From Maine, With Love - An Allagash Brewing Podcast

S4 Episode 5: Cleveland Rocks!

Season 4 Episode 5

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We've got another roundup for you and top billing is the great state of Ohio! Allagash beer is coming back your way after a 20 year hiatus. Also on the podcast docket is our Barrel Bonanza, some fun reviews of our Hazy IPA, and a roundup of some things we're excited about. Thanks, as always, for listening!

Brett

This is for Maine with Love, an Allagash Brewing Podcast where we talk about beer, our community here in Maine, things that generally make us happy. Hi, Liz.

Liz

Hey, Brett.

Brett

How you doing?

Liz

Okay.

Brett

I got a secret question for you that I just came up with off the top of my head. If you had to have tea... what sort of tea would you have?

Liz

I do enjoy tea.

Brett

Are you a tea versus coffee person? Oh, I'm

Liz

like hard into the coffee. Okay, that's kind of what I thought. I'm not exclusive to coffee. There are situations in which I enjoy a cup of tea. And most of them are when I'm sick, which is like, poor tea. Yeah. But in the summer, I love an Arnold Palmer. Ooh, yeah. So that's like probably my go-to summer drink other than water, coffee, or beer. That's good. That's good. But I'm a big like non-caffeinated tea drinker. So I like it in the evenings, like especially in the winter from freezing just to like hold a warm cup of tea feels nice. That's nice. Yeah. I'll drink chamomile. I'll drink peppermint. I'll drink sleepy time.

Brett

It's like such a kid's brand for grown-ups. Like, do you need to have a window nap? Have a sleepy time.

Liz

What's your favorite flavor? Sleepy time. I like a sleepy time. Like, I don't know what's in there, but... That's funny. ...delicious elixir that I'm convinced helps me go to bed. Sure. I was distracted by a FedEx truck that was outside because... A, the FedEx truck should not be outside of our office, but B, I am waiting for a moose costume to be delivered. That's what I get here. It was a very small box. Maybe it packs down. Unless it's inflatable. Inflatable. In which case, I did not read the directions.

Brett

There was. Fine print. We did receive a toy stuffed animal for the kids that was in a significantly, it was like a not very big box, but it was like you picked it up and you're like, that's heavy for a stuffed animal. And then we took the thing out and it was like larger than our children. It was a big dog stuff. What if we didn't read the dimensions correctly and it's actually just like the tiniest little loose costume? I mean, that would happen to us. It'd be like a spinal tap. It'd be perfect. It's like a tabletop movie. We're like, this isn't going to work. Novelty mini moose

Liz

costume. Stay tuned to find out what we're doing with the moose costume. Yeah. It'll be fun. Brett, your secret question. What was your first concert? Do you remember? I...

Brett

I, I have like two answers. My first real concert was I think Dave Matthews band. And that was, I think we've talked about that, you know, cultural thing. It went for high school friends, that stuff. But I think my like first legit kind of concert was at, in high school. My parents weren't like super musical folks. So they'd go sometimes, but they didn't like take us, but it was in high school. And there was like this very, I forget exactly what the band was, but it like, the key component of it was like a pan flute. So it was like the like, you know, like Ocarina sort of a thing. But I was just like, I'd never felt or seen live music. And so this like pan flute band, just like I bought the CD. I was like, they got something going on here. And it was like, it was just, They were really good. They were very talented musicians, but it was, like, not what you'd

Liz

expect. High school friends, like, have you heard of the pan flute?

Brett

This guy was just ripping it

Liz

up.

Brett

20

Liz

minutes on

Brett

that thing. It's a divided sky solo, yeah. They had a 30-minute pan flute jam. Anyway, yes, that's a good question. That's fine. Thank you. No, the first topic at hand is big news for Ohio.

Liz

For Allagash.

Brett

And Ohio.

Liz

And Ohio. And Allagash. We are back.

Brett

Baby. We're back, baby. First time in 20 years. We did the math. Yeah. It's pretty simple math. And yeah, we're bringing basically, we got four beers coming to Ohio already there. I mean, trucks were shipping out like prior to us announcing this.

Liz

I heard. Oh. We had to ship an extra truck. What?

Brett

What? Ohio needed more trucks.

