422: Vincent Ménard of Messorem Searches for Brash Balance in Sweet and Sour IPA

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 the last of our Canadian episodes or at least the last for now of this Montreal and Quebec trip here on the podcast. I'm Jamie Boagner joining me for this episode is Vincent Minard from Messerim. Welcome to the podcast, Vincent. Hi, thank you. We met last year down at the three sons festival in South Florida and you all were down there pouring beer. I was doing some podcasts upstairs and the art gallery. The coolest. The most unique beer festival I think with that kind of art space. Really fun. Yeah, but here I am now. Messerim, of course, over the last number of years you all have built a reputation for brewing progressive styles of beer, going hard with gorgeous hazy IPAs, innovative styles. You continue to push flavor, intensity, refinement, all of those things. It's a beautiful industrial space here. I can produce about 7,000 barrels of beer per year but the brand is cool. It's cool. It's active. You've got a great style to it and of course in this gritty place there's definitely you could draw some comparisons to certain American breweries and this kind of industrial rough graffiti strewn. A beautiful kind of thing or beautifully decayed kind of thing. But anyway, since I'm here in Montreal and on this last day of podcast, if you're here we should get together for a conversation. Of course, of course, we're going to talk about IPA. You're walking through the brewery earlier. You mentioned that you've even pasteurized your IPAs and tested that out with some interestingly positive results. You know I love counter intuitive things like that. You also are pushing into, we're trying to bring sour IPA back a little bit. Finding that more acidity as an alternative to the smoothie sour kind of thing. Using that fruit and soft character. It's kind of a style. You're right. Hudson Valley, as we talked about earlier, it's kind of this prime mover there and they made beautiful beers. One of their beers was one of our beers of the year, one year. And then it seemed like that lost some momentum but there's some beautiful potential there that you've been trying to keep going and revive. You also as we were walking through the brewery have a food around there that you've turned a food that was originally from American Solara. That you had some wild beer in and have now cleaned it out and finished it and pitched lined it and are getting into pitch lined logger. A very, you know, a very hot subject amongst a certain cadre of loggerers. So we'll talk about that also over the course of this episode. But first, if you're looking for a brewery chiller that's worry free and tough on GWP, then look no further. G&D Chillers Elite 290 Series Chiller uses propane as a natural refrigerant with extremely low global warming potential. 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Their bulk division supplies a wide range of beverage segments, making it a one stop shop for flavoring beer and beyond. More information of free samples are waiting at old orchard.com/brewer. That's old orchard.com/brewer. Alright Vincent, give us your story. Give us the mezzarum story. Yes, okay. I started brewing about 20 years ago in my apartment. My girlfriend at a time. She told me, "We should start making beer out of nowhere." Okay, let's do it. We'll try. And then it really picked up on me. I was like, "Oh, that's fun." And it's, it's can't actually, it's good. It was almost as good as what I could find in the brew pubs and stuff. So I started. It was really extract batches. Yeah, exactly. It was pretty good from the beginning. So I started learning more and more and get really more into it. And it kind of continued like that for a while. And I would say about almost 10 years ago, we didn't have really like a school program here. And the first one that came up, I was like, "Oh, this is, I think, I think I'm going to do it." And I went there. It's a short program about six months. And then with the guys here, we were friends for a long time, all my other partners. And we kind of started thinking about opening a project like that, you know, while I was there. Well, all of you guys were involved in music in various ways. Right, right. Yeah. Me, me Sebastian and Mark, we all used to play in bands before. So we did a lot of shows together. That's how we met. And that's how we became friends. You know, a lot of parties together with all the bands, you know, all the, the, the, the scene here. And we were drinking more and more craft beer and trying to find like new taste and stuff. And when we, we were getting our hands on like American beers that we can't have here. You know, and we were like, "Wow, this is so good." You're trading nerds. Exactly. And we were trying to find, you know, always the new one to try and everything. So we were traveling a lot to Vermont. That is not far from yours. So after that, we were traveling to New York, Boston, stuff like that, trading beers. And then one day we were, we were at a pub in Burlington talking to some, some, some locals there. And they were like, "Oh, we're coming to Montreal for a trip, you know, where can we go to have some good IPAs like that here?" We were like, "You know what? I don't know. I don't know where to send you, you know? Nobody were really doing AC IPAs here. And it kind of, it kind of gave us the push to start the project actually. So. What year did you guys get started? This was maybe 2015 around that. So we came back home and we were like, "Okay, I'm going to try and make some myself, you know, to see if I can do something good at least. Maybe not the best, but at least to see if I'm close enough, you know?" And I tried, I started reading more and more, listening to podcasts and stuff. And then some of my first brews were actually pretty good. So, Mark and Seb were like, "Oh, you know what? Let's deal with it." And we started building the project and Mark's father and Uncle lent us some