BeerWise Podcast
The BeerWise Podcast, hosted by Mark DeNote, editor of Florida Beer News, delves into the dynamic world of craft beer, offering listeners a comprehensive look at industry trends, news, and in-depth interviews with key figures shaping the beer landscape.
Each episode explores the past, present, and future of brewing, providing insights into the evolution of beer styles, brewing techniques, and the stories behind renowned breweries. Whether you're a seasoned beer enthusiast or new to the craft beer scene, BeerWise serves as an engaging platform to expand your knowledge and appreciation for the art of brewing and craft beer culture.
BeerWise Podcast
Ep. 45: Chip McElroy of Live Oak Brewing - Decoction and Tradition
What if brewing beer the traditional way wasn't just nostalgia, but the path to superior flavor? Chip McElroy, founder of Live Oak Brewing Company, has been proving this point since 1997 in the heart of Texas.
When most craft breweries were chasing new flavors and shortcuts, Live Oak doubled down on decoction mashing, traditional European brewing techniques, and styles that have withstood centuries of scrutiny. "These beers have already been crowd tested for a couple hundred years," McElroy explains with characteristic straightforwardness, "if you make them properly, you've got good beer." This philosophy has guided the brewery through nearly three decades of operation, from humble homebrew experiments to becoming one of Texas's most respected brewing operations.
The conversation takes unexpected turns through brewing history, revealing how Live Oak's Hefeweizen—now their bestseller—initially struggled to find an audience until they reduced its bitterness following feedback from none other than Georg Schneider himself. McElroy challenges common misconceptions about adjuncts like corn in American beer history and smoke beer characteristics, demonstrating how thoughtful brewing transcends trends. His annual pilgrimages to Germany and collaborations with Polish brewers have deepened Live Oak's connection to brewing traditions while refining their approach.
Despite losing 60% of their business overnight when COVID shut down bars and restaurants, Live Oak persisted, eventually transitioning from 28 years of self-distribution to partnering with a major distributor in April 2025. Through it all, their commitment to flavor-driven authenticity has never wavered. Whether you're a brewing history enthusiast, a dedicated craft drinker, or simply curious about what makes traditional beer special, this conversation offers refreshing wisdom from someone who's never compromised on quality in an industry often defined by its latest trend.
Hello and welcome back to the BeerWise podcast. This is the podcast that looks at what's going on in the world beer-wise. Hello and welcome to the BeerWise podcast. I'm your host, Mark Denote, and I'm the editor of Florida Beer News. This episode I'm joined by Chip McElroy, the owner of Live Oak Brewing Company in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1:Live Oak is headquartered in Austin and has been waving the flag of traditional old world styles of beer found extensively in Central Europe, Europe. In my beer trading days in the early to mid-2000s, Live Oak Brewing Hiffeweizen was considered the highest rated beer in Texas, even when it was only sold in on draft and in growlers. Live Oak's home is near the Austin airport, where the brewery now cans their beers, and in April of 2025, they stopped self-distributing and opted to sign with a major distributor. Chip took some time to sit with me outside the brewery and talk about the history of Live Oak and how far the brewery has come. We spoke extensively about Hefeweizen and the beer's history, along with the inspiration for Live Oak's traditional core lineup of beers.
Speaker 1:And, just as a warning, there weren't too many planes, but you will hear some airplane noise in the background as the podcast continues. But before the interview I need to stop and thank Coppertail Brewing for their support of the BeerWise podcast. Coppertail Brewing has been making Florida-inspired beers just outside Ybor City since 2014. Look for Freedive IPA, Night Swim Porter, Cloud Dweller Hazy IPA or Unholy Triple throughout the Sunshine State, wherever fine ales and lagers are sold. Now here's my conversation with Chip McElroy of Live Oak Brewing. Well, Chip, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me about Live Oak and sitting outside here in Texas by the airport.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for doing this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the more I read your story, the more I just I want to talk about Live Oak's place in the current beer industry and the beer scene in the country, because you are really holding the line on traditional brewing, traditional practices and traditional beer, and so can you talk. Before I get going, I like to talk a little bit about the origin story of the brewery and how Live Oak came into being and what made you decide to start everything back in 1997?.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, so we started in 97. When I say we, I started it with Brian Peters Some people know him as Swifty. We were both interested in brewing lagers and we had some nice equipment. I had some beer kegs converted into a louder ton and a boil kettle and a mash kettle. So we did proper lager mashes, homebrew, and then we would try out different yeast. You know, you make a 15-gallon batch or 12-gallon batch really, and split it up three ways. Anyway, so typical homebrew deal, so typical homebrew deal. And so it was just a homebrew deal that got out of control. And we were both interested in brewing lager beers and also Hefeweizen, because we both really liked that kind of beer. And so it took off from there.
