S2 Episode 7: Homebrewing Q&A with the Experts

We have a bevy of homebrewers at Allagash, so when a fan suggested we host a homebrewing Q&A, we did!

In this podcast, we're joined by three seasoned, professional brewers in Patrick Chavanelle, Katie Beaucage, and Corey McNutt. In it, we take fans' online questions and basically break them out into novice, intermediate, and expert-level questions. The best part? We suspect you'll learn quite a bit along the way, no matter your level.

So come along and hear all about homebrewing.

Transcript

Brett Willis 0:00

This is from Maine with Love, an Allagash Brewing podcast where we talk about beer, our community here in Maine, and things that generally make us happy. Uh, and today we're talking to Home Brewing with Corey McNutt, R&D Brewer, here at Allagash . Welcome, Corey . Katie Beaucage, brewer here at Allagash . And Patrick Chavanelle, Senior R&D Brewer. And I'm Brett , I work on the marketing team. Uh, welcome. Thank you all for making the time to talk about Homebrewing. But before we get into home brewing , uh, we're gonna do quick secret question for everybody. Around the horn. Uh , Corey , what is the origin of the mullet and pickup truck video that you did for the company meeting ?

Corey McNutt 1:05

Uh , I just...

Brett Willis 1:07

<laugh> It's okay if you just decided you had to do it.

Corey McNutt 1:10

Well, I , I was growing my hair out for a couple years and like, I was like getting hot one day and I'm like, this is enough. And I, you know, a couple people here before had cut one and people were like, oh, cut a mullet, then do a rat tail and all this. And I'm like, you know what, <laugh> , I'll do a mullet. Yeah. You know? So I went down the road where I was living in , uh, this lady actually cut it outta hair place , and she was like, are you sure you want to cut 'em all in ? I'm like, oh, I'm sure <laugh>. You know? And , uh, so I, you know, it was fun just kind of playing around with it. And , uh, you know, I was a little inspired by Joe Dirt, you know , I'm not gonna lie. Sure. And , uh, my lady helped me kind of record a little video. Yeah . You know? So,

Brett Willis 1:54

So just for context too, the video in question is just, it was at a company meeting. It was like, it's like Allagash legend at this point. And , uh, Corey put together a video of him with his mullet peeling out in a pickup truck in a very safe way. <laugh> ,

Corey McNutt 2:08

Uh , very safe. Yeah . And

Brett Willis 2:09

It was, yeah, it was, it was great. That was good. All right , Katie . Uh, are you a motorcyclist now? Is that what I hear, <laugh> ?

Katie Beaucage 2:17

Yeah, I am. That's awesome. I got my motorcycle license a couple weeks ago. Ah , actually bought a motorcycle last fall. Oh , yeah. I did that first <laugh>, and then I was like, I should probably get my license, start riding this. Um, it's just a little two 50 , um, Suzuki. Nice. It's a nice little ride.

Brett Willis 2:37

And I, I almost asked you about , uh, your license plate on your car, <laugh>, because it's also pretty excellent beer.

Katie Beaucage 2:44

Yes. Yeah. Beer . Um, b i e r. So German beer. It's good. I couldn't believe it was available.

Brett Willis 2:51

I , I kind of couldn't believe it when I saw it pull into the brewery . I was like, that's kind of incredible you were able to find that.

Katie Beaucage 2:56

I'll be doing a vanity plate on the motorcycle too.

Brett Willis 2:59

Oh, nice.

Katie Beaucage 2:59

That, that'll be a little surprise for you guys. Okay . <laugh>,

Brett Willis 3:02

I'd like to have you back on then. Uh , that's great. All right , Patrick , uh, my question for you is, should I buy or sell Bitcoin? Oh,

Patrick Chavanelle 3:11

God.

Brett Willis 3:12

Or should I just hold it?

Patrick Chavanelle 3:16

You should just hold it. Okay . I , I don't want to go on a whole rant about the reasons why , um, <laugh>

Brett Willis 3:23

Go off.

Patrick Chavanelle 3:24

Uh , yeah. I just won't even go there. Okay. But yeah, you should buy it and hold it and, you know, hang onto it for a while .

Brett Willis 3:31

Just hang onto it. Yeah. Let it be. Exactly. For sure. All right . Good. Good. That was a good response. That was what I was hoping for. I was hoping for, for some sort

Patrick Chavanelle 3:39

Of response. I mean, if you want this podcast to be about like federal reserve and monetary policy Sure. We could do that too. But I feel like they probably put a bunch of people to sleep. Yeah.

Brett Willis 3:49

Side Pod. It's a side podcast. Yeah . That's good. That can be a special episode. Uh, awesome. All right . So , uh, to the question at hand, so we posed a question to , uh, a lot of the people , uh, or to the people who follow us on social media , uh, just any home brewing questions at all that they had. And , uh, people had a fair number, number of questions. Uh, it was pretty cool to see. And so what we're gonna do is go through the questions kind of from a level of novice to intermediate to experts . So kind of no matter your home brewing experience level, we hopefully will provide some insight for you. And I think I'm, I'm gonna guess with the brewing knowledge that's available right here , um, there's gonna be a lot of insight. So the first question comes from a person named r underscore gross, who says, where do we start? It seems intimidating. And do you , do you have to be strong in math and science? Uh, what's the best piece of advice for people interested in learning how to home brew?