money to start the project in the beginning and we, yeah, it came up like that. Sure, sure. So as you get this started, your initial drive and motivation was to make some of these beer styles, progressive, you know, AC saturated flavorful IPA, you know, and other things that just weren't available. And obviously, that's a style that has a time limit on it. You need to drink it usually within that first month, you know, at least first two months and then it's gone. So even trading for those can be a harder thing. I have certainly tasted plenty of oxidized beer from the East Coast, shipped out to us in Colorado and, you know, there is a benefit of having it local and fresh. So, talk to me about how you went about creating the overall program for Messerum. When we started on a 10-barrel system with five fermenters of 20, we never wanted to distribute in the beginning. We wanted to have fresh beer on site. So people can really experience the American tap room, you know, nobody was really doing that here. And we wanted to bring people over here to get fresh beers, you know. So we wanted to have a faster turnaround. And this is a little bit out. I mean, it's not right in any downtown, especially a manufacturing area. People have to make a point to come out here and you have to have something that's going to be so good that people are going to want to make the trip down here. Yeah, we were. We still are really big fans of other half. And their Brooklyn site was really what we fell in love with, the concept and everything. And we wanted to bring that street vibe to the people. So they can come into warehouse and feel the actual beer making. - Right, right. - So we, like the spot was a really big part of our, like the location was really a part of our project. We wanted to find like the good spot for us that really felt like what we were feeling like in Brooklyn or other industrial areas like that. You know, and I think we found like a good spot here. - Yeah, yeah, no, I definitely see the similarities to that with this old industrial building turned now into brewery. Also has the benefit of giving you more access to space without having to pay some very expensive rents on that. - And also we're not really close to a lot of living space. So we can like, we don't really have to-- - The rules and regulations are a little looser over here. - Even for the noise and stuff, you know, we can, we have DJs outside like also me along and we don't have any noise complaint. - Sure, sure. So as you were thinking about what the beer program is, what was that initial love and what year did you actually open? - We opened in August 2019, early August. So the first, what we wanted to do in the beginning was mostly IPAs, you know. We, it was back in the days when in the States you had like a lot of breweries doing like focusing on a style, like a sour breweries. - Right, right. - IPA breweries and stuff like that. And we wanted to bring that here to the people from Quebec. So we wanted to focus more on IPAs before because it's the style we liked the most drinking back then. So we were, yeah, and we only had five tanks. We couldn't do much else, you know. So when we started, I was like, let's feel like half the tanks. So we can have like another extra 10 barrel in the fermenter if we need more beer, you know. And then I was thinking about, you know, when there's a new brewery opening, there's always like a hype. So we, let's just fill everything up to 20 barrels and we'll adjust from there. And a good thing we did it because we sold out of beer in two days. (laughing) Yeah, it was pretty crazy. And so we closed, we were not even open on the weekdays, you know. Only opening on Saturday and Sunday. We were selling out of beer, making more beer during the week and then like that. So we had no choice but bringing more tanks in to keep up with the demand. And we were able to like open a few more days a week after that. And then pandemic arrived and was actually pretty good for the breweries in Quebec because the government declared all the micro breweries essential businesses. So all the like entertainment budget would go through beer actually. So it was pretty good for all the micro breweries. And so then you got hard into packaging. Yeah, we had 100%. We were thinking out of in cans selling from the garage door. Then all of a sudden the small canner you had wasn't fast enough. Nothing else was following. We couldn't keep up brewing. The brew house was too small. The canning line was too small. So we did a pretty big upgrade of equipment about two years ago to level everything up. And now we're pretty up to speed. We can brew a lot more then before. And a lot more efficient. Now it's a three with three vessel 20 barrel system. Yeah, we have a three vessel 20 barrel system, mesh, a lotter and a boil well pool. And the way we build the piping on the brew house we can bring back the work of the second batch back to the mesh. Yeah. So we can like do two batches really quickly. Right, right. And a little pasteurizer tucked in right under the brew deck there also. Yeah, a lot of process piping to make things moving through this. It's a nice technical setup for what is generally a somewhat small brewery in a big space here. Then it is a sprawling complex with different avenues. Yeah, the way the building is made here, it's a lot of different rooms. So it didn't really make sense to have hostes everywhere. So we invested in some hard piping to move the liquid everywhere. Sure. Well, let's talk about brewing. And we'll talk about that approach to IPA. Because that's obviously-- we'll start there. And we'll see how much. I know there's some secrets that you want to spill everything on this. But we'll see how much I can get out of you in the process. Before we do that, both classic and contemporary, IndieHop's Lorean was developed with crisp low gravity beer in mind, and nod to the pastor tonight of the future. Lorean seamlessly combines traditional elements of European noble hops with