Liz

Yeah, people were like, give us Allagash White. And we said, okay.

Brett

We said, no, actually, yes.

Liz

They're like, take it all. So yeah, no, that's great news. Yeah, I've been hanging out in the warehouse this week. So I'm getting some scoop on the logistics. And it sounds like, yeah, a lot of it was already... You know, accounted for, and people wanted more. Sweet. That's awesome. Thank you, Ohio. We love that enthusiasm. We're super psyched to be back.

Brett

Yeah. But yeah, no, the beers we got. Allagash White, of course. Allagash Triple, absolute awesome beer. Allagash Curio, triple aged in bourbon barrels. And then our house series. Right now it's Surf House. Then in the fall time, it's going to be Haunted House. Dark ale. And then in the winter tide, it's going to be Ski House, our big wit beer with ginger.

Liz

Yum. Yeah. So that beer, yeah, it's on its way out there. It will start hitting shelves in the upcoming weeks. You can, on our website, go to the beer finder. It's going to start populating there, so you can check out. Yeah.

Brett

Yeah. Yeah. Pro tip on the beer finder. So it's allagash.com slash locator. It's also like, if you go to our website up in the upper right-hand corner, it'll say like, find our beer with a little like call out. The thing with the finder is you go, you look, it'll, it gives you like, it gives you shop. There's like scan data. So when the beer comes in, they'll scan it and they say it's here. So it's like very up to date that way, but make sure to call.

Liz

Yeah.

Brett

Just give them a call before you drive all the way over there because it does not mention, it does not really track as well the beer leaving the place. Yeah. So especially for Ohio, first time, if it's getting bought up, just be aware. Should I read the quote? Yeah,

Liz

really nice. I'm

Brett

going to read the quote. Yeah, so Charlie Steffi is director of sales at Premium Beverage. They're the distributor. who we have in Ohio. And they've been awesome to work with. We're really excited to be working with them. But Charlie had just like the nicest thing to say that he wrote up for us. So I just wanted to read it because it was really made us feel good. A little pat on the back. It's always nice. So it says, That's so nice. Thanks, Charlie. Thanks, Charlie.

Liz

I'm sure that was nice for Rob to see.

Brett

Yeah, yeah. All right, yeah.

Liz

We are, for anyone keeping track, have made some good moves in the Midwest. Minnesota. We've got Wisconsin, which we've been in for a few years now. We expanded outside of Chicagoland to the rest of Illinois. And then Colorado is a recent move. A state that carries allagash. So more allagash to more people is always good news.

Brett

Yeah. Yeah. It's fun to be back. And because of our history of kind of being in places and then pulling back more towards the Northeast and now expanding, it's kind of like a familiar old friend coming back.

Liz

Yeah. Oh, man, it's back. Yeah. And I'm not sure what we've got planned for... the future but you can always ask us on social I'll probably respond and say never say never and

Brett

I which is literally the truth

Liz

and that is

Brett

or a little shruggy emoji yeah yeah

Liz

keep asking yeah so

Brett

Our Ohio fans asked.

Liz

They sure

Brett

did. And we did go track down every Ohio fan that had requested us. Did we actually do that? Did we send it to them? Yes. I'm so glad we did that. Well, Mike did that. I'm so glad Mike did that. That's very nice of Mike. But so for backstory, Ohio fans, very vocal about our beer, which has been awesome. But it's like we post about whatever, like something like our tasting room has a new boat that we put up and then someone will be chiming, bring it to Ohio. And so- Uh, yeah, they, they, they succeeded. And so we went back in social media and responded to all those people who said, bring it to Ohio and said, we

Liz

did. Yeah.

Brett

It's there. So that was really fun.

Liz

Yeah. I enjoy that. Thank you for engaging with social media. Thank you for your engagement. Engage more. Thank you for being kind. We love it. Yes. Yeah. We like nice, nice things.

Brett

Yeah. Yeah. All

Liz

right. We're talking about this next one.

Brett

If we get it out in time, I think it's worth mentioning even if necessarily you catch it a little bit too late because there's a high chance that this might happen again.

Liz

Yeah.

Brett

So barrel bonanza.

