Ep. 29: Gilly Woolfolk and Ryan Freeman of Dade City Brew House

 Hello, and welcome to the BeerWise podcast, I’m your host, Mark DeNote, and I am the editor of Florida Beer News.

 It’s great to be back and bringing you new episodes of the podcast. Due to some unforeseen personal circumstances, the podcast ended 2023 somewhat abruptly. But, I’m back for 2024 and ready to roll with some new guests, new ideas, and new horizons. 

This episode, I am joined by Gilly Woolfolk, the brewery manager and Ryan Freeman , head brewer of Dade City Brewhouse in Dade City, Florida. 

 I was tipped off to this brewery when passing through Dade City, a small town north of Tampa near Saint Leo University. Dade City has just over 7,600 residents and is mostly known for its kumquat groves. In fact, each year Dade City celebrates these little citrus fruits with a festival in their honor. Due to delays in opening time, DCBH happened to open during the 2021 kumquat festival. Thousands of people were right outside and wandered in for a beer. Gilly and Ryan discuss this and other ways that this small brewery has connected with its community as our talk goes on. 

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Transcript

 Hello and welcome back to the beer wise podcast. This is the podcast that looks at what's going on in the world  📍 beer wise. 

  

Hello, and welcome back to the BeerWise podcast. I'm your host, Mark DeNote, and I'm the editor of Florida Beer News. It's great to be back and bringing you new episodes of the podcast. Due to some unforeseen personal circumstances, the podcast ended 2023 somewhat abruptly. Sorry for that,  But I'm back for 2024 and ready to roll with some new guests, new ideas, and new horizons. 

In this episode, I'm joined by Gilly Woolfolk who's the brewery manager, and Ryan Freeman, who's the head brewer of Dade City Brewhouse in Dade City, Florida.  I was tipped off to this little brewery when passing through its namesake city, Dade City, which is a small town north of Tampa near St. Leo University. 

Dade City has just over 7, 600 residents and is mostly known for its kumquat groves. In fact, each year, Dade City celebrates these little citrus fruits with a festival in their honor.  Due to delays in opening time, Dade City Brewhouse happened to be open during the 2021 Kumquat Festival. Thousands of people were right outside their door and they all wandered in for a beer.

Gilly and Ryan discussed this opening day madness and other ways that this little brewery has connected with its community as our talk goes on.  Here's our conversation. 

 Gilly, Ryan, thank you so much for sitting down with me and chatting about Dade City Brewhouse today. I appreciate you taking the time and good hanging out with you guys.

No problem, man. Thanks for considering us and coming out. Yeah. Well, I've been meaning to get out here for a while because Dade City and Craft Beer don't always seem simpatico, but you guys, the work that you guys are doing is really, really impressive in this space. And then you've kind of moved Dade City further north from where, for where you are.

Absolutely. So the whole vision was my boss was a big fan of a tap room in St. Ann that closed right before I moved here. And he, he loved that spot. He liked the camaraderie that was there. He was really upset when it shut down. He wanted to do his own thing and wanted to add the brewing element as well.

And with all the population moving north, Dade City seemed like an untapped resource. And here we are. Awesome. Yeah, yeah, it was you know, initially I think he, they wanted to break ground in 2019. Or start in 2019 for construction and then open in 2020. And then obviously with COVID and everything that happened, it pushed it back almost a year or so.

By the time they brought me in, it was November of 2020. And we were still gonna be one of the only businesses on this side of town that's opening up. Because most side of town most of the businesses are on the, like, two blocks over. Okay. Over here was mostly empty buildings. And a couple businesses had come in, and it was trying to, almost like a revitalizing this side of Dade City.

Sure. And so the, the brewery was almost at the, the ground level of introducing that revitalization. And since then, we've had. What, 10, 15 businesses open up on this side of town. Oh yeah. And it's interesting how the, cause Dade City used to stop further south from here and you guys have kind of moved, the businesses kind of came north with you.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think we had a, Papa John's was just opening up or it just opened up and there was the bike shop and then one restaurant and Bonita was going to be opening up around the same time, the flower shop across the street. But beyond that, there really wasn't much on this side of town. 

And so what, what have you seen from that revitalization? So we were talking earlier about the block parties that you guys do. How did that all get, how did that get started? And how long did it take to kind of catch fire? To catch fire, I was immediate  to get started. We probably spent about a month and a half planning it.

I did an event like this at another brewery that was very successful. And like I said, the whole idea was to. bring attention to our neighbors our local merchants who are usually closed at night and Once we started planning Probably four weeks. Yeah, but we were not ready for the response that happened.

No, we were like, all right, cool This will be a nice easy opening to this thing and it will roll out super slow and that did not happen 4, 000 people showed up  It was it was a good time. We got completely massacred behind the bar, but it was It's non stop, good, everyone loved it, and it's carried over, this is now our third year, our third season doing it. 

And it's changed from its infancy as well, from what it started to and what we were doing and then to what it is now, you know, we're keeping up with  what worked, what got stagnant, what can we keep doing to keep this, you know,  a fun event for everybody, something that people are going to want to keep coming to. 

Did all those people just kind of come out of Dade City? Or did the word spread? Are they, as much as you can tell Maybe at first, yeah. Yeah, they the great thing about Dade City is the people here are incredibly supportive of anything that they can, they consider their own. And they, they are so generous and so welcoming.