Patrick Chavanelle 4:46

I would almost say it'd be similar to what Katie said about getting a motorcycle uhhuh , where you just gotta start by buying some ingredients and maybe a beginner's book to sort of force yourself into doing it. Otherwise, you're just gonna be stuck in that like, oh , this way too intimidating sort of phase. Yeah . Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And you're not just gonna rip off the bandaid and do it. I think it could be looked at as technical as you possibly can. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> , or as easy as you possibly can in that. All you have to do is take some grains, crush 'em up, let 'em sit in water for a little while, remove the liquid from it, boil it, add some hops, cool it down, add some like, it's so, they're, so the steps are so basic mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and you could overcomplicate it as much as you want. Right. And that's like, once you really get in the weeds, that's one of the really fun aspects of it, because you're not only looking at it from like a scientific level, but also from, you know, like a recipe level where you get like, the mix of art and science. Um, but yeah, the , there are so many good beginner books out there that don't speak in terms of the processes from like a super technical level. Right . They say just like, these are the basics. This is all you need to follow. You can get like super complicated eventually if you want to. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, which, that's what happened to me personally. Yeah . It's like starting from that first batch of home brew, it like started to consume every aspect of my life. <laugh> up until this day still, like, I go to bed and I read things about brewing and fermentation. Like, I wake up, I come to work, I do it all day. And like that's where my mind is cuz I'm unusual, I think more or less and slightly obsessive <laugh> . Uh , I think ,

Brett Willis 6:38

I think you and I have some things in common, but Yeah . Yeah ,

Patrick Chavanelle 6:40

Yeah. Uh , but you know, it's, it's, you can overcomplicate it all you want or you can, it can be super simple. Um, so yeah, getting a book can like, kind of, sort of forcing yourself to do it, I think's the best place to start.

Brett Willis 6:52

So. Yeah. So for, I guess for the , any of you, do you have you, this is from another question from Craig Friedland. Have you done the malt extract versus the grain brewing in your time? Or did you all do just some grain?

Corey McNutt 7:05

Uh , when I first started, you know, it was, I did partial grain batches. So you'd, you'd get a small, you know, muslin bag of specialty grains. Uh, and then the rest would be, you know, liquid malt extract. Um, so basically start out kind of steep in specialty grains and then, you know , uh, rinse the grains off and then I would add some, some more water and liquid malt extract and keep it pretty simple. Yeah . Uh , and you know, those were just going into carboys at that time, you know, six and a half gallon carboy , uh, primary and five gallon secondary and just kept it really simple. Totally.

Brett Willis 7:48

Can you explain what a carboy is for those?

Corey McNutt 7:50

It's just a glass most of the time. Glass vessel. Uh, it looks like a big jug kind of. Uh, and usually, you know, my primary, like I said, would be a six and a half gallon mm-hmm . <affirmative> that I had. And then , uh, my secondary would be a five gallon.

Brett Willis 8:05

Patrick, what you were saying too about the getting started thing, I feel like Katie , your kind of brewing journey is, is a bit like that. Like I feel like you started like from a place of curiosity. And so is that what you found to be similar?

Katie Beaucage 8:19

Yeah, I mean, I definitely started from this point of curiosity. Previously I was a flight attendant and <laugh> , so I was traveling a lot. And a common factor in most big cities that you go to is that there's different craft breweries mm-hmm . <affirmative> . And , uh, that kind of piqued my interest initially. And uh, yeah. Um, I started working at a small brewery , um, just doing front of house stuff and was just like, what is going on back there? Right. Uh , very curious. And I just kind of pushed my way into the back. I was like, yeah, I'll catch cans off the end of the canning line. Sure. But can you show me how to clean that tank too? And oh , well what are you doing over here? Are you writing a recipe? What's going in that? Um, for me, a lot of my brewing experience started just working in a brewery. Right. I actually did more home brewing after I started working in a brewery. So, you know, a lot of our seller people, the first Bri worked at, we weren't getting on the brew house . Um Sure. So we would just brew patches in each other's garages.

Brett Willis 9:23

That's very fun. Yeah. That's very fun.

Patrick Chavanelle 9:26

You know, YouTube is a pretty amazing source of information right now. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> , I mean, you can definitely go down crazy rabbit holes there. Sure, sure. Um, but I'm sure that there are very basic beginner videos. I haven't searched for them personally, but , uh, I'm sure they exist and they could break things down into really simple terms.

Brett Willis 9:46

Yeah. That actually was kind of like a , a later question that I had , I had sort of come across as just like, do you have any sort of go-to like home brewing resources that you found to be particularly helpful along your journey? Was there like an early book or an early something?

Corey McNutt 10:04

Oh , mine was, I think it was John Palmer's How to Brew. Okay. I think was a , that was , somebody had gifted me that it was like a Christmas gift or something, you know, when I, they learned I've started Home Brewing mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and that was a pretty good book. Cool recipes, you know, it goes through all the process. It's got some recipes in it. It , it's pretty good.

Brett Willis 10:27

Nice.

Patrick Chavanelle 10:29

Oh , I got some ones.

Brett Willis 10:30

<laugh> <laugh> .

Patrick Chavanelle 10:31

Like I said, I'm a like an obsessive person to some extent. So , um, I had that book. I had , uh, Ray Daniels designing great beers. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> . I had , um, oh, what's the hell's his name? You're gonna probably edit this out later.

Brett Willis 10:51

Uh , we , we never edit anything out.

Patrick Chavanelle 10:54

The Joy of Home Brewing.

Corey McNutt 10:55

Charlie,

Brett Willis 10:55

Charlie Papa .

Patrick Chavanelle 10:57

I had Charlie Papazian , the Joy of Home Brewing actually when I first got hired here , uh, within, I don't know, nine to 12 months of me working here. He came to visit the brewery to do some sort of like, special event. And to me he was just like, oh my God, this guy like, changed my life. Yeah. So I went up to him, this crazy person. I was just like, oh my God, I'm so excited to meet you. And I like shook his hand and he was like , uh, let's

Brett Willis 11:25

Thanks . Nice

Patrick Chavanelle 11:25

To meet you . Like he was very kind. Yeah. But like, I was a little too intense in my , uh, in my like way , which I said Hi.

