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. 47: Jack Hendler of Jack's Abby Craft Lagers on Evolving American Lager Beyond German Traditions
Jack Hendler of Jack's Abbey Craft Lagers shares his journey from an ice manufacturing family to becoming a pioneering force in American craft lager brewing. His vision goes beyond recreating European styles, challenging American brewers to develop their own lager identity using local ingredients and innovative techniques while honoring traditional processes.
• Family background in ice manufacturing shaped Hendler's commitment to quality and manufacturing excellence
• Jack's Abbey initially brewed eccentric lager styles like IPL to establish craft credibility before transitioning to more traditional offerings
• Naming and marketing of beer styles significantly impacts sales, with "IPL" struggling while terms like "Cold IPA" and "West Coast Pilsner" resonate better with consumers
• Oktoberfest provides a crucial marketing opportunity for lager brewers due to its strong positive associations and consumer understanding
• Hendler emphasizes the importance of heritage barley varieties and maltsters in creating distinctive lager flavors
• Using American-grown malt varieties and American brewing techniques creates uniquely American lagers rather than simply copying German styles
• The formation of Hendler Family Brewing Company maintains craft independence while expanding portfolio diversity
• Jack believes the craft beer industry needs lager as a strong second option to IPA for long-term health and sustainability
Check out our supporter Coppertail Brewing, 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 Florida.
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 Jack Hendler, the namesake Jack of Jack's Abbey Craft Lagers in Framingham, massachusetts.
Speaker 1:Jack was the keynote speaker from the Florida Brewers Conference this year and he has a lot to say on the subject of lager. He started talking about his family's background in the ice business and how that informed his interests and work ethic his family's background in the ice business and how that informed his interests and work ethic. Jack went on to suggest there's a lot of room in the market for brewers to brew lager and quoted some interesting statistics, using his brewery as a reference, and discussed ways that lager can be brewed creatively. Finally, jack also talked about the newly formed Hendler Family Brewing Company and the thoughts and purpose behind this move. But before the interview, I need to thank Coppertail Brewing for their support of the BeerWise podcast.
Speaker 1: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. And now here's my conversation with Jack Hendler of Jack's Abbey Craft Lagers. All right, jack, thank you so much for taking the time to sit with me. It's interesting hearing your speech and I look forward to talking some lagers with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Excited to talk lager.
Speaker 1:Okay, what's your impression been so far of the Florida beer scene? I know you've only been here for a little bit, but in terms of lager, how are we looking?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's an interesting question. There's some limited data that I had access to to look at how lager's performing and there are some interesting bright spots, but it's not all great. I think that there's certainly room for improvement and Florida to me you know, as someone who's coming from the Northeast seems like a really logical place for lager to do well. So I think that there's some real opportunity. So we'll see how that goes, and I'm very curious to see the trends for lager. It's fascinating because Florida.
Speaker 1:I'm very curious to see the trends for lager. It's fascinating because Florida, despite how hot we are, we love Imperial Stouts and we love big thick beers much more than we should, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting. I remember when I started getting into craft beer in the Northeast and we would get a lot of beer from California back then and you'd still see in the middle of the summer all these 10% beers, not understanding that people from California don't have seasons so they just drink it year-round. Where in the Northeast you cannot sell 10% beer. In Boston in the summer People are actually appreciating the weather for a few months.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess that must be. It is that we don't know what seasons are. It's really like hot or not hot, exactly Not. Hot is only two months out of the year. So I wanted to. I like to start the podcast talking about kind of your background in beer and especially hearing you talk. Can you talk about your background in ice and how and how your family history in ice led you to kind of that kind of pave a road for your way into beer?
Speaker 2:yeah, absolutely so. My grandparents started an ice company back in the late 50s, early 60s in the town or it wasn't even a town, but a section of stanford called springdale, and springdale is actually a brand that we used to have at the brewery. We tried to incorporate a lot of the names from the ice industry into what we were doing, but the ice industry is a manufacturing business at heart. We froze water, but there's better ways to freeze water. You think I don't know how much you want to learn about ice.
Speaker 2:I'm happy to talk about ice, but there's a reason that there's a hole the ice cube because you freeze it from the inside and outside and it's a more efficient way of freezing ice and it also takes out all the impurities, so you get a really clear, crystal clear cube.
Speaker 2:My father would always joke that it also helped the ice melt faster, which was good for business, but you know that wasn't really the purpose. The purpose of that, that hole in your ice cube, is to help with the freezing process, be able to produce ice more efficiently with less energy, and but you know, going back to ice and manufacturing it, quality is still at the heart of any manufacturing process, and when you think about freezing water into ice, that quality matters and it's one of the things that you don't think about is that ice is food and you need to. You need to really be careful about what you're ingesting. Where does your ice come from? And you want to make sure that you are purchasing ice from the manufacturers taking food safety? Um doesn't have oil or grease or who knows what in that, in that ice? Um, you know there's, there are some advantages to ice. It's not gonna grow, uh, bacteria because it's frozen, but there could be things in there.