Liz

Yeah. Brett, why do we have a barrel bonanza? Why

Brett

do we have a barrel bonanza? Well– Pete, our warehouse manager, is a hoarder, and he just hoarded too many barrels. No, normally the way barrels go is we use our barrels. They're whiskey barrels. We use them to age Triple N to make Curio, as I mentioned earlier. And then once we're done with that, we only use them once. So to get that kind of consistency of character and to get the freshly emptied bourbon barrel, so then once we empty our beer out of it, then we sell it. So sometimes we sell it to other breweries. Sometimes we sell it to barrel folks. They're people who just do barrels. But we've recently gotten a couple extra barrels, and so we said, let's just share them with the public.

Liz

Yeah, and there is a lot of enthusiasm for barrels, it turns out. I bought one barrel one time oh one time okay i mean we cut it in half and now it is it holds our tomato plants um so there's lots of things you can do with barrels um people are very creative use the staves yeah the staves are the individual like elements of the barrel yeah the individual elements of the DNA

Brett

of the barrel

Liz

and they're like the inside they're very pretty they're kind of like Are they charred?

Brett

They're charred, yeah. And

Liz

then, I don't know, they kind of got a yummy smell.

Brett

It's kind of vanilla-y.

Liz

Yeah, yeah. It's oak? Yeah.

Brett

We do make people sign a waiver now that says they will not take them over Niagara Falls. Oh, yeah. I checked it. Any other waterfall, you're completely free to go. Any smaller waterfall, up to your own

Liz

discretion. You did not get this idea from us.

Brett

We said don't take it over wall to wall. Do not. Do not.

Liz

To be clear, these barrels are empty. They do not come with beer in them. No residual beer. Yeah, sorry. But yeah, it happens a couple, you know, one or two times a year. And so coming up this weekend, this would be June 14th. 8

Brett

a.m. to 11.30 a.m.

Liz

Yep.

Brett

Reserve them online.

Liz

Yep.

Brett

Each barrel, 50 smackaroons. Nice. Plus main sales tax.

Liz

Yeah, very important detail.

Brett

And a smackaroon is a dollar, sorry. $50 plus main sales tax.

Liz

Good stuff.

Brett

Yeah, look for it online. You can reserve yours today if we get this podcast out in time.

Liz

But I think you could still buy them. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I feel like they're on the web every now and again.

Brett

We'll get this out. We'll get this out. Yeah, yeah. I believe in us. It was live right now. We're going straight to live. Yeah. We're streaming. We're streaming on Twitch.com, Twitch.tv. That'd be fun. That would be fun. That'd be fun. Okay. What's up, subs? We really, really appreciate that follow. That really helps the account. I feel like we need a cool name for our fans.

Liz

I'm sure somebody creative could come up with that name. G-Crowd.

Brett

I don't know. All right. We won't spitball too much here. We'll come up with something. Chalice heads. Yes. It's a real take on Noah Kahn. That's nice. I like that. Some chalice heads. I like it. Actually, it's growing on me. I actually do like that. The way to talk about the chalice. Yeah. It's the flippant army. Yeah. It's the flippant army. Okay, yeah, we're going to have to start. Yeah, send us your ideas. Send us your ideas. That's good. Oh, man, we got a brand new beer for you, Chalice Heads. Sorry. It's too good. It's pretty good. All right. All right. Look out for our Twitch.TV streaming channel. You can join the Chalice Head Army. I don't want to make it military. The Chalice Head Band Group. Anyway. Community. Community. Chalice Head Community. Thank you. That's how. All right. Cool. We definitely need one. Cooperative. The Chalice Head Co-op. CHC, baby. That's good. All right. Up next. Hazy IPA. Outlook is hazy.

Liz

Yeah.

Brett

It's out

Liz

there. Yeah. People like it.

Brett

People like it. We've been brewing more of it.

Liz

Yeah.

Brett

We have projections. We've brewed more than to the projections. It's been great.

Liz

Yeah. It's been fun. I think we've certainly dabbled more in the IPA world in the last few years. Yeah. And this has just been a really fun brand to watch grow. I don't even remember when we first, I feel like I've been talking about it for three

Brett

years. It's been like three years in our brain. Yeah.

Liz

But I think it actually has not been out there very long.