And yeah, as soon as we said we were doing an event, I mean, just like grassroots regulars were just spread, spread the, spread the word. We did very little outside of social media marketing and just flyers in the brewery and it just spread like wildfire. That's amazing That's amazing. And so we're  Kind of going back because I was getting to that but then so The vibe that the brewery has spread is really impressive, but I kind of want to Talk to your origin stories, both of you and how you got into craft beer, because in studying and writing and looking around at breweries, a lot of folks don't realize that they're making history, that what, how, and so that their story is part of the overall story of craft beer, so can, can each of you guys kind of take a moment and see how did you get here into, into Dade City Brewhouse? 

I started much like yourself in beverage journalism. I worked for the Examiner with Charlie Papazian for a little bit. Wow, yeah. And then I started my own website Mashing In, doing just local beer news and national beer news. I worked for, I also did dabble in marketing and website design for breweries in Alabama when I was there, and also the J.

Clyde beer bar in Birmingham, which was named one of the top ten best beer bars in the country. I spearheaded that whole thing for them. And then I moved here with my my wife at the time. She got promoted. Came here.  Had a tough time injecting myself into the beer scene.  But then eventually got on with Double Branch when they first opened.

And then once I caught wind of this place, I figured this might be a good move. Came over here, and here we are.  Very cool. Ryan, what, what, how'd you, how'd you wind up? What was your twisted road to DC? I was I was born inside of a fooder. No, I  I originally back in 2013, I wanted to move out of Tampa.

I was born and raised here in Tampa, Florida. And I was looking to move to Asheville, North Carolina, doing construction. And randomly, my dad had sent me an email like, you know, the school you're going to has a brewery program. And I was like, yeah, I saw it, and I don't know, I want to get a degree. And that year they opened up the degree in 2013 for the first associate's degree in the country for brewing.

So I was like, ooh, let's get in on that. So I started in 2014 at AB Tech Craft Beverage Institute of the Southeast. Did two years with that school and during that time took an internship with Catawba Brewing. Where I was I was like a professional box folder and a keg painter. I was very good at it.

I could really like paint the line on the keg really well. Yeah, it's very, very useful. But when I was there, you know, interning, it was anything I could do. So can I, can I green out for you? Can I wash this tank? Can I be on the candy line today? And started a tap cleaning for them, doing festivals for them.

So I was traveling Tennessee, South Carolina, going around all the breweries, really like getting immersed and into the culture of it. And then from there I went to Brumari Brewing. After that I took an assistant brewer position with them. Was with them for about two and a half years. And then took a brewer position with Wicked Weed.

At their pub in downtown Asheville. I was with them for about two and a half years. And and then wanted to move back home, me and my wife. We got married up there. We had a baby. And we were you know, six month old, you know, missing family no, my dad lived up there, but the rest of my family and her family are both from there in Tampa.

Okay. So we we were like, Hey, babysitters, we we move home. We have those now. So, so we moved back and I, I went on Pro Brewer and if you know, Pro Brewer, you know, for, for stragglers as my, as I call it I saw the opening for date city and was like, I remember that town and had a, you know, small they used to do a car festivals there.

I'd go to as a kid and I was like, I'd be kind of cool. And then so I just. Flew down on my birthday, met with the owners and then while looking at the place under construction, I was like, yeah, let's do it. And by January I was, I was on the job knee deep and rattlesnakes and kumquats. Just loving it.

Exactly. That's awesome. Now, at that time it was construction, dust and yeah, quats and a lot of income. Quats, quat. The kumquats were still here. Yeah. Dade City is the kumquat capital of the world. So it's interesting how, and I wanna talk about the beer as well, but the. It's  nobody, nobody kind of wakes up and says, I want to be a craft brewer.

When I grow up, everybody just kind of has a winding road that leads them to craft beer. So what was it that,  how did, as much as you know, how much did this, what was it that brought craft beer to date city? So what was it about the owner's vision that said, you know what? Dade city needs a brewery.  I think he just wanted a brewery.

He wanted a brewery that wasn't a consistent  welcoming atmosphere to him  that you could get a really good beer at and hang out and to spend an evening like a watering hole, you know, going down to that place where you know you're gonna see the same people, you're gonna get a quality beer. There's gonna be good service for him.

He was the one thing he was thought the city was lacking was just a good place to gather where people can come and have meetings during the day. That's a chill environment. Everyone's welcome. You know, that kind of environment. Not that the place is Or, against that, they just, he just didn't see that kind of vision where he thought, Oh, I think I can improve on this.

Okay.  Okay. And then, what was it, what was it that made him settle on, and you guys settle on, here, this specific facility?  Basically,  being in the area was where it was undeveloped it had plenty of opportunity, and just wide open space. And he lives like 15 minutes away. So for him, it was like, I can go here. 

This was originally going to be like an armature works style. Okay. Each bay that is in the brewery was going to be a different business. Okay. And we kind of ruined that for the landlord a little bit. Because Jeff, our owner, came in and was like, I want basically half of the building. And then the block is, so the whole block is, is a part of it.

So this, this city block is called the block. And they were supposed to be that same kind of thing where you have Multiple businesses, you can walk around, go outside. So multiple places to eat? Multiple places, yeah. And then you know, we have the one restaurant wedding venue, and CrossFit. And then that's kind of where we're at with the brewery, and that's kind of it.

Okay. And it, and it developed that way just due to, at some point, necessity. I felt like it, I don't think the, the vision and the execution were there to get everything going. And then once everything got here, it was like, oh yeah, well let's just stick with what we have.  This is, this is working. Kind of an, if you build it, they will come kind of thing.