Speaker 1:Um, I think I'm getting off track with ice here that's okay, but I the parallels, some of the parallels you're talking about, just in quality and manufacturing, Absolutely Definitely translate into beer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think from the Händler perspective like if you could take seriously quality in frozen water you know how can you translate that to beer and it's something that we think is really important that we are producing something you ingest. We want to make sure it's fantastic every time, both from a safety perspective but from a flavor perspective, and everything we do in manufacturing we try to excel and make sure that we are doing it right.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then? When did your love of lagers become exclusive? When did you decide that lagers were. You wanted to focus mostly on them? When did you decide that you were?
Speaker 2:that lagers were. You wanted to focus mostly on them. Yeah, exclusive is you know, maybe the exact time is tough, but I always focused on lagers. Even from early times of getting first real beer experiences was drinking beer in Munich, getting a liter of beer, a liter of Dunkel Amber Lager, and that experience really influenced what I did. And so when I got my first brewing job, I actually hadn't homebrewed, I didn't really know much about beer other than I was interested in the manufacturing process, and it took me a year to enjoy my first IPA. So I was brewing in a brewery, basically drinking everything but IPA, and eventually my colleagues convinced me to keep trying the IPA until about a year or two in. I was like, okay, now I get it. But I always was focused on different styles of beer, mainly lager beer, and it's been really my focus my whole brewing career.
Speaker 1:Okay, and can you talk about one of the in hearing you talk, listening to you talk about the first beers you brewed at Jack's Abbey when you opened and how you seem to be kind of chasing ale styles or you were making up your own. Can you talk about how those came about and kind of the evolution of the beers at Jack's Abbey in that way?
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah. So if you look at the beers that we brewed in our early years, they're very different from the beers that we are selling today. Today we're selling much more traditional styles. Half of our production is hellis and pilsner, but in our early years it was ipl, it was smoked black lager, it was double IPL, kiwi Rising. It was a whole slew of very eccentric what would be comparable to some of the craft styles brewing barrel-aged Baltic Porter and that was our gateway to get into craft beer. That was our way of talking about lagers in a way that craft beers could wrap their heads around, and I sometimes would call this sort of brewing lager for lager's sake. We would just do things to prove a point versus necessarily thinking that this is a long-term viable business option, but really needed to change hearts and minds when it comes to lager in 2011. And that allowed us to earn credibility within craft, but also then to transition from some of those styles into some of the beers that you see today.
Speaker 1:Do you still brew those more eccentric styles, or are they only in-house, or do you have they kind of evolved?
Speaker 2:Less and less. We still brew Hoponius Union. That was a flagship beer back in 2011, and that beer still exists. We no longer call it an IPL, because no one knows what IPL means. The Hoppy Lager thing is actually super interesting to me from an industry perspective, because there's actually been a lot of movement in this front whether you call it cold IPA or you call it West Coast Pilsner or you call it something else that is trying to bring that influence of both lager and hops, and I I'm really interested in this, that uh change in craft beer. I think that's really um a good good innovation, um something that we've been trying to do. We've been doing since the beginning um, but seems to be uh gaining some traction in in craft beer.
Speaker 1:So so do you? Do you still find that that naming in the beer has an impact on sales? So if you call it an IPL, call it a cold IPA, call it a West Coast Pilsner, one sells better than the other.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Ipl is very challenging. We've never had a lot of success with that and it goes back to people not really knowing what that is. I think what's interesting about cold IPA and West Coast Pilsner is that there is a consumer expectation of what that beer will taste like. They may not know what a cold IPA is, they may not know what a West Coast Pilsner is, but they have a basic idea that a cold IPA will probably taste something like an IPA and a West Coast Pilsner will have some West Coast hop character. So I think being able to better communicate these sorts of styles to beer drinkers is definitely a great innovation and something that we did not appreciate when we opened, when we were trying to sell these styles of beer.
Speaker 1:Interesting, okay, and so which one sells the best?
Speaker 2:I mean, off the top of your head. Yeah, so that's a good question. So our Hoponius Union we just call a Hoppy Lager. These days we don't even, or maybe we call it a West Coast Hoppy Lager, but we don't call it a West Coast Pilsner. So that's how we describe it. Our most recent beer that we're very enthusiastic about is called Modern IPA, and this is something that we're very enthusiastic about. Is called Modern IPA. Okay, and this is something that we've noticed that we find really interesting is that people are realizing they can make great IPA with lager yeast, and a lot of times they're not even advertising that the beers were made with lager. So the interesting thing about lager yeast is, if you really want to highlight hop character, it's a great vehicle to do that, and if you think?
