Ep 35 - The World of Non-Alcoholic Beer with Mash Gang's Jordan Childs

In this episode of the Modern Brewer podcast, we focus on the growth of non-alcoholic beer, featuring an in-depth discussion with Jordan Childs, founder of Mash Gang. A leading non-alcoholic craft beer brewery.

Jordan discusses the challenges and intricacies of brewing non-alcoholic beer, including recipe development, stabilisation and market perception.

We touch on the importance of proper cleaning practices in brewing and the innovative methods Mash Gang employs to maintain quality.

Listen to the end as this episode concludes with Jordan's advice for brewers venturing into non-alcoholic beer production.

Tune in to learn...
•⁠  ⁠The challenges and intricacies of brewing non-alcoholic beer,
•⁠  ⁠Recipe development
•⁠  ⁠Market perception
•⁠  ⁠The Mash Gang way

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Recent Events
01:25 Upcoming Projects and Sustainability
02:46 Non-Alcoholic Beer: A Growing Trend
04:22 Interview with Jordan Childs of Mashgang
06:14 Mashgang's Journey and Challenges
08:43 Developing Unique Non-Alcoholic Beers
20:52 Consistency and Quality in Brewing
34:21 Biggest Challenges in Brewing Non-Alcoholic Beer
34:58 Innovative Brewing Techniques
36:43 Customer Perception and Market Challenges
41:43 Unexpected Brewing Issues
50:02 Altitude and Brewing
59:05 Sterilization and Stabilization in Brewing
01:09:38 Advice for New Brewers
01:12:21 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Thanks to this episodes sponsor - SSV Limited - Brew more. Brew better!

🔗 Mash Gang
🔗 Jordan Childs LinkedIn
🔗 Chris's LinkedIn

Transcript

0:14

Hello everyone and welcome to the latest episode of the Modern Brewer podcast with me, your host, Chris Lewington. Well, boy Have I been busy over the last few weeks I was at Mashfest as I spoke about in the last episode I've actually also been to the IBD's southern section dinner in Bristol courtesy of the great Steve Wilkinson So thank you for that I've also been to the LBA meeting, the London Brewers Alliance, which meets every couple of months in London. I was actually at the amazing Howling Hops, which is really fun. I love that place, great tank battle, one of the OGs. And I actually went to one of the more unique events in the UK, which is the Brewers Bristol Forum, which is the Brewers Climate Forum in This is where like a bunch of brewers in Bristol here in the UK. This is where a bunch of brewers in Bristol here in the UK get together to share their sustainability wins, push the environmental agenda in their breweries. It's just super cool and so great to be a part of that meeting. and shortly after this episode airs, I'll be on a plane to Brau Beveale in Nuremberg. So Brow isn't really an event I would usually attend as ultimately I'm not a brewer anymore. So I can't really justify the economic or the environmental cost of going to sort of hang out with people, which is effectively what it would be. But this year I am going because I have an amazing project with Vault City in Edinburgh on. So Vault City are making the commitment to go to net zero. Now for those. Who have listened to the last episode will know that this is not easy. I actually building a new brewery. And it wants sustainability to be embedded in their process from day one. And I'm helping them on that journey. They're an amazing brewery making truly unique beers for anyone who isn't familiar with vault city, I'll share some of their latest beers. So one of them is a 15%. Double dunked deep fried churro impi stout. It's 15 percent 5. 3 percent chocolate strawberry dutch pancake beer and a five percent strawberry mango margarita. So this is just a example of how Truly unique and absolutely smashing it at the moment. They are so it's great to be a part of that journey i'm actually not sure Now I think about it if a 15 impi stout is the best way to start this episode But today's episode is all about non alcoholic beer. Not a new concept to the brewing community, but what's really interesting is it's turning from a fad into a trend. It's fuelled. by society's overall leaning towards health and fitness and the negative health label beer has attached to it. So this has meant that N. A., or non alcoholic, has moved from the occasional bottle in the back of the fridge at the pub to like dedicated draft lines and entire breweries and businesses focusing only on beer. On beers without alcohol, but i'm going to be frank with you As I kind of know what everyone says in private as I said, you've as you heard i've been to a bunch of events I know what brewers say in private so we can just be honest here on this podcast The majority of non alcoholic beers are a bit trash. They're either so worthy watery or riddled with off flavors and overall a lack of Of what makes beer beer and it's no surprise. I mean it is Not an easy beer style or category to brew process or package I mean, you can't shy away from the fact that fermentation is a fundamental part of beer flavor So how can you make a beer taste like beer without it? Well with me today is Jordan Childs of Mashgang Now i'm sure most listeners would have seen heard or drank Mashgangs, non alcoholic beers, but they are alcoholic craft beers, best dressed cousin. And Jordan is going to share with us his journey towards how they built the best craft beer, NA brand in the country, how they develop their recipes and the key ingredients and processes that NA beer needs in order to succeed. But before we dive into the world of NA craft beer, this episode is proudly sponsored by SSV limited. Your trusted partner in crafting bespoke production solutions for the beverage industry. Whether you're just getting started or scaling up, SSV Limited is there every step of the way. From initial conception, through installation, to commissioning of your new equipment with exceptional after sales support. With over a decade of experience, SSV Limited has been supporting the beverage industry across the UK and Europe. Delivering top tier innovative brewing systems, CO2 recovery solutions. Process and storage tanks, as well as everything in between. Their expertise ensures that your project meets and exceeds your expectations from concept to completion. Ready to take your business to the next level? Visit ssvlimited. co. uk to learn more about their custom built solutions. SSV Limited. brew more, brew better. So without further ado, let's dive into the curious and rapidly growing world of N. A. B. E. R. with Jordan Childs. Welcome to the show, Jordan. Jazz hands. Hey man, um, I'm Jordan, I'm the ha head brewer and founder of Mashgang, a specifically non alcoholic based brewery, which makes me very popular with people and parties, started out in London in 2020, and now, a global phenomenon. So long as, like the World Series, you only really count America and the UK a little bit. ha. This is gonna go great. This is gonna go great. Yeah, so good. I love that. That was like straight, you know, you've, you must have done that so many times over the last year because you've recently raised, sold some of the company or the company entirely. Or Yeah, I sold all of going on with, with mash gang in general. Some people would have read the press release like me, but some, some people Some people read the press release and got something completely different from it as well, which is great. I was in Denmark last week, in Arhus, like three hours north of Copenhagen, and someone was like, wow, I can't believe they'd let a Diageo owned brewery come here. And I was like, What? Two guys worked there like once but that that makes you know You could say cuz I worked at BAE systems that BAE or lock and I worked at Lockheed Martin So you could say that, you know mash gang was founded as a partnership of BAE systems and Lockheed Martin That's why I drink to the bomb. I haven't done that bit before but I'm writing it down. That was good That's going in, that's going in the next pitch deck. there will be no further pitch decks because this is it, man. Yeah, you were just saying before, it's it's not an easy process to go No, I would, yeah, I said, what I actually said is I'd rather go through a divorce or a bereavement than go through an acquisition again. And that's from all sides. It's painful for everyone that gets involved. It's, yeah, it's like a life laundry audit of your successes and your failures. And having someone go through, like, various