Brett Willis 11:35

Do you like jump out of a barrel or something? You like <laugh> ? I can't believe it's you <laugh> . Will you be my dad <laugh>

Patrick Chavanelle 11:44

And the , the , actually the other big thing for me, and they're still around the brewing network had a podcast. Oh , you listen to that too, right, Corey ? Oh, yeah. Um, they had a podcast all about just brewing. Uh, and like the, the ones that they recorded, you know, 10 plus years ago are still around. Right. And they talked about the basics and they'd talk about brewing specific styles. Um, and that was also an obsession because it was actually before recorded podcasts. Now I'm sounding really old. Uh , I swear I'm not that old. It was before a recorded podcast. Like, they had this like, live stream , so you'd have to Oh yeah . At like eight o'clock at nights on whatever, Friday or Saturday. Cause I had no life and I was just doing beer stuff. Uh, you'd have to tune in live in order to like hear the interviews and stuff. So, so yeah. That, that was just like the tip of the iceberg of the, the books that I had and , uh, their resources.

Brett Willis 12:35

And the other part that this came up in . So I'll , I'll give a little backstory. Before this podcast, I actually went around the brewery and just asked people questions. Cuz there are actually a ton of home brewers at this brewery, as I'm sure there are at ev every brewery. But I think on , it's similar to what you just said too , Katie , of like the fact that get a friend or a mentor or people to help you. Because I feel like one of the sort of unspoken things about home brewing is like, it takes a long time. It's, it's a , it's like six someone, someone said like six hours about for like a single brew . Is that kind of a good A brew day ?

Katie Beaucage 13:08

Yeah . Between five and six hours for one batch. Right. Depending on how long your boil is.

Brett Willis 13:13

So it , I , I feel like for, for my experience, cause I have not done a ton of home brewing, but I feel like I've done an equivalent thing in that I got obsessed with bread for a little while like everyone else did during the pandemic. But I feel like bread is one of those things where you do something for a little while and then wait for a long time and then do something for a little while and wait for a long time. I think that's kind of similar. Is that a similar way to how the Brew Day goes?

Katie Beaucage 13:35

Yeah. Yeah. And plus they both have yeast . Oh , they both, exactly. And some grains I guess, you know, here it can be a little different , um, with our 70 barrel brew house . Right. Um, cuz once that thing is on, it's gonna be on until Friday. Right . Usually. But you know, if you're doing a single batch, like on our 30 barrel brew house , it could definitely be a lot of like start and stop. You know, you get your mash in and you might have an hour rest. Right. So you might do some hops and then hang around a little bit. And especially once, you know, once you're in the kettle and you're boiling Yeah. That's, that's like the chill time right there. <laugh> .

Brett Willis 14:14

There you go.

Patrick Chavanelle 14:16

I don't know. I feel like I was high anxiety whenever I was brewing . I was like, it was a little stress. It was enjoyable. Yeah . But it was like stressful. Yeah. Because I don't know , back then you'd spend a lot of money on ingredients and Sure . Like I wouldn't be the person that would drink and brew at the same time cause I didn't want to screw it up. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> , uh, not that there's anything wrong with that, but like, I'd spent 70 bucks on the ingredients to make five gallons of beer, whatever it cost . Right. So I was, I don't know , I didn't have a whole lot of like, downtime <laugh> , mentally

Brett Willis 14:50

You're just reading books.

Patrick Chavanelle 14:50

I was just like, oh my God, I just wanna make sure I'm doing everything right. But there's like some cleaning to do along the way too. So like, you'd fill up your time more or less. I think

Brett Willis 15:00

That was another one that came up is like clean the stuff immediately after you've used it. Cuz if you leave it, it tends to stay left for too long. Is that the experience you've had?

Corey McNutt 15:11

Yeah. It gets super gnarly too. Yeah. If you leave it. Yeah. We'd always be, my buddy and I would brew a lot together and we'd always like, have a couple of beers and be like, oh , we , we left this dirty from last time. We gotta clean it before we knock out <laugh> . You know, we're boiling. We're like, oh god it . We gotta get this clean <laugh>.

Brett Willis 15:31

I'm sure this is a common experience for people. Yeah . All right . Intermediate questions. We're moving up a little bit in , uh, the level of difficulty. So , uh, mark Zel says, love Allagash. You guys are great. Thank you. Uh , what is the best way to monitor necessary fermentation? Temp heard many methods, but more seem difficult than others. Uh , and also I'm gonna follow this up with best low-cost fermentation temp control from another person named Michael Edwardson. So all about fermentation. How the heck do you do it?

Corey McNutt 16:00

It's tough on , and the home brew scale , I mean, we, we've kind of, my buddy and I started, I mean really when I first started Brewin, I , like I said, I was using Carboys and I would just have, you know, one of those sticker temperature things on the side and I'd wrap it in like jackets to try and help it. Like, but I remember one year I was, I was brewing in this employee housing and I probably wasn't supposed to be brewing there, but there was nothing that said I shouldn't be. Uh , and I remember it was like a wicked hot summer and I was doing this fermentation and the blowoff clogged and it blew off. Oh . And like shot up, hit the ceiling. Like there was just like trube everywhere. And I was like, oh. Ah . But so from the, from the get-go, like the early on stuff was very, you know, just one of those temperature stickers on the side. And then as things progressed we made like a fermentation box, you know, out of wood and insulation and like, and that was still pretty janky. You know, I would say the best way for a home brewer , if, if you can't get like the , if you can't spend the money on like an s brew tech system or something, you know, would be like an old , uh, fridge. If you can find one and use a Ranco controller, you know, which Ranco you can get decently cheap and uh, you know, you can just keep it in there and kind of, you can have the, the temperature off. The one thing is, I mean, it works well enough. I, I think that's like one of the best options if Sure. You know, so Yeah . Ranco controller for sure.