Speaker 2:about the evolution of West Coast IPA over, say, a 10, 20-year period. That style of beer continued to reduce malt character, continued to reduce yeast character and really just focus on hop character, where if you're going to brew a West Coast IPA today, you're probably going to use a very neutral ale strain to do so. And lager is sort of the extension of that. It's like the full evolution of that style, and there's some great West Coast IPAs that are actually being produced with lager yeast award-winning IPAs that are being produced with lager yeast, and that is really interesting and it's something that we are working on at the brewery right now. That's fascinating.
Speaker 1:So do you? So you say modern IPA, is that? But it's produced with lager yeast. Correct, interesting, and I mean that as you talk about it. That makes sense because ultimately, the lager yeast is going to get out of the way of the anything that interfereses with the finish, which is part of what's lingering yeah, so it's two, two, twofold.
Speaker 2:One is it helps to highlight the hop aroma and also it changes the the finish of the beer, and I think it helped. It changes the finish of the beer in a in a positive way, and obviously some there's other reasons why that might be and how you're designing the recipe, but it certainly is a fermentation style that is really really works well for creating that sort of beer okay, okay and then so what do you think is most misunderstood about lagers by the average craft drinker?
Speaker 2:well, you saw my presentation. I had, um what? Seven different myths and I think that you know some of the myths about lager are consumer based and some are brewer based. And you're looking, yes, about consumers. Yes, I think styles is a really tough one that people don't understand, particularly this idea that a Pilsner is not a lager, or Pilsner and lager is different, and that seems real obvious, probably to beer enthusiasts and to brewers, but that is not something that's obvious to your average consumer and it's something we see a lot in the data of the beers that we're selling is that some markets are lager markets, some markets are Pilsner markets, and why one would sell better than the other it has more to do with the history of the beers that are sold in that market and how they were sold.
Speaker 2:And again, boston, being in Boston, boston is a lager market. There is a big brewer from Boston who brews lager and has really influenced that market, where New York, as an example, is a huge international market that every single international brewer wants to sell into, and most international beer sold into the New York market is Pilsner. So there's an expectation that Pilsner is of high quality because they see it as sort of an import style, particularly from Europe. Think about all the bigger German brewers and even Dutch brewers and just a lot of international brands that want to go to New York and push Pilsner beer. So we'll sell a lot more Pilsner beer than lager in New York and a lot more lager than Pilsner beer in Boston. And that's a very thing that you would think in the beer world. People would know. Often they're just what you decide to call it, but people think that they're completely different styles and a pilsner is not a lager.
Speaker 1:That's. That's interesting, that the that was one of the big takeaways I had from your presentation was that what you call the beer and the style of beer matters. Now in Boston, in the shadow of the red lager, did you find that consumer ed, that in opening a lager-focused brewery was consumer education? Were you at an advantage because people already knew lager, or were you at a disadvantage because they had preconceived notions?
Speaker 2:that's a. That's a good question. I I think in many ways it was advantageous that we had a strong influence of logger in the craft space. I would say overall that was a positive uh obvious. On the flip side, you're then directly competing, right? So, um, you know there are challenges to both, but I think that in the end uh real positive for for us. Uh, with people in the boston area at least having an idea of what lager beer was does that mean?
Speaker 1:does that then amber lager? Then get, uh, get a step up, because it was of a similar style, or or was it? Was it not that way?
Speaker 2:we don't. We haven't really pushed amber lager directly. Um, although these days we do have an amber lager that we've had for the past few years that continues to grow. Uh, beer called shipping out of boston. Our whole idea with that beer is using a lot of local ingredients. So we work with two local molesters to create that beer and I don't I think the success of that beer the past few years is not is unrelated, because we've seen so many breweries in the last five plus years either stop selling amber beer or changing their amber beer to a golden beer and this is one of the few year round amber beers in the market.
Speaker 2:The amber beer style has just imploded the last 10 years and I think that there is sort of some interest like maybe maybe we overdid it on the ipa side. There is something to this amber style. It's flavorful, there's a lot of um, a lot of different malt characters. Some of them have have some hop character, but they do sort of harken back to a different time and craft beer probably more like 15, 20 years ago than they do today and we'll see if that's something that's long-term going to continue to grow or if that's we are just taking advantage of a gap that no one else wants to fill right now.