Speaker 2:The first beer we made was the Pilsner, the Czech-style Pilsner. We did a decoction on it from the get-go. And our first brew at the brewery was Pilsner and we did a decoction on that and it was difficult to do on the setup that we had, but it was doable. And then, from then on, everybody told me you don't need to do a decoction. I'm like it's not all about just turning starch into sugar. Sure, you want it to taste the way you want it to taste. You want it to taste the way you want it to taste. And you know the same people who would probably argue endlessly on one person, or one maltster's, vienna or Munich malt versus another one, and you know which one is better and yet they would say well, decoction doesn't matter. So anyway, I never understood that, but of course it matters.
Speaker 1:Sure Well, and you've been decocting ever since, I mean from the first batch. Essentially, you've been doing a decoction match.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but not on everything. Right, one beer that everyone really associates with decoction, which is a Hefeweizen, we purposefully do not do one because we like the light color and the way it turns out. By not doing one, we did one, we tried it and we didn't like it as much as without it and, uh, we like the lighter, less caramelly flavor, okay, and so we didn't do it on that beer. Um, we don't do it on every beer, obviously. And uh, um, we used to do a single decoction and uh, not too many years ago I had did a another tour in the czech republic and, and you know, everybody over there does at least one, almost everybody does two, and just a few people do three, and we were only doing one. I was like, well, shit, we got an upper game, so now we do two.
Speaker 1:So it's fascinating. So then, innovation. So innovating in that sense was deciding to do another decoction, because that's what the old world brewers were doing.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I don't know if that's innovation. That's something that people have been doing for hundreds of years. I guess it was just a good way to raise the temperature of the mash without having to have a thermometer.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, yeah. So what was the reception like when you went commercial and went from the homebrew setup to the professional setup? What was it like in Austin back then, in this corner of Texas, going pro with the traditional beer styles that you did? Well?
Speaker 2:it was great. You know, most people weren't familiar with a nice, full-flavored Pilsner beer like that and so, doing that kind of beer, it immediately took off. It was very good. Okay, that was the first beer we made, and then the second beer was our summer seasonal, a Hefeweizen, and that did not take off.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:No, really no. And it was probably visit from Georg Schneider actually, and he was in town for a whole other reason and the people at St Pat's Home Brew Supply they had him in for something, wow, and they brought him by the brewery and and, being uh german, he was very honest and you know, uh, he liked the pills, I guess, but but the hefeweizen he said, yeah, it's too bitter, and it was, and we cut down the bitterness and still took a while for that to take off. Not, not everybody was familiar with it or apparently wanted to be familiar with it, and it took a while for it to take off, but it eventually did.
Speaker 1:And is it your number one seller today?
Speaker 2:It's our biggest seller. Yes, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:So what was the span of time before it became accepted? I don't remember A couple of years, okay, okay. What was it like brewing back then? Because you didn't have so many other brewers to run ideas by, or you didn't have so many other people that were doing the same thing.
Speaker 2:Well, there were people. This sounds arrogant, but I mean it's like when you put the beer in your mouth and it tastes good, you don't really have to think about whether it tastes good or not. In the past 10 years that I kind of believe there's nothing new under the sun, and I don't know if it was actual innovation or people trying ideas that had already been tried and discarded. And I think there was a lot of beers that were just it's like that doesn't really taste good, and just because you put, you know, some kind of twigs and berries that you, you don't think anybody tried before. Sure, that doesn't make it good, and so we were making I mean, that was the idea for making traditional beers is that they've already been crowd tested for, you know, a couple hundred years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they taste good, okay, and if you just make them properly, you've got good beer, and that's kind of the idea. It's very, I don't know, it's a rather simple-minded idea. Well, if you build it they will come right. Well, you know, that's what you hope for. It turns out that's not really true. That must have been cut out of the movie yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So what was so? There's a lot to unpack there. What, where did what made you decide to then keep? What kept you away from the twigs and berries beers?
Speaker 2:Well, they don't normally taste very good. Okay, again, I mean, that sounds simple-minded, but it's true. Okay, they don't taste good.
Speaker 1:Okay, so is Live Oak, then are you? Reinheitsgebot Is every beer.
Speaker 2:No, because we have very high pH water here. Okay, it's like nine and a half. Sometimes it gets close to 10 because I mean it's, but it's nine and a half pretty much all the time. Wow and um. So we acidify it with lactic acid and we don't have a a lactobacillus fermenter going all the time, okay, like they would in Germany if they have to acidify their wort. So we use lactic acid.
