From Maine, With Love - An Allagash Brewing Podcast

S4 Episode 3: Tappin' Into Tuesday

Allagash Brewing Company Season 4 Episode 3

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We've got a roundup with updates from the ground up.

Which is just a way-too-clever way of saying: we have a lot to talk about.

From filming our first very legit TV advertisement to the release of an imperial IPA to a blueberry beer to soccer highlights, and everything in between, this podcast will give you a snapshot of the bevy of exciting things we have going on at the brewery, right now.

Brett

This is for Maine with Love, an Allagash Brewing Podcast where we talk about beer, our community here in Maine, and things that generally make us happy. And I named this podcast Tappin' into Tuesday.

Liz

Whoa. Even though it's Wednesday.

Brett

Wow, I was very confused. I just wanted to. I just thought it. It feels like a podcast that could happen on a Tuesday. I don't know what it is about it, but we're just tappin' in. Tappin' into Tuesday Liz, I've got a secret question for you, and it's kind of about me. Have I worn out my welcome talking about Robert Caro's The Power Broker? Yeah.

Liz

The thing is, the secret question, Brett, you wrote it down. Yeah. And I have it in front of me this time. Yeah,

Brett

I know.

Liz

I think probably.

Brett

Okay, good. All right, good.

Liz

I'm going to officially say, Brett, too much on the Power Broker.

Brett

Well, guess what? I just finished it, so you don't have to worry about it ever again. It's all done.

Liz

Any grand takeaways?

Brett

Oh, God. Yeah. Now I'm going to wear out my welcome further. No, I would say if you have an interest in reading Robert Caro's The Power Broker, it is 1,200 pages long. And if you're in after 30 pages, you're in for the whole ride. But I would say the interesting part is it's just really good. And it's really money and relationships, Liz. That is what I would say is money and relationships. Money and relationships. All right, that's all I have to say. Good. There you go.

Liz

Okay. my secret question for you that i definitely thought about before right now okay good you're at a bar you're having a delicious pour of algosh white yeah what's your go-to bar snack

Brett

bar snack uh i'd say fried pickles fried pickles tend to be the thing where like if i see them it has gravity

Liz

i'm just like oh i gotta get

Brett

But I also like wings, but wings are just so messy. Because I like bone-in wings, and so it's like there's no easy way to have a conversation and eat those.

Liz

Fried pickles are

Brett

delicious. I

Liz

feel like they came hot on the scene.

Brett

Yeah.

Liz

15 years ago, but also it was like all of a sudden, are you a fried pickle chips or a spear?

Brett

Oh, chips. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. More dippage,

Liz

more dippage. What are you like a rum a lot?

Brett

Uh, I feel like the sauce that I always get is kind of like a Canadian fry sauce sort of scenario where it's like mayo and ketchup and relish. And maybe it's a little more mustard. I don't really know.

Liz

Yeah. I mean, it's not a, Not a bad time, any time you're eating fried pickles. But I

Brett

know what you're talking about with that, like coming on the scene. I feel like it was like the Northeast discovered the fried pickle and we were like, just could not believe that the South had the audacity to do it. We were like, is it even good? It

Liz

is good. Was it the same time or- before Brussels sprouts became on every single menu. I believe it was the same

Brett

time.

Liz

Right around peak Brussels sprouts. Peak

Brett

Brussels sprouts. Yeah, big Brussels sprout really made a push.

Liz

But honestly, maybe they were close to extinction. I don't know. Where did that even start?

Brett

Do you know the thing about the Brussels sprouts?

Liz

No, but I'm glad you do.

Brett

They somehow engineered it, but they found the right seed or some variety that took away the bitterness. Because it used to, in our parents' heyday, when no one loved Brussels sprouts, they used to be actually, I think, more bitter. So they made a better version that was more palatable. Okay, what

Liz

are we talking about?

Brett

We're talking about, to start, we mentioned this in the last one in our sports pod, but the Hearts of Pine game, we went. We were there.

Liz

It was so fun.

Brett

That was awesome. They do such a good job. The energy, above all, is fantastic.