And then, so when you opened, how long did it take for the people to kind of find you and go, Oh, there's a brewery here. Almost immediately. Yeah. Yeah. It was  like I said, for the longest time, it was mostly just locals. But they were,  like I said, I came from double branch versus Wesley chapel and was basically  the ratio of the amount of people that came in like, Hey, do you have X, Y, Z?

You know, macro lager and we say, no, they would leave here. They would come in and ask for their, their brand. And we're like, we don't have that, but we have this 90 percent of them were like, okay, I'll try it. It was, it was actually surprising. Like we opened with a Saison  and that's what all, you know, these, these laborers and, and farmers, and they were just, they, they loved it.

Yeah. We had a kumquat, kumquat wheat ale with kvike yeast. We had a Smash Beer with Columbus Hops. We had a regular IPA, just standard American IPA, and then a a Saison and a Raspberry Saison as well. So, it wasn't like, you know, we just started out with a couple light beers, get everyone in.

Like, there was stuff that we were assuming, we were like, people are going to come in and not know what this is. Yeah. And they adapted with us, and  just fell in love with it. And oddly, like  When we made the Brahmari Collab your dad called, which is a heavily fruited pastry sour, that became the most popular beer with our locals.

It's still one of our highest rated beers. And we, we probably did that  19th batch that was coming out. And we were like, yeah, let's just do, and we did some other stuff. We had a, we had you know, a Gozo on at one point with peaches. I think it was peaches.  Something like that. I don't remember.  A lot of brain cells have been lost since then.

But but yeah, it and so we did that one. It was, it was raspberry or blackberry, tangerine, marshmallow, vanilla, lactose, sour. And  people loved it. And your Cezanne drinkers all came back for that one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They quickly changed to it. And this, this purplish pinkish hued.  Beer in a fancy glass and they were just crushing it.

I think at first people would see it and be like, Wow, that's a lot. I don't know how to approach that. Yeah. And then they would see it come out and they're like, Man, that looks pretty good. And then, that's what I think led to is, When people ordered it, people would see it. And then they'd go, I have to know what this is.

What's the purple stuff? Why is this purple? Okay. And then they would try it and, you know, it had marshmallows and vanilla and, you know, it had, it had things that people love already in their day to day lives, they just never think about it. Oh, in a beer, I can still achieve those flavors and like it. And that's fascinating too because the color is part of the sales pitch.

Big time. Right? Because that's a weird color. I want to try it. Yep. Interesting. Interesting. So then, how did you, how did your beer offerings evolve as from Saison and, and fruited Saison to where we are now, which is IPAs, some experimental stuff, but does the audience still embrace and say, where's the Saison?

Do they, I mean, I'm drinking a Grodzydzki. Yeah. And so that's fairly ambitious. But not everyone has one of those.  I don't know. We'll have to, we'll have to do some exploring and find out.  But, I mean, does that. Does your audience shift with you when you experiment? Or are those that come in and say, No, that's my everyday drinker, I don't want that.

We do get a little bit of pushback, like when Company 7 goes off for a couple weeks, or Little Jim. But, they,  they're, they're open, they're like, Well, what's, what, what, what will I like? We, we have a we probably have a Regular base of about 200 to 250 people. Yep. That come in each month. Okay. At various levels.

Some are every day, some are, you know, Once a month, some are several times a week. But but yeah,  my staff is incredible at getting to know our regulars and our guests. And we just walk them through and they find a new beer and then that carries them over. So they're always very open to try something new and experiment and see what this guy's been up to.

Yeah. You know, and people are going to obviously come in and be like, I just, I wanted something light. You know, there's going to be that everyday person that just wants the same thing. And that's why, obviously. You know, we have our lighter beers that sell better, you know, this and that, but yeah, it's, it's actually surprising to be able to put out, let's say, 15 different styles of beer at once.

And actually see all of them sell and people are trying them and people are willing to try too, which is not what you think a lot of the time of like a small town you know, middle of Florida, you're not like, Oh, these guys are coming out for the, for the new pastry oat blonde with a caramel sauce flan inspired, but they come out and then that becomes, you look around and you're like, Oh, there's eight tables with that on their table.

And it's just, it's so, and it can, from any age group, anybody, any, it You look around and it's it's so diverse from what people are drinking you would think oh someone's gonna come in They're gonna light beer and they walk in they're like, I'll have the raspberry lemon sour and you're like, I didn't expect that.

All right Yeah  For you right now Interesting. It's an interesting cross section of humanity that comes in Do people drink see do people drink seasonally and do you have to match that with beer? and we go heavier because it's not really cold in Florida ever except for maybe a month out of the year, but Do you vary your taps based on that?

Florida is an anomaly for this, I feel like. Because up north, when it does get cold, people do want to drink darker beers or see those kind of flavors. But here, you know, it's relatively the same temperature year round, you know, with spikes and drops here and there. But yeah, I think the heat can attest more to what people are drinking.

I'm just making it. Leaving. We have people that do come in and they look for the seasonals but  Being Florida, this, like you said, it is an anomaly. We have, we have breweries like Angry Chair that are just killing it year round with 13 percent barrel aged pastry stouts. Yeah. And, and we love them for it.

So we try to just basically tick a few boxes by having, you know, at least one stout on it at a time. Maybe throw a porter in there. And like we're about to do a holiday spiced porter for Christmas. But  other than the, The only adamant crowd is the PSL crowd, the Pumpkin Spice Latte crowd which  Yeah. 

