yeah, it's a style. It's very successful. - It's the only thing floating big breweries out there, but yeah. - Yeah. - Tell me about the hands of science then. - So hands of science started as a showpiece. So I do, I still work for Yakima Chief in kind of a technical sales role, and it was the World Brewing Congress in Minneapolis in 2024. So trying to build a beer around some new advanced products, some new hop varieties, and then a new yeast drain. So it was Pomona, HPC 586, which has since become crush. Actually, I think it became crush like that week. - Yeah. - And then Hyperboost, which is a cold side, aroma oil product. And it's continued on in that vein, we've made it. So it's been off tap for maybe like three months now, and I think that's the longest gap it's had since then. And I think we've dialed in some things on the hot side and the cold side with that beer, but it's still Pomona, crush, citra Hyperboost, and then a little hit of mosaic on the cold side. And that's all it is. Yeah. Sweet. Yeah. I mean, I like crush. I found the beer like super dank, but like nice dank, like almost kind of towing the line between like what I would call West Coast and hazy. - Yeah, and you like, you had it on literally five minutes after we put it on tap on date 12, I think. So yeah, about as a rip and fresh as it's going to be, Crush is a fantastic variety. There were some like agronomic things with it that kind of held it back for a few years, but they kind of figured them out. One of the cool things about Crush is that if you look at like a radar chart of the human sensory of a hot pellet, it really does translate well into the beer. So it's got this big spike. It's almost like to me and my personal lexicon, the way I think about it, is like all of the things that were promised to everyone when mosaic came out. Crush actually kind of delivers on those things. So it brings a lot of sort of like red berries and like a little with a dank and then some tropical. I'm gesturing at a spider graph right here. Yeah, so it's just like a fun variety to mess around with. And it's easy to play with basically. - Yeah, I've found, you know, personally I've really, really liked like, you know, what are we called, the clear IPAs with Crush, but I think this is a nice example of the easier beer too. - It's all IPA. - Yeah. - Yeah. I think it just works really well in that context. - Yeah, we, so we started out using Crush in hands of science. That was the first thing we used it in. And then we actually, once it occurred, It's absurd to me that it might be this sort of pletonic ideal of the mosaic that people want, but don't ever get. We used it in a West Coast IPA with mosaic and Columbus cryo, and that's called pick window. And that was a ripper. We've made that a couple of times now. So yeah, it's really versatile. Yeah. - Can I ask you a logger hop question? - Yeah, please. - And at YCH question. - Yeah, yeah, hit me. - Is 1134 gonna see the light of day? - I love that. You gave me like a bag of it, and I used that to brew loggers, and I really liked it. - So, but I was probably crop your 23, I think. - I think so. - The alpha was like 9.7 or so. - Yeah. - And so this is one of the challenges with experimental hop varieties is that they start on one farm. Regardless of what the number is or who grew it or whatever, they start on one farm. And when they move from one farm to other farms and they expand their acreage, there's usually some things that happen that you don't expect to happen. And so 586, for example, which became crush, it has this interesting behavior where it's like they call it intersex bloom. And so, yeah, I know. But some of the female plants will actually produce what look like male blooms, but they're not, they're sterile, which isn't a problem for open crosses or unintended things happening, but it creates problems with picking. And 1134 is an example where it moved from one farm to another farm and all of a sudden the alpha spiked from 9% to 15%. And so at 15%, it becomes difficult to use as an aroma hop. And so I think that's maybe like there are little, the brakes got pumped a little bit because people like myself who wanna make aromatic loggers and we're interested in American cultivars had been using 1134. And then when it shoots up to 15, it becomes difficult to make highly hop beers with moderate IBUs with something that strong. So I think 1134 has a future, it definitely has a runway. But I think figuring out how to grow it so that the alpha is moderate to high is gonna be the kind of break point for that. - Feels like I'm in this so counterintuitive to say, but it feels like one of the holy grills right now is like really good American loggers hops? - 100%. I mean, I think the market has become so specialized where there isn't like huge growth out there to be had. In a lot of, in basically any realm, which we, that's a different podcast. But what that means is that the, what's cool is that the infill is now possible. So everybody had just moved on to novel aroma and high alpha because those are too easy to sell hedges, right? And so now there's a lot of acreage that needs to get refilled with hops. And so if there is this niche of people who are seeing difficulty in importing aroma hops from Europe and looking for American cultivars that are more disease resistant, more drought resistant, yield better all these things. Like there's just more room to play in the kind of backwater. - Okay. - Yeah. So I think this is a good transition. So speaking of, you know, American grown loggers hops, can you tell me what we're drinking right