Liz

We got... to hang out in the $3 Dewey Suites. $3 Dewey's is a great bar in Portland, and they sponsor the area right behind the goal. And so we got really close to the action. Oh,

Brett

yeah. Snacks. Snacks galore. Beer galore. Beer galore.

Liz

Tents

Brett

galore.

Liz

And then family. Super kid-friendly.

Brett

Yeah.

Liz

Kids running around everywhere.

Brett

Awesome. And they won. And they won. First home win.

Liz

Yeah, we were right there for the goal.

Brett

Oh, man. A lot of cheering.

Liz

That was exciting.

Brett

That was great. Patrick Dempsey, apparently, in the crowd.

Liz

He's a Mainer.

Brett

Riling them up.

Liz

Yeah, yeah. Famous Mainer. He was wandering around. Matt and I... Almost got a photo with him. We almost. Oh, dang. And then we were like, oh, gosh.

Brett

Let him enjoy the game. His force field of fame, like you bounced off it like a Star Wars droid. He was super casual and just seemed like a regular guy walking down the thing. But then we were like, we'll be interrupting him. But he's used to it. We'll be interrupting him. But we don't want to bother him. You should have bothered him. Oh, well, Patrick will have you on the show someday. Here's the official invite. We'll be hitting seven followers. No, that's a joke. People like that. listen to this

Liz

we will yeah so I think Hearts of Pine has a great momentum we're hosting a watch party for an away game in I believe July and September so we will follow up with the details on that was just part of planning on that with our with Emily and our TR in the tasting room so more details to come there but We've got lots of ongoing fun stuff.

Brett

Yeah, Kickabout Lager will be flowing.

Liz

Oh, yeah.

Brett

So good.

Liz

Yeah.

Brett

Awesome. And then also momentous, a first-ish, because we've kind of filmed commercials like this. I feel like this, I want to say this is our first commercial commercial. Is that correct? Is that wrong? I mean, we've had some that have been commercials, but I feel like this was like the first time that we were like on set

Liz

and

Brett

had our little viewing monitor. Yeah, yeah. Craft services were not there, but it felt like they could have been. We were in the craft service. It was in a bar. We ate lunch after. Yeah,

Liz

we stepped our game up.

Brett

Oh, yeah. The game was stepped.

Liz

Yeah.

Brett

It was awesome.

Liz

Yeah. Local crew?

Brett

Local crew. Local actors, Samuel Lipman, Melissa Gabriel, and Zoe Wade. I want to call them out because they did an amazing job. And Bill and Laura. Absolutely crush it. Oh, yeah. Oh, we got them on there, too. We got local lighting folks, got local sound folks. Bill and Laura, our director, videographer team.

Liz

Yeah.

Brett

Awesome.

Liz

We've been working with Bill for years, and he's just a joy of a human. Very much so. And he gets us, and he comes in, and we give him all these constraints like, Bill, hey, we can only do this in four hours. Like, please help us. Yeah. And then he... makes it look amazing

Brett

he smiles and makes it look amazing and like has just like such a positive aura the entire time where you're like if you start getting a little worried you just go within two feet of bill and you're like i feel i feel good again when bill also we were like we need to shoot this in one week and it's due in two weeks

Liz

it's super normal

Brett

it was like oh yeah Thank you,

Liz

Bill. Yeah,

Brett

Bill crushed it. And so then also thank you to Great Lost Bear where we filmed it. So a little Easter egg if you see the commercial and wonder, that's a cool bar. Where is that? That's the first bar that ever poured Allagash White way back in 1995.

Liz

Yep. We also have some fun events with them later in July connected to our 30th anniversary. And so, yeah, big shout out, Great Lost Bear. Thank you for letting us come in like a...

Brett

Tell the premise of the video. Oh, yeah. We could like drop it in the... Oh yeah, we can do a little link to it. Yeah, exactly. So the premise of the video, like honestly the premise of the video comes from a very human truth that we have both experienced ourselves but found through like literal research, which is just that like when you approach a bar menu, especially for beer, it can be very hard to decide. Even if you know a lot about beer and a lot of people don't know that much about beer, no fault of their own because there's just too much to know. And so we were playing off of that idea You know, order anxiety, you're faced with a big beer menu, I got to make a decision. And so we're just making it easy for you and saying, start your night with an Allagash White. Easy

Liz

to remember.