decisions that you've made in 2020 that were terrible, it's painful. You know, is, is never great, you know, but it's, it's kind of good, good for the soul to remind you that you are, in fact, as stupid as you once were. funny. Jordan, I mean like, when you started Mashing, you said 2020, right? Yeah, so it was, yeah, what was the NA market like then? how And why did you get into it really? mostly, I, I, I just thought, God, there's so much money in this, like, I, like, and, no, I, so, I think I probably would have given a different answer that was less fair, but, yeah. Longer ago and I would have probably said something along the lines of there wasn't very there wasn't any good choices and stuff like that But that is not true, you know with a little bit of hindsight. I would say that by 2019 2020 we were starting to get to a point where there was more and more good and In the market, and especially if you looked beyond the borders of the United Kingdom, there was like, you know, extremely exciting things going on in Europe as well. You know, and I said, Well, there wasn't many choices, but there was a very small bar down the road from where I lived in worthing at the time, and they had one of these Japanese vending machines for beer because they had a very small bar area, and they didn't want people to waste time at the weekend queuing at the bar to get a pint. They actually were like, if you want a cocktail or something that takes time, come to the bar, but if you just want a tinny or something, you just tap and pay, you know, but they had a CBD. non alcoholic beer bottle in there and I was just like Every day i'd come home from work and i'd go in there and just tap and just buy Like four of them and just take them home and That kind of you know, that was my first real expo of all of the na things That was really my exposure to it I'd i'd kind of given up on becks blue Like if I saw my mom my mom and dad on a sunday for a sunday roast they would Automatically just buy me two Becks blue and they put it in a jug glass and I'd sit there and have my really dry sort of pub sundae roast, that was all my exposure to during the first like couple of weeks of COVID. I'm extremely bored and I start think by buying things from like McKellar to all. Like some of the BrewDog stuff, you know, and I, I remember there was like a, a big drop stout and I, and I, I'd had it a few times around Christmas. I quite, quite like that. so there, So in in honesty the market was actually okay and there was things like funky fluid and malt garden over in Over in europe that were making like fruited sour nas and stuff so you can't say you didn't really have a choice because Because you did as long as you were prepared to one look for it and to pay for it. I Bought a box of beers from omnipolo that was extravagantly expensive for me, certainly, and they had, a blueberry soup, kind of fruited milkshake IPA that they released in like, Ikea, Japan, and they had some like, jewel must, you know, like the, like, it's like, Sort of scandy christmas coca cola and things like that and Yeah, those guys were kind of hugely influential where I was like right if they're doing that, you know They're surely there's a market for that kind of thing here And that would be the if we're if we're being honest that was kind of the inception of it. And then how did you, because you, are you from a brewing background? Oh I didn't know I this is this is the thing anytime I get Interrogated about this is like, how did you get so good? It's like, how did you not? It's like really easy to learn. There's never been a better time to learn literally anything as long as you're ready to do it imagine the scenario where there is billions of hours of youtube videos forums and everything there was like, Ultra low brewing. com as well. You just go on there and like learn so much stuff. I think that It's very, you know, maybe some people are inbuilt, not, not great at learning to learn. I'm old enough that I remember the internet not being a thing. So I still look at it with fascination that you can learn, learn this stuff. But my experience is like, I dug ditches at a vineyard that was being built, but I wouldn't really care about wine, but some of it stuck in my head a bit. And then I could never leave alone home brew kits and things like that. And I remember asking. Like my dad, can I have one of your beers or something like that? He's like too young can't drink and I was like, ah, but I want a beer. He's like, why don't I fucking make it? Like I was like, what do you mean make it? It's like go to wilco get a kit make it That's what I did when I was your age. I'm like Alright, so, it was, Woodford's Wary was the first beer I ever made. yeah, yeah. And then I, I hadn't touch it for a very long time, you know, and, and I, I was, I wasn't into it then. I wasn't all grain brewing or anything. It was literally probably eisenberg's would, you know, it was like LME and a LME winds a yeast, and there you go. That's it and I was I was good enough at that when I was like pretty young that I would I would I would be Like the beer guy at parties, you know, those milk like four liter milk jug four pint milk jug things I'd just be filling those up. used to buy them from the there was Old enough that there was a dairy where I lived you go to the dairy and buy them for like 4p for these milk jugs And then i'd take them to a party and like sell them for a couple of quid each and then I make more beer Because essentially I think deep down, you know, i'm probably a capitalist pig at heart That, that was my, my start with that and, and, you know, during COVID, I get sent home from work for the first time, like, in my life, there is nothing to do, you know, at all. And I, I, I messed around with loads of things. Loads of people mess around with things, making bread and rubbish at that, you know, making pickles and chili crisp and, you know, everything. Vegan cheese with cashew nuts, anything to, but the first time I made, A beer like thing. I was like, Jesus, I'm actually quite good at this. This is good out of the gate. Maybe I'll give it a go. And I've never found anything that I had a natural ability at. So I'm like in my 40s when I finally find something that works, you know. But that was it. It was that simple. That's so good. Do you think, how important do you think that first batch success was? Oh, Like, one, was garbage, would we be sat here no, no, I would have given up on it. Like Homer Simpson said it's best. Like if something's hard, it's just like not worth doing. Like, what's the point? You know, it's like, I want to be an Olympic swimmer. Like, I'm like, are you good at swimming already? No, don't bother. Like, don't bother. Like, you don't have a time machine. You can't get that time back. You know, just don't bother. Find something that is, like, that you like, but you don't love. That is, feels easy and fun to do. And that's the true way of being happy in your life. Never take the thing you love exactly and spend your whole life on that, because it will only ever break your heart. But do something that makes you happy enough every time you do it. And that's brewing for me. I don't know if it makes me happy, it'd make me less sad, you know. Yeah, I mean, that is That is what happened. happiness is just an absence of sadness for me. Ha ha ha ha ha Oh, I love it. Um, so how did you So you started your first homebrew, right? Oh, no, your first, but you did it, you were happy with it. How did you start to develop what became Mashgang's first few beers? We, we, we had like a, it was like a piece of software called Allo, which is like Google's attempt at WhatsApp. So we had like a few school friends on that and it was really, it's boring chats, you know, it's like, do you know we can get pasta at the moment and toilet paper and things like that? Because you know, and We, there was no brand, there was no brand that was just liquid. There was no brand that was just liquid. So we just made, I was just making stuff and kind of sending it to the rest of the people that would actually become the business, you know. but there were, there was no like brand ideation or anything like that. We knew that we would do something cool. We just didn't know it was. And luckily I was working in the tattoo industry for like, I owned a studio, but I'm not a tattooist for like a decade. but the studio was a place where I worked on other creative