Speaker 1:Okay, Okay, I want to move off of just lagers first, but the other thing about your talk that I want to harken back to was Oktoberfest and talking about Oktoberfest as that. Speaking of Amber Lager, Oktoberfest as that opportunity to connect with consumers as a lager brewery. So does that mean that more breweries should? How does the Oktoberfest factor in to a brewery that's saying should we brew lager, shouldn't?
Speaker 2:we. How you grow this segment is you need to connect with consumers, and particularly craft drinkers, and convince them that they should be thinking about lager. And you need to find that connection point. And, as I was trying to point out with Oktoberfest, is that there's already that connection with a consumer.
Speaker 2:Oktoberfest is the biggest party in the world, it's the biggest place to drink beer and people understand what Oktoberfest is, even if they have no idea what the style of beer is.
Speaker 2:And it can get complicated here, because what is Oktoberfest? It could be a golden lager, it could be an amber lager, it could be something in between. We brew three different Oktoberfests at our brewery, trying to showcase the evolution of this style of beer over the last 50 years. Because Oktoberfest has changed a lot, sure, and people don't think of it as a beer that's changed a lot. They just think of it as the beer that you drink when you're having a great time at a festival. Okay, so I think, when you think about selling more lager, being able to connect positive expectations, be able to involve fun concepts and Oktoberfest is certainly that thing that is connected with consumers and I think that there's opportunity, not necessarily even for Oktoberfest I wouldn't necessarily tell everyone to get into Oktoberfest, because there are a lot of Oktoberfests out there, but it does show that there are ways that we can get drinkers thinking about lager in a different way, and I'm hopeful that it's not just September that that we see a spike in lager beer.
Speaker 1:We can see other seasonal products succeed as well okay, and it and it also, and it helps that, like you mentioned, that there's that positive association with. I don't know if this is a Martin or if this is a Fespi or whatever it is, but I know that I'm having fun when I'm drinking it. And so that positive association.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the only thing that we don't really think about is how many events do breweries have around Oktoberfest? Like we've created this really fun thing with Oktoberfest that we haven't quite been able to figure out the rest of the year.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, ipa Fest just doesn't doesn't ring true the same way. You're right. And every a lot of breweries do have that Oktoberfest, that and that same brewer. It's always funny because that same brewer we were talking about in Boston always drags their it seems to drag their Oktoberfest out earlier and earlier. So I think it's like the end of June, middle of July, where Oktoberfest starts coming out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've. Is it August, yet it's the last week of July. So, we've already packaged a lot of our Oktoberfest, so it's not. There is a seasonal creep but and it is tough to work around.
Speaker 1:But Oktoberfest in particular is really challenging from the distribution side because november 1st no one's drinking octoberfest, that beer is old that's the dirty little secret of that beer yeah and it's a particularly troubling seasonal.
Speaker 2:so in order to actually get this product into the market, get, no one is going to provide the amount of time and effort for a one month period of time. So in order for all the partners on the retail side to buy into this, you need to give them the seasonal window. That's a three month window. So you have to talk about at least August, september, october to make this work for everyone's investment into this style of beer, and that's part of the reason that beer comes out so soon, okay, so it's not just seasonal creep, although july is a bit excessive, but still.
Speaker 1:I mean there's a brewery in jacksonville um that their their octoberfest is called aug octoberfest because, they always try and sneak it out earlier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the other thing people don't understand about octoberfest. It's actually a september event, right, so right. It's not even an october event, so we're trying to sell beer. You need to at least have it out in september. I think, like middle to end of august is probably the perfect time to bring it out, but you know, it comes out a few weeks before that anyhow well, and I mean in florida we just kind of get it with everything because there is no october, is just like september or august.
Speaker 1:Um, I want to shift gears now and kind of talk about another thing you mentioned in your talk, which is Hendler Family Brewing Company and the addition of Wormtown and Night Shift and the unbelievably named Mass Hole Light which whoever came up with that? Really, really fantastic. Can you talk about how adding other breweries to the Hendler family umbrella, how that has? Has that changed your brewing or have they augmented space in your portfolio?
Speaker 2:This has definitely been a great way for the brewery to partner with brands that are not lager. So like I'm here to promote lager but we're obviously missing a huge market with with other categories. But the important part of these partnerships is that we get to keep craft independent, and that's a real goal here is that we, rather than seeing brands either go out of business or become non-independent, we're able to keep these brands family owned, independent craft, and that's not just with the these brands family-owned, independent craft, and that's not just with the brands we've acquired. That's also through the contract brewing partnerships we have. It's a tough market and we're trying to find ways for brewers to have successful business plans and we're really passionate about keeping craft crafts, keeping craft family-owned and keeping craft independent.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then where does so? Then, how does? How do the loggers of Jack and Abby kind of fit in with the other brands, or or don't they, or they have their own kind of space it's a really interesting to me because I'm not a marketing or sales guy but, like people are so passionate about brand.