Brett

Yeah. Yeah, great. That was your line, Liz. I think you

Liz

came up with that. I think I just spewed that one day in a meeting. Yeah, you did. I was like, marketing, start a night.

Brett

Yeah, you did. And we were just like, yes, that's great.

Liz

This is going to go to start on Hulu as an ad break. Yeah. 30-second commercial. And that will run in the Northeast. So everything New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North. Exciting. Really exciting. So if you see it, let us know. Yeah. We hope you like it.

Brett

It could also be during the Hearts of Pine games on

Liz

ESPN+. Yes, it might also be on Nessun and ESPN+, during some of the games for Hearts of Pine.

Brett

Yeah, that'll be fun. It came out super well. I'm really pumped. And speaking of more local things, we have a new For Main with Love beer coming out. And the cool notable part about this beer beyond it being a tasty beer is that it's the first debut of a newly designed can. for for me and with love so we gave them a little bit of a revamp we hit 40 and with the intent being we want to if you know those cans they featured beautiful full photography by our very own Matt but also they kind of just they they were meant to be kind of consistent so that we could have them live on the same same area and be just honestly slightly easier to brand because we were doing so many of them and so the idea is keep those images but also make them so they stand a little bit apart from each other so you can kind of get a better picture of like, oh, why is this one different from that one sort of a thing. And now they say stylistically what the beer is on the front. On the front. So watch out. Yeah, so now you'll know what the beer is.

Liz

Yeah, I think that was one of the hardest things was separating them by style and knowing what was different. So yeah, check it out. What's the image for this first one? Do we

Brett

know? Oh, yeah. It's like blue.

Liz

But I feel like, is it fair to say that the glow up of these beers, it's like a little postcard-y. Branding is one of those things that is like a constant evolution and it's great to be able to be, I guess I'll say nimble and sort of grow over time because that idea was the For Maine With Love series was, helped us so much on a branding front from a like we do not need to come up with a name for every single beer in the tasting room and I think we've talked about on here how challenging that can be and these beers are like a lot of our innovation side of things so they come out kind of quick and we want people to have those like experiences with those beers in our tasting room but when you know you'd get to the the winter and there'd be like three beers with snow on them yeah you're like oh yeah yep hard to tell the difference and so

Brett

tasted good with snow

Liz

they're all yeah and all like really cool beers and design individually, but also when you start to look at the shelf, it's easy to understand why people were just like, I'm not sure what to do here. And so we kind of work really closely with the tasting room, get their feedback, and then tweak it and see if this helps. And

Brett

shout out to Stout Collective for this rebrand. They took what we had and did multiple news spins on it, and we kind of landed on a really awesome one, so kudos to them.

Liz

Yeah, and we... If you have visited our tasting room, we have a little postcard station that you can sit down at a desk, write a little postcard, stick it in the mailbox, and we'll get that in the mail for you. So if you like writing postcards, another reason to come to the brewery.

Brett

If you're a postcard enthusiast, we got everything you need.

Liz

Did those start with the Brussels sprout, the postcards at restaurants?

Brett

What? Postcards at restaurants?

Liz

Yeah, you know when you get your check, like a lot of... restaurants will like give you a little postcard and like my sister and I will always like pocket those and send a little postcard. Yeah.

Brett

Like I've never experienced that or I just have never noticed it. It's funny.

Liz

You got to start writing postcards, bro. Yeah,

Brett

I guess. I live under a rock. But on for Maine with Love number 40, it's an Imperial IPA. We're dipping our toe. I think it's an awesome one. I think as Imperial IPAs go, this is an incredibly drinkable one. So I can't remember. I didn't write down the ABV. What is it, 8%? The thing I wanted to do quickly, though, is I feel like you always see a– list or a litany of hops on the back of these things and you're like what does that even mean so i actually looked up each of these hops in like the notes that they give because these are the hops that are in this beer there is nugget which is citrus sweet fruit some cool things going on there el dorado which is sweet fruit and green fruit Sounds very interesting. Crush with a K, which I just love that name. Berry and Currant. More of that sort of flavor with citrus. Chinook, which is big citrus, but also a little woody and spicy. Just a little bit of balance there. You know, it's not a spicy beer, just a little bit of something extra. This is my favorite one. HQG4, which is Hop Quality Group 4. Actually, Patrick, I'm pretty sure, of Patrick Chauvinel fame, is on that Hop Quality Group, where it's like they... come up with new hops that can then be used by any brewery. So this is one of those sort of experimental hops that they're trying to come up with a name for. The former name for it was- H-Q-G-2-0-1-5-0-3-4-0-2-3. Anyway,