now? - Yeah, so playing in the backwater, it's kind of my, that's my thing. - Yeah, so we're drinking double elbow, which is like I say, my little logger fiefdom. This is called 33. It's an extra highly hopped check style pale logger. It's an homage to the Budvar 33, which I don't think makes it to America, but so Budvar original, it's like Budvar with 1.5X the hops. And I, you know, if they want to assume me on the name, that's okay and I'll change it. But it's the idea basically like, let's make check style beer, but hop it up a little bit in the same way that Americans have really landed on like quote unquote German style pills and then hopping the ever living shit out of it. So this beer is brewed with true redore malt from Fort Collins, Colorado. And actually this is, Washington grown, saws, Zots, whatever, from Virgil Gommash. Washington grown, saws, that's cool. So the biggest pressures on these European cultivars are temperature change and drought. And so moving from some really like temperate in sort of wet region like the saws region or the like the tetanagre or all these things, moving it to Yakima, which is basically high desert, is an interesting idea. And so what he yielded was a little bit sharper, basically two and a half times the alpha of what you might get out of a check ground variety, but like not so far off I think. - It's deep, it's very tasty. - It's very tasty. I mean, I think even just from a conceptual standpoint, like creating what feels very European, feels very, I would say maybe between like check pills and like North German, like Gavre kind of bitter pills. - Yeah, which I literally-- - Which is the literal North Star. - Yeah, but doing that entirely with American ingredients is I assume the use of American, I don't know, it's not ours. - It's from Colorado. - Yeah, okay, okay. Also from Colorado, so malt and yeast. - Well, and also the rule is not US, the rule is North America. - Okay, that's my rule. - Note it, yeah, keep that in mind. But like I think it's successful in that concept of recreating something that or creating something that tastes very European, but is not in any really, in any direct way. - Yeah, well, I mean, so I was on another podcast not so long ago where the question was like, if you're trying to make a check beer, what makes, what makes as an American? What makes the check style beer? Is it buying the ingredients from checker public or is it making the beer using process that they might have done in checker public or still do? And I mean, I think still at this point, you can say the gold standard is doing both. - Yeah. - But because most American brewers aren't set up from an equipment standpoint, they basically have British brewing equipment. Whether or not it looks like a Peter Austin system, it doesn't, but it's a single infusion system and it's designed for highly modified malt. So buying check barley and buying check hops and then making a logger using your standard sort of like inherited British brewing tradition and presenting that with a check beer. Is that more or less check inspired than buying sort of like oddball whacking ingredients and doing oddball wacky processes and then presenting those things? I don't know the answer, but my thesis is that maybe using the North American ingredients and doing all the weird bullshit, maybe kind of gets you closer. - I don't know. - Is this decocted? - Yeah, this is a single decoction. - So again, that would of our 33, they make a point out of saying there's some crystal malt in it. So this is all troubadour malt. It's the super Pevec malt that Chris, the malt's there developed for cohesion in Denver. I've been stealing their stuff. So it's that and a little bit of their very light crystal malt. It's a single decoction, three step and a single decoction and then just a bunch of hops. - Sweet. For anyone who, I've heard this said before by certainly people from like bigger breweries that like there's no objective measure of decoction. It doesn't make any difference flavor wise. Wrong. - I think that's BS. I think it's just a matter of-- - No, it's just wrong. - It's a matter of what you're measuring. I do think yeast wise, this is actually a blog and a podcast we haven't done yet, but there's like a really awesome paper that was done by a lab in the Czech, in Chechiah. That's what we call it now. Where they actually did like they made war, like single infusion, single double triple decoction, measured a ton of different things and what did come out was like big differences in like the fan, the amino acid composition. A lot of things that actually do influence yeast. So my argument is that yeah, maybe if you just look at the war, it might not be the same, but if you look at what it provides to the yeast, you have differences that might actually become flavor relevance. So whole episode that I will do at some point. - No, no, I completely agree with you. And I think even just stepmashing is another example of that. Where-- - Yeah. - So even just doing the sort of the German hot shortmash, where you're splitting it out and just doing beta amylase and then alpha amylase, whether you do a match out or not, that's another thing. So we can sit there and do starch test until you're blue in the face. Whether or not you do a match out, we noticed at first date, we noticed a difference in finishing gravity. So if we sit there and we do in Fahrenheit, if we do a 143 and like a 157 or 158, we do that and then we do starch tests at 158 until we pass. Every time we pass, ferment that beer out, that might finish at 2.2 play-doh. If we do the same exact