Patrick Chavanelle 17:40

Yeah, I had one of those too . Yeah . Yeah. I did it a little differently. Um, we had a basement in all the places that we stayed in. So the basement floor always stayed pretty cold. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So all I would do is have, I did buckets. I wasn't as fancy as you. Corey <laugh> one of the nice car boys . Yeah . <laugh> . Um, so I just had a plastic bucket and I would put the Ranco controller , uh, on one side, so you know, have the probe on one side and then it'd have a heat wrap on the other side. Nice. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> . So the basement was cold enough to keep it cold. And then to supplement the heat, I would have that , uh, jacket kind of go on and off connected to the controller. And it was pretty cheap. Like that temp wrap , uh, that like heat wrap, I don't know, it was 10 bucks. That Ranco controller. 40 bucks maybe. Yeah . Something like that. So I dunno , 50 bucks , 50, 60 bucks. You can have like a pretty decent temp control as long as you can find a cool place to put it in. Right. And then I , I guess the other thing I'd say is if you don't have that luxury, just kind of choosing the style that you brew based on the temperature that it is so brewing seasonally more or less mm-hmm . <affirmative> . So if it's really hot, it's not to say that all Belgian beers need to be fermented hot. Cause I feel like that's like a misnomer. Like that's not exactly correct. Sure. Like hotter is not always better. Um , but they can take that like heat more or less and can be beneficial. And then maybe when it's colder you brew more colder fermenting beers. So I guess that would be the other cheaper option. Totally.

Katie Beaucage 19:30

Yeah. I think, you know, like Chavez is saying, if it's almost more beneficial to have a cold area Sure. To store your carboy or whatever it is that you're fermenting and it's a bit more cost effective to have like a heating unit. Yeah. So I know in the past, I know people who have used like seedling mats. Oh yeah . Those are very responsive. Yeah . Um, you know, like even like an ink bird temp probe , those ones are pretty affordable too. Um, and you can just plug in a seedling mat to that kind of get your temp probe against your carboy or your fermentation vessel. Cause if you already have access to the cold, like a nice basement, just get a little bit of heat on there. Those are pretty, pretty effective too. Nice.

Patrick Chavanelle 20:17

You don't like, it's so weird being in, I've grown up in New England my whole life. Yeah. Not everyone has basements. Turns out <laugh> ,

Katie Beaucage 20:23

Like down in Texas,

Patrick Chavanelle 20:24

They, they were like, what's a basement? <laugh> ?

Brett Willis 20:27

They all have a swimming pool. Yeah . <laugh> . It's just, yeah . So

Patrick Chavanelle 20:30

Put it in the swimming pool. Yeah . Yeah .

Brett Willis 20:32

Just get a bathysphere. Yeah. Uh, what, so this actually kind of brings up the other question that, that was a , I feel like a good specific one of like, you know , I know you're talking brew seasonally Patrick of like, you know, if , if you're familiar with beer styles, you can kind of of figure out, oh, you know, this, this goes with this , um, sort of , uh, season. But I think that like, maybe for the person who's even not familiar with beer styles, what would be the like primary styles of beer to start with as like, this is kind of going back to the novice, but like what styles do you feel like are the most forgiving potentially of errors in the beginning?

Patrick Chavanelle 21:08

Uh, chocolate cherry, stout, <laugh> . Cause that was the first year I ever Brewed <laugh> . Um , no, honestly, anything dark. Yeah . Mm-hmm. <affirmative> . I mean, we've learned, you know, being involved in the pilot team here , uh, anything dark is just more forgiving. Right . It could mask other, like, both good characters and like your off flavors. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> , uh, way more than like, what would be the polar opposite, which would be like a light lager . Uh , which, you know, there's, there's nowhere for anything to hide in a beer like that. So. Right . Stout, a porter, I dunno , something dark. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> ,

Corey McNutt 21:45

I , I started off with pale ales and then yeah . Ooh , cool . Like crystal malt and everything, you know what I mean? <laugh> , like back then crystal malt and Cascade, you know, kind of ruled the world back then in my world. Anyway. Yeah. Uh , so I, I started off with a lot of different pale ales and kind of messed around with the hops and stuff. So

Brett Willis 22:05

That was actually the other one that , that I heard when I asked was, was I was pale ales and IPAs. Just, I think the common denominator, I dunno if you're thinking this too, Kate , it's like mm-hmm . <affirmative> , the common denominator being like any beer that has one prominent note to it seems to be the way to go. Whereas when the notes need to work in harmony, it kind of gets harder and harder.

Katie Beaucage 22:25

Yeah. Especially, you know, if you maybe don't have as much experience Right. With the ingredients that you're working with. If you're trying to build a really complex flavor profile, it just leaves a lot of room for error and off flavors. I mean, I think some of the most forgiving styles when you're starting are like brown ales. Ah , and maltier English styles too. Sure. Are very forgiving.

Patrick Chavanelle 22:50

Uh, it was crazy the other day, when was it? Last week Katie and I had this sensory , uh, um, meeting where we're tasting through a bunch of different spike samples of hop reach mm-hmm . <affirmative> or ipa. And there was one that was spiked with Diol Ah , which is that like buttery character. Yeah . Mm-hmm . <affirmative> . And as soon as I smelled that, it was something that I haven't thought about in so long, but the second beer I ever brewed was this clone of Uhlin , the elder Russian River. Yeah. <laugh> . And I smelled that beer with Diol and it like brought me back to that second batch of Home Brew have I ever done. I was like, oh my God, that batch was awful.

Corey McNutt 23:34

And like, I just

Patrick Chavanelle 23:35

Realized it then from 15 years ago that like, that was the issue. My beer smelled like butter,

Brett Willis 23:42

<laugh>

Corey McNutt 23:42

<laugh> .