Liz

but this one has thiol. Probably a password to something. Thiol

Brett

precursor. Oh, man, that reminds me of Justinson. That's our, do you know him? The guy for the Seadogs. He's one of our new players, but his name's Justinson, but it's spelled like J-H-O-S-T-Y-N-X, something like that, O-N, and his nickname is the password.

Liz

Oh, that's amazing. It's the

Brett

best frickin' nickname ever. Anyway, this one's super tropical, the Hop Quality Group 4. All of This is to say, really tasty beer. If you're a fan of the big, big IPAs, this is a really good one.

Liz

So

Brett

check

Liz

it out. And shout out to our brewing team because that's like a lot happening and somehow they make it taste super balanced and delicious. Totally. So come try it out.

Brett

Crushing it. I skipped the topic we wanted to say before this one. I'm sorry, Liz.

Liz

Well, we have a lot happening in the tasting room and each year we... we make it ready for the summer. And so we are at that point right now of, we're going to be open seven days a week, right after Memorial day holiday. We have the backyard, which is our family friendly space, um, that is already open. So come on by with your kids, um, Uh, it's been packed.

Brett

It is like legit. I went, yeah, I was there this weekend and it was a lot of people.

Liz

Yeah. So, um, I also heard, I hope we can keep this in free popsicles on Sunday

Brett

on Sunday. Okay.

Liz

So, uh,

Brett

I think 100%. We can probably keep that. Well, we got to double check, but I feel like that existed last time too.

Liz

The other good news is I know we're keeping trivia because that has been a well-attended addition to our weekly lineup.

Brett

Personality hire trivia.

Liz

Yeah. Awesome. And then we have music happening on Saturdays. And then we also have free beer samples on Monday, which... have just been, thank you for coming to those. Those have been super fun to see how well attended they are. So our hospitality team, your crew in the tasting room, pick a different beer to feature each week. Come on by, give it a taste, tell us what you think, and yeah, maybe you'll get a pour of it.

Brett

Yeah, and those are really fun too because I think each of these beers has a lot going for it. And we try as a marketing team to make them as simple as possible to just kind of pick up off the shelf. But I think when you hear all of the different thought that goes into them, it's really fun to taste it and be like, Oh wow, I do get this, this and that and this to kind of peek behind the scenes.

Liz

Yeah. And our, the crew in our tasting room is super knowledgeable. And so if you are ever like, ah, what is like, help me describe this or I'm looking for something that tastes like they're, they just know a lot. Uh, And so they would be more than happy to help you.

Brett

They're here to help.

Liz

They are here

Brett

to help. They like to help.

Liz

Yeah.

Brett

Ooh, next one. Exciting.

Liz

Blueberry beer.

Brett

Blueberry beer.

Liz

I don't know how much we want to get in the background. We've made blueberry beers before. We have Little Sal, which has been a perennial favorite. But this is intended to be a little bit more more casual than Little Sal. Could we describe it as that? Yeah.

Brett

I think, I mean, the background, at least in my mind is like, people literally ask us for this beer. We've never made a beer like this and we have been asked for it a lot because I think we're in Maine and Maine is blueberries and lobster and moose. So no one wants a lobster roll beer. No one wants a moose beer. They just want a blueberry beer.

Liz

Yeah. And, um, Yeah, blueberries. I think it would be safe to say our brewing team blueberries are kind of finicky to work with. And I know our team has played around with a ton of different blueberry beer recipes over the year and I think are finally feeling really good about what we're going to release.