Speaker 1:So does that then as an adjunct for Reinheitsgebot purposes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that would disqualify you. And also we make a bunch of corn beers. Corn beers are fun, okay, and they taste good. Uh, people like them, and if you do them properly, they're they're good sure did you find, do you find that corn's another interesting topic.
Speaker 1:Did you um, because it had a bad rap from PBR and from macro loggers using um or big business beer using them to debt? Was that something that was? Was that something that was difficult or took you a while to get into? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was it the? Was it the reputation? What? What ultimately decided to decide to? What ultimately made you decide to use it?
Speaker 2:We tried a corn beer at Craft Brewers Conference back when it was in DC. Okay, there was a group, lost Loggers, and they had a 1912 recipe, okay, and they had made a batch. It was just a homebrew batch. They had some other beers that they had made, but we were very interested in that beer and we went and we tried it and we were shocked to find that it was really good. You know, talking to them, they admitted, yeah, we weren't expecting much, even they weren't, no, but it was really good.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, now there's some books out. Oh, gosh, who wrote? I think there's three volumes, three or four volumes out on American adjunct loggers and great books, and the history is a little different than what people think. It wasn't just well, let's make cheap beer and pull the wool over everybody's eyes and it'll be great. It wasn't like that at all. You know, you gotta read the books. Gosh, now I'm embarrassed, I can't remember his name. He's written some very, very nice history books on adjunct loggers, okay, and um, anyway, uh, uh, now we, we have a beer that we have on all the time the pre-war pills, and, and there was this whole deal with naming the beer and, uh, I had also, um, texas laws are kind of odd and we had some uh, a law. Oh, that's a really long story, but but it was actually written into the rules. You know, in Texas we have the code and that's the law, and then there's the interpretation and that's the rules. And in the rules way, way, way long ago back, probably in 35, they said you can't use certain words. That was the beginning of the beer and ale distinction In 1935, so just after repeal, people believed that the beers before Prohibition but they referred to it as before the war because that sort of loomed larger but the beers before the war were stronger.
Speaker 2:But that wasn't the case. American brewers, mostly the lager brewers, were German brewers and they were making just below 5% alcohol beers back then. And then upon repeal, they started making the same thing, right, but people had had been drinking um, um, like, uh, bathtub gin, as they are, or or um, home brew that was made as strong as they could and it was referred to as malt liquor, okay, and they were using ale yeast of course. So it was referred to as ale or malt liquor. And then brewers and I suspect it was all over the US, but certainly in Texas. They were putting what the Texas Brewers Institute Trade Association of Texas Brewers formed in 35. I believe it was 35. They referred to them as trick labels. So on the neck label of the long neck it would intimate that the beer was high strength and they would talk about it being pre-war strength or, you know, winter strength or stuff like that. Okay, and it wasn't. It was just, or it was, pre-war strength, but pre-war strength was no higher than the strength.
Speaker 2:And so they referred to them as trick labels. I've got pictures of these. It was in the Texas State Archive that I've photoed these state archive, that I've photoed these, but anyway, um, and they would refer to, uh, you know, a plato strength which I don't believe that was really used in america, and they talk about it 12 percent. So people were thinking, oh, it's high alcohol beer, but it wasn't. So the Texas Brewers Institute formed, and one of the first things they did I think it was the first thing they did is a code of conduct or a code of ethics. And the second thing was to, you know, I swear I'm not going to use these trick labels anymore. And so they all quit using the, the trick labels.
Speaker 2:However, uh, there were imports from, mostly from louisiana, that were still using the trick labels, and so the uh institute uh, lobbied the legislature to make a law and the law came up that you know. So if it's, if your fermented malt beverage is above 5%, you must call it ale or malt liquor and you may not call it beer. And if it, and so beer was just below 5%, a lot of people think it was a, you know, misguided attempt at sobriety, or, you know the Mad Mothers or somebody else, you know trying to somebody else, you know, trying to warn people about high alcohol, low alcohol. But it wasn't that. It was the brewers asked for it themselves, so these trick labels couldn't be imported into Texas anymore. Okay, the beer ale distinction until I think 2017, or maybe 17 or 19. I think it was 2017. Anyway, we had that for forever and then the TABC got sunsetted and that opened up the opportunity to fix a lot of these antiquated laws. And then they fixed that we only have malt beverage. Now we don't have beer and ale.