Patrick Chavanelle 23:44

It was , it was a very weird reaction

Brett Willis 23:46

That, you know what's really funny about that was, that was actually one of the most surprising, like sort of pieces of information that I got from asking people around is I asked Matthew Davis, who's one of our quality control , uh, folks, and he said, you should, if your beer tastes bad, don't dump it not, or don't dump most of it. Just keep it. Because then you could potentially either taste it yourself and take , get some sort of a feel for like what's wrong with it. Or bring it to a friend who is good at home brewing or a good brewer. And they might be able to tell you where you went wrong based on what that off flavor is. Cuz there are a lot of clues and off flavors. Like what would you do about Diacetyl? I mean, what do you do about Diacetyl?

Patrick Chavanelle 24:23

You dump it down . <laugh> . <laugh> .

Brett Willis 24:25

Well, I'm gonna say give , don't give your bad beer to friends to drink for fun. Just give it to them for education.

Patrick Chavanelle 24:31

It's kind of you , you don't know for sure. Right . It could come from like microbes. Sure. Due to infection. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Uh , so in that case you couldn't do anything about it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> , um, or just poor fermentation. Uh, or you know, like you could probably hold onto it for a little while longer and maybe it would clean up maybe. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> . Mm-hmm . <affirmative> . Um, I don't know . I guess it would, it's a case by case basis kind of thing. Sure , sure.

Katie Beaucage 24:55

Yeah. Diacetyl is tricky too. You know, it's one of those things that could be from dirty tap lines . Right . Or you didn't give your yeast long enough to consume the diol in the beer. Right. Um, it's good to keep notes. That's something that I don't know if a lot of home brewers think about as much is like detailed note taking will kind of help you to f you know, find the clues of where something might have gone wrong. Totally. Like, oh wow, maybe I should have , you know, let this ferment out another couple days. Or, oh , there was one day where like, I don't know, but we lost power in the house and everything got really hot cause it was the middle of the summer. You , things like that note taking . Yeah . It's great. Yeah.

Brett Willis 25:40

That's good. I've th this next question is funny to me cuz I think there is no answer for this person, unfortunately. <laugh> , uh, it says Dave Benes . I was an avid home brewer, but recently decided to put it on hold because I don't have enough time. I have three kids under the age of three. Oh God.

Patrick Chavanelle 25:55

Dave . Oh God .

Brett Willis 25:55

Did any Allagash employee home brew with young kids? If so, how did they find time to do it? I think he had a life problem. Dave <laugh>.

Patrick Chavanelle 26:01

I don't think anyone has ever brewed home that has like children under three. Yeah . Like in the existence of humanity. <laugh> ,

Brett Willis 26:10

There's no time . That's crazy.

Patrick Chavanelle 26:13

It's

Brett Willis 26:13

Crazy. I'm sorry. Three kids.

Patrick Chavanelle 26:14

That's insane. Yeah .

Brett Willis 26:16

Under

Katie Beaucage 26:16

Three. Wow. I know. That's a lot. I

Brett Willis 26:18

Just, I have two kids who are fairly young and like doing anything is hard, but Yeah. Sounds like Dave's gonna have to wait a couple years at <laugh> . You just gotta wait it out. Wait it out.

Patrick Chavanelle 26:29

I think any option Dave has his significant other Sure . Would be very upset with him . <laugh>

Brett Willis 26:36

<laugh> six hours Yeah. Of childcare . Yeah . I don't know . We might not even keep that in there. Sorry Dave. But we may Dave we may do . All right , now we're going up, we're going up to the, to the more expert level. Um, ib bearded Brewer says, how do y'all go about scaling up an idea from a home brew idea into a full scale production recipe? He says, thank, thank you and love you all yours podcast, which is very nice. Thank you for liking the podcast. But yeah, how do we go about scaling recipes up?

Patrick Chavanelle 27:08

We just take everything and multiply it by a hundred <laugh> and that's it. <laugh> ,

Brett Willis 27:13

It's so simple. <laugh> .

Patrick Chavanelle 27:16

Um, yeah, I don't know. We, we've been doing it for so long now that we have a pretty good method. Um, and you know, our method probably is different than the brewery next door to us and so on and so forth. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, there are some ingredients that you can just sort of scale more or less by like some sort of multiplier. Um , but the , there are some other things such as , um, a big one for us is just , uh, being able to scale the exact bitterness that we want in the beer is a little challenging. Huh . Um, whereas it doesn't necessarily scale from pilot to 30 barrel or 70 barrel batch.

Brett Willis 28:01

Interesting.

Patrick Chavanelle 28:01

Um, we have an internal , uh, how do you want to call it? Um, units called the Allagash Alpha unit. That's, we utilize it's made up number at least utilize , uh, to adjust the amount of hops we're adding based on Alpha acid. This is not gonna be a very helpful answer at all. <laugh> Uh , as of as I saying

Brett Willis 28:26

This , the , it shows

Patrick Chavanelle 28:27

The thought . So it's, it's I guess the, there there isn't like the best, we don't have the , what am I trying to say? <laugh>?

Brett Willis 28:37

This . It's a ,

Patrick Chavanelle 28:37

It's a complicated question

Brett Willis 28:39

Really. Yeah . Yeah. Right.

Patrick Chavanelle 28:40

Um, and each beer is a little different. Sure . Um , but there, there are some , uh, some additions that are scaled from pilot to, to anything bigger proportionally. Yeah. Like a Whirlpool edition , uh, whether it's a hop or some other unusual ingredients, we'll scale that on like a pound per barrel basis. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, if it's a dry hop will do the same. Um, but everything kind of before that is sort of like a case by case basis. And I think that's all I'm gonna say. Cause I think that's all I have to say <laugh> , but I feel like I didn't do a great job answering that question. No , I've,

Brett Willis 29:22

I have thoughts. Either of you have any thoughts on that?