That's probably not going to happen, but we'll see. They love it. You know, we'll do something along those lines, but I don't know, the pumpkin craze is just so overblown. People forget that a lot of the  The flavors that they're tasting aren't anything related to a pumpkin, it's just cinnamon and nutmeg and cardamom.

You should teach him and do a field beer. This is what actual pumpkin tastes like, guys. Yeah, and I go, it's so, and we, I've made pumpkin beers in the past with just pumpkin in it. We, you know, the way you do it and like, I mean, we were doing ridiculous stuff to get these to have, you know, putting them on, wrapping them in aluminum foil, put them on the grill, grilling, smoking them basically to get them to gelatinize, bring out more flavors, you know, caramelize some sugars in it.

So we're doing all this work and I'm like, for what?  For what?  What are we doing?  I could just make a lacto sour and you're gonna love it just as much as you would love the pumpkin spice beer I can only sell for three weeks and then everyone's like it's not in season. You're like I just released it three weeks ago It's a great beer.

Well, if you release it in July, then you know, it'll last the whole time. Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's where that's where we are now  Yeah, all Marsons come out on on 4th of July now. That's a New rule. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, I got it  So then,  gosh, kind of, we've been all over the place, this is fun. Welcome to Dates, yeah, welcome to Dates City, man.

What was, what was the first milestone? What was the first time you guys kind of stepped back and went, Wow, we just did X. Or we just you opened the brewery and, I mean, Gilly, you were telling me the story earlier, but you opened on Kumquat Festival, which is what, four or five thousand people knocking on your door for beer.

Yeah.  What's the first time you guys kind of went, Look, look back and said, Wow, this is a big deal.  Probably that day. Yeah. Opening day. Oddly, yeah. Yeah, at the end of the night. The fact that we were so not prepared. Like I said, my staff which I was just a bartender at that time. We had three bartenders.

And we had never spent a day on the POS system at all. And we learned the POS and all of its failings. It was a horrible POS. I won't, I won't say who it was. But it was, it was terrible. And the fact that we survived that with lines. It's two Robinson Street from both of our bay doors, like literally at each end of the bar all the way to the street.

And just constant. I mean, I was bartending. My wife was bartending and she doesn't work here.  And the fact that we were able to pull that off and not have basically have any complaints and we were just an assembly line for.  10 hours straight. And it was extremely well received. Everyone not only enjoyed the beer, but they enjoyed the atmosphere.

They enjoyed the service. They enjoyed everything they got from their experience. And that's when I knew we had something special just with the crew. And that's, we put a lot of value in the team that we have here. We are very lucky that the three, we're all still here. The four original hires, Ryan, myself, Vinny, and Alex are all still here.

And, we have very little turnover when it comes to bartenders usually if someone leaves it's because they're going on to a different job in their career path. And it's,  I think that's one of the main things, other than this guy making incredible beer all the time. Hey, thanks man. It makes, sets us apart, makes us really, really special, is our level of service and just how attentive our staff is.

And how we take care of people. I mean, I think the beer is mediocre, but, you know, I appreciate it.  I got a hype yet, bro.  Actually, compliments I hear out when people are like, Oh, you came into your place. Dude, the service was great. That's always like one of the first things that I hear. Immediately. And then they're like, Oh, and the beer, too. 

Oh, you're the brewer? We got good water.  But it's  always immediately the staff is mentioned. Right out the gate. Oh, we had a great time. Oh, we were, this person was bartending. Oh, we had a conversation with them. It was great. Oh, thanks. We love that it was low key, you know, or it's usually what we get. So the experience here, I think, is a really big thing.

I think it all kind of, when everything meshes, a lot of time you open, you're like, Hey, we're, you know, we're just figuring it out, let us get It was, everyone knew the objective and we all tackled it and, you know, since then. It was actually our soft opening.  We were not supposed to open up. We did the soft opening and we were going to have a grand opening in July.

And we did not close. We still, we've closed maybe four days since then. We, we just were like, it works so well that we were like, well, why would we not be open? So we started right out the gate seven days a week. And which is not, I mean, we're one of the only businesses still on Mondays that is open.

And but we were like, Hey, we were so well received.  Let's see how far we can go. And then by the, by July, we were like, why are we even having a grand opening party?  We opened four months ago. So, but you just had to cut the ribbon and get everybody. And we did the party and it was fun. And yeah, we had a great time.

Released your dad called. And that was your day. Yeah. That was our first collab beer was released for that, for that event. So it was kind of cool. It was, you know, a fun, fun look, you know, back looking back on it, but it was like, Oh, our grand opening was our soft opening. That was, that was immediately. Okay.

So, but I mean, how do you.  When you have that much of an attack on your bar the first day, how do you go from there? It's like the next Tuesday. It's like, okay, guys, we can relax now.  Do you still have a steady stream of people coming from there? Yeah, we really don't have the slow days or, you know, you always have a slow day, but our Mondays are one of our best days because we have trivia, you know, and then like, you know, comparatively to most people, you go on Mondays, we don't even open.

Well, we have a trivia event and we've been doing that since day one. We've been doing live music on Friday since day one. So like these days where, you know, we continue this, I mean, we, we, we're pretty steady, even, we always joke that, like, the dead season isn't really dead anymore, it's just kind of slower.

Everyone assumes once the snowbirds leave us that we're empty, but we, we still do incredibly well, and we're very fortunate in that regard. And the events are still going on, you know, so like, summer's a slow season for everybody, we, we don't do our street bash during the peak months of the summer because it's too hot.