Speaker 1:So then you call that beer a pre-war.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, okay, that's so. One of the laws was is that you couldn't use phrases, and one of the exact phrases was pre-war strength. Oh, old time, pre-war strength. You couldn't use that phrase. Well then you could, and so, and it was a pre-war, a pre-World War I recipe, and so we called it pre-war pills, because you could, because we could, and because it was or it is.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's a cool story. And then, how come? Why did you, just as a curiosity, how come you opted away from pre-prohibition versus pre-war? Well, that's what everybody does, okay.
Speaker 2:You know, and it was cooler, I mean, we had an actual law that said you couldn't call it that, and then you could, and because that in 35, that's kind of the way people thought about it More about before the war than before prohibition.
Speaker 1:Because the war was a huge turning point the Great. War. Yeah, it was huge, was huge, yeah, the war to end wars.
Speaker 2:And then they had yes and then yeah yeah yeah so, um, uh, I, I think it's cooler, it's. It's turned out to be confusing people don't. People don't know if it's a you know, uh, uh are. Are we prognosticating something to come or what you know? No, no, it's not political, it's beer, it's historical.
Speaker 1:OK, yeah, ok, that's so it's unforeseen consequences of the name.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Does it stop people from drinking it? No, no, it's turned out, uh, people like uh, adjunct loggers in america, and they always have, and that's why we had adjunct loggers. Initially it was, yes, okay, we had high protein malt, uh, and it took to end it out and, uh, you know that that was, but but then, well, you have to read the books, okay, uh. And then, uh, uh, brewers. Some brewers would brag about, um, with now, with corn, or with rice, okay, and then other brewers would brag about never, with never, never with corn happening up and it's all malt, and then turns out that those all malt brewers, eventually they then they started bragging now with corn.
Speaker 1:So all the way up until corn syrup gate hit us again with that yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, I kind of you know, corn syrup it. Just, you know it cheapens it. We enjoy making corn with grits the first time we ever made uh, pre-war pills. Uh, I brought up um, some link sausage and and uh, uh, tabasco butter, salt and pepper and we ate. We ate grits right out of the, uh, the mash kettle okay, okay, so, like, so, like a brewer's brunch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's just grits yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean same thing. Right, it's grits. Yeah, you just don't put butter in the beer.
Speaker 2:No, you don't put butter in the beer. We had to pull some out, but you know Gotcha With I don't know, something like 500 pounds of corn in there.
Speaker 1:I don't think we missed much yeah, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2:It didn't thin the mash wow.
Speaker 1:So what's so? What scale? So what scale was that you were brewing on you? Uh, 500, was that 30 barrel?
Speaker 2:the old place. It was a 30 barrel brew house and here it's. Here it's a. Well, it's a 75 hectoliter. Okay, because it's German made, but yeah, that's about 65 barrels. We usually do about 62, I think.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you doubled capacity when you came old place versus new place. Okay, and then how close are you to the ceiling of the capacity?
Speaker 2:Oh no, we're a long way away from that. Okay, Especially since COVID. Okay.
Speaker 1:What's so? Then I skipped. I skipped ahead a number of chapters in talking about the new place. But once you, what was the sign that you were so? From 1997 onward, you were in the old place. What was the sign that you needed to start a new, to start a new operation or build a new brewery?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean we had maxed that out. We couldn't do any bottles or cans. I mean if somebody I used to say, if you snap your fingers and or cans. I mean if somebody I used to say, if you snap your fingers and um, um, immediately there appears a bottling line or a canning line, uh, and it's all for free. And you know, we couldn't make enough beer to put in the line. So we needed to move, we needed to increase our capacity and um, and we also needed to get into a package and uh, that's what moving here allowed us to do so did you so um?
Speaker 1:were you doing all that with self-distribution in kegs? Oh yeah, the place.
Speaker 2:yeah, we, we self-distributed until April 1st of what year are we in? 2025. 2025. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, april of this year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for 28 years we self-distributed in Austin and San Antonio, and around.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then so with a commercial distributor now, does that open the door for more expansion, more volume, moving to other markets?
Speaker 2:Yes, it really does, especially in C-stores where you know, when we first started you wouldn't find any craft beer in a C-store and it was great that we were draft only and we did very, very well, draft only um. But but now that that craft beer is more mainstream, uh, uh, it's all over in c stores and stuff and uh, honestly, we couldn't. We couldn't service that market appropriately.