Speaker 2:So you know, some people are passionate about craft beer in general, but it is. It is super interesting where you can see that some people are Wormtown drinkers and they like this beer. And you know, in the early days we we get emails like you better not change the beer, you better not change the recipe. We're like, why would we do that? That's the whole point of what we're trying to do here and you know, I think we've alleviated most fears on that end.
Speaker 2:We brought in the brewers from Wormtown and they are making sure that we are, that we are producing that beer and within their expectations, and that's just a really important. It goes back to that manufacturing taking pride in how we produce things and why we're producing it. Yeah, you can just brew great beer, but sometimes and this isn't specific about the beer, but one of the things that I talked about in that presentation is, sometimes beer is defined by its law and that's what makes it great. And so, yeah, you could probably just like streamline things and make it really efficient, really, um, really simplified, and that might be better for manufacturing, but it's really important that we keep the identity of these brands. What they are absolutely, um, and you know again, not saying that they're flaws per se, but they are they. There's something that makes that beer great and it's the way that recipe was designed, the way that the brewers decided how to brew the beer, and we're trying to stay true to that and make sure that that unique character stays within those beers.
Speaker 1:Okay, and is there, do you see, are the audiences for those beers. Are the loyal drinkers for those beers? Okay, and is there, do you see? Um, are the audiences for those beers? Are the loyal drinkers for those beers? Do they kind of incorporate other of your brands? Or if I'm a night shift drinker, darn, and I want that berliner, and that's, that's all I'm gonna drink I.
Speaker 2:I would say there's probably as much carryover as there are just normally with other craft brands, but I don't think that there's anyone who specifically knows that we're all the same. You know, obviously it's not a secret right, but they're um. I think each brand has its own identity. They're talking to a different audience. They're talking to people who who drink different beers, live in different places, and that's important. You know, we have a. We have two tap rooms for night shift in the Boston area Jack's is in Framingham, wormtown's in Worcester. Each one has its own home where people come and drink beer. We're not there to sell Wormtown drinkers, jack's Abbey or Jack's Abbey drinkers night shift. We want to make sure that the people who are going to each location are getting what they want and are happy with the experience they have.
Speaker 1:Okay, um, one of the things that, as we're talking, kind of dawns on me is that you guys have been able to, um, fill some of those gaps in your portfolio. Fill some of those um, keep growing through beer, which is something that a lot of breweries have not been able to do. Have you been when you think about that? I mean, that's what everybody wants. Is there something that you attribute that to? Is it having a diverse number of beers? Or is it because the growth that you got with the acquisition of the other breweries really seems to you did it smart and you did it with contract relationships that were there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is something we are thinking about. Like we do have a, we are essentially only selling beer. It is something that we'd love to diversify, but right now our focus is beer. That's what we do, that's what we know, and trying to succeed by investing in the manufacturing that we have on site, making sure that we're able to produce the best beer at a reasonable price point that you can get in the market. And having sort of the economy of scale now helps us achieve some of these goals.
Speaker 1:Okay, Um, talking more to the brewing, uh, the brewing side of Jack's Abbey specifically. Um, how do you innovate, or how do you, in a world where the drinker is always looking for the shiny new thing? How do you, how do you, you, or do you innovate on traditions and processes that have been around for hundreds of years?
Speaker 2:This is something that I'm very excited about and you know, you kind of say like how can you even do that? But there are so many great ways to innovate on the lager side and one of the things we've been looking at is trying to see what other traditions have done. So, you know, one of the beers we just released was, uh, a rice lager inspired by some japanese brewers, but the beer itself isn't even half of it. One of the things we learned about is how intricate some of the pouring of these beers is in Japan, and we did a lot of research to think about the presentation and the consumer side of this, and we've got some special faucets and we're doing special pours and really trying to learn as much as we can from as many different influences, and not not just in Europe but around the world. Sure.
Speaker 1:Okay, Um, are there other examples of that? Where, um, you're, you're, because innovating is, is innovating, has its own kind of connotation of what you, what you expect. But these traditions have been around. You talked about in your presentation um, kind of an Americanized version of some of these traditions. Are there other beers that lend themselves to that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. When I think about innovating on the lager side, most of my ideas come from the malt side. Okay, ideas come from the malt side. Okay, and malt isn't really something we talk a lot about these days in the craft world. We're generally talking about hops, and I'm not trying to say hops aren't important, but this complete lack of conversation around the malt that we're using to me is very interesting. I you could, probably I would be surprised how many brewers could tell you what variety of malt or barley that they were using in their beer.