projects like Scrooge Street. Wear and things like that. and like my wife's like a screen printer and graphic artists, we all had that. There was a lot of people out of work at that point because it was, you know, COVID times. So I, I started buying artwork off of a load of our friends, you know, we were like, this is going to be for the brand. And I think the idea was eventually we'll find some kind of, Some kind of style but I will show you hopefully I have it here. So this is the first commercially produced bottle but what I want to show you is how close it Oh, yeah. Look at the logo, the logo is completely unchained like We were We were so, we just, I'm glad this hasn't blown up as well, because it says it's best before July 2021, which means it's July 2020 when it was made. So Hey, yeah, let's have a clean there, no weird stuff going on, it's like really clear, it's like hyperfined as well, there's nothing in there, I do, I do keep thinking about opening it, but it's like number one of so, you know, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, The brand just came together because there was no thought behind it. It was like we'll have it like this until we one day get our act together and do it and we just never did. So that was the beginning of the brand and it's not great for a ted talk and it's like so how did you I didn't I just a lot of the times we're just pivot to whatever works yeah, I mean, you had a lot of natural talent within there. You know, you said you're a Yeah, we we were lucky worked in the, tattoo industry and you know, you're, you're around good design. So if that's one of your strengths, that's definitely going to be something you can do quite easily for a lot of people. Yeah, yeah, it was here, you know, I know, I know, I know we're going to talk about those kind of things and I think people would assume that we're under very, very strict like intellectual property and and stuff like that, but I think that the advice I'm going to give around it. is more important than the minutiae of the detail of how we do it exactly, because I can get, how come you get Jamie Oliver's cookbook and you look at it and why haven't you got 20 restaurants in a multi billion dollar empire? It's because it's more than the sum of its parts, like, why the hell can I not bake a loaf of bread? I really can't, I wish I could, and it's something this winter I've promised myself I will dedicate time to. You can crack on with that section if you fancy. Yeah, I think like that's the, that's the point I always make and I know that everyone listening to this will know because they're brewers themselves. It's like the recipe is such a small part of what makes a beer a beer. The sheer terror of, of of an acquisitional party when they're like, how long does it take to make a new beer? And you're like, if it's based on something you've done before, it still can go very wrong. And I say it takes about six to nine months to commission a beer. What do you think? A new beer. And be happy with it. Be yeah, you. yeah, it, it's tough. I mean, it depends on what it is. If it's a one off release, then I Oh yeah, a one off rele like, the recipe done. If it's a core range beer, it takes It takes months. right? Like, it it it takes months and it's it's like, Brewing is like science, alchemy, and magic. And and also just how the kit's feeling. And it's like, How come you can't make things exactly the same on exactly the same on exactly the same? And that's, I think we've discussed this bit where it's a, how will you deal with a core range? I feel like you asked me that when we were in London. How will you deal with a core range? I said, I think I'm, I'm done with the challenge of making eight new beers a month. And I'd like to get very good at things being consistent. It's like the last challenge for the brewer is, you know, people will make fun of like Molson cores and stuff, but the beer's always the same. You know, and that's a really hard challenge for Bruce, but yeah, Yeah, that is that is the hardest part is consistency and you know, it's you're looking for tens of thousands of reactions to all happen in exactly the same Yes. and most breweries don't have the level of control or automation that is required to make sure that those ten thousand or tens of thousands of reactions happen the same time. So consistency is always the biggest But you know, like telemetry two types like telemetry is great, but it never tells the full story either. We've had bizarre things like massive temperature swings in countries. We produce it, we produce in the Midwest, you know, we used to produce in Croatia in the summer, it's 30, 40 degrees in winter, it's minus 10 and there's snow on the building and, and, and some days it will happen in the same day and it will ping pong between the two. And you've got massive volumes of stuff and it's. You know, it's, it is, even though they're jacketed and everything's controlled, tens of thousands of reactions, like you said. Yeah, because consistency to me comes in two forms. It comes in both consistency of single product. So, you know, what your one, your lager, your cola lager, how consistent is that, but also the consistency of the brand making good beer. I think there's the third one as well, and it's like, you know that some breweries It doesn't matter what style of beer they've made. You, I think Brooklyn's one of these. You could pick it up and you start to sip and you're like, it's a Brooklyn beer. Easy, like, it doesn't matter if it's like a Sour or it's their, like, Vienna Lager. You're like, I can still tell this is the thing, you know? Boxcar was like that. Anything Sam made was like, you could just go, This isn't old speckled hemp, this is box carpet. Whether you like, you know, like, so yeah. Agree. with that in mind, because I, I believe that consistently mash gang has been. The best, one of the best NA beers I've drank consistently. And I do mean that I'm not just blowing smoke, but I do generally mean that. You know me, you know me well enough you, could be rude to me and it would be okay. You know. we've argued quite a lot in our career, right? So how do you create that consistency and how do you approach like new product development as mash I, so that two very, two very different questions, but I cover both of them. I'll do the second one first. So the, the, the. Inspiration almost certainly comes from somewhere other than beer, but it certainly comes from, like, a moment or an experience. It can come from anyone in the team, you know. And one of the things that's very Nice. If you're doing something that is essentially different from mainstream alcohol, is that you can look at something that has alcohol in it and go, How can I make something that's like that? And should I bother? An example of that is I loved like the beers from like 450 north and like toppling Goliath and things like that. And and in him, you know, obviously, the like the vault city beers, you know, and, you know, You start thinking is there a point of us making a heavily fruited and a sour because will people get it? Or will they think you just bought a very very expensive fizzy innocent smoothie and just be Like let down by it, but they were some of our best selling beers. We wanted to make them We wanted to make them for for us But the risk that vault city took with that six month sabbatical thing we did with them was insane It paid off for everyone by the way, it was great Like, you know, it the customers loved it and the ones that didn't like the idea of it didn't buy it So they didn't complain about it. They didn't get like, you know funny about it From the the brewer's perspective the brewing teams at vault city and mash game just learn everything all of the time And I will say that at no point was it ever painful and things came out Unexpectedly, but they never came out bad. So we were, it was a really fun project and it was like, if you could imagine the sunniest, happiest blue sky kind of project, that was it. But on paper, it sounds like a bad idea. So there's a great deal of, fuck it, we ball. We want to do it. So we're doing it. I, I could, A recurring theme in our beers is like mango, chili and salt, and it is just down to a point where I was really I was in a shitty hotel in Las Vegas. It was homesick. I miss my wife. I miss my kid. He was really young at the time, and, I went to like a little bodega on the corner and they had