Speaker 1:Okay, and now you feel more confident in that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and sure enough, we're getting out there in a lot more C-stores Grocery is better and chains I mean it's just we're getting it. It turns out those guys knew what they were doing.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of yes, yes, there's a lot of science and brain science. That goes into a lot of what they do in numbers and everything. What so then, do you see 12 ounce cans? You see yourself move into the larger format. Do you see your? You see Live Oak adapting to the, because everything that I'm reading about the, the convenience store chain, uh, channel, is that they want singles, 19 to singles and they want high, high gravity beer in those singles I don't know that it has to be high gravity.
Speaker 2:Um, even the, the, the big producers are selling singles and convenience and yeah, they're not high gravity, okay, it could be.
Speaker 1:I know Well, and I'm also speaking for the Florida market because I'm not as familiar outside that market, but I can tell you that double IPAs and 19-2s are doing very well. Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, okay, okay. Well then I want to kind of switch back and talk IPA. That was a good, good segue. Um, how long before? How long was it before you had an IPA on tap and did you feel like that was maybe missing Cause it was such a high popularity style? You're way off base.
Speaker 2:No, okay, so I love it. Um, uh, we had our first ipa. Was our first winter seasonal really, yeah, okay, so we made liberation ale, the, the ipas that were Celebration and Liberty from Anchor, and I loved both of those beers and they were quite different, and so we made one that was kind of a combination of the two and we called it Liberation and it went very well. But that was a time of of pale ales.
Speaker 1:Ok, not not IPAs before the IBU wars.
Speaker 2:And yes, oh, yeah, and, and, and I mean, who doesn't love both of those? Celebration and liberty? Rest in peace. They were fantastic beers and our liberation was, and still is, occasionally a great beer. Now it's gotten the moniker of West Coast IPA. Sure and whatever. That's fine, sure, but we made that back in 98. Sure and whatever, that's fine, sure, and, but we made that back in 98. Okay, I'm sorry, sorry, 97. So the winter of 97, 98. Okay Is when we started with that, and then it started really, had really taken off, and it was doing quite well until 2007 when there was a hop and malt shortage. Both and uh, uh, the guys, I had been buying hops from the same group for 10 years, but it was on the spot market.
Speaker 2:There was no small brewery, no craft brewer. I mean, ok, maybe some of the larger craft brewers, but no small craft brewer. Was was contracting, yeah, and, and we got cut off and we, we didn't, we couldn't get cascade hops is what we were using in that. And so, in a misguided attempt at truthfulness, I said, you know, oh well, it's not liberation anymore, because we tried to make an IPA taste exactly like the liberation. We got very, very close, but you know, and yeah, in this misguided attempt at truthfulness, I was like, well, we can't call it liberation anymore, and so we changed the name to IPA, and Liberation wasn't available until we could later get some Cascade hops.
Speaker 2:Well, what happened during that time? I wasn't the only one cut off, sure, and I wasn't the only one experiencing a shortage of Cascade and whatever else, and everybody else just kept making the same names for their beer, and they changed things up a little bit, right, and and they, they, I should have just kept calling it liberation, but I didn't. And so then, well, you know, then there was all this, well, the ipa, it's like, truthfully, it was very much like liberation, and I think it would have been fine if we had just called it liberation, but anyway, Wow.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, I killed it in 07, and then that was the first year that I went to Brau in Germany. People have been telling me for years oh, you've got to go to Brau. I'd never gone, but I had to get some hops and some malt. So I went and got malt and hops, okay, and I I've gone every year since, except for last year. Um, I don't know, there might have been, I might have missed one or two, but okay, and then.
Speaker 1:So, on those, those trips, then what was, um, what do you? What have you gleaned from those trips? Then, if, going over to germany.
Speaker 2:And how is that? Oh my gosh, I mean just you know, and it's not just. It's not just tasting the beer, it's talking to brewers and seeing the different ways that they make. You know, different brewers make uh hefeweizen a little bit differently than one another and there's not some sort of monolith of German beer. It's not like that. They're all different and they're Helles and they're Pils and some of the beers you like and some you don't.
Speaker 2:But it's not all that. It's meeting these brewers, talking to the brewers, meeting the, the maltsters, and and getting to go to malting companies and and uh, the hop, uh, hop uh gardens and just, I mean, every year it's different, we get to do something different and and uh, it just it's been invaluable. I mean just immersing yourself. We usually go a little bit before brow or a little bit, stay a little bit longer, or maybe both um and uh. We always, almost always, we have friends down in frising. We stay with them, um, depending on whether it's a drink tech year or not, we always visit them anyway. But but uh, we like, if it's a brow year and it's going on in nuremberg, we like staying up in uh bomberg. Okay, of course, smoke beers up there, um and uh, you know, man, the beers up there are fantastic, and all over franconia really okay, so is that where you found your love of smoke beer and brought it, brought it?