Speaker 2:And what we're trying to do is we're really diving into specific varieties, varieties that often have been passed up because they're no longer as efficient or yield as much, but when you think about the flavor characteristics they bring to the beer, it's really important. One of the malts we're really working a lot, a lot with now is a variety of barley named steffi comes from germany and it's mostly discontinued. They're still. They still grow a little bit in germany, but now it's being grown in the US and the flavor profile that that malt brings to our beers is just beautiful and it's something that I get really excited about. But it doesn't have to just be Steffi. There are so many maltsters bringing back interesting novel malt varieties that can really provide interesting opportunities, particularly for lager brewers.
Speaker 2:And why lager brewers versus ales can take advantage of this more than than more is because a lot of the mashing techniques, a lot of these malts or barley varieties have lower modification. They've been discontinued because they're not quite as efficient. But if you have a lager process where you're either decocting or you're doing a multi-step infusion or you're just used to processing your malt in a, in a non-infusion mash, the opportunity to use all these really heritage vintage, the business may not be right, all these, uh, heritage varieties of barley. Or we can start thinking about flavor of barley versus efficiency of barley. And the entire industry the last 50 years has been only thinking about yield and efficiency and modification. They have not been thinking about flavor.
Speaker 2:And that's not like my personal opinion, because the brewers are the least influential when it comes to breeding barley. Barley is mainly, um, mainly farmers have probably the most influence and the molsters then are second and the brewers are third. And I think from the lager perspective, having the most modified malt is not necessarily the best, um, maybe, and there are reasons why. It makes things your life simpler and it makes it easier, but you lose something. Sure, and we're trying to bring that something back by using a lot of these older varieties, or using varieties that are have been bred for the flavor purposes versus their efficiency.
Speaker 1:How do you? How do you find those? Um, how do you find those heritage varieties that aren't so popular but yet are known for?
Speaker 2:flavor. There's so many craft malters. Right now maybe not so many, but there has been a real growth in craft malt. That I think has been overlooked. And you know, I used to talk to a lot of people about craft malts fellow brewers, and they'd all sort of say the issue is they don't work in my brew house as well, I can't use those A. I think that sort of changed. I think a lot of the craft malts has really matured. That industry has matured and a lot of these malts are now equivalent to some of the more modern malts.
Speaker 2:But on the flip side, I think if you can think about brewing beer not just through a single infusion, there's opportunities there. So if you go to a lot of these craft malt websites, you'll see that they are identifying varieties. They are not only identifying varieties but they're identifying styles of beer. So this is what they would consider a decoction, a decoction specific malt. Or this is a maybe just a lager lager influenced malt, or maybe it's a British influenced malt.
Speaker 2:So there are a lot of interesting things happening on the the malting side and you know, even if you think about the big maltsters, the big malters have always been prioritizing the biggest brewers and creating malt that's designed to brew 50 rice and corn beer. Okay, and there's now a new. There's a new spec for craft malts that is slowly being introduced so you will start to see changes in the malts that are available to the craft industry. As craft continues to buy more and more malt, there's more influence on how that malt is malted and the specifications will come more in line with what's needed in a, for the most part, 100 barley based brewing brewing worlds okay, that's, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Um, are there? So then, with that malt evolution, with the new is, are there styles of lager that you think deserve more attention? And I swear I didn't. I didn't read your presentation before I wrote this question last night.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so what? Again? Going back to all these interesting malts, it's like are you can now get malt that's grown in the U? S, that has a flavor profile of the U? S, grown in the US that has a flavor profile of the US? And I think that's interesting. Where I think, when people in the past have thought about lager, it's like let's just buy some German ingredients or some Czech ingredients and let's recreate Czech beer or German beer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's only so many brewers that are going to be able to pull that off, and we know who they are. They make absolutely awesome German-style Helles, german-style Pils, and it's often better than the stuff you actually get over in Germany. But on the flip side, do we really just want to be a cover band for German brewers? We should be defining what lager beer is. Here we have so much opportunity. Look what we've done with IPA. Look what we've done with IPA. Look what we've done with a lot of ale styles in the US. We've completely redefined these beers.
Speaker 2:At one point, 20, 30 years ago, we were brewing English-style pub ale. It's not what we are doing today in the craft beer world. When we think about ales, we are not thinking English pub beer. We've completely redefined these categories and that's what's exciting about lager. We are just on the precipice of changing our philosophy from just recreating European styles to creating lager beer that really defines who we are in the US and that's going to be incorporating some really American techniques.