We don't want to bring people out, you know, with 95 degrees outside. You're walking around outside, you know, and at the time, the sun's out till 730, we start at four or five, you know, there are two and a half hours just, just getting burnt. So we try to avoid that and but even still, we just do little events here and there or, you know, you know, then Oktoberfest comes and then, you know, we have Halloween stuff and then it just, it, it continues rolling.

So on a random Tuesday, we could just have a great day and we're like, okay, I guess, yeah, we always plan to be busy where I don't want to say that a lot of businesses are like, oh, it's Tuesday. We're to be slow and they shut it down. We all, our staff is always ready for business and we always just plan for it.

If it happens, great. If not, we, we have a,  basically a saying or not, not every day is going to be a banger, you know, and we, when we regroup for the next day. So do you find yourselves as a speaking on that same note about people coming here? Are you a destination brewery? Are you a, I mean because they say we want to be,  well, they say, you know, what is it?

One brewery in an area is a destination. Two or three is a, is a, you know, a vacation or, you know, go there to see everybody. Do you have to come? I mean, well, we are a three star Michelin. No yeah. Three star Yelp. Yeah. Three star, three star Yelp. Yeah. We're going to get to five. But no, I, I feel like we are a destination for the areas around us.

Where, you know, if you look at Zephyr Hills or you look at Plant City or even Brooksville that has like places that still have stuff, but people do want to drive up to check out things around them. So in a destination in that sense, yes, we're not just the local, you know, foot traffic. We're getting a lot of people coming from the surrounding areas that are like, you know, Hey, heard great things about you or we were at a festival, we tried your beer, you're only 20 minutes away.

We'll, or we have people that like to ride mountain bikes in the area or we're a big motorcycle area as well. So people are coming out for that and going, Oh, I want to stop into the brewery. Let's do a drive up there. Let's do a trip and we'll go do a whole thing. You know, okay. So in that sense,  like a, like a regional destination brewery. 

Okay. We don't have people flying in. Let's not yet. Not yet. We'll get there again when we get our five stars on Yelp. Once we get there, then we'll  squad goals. Yes,  absolutely. Yeah, I want to talk about a couple of the specific beers you have on.  Specifically, first, the Gridsitsky, because we talked a little bit about your audience and we talked about it maybe not being the experimental slow, fast mover on the list.

What is it that  lets you kind of feel comfortable playing with that style and bringing it to such a rural area? Just open a bag of worms. Ryan's gonna talk for like an hour Now, , I like  you know, I, we we're doing so well with other beers. I don't wanna do well with the no, we, we there's one tap that has to move slowly, right?

Yeah. You know, we can't just keep slowing. No. But it, it I would just really love that style. I try to brew beer that I like, and I think that will, if, if I like it and I'm, and I enjoy it. I'm going to put, you know, the time and effort, obviously I would put time and effort into every beer, but I just feel like that's the way to brew.

Instead of trying to brew to what you think everyone's going to like, just brew what you like. That will translate. The quality will translate, the time and effort will translate. And so that's kind of what I do. And that's just one of my favorite styles of beer.  But a lot of it is, it's idea, like I was saying before, you know, we started we were talking the, it's kind of an open door policy with ideas.

If you have a concept or you have an idea, just come to me. We'll brew it. You know, if it's a good idea it's gotta be good. And, you know, Gilly can attest to that, how, like, half of these beers, the ideas you know, the recipes I'm writing, but the ideas are, a lot of the time, aren't coming from me.

They're coming from an idea that someone had, our Emo series, which has been super successful, was this guy, and one of our bartenders, Vinny just had a great idea for Emo themed beers, and playing around with, like, this, and it's, you know, developed, and now it's molding into what it is, but it it started with just one idea, one beer, oh, this would be funny, and then it turned into, now we're doing a series, now we're gonna continue the series, now we've won a medal for one of them, like, It kind of started to snowball and it's really cool, so as long as the idea is good, we'll make it.

That's awesome. That's awesome. And so, what about Taylor Swift and your nightmare? Nightmare dressed as a daydream. I mean, we're just a couple Swifties. Yeah, we're Swifties. Just living. No, it's just a, it's a great line, number one. Yeah. And we, we were, we were actually messing around with beer names.

There's another nightmare theme beer name we had and then it's, he, he said that one Also. Also this one. Taylor Swift. And the beer itself, too, you had mentioned. It applies. It applies. It's a coffee Blondale, so you've got dark beer flavor and a very light bodied beer. So, Nightmare Dressed as a Daydream, the dichotomy's there.

It works. And then we went insane, absolutely bonkers on the label.  Yeah, you didn't get a chance to see that one. That was the unicorn one. Yeah, it's ridiculous. And, as it should be. And it was a good time. So, and, you know, also.  Yeah. Yeah, I mean this was pre Kelsey Swift. Yeah, we did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, pre.

So we, we were, we were ahead of the game. People didn't see what was coming. I knew. I knew. I was like, she's gonna meet Travis Kelsey. So we, we saw the writing and we were like, we gotta get ahead of this. Yeah.  Football season. Yeah, it was, yeah, we, we released, I'm just saying head of the curve.   Day city.

Brewhouse ahead of the head. Ahead of the curve. Head of the curve with Taylor Swift references that, and, and only that yeah, we're still behind the curve on so many other things,  . Okay. So, gosh. So what can we look forward to then, as your next. Swifty themed beer. I don't know if that's going to be a series.