match, same everything's the same and we do a match out of 165, that might finish at 2.7. And it was reliable. Every single time all the other variables are controlled for. And so there's just, that little backup envelope starch test clearly isn't getting me the full picture of what I'm doing. And then so like stepmashing, again, I think a lot of brewer's view low finishing gravity as a sign of like success. And so if we're making pilsner, so the talk's Tuesday, other person that you had on tap. Pretty low FG. But so when we make the little thistle flagship logger, the Doug, which is all Virement malt, single infusion mash, where reliably ends between 1.6 and 1.9 play-doh. We do the same thing with the Trubidor malt, which on paper, COA, we should be getting even drier, beer than that. When we do a two or three step step mash, we're reliably seeing finishing gravities between 2.2 and 2.5. So if we can manipulate those individual enzyme rests, we just get different finishing gravities. So, the coction is the same thing, but you have all of the sort of genus a Qua intangibles. We're talking about, we're watching baseball when you walked in. It's all intangibles. I think there's something about that too, like Chip, Lava, he would always, his part of his tour was like, you see the mash coming back into the mash mixer. You can see the swirl of it going back in. And so the last time we did a double decoction, the color difference and the obvious viscosity difference between the malt going in on the first decoction at 50C and the second one going in at 70C is massive. How could that not contribute to a difference in the finished product? I will also, I mean, I don't know how much of this makes it into the beer, but just the smell of decoction is super unique too. It's wild. It's like in the brew house and you are boiling mash. It's a super different smell. To me, it's like sort of like a pasta water kind of feel to it is what I always get. I think that there's some little bit of leftovers that that shows up in the beer. And we see that with the finishing gravities too. And I'm not saying that higher FG is better. I'm not saying that. But if you're, if you just back of envelope, if you just back into what the starting gravity and the finishing gravity on a Belzner Kellis, like, yeah, it's, it's like, it's like a hazy IPA profile. Yeah. It's like 13 down to four kind of thing, right? Correct. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's 12 down to above four. Is it? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think P.U.s where everybody pegged at 12 play-doh. I think that's kind of where it came from. But it's, it's high as hell. And especially when we make tomahe people, we make the dark vloggers like the difference between good and very good. I won't call it great. Good and very good on that beer was like just getting that finishing gravity up. And so like the beer that we're drinking, the 33 finishes mid-tools, which to me is appropriate for that beer because it's, it's pretty aggressive. And I don't want like too much malt clouding in there. But if it finished at 1.6, it would be a mess, I think. You'd be getting almost into like West Coast IPA, but with the wrong hops. Yeah. Because of like the profile. It would be like if we were making, you know, Farson Walker Pivo and we didn't want to. I love that beer, but like, if, but if you did it unintentionally, everything, everything, if you did it unintentionally, everything else about the beer would be a, a goddamn mess. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I don't have a guy on the inside at Fierce, don't need more. I can't get. We're pills now. So that's, yeah, that's some news. I'm just going to drink that. Yeah. Sweet. Okay. So actually I was hoping you could tell me just a little bit more about how this, this whole little double elbow thing works. Because I think it's a little bit unique and I think it's something that I, I think some other brewers might benefit from just, you know, in their own lives. This, this idea of creating almost like a secondary brand within the brewery. Like how does it work? I think it's your brand, but it's all run through little thistle. Yeah. So it's, when I left Fierce State, I was for a lot of reasons, just kind of tired of, of the brewing industry and running a brewery specifically. But within sort of six months of selling hops, it became clear to me that I did want to get back into brewing in one way or another. Oh, man. We are being delivered some crispy looking pines right now. Good. Good fun. So I had this idea, I had this idea to do this thing that was like, it's, in my head it started out as like collaboration only, you know, a traveling brew. And it's sort of, you know, I, I talked to a friend of mine who is the designer, her name is Anne. She did the design for double elbow. So the, the logo predates the, the brand by at least 12 months. Which is, it's the most like burst inside baseball. It's, yeah, it's just inside baseball. It's two 90s. Two 90s. Two 90s. So the conceit, the conceit is that the, the double elbow is my favorite seller clutch because it operates on multiple planes. So you can make connections between different things on different planes, right? So, I didn't realize this was the thing I leaned on a lot until one of my brewerers pointed out to me that I would solve every problem with a double elbow. So I had the idea, but then it just kind of sat, fell over a while because I was like, "Eh, it, it, it sounds like a pain, I don't really want to do that." And then it was Kizmett. It was just like right time, right