Brett

Did it come out in like February? Well, last year it was out in our tasting room as like a smaller release just to kind of gauge. And then we launched it larger this past year. And so, yeah, I think like New England plus Pennsylvania and New

Liz

Jersey

Brett

and New York. It's been out there six 6-packs, 12-ounce cans, big time.

Liz

And you know where you really like to drink it is at Citi Field when you watch the Mets.

Brett

That's very true.

Liz

So that's been, you know, you're digging Allagash White, of course, but we've also seen some real love for Hazy IPA at Citi Field. So thank you, Mets fans, for digging it. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. Pairs great with baseball.

Brett

It just, I think, yeah, the, the thing that strikes me about that beer and I think is just really nicely done by our brewers is the balance. It's just like, even though it has the. signature, juicy, hazy IPA flavor you want, it's just in a very drinkable package. So you find yourself not feeling like, oh, I just drank a whole hazy IPA. It's just kind of like a really nice, easy drinking experience.

Liz

Y'all gash way.

Brett

Nailed it. And the Chalicehead's been weighing in on it too, right? Oh, what a segue. The Chalicehead community has been buzzing. No, we actually, because there's no better place to go for hazy IPA reviews than untapped. We just were looking. You know, we look.

Liz

Oh, we look.

Brett

And honestly, we were just like, these are some great reviews in ways that are, we didn't, you know, they're not all glowing, but we wanted to share them with you because we like them and they're fun.

Liz

You took us on a journey, so now we want to share that journey with you. The first one's starting off easy.

Brett

It is very easy. All right, do you want to do that? Nice

Liz

hop profile, light and refreshing, which I feel like is a great thing for a hazy IPA. You don't always get that light and refreshing vibe. So anyway.

Brett

Yeah, and speaking to what I just kind of said is like the light and refreshing, like I would not necessarily personally call this beer light, but it's like that's the fact that someone's having the experience and saying, oh, yeah, yeah, that's refreshing. It's like, heck yeah. Yeah. Next one. If this was less than 6.7%, I could probably drink it all day long. Immensely crushable, tropical melon. Very easy going down. Thank you.

Liz

Thanks. Yeah.

Brett

That was probably like a two star. Two out of five.

Liz

I don't know what this is. Two caps. Yeah. Is it? No. They're stars. No, they're little like circles, right? They're little caps. They're little cappies. Oh, all right.

Brett

Untap the cap.

Liz

Okay.

Brett

Yep.

Liz

Nothing really stands out, but also nothing wrong with this IPA. Considering it's readily available in liquor store, very good option for the price. I

Brett

like that. Kind of nice. That's nice. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Thanks. Yes. Thank you.

Liz

I mean, nothing wrong with this IPA?

Brett

Not in the Chalicehead community yet, but, you know, maybe we'll get them there.

Liz

If someone said, there's nothing wrong with you, I would be like,

Brett

great. First of all, I would say, are you sure? How long have you known me? Yeah. Yeah. That is a very backhanded compliment, so thank you. All right, here we go. First time trying this beer. I've had their Belgians in the past and had no idea they jumped into IPAs. So glad they did. One of my new faves. Nothing to complain about there.

Liz

We

Brett

will be quick to say we're not new to IPAs. We've been doing IPAs for a long time with old Humulone.

Liz

Yeah, that's the way back machine. That's the way back machine.

Brett

That is a Belgian IPA? We fermented it with a Belgian yeast strain. But yeah, we've been doing that since a long time. So not that we're necessarily known. I think they're correct. We are not known for IPAs. No. Absolutely. But we've been dabbling.

Liz

Yeah. And Patrick and the brewing team is like constantly... trying things out on the R&D side. So I remember, what was the series that used to be in the Taste Room? Hop Pilot.

Brett

Then it is it. Patrick's literally on the hop quality group of the Brewers Association. So it's like we are deep in the hop game for sure.

Liz

Yeah.

Brett

In various ways.

Liz

This one just says, it's okay.

Brett

You said it right.

Liz

Okay. I like this. The enthusiasm. It has an exclamation point. It does. It's tough to know. It's okay. So maybe that's like, it's fine. But the enthusiasm towards the end there kind of makes me believe they kind of enjoyed it.