Yeah. Well, I think she has really good lawyers. So if we really try to make a series out of it, I think she would. Yeah, we got away with one.  Probably not two.  Not pushing the luck. But Taylor, if you're listening let's do a collab.  That's it. There you go. There you go. Let's make it a club. That's that'll be the quote for the episode.

Taylor, if you're listening. Yeah. And we know you are. I appreciate that. Taylor is a closet beer geek. Yeah.  Everyone knows that.  What is the future hold for Date City Brewhouse? What's your next milestone? What's the next mountain that you're looking at? 

Where are we going? Yeah. I don't know.  Maybe distro, you know, we, we look ahead we just made Brewers Bain, which is a hazy IPA,  which is basically a recipe that he was playing with. So in the  In the future, if we decide to scale up and we wanted to have a flagship beer that we could easily do in large, you know, cost like affordable, like something that can be done on a larger scale as a hazy, as a hazy, and make sense where, you know, with the smaller brewery, you can really play.

And, you know, we're just doing a 10 barrel batch. Let's, let's buy some crazy hops. It doesn't make sense when you're like, let's do a 200 barrel batch. And you know, I've learned that from other breweries when we were doing that at like a Wicked Weed. We make this beer and we're like, Oh, we should, you know, do this.

And they're like, look at all the money you spend. Dude, we can't make a 200 barrel batch with this. And we're like, Oh, that makes sense. So you have to charge a 25 snifter. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, so it's, it's kind of the goal is to make that, that beer that can scale up, that will make sense and kind of get ahead of it.

So that way one, if we did get to that, we don't have to go, okay, what are we going to do? We can be like, all right, we already have this here, you know, kind of stuff. So everything here is. In Incre, although we seem like chaos, we, we take very slow, deliberate approaches to advances forward. A lot of things.

Yeah. Can be dark stone at a wall and see what, what hits, but sure. Which is necessary. We, it, we do try to be as cautious and well thought out as possible. 'cause this is a very volatile business. And we both have been in it long enough to know this. You know, we've, we both worked at place. We've seen it, we've, we've seen bad breweries and we we, we wanna make sure that we.

Don't do anything to hurt ourselves and keep going in the right direction. Like I said, as we mentioned earlier, we started very high. And we're trying to keep that floor up there. And so,  it's, yeah, distros, we dabbled with it.  And then we'll go from there. I mean, our boss, our owner, Jeff, has very grandiose plans. 

In the future he's always had ideas. Barbados, 26. Barbados,  he's from Barbados. So we might be moving. Who wants to open a brewery in Barbados?  Sure. Barbados Brewhouse. Yep. Possible whiskey tasting room slash distillery. Yep. Has been popped around. Maybe a satellite tap room. Okay. That seems to be the direction that the brewing community is going.

Sure. Instead of, you know  And not everything being just, and not even just being Dade City Brewer House, you know, with like our distro brand, we want it to be a brand, we want it to be a standalone brand. Which our name is actually Brewer's Bain, which is LLC, yeah. So that's where we get the Brewer's Bain for for the name from, you know.

If we could start making a brand that is Brewer's Bain with this style and this style. I always like reference like Wasatch and Squatters out on Utah. They that's what they, that's what they do. Those are the same breweries. So it's, there's a, they're a, they brew a separate brand that goes into distro, but it all, it's coming from the same brewery.

So, you know, if we could start doing that, that's just, you know, opening a portfolio at that point. That's giving us a little more broader spectrum. You know, we don't have to run everything under one, you know, kind of design and feel and, you know marketing strategy. We can have a separate thing that is different.

You know was it New Belgium and voodoo? Yeah. You know, something like that. Sure. Okay. Okay. Well, that's a, that's a great kind of segue into the next part. I love segways. They're the best. You know, the inventor of segway died on a segway. What? Yeah, he fell over a cliff. Because they're dangerous. On a segway.

Yes. And on that segway. Not to put a sour note on that. But I have six more questions. I want to respect your time. But I do like to end with a six pack of questions. So, okay. Six more questions for each of you. First, every beer person's favorite question. What's your current favorite beer?  Gilly?  Always this time of year, Sierra Nevada celebration.

I buy way too much of it this time of year. So cases upon cases of it. Okay. I will drink only that beer right now. Okay. Brian? Oof.  You know, Yeah, whatever's free, I guess. That's, yeah, free is definitely my favorite. I  don't know, no I,  Truly, I'd say it's more of a style than an actual, like, I, I, I,  during the time of the year, I tend to go for different things and right now, like, dark Czech lager. 

A dark Czech lager for me, I could drink, oh, and I could drink year round, but right now specifically, I'm, if there's a brewery making it, I'll go and buy theirs. Okay. So that's not so much like a specific. It's not the easiest thing to do. But it's not, but there, I, look for next year, I'm telling you, they're going to be everywhere.

It's a, the Czech, the Czech lagers are going to be the new.  for the summer. Okay. That's, that's my, that's my prediction. Okay. Put money on it. I don't know who has that line somewhere on what betting site, but we can bet on it. Yeah. Okay. I'm sure. Yeah. Somewhere in sports betting.  Skipped ahead of me, but if you could only brew or drink one style, what would it be?

Brian, I'll hand you the tea ball. I'll do brew. Since I already said drink. Okay. Brew  Yeah, literally light lagers. I, for brewing, I like to brew the easiest beers. Now, if it's something fun and we're like actually doing some cool stuff  I, yeah, I would, I would, I would probably say,  I actually like brewing hazy IPAs.