Mangonadas, like sorbets, and I picked up a bunch of stuff and I ran a bath and I sat in it and I was like, you know, and I had this and it had such a profound, exciting, you know, effect to me. I'd never had tahini, I'd never had chamoy before, and it was all wrapped up and I just like got the rest of the stuff and just chucked it in the bin, went back down like in a pair of swim shorts like to the store, bought four more of them. Put them on the side and just sat in the bath, eating them until I felt better. And it's like, that recurring theme is like, in everything and it never ends because it had such an effect on me. and then, the other part of it is you just travel places, you pick up something odd that you've never had before and be like, I could make this into a beer. So that's really it. That's, that's where that kind of spark comes from. The other thing is, we just ask customers, What do you want us to make? It's really simple. They tell ya. some of the ideas are just diabolically terrible. It's like, Why aren't you doing a smoked Sorted Goes? And it's like, BECAUSE NO ONE WANTS THAT! ANYONE! No one wants it! you know, but then sometimes it'll be like, I wish you'd do something like this, and you go, Ooh, yeah, so do I. Like, someone asked for a, Someone asked for something like fruit salad or blackjacks, and I was like, gonna stop you there, bud. The blackjack thing? Not happening. Not making an aniseed stout for you. Would rather go and fight God. Fruit salad though. Now we're talking. Like, hell yeah. Fuck it, let's ball. You know? That, that's, But that's, that's that kind of, The creative process is like, Nothing's ever off the table. Ever. And, Also I've never, Been shy, Of putting something in, Taking a tank sample, Going, Ugh, that's not very good. I'm gonna try and adjust this. No, it doesn't work. Down the drain it goes. It's cheaper to just put it down the drain than it is to, to, to, to can it and have everyone go, not very good. consistency. How do I approach that? It's really difficult with a multi site process. You need trusted partners, we contract brew. It's kind of strange in the craft beer industry, where there's a lot of folded arms over contract brewing, but in the soda industry, in every other industry in the world, but brewing, the idea of buying a brewery first and working it all out later is pretty weird. pathologically insane, you know, and I always had the aspiration that any brewery that we could build Would be too small by the time we finish the next year So we were always waiting for the point where we got big enough to kind of build a brewery And now we're kind of demonstrably too big to brew build a brewery because it would be too expensive not cost effective. And if you think that like, many brands are brewing their own beers, that they're not. Even some of the ones that have breweries are not brewing their flagships, you know. the, in, in terms of quality and consistency, so those good brewing partners are where it starts. And then the, Realization that every beer on every different kit will be kind of different. You'll have a commissioning period and you have to work really carefully. Like you said, the numbers might match up. The ingredients are the same. Oh my God. The kit may be the same brow con kit that it is, but you put the same in and not the same comes out because of, you know, trifling. In different things part of a big project. I have now is like lots of telemetry to try and understand these things But I have a deep seated Concern that even with all of the data in the world, this may not be possible to understand. So we'll see, sometimes. It's not just using the same ingredients over and over again. You may have to modify how that so we had a site that we tried to commission in the UK and it failed because whatever we would do, whatever we would do, it was way too bitter and we just could, we could get to the point where we were reducing the hot side hops too. A blink of the eye and it was still a little, not only was it like not full, not only was it not like a, the aroma wasn't there, but it was just bitter. And that was that. And we tried so many different things. Sometimes it's knowing when to give up and consistency is, it's a continual journey. in the U S we just had a really good brewing partner who is, you know, used to incubating brands that are growing. You'll be able to back me up on this making something at 35 hectoliters and making something at 900 hectoliters are so far away from the same game. It's like, just cause you can drive a car doesn't mean that you can fly a plane. You know, it's it. Yeah. And sometimes it's knowing when to lay your sword down and say help So a lot of the time in the u. s. It was like because it was in metric to imperial and then everything's different Help, you know, Yeah, it's that's that's the hard part that definitely, and it's actually a way bigger challenge, as you said, when you've got so many contract partners. You know, I've worked in that contracting world. and consistency is the hardest part of it all. There is somewhat a joy of making billions and billions of different skews because Consistency isn't a watchword, but people are still going to want stoop and chug to taste the same or better You yes. Which is. My two favourites, of course, because Thank you As someone that understands brewing, you can understand from my perspective how difficult it is to make those specifically. Because they're a hit single, right? That's what I was tasked to make. Because if we didn't make that stoop and chug at the time that we made it, we were at a crossroads where financially we were having a load of fun. But around 2022, I think me and James were ready to wind it down and go and do something else. Thanks. Because it was only just about self sustaining every supermarket had turned us down at that point james clay Matthew Clark LWC with major distributors have just been like prices too high. No chance. No one wants in it No one wants a five pound can of any beer So we we we had we had to make a decision and I was like, I want one crack at it We'll brew these ones at Gypsy Hill will like we'll work with their beer Like Torsten, who was there at the time, was really good. Freddy, their QA guy, was really, really good at, like, engineering stuff to come out well. So we took one of the beers from Northern Monk that we needed to squeeze a bit more value and a bit more size out of it, and we designed Chug to Mentally, I was competing with Neck Oil. I was like, I need to make a Neck Oil clone. That's what I've got to do. People will love that. Like, uh You know, essentially such a modern IPA that it's basically a dry hop lager was where I was at, like a heavily dry hop lager that almost everyone would like. And people that didn't like it certainly didn't hate it. It just wasn't for them. And pulling that off was the heist of the century for me. Like I was punching so far above my weight and if it failed, it was okay. But that would have been the last of the money in the company. And me and James would have gone off and done new things. so cool. There's always that moment, right, I guess, in And it, that was the one. do we leave? Do we make the effort? But the other thing is we, weren't, do we cut it out? Or do we risk everything? It's cool So going back to Yeah, yeah, of course. What are the biggest challenges you were facing and how did you overcome them? I, I think the, the first thing is price, right? Because it takes so many ingredients to make. That's what's not really understood, is when anyone talks about the price of N. A. Beard, they're always Benchmarking it against like Heineken zero or things like that from the supermarket Where these guys can produce a beer for less than I can procure a label for a can, right? With the economies of scale and we couldn't just brute force it So what I what I what I looked at doing in those and I this is where it was an expensive But really worthy endeavor was we'd never used things like liquid hops before You Because there wasn't really a necessity to do it. The, the, the backbone of Chug was like incognito in Spectrum. And that was kind of, it meant that when all else faded away and all else failed and there was always like this robust background in there. The other thing was literally everything I could do to get to an exaggerated level of mouth fill to overcome people's. Preconception that it was going to be watery and very