Katie Beaucage 29:26

I couldn't put it any better myself . <laugh> . I think the long and the short of that for me is like, in everything that I've learned about beer is like, it is like such a fiddler process than like I ever expected it to be. Where it was like we changed the angle at which this certain thing, like this certain spout was pouring onto the beer and it like, changed the product massively after like a month in like bo like, you know, like there just are such tiny nuances to changing stuff that have large and like potentially bad impacts on down the line. There.

Patrick Chavanelle 30:01

There are. But I feel like the, there are , we have a pretty good way in which we control Sure . Variables in the process from a pilot perspective. Right . And obviously beyond that, so like temperature control in the mash is controlled fairly well in the pilot scale mm-hmm . <affirmative> and even better scaling up. So like that's not really a big variable there. Sure. Really like you're just making some sugar water going into the boil. So , um, it's there . I don't think there's a ton of variability. I think we, we do a pretty great job of scaling beers up to the point where , uh, they more or less match , um, from like a scaled version versus a pilot. And I guess the other thing I'll, I'll add is, sorry, I feel like I'm talking too long. <laugh> , um, is that we actually do have like a follow up meeting , uh, regularly for any beer . Any beer we scale up. Uh , we'll sit down with that beer, taste it as a small group and ensure that we sort of matched what we did on a pilot versus what we , uh, what we scaled. And if we didn't , uh, we're tasting the beer when it's fresh, we'll make notes so that if we intend on making that beer again in the future or scaling it up even more, we'll be able to reference like what things we needed to adjust to dial it in even more. So , um, after that. So , um, so yeah, there are many steps along the way I guess. Okay . That's good. And I'll stop talking now. Sorry, <laugh>. It's

Brett Willis 31:38

Alright . We got another one. We got another one. So. All right . Uh, we're, we're nearing the end of our, our , uh, questions. And if we didn't get to your question , uh, I apologize, but we probably will have another one of these podcasts honestly, to do another home brew follow up if we get more questions. So weekly

Patrick Chavanelle 31:54

Follow up , we

Brett Willis 31:55

<laugh> Sounds great. Turn into a home brew

Patrick Chavanelle 31:56

Podcast.

Brett Willis 31:58

All right . Little orange hellcat underscore brewing. So we might be talking to a , to a real deal brewer here. Wow . What's the best way and time , uh, to add fresh fruits so it retains as much of its flavors possible in the fry of product, specifically strawberries. Freeze them first. Cook them a little. I know you shouldn't dump a quarter of fresh strawberries or we , we don't want to give away any trade secrets here, but I , I think the question is two parts. Part one is kinda like how do you add fruit to to beer? What's our philosophy there? But part two is kinda like, how do you do that at home? Like, do you buy some wyman's like frozen berries or something? Or what do you do? I I

Corey McNutt 32:31

Never really added any fruit to my home brew. Uh , I'd say for the most part, you gotta decide whether you want the beer to be wild or tame. Right. Right. Would be the first thing. Cuz if you throw fruit into your fermentor, it's gonna be wild. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> most likely. Um, I'd never really used frozen fruit that much. Always use fresh fruit. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> here we kind of do it at towards the end of fermentation.

Katie Beaucage 33:00

I mean, I think that what you're saying about , um, especially if you want it to be wild, I think something , um, you might not think about is if you're adding fresh fruit, like from the grocery store into your fermentor, that fruit has yeast on it. Yeah. Um, and you know, if you're doing some completely different style, adding any sort of wild character to that can really ruin your beer. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> . Um , there are places you can find aseptic, purees. Sure. Um, even some local farms. I mean, kind of part of that is having that fruit be pasteurized. Um, so if you can find a local grower that has the ability to do that, that would be a good move. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But it's tricky if you add anything on the hop side, you're not really gonna get much character. Right . And strawberries are already very, you're not really gonna get much character from strawberries compared to other fruits as it is.

Patrick Chavanelle 34:03

Strawberies, I feel like are notoriously difficult to get the flavor of strawberry out of. Yeah. If you want fresh strawberry character, even the wild beers that we add fresh strawberries too mm-hmm . <affirmative> , like I agree. If you want fresh fruit character, adding it as late as possible into like a beer's life is probably the best thing to do, but mm-hmm . <affirmative> to your guys' point, like the beer's gonna then be wild unless you're cooking it to some extent, which will then change the profile of that fruit and maybe not come off as like a fresh berry character anymore. Yeah. Um, so the beers that we've done on the wild side with strawberries, they come off more sort of jammy than anything else. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and I mean, that could be pleasant, but if you're looking for fresh strawberry, if you're looking for, actually, if you're looking for fresh strawberry character, it might be better to go something more artificial, whether it's a puree or something else. Like if you really want like that fresh strawberry note. Right. Like you can add some fruit to the beer if you pasteurize it. But then like , uh, utilizing, you know, one thing, Ooh , sorry. Going down to rabbit hole now. <laugh> , Uh , one thing that we haven't done much of, which I think would be cool to do more of, is to , uh, sort of layer in flavor by taking different types of that fruit. So whether you're taking like dried uh , strawberries along with some , uh, like pasteurized fresh strawberries. Yeah . And then maybe some strawberry essence or something like that. So you don't have to try to get all the character that you're looking for at a one thing. You can use different strawberry types , uh, or like different forms of strawberry , uh, in different ratios to get at like ultimately that like final strawberry character you're trying to achieve. So yeah , we haven't done that a whole lot, although we have played around a little bit with some dried fruit and I think we'll probably continue that. So if like some dried in addition to some fresh could be cool.

Brett Willis 36:09

That's interesting.