Speaker 2:So we have, like one beer that we call Modern Pils, and this is a beer that we you would never get this beer in Germany, it's a Pilsner and it technically is Reinheitsgebot and you know, it fits everything that could be considered German, except we cool pool this beer. So at the end of the end of the kettle we cool that wort down to 170 degrees and we throw a ton of hops in. At the end there's almost no bittering hops and so we get this huge noble hop aroma without the bitterness. And this is a technique we learned from our hazy ipa. Uh, uh, colleagues, right, this is something that hazy ip brewers have really spearheaded. But we're able to incorporate that sort of influence into our beer and it makes that beer more true to who we are. You know, we're in the northeast, we're we're right around all the hazy all the more true to who we are. We're in the Northeast, we're right around all the hazies. So we are taking influence from what is important to drinkers in the Northeast and we're incorporating that into our lager.
Speaker 1:I never would have thought of that. Okay, so then that answers the question of where you find ways to innovate and things to explore. And I love the line that you're not ways to innovate and things to explore. And I love the line that you're not a cover band for German brewers. That's because, you're right, there are so many that try and recreate Germany, but you make a trip every year to Germany, absolutely. And so then how does that influence your recipe development, or your new beers that you're making, or the twists that you put on the beers that you're making?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I, I I traveled to Germany every single year, or at least try to. Sometimes I'll go twice if I'm lucky, and in some ways the German beer scene is very narrow and when you go to Munich they basically have three styles of beer and pick one, that's it. And you know I still love those beers, but there is no variety. But you go two, three hours north of Munich, you go to the Bamberg area, franconia, and you'd be surprised with how many different styles of beer there are, and I'm always just so inspired by trying all these new, unique beers, and a lot of them just take the influence of home. Some of them are still malting, some of them are still using equipment that's 50 years old, some of them are still doing techniques that are so outdated. Just because that's all they know and that's what they do, and being able to understand why these brewers are doing what they're doing, you can then bring some of those ideas back. So, particularly on the process side, we bring a lot of these processes back to the us, whether it's decoction, brewing, natural carbonation, um, horizontal lagering, those sort of sort of things, but we try to do it in a way that also speaks uh to the beers that we're producing.
Speaker 2:There's not a single beer that we really put out that I would call like a super traditional two spec or two style. You know we brew a helles, but it's wouldn't ever would. It's not a helles, it's, it's it's again, I we used to call it a land beer, now we call it a Helles, but it's a beer that has a lot of Vienna malton, which you wouldn't get in a Helles in Germany. Our Bavarian Pilsner. We call it Bavarian Pils because all of the hops come from this single farm in the Hallertau. But one of the varieties that we showcase is a hop called Hallertau, but one of the varieties that we showcase is a Hopkold Hallertau Blanc, and you would never get a Pilsner in Germany with a Hopkold Hallertau with Hallertau Blanc in it. And that helps us to sort of recreate in the spirit but keep things that are unique, unique to us, and showcase who we are. We are not just trying to recreate Unicalis and northern pills, northern German pills. We are trying to find that balance of what am I trying to say Innovation and tradition?
Speaker 2:We're trying to stay true to the process but find the ways to make those beers unique to us.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, then again, I didn't look at your presentation ahead of time. Should every brewery brew a lager?
Speaker 2:Should every brewery no, I mean everyone has their own niche. You need to know your market. But from the perspective of the overall craft scene, I think that there needs to be a lot more, a bigger push and more investment. On the lager fronts front. We've seen such consolidation in styles where we've nearly doubled the market share for IPA over the last 10 years. I don't think this is healthy for craft beer.
Speaker 2:I don't think craft beer wants to be just synonymous with IPA. I think craft beer needs to be able to slightly redefine who we're targeting, who we're selling to, and it could just be a generational shift. We need to be able to attract the next generation of drinkers and IPA might not be it, but I think that lager has a lot of opportunity here. We know lagers had a great almost 200 year run at this point. Maybe there's a little chink in the armor now with some of the things that are happening in the market, but I do think that there's an understanding of what lager beer is, even if it in the past hasn't has been sort of a enemy of craft beer. I think we need to figure out a way how to own that style and and take advantage of of that market opportunity.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then last question for now. You talked about the year of Lager and you have that wonderful shirt where every year you've been open it's crossed out, and then you have the 2024 on there. What does the year of Lager? As I'm listening to your talk, the question that goes to my mind is what does the year of Lager look like? What do you know when you can circle? How do you know you can circle the year and say that's?
Speaker 2:the year. What's the normal answer? I'll know it when I see it, or something like that. Yeah, that that's a really good question. How will we know it's the year of the logger? My guess is we won't know it's the year of the logger until until all of a sudden we're there, like when was the year of the IPA? Probably it was, you know, 20 years ago, but like it may not have been quite as obvious at the time when it was happening.
Speaker 1:Well, does that mean? Is it the year where Logger outsells IPA in the craft world?