fizzy. Lowering the carbonation is a real double edged sword. This beer is flat. But I'm like, I need the level of carbonation that Beak and Verdon and other half have. I don't want the level of carbonation the other NA brands were putting in because the things that that high carbonation is causing some of those weird metallic carbonic off notes that are sort of present that put people off and also a lower carbonation point I actually think gives a smoother, fluffier mouthfeel. So we were doing things like How do we get it to feel more natural? How do we get it to, to smell better, right? And we found that, and, and, and head retention. Okay, so like all of these things are coming together because it's all to do with overcoming a customer's perception. And we have a difficult customer base as well because some people that drink non alcoholic beers have never had a beer. Or they've had one so long ago that their perception of what a beer is, is very different to what a perception of beer now is. I actually took one of the guys, from the, the acquisitional team and sat him down in Houston tap and went, this is a pint of stone IPA. When I'm talking about the bitterness of a West Coast beer, this is what he took. One sip and he went like, Jesus. What is wrong with That, And I went, not only is there nothing wrong with that, this is an archetype of exactly how you would do it, right? And he was like, I don't get it. I mean, the problem is no one would get it unless they were in the place and the time when this So that's my perception of what a West Coast, or at least like an American parallel is like, that is what it is in my mindset. So, we started looking at like, we have to amplify, to win at this, we have to amplify the points that people disagree with. So we, Chug is scientifically designed, like, from, Everyone's things they don't like about non alcoholic beer. So in terms of like aroma, we like spondid it and spectrum smells nice. Once it's been fermented. So like sponding it's if you don't know, it's essentially that you're naturally carbonating the beer in its fermentation stage by. Not having an airlock and letting the pressure build up letting it out But what tends to happen there is it traps a lot of volatile compounds that would be scrubbed out by co2 But you're thinking already hang on though You're gonna get like off notes trapped in early and stuff like that So we have to do loads of stuff like ALDC loads of like copper clear and things like to deal with that Also, that particular part point, we're not using it anymore. But at that particular point, we're using Voss fight yeast at 40 degree fermentation, which actually is So free of off notes and it's so Competitive and so violent that nothing gets a look in and I I was just trying to build this fast to ferment highly aromatic low carbonation high opacity high final gravity And then I, I chose interlock, like it went through a few variations of hops, but we took everything that we learned, like we won't use mosaic near it. We over time of rolled down the amount of Citra that we use in it. And it's more things like Vic secret and Eldorado in there, which in context tastes more like. The Citra mosaic that people were used to in that context, they sit in there a little bit better. And we, yeah, we, we had a little sprinkling of Vic secret, some Magnum and a tiny bit of galaxy in there. And we tried to build that profile, but everything to do with chug, like right down to the artwork was like, we don't want it to, you know, we want it to be fun and like in, in context, but things like the tie dye is like, I want it to be more grateful dead than it is Slayer. You know, so it was kind of, that's where we really went with it. It was, it was designed to succeed, and that's not a very cool thing to say, but, It's, it would, it would allow us to stay in business, and that's what we did. Yeah, I love that. And how, so you were using that kveek yeast, presumably you were just making like very high, low fermentability worts, yes, that, that, that's, that's, that's, that's the thing, is, Is really, any time a brewer asks me, like, So how do you get the alcohol so low, like, Do you remove it and stuff, it's like, No, we just, like, Okay, listen, the easiest way it's no coincidence Every time mash gang has brewed with a brewery that spends all of its time Making high abv imperial stouts and stuff like that Siren, you know, you get like vault city northern muck It starts to all come together really quickly. If you were making a stout and you wanted to make a imperial stout What would you do? And it's like, well, it's easy, you do this, and it's like, if you were making a stout and you wanted to make one have less alcohol, what would you do? I don't know. Are you sure? Are you sure you don't know? Because surely it's not, it's not rocket science, is it? You know, it's, it's, it's like, I, I want my car to drive fast, far further, so I put more petrol in the tank. I need to spend less money so I don't go as far. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's not, it's nowhere near as complex as people are making it. The other part of it is difficult. Preservation and things like that, which were obviously going to come around to a difficult tackling off notes, flavor profile, managing bitterness, perceived bitterness. You know, the other the other cheat code like this is, this is, Full alcohol and imperial brewing is unfair because it allows you to drug your customer whilst you ask them their perception of something. Like, if I could get my customer to rip a bong before drinking my fruited, like, sours, they're gonna rate it higher. Do you know what I mean? And it's, it, I know it's like, But like I I love the craft beer industry and it's it's super fun and I just you know and I I but I do like to dunk when I can on certain things like Like you go and look at the highest rated beers on untapped and it's like it's a triple maple coffee breakfast style It's 20 percent like rum barrel aged like Like and they're just like do you guys like beer? Or would you like a large rum and coke? Because, boy, like, you don't need to spend 25 on this bottle of barrel aged imperial stout. You can just have three rum and cokes and it'll get you there. Bear in mind, my best friends just make these things. So, so, and, and, and, and, and if I was purchasing something for my father in law, like, now, I would just buy him imperial stouts with, with chocolate and biscuits in it because, because he He thinks he's a miraculous because imagine imagine being like an older guy That's like what do you like stout and whiskey and say wait a second man. Do I ever have something for you like? Yeah. Going into a pub in 1980s, like when everyone was drinking milds, being like, well, in about 30, 40 years, this is what they're going to be drinking. Like, get the hell That's so funny. How do you, how do you get body into your NA biz, other than just high gravity? Because obviously that's going to give you Because otherwise it'll be too sweet. You mean, I wish there was like a single answer for this There really isn't a single answer, but it's like very low fermenting grains are good for it. where at the beginning I used terrifying amounts of maltodextrin until I found out that maltodextrin isn't a totally unfermentable If you put a literal There was one point I put one tonne of Mortodextrin into a brew to see what happened. Yeah. So, it will fermen It will ferment when you do that, So that's not suitable. So many different types of, of things we've tried over, over the years like, like making quasi oat milk sort of thing, like, you know, kind of like, like, like lots of oats, loads of oats, and then like lower fermentable grains, and then, selectively using like lower attenuating, yeast strains when you really want something specific, like Winsor's great for if I'm doing any kind of darker beers, I always go in for like a Winsor kind of, and then really just boost up your non fermentables in there, kind of works. And then, oh, we talked about presentations, really important. So if I get a can of like root and branch, like double IPA, And I pour it out into the glass. The head retention's like zero because it's greasy. And I don't even notice that. I don't think like, but most customers will pour out and be like, no head, you know, and NA customers would be like, This beer is broken. It doesn't look like it. So I put an extravagant amount