place where I had finally admitted to myself that I needed to get back into like at least home brewing just to kind of like keep the, keep the, the gears moving. And so I bought all this home brewing equipment. I was like posting Instagram stories or whatever. And Steve, so Steve and Dawn, the owners of this place, I've been friends of mine forever because they used to buy kegs from Ferris State and they're just great people. And I had actually done sort of a stodge thing here during pandemic where they wanted to go on vacation and I was like, "Yeah, dude, it's like I'll just come in and brew for a week with Nick and it'll be great." So I already kind of knew what I was doing. And Steve texted me and he was like, you know, Nick's going to move on to his next career. And if you ever want to come down to Rochester and just make a beer for fun, like just let me know. And I was sitting on the couch and looking at my wife and I said, "Eh, she said eh, and I texted back and I said, "Are you offering me a job?" And he said, "I didn't think I was." And I said, "Maybe you should." And then it occurred to me that like, you know, they already had a brewing license and I wanted to do a thing and I had a vision for this thing, which is like, re-invisioning continental style lockers with 100% North American ingredients because I'd become sort of disillusioned with supply chain stuff and all these things. And it occurred to me that like, we've come far enough that it's worth giving North American craft malsters and hop growers a chance to make these beers. But I didn't want to actually start a brewery. So I pitched to them and I was like, "Well, what if I become the head brewer and you give me a chance to get in where I fit in on the production schedule to do these things that I want to do?" But instead of starting a company, you know, we sell it, you keep the money and you pay me a salary. And I said, "Hack yeah, that sounds awesome." And it's worked out great because I have, we're, you know, like Steve said, 70 miles south of the cities. I have a lot of connections in Minneapolis and Paul. So it's easy for us to sell these beers up there, granted the sizes are small, but it's helped with little fizzle distribution, we're getting the awesome stuff that they were already making out into the market as sort of fellow travel with the double-obo things. And then it's also worked really well with bringing people to the brewery. So like, it just feels like win-win-win. And there's no downside, yeah, today. It's almost like, I almost see it as like an artist in residency kind of approach, but then yeah, you have these like synergies of like, "Okay, there's this different brand. It's a different approach. It's a different purpose." Right. Like little fizzle is intended to be like, you know, a kind of local tap room, but then you also have this other brand that ties into it where, as you said, your intended purpose is to create, you know, European beers without European ingredients. Right. We have rules. We have constraints. It's easy to say like, "What is and what is not a double-obo beer?" It's super, super clear. And then also like, because the brewery operates without constraints in terms of style, it scratches all of the itches for me and it's a value ad for them. And I don't know. I just like, yeah, we've already seen one other person here in Minnesota, my buddy Matt, formerly of Wild Mind and Blackstack, do a different version of this called Penn name where he's like picking up fooders and making, you know, food or age beers at, he's done it at two different breweries now as literally just like a brewer in residence. Food or rescue. Yeah, food or rescue. I mean, he legitimately was giving away fooders on the internet like Jay said at Black Frost, the distillery, I picked up a couple of them. But it's like, yeah, I, I, I, I, there's, it just feels like there's room in the industry these days for these really niche like hyper specific things that are sort of like high touch or whatever it is they require hand selling. But like we're not trying to beat the world. We're not, I'm, I have no interest in distributing to the through distributor. We just do what we do. And, and, and it just kind of works, you know, and it feels authentic to me and I think it feels authentic to the people who come in here and the people who buy liquor stores. And it, one of the things that I think we all missed myself, including very much so in the previous boom was that growth is not a de facto good, you know, like it, it doesn't getting bigger does not mean you get better. And so I would view this as kind of like a, around two, right, for a lot of us. Interesting. Yeah, kind of coming full circle. I mean, a lot of us have kind of been in the beer scene for, you know, 10, 15 years. So I think I think it does have this, from what I understand it does kind of have this like natural cycle, right? Yeah. The other one that I would throw out is my friend Andrew Schwartz at Human People in Seattle. They, they have a. a retail spot now, but they make all their beers that had an existing brewery because it didn't make sense to actually start a brewery. But so much knowledge between him and Mal and Tim in that brewery being leveraged in a sort of nimble way is awesome because it brings these world class beers to people in hyper-local ways with the barrier entries just like so much lower. - Yeah, and I think like a success story that hopefully we can get on the pod soon is our friend Avery Swanson. - Yeah. - Keeping together, which is up and running out in New Mexico, but she sort of went