Speaker 2:I don't think we're going to get there. That's not what I'm trying to push or promote. I do think we just need a really strong, viable second option after IPA that should be lager. Is that 15% of market? Is that 20% of market? I don't know. We're currently hovering right around that 10% mark. But the interesting thing about craft beer is that often these trends come from the bottom up, Um, and I think that if we as smaller brewers, a lot of these independent tap room only facilities, start pushing lager, then you can start seeing that that shift upwards to what people are doing on the on the largest, larger brewing side and really help to promote that idea and help to spearhead that that conversation around lagers. That will be important going forever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Um then I want to be respectful of your time and thank you so much. I do have six rapid fire questions if your game has ended with a six-pack, okay. So the first question is what is your current favorite beer?
Speaker 2:Yep. Do you ever get anyone to answer this?
Speaker 1:Well, that's why I added the word current Correct, because as a beer guy, I know it shifts and I know that people go. I go on kicks all the time. So what's right now? What are you drinking the most of, or what is it that you're really savoring?
Speaker 2:Well, it's Oktoberfest time, so I would. I would go with some sort of golden Five and a half to six percent lager right now. Ok, that's what I'm drinking, perfect.
Speaker 1:OK, if you could only brew one style, and that's going to be the style you drink. If you only brew one style, what would it be? Land beer Okay, I was hoping you wouldn't say lager, okay, okay, good. Next, what's the last beer you had that changed your mind?
Speaker 2:That's a good one.
Speaker 1:The example I always use is Duchess de Bourggogne. I hadn't had a sour before that, and it was different than all of the other sours I have had since yeah, I mean I sort of mentioned it earlier, but that beer in munich when I had the dunkel.
Speaker 2:You know we always talk about lager being crisp and clean one of the myths about lager but Dunkel sort of defies all categories of crisp and that was sort of eye-opening to me. That first liter of Dunkel just like unbelievably malty and full-bodied sweet but yet somehow light and drinkable and you can drink a liter of it. You look at the beer like I can never finish a liter of that beer and then three sips later it's, it's gone I, I would love to, I would love to deep dive into the myths around.
Speaker 1:Dark in air quotes, dark beer at some point, because that, that, that stigma of it's dark, so it's heavy. Yep, it's fascinating, sure, yeah. Um, next, when it comes to beer, what do you wish? You really understood Everything, but you've been brewing since before. It's yeah you know.
Speaker 2:I think the more you learn, the less you realize you know, and that's sort of where I'm at. Okay, every time you think you've wrapped your head around, the things that we work the most on from a lab standpoint on a weekly like this has to be right is attenuation, fermentability, yeast health. Every time you think you figured out your yeast, something else is a problem and you got to figure out how to tweak, because for every action there's something else that's going to go. For everything you improve, there's something else that you now have to resolve and that's something that we just sit down. We really have to identify and make sure that every beer we have three different yeast strains in our brewery, one lager and two ale strains, and making sure they're all happy at the same time and all the parameters we're doing for each different yeast. Um, our right is. It's just a huge undertaking, sure?
Speaker 1:sure, okay, um, what is one thing you wish everyone knew about your brewery?
Speaker 2:um, we live for lager, but that's just the jack side right. So now I gotta come up with something for each brand. I know we're sort of here to talk about lager, but I think what's most important for what we're doing at Hendler Family is trying to keep craft independent and really doubling down on keeping production in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then. Finally, what's the greatest lesson you've learned in beer? Be humble. Okay, and then finally what's the greatest lesson you've learned in?
Speaker 2:beer. Be humble, okay, every time you think you got this industry figured out, you don't. You got to shift quickly, so we're just happy to still be in business. It could have certainly gone in different directions. We were able to my brothers and I figure out how to navigate it, and we're just lucky to still be here. Awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, Jack, thank you very much. It's been wonderful talking to you about lager.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Always happy to talk, lager.
Speaker 1:That was my conversation with Jack Hendler of Jack's Abbey Craft Lagers. My thanks to Jack for sitting down with me and taking time to talk about all things. Lager Support for the BeerWise podcast comes from Copper Tail Brewing. My thanks to Jack for sitting down with me and taking time to talk about all things. Lager Support for the BeerWise podcast comes from Copper Tail Brewing. Copper Tail 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 free dive IPA, night swim porter, cloud dweller, hazy IPA or unholy triple today.
Speaker 1: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 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, please remember to review the show on your favorite podcast platform and help us reach new audiences. Florida Beer News and this podcast are now on Patreon. I've begun fundraising efforts for the website and podcast in hopes of making updates and changes. Check out patreoncom slash floridabeernews spelled out 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 and when I'll be back to talk about what's going on in the world. Beer, wise Cheers. Bye.