Brett

I think they did. Yeah. It feels like it's like they're surprised that it's okay. You know, they're like, I don't know about this one. It's like, it's okay. That's funny. Might have to bleep that. Don't want the old explicit, you know, on this one, but.

Liz

All

Brett

right. Next one is rounded up to four because of the lobster roll. Tasty beer. They were in our tasting room. We have lobster rolls in our tasting room that are very good. Thank you for the

Liz

four. We'll take it. We'll take the four. We'll draft off a bite in a main all day.

Brett

Oh, you get the good one. You get the good one.

Liz

Okay. Light, hazy IPA that's perfect summer day beer. Light hazy IPA that's perfect summer day beer. Just a hint of hops in this tropical fruit forward hazy IPA. Entry level for sure, as it's simple and not at all complex. True IPA drinkers probably won't enjoy it as much, but perfect deck beer, in my opinion, 3.5 stars.

Brett

3.5 stars. That is just awesome. That was a journey. It is a journey. Yeah. It contains multitudes.

Liz

You know, I think I actually don't know if this is a simple, not complex IPA. Our brewers are not known for doing simple things, but I love if it comes off as simple. To me, that is, you know, just a testament to their brewing abilities.

Brett

Yeah, it almost makes me think that, like, in this reviewer's sort of estimation process, balance makes it not complex because it's so nicely balanced it's like oh it's all working together whereas if it had something that was like really popping out oh there's the complexity or something like that you know so

Liz

but enjoying perfect deck perfect

Brett

deck beer what more could you want i'll just take that let's just take that like this is like a movie poster if we were going to do that just perfect deck beer great thumbs up all right here we go date night dinner, at least, with my beautiful wife. Solid NEIPA. One of the things I like from New England.

Liz

This was funny when I read this. Yeah, because that's just like, wow, not many things you like from New England, which, you know, we can be a prickly bunch,

Brett

but... Get to know us. You might also dislike us. Or you might like us. Time to be warm up. Slow to warm up. Join the jealous head.

Liz

It's

Brett

growing on me. It's growing on me, Matt. I like it.

Liz

This next one, short and sweet. Solid for a supermarket IPA.

Brett

I think we should lean into that. I feel like the supermarket IPA, it seems like in this case it's a pejorative of like, bleh, supermarket IPA. But like, I don't know. We've got some nice supermarkets around here. There's some good supermarket IPAs out there. That's where I do most of my shopping. I get my food from there. That's right, yeah. That's where I get my food. That's an important part of my week.

Liz

We'll take

Brett

that. All right, we got one more. Allagash once again excels at the fine art of fermentation with this breezy, sunshiny burst of mellow

Liz

hoppiness. Oh, that's a nice one to end with.

Brett

That's a really nice one. Nicely worded, too. Yeah. Fine art of fermentation. Some poetic wording. Yeah, somebody is an artist.

Liz

That is a

Brett

true chalice head. That is a super chalice head. That's our 16-ounce chalice

Liz

head. Level up. Level up.

Brett

Oh,

Liz

God. I'm having so much fun.

Brett

This is good. That's what we try to do here.

Liz

All right. Well, Hazy IPA, if we didn't just convince you to go out and try, I don't know what will.

Brett

Yeah. Listen to the people. Go to your local supermarket. It's okay.

Liz

Okay. What do we got? Quick, rapid fire.

Brett

You ever played? So this section is titled Roundup of Things. Have you ever played the card game Roundup? Did anyone do that to you? No. This is like an 11-year-old thing, but you basically take the entire deck of cards. You ask someone, have you ever played Roundup Time? And they say, no, I haven't. You take the deck of cards and you spray them everywhere and you just go, it's Roundup Time! And that's... Did you have an older

Liz

brother? Yes. I feel like he just did that to you.

Brett

Yeah, he just didn't talk to me. We talked later. Oh,

Liz

yeah. Okay.

Brett

Surf House. That's the first item.

Liz

Yeah. Our dry hop lager. And we brewed more than this than we anticipated.

Brett

Double.

Liz

Double? We

Brett

doubled.

Liz

Oh, my God. Okay.

Brett

We thought we were going to brew one amount, and we brewed two times the amount. It's a vibe.