Patrick Chavanelle 36:11

Yeah, because like, each gives off a different character cuz like the, ultimately they're like processed differently. We've used freeze dried fruit, we just brewed , uh, from a with love some freeze-dried rhubarb. Yeah . So using some like freeze-dried strawberry. Yeah . And some like fresh strawberry and strawberry puree, you know, doing some like small dilution with those and seeing what you like and then coming up with the blend. That could be cool. Nice. But again, we've never done it, so I don't know .

Brett Willis 36:36

Totally.

Corey McNutt 36:37

We've done some dried fruit on the cold side, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah . And then freeze dried and the hot side

Brett Willis 36:44

Before. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. So this one is kind of a follow up cuz talking about wild beer, beer brewed with something that's not saccharomyces the normal like sort of brewery brewers used . It's brewed with something like Brettanomyces are a wild yeast that you find in the air a person is talking about, I'm gonna paraphrase their question. It's from worst alarm clock ever. It's a good question. Making lambic at home. Is that possible? Or lambic style beer at home, I should say. Unless you live in the lambic region of Belgium, you're not gonna be making lambic anywhere, but there I think

Corey McNutt 37:16

You can come, you can come pretty close, but it's not gonna be the same thing. Sure. You know , um, you know, you can throw all the bugs at it, but it's still not gonna be the same as if you're knocking out into a cool ship in the fresh air. I mean, that's just my thought, but

Brett Willis 37:33

You could build yourself a mini cool ship room . Yeah, that's what I was wondering. You could , yeah . I mean, you could just use an actual brownie pan. Just do a little brownie pan sized <laugh> . Yeah .

Patrick Chavanelle 37:43

Corey, I thought you guys did build a mini cool ship .

Corey McNutt 37:45

We did build a mini coolship.

Brett Willis 37:47

Okay . <laugh> ,

Corey McNutt 37:49

B ut we ne we never actually ended up knocking out into it. Oh , okay . Life got kind of busy, but we Sure we did. We had this big kind of drip stainless steel drip pan that we, and then we built a little wooden room around it. I mean, it was pretty small. It was like, it's awesome . It was like, I don't know , four by , or maybe two by six or something like that. Yeah . You know, two feet wide, six feet long. Um, and we had some little mini windows on the side that would flip open. Really? It it was pretty cool. It was pretty cool . Oh . But we never ended up actually knocking out into it, unfortunately.

Brett Willis 38:22

Oh . After all that effort. Do do you still have it?

Corey McNutt 38:24

Uh , Evan , uh, my buddy took it. Yeah . My buddy still has it.

Brett Willis 38:27

Did you have like a little, uh, stained glass window on the front?

Corey McNutt 38:32

We actually had somebody who works here is in the stained glass and she made us some small little windows for it. Oh , no way . It was pretty slick. It was pretty cool looking. That's amazing. That's so cool. Yeah .

Brett Willis 38:43

Wow. I was not expecting that. Okay. So all you you have to do is you need tiny barrels. Yeah . And you can Tiny barrel room <laugh> . Oh man. Yeah. I'm sorry. I couldn't be more helpful on that one. That's just like a , I feel like that's a whole other process.

Patrick Chavanelle 39:02

I think you can get somewhat close by cheating. Um , sure. By like, making wort , you know, it's, they actually , I think they might sell age top pellets maybe for home brewers. Maybe. I don't know if they, they supply mm-hmm . <affirmative> , uh, them in like those small quantities, but you could easily age your own pellets. Right, right. Uh , just keep 'em warm. Um, you know, so that covers sort of like the boil and, and that aspect of it. And then just pitching, I think what Corey was getting to, like some, like the

Brett Willis 39:35

Lacto,

Patrick Chavanelle 39:36

The either that or you can like take some drags of some lambics that you like and Right . You know, dump that into your beer. Do that a couple times.

Brett Willis 39:46

This person mentioned B lambicus. Is that a yeast strain that you're familiar with?

Patrick Chavanelle 39:51

That's brettanomyces lambicus.

Brett Willis 39:54

Okay.

Patrick Chavanelle 39:54

Okay . And , and honestly, that's just one , like if you, if you're actually looking at all of the microorganisms that are in wild fermented or spontaneously fermented beer. Yeah. That is just one of 50 plus. Wow . So , and , and , and those go through cycles of fermentation where , uh, certain microbes are, are busy doing things and then they die off and then like come here, comes like the next round of like the Brettanomyces fermentation and those kind of pitter away . And so just using that to try to replicate like a , a lambic quotations mm-hmm . <affirmative> , uh, style beer. I don't think that that's gonna get you there. Uh , but doing like either blands of , uh, bacteria, lactobacillus POCs, couple Brett strains, or I think, I honestly think your , your better option is to just take some, like buy some Coolship Resurgam <laugh> Because that beer's awesome.

Brett Willis 40:53

There you go.

Patrick Chavanelle 40:54

And that , like, that has all the stuff that you need. So, you know, drink half of that and then swirl it up and dump the rest into , uh, into your carboy and maybe do that twice. And then , uh, you'll get all of the, the micro of like, that beer's not filtered Yeah. Uh , by any means. And it has a blend of different years . And , uh, all the other beers in there , air cumulatively are on the older side. Those bugs in there are pretty resilient. And they'll , they'll start chipping away at sugary water. Wow . Uh , and food if they've got it. So do that.

Brett Willis 41:30

There you go. All right . I got one last one. One last one. And this is for all the people who have listened to this and been like, there is no way I'm gonna go brew beer now. Uh , this sounds too hard for me. What do you guys think about cider? You make your own cider. Is that an easy way to go? Or just buy your beer? <laugh>

Patrick Chavanelle 41:49

Do both

Brett Willis 41:50

You No , man,

Patrick Chavanelle 41:51

I don't, I'm obsessed with ciders , <laugh>,

Brett Willis 41:55

<laugh> .