an elegant twang of American modernity. Low alpha and squeaky clean, Lorean provides a refined, smooth bitterness to any logger, and delivers enticing flavors and aromas of lemon limes-esque fresh melon, wildflowers, sweet hay, and cinnamon spice. Refreshing the past for a present time, Lorean's classic profile and distinct finish are conducive to celebration and appetite and evoke feelings of a grassy meadow near a cold mountain stream. Summer is near and Lorean awaits. Learn more about Lorean and the rest of Indie's varieties at www.indiehops.com. IndieHops life is short. Let's make it flavorful. And ExtraTop has been making rugged and reliable boots for 75 years, built for the harshest conditions. The legacy collection styles are oil, acid, and chemical resistant with a non-slip rated outsole. Be prepared for whatever comes your way and shop the latest ExtraTop Boots on extratop.com. That's x-t-r-a-t-u-f.com. All right, Vince, and let's talk about IPA. So you're tasting these IPAs from IPA brewers in the United States and other places and getting excited about these big juicy hot flares. As you start thinking about designing your own Haze IPA, where did you start and how has that developed over the years to get closer to where you are now? Are there some kind of key points in recipe, whether that's grain and ingredients, whether that's manipulating water, whether that's thinking about the way and how you use hops in those recipes? What are some of the things that you have developed and iterated on over the last number of years as you-- I mean, six years. There's some development all the way. What are some of those kind of key things that helped improve your IPAs along the way? I had the chance of-- when I finished the brewing school, I went to brew in a brewery here close by. So I had the chance to get familiar with the equipment. And they had like a tabarel system too. And we were doing some pretty good IPAs over there. So I kind of knew what was working on that setup and the fact that we had a tabarel too. I was really confident that my first beers were going to be good. So we kind of started with that and then kind of tweak like a lot, a lot during six years. We still do, actually. So the beers we were making back then are not at all the same as today. Sure. Sure. Because you think about building a recipe today. And obviously, you make lots of different kinds. Like you said, you're constantly changing things. There's always testing new ingredients. There's always trying new things. When you're writing a new recipe in the Haze IPA space, where do you start? Is there a preference here for single or double IPA? Does that change how you go about creating things based on what people want? And then from there, how do you construct a recipe? Yeah. Depending on the series we want to start, we-- Yeah, we-- Series. Yeah. If we want to build-- we just started the brand new series right now of single IPA around 7% that we can really push the hop saturation level in them. So-- Even it'll-- that's-- Yeah. It's not lower ABV, but-- But not a double IPA. Exactly. But still with that kind of saturation. So we-- yeah, that's something we understood after a while. Like the bigger the beer, the more hops you can put, the bigger everything is going to be. So trying to find that hop saturation for different ABV in beers is-- it's still a challenge. for us, you know, we still work on that. But it's, yeah, we, when we started to build the new recipes, we thought we think about ABV, what the drinkers are going to be, is it summertime? It's a winter time because we have a lot of snow here, so people in summertime want to drink higher ABV beers. Really? Yeah, you want to get some. No, winter time. Winter time. Winter time. Winter time. Yeah. That makes more sense. So summertime we, plus Quebec here has this history of, again, from the Unibru and that kind of early days, there's this strong, you know, these Belgian strong beers. Yeah, exactly. That's what craft beer is, even though it's not like super bitter, it's not the IBW, it's definitely ABV wars. No, exactly. And we, yeah, we build recipes depending on the season and depending on if it's going to be distributed or only here in the tap room because people here in the tap room don't want to get like smashed with like 10% beers, you know, they want to drink more. They have a good time on the patio, so they want, they were going to drink lower ABV beers. Yeah. So yeah, we started experimenting with different series like that to, we try, always try to push more, more and more hops into the IPA. So yeah, we look at ways to do it. Yeah, it's always a challenge. What are some of the, I mean, now obviously if I think about a single 7% IPA and getting that kind of saturation and intensity, you know, there's two things like, or there's a few things, you know, now, you want the flavor and aroma, but you don't want a huge amount of bitterness. So that's going to be dry hop and that's going to be whirlpool additions. That also could mean advanced hop products that are not going to have as much of that green or polyphenol character, you know, or, you know, the kind of, yeah. And so there's that piece of it, you know, then there's also, you know, but then you still want to find some balance in there. And, you know, so to think how do you, you know, how do you start like tweaking that, you know, that saturation level? There's also just a theoretical point in which it's harder to get more into the liquid. Yeah, we always try to push more and more. Yeah. One of the ways we found that really works is to have a higher finishing gravity in our beer. So some like, our beers are finishing higher than the majority of people. So we can push even more hops in them, but they don't necessarily they don't feel like they're just cloying and sweet. Exactly. That is a function of having that much more, you know, hops saturation in it. Yeah, it's a we, yeah, with all these years, brewing the same style, you know, we were able to how high is