of work into, like into loads of head retention and presentation. I truly believe that people like they drink with their eyes first. And if a beer kind of looks ropey out of the gate, then they aren't gonna they aren't gonna want it. And you're doing that with mainly the low fermentability Yeah, and like, you know, there are, like, obviously, like, seaweed derived additives that can help as well. Just use more sparingly than they say. They seem to have, like, an opposite effect. And one of the things that me and Dave at Fierce found is we were working towards Like a horizon that was, false in a way, I'll explain it, we found that the head retention was better in the beer after it had been in the can a week. So when we were taking samples straight away, we were unhappy with them. We were working harder and harder and harder and harder to get more and more and more and more. And if we'd waited a little bit of time that it would have come together and I believe that Sean had, from Siren had similar, experiences when they were working on nitrogenation and and better presented beers that sometimes just a week in the cold sore upside down in the can was actually all you needed to do. so we started to just factor that in. So we started pulling the beer off essentially four days early than leaving it for seven days in the can in the cold store before it went out to distributors. And that was Sometimes the answer's not, sometimes the answer isn't, isn't related to more ingredients, it's related to time. That's Yeah, I know, because it, we, we only found out because we were about to give up and, and some of the other one, like I sent, you know, I sent cans down to, to Alex and he was like, I dunno what you're talking about. Head retention's fine on these. While we're talking about the unpredictability of business. Right. We had exploding cans. Micro, clean. Micro, clean, fucking, carbonation levels were fine. Going and to the site, opening the samples, they're fine. Whatever happened to them after they left the site wasn't, wasn't good. So weeks and weeks of this and it just won't go away and it suddenly appears out of nowhere and disappears and it doesn't seem to matter what product is and I mean cans are arriving hemorrhaged at the DPD depot. I get a call from Alex and he's like, he's mad. He's like, these are shit again. Like these are, these are burst all in transit, like got the box delivered. There's like beer all over the floor and blah, blah, blah. And I went. Hang on, hang on, wait a second. This beer was canned yesterday. And he went, yeah, so what? I went, this beer was canned yesterday in Aberdeen. He's like, I don't know what you're getting at. I went, but it was picked up at 6pm yesterday by DPD. There is no functional way that it can be at your house unless they put it on a plane. And he went, no, no, they can't, so I rang up DPD, I said, do you air freight out a dice? And they went, yeah, for the southern orders and that, like the whole container goes on. So basically, the beers were being canned, and then they were putting them in an unpressurized plane, immediately after canning, way. like, bang! Like, It was, but you couldn't work it out if you tried. So, like, you imagine, like, Dave McHardy from fucking Fierce is slapping on not for air freight on the side of the things just so that they don't air freight them. You couldn't make it up. Like, that's the thing No, you couldn't make that up. you know, we found, like, like, we later on found that they, they They weren't happy with their seamer, so things weren't as strong and close as they should be, and, and, and the can quality had really dipped around that time because there was like aluminium shortages, and, you know, but the perfect storm was that, that, that, that was it. It was the, the cans were going, and I had a, I had a panic attack the other day. I was standing outside of the Milwaukee, and, and, yeah, Courthouse with, a new operations, head of operations, Mark Clark, which was a, we beat Mark Clark in the car park after dark with a peck of shark. and he, and we were talking about something else and one of the test areas that we have for mash game products in the U S is Colorado. And it's a new area for us. Do you know anything specific about Colorado, which is unusual? It's the altitude. So, where I live, in the Snowdonia National Park, the height of Mount Snowdon, our highest mountain, which is like an endeavor to get to the top and the bottom and it's a big thing, is 600 meters lower than Denver Airport, where you start your journey in Colorado. I only find this out the second day I'm in Colorado. When I wake up in the morning, it feels like someone's put a belt around my head. I just keep being sick, and I'm like, out of breath and tired. And then like, I bought a new watch, and I was like, this watch is fucked. It says I'm like, like a mile above. What's worse is next week, I'm going to Vail and Aspen, and they're like twice as high again. So, I'm gonna be terri But as we're, as we're talking, you know, I've just come back from that trip. I go back to the brewery in Milwaukee, which is at sea level. And Mark's talking, he's like, you know, like Denver's a bit of a pressure test. And I was like, yeah, it's quite high pressure with the attitude. Wait, what the hell is going to happen to the cans when we send them up there? And like, we didn't say anything for like a minute. We're just like walking back to the brewery. He's like, surely, surely surely this has happened before somewhere. And I'm on like home brew forums and I'm like messaging people. And apparently if you brew there. And you take it down, it's a problem. If you brew at sea level and take it up, it's not, but it does affect brewing up there because the boiling temperature is different. yes, definitely So actually the reason loads of beers in Colorado are so good is because it's a high altitude, not that's weird. Yeah, but yeah, you don't, you don't think of these things. And those are the kinds of things that trip you up in business that you just can't train for. You just have to Yeah, yeah, that's just, sometimes you just have to learn by doing, and that is, it's not always, it's the best way of learning, but it's not the most cost effective way of learning sometimes, but, is only a mistake. If you continue to make it the first time, it's a learning tax. there you go. That's a lovely statement. Media training really kicking in. Um, reining this back in here, Jordan, let me, talk a bit about Yes. because I find that is one of the biggest challenges for a brewer who is used to making IPAs, how they can adjust the alc. Because not only just the IBUs, because it's just a silly Yeah. No, you're right. bitterness and how that feels to the consumer. We we had a we had an incident where we had to make a call on something and I remember the You know, we, it was, it was during the, the, the, the mortar dextrin phase of my career, me and Adam Lyle from Northern Monk were making, a beer, which was called stadium craft. And the idea, it was like a play on stadium, rock bands, you know, when you sell out and you'd like to try and foo fighters, the whole thing, like nothing but singles. And, we had a load of. We had a load of hops in, in the cold store that were like out of audit. So it's like, they've been open and it was like brew one Citra, like just loads of different stuff. And I was like, okay, so what we'll do is we'll get all of this and we'll put it in. We'll put loads of them. And I wanted something that was kind of. Very much like that West Coast IPA, but I wanted it to be very very extreme You know I wanted it to be like Malty and sweet and bitter and and it was designed to be too much And it was kind of like a partial love letter to the memory of what like sierra nevada was like When you'd never had it before so not like it is now where it sits in its You know, because everyone's like every year is like, Oh, I preferred last year's party. It's like, it's, it's identical, like, like, it's just that you've had other beers in the time that have changed. So your perception is different. It's like, if anyone can make a beer identically the same over years or better, it's verdant and you're not smart enough to, to say they're wrong. So, you know, and the maltodextrin delivery does not come like, it just absolutely doesn't come, but the, we, we already had to start brewing. So the boil is on and it's like in just. It