Patrick Chavanelle 41:57

You're just like piqued my interests as soon as you said the C word . Yeah.

Brett Willis 42:02

Is it, I mean, I guess is it simpler to a , could it , couldn't it be made simpler? I'm guessing.

Corey McNutt 42:10

I I think it, I've made cider before. I used to be a home brewer too . I think it's easier to make a cider a very rough, simple cider.

Brett Willis 42:21

Cider . Right , right,

Corey McNutt 42:22

Right, right. You know what I mean? Like Yeah . Nothing too fancy, but you know, I mean, literally we would just like grind up the apples, press 'em , throw 'em in a carboy, sometimes I didn't even pitch yeast. It was just like, what ? Whatever was on the skins of the fruit Sure. Put an airlock on it and wait, you know? Yeah . And that would get you a cider. I mean, it's not, you know Yeah. Super artisanal or anything. But , uh, it'll get you some cider, you know, and it's a lot faster. The, the process of making it is faster. The fermentation sometimes would be longer though. Sure, sure. You know, it , it's a different experience too. You know, you're out, sometimes you're out in the, or like my friend had an orchard and he, his dad had an old press and ah , so you're out kind of outside, you know, you're, you're grinding the apples, you're pressing it. It's, it's a cool experience. Yeah. You know,

Patrick Chavanelle 43:17

I think there it's a lot less, I don't wanna say a lot less science based , but a lot less process based . Sure . Which, you know, all of the brewing processes involve science to some extent. Um, you know, with brewing beer it is, if you really want to get into the weeds, it's very technical and like, there's a lot of , um, how do I want to say it? Like, there , it's, it's complicated. Yeah. It's incredibly complicated. Yeah. Making essentially wine , uh, with fruit or just cider with , uh, with apples. Like that's pretty simple. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> like, you crush up apples and you get the juice out. You might pitch yeast, you might not. That's it. Yeah. I mean, there's all of these other chemical biochemical things that are occurring over time. Um, but it's, that's it. And like, and you probably shouldn't touch it. You probably should leave it alone Right . For a while and not like, you know, not even look at it <laugh> . Like ,

Corey McNutt 44:25

Which

Patrick Chavanelle 44:26

Some, like, some like lambic brewers in Belgium, when they talk about like, brew and lambic, it's like they don't move their barrels at all. It's like Oh , right , right . You can look at them. Yeah. Um, because I think they're, you know, cuz it could influence the final product. Sure. Maybe. Um, so

Brett Willis 44:42

Yeah. Thanks . It's , it's a , it's a less involved , you can make it a less involved process. You can give it a try and you'll come up with something that is alcoholic and you can drink it

Patrick Chavanelle 44:53

For sure. <laugh> and it won't harm you.

Brett Willis 44:56

Yeah. Just , just , just be apple juice with a little bit of something.

Patrick Chavanelle 45:00

Alcohol.

Brett Willis 45:01

Alcohol . Yeah . <laugh> . <laugh> . That's the something That's true. This is something awesome. All right . Anything anyone wants to add? Anything that you feel like you didn't get to touch on for our home brewing friends?

Patrick Chavanelle 45:12

I'm sorry I talked so much <laugh>.

Brett Willis 45:14

I just get really excited you can talk about this stuff . Know that's why we , that's why I wanna have you on here, Patrick, because you're very passionate. It's good. Okay.

Patrick Chavanelle 45:22

Uh ,

Corey McNutt 45:22

I would say kind of, you know, what Chavez was talking about early on, like, j just get into it if you want to, you know, don't focus on all the technical stuff in the beginning. Just like, if you're not having fun, what's the , what's the point? You know, just get started off simple. Buy yourself a cheap, thin walled pot. Throw it on the stove, get a , get a little bit of grains in there in a , in a bag. You know, mix a little lme in there and some water and you know, just, just have fun

Brett Willis 45:52

Like that. Yeah . That's a good message.

Katie Beaucage 45:55

If you can cook a meal, you can brew beer. Yeah. And the more you do it, the better you're gonna get at it.

Brett Willis 46:02

It's amazing.

Patrick Chavanelle 46:03

I think that's the best piece of advice there. And like, going back to what you were saying on bread. Yeah . Like, I've made so many breads lately. I'm a little obsessed with bread making <laugh> , so I go through phase the trend of

Brett Willis 46:14

Obsession, <laugh> , obsessive,

Patrick Chavanelle 46:15

And uh, and a lot of them are just total garbage. Yeah . But it's like, oh yeah. And to your point of, you know, saving your, your beer when it's messed up. Yeah . Like, you can learn from that. And I think like, you know, your first batch probably isn't gonna be great. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> the second batch. Hopefully it's an improvement. And like, there could be some like, bumps in the road along the way, but like a gradual improvement over time. Uh, as I think where you'll, where you'll be in , uh, as long as like you continue doing it over and over again. And , um, and it's, it's awesome. I don't know . It's Yeah .

Brett Willis 46:50

Yeah.

Patrick Chavanelle 46:51

Start and then it'll hopefully it won't become as much of an obsession as it did for

Brett Willis 46:56

Me <laugh> . But , um, we'll cross our fingers,

Patrick Chavanelle 47:00

But I don't know what Corey and Katie said are probably the best, best things to do.

Brett Willis 47:04

Awesome. Well, thank you all for being here. Thank you for everyone on social media who sent in your questions. This was , uh, super cool. So I , I learned, I learned a lot about home brewing and I might have to get out there and home brew. I'm probably not going to, but I might. I could because you have kids, but I won't. Yeah. Because I have kids , but I'm not going to , but I could. All right . Thanks guys. Thanks. Thank you . Thank you . This has been an Allagash Brewing Production. And if you have something you want us to talk about on the show, shoot us a message at podcast@ allagash.Com.