the finishing gravity for a 7% IPA? We finish around six. Wow. Okay. For those higher from for other ones, we tried like a bunch of different things, you know, and we always keep in mind that we we want to have the like a fruit effect, you know, right? And what's what's in fruit? It's sugar, you know, if you want to have like a fruity, something, sugar is going to help and people love sugar. I think what you're saying is absolutely right there that if you take the sugar away from some of those fruit flavors, they don't taste like the fruit, you know, and and that's true whether you're, you know, we'll talk about hops or whether you're talking about actual, you know, fruit with those flavors. And so it can help amplify that. But then of course, you don't want it to come across as cloying and too sweet, you know, because then so how do you kind of, you know, balance that that sweet and then the other question, you know, does that six, you know, Plato finishing, does that change for bigger beers as it go up? Does it go down? I know that, you know, it's curious to me in previous conversations. I've had brews actually bring it down as it gets bigger. It depends on the on which one we're doing and depending on the Siri, but we have some that finish higher and some lower. Yeah. Same thing for lower ABV. I try to finish higher to bring more hops into the beer to have more body to but it's a like it's personal choice, you know, it's a personal likeness, you know, in your beer. When I feel like an IPA when it's too dry, something's clashing, you know, right? It's just a matter of balance. Sure, sure. Are there, what are some of the factors that affect whether it goes up or down? Are you thinking about, oh, I'm using these hops in this beer and that's going to come across this way. And so this one might need either a little higher or a little bit of lower finishing gravity or there's specific hops that kind of push you in some direction. Sometimes and even the how the fermentation goes, we're going to adjust the, let's say the dry operation. If it doesn't ferment as much as I wanted, sometimes I'm going to add even more hops to counterbalance that sweetness. Right. And yeah, that's pretty much the way I do my beers. Sure. Sure. For texture and the kind of, you know, haze and body that you want out of haze IPA, are there some grain ingredients that you depend on? How do you think about building that kind of haze and texture? We were electric when we started our brew house. Wow. It was pretty tough to have that really pale yellow that we liked and we tried like a bunch of different grains. And I really tried to find the lowest SRM I could find on a grain to use. So we, we can stick with the Heidelberg malt from Best Malt. Okay. It's kind of my go to grain for a lot of beers. The higher ABV I go, I use more grain. So I'm going to use a bigger portion of that malt. And I also use some extra pale from wireman. Which is the, I always try to find the lowest rival on on the grain. So we use, we also use some wheat, some pale wheat and a mix of oats, oats, malted and flaked. Yeah. And I play in these ratios. Sure. Yeah. Depending on the color I want, you know, right. And they need to be different colors because people are buying lots of IPAs next to each other here in the tap room. Yeah. Yeah. But we have that same. What's the range that goes in, you know, what, like 30-ish percent or 20 to 30 percent specialty or, you know, oats wheat and then about that. I've tried lowering some adjuncts with the new brew house. We had like a really hard time adjusting our efficiency. I thought it would be more efficient with the new brew house. And it's not that much more. So yeah, I kind of, I started lowering some adjuncts to get more of the, of the base malt, you know, with good result. So, but it depends on the beers we're making. Sometimes I push more sometimes less, but I would say a good 20, 20 percent of adjuncts. Yeah. Are there any kind of offbeat grains that you've tested on in IPA or played around with and done anything interesting with? Kind of hard to say. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Well, let's talk about fermentation. Is this, you know, down the, you know, the kind of Londonale 3 fermentation that is very common these days. Yeah. Anything to the way that you go about that. I assume that, you know, all of your hot additions are happening in the whirlpool and then in dry up. And so we, actually we dry up more than then we put in the whirlpool. Yeah. We don't, we don't whirlpool a lot. I would say, even though you have your own whirlpool vessel there. It's a boil. Yeah, it's a boil. Kettle whirlpool condition. But no, we don't, we don't, I've tried like a bunch of things. You know, I've read the, the Scott Janage book, you know, with like a few different things to, to, to try. And we've tried lowering the, the whirlpool like super low adflame out. And we're, I don't know, I didn't see much of a big difference. So for us now, we're almost, almost adflame out, I would say, small addition. So we get, we get some bitterness also, which helps balance the sweetness. Right. And then we, we do like crazy big dryups. Crazy big dryups. So, talk to me then about that, the dry hop process. Are you, you know, are you waiting until fermentation is complete? Do you hit it a certain, you know, play the point of what's, uh, talk to me about that? No, we, like, with with this casual. here we brew like every day almost double batch every day so we brew a lot so it's it was kind of hard to try and find the perfect spot you know waiting for the perfect gravity right so we we don't do that we just wait till it's finished we do a soft crash we we crop the yeast and then we do we do a big try up there just one addition now we used to do a double dry up before we've tried like a bunch of different things you know like uh uh like mid fermentation with fucking beer go anywhere so now no transformation isn't doing it for you is it now we don't we don't really do it