should be here in 15 minutes, and the boil's going, like, 180 minutes, we're like, We have to agree that it is now not coming, and we have no way of, of backfilling it or doing any of that, So it's just been so many hops, in there, and like, like, the boil goes on and on, and you would think it was incalculably bitter. Because the universe doesn't work like that. The malts that we'd use, we'd use like, Melanoidin malts and stuff, so they're like red colour. Whatever happens during this magic phase, this beer comes, we basically like, at this point, it's like free hops almost, the grain bed's really low, the maltodextrin didn't turn up, so we kind of throw in some like, And we're like, we'll see what happens, but this is probably But we haven't lost anything, you know, it's, it's all leftovers and stuff. God, like, it's, it's ran, it smells really bad, like really kind of like loads of off notes, really eggy and stuff. So we, we find the absolute bejesus out of it, of like, Clarax and super air and all, we just chuck in all of it, like, there's something under Because it smells like eggs. and we left it for like five weeks. Poured off the samples. Brilliant. Can we recreate it? No. So it's like the, like the, the bit in it should have been off the charts, but it's really, really well balanced. Really, really, really great. And the only thing we did is accident, boil it for too long and, and, and didn't, didn't work. The more dextran, but it come out really good and we've never made it again because it just is impossible to make and it led to no, no, useful research and development for us other than sometimes things happen and there's nothing you can do. Like Sometimes you fall upwards to the level of your incompetence to the point where something great comes out. but yeah, the, the perceived bitterness thing is, is wild. Like I have been down to the point of where I don't even put my Hops in the boil or the well and just dry hop something to see what happens and it's still it doesn't pick up any bitterness in the dry hop. Yeah, it does like it does. it does, and there's nothing you can do so I do I I basically got to the point where there's some things that you don't like Don't know why they don't work. They just don't like I all I talked to Sam from we can be friends and he uses Mosaic and loads of things and it works. I'm just like if I use it, it's fucked. So I just don't I just avoid it Certain hops. I just avoid them And there is some point of i've got so many other tools at my disposal that I can just go ahead and use it But I tried things like dynaboost and hyperboost which should be An analog to like incognito and spectrum but straight away It was like it wasn't Lab bitter, but it was consumer bitter. so I still got some work to do with those, but at the moment, at the moment, it's always a battle. And people who have never drunk alcohol have sent back cans of beer and said, there's a weird, but we do like a West coast, but then there's a weird note and it's like bitter and you're like, yeah, kinda like, Yeah! and also the, there's something really, Interesting with like consumer feedback is is some sometimes it'll be very very detailed but demonstrably incorrect like I bought your Vault city beer and it's incredibly bitter so bitter. I can't drink it and i'm like bitter like bitter like bitter Yeah, bitter like um, like haribo Sour. Yes. Yes. It's very very sour. It's sour beer. It's gone off and it's like No, it's it's a thing people like it Have you ever had sweet and sour sauce? From the Chinese. I don't have foreign food. I don't really like anything that's sour. And it's like, why did you buy the thing that's You know, I continually have I will make like something that's like Like a triple Cereal milk milkshake IPA, oh no Cryo Pop Tart. So we named it after Pop Tarts. A incredibly sweet thing. On the outside cover of the can, it has a Polar bear holding a cube of sugar with a hop in it and on the front it says now with even more sugar the amount of people and I swear to you the amount of people that complained that it was very sweet Was astronomical I'm like, you don't go and buy a, you know, like, Super Scorcher Satan's Hellfire Napalm Strike Triple Nine Hot Sauce and then put it on site and go, I can't have that, it's really hot! Like, what do you expect? so I'm, what I'm curious is we talked about it and In my opinion, the most important part of N. A. production is the sterilization or stabilization, it's probably a better word, of, of the beer. What is your experience with stabilizing these, sugar low alcohol What, they're like, they're like the big things? Yeah, like, I mean, I'm, I mean, we'd got good, yeah, E. coli, E. coli, listeria, E. coli? listeria, botulism, yeah, so, serious stuff. So, it, it, it starts, it starts with, like, relatively boring stuff, like, in the first month or so. Of, of making stuff. It just didn't occur because it wouldn't occur and that's not an incredibly great thing, you know, but I don't think many homebrewers, you know, take for granted. Let me, can I, like, there's like a tiny segue that, that gives rationalization before so I can just, you know, They will explain things later. Alcohol companies are not required to list every single ingredient they use on the label. And as the ABV of the product goes up, the amount that you can put into that product without declaring it is very, very high. Like things like certain types of blended Scotch and stuff have all number of, of, of, adulterants that we are not even allowed to use. Like one of the things they use them for colorants. We're not allowed to use, cause it's a known carcinogen. But I think that the, it's to do with dose. So in a shot of whiskey, it's okay. But in something that's larger, like alcohol, it's not. So one of the early pushbacks I would always get would be, I'm not drinking non alcoholic beer because it's full of chemicals and it's like, what kind of chemicals is like potassium sorbet, metabisulfite. And it's like, Your beer probably has those in too. If it's not been pasteurized, it's not been preserved, it probably has at least some of those and they've probably been used and other things in the process that you don't know about and they are not required to do it. So, but we are required to do it. So that, that's why it is. I have enough of an education in food science related stuff, you know, like, but, but I, you know, not enough to be expert, but, but I knew that pH range would be really, really important for suppressing some of the things. And If 99 percent of brewing is cleaning, 99. 9 percent of non alcoholic brewing is cleaning, And I will say that in my experience, breweries are really fucking lazy a lot of the time because alcohol is a very good preservative. So clean doesn't always mean clean doesn't always mean clean. If we have a quality issue, nine times out of 10, I say, was CIP correctly done? Yes, we do CIP. Was it correctly done? Who was it done by? Who signed it off and who did it? And it's that we had a A huge batch of stuff go wrong and it turns out that CIP was done on the bright tank by The apprentice who had been working for a week on a friday afternoon Where he left early to go to a gig and it's like that is your That's the the quantum for the problem is there. It's it's it's Almost always operator error and I'm not dunking on the operator because the procedure should be so easy and So trained that you don't even think about doing it a shout out to someone I when I watch like a Pete Vick who was at garden He's now in Berlin somewhere doing something but I I would watch him work and he's like a submarine captain because he's done it so many trillions of times that everything is he works clean on everything because That's how he does it. And you see people who have been trained by someone who's been trained by someone who's been trained by someone who's leaving next week who's been trained by someone and it's like, you know, ungloved hands inside of ports taking things off and it's like, you've just cleaned that and then you've contaminated it. It's like, yeah, but I washed my hands earlier and it's like, you know, and stupid things like that. Nine times out of 10. It's about robust standard operating procedure that oversees an extreme level of caution with You know, with, with, with cleaning as well as like good hygienic practices and a clean space. it was like we were, we were discussing the other day. The, the