Speaker 1:I assume that somebody here loves smoke beer because there's always I mean, there's always some kind of smoke on the tap list.
Speaker 2:It's. You know it's a great style of beer. Smoke beers are fantastic and, um, it's misunderstood, sure, and and I would say, oftentimes misrepresented. Uh, like it's frequently these, you know, big, huge, double, imperial, triple IPA, super stout with twigs and berries, and oh, by the way, it's also smoked. It's like you've got to have some in order to stand up to this strong, mindless smoke flavor. You've got to have, you know, a super huge beer. Well, that's bull. You know we have the Grodziski, which is a 3% beer, very light, wonderful, delicate beer with traditional, wonderful Polish hops. I drink it every day, okay, and so smoked beers.
Speaker 2:I've always said that the thing about making a smoked beer is the underlying beer has to be right, okay, and the smoke is a bonus. And if you have some sort of crazy beer that somebody's not going to like and it's smoked, well they think, oh well, I don't like those smoked beers, but come here, come here for a rock fest, and I think we had six smoked beers on tap this year. We have somewhere between four and six beers, and oftentimes I mean not just for rock fest, I mean we always have Grodziski on tap and right now we have the Fumigator on tap, which is a double buck. Yeah, yeah, pretty soon we're going to have Smoke Schwartz and we're going to have well, we had the Wolpertinger Weizen, which was a Dunkelweizen that also had some smoked malt in it, and so you know these beers. Okay, the Doppelbock, that's a big beer, but they don't have to be like that and, as I say, the underlying beer needs to be good.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then. So I want to talk, then, a little more about the Polish hops and the Zula hops. What is the name of them?
Speaker 2:No, they're called Polish hops.
Speaker 1:Okay, no they're called Polish Ops. Okay, so then you went over there and collaborated on a beer, initially with a Grodziski brewery.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they saw that these brewers in Texas were making a Grodziski and they were putting it in cans and they were doing it year round. Who the hell are these people? They're crazy. Yes and uh. So we got to be friends with them. We went over there and visited them. Uh, and doosan actually got to go to the hop farm I I haven't been able to go yet, um, but uh, uh, we've been to their brewery a couple of times and they've been over here a few times and uh, those they're great guys, they make wonderful beer and in fact, they just had a? Uh, a competition, a grudziski competition. There was a commercial competition and a homebrew competition and we won gold in the commercial and it was judged right there in the old Grodzisk malt house.
Speaker 1:They don't malt anymore, but Over there in Poland, wow, we haven't.
Speaker 2:We, we haven't, we haven't got our metal yet. Marcin wrote to us and, uh and um told us, but he's going to send the, send the award. You know, and I, I, it's just fantastic, that's, that's, that's incredible. But we, we have been doing it for a long time. Sure, we go in on batches of malt with those guys. There's a small malting company in the Czech Republic that we get smoked wheat malt. That's hard to come by. Sure, and oak smoked wheat malt, not beechwood smoke, and anyway, so it's an authentic style. You know, grodziskia, and I can't tell you how many times people say, no, I don't want to try any smoked beer. Well, here, try this. And they think, oh, the first sip is like, oh, so smoky. But just finish that little glass and by the time they get to the bottom of it they're like man, that's good. Please, sir, may I have another?
Speaker 1:Well, and so is. Do you find that your audience kind of misunderstand Is smoked beer misunderstood?
Speaker 2:I think it is misunderstood. I think people think it has to be some big, huge beer and it doesn't.
Speaker 1:And the undertone? Yes, okay, but it can have undertones and it can have subtlety, the same way any beer can.
Speaker 2:Of course, of course. I mean, you know, if you were to put, you know, smoke malt in a bad hellas, smoke's not going to add or detract, it's just going to be in a bad hellas, and the problem is the bad hellas, not the smoke, not the smoke.
Speaker 1:That's very true, and so smoke then gets a bad rap.
Speaker 2:more for the beer that it's in not as much as the yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, that's definitely something to think about and I can't think of any reason. No, that's, you're absolutely right, no Shifting. I want to shift into the future of beer and kind of think and pick your brain on what you see going on in the bigger industry now. And what is the next beer? Do you have a next beer to develop or are you struggle? Are you focused more on perfecting the beers you have?
Speaker 2:Well, we have a lot of beers in our history that we haven't really commercialized other than having it on here.