Brett

Yeah, I think this is something like... I don't want to say new for us, but I feel like it represents something for us. That's really exciting where it's like, we are delivering very much on what you want from a blueberry beer. You see blueberry beer and you think like, Oh, I'd like to have that on like, you know, a warm summer day at a picnic. This is a hundred percent that beer. It's like, it has it, we actually add blueberry to it. So it's going to have a nice little, almost like purplish bluish hue to it. That's really inviting. There is, um, you know, it's underneath that, I think just a really super drinkable beer. And there's, I I think Patrick has described it this way, and I really like it, a top note of blueberry. And all that is is just to say when you add actual blueberry to a beer, it never tastes like blueberry. It gets a little bit of tartness. It gets a little bit of something else going on. Like if you've had Little Sal, it's a really good blueberry beer, but it's like a very complex sort of tart, interesting thing. It wouldn't scream like, oh, I just picked up a blueberry. Whereas this beer, it has that top note. of the blueberry that's like, oh yeah, it's what you were thinking about, but it's also balanced. And I'm just really happy with where it is right now. Like five-ish percent too. Yeah. Yeah. Super. And not tart. Not tart.

Liz

When does it come out? When does it come out?

Brett

I think it's meant to be like around blueberry harvest season. So like August, late July. Oh, dang. You got to wait. Sorry. Get excited. Yeah. But

Liz

I think we probably have blueberry wine on tap. So yeah, we've always got some blueberry happening here.

Brett

Blueberry fans.

Liz

And I feel like the other thing that might be worth mentioning is We got a new hop water coming out.

Brett

Oh.

Liz

It's grapefruit.

Brett

Grapefruit hop water.

Liz

It's right behind me in this chair. Yeah, I keep looking for it. I think it's a good sign. In the chair. There it is. The marketing team always gets a case of whatever's coming out so we can photograph it and get the word out about it. Yeah. Hop water got sent over. We got two six packs and there's three left. And I think maybe we needed one for the shoot. I

Brett

went through like three or four for the shoot. Okay, sure. One to shoot and the rest

Liz

I was drinking. So I think it's a good sign when the staff is... pretty much gobbled up all the samples that we get. This one

Brett

is really good

Liz

too. It's so good.

Brett

Because the original hop water was good. This one's absolutely delivering on the grapefruit, but that hop sort of aspect of it is giving you a little something more. So good.

Liz

Yeah. And I think this is a pretty limited run of the grapefruit hop water. So if you are interested, it's coming out in the tasting room Thursday. Oh, wow. Which is Tuesday. Tomorrow. You've got me all confused. Well, it's Tuesday today.

Brett

It's actually Wednesday.

Liz

Yeah, tomorrow. And so, yeah, come on down. Tomorrow, the

Brett

22nd of May, 2025. And also just a brief refresher. Like, hop water is zero alcohol, zero sugar, zero calories. Hop water grapefruit. Find it in the tasting room. And the last thing, I want to put in a plug for our B Corp report. We just released our one for 2024. There is way more in it than we want or need to get into right now. But if you want a B Corp report. big picture, but also some really cool details about the sort of good stuff we're doing as a company, this is the report for you.

Liz

How do you find it?

Brett

How do you find it? Online at www.allagash.com. No, you just go to our website and type in B Corp Report in the search and you'll find it there. Or you could even type in Allagash B Corp Report into Google's. I pulled these just because I feel like they... speak to a lot of what we're doing, but they're also kind of more tangible, I think, to think about. So in 2024, we brewed with 1.69 million pounds of main grown grain, which is awesome. It's also a very funny number because we can't seem to get to round numbers or just above round numbers. We seem to be able to get really close to round numbers because this is literally like 1.699857, where it's just like, just... Just give me 1.7. Give me

Liz

three more grains.

Brett

Put three more barleys in there. We got to gotten to it. But anyway, we're saying 1.6. I don't want to round up. And then, all right, we also, this is a big number. This is huge. Yeah. Take it away, Liz.