Because there's so, for me, the hop, just different hops. I know, and he hates it. He loves it. By the way, just for a record, Gilly loves Hazy IPAs. They're his favorite. But no, they I, I like it because you get to just really see every hop. With other beers, you know, a lot of the time you're using like, yeah, we're just going to use hollow tower hops for this, or we're just going to use, you know, some bittering hops and then that's it.

With, with Hazy's, we get to see the full spectrum of hops. Okay, because you're constantly you don't have to make the same one over and over you can constantly just do new ones or new Oh when I use this together, I use this together I get this from it or you know when I don't use it I didn't get this from you know There's there's so many different ways to play and figure out how to use hops with other hops or what hops go well together What hops don't go well together?

What hops smell like ramp onions and ruined your beer now and now you're upset and you have ten barrels of it You know how to sell it and you're mad. It's fine. That's never happened to me they but yeah, it's, I really enjoy that. And and, and, and even with the grain bill, you can play so much with the grain bill because you can do so many different adjuncts.

You want to add spelt to it. You want to add you know, golden naked oats. You can add flaked oats, flaked wheat. You can add, you can even do it with a little bit of rye if you're trying to get weird. I don't know, I don't know what your brewery is. Go, go have fun. But yeah, that's, I think, that's me. I, I, I really just enjoy brewing AZIPAs.

Okay. Saison's. I'm, I'm a sucker for it. I literally I've told this to Ryan. I met, when I came here on my interview, I got to meet this guy as well while he was back there laboring away. And the main, one of the main reasons I took this job is because he, I was like, what are we, what are we opening with?

And he's like, a Saison. And I'm like, I'm here.  If I get offered this job, I'm taking it. Yeah. So it's just a versatile style. It's light. It's flavorful. It goes with almost any type of food. And I'm never upset drinking a Saison. Okay. So. Okay. I could agree with that. Yeah. Saison was delicious. Even though we named our Saison Malcontent.

Malcontent. Which is hilarious that I just made that comment. Yeah, right? Yeah.  That's why we did it.  Next question. What's the last beer you had that changed your mind?  In what way? About something. So the example I always give for this question is, for me it's Duchess de Bourgogne.  So Duchess, I had Duchess and it was balsamic vinegar, but for some reason it was enjoyable.

And that beer kind of changed my mind about sours. So what is, what's the beer that you had that kind of  made you think differently about a style? Or made you think differently than you did before? 

That's a really good question. Thank you. Sadly, it was actually one of our beers. Imaginary Dollar Bill. It was, it was an incredibly good hazy IPA and I do not, it takes a big man to admit that. You know, he does not like hazy, hazy IPAs. And I had, I repeatedly told him while sipping it, I'm like, I hate, I hate you that this is so good.

Yeah. And I remember that. It was very fun for me. That would definitely be the most recent, but yeah, I had the similar, Rodenbach was the one that got me into Sours  where I was like, Oh, why does it taste like vinegar? But why do I like it? Yes. But yeah. Yeah, as a steadfast, there's a West Coast IPA here named after me because I am staunch about the West Coast style.

Yep. And yeah, that beer definitely is like, I can see where we're going. Yeah, I was going to say, beers here, that was, and I did like West Coast, but I was like, I'm not going to brew them, no one drinks them. And I was like, I told him all the time, I was like, dude, no one's drinking West Coast anymore. The style panned out, you know, everyone's into this stuff now.

I was like, I don't want to just brew it and sit on a hoppy beer, you know, kind of thing. And then and then we brewed it and I was like, Oh, I forgot how much I love West coast IPAs. And then it became one of our top sellers. So  that would, I'd say beers here. That was it. But for me, I remember I really wasn't into goes early on into craft beer when I started getting into it.

And then I tried it's a collab with evil. And I've told you about this beer before. It's a collab with evil twin and think two roads. This is like 2016, and it was called Kaiser Gose, and it was with, like, kelp, and, like, seaweed, and it was, like, the most ridiculous beer, and I tried it, and it was so good.

I don't know what it was about it that was so good to the point where I was doing an exam for school, and I told my professor about it, and for the tasting portion, you had to pick, you had to guess what style of beer it was. He actually poured that for me for our exam, because I told him, I was like, I could pick that out of a lineup.

That's amazing. In mid exam, I, like, smelled it, and looked up, and was like,  And he was like, yeah. And I was like, yeah. So I went through and like did a portion of the thing and just kind of save that for the end. Cause I was like, I know what this is. And I got extra credit for actually saying what brand it was.

Cause I was like, I know exactly what beer this is. And that beer changed when it goes and became one of my favorite styles after that. So I remember early on, I was like probably 2015,  whenever I was in school, some, one of those two years. It's like when we had exams.  Very cool. Next question. When it comes to beer, what do you wish you really understood? 

Customer mindset. I'm joking, but I'm also not. That and yeah, what to make next.  I never understand how people just come up with ideas constantly. It's insane to me. I think the hardest part about brewing is way easier. To actually do the execution. It's numbers, time, temperature,  concentration, it's easy.

It's things that you can mathematically look at and be like, this makes this.  But like, what to create and what people want, that's insane to me.  Applied Brewing. I'm, I am not a brewer. I never claimed to be. I help him with some ideas. But I am marketing, I am trends, I am research, and I am business.

But everything He's also a hand model. He's very, he doesn't want to tell people, but he is a hand model. It's, it's on my card. It is. But no every, every day when he, when he comes in and he works, works and he creates product. Blows my mind, man. And it's it's, it's an incredible thing to watch.