Speaker 2:Okay history that we haven't really commercialized other than having it on here, okay, and it's hard to say which one of those is going to pop up and be the quote-unquote next beer. Sure, the whole craft beer industry is having a hard time and I'm not sure that what we need is quote-unquote more innovation. It might be we need less innovation, but I'll tell you what has been very interesting to me, and that is you know, a lot of people say you know well, chip doesn't like those hazy juicies, and there's some truth to that. But I didn't like the accidental nature of them and there's been so much research done and the biotransformation that goes on. I have a good biochemistry background and so the biotransformation that's going on in the beers and and of course, hop creep was figured out, you know, uh, years ago, um, but, but they're much more intentional now and I got some young brewers here, okay, that um, um are chomping at the bit, um, and we've, we've done a couple of hazy juicies and we did it again with intentionality, but not knowing so much about what you know. We knew what to do with dry hop, double dry hop, triple dry hop. You know, right, right, yeah, yeah. But now it's understood a little bit better what's going on there.
Speaker 2:But also we tried it a few years back. We were using the kveik yeast. If that's redundant, sorry, but but uh, that comes out really juicy. Plus, we're here in texas and and just the idea of fermenting a beer at 95 degrees fahrenheit and just like that's just crazy. Yeah, this is gonna taste like shit, yeah. And then it's like, wow, that's really good and it is really juicy. And and of course, we're good at making hazy because we've been making hefeweizen. So so we know how to make a hazy beer. And again, with some intentionality in the industry now there's a lot more understood about that Different yeast to use. You don't have to use a Kveik or half a bites in yeast. There's other ways to do it and I'm not talking about dumping in some starch or you know some kind of bullshit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, I'm talking about with, with finesse, and so, uh, that's a very interesting thing to me and we've done a few of the newer generation of IPAs and, yeah, sure enough people like them and so you know, we might push that a little bit, push a little harder on that. We might push that a little bit, push a little harder on that. But now that they're fun and not just total serendipity, well, let's just see what we get.
Speaker 1:I like it. That's an interesting comment, because that amount of hops would be a terrible thing to waste. So I feel like if you're putting that much hops into a batch, then how do you then say oh well, we don't like it, let's dump it.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's a big financial problem and, as far as I can tell, nobody's done that yet.
Speaker 1:Although some of the ratios are pretty high. When you consider the limits of the human palate, you know you can put more hops, but then what?
Speaker 2:can we perceive. It's always been like that. That's long, long ago, before hazy and juicy, there were people that were bragging about how many IBUs they had in their beer and it just wasn't true. And I met a guy, uh, uh, Derek Walsh, at a craft brewers conference I believe it was in San Diego. Anyway, it was many, many years ago, and we were sitting at a bar and drinking and it turns out that both of us just it just rubbed us the wrong way. That people were well, I got 120 IBUs and we were just going on about calculated versus actual, Actual Versus actual. And he lives in Belgium and he's in with a bunch of the Belgian brewers, the big brewers that have good labs and stuff. In fact, Derek was the one who took Michael Jackson on his tour of Belgian breweries, Anyway. So he had them analyzed and some of these that we're talking about, you know, we got 80, we got 100, we got 120. They had like 40.
Speaker 2:And people were confusing just the flavor with bitterness. But even I mean, why would you want that much in bitterness anyway? And it turns out people like the flavor of hops better anyway. And so I don't know, maybe the? I think the IBU wars are probably over at this point. Well, here's hoping. But maybe not the juicy wars, I don't know.
Speaker 1:They're just beginning. Yeah, that's an interesting perspective when we talk about hazy, juicy and fruited sours, though that fascinates me because there's at this point in craft beer, with the numbers where they are, it's hard to it's hard to ignore anything that'll stop the scroll long enough to bring people in or have them try something and then maybe move to another, another beer, yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I can't. Yeah, yeah, okay, it's hard to I, I'm an old git and I just I'm not into. I don't understand the scroll and I don't. I just, oh, it's just, it's just too much, okay?
Speaker 1:well then, what is it that keeps you?
Speaker 2:up to my, to my, you know, to my detriment. I admit, um, and you know, we got young people around here nudge me along and, uh, not, you know, or including my own kids, you know, sure, and they're telling me you got to do more Instagram, you got to do more Insta-doodle. I don't know, yeah, I don't know. So I don't know how you stop the scroll long enough that they try your beer.
Speaker 1:Well, especially when you have 10,000 other breweries that are trying to do the same thing, exactly, exactly. Yeah, what keeps you up at night in regards to the beer industry?
Speaker 2:Revenue lack thereof. Okay, yeah, since COVID, it's been terrible. Okay, we lost 55% of our business, no more than that. We lost 60% of our business on March 15th of 2020, when all the bars and restaurants were shut down.