Liz

We, I guess, did the math. We figured out that we have given back $5 million to our community since 1995. And it's something that has always been important to Rob. And, you know, in those early days, it was really tough to sell Allagash White. Nobody knew what this beer style was. And so I think, you know, he... he would say that in the beginning times, he couldn't give back much to the community. But as we grew as a brewery, the community has been there for him for so long that it just baked into the ethos of our brewery. And we tallied up all those numbers and realized that, yeah, since 1995, we've given back $5 million. And that's pretty incredible for a brewery. independent yeah

Brett

independent brewery awesome i think we could do it like thinking of independent too the more i've been thinking about that like that really is something that's becoming rarer and rarer and more special these days of being a literally family-owned brewery of our size especially

Liz

yeah it's it's not easy out there so it's not surprising to me to see a lot of these sort of mergers and totally acquisitions and things like that and yeah rob is Holding strong. Holding

Brett

strong. We're doing

Liz

it. Super proud.

Brett

Still giving back. Yeah. Speaking of stills, still brewing with half the industry average of water. It's 3.4 gallons of water per gallon of beer. That one, I feel like still just is very tangible, awesome, a testament to our brewing team, production team. Across the brewery, water is used, and we have found ways to use less of it all the time. So they crush it. So congrats, brewery team. And then the last one, 1,038 hours of community service time, 2024, for our 130 employees. So a lot of community service time.

Liz

Yeah, I've got some volunteering happening this week with Maine Needs. Oh,

Brett

I'm going to go to a beach cleanup.

Liz

Nope, you're not. You're going to go to Maine Needs. I'm going to Maine Needs. I think it's supposed to be raining again.

Brett

So we're switching it up?

Liz

I think so.

Brett

Okay,

Liz

cool. Same time? I just hear these things in passing. There's going to be a group of people standing in the rain at the beach for sure. Yeah, we have... Yeah, and our HR team has done these really fun sort of community days that gets everybody from the brewery involved and we kind of split up and go out into the community and do a lot of... It's

Brett

like a community day crew drive. Yeah,

Liz

exactly. Taking the

Brett

whole crew out and doing a lot of community stuff all at once. Yeah, it's

Liz

awesome. So we will... I'm sure do just as much volunteering, if not more this coming year.

Brett

Yeah, I think so. And yeah. So, I mean, check out the whole report. You'll see a lot more in there. Uh, just like a little, yeah. Notes from our note from Rob and everything else. And it's, uh, it's cool. It's fun to see it all together. It's a very nice reminder of like, wow,

Liz

we do a lot of stuff.

Brett

That's cool.

Liz

Um, there's a podcast that I've been enjoying listening to. Oh, it's a call

Brett

from Maine with love.

Liz

That is a great one. Highly recommend. Um, Good Hangs with Amy Poehler. I love that. There's something she does at the end where she asks her guests, like, what has made you laugh or smile or, like, brought you joy? Oh, wow. Do you have anything that does that? The answers are far ranging, I would say.

Brett

Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think past. Yeah, I'm trying to think of a good example.

Liz

There are. Yesterday, I came across a video on the internet that really made me laugh. And I've never had a cat, so I don't really understand cats that much. But it was a compilation video of cats swatting cats. babies. Oh wow. And the, and it just made me laugh. Like doing a little

Brett

paw thing of like,

Liz

yeah, yeah. But you're like the kid would know, like it was more aggressive. I mean, some of them were, yes, but other than like, it would like jump out from behind the corner and like take a kid out. And I laughed out loud for like a good three minutes and then like proceeded to rewatch that video. And like, I don't know.

Brett

That's good.

Liz

I feel like laughing is important.

Brett

Oh, yeah. You made me think of something that sticks with me because I feel like I found this like six months ago and probably showed all of you, but it's like continues to pop up in my brain here and there and just makes me laugh so hard. And it's that video of the husky with an Italian accent. Do you remember that? It is, oh, my God. Just type in husky with Italian accent, but it's like this woman who's speaking Italian is like, and the husky just goes, and the husky just goes, and it's like the husky has an Italian accent. It is so freaking funny. But it's like pure.

Liz

It's one of those things where it's like there is nothing that can, unless they're saying something in Italian that I don't understand, but, oh, man, so funny. We can cut that out, but I was like, it's good to

Brett

laugh. No, that's awesome. I love it. Thank you. Thank you, Liz. I would love to adopt that to finish out. Nice. All right. Thanks, Liz. This was awesome. This has been an Allagash Bring production. If you have something you'd like us to talk about or a question for our team, just send us an email at podcast at allagash.com. And as always, thank you for listening. Thank you.