Liz

You know what I've seen on the socials recently is because here in Maine and much of the Northeast, it's been... Really pitiful on the weekends. Lots of rain. People have been holding up their surf house cans and saying, like, just wish I was here. And it's just they're trying to get that surf house vibe even though it's pouring rain. So a little escapism if you need to, you know, pretend you're not being poured on.

Brett

13 in a row, I think, was the number. Brutal. I think we're supposed to rain this Saturday.

Liz

Oh, it is. That's amazing. Yeah, and, like, cold.

Brett

It's cold. It's 60 degrees. It's the Allagash Gulf Scramble. I hope it's not rained out. All right, next one up. Another thing having to do with hops. For me, with love number 40, we talked about this on a different podcast. Imperial IPA, it's out now in the tasting room. We were talking about our brewers getting in on the IPA game, and this one is awesome. This is tasting super good. Signature, very imperial. I think it's like 9% ABV or something. It's up there. But still, same thing, drinkable. Very drinkable, very approachable, great balance.

Liz

Awesome. The next, a plug for our private events. We've had some awesome events recently. We just had our friends Cultivating Community do a big event here. I don't know what's been happening. Anyway, great. We've got... many different spaces that folks can choose from. The Cellars, which is probably our most classic event space. The Brewhouse. Literally our Brewhouse. Yeah, an option. And what do we call our Great Room?

Brett

What do we call it? Yeah, it's Great Room. In the building we are in currently.

Liz

Yeah, yeah. So if you're thinking about getting... Eloping.

Brett

Yeah, an elopement. An elopement. If an elopement's in the future.

Liz

Yeah, or a small wedding. You put down pet birthday, but I bet if we asked my... I'm not

Brett

sure. Am I not allowed to have pet birthday? Yeah, it depends on... No, we did one.

Liz

We did?

Brett

On the patio. Oh, on the patio. Oh, but they didn't tell us. They just had a pet birthday. I think they were saying, can we reserve this for a birthday? And we thought it would be like... just a regular birthday, and then they showed up and had like 20 dogs. Okay, sure. They were very well-behaved dogs to my memory, though. It wasn't like a bad experience. So that's okay. A little less official. Yeah,

Liz

graduations.

Brett

Graduation, that's right. Big birthdays, anniversaries. Your

Liz

corporate

Brett

events. Definitely. That's actually like the two things that I think have, through talking to Maya, our events planner, our events manager, is parking. We have really good parking, which is like actually rare in Portland and a surprising huge selling point. And then AV equipment. We got the full boat. We got in every single, or maybe not the great room, but in the other, or no, sorry, not the brew house, but in the great room and the cellars, we have like full AV. Should we talk a little bit about how good our parking is? Is it because it's so flat? Or evenly spaced or well-lit. I

Liz

think we have it.

Brett

Good drainage. I think that it exists is the one.

Liz

And you don't have to pay an exorbitant amount for it.

Brett

And nearby. Yep. The things.

Liz

Yeah. Our parking lots are not the most obvious, but once you find them, you are golden.

Brett

We're working on that signage. We got that signage under control.

Liz

So, yeah. We've got our great... private events team if you're interested reach out we'll get you in touch with the right people

Brett

yeah or I mean reach out but also if you check out the website there's a lot of information about that stuff about what's available where and everything like that so it's great tasting room open seven days a week this is this is like a week a week old news but it is good news

Liz

yeah I mean I know we just talked about Scarborough on our last episode but I guess we should just say we have two tasting rooms which is still amazing wild to me. And so our Portland tasting room opened seven days a week and got all sorts of things. The backyard is open, family friendly.

Brett

Backyard's been popping off. I think it's getting discovered as the gem that it truly is. And this is a very personal opinion of I love coming here and being in the backyard with my young children because it's very relaxed. The other kids are almost always there, and you get a little sit at a picnic table. It's really nice.

Liz

Great. I love that.

Brett

All the amenities.

Liz

I think we did it. I

Brett

think we did it. Wow. That's a roundup. It was great. Beautiful. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Liz. Thank you, Brett. Awesome. All right. This has been an Allagash Brewing 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, thanks for listening. Thank you.