through this cycle and producing her beers out of half acre in Chicago. And I think that gave her some of the push to go and do her own thing after Jessica King. So another Texas alum, I guess. - Yeah, it's true. - All at the same time. - Yeah, I mean, it just validates the model. And I think like if you would say, I'm gonna start a mixed firm farmhouse, be like no, no, no, no, no, please don't do that. But if Avery does it, she's proven track record. Like it makes total sense, it's a natural progression. So yeah, it just goes to show like the marketplace is not unitary. The story, the dominant story of the marketplace is not the story for everyone. - Absolutely not. - So soft spots all over the place. - Yeah. So, I appreciate that you mentioned constraints, 'cause I think it's important for everyone to like, acknowledge but also potentially leverage constraints and just find where they fit. - Yeah. - I think we're going through that same thought process and evolution ourselves. We can't be the yeast company for everybody, but we can be the best option for enough people, right? - When you came in here earlier, I was talking about how we can really only do a single batch per day. And I refer to those things as productive constraints. 'Cause what that means is that we just need to reshuffle the pieces that are on the board to be the most efficient that they can be and not chase the dragon of like, oh, if we just added 10 more 90-Birl from enters, we'll magically make money. That's the underwear-nome's math. Like it doesn't make sense. - Yeah. - Certainly, yeah. And I'm glad that that's like the thought process that I think is starting to dominate because we do see some of those, you know, uninformed scaling decisions, not necessarily pan out. - I made them. I mean, I made all those decisions. - So yes. - We're all learning from our mistakes. - Exactly exactly. - And 15 years in. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And we're all feeling the pain. - The beer's still good though. - Yeah. Beer's been better. I mean, honestly, this is my frustration. It's like, I think in most places, most scenes, beer quality on the craft beer side is better than ever. - It's the best it's ever been. - And yet, the consumer is always there. My one complaint is that I think we all need to do a little bit more intentional work of re-expanding the style catalog. - Yes. - And are you saying we need to bring back Red Ails? - Yeah, why not? Yolo. - Yeah. - If not Red Ails, we were just talking about this. Like, we have two beer engines. Like, let's do that. - Let's do that. - Yeah. - Or I'm not a big Belgian guy, but I do think a lot of people that got into the end, I mean, like it used to be that you could specialize in that way. And still, when I go to what I would call mature beer scenes, like we go to Denver, the first two breweries I always want to hit are beer shot. Well, I guess three now. Beer shot, cohesion, and hogs head. Because these are breweries that specialize in very particular things. Like, we do cask beer here and we do our best. Like, we cheat on a lot of things, like I said, but when we go to cohesion, it's just like, I want to be there for a minimum of four hours and just hammer pints the best better. - Well, when I go to Vancouver, I want to drink Daggerat 'cause it's so rare to get good Belgian beers. - Damn, exactly right. - Right, you may not be what you want all day every day, but like when you're there in the moment, amazing. So yes, bring that back, basically. - Hell yeah, all right. I think we'll wrap it up. Thank you so much, Nico. Thanks so much, Steve also. Steve disappeared to get his beers and delivered the beers. So thanks for the beers, Steve. Really appreciate the conversation. Hopefully this was helpful to everybody. Got a couple of promotional things to read before we send you off. We're basically reaching the end of our little spring tour here. Last event for the spring, before we sort of hit the busy brewing season is CBC, Crapper's Conference. That's happening April, whatever, 20th to 22nd in Philadelphia. We have a booth, I have a number now, thanks, Nicole. That's booth 1016. So you can come by, swing by the booth. I'll be there, a whole crew of a Scartment will be there to talk to you about yeast and fermentation. We're gonna be launching a little bit of a lineup of like ask me anything type things at the booth as well. If you're arriving early, we have a free pre-CBC workshop at April 19th from one to four PM. That's with Lallem and Brewing and White Labs. We're gonna be giving some education on biotransformation, including some biotransformation training and trying some beers with a new experimental yeast strain. We've got an opening night party on Monday. That's gonna be at Victory Brewing. That's also gonna be alongside Lallem and White Labs. So a little yeast flock. Love for you to be there, there will be beer, snacks, et cetera. So come check out that opening night party. And then if you haven't had enough of us by that point on Tuesday, I have a talk with Dr. Glenn Fox from UC Davis. We're gonna be talking about yeast nutrition, zinc, and fan and achieving the right amount for your yeast. So that's gonna be a lot of fun. We've got a really nice presentation for you. If you're not heading to CBC, you can still get in on the action. We'll be dropping basically everything online as well as resources during CBC week. So you can take part wherever you are. Keep your eyes peeled between April 20th and 22nd. Looking forward to seeing you. Looking forward to staying home and tending my garden in the summer. Cheers.