anymore yeah sometimes with some flow bowls sometimes okay you know it's you don't have that same nucleation right here so it's kind of easy to to get that that incorporated but usually just just one big drop addition at the end of fermentation yeah how much do you know this new generation of products whether those are you know say hot side or whirlpool flow bowls or even cold side you know dry hop you know kind of flow bowls how much has that started working its way into your program we use more and more actually it's uh I feel like it brings a new layer that we we you don't have just with with palettes you know or just T90 I would say yeah it brings another level of taste another level of aroma it brings something else to the beer and makes it more exciting and and you want to push more and more to try all these products to different places in your fermentation you know but yeah we we use more and more of these products we're lucky enough to be part of the forward program from Yakima Chief right so we we get we get to try some new products before they're commercialized so we just tried their new product I don't know if I can say no actually we release the beer it's like a new floor bowl that's supposed to be like twice as powerful as hyperboost sure 803 okay uh and yeah we we had a really really good result with that beer so it's something that I can't wait to try more how do you then layer obviously you know flow bowls are great especially when intensity is your role but you also want like some of that familiar you know the full range of hop character is important so that it's not just say some of these you know fruity or you know terpene notes we yeah we we did a lot of tests so we kind of know and we I would say we don't really mind when it's too much so when it's too much we back down too much is just enough so we if it's too much really we're going to back down a little bit but we we try we try two different fermentation time you know and we we try to end the bright we try to add dry up time during fermentation with like with all these good results so I don't have any just one particular technique for these products we but you still also add in you know t90s or majority of the dry up is t90s how do you know what's a typical balance would it be you know 10 or 20% of a flow product versus not even not even maybe maybe 1% something yeah okay just to add something you know not too not really to taste it but to feel something different you know a new layer of of taste or something which is really good with all these like hopkey and hyperboost I feel like they're they have a really cool like natural taste they don't really taste as as fake as like terpenes and stuff sometimes terpenes can get like in my in my opinion like a little bit fake yeah if you add too much you know that I don't feel in in hopkey and hyperboost stuff like that you know yeah yeah well next up I want to kind of pivot and start talking about sour IPA for a little bit you know because obviously that's something you know that you're interested in it yeah it's just not something we talk about very much here on the podcast and I think that you know once again it also seems to fit within this idea of acidity and fruit and if you've got so much of this fruit character in you know these beers through through those hops some of that acidity also works well it's expected it's typical we're familiar with that as we taste these things and so I want to talk to you about that but first are you ready to explore the new frontier of freshness cryo fresh from Yakima Chief hops combines the innovation of cryo hops with the frozen fresh hop concept of YCH trials 301 and 302 capturing the aromatic vibrancy a fresh hop harvest in an easy to use pellet form harness the magic of hop harvest anywhere anytime available through preorder lock in the fresh picked flavors of cryo fresh from Yakima Chief hops visit Yakima Chief dot com for more information also if you're launching a brewery or acquiring an existing one consider our brewery workshop a new brewery accelerators September 14th through 17th and Fort Collins Colorado over four days we engage in panel discussions technical brewery tours networking and small working group sessions to help you better understand and prepare for the challenges of brewery operation tickets around sale now visit brewery workshop dot com for more information and to secure your spot so let's talk about sour IPA you know as you think about you know having some you know as a beer trader in the late 20 teams going down to you know Hudson Valley or on trading for for some of those beers you know you then you think you now you've revisited that and have a soft spot for it there's almost like it's weird that nostalgia is hitting us this soon like we're only 10 or you know nine nine ten years past that and yet like there are some of those things it's almost like I mean I've been on such a sazen kick because it's like gosh why did we you know I yeah anyway here we are nostalgic for it oh the other nostalgia when Lawson's decided to release 22 ounce bombers with gold foil on top of sip of sunshine or double sunshine whatever it would like you know it just comes out I remember those bombers from you know 2013 2014 like so excited to you know to get back there again and you know and get this you know gold foil top to bomber you know the nostalgia it's so funny how we now have this nostalgia for the era there isn't that far you know ago right but you know so you start thinking about making a sour IPA again yeah we've been and I guess that also tracks to like smoothie sour is starting to you know fade a little bit yeah yeah consumers you're finding trying to find something to kind of you know hit in that character yeah we've we've always been like big fans of Utsunbury Utsun Valleybury what they were doing was really amazing in a big inspiration for us and I feel like with with the big smoothie trend that we saw like in the past five years that style got a got pushed out a little