Speaker 1:So it was fortunate, then, that you had pivoted to package.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. Package, yeah, but still when you lose 60% of your business, yeah, it's devastating yeah.
Speaker 2:No, we haven't come back. So we got draft lines everywhere around here over, you know, I guess, 23 years, sure, and we were one of very few. We were one of one at certain points. Breweries and brew pubs didn't get there. They couldn't have their beer out in the marketplace, they could only serve it there. So there was times when we were one of one, and then one of two, and you know, so on. And now there's now the brew pubs can get their beer out there. Uh, we're one of 80 nearby and not all of them are distributing all over the way we are, but they're all distributing to the few places that are nearby. Yeah, but there's 80 of them and there's so many brands out there. And trying to get back our draft handles has been very difficult. We are making you know I piss and moan about it, but we are making a lot of headway well, and that's, and and that's.
Speaker 1:I think there's a lot to be said for that, because ultimately in the beer industry, it's about relationships.
Speaker 2:It always has been well, the relationships were lost. You talk to all of these beer distributor guys, because when the bars and restaurants were shut down, all the bar managers and restaurant managers, everybody flew the coop and then new people came back in and so all of those relationships were lost. Not all of them, of course, but you, you know most of them were lost. So, yeah, and it's been, it's been hard for for uh beer distributors. I mean, you know, in spite of not having uh, our own, you know working with a beer distributor here in our own home market. I've known those guys for forever and they're all friends and and uh, we talk about stuff. You know, I, I was uh, eventually, after a couple of years, I was one of the guys and uh, um, so they're having a very hard time, or draft is having a hard time right now. Yeah, but I think that the quality of draft beer is going to bring it back.
Speaker 1:It is definitely a different experience. Yeah Well, tim, I want to be respectful of your time. You've given me so much of it, but I do want to. I do like to start wrapping up interviews with six quick questions. If you got a six pack left, okay, okay, all right. So this is kind of a get to know you and a couple of couple of different aspects of beer. So every beer person's favorite question what is your current favorite beer?
Speaker 2:um, I drink, uh, pill zisky all the time and that's half pills, half great zisky. Okay, that's what I drink all the time. Okay, not all I mean. Yeah, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:yeah, a lot okay, if you could, only, I would say, brew one style, and of course you're going to be drinking it. So if you could only brew one style, what would it be? Pills Without hesitation, right, okay, what's the last beer you had that changed your mind about something?
Speaker 2:Hmm, hmm, man, I don't know. You know, it might have been years and years and years ago, having the Schlenkerla Mertzen. That might have changed my mind about smoked beer, although I probably didn't have a mind about it, but that was one thing that I realized, man, these beers are good okay, would you say that was kind of a seminal moment on your opinion on smoked beer?
Speaker 1:Yeah, probably Okay when it comes to beer. What's one thing you wish you really understood?
Speaker 2:I wish I was better at water chemistry.
Speaker 1:Okay, that one's becoming a more popular answer for that question, really. Yeah, before it was customers and yeast were one and two, but water is moving its way up there. What do you wish people knew about your brewery?
Speaker 2:How honestly great our beer is.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, and then last question. Okay, okay, and then last question Wait for the plane.
Speaker 2:We've been lucky about planes flying over, Isn't that that's like the first one?
Speaker 1:That's the first one, real loud one, yeah, what's the greatest lesson you've learned in beer Patience.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, okay, all right. Well, that's a great answer, great way to end. Thank you very much for your time, chip. Thank you, this has been fun. That was my conversation with Chip McElroy of Live Oak Brewing. My thanks to Chip for taking the time to speak with me and to Mike and the team at Live Oak for their gracious hospitality.
Speaker 1:Support for the BeerWise podcast comes from Coppertail Brewing. Coppertail Brewing has been making Florida-inspired beers just outside Ybor City since 2014. Visit their taproom across Channel Side Drive from Tampa's IKEA and enjoy a Freedive IPA, night Swim Porter, cloud Dweller, hazy IPA or Unholy Triple today. Are there any guests that you'd like to hear on the podcast? Reach out to me. I'm on social media at FLBeerNews or mark at FloridaBeerNewscom, and let me know what's going on in your world, beer-wise. Please remember to like, subscribe and follow beer-wise on your favorite podcast platform so you don't miss an episode. Also, remember to review the show on your favorite platform to help us reach new audiences. Florida Beer News and this podcast are on Patreon. I've begun a few fundraising efforts to help the website and podcast make some changes for the better. Check out patreoncom slash F-L-O-R-I-D-A News for information on how you and your business can help fuel our growth and get some cool rewards. 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, thank you.