And I have helped on a few batches and have helped whenever, you know, recipe development. He goes West. He told me you guys can't stop stuff from coming out of a tank while I'm on a ladder. It's fine. But yeah, more, more applied brewing knowledge. Like I said, I've done the research. I know it,  but it's not as much applied.

Okay.  What do you wish people knew about your brewery?  That we exist.  That we're here.  That's valid. It is tough with the, you know, more southern Tampa crowd and St. Pete crowd.  Like, we were just a badass beer festival. And we literally had people in like Newport, Ritchie, like, There's a brewery in Dade City.

We're in the same county, dude.  Pasco. Pasco's just a big county. Yeah, it's a huge county. So that, that, that is rough. Also that we do not we are not in Dade County, we are in Dade City. That, yes. That's actually, I feel like, might be my answer. It's everyone's like, oh, I love Miami. And I'm like, it's the complete opposite, actually.

It's a farm town. Colonel Francis Dade, the guy was everywhere. That's why I go, I was like, think of this as like, he had a vacation home in like, northern Florida for Miami. And he was like, oh, well, just name the city after me. That's what I think.  But no, just that really incredible beer can be made in Dade City.

It kind of,  it's endearing, but it's also kind of heartbreaking when we have people in the industry that come in and they're like, this is not at all what I expected when I came to a brewery in Dade City. I think they often think we're not on a large commercial system, that we're not making incredible beer.

And I don't mean to be boastful, but I feel like people, thank you. But yeah, people walk in and they go, man, I definitely did not expect this out there. And like brewers, we've had brewers, brewery owners you know, in the area when they come in, they're like, man, I did not expect this from Dade city.

And it's like, we're not, you know, we're not Sierra Nevada, you know, so we're not doing anything like crazy, but we're, we're really clean brewery. You know, we focus on the experience as well as the beer. And, you know, we didn't set out to just do a one barrel system and make some crazy beers that we used to homebrew, you know, we really want, I learned from incredible people at the breweries I've worked at, you know, and they've taught me how to do it at one level, at a next level, what quality is, and I thought, you know, what would be the best thing to do is, you know, go to a small town, open up a quality brewery, and have people love it, and at that point, you get the, The, the local area coming in to like back you up because like, no, this place is actually good.

You know, don't just look at us as some random outlier brewery. Like we can really, you know, we could, if we were on the same street as you in that big city, we could compete, you know, and that's, that's our, our goal at least, you know, so that's what I, I just want people to know, like, hey, we're not, it's not a hobby, you know, we do, we do this because we love it and we do it because it's our job, you know, and so we want to make a beer.

We want to give a good experience, want people to have fun, feel safe.  Final question. What's the greatest lesson you've learned in beer? 

Always be adaptable.  This, this, this industry changes on a dime constantly. It keeps you on your toes. And if you're not learning, and if you're not  studying constantly, you're, you're gonna fall behind. And it's, I probably put way too much pressure on myself in that regard. But yeah, that's that's what keeps me up at night is constantly learning, researching and figuring out what our next step is going to be and how we're going to keep moving forward. 

Yeah. Mine's kind of similar, but it's more so the, like you're, you don't know everything.  The day you think you do is the day that's going to go downhill. You know, you will always learn every single day. There'll always be a new problem. There'll always be a new hurdle. That someone will always make a better beer than you tried to make on the same style, you know There's so much learning that goes into it  And with that adapting, you know understanding like yeah, I may do it this way.

It's not working I may do it this way and then I've seen a better way. Maybe that it wasn't even not working It's just there's a better way to do it, you know and understanding that you put your ego aside and go Hey, let's let's do the thing That's the best and if what I'm doing is not the best and someone gives me a better way to do it Yeah.

Let's adapt that. Yeah. And so I think that for me, it's just remembering that you don't know as much as you think you do.  And I think that would help out a lot of people in this industry to remember that. Like, Hey,  none of us were doing this. Like you said, at the beginning of this, no one grew up, was  born and was like, I want to be a brewer.

We're all learning this and we're learning it probably later in life than how much we've lived. You know, I'd started at 21 in this, I'd live 20 years. And I was like,  When do they put the alcohol in?  I don't know how to do this. And then you learn. And then, you know, you adapt and you continue to remember that there's always someone out there who knows more.

Learn. Don't, you know, If your mouth's open, your ears aren't listening. My dad told me that when I was a kid. I wasn't listening, but he said something like that. And so that's what I've learned. Seems to make sense. Yeah, you know, just remember.  You can always learn more.  Well, Gilly, Ryan, thank you so much for your time.

Really appreciate it. This has been a really fun interview. Awesome, man. Yeah, thank you so much. We appreciate you getting us on. 

  That was my conversation with Gilly Woolfolk and Ryan Freeman of Dade City Brewhouse. My thanks to Gilly and Ryan and the team at Dade City Brewhouse for their hospitality during my visit and their candor and conversation. Welcome back to a new year of the BeerWise podcast. There are some great guests lined up and I can't wait for you to hear them.

Are there any guests that you'd like to hear on the show? Reach out. I'm on social media at flbeernews or mark at floridabeernews. com and let me know your opinion. Please remember to like, subscribe, and follow BeerWise on your favorite podcast platform so you don't miss an episode. And remember to review the show on your favorite podcast platform to help us reach new audiences. 

If you'd like to reach potential customers by advertising on the BeerWise podcast, please reach out to me. I'm on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as FLBeerNews, or you can find contact info under Contact Us at floridabeernews. com.  That's all for now. Until next time, when I'll be back to talk about what's going on in the world beer wise.

 Cheers.