bit you know because smoothie was big and bold and wild so people got interested in that but it's uh it's not yeah it's kind of hard to drink you know you can't drink much it's kind of cool to have a small sip or a small glass but I don't feel like it was meant to say that all that lactose all that like it's a lot of calories a lot of calories concerned about those these days a lot of sugar like a lot of and it's expensive too you know we put like a ton of fruit in them so it's really expensive so we see we see we see a little bit of a decline in that area it's still really popular on draft here in the tap room but cancels are not as popular as before and we we really wanted to bring back that sour IPA vibe that Utsun Valleybury does really really well you know so we decided to to start a new series of sour IPA fruited sour IPAs this summer to to yeah trying to do other different different dance smoothie beers you know sure sure and of course yeah and of course you also have a wild you know beer program we're sitting amongst the barrels right now you know as you what is your approach to to sour IPA look like obviously in the Hudson Valley context they had been you know often blending in some you know golden or pale blonde sour wood age sour beer into that in small amounts and it makes for you know an interesting kind of complexity into that and you know we've seen the same thing like a new Belgium in Fort Collins where I live with their beer Dominga you know it's a fruited beer but they add 10 about 10 percent of the wood aged sour beer and it was a great way to use this beer they were making in the you know and get it into a mainstream brand we have a great video class about how they manage that program because that's such a big brand they have to produce so much wood aged here to go into it but it's pretty awesome to see how Laura or manages all that. How do you guys approach that? Because there is also, you can also go through a more typical cattle sound process that'll do the, give you similar acidity. - It's kind of a new series. So we didn't exactly nail-doll-de-parameters, I would say. - Sure, sure. - But it's something we wanna work in and not having to stay within guidelines, you know? So we're not, we might use some wild beers and we're open to that. And we have a pasteurizer too. - Sure, sure. - So we can pasteurize the beer before we go in through the canning line. But now, right now it's typical cattle sour. We try not to bring the sourness too low. Yeah, to keep it drinkable, you know? Not too acidic. - What is there a titrateable acidity, your total acidity or pH? - Just pH, right now. Yeah, I try to aim for 3.6, you know? Not really below that. Sometimes it does with the fruit and stuff, but yeah, I'm trying to stay around 3.6. - So these all have fruit in them also? - Right. - But less fruit than your sweet fruit. - Less fruit. No, not that texture of like puree and stuff. And the challenge we have right now is to get that hop character in that beer. So we're still working on that. But we've used some flow bowls to get some nice aromatic. We try to find some hops that are complimentary to the fruits we use. - Right. - And trying to make it pop and bring another layer of like, oh, is it hops, is it the fruit or? - How do you think about that? How do you think about blending certain hops with certain fruits? - Like I said, we've been using so much hops the past years. We can and know some main characters of majority of hops we use. So we know like, okay, this is gonna go well with this fruit or this. And yeah, the challenge is really to trying to make it pop the hops without being too bitter, you know? 'Cause I feel like when it's too bitter and sour in the same time, it's just not working for me. - That is an opinion shared by a number of Lambic Brewers as well. - And, you know, Belgian Brewers in general, I remember Rudy Chacara from Rodenbach, their old former brew master, you know, just famously talked a lot about that. - Sour and bitter. - No, it's not working. - Yeah, so we don't hop much as much as our typical IPAs. We use some hops in the boil, but lower, lower whirlpool as well, trying to get more of the fruit from the hops and not the bitterness. Smaller dry hop, we've played with flow bowls into that also trying to make more aromatic pop, you know? - Yeah, yeah. - Without the bitterness. So we, yeah, we're still working on it. - All right, all right. Well, let's talk about pasteurizing IPA. That is something, you know, you, as we were touring through the brewery before the podcast, you mentioned that, you know, you had some counterintuitive results from doing that. - Right. - That you thought that, of course, why would anyone want to paste your IPA? But you did a split a batch and, you know, they had under attenuated and, you know, then ran half through the pasteurizer and half without, and then did some blind tasting with the entire team to try to get a sensory basis for, you know, how that works. And so tell us about that project. - Yeah, so we had that beer that we had to dump, you know, it was not attenuated at all. We still dry up the beer because we thought we were gonna be able to get some hop creep maybe. But it didn't work. So we had to duck. - Yeah, it had to, we had to dump like a finished beer. So we just got the pasteurizer. I was like, you know what, it's the best time to make a test right now because we're gonna dump that beer. So let's do it. And like you said, we, I had like two samples, one pasteurized, one straight from the fermenter and actually the guys taught the opposite, you know, the pasteurized beer thought it was not pasteurized and the other one thought it was the pasteurized one. So I was like, okay. And even us, we couldn't even tell the difference, you know. And we, yeah, it gave us some really good options with it happened like we, - You could even tell the difference. So say in a triangle test where you're picking the odd sample out and even became hard to consistently, statistically - Exactly. - Differentiate one from the other. - Yeah. We didn't have any O2 pickup during the transfer and everything. So it was pretty good. I don't say we do that to all the beers. - Right. - We don't pasteurize all the IPAs. - Is there a pasteurization kind of, when you are doing that for whatever reason and you know, is there, you know, because there's different ways obviously to paste your eyes. You can paste your eyes fast and hot. You can paste your eyes low and slow. You can get to the same number of PU because it's a function of heat and time. You know, is there a way that you structure that just for if you're going to pasteurize an IPA? - Yeah, it's not that warm and pretty fast, I would say. Not that warm and pretty fast. - Yeah, so I don't think it would be like, we didn't do tests actually on that one to see if something was still alive. But we, now we had a pretty good result overall and we were able to save like a couple batches of beer like that with the pasteurization. We had sometimes like, it happens, it happens that we get like a beer that's too attenuated, one that's not enough and we have to blend sometimes to save the beers or making something else, you know. And when we do, we pasteurize. - Just so that you don't have to more fermentation happening. - Exactly, exactly. Like that, we know we won't have any problems. - Sure, sure. Are there any, you know, some like flavor benefits from times from pasteurization? I know that as I've talked to Brett Coleman Baker from Urban Artifact, you know, he talks about, you know, cooking fruit for that same kind of pasteurizing fruit, but using that, that some, there are certain fruits where they really benefit from having that kind of heat and pasteurization that, you know, because again, we were talking about our flavor psychology, like we associate certain fruits with the cooked version of them and not the raw version of them. - Right. - You know, and so there are certain things and you know, that can, does that work at all in the hop space as well? - I, I, I, I, I don't know. - Sure, sure. - We, we didn't keep enough cans to make a, like a test few months after. - Yeah. - I don't know. - So they couldn't tell. - Yeah, there are many other conditions in which you, I mean, obviously if you, you know, if anything goes through a lab test and shows up with something that, you know, might spoil it down the road, you can paste your eyes and help better. - Yeah. - There are other conditions in what under which you do? - Yeah, we, we happened to use it on a beer that got crashed by mistake right at the beginning of fermentation. So we were able to warm it up and then save the beer like that, you know? And also with, it's mostly for smoothies that we got this one. - Right. - We paste our eyes that were a base, our sour base. And then we, we use eceptic periods in the, in the mix, you know? And we also did it, we do it for our, everything that we use with a diastatic yeast, we're gonna paste your eyes. - Right. - We don't want anything in the canning line. And we even did a blend last year with some wild cider, like a beer, like a logger mix with wild cider that we pasteurized and then we can't. So yeah, it's a really good tool to have. - Do you use it, you know, as process with some of your barrel aged beers that get adjuncts, or? - We think about it sometimes, but we, - No, we, we don't do it yet. - Well, let's talk about logger and the new program that you all are working on right now, with, you know, pitch-lined logger, a subject that, you know, I know, if had conversations with a few brewers about, and know that, you know, Brianne from Sacred Profane has been doing a lot of research and work on that, you know, here in Canada, Luke Godspeed, as his barrel from Pillsner, well that they made, made over there and shipped over here and has up to speed, you know, and so, you know, so tell me about, you know, your approach to pitch-lined logger vessel. - Yeah, so we, we have three fooders here. We have a lot of wild beer production. We had like a lot of wild beer production, and we see, we kind of see in the client in sales, like everywhere, so we have too much beer right now. So we decided, and this fooder was kind of, It took time to get good, you know? And we kind of had that beer sit in there for a long time that we couldn't really do much with it. So we decided to take one of our fooders to and try and save it to make some fooder loggers. And then when we saw Luke, and we saw that he had some fooders from a prisoner of accrual, I was like, oh, that could be a really good idea to save one of our fooders. And we have a barrel broker, not too far from here, good friends of us, Tonnele Rimauro. He does some really interesting stuff. And he came up with a pitch recipe to redo the pitchlining in Luke's fooders, you know? And he did some tests in barrels before for another local brewery with really good results. So we called him and we talked to him about the project. If he was interested in trying to save our fooder and make it like a clean fooder for loggers and he was like, oh hell yeah. (laughing) So we did, we kind of talked about all the logistics and everything. He had to remove all the like the mantle, like a bunch of stuff from the fooder. So he did like a lot of preparation and we did a really good nice event here a few weeks ago that we invited some local breweries in Montreal to join and see what we were doing. So it was a really-- - A live demonstration. - It was a pretty cool event. People really loved to see the process and everything. So yeah, it's not on yet. - Right, right. - We're still doing some finishing, tweaking on the fooder. We need to bring in some glycol also. And then I expect to transfer the first beer in it in about a month. - Sure, sure. - So yeah, it's a new and exciting project that we can't wait to work on. - So loggers is a thing even for this hipster, hazy IPA brewery here. - But yeah, we started a logger program here four years ago actually. So we did dedicated one for mentor for loggers when we started and it was really expensive to make because we wanted to do it the right way. So we were loggering for like three months and stuff like that. So the tank, the turnaround in the tank, we used that tank like four times a year, three times a year, it was crazy. We couldn't recuperate the yeast. So it was like, it was really expensive to make. So we decided to invest in that program and we brought in four loggering tanks. So that way we can brew and transfer and releasing a beer that's been loggering for almost eight weeks every two weeks that way. So it's pretty cool set up now. Once that is running and we get more work - To make it has to have some scale to it. - It has to have scale. - And it's more and more popular. - In some less expensive tanks for beer to sit in rather than that. - Exactly, and now we can crop the yeast and repitch for an auto logger. We brew even, we have two 40 barrel fermenters that we brew loggers in them right now. 'Cause 20 barrel, it's not even enough. - Sure. - So yeah, it's getting more and more popular. And it's a cool way that we wanted to bring in some new loggers, new techniques and exciting stuff for the clients. - Sure, sure. Well, as we finish up here, we typically we'll go look at a, finish up with a big picture kind of question. For you all, cool is central to the brand for Messer M. Having a vibrant location here, having a beautiful design to all the things that you put out, cans, merchandise, the space itself, having a contemporary artful edge to it, as a big piece of it. All of you guys are involved in music. But you also, time continues on. Everyone gets older, things start to, how do you, what do you think the next couple of chapters of Messer M are going to look like? What keeps you excited about this creative project and keeps kind of giving you the creative spur to keep going and doing new things? - We do a lot of festivals, so it's always exciting to meet new people, to go to new places. We can't see that almost like doing shows. You go somewhere, you put on your show, serve your beer, you meet fans, you meet other breweries and stuff. - You're playing on the bill with other, other breweries or AKA bands, you know, the same kind of thing. - Exactly, so we really wanted to, it was always a big part of our project to trying and travel for beer, you know, and meet like all, it's kind of crazy right now because we meet all of our influence, you know, and we collab with them and sometimes it doesn't feel real, you know. So it keeps really interesting, everything. So next chapter I would say-- - I see these collaborations showing up in the strangest places, like Louisville Kentucky. And like, where'd you guys get down there? - Yeah, but we meet a lot of cool people like every time. There's a lot of really nice breweries, making really good beers. So it's always fun to make new friends and to learn about their way of making beer, you know, all their techniques and stuff. So I think it's a big part of our project to keep. And yeah, focusing on maybe expanding a little bit, I would say the space here is getting pretty tight. So yeah, that could be fun to maybe open another location to have a bit more space. And I would say continue to be-- - It's a strange beer world here in Quebec. - Right. - There's so much of like on-premise draft service is directly connected to the brand. And the United States with a three tier law, you can't have tied houses like that. But here, most bars have the brand of beer that they sell. And so for a lot of small, for a lot of micro breweries here in Quebec, you have your own locations to sell things. It's hard. There are only a few kind of independent beer bars and places to sell that kind of thing. - Yeah, we, I would say the majority of business here by the industrial breweries is distribution. So direct sales, the law changed a little bit during COVID to allow brew pubs to sell beers directly to customers that we couldn't do before. - Right. - So this is good advantage. And we also, with our license here, we serve directly to clients. It's part of our concept that we wanted since the beginning. - Sure, sure. Well, let's bring it to a close. G&D Chiller's Elite 290 Series Chiller uses propane as a natural refrigerant with extremely low global warming potential, Berkeley yeast bioengineers ordinary strains to make them extraordinary. Old orchard formulates custom blends featuring specialty ingredients. Indyhoops Lurian combines traditional elements of noble hops with an elegant twang on modernity. Harness the magic of hop harvest anytime with cryo fresh from Yakima Chief Hopps. And the brewery workshop will help prepare you for the challenges of brewery operation. If you've enjoyed this episode, go to beer and bring.com. Click on the subscribe button, become a subscriber to craft beer and brewing. And help us bring you great conversations, great issues of the magazine, great video classes, all the other things that we work hard to bring directly to you and need your support for. Beer and bring.com, click on the subscribe button. Vincent, if people want to learn more about MesserM, where can they find you, whether that's out in virtual space or here in person in Montreal. We're located 22, 33 Pits Street in Montreal. We are here all the time, so ask for us. When you're not on the road, when you're not at some faster, you're gonna see us in a festival anywhere. Or you could always go to our website to learn more about the history or the brand and everything. MesserM.co or messerM.beer. We have both, so yeah. Cool, well thanks for talking with me over. Brewing. It's been a fun to get over here. Yeah, thank you for having me. Cheers. Cheers. (upbeat music) This podcast has been brought to you by craft beer and bring magazine for those who love to make and drink great beer. To learn more, or to subscribe, visit beer and bring.com. Or find us on social media at craft beer brewing. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)