micro and the controls around tattooing are such that if someone comes in with HIV or hepatitis, should you really turn them away for tattooing? Because you should be prepared to treat everyone. Like they're being like they are infected because someone may not know and just because they don't know they've got hepatitis means that's why you act like it so you should always act like the tank could get an infection and that's you know, that's where it all begins now. We're at the point where we are into extreme micro controls. We take the cans that get delivered and then we cut bits out of the membrane and we try and grow to see if there's any inhospitable pathogens, any kind of. wild yeast or anything in the can before it even starts. And I doubt many breweries do that because it would be unnecessary at the breweries. We flash them with UV and they'll rinse with a solution. and I'm gonna say that I can't remember exactly what the salute. It was an acid based solution that we use, and we tried several different types to clean the cans before they went in because only When I visited a brewery and saw all the cans lined up by the forklift waiting to take them in, I thought, hang on, this step is part of the tenth step these cans have been through, you know, and On a, on a, I, I, a completely unrelated call, we don't produce at Fierce anymore, but we obviously still talk, one of, one of the guys from the team run me up and said, have you ever had this from X company that basically they hadn't put the toppers on and the cans were full of rainwater? And he was like, I don't know what to do. They won't take them back because they say the cans are sold to you is not sterile. And that's where it all begins. You know, all of these points of control. So for us now at the level that we're at, we have full drip batch traceability on every single ingredient. Our yeast strains and we make sure everything's noted and it all goes into a centralized database. So if in two years time, we have a problem with one of the cans, we can trace back to where it was likely to have happened. And we make sure that everything goes, everything goes for lab testing before it's canned. When it's canned and after the first week of canning, in terms of preservation methods, I'm now warming up to inline pasteurization with, with, with managed cans. I still prefer tunnel pasteurization, but you have to design your beers to be tunnel pasteurized. I think Velcro is incredibly effective and an underused ingredient in the UK. And I think people were scared of it for a long time. For silly reasons because you're already consuming products that have it in if you ever drink orange juice apple juice If you ever drink a loader ever drink some like wines you've had it like there's no way of telling that you've not had it because it's not present in the product when it's Drunk, so I think it's extremely effective. I have been experimenting with some of the fungal based clean label preservatives which James discovered from a forum on growing like a like mycelium forum for growing Like a culinary mushrooms that people were using German Capri Sun to sterilize things because it has some kind of ingredient in it. That's very good for it. And we tracked down that that was an extract of a mushroom that was being used as a finding agent, and we just couldn't get it to work in our process. We just couldn't get colony counts would be actually looked really great. It's really great finding agent. We just found the colony counts were not really effective of it as as much. but I do hope we That gets worked out sometime because it's it's like an industry game changer in terms of quality if it gets to work. And there's a couple of brands that are working on similar things like, you know, like, shin over by a works and, Langston is a kind of have a few things around those, but a chemical pasteurization is not as effective on its own. but once again, I like to discuss with people that they don't understand preservatives in a, in a. in a realm of bio burden. So it's like, I add this much because it says that's what I add, but it's like, until you do screens of the bio burden of it and make sure that all your yeast has been spun out, settled out, the effectiveness of it is based on the bio burden of what is in there. So if things aren't working, a lot of the time it's because it's too much of a a load to deal with before it even starts its preservation function, it's over, overwhelmed. Like, how effective is a wool? against keeping back a tide. Well, if it's one inch of water, it's probably effective. If it's six inches of water, it's probably effective. If it's 14 foot of water and it's a six foot wall, it's not effective at all. And it won't be effective until the water's rushed over. So, That's it, because stabilisation isn't removing bacteria, preventing it from growing. Like, Which is a very important difference that people And everything, like, the other thing is like, like, I was really pleased, I just had screens back from North, and I'd rung up seven, it's like, I've never really seen this before, but there is, at no point, post, post Bright Tank, is there anything in any of the things, and we still send it off to get pasteurized. There's nothing in it when it starts and nothing in it when it ends, and it's, I'm going to guess the CIPs are very, very good there, and they give the beer enough time and they take samples and send them off to make sure that they've got got the yeast burden down to a manageable level before it travels on to its next stage. And I think it's all about that prevention methodology. The other thing is, You know, it's it's like there are so many problems with like non alcoholic beers like there are so many problems with alcoholic beers. Um, Jordan, so if you had three pieces of advice to give a brewer who's about to brew their first N. A. beer, what would quick because i'm already better than you. No, um Don't don't try and make a really cheap thing because you're Getting told there's gonna be more margin on it and like it doesn't really matter and this is gonna be a real money spinner for you Like don't cheap out Do it spend the time the care the patience and the cost That you would on any other beard that you were making Number two, don't take the piss out of your customer with the name of the beer. Like, I I think it's incredibly bizarre to like, you know, like, I don't want to have a beer that's like, called Cucktoberfest or something, or Designated Dry Vrrr Or, I don't know, like, like Sissy Water or Nanny State or something like that You know, like, I don't want to stand in a bar Where the first thing that happens is I have the piss taken out of me by the brand It's like Like, that's bizarre. Don't do that. You are under no obligation to make any kind of pun on the name that it's low alcohol at all. Ever. Ever. Number three. Did you get all of your other beer styles correct and the best that you've ever done them on your first go? No, then when this goes wrong inevitably because something isn't quite right don't give up don't give up on it Take it on the chin when you get feedback and it's horrible because it kind of sucks It's halfway to being good. You've got another crack at it put it through do it again Just give it like going back to point one. Give it every single chance. You'd give a full ABV beer That's my three. Is that fair? that. They're kind of they're kind of my the one about not I love not You are under no obligation to make a You you what like you it's like like It's so funny cause it's so It's like, oh well, we must play on the fact that it's non alcoholic. It's like, no. Actually, a lot of people who drink non alcoholic, the last thing they want people to know is that they're drinking non Yeah, like Like, they're just Like, I just wanna enjoy a beer like everyone else. Jordan, thank you so much. It's been really, really fun to have you on. So thank you so much for spending your valuable time. And just, you know, once again, Congratulations on everything that's happening with Mash Gang. Truly, all you guys deserve it. I've met most of you individually. You're all fantastic people and the beers are absolutely great. Stupendglow, always one of my, like two of my favorites, non alc so that I can go for. So thank you so much for spending your time on here and I know because you've got such a busy I, I, I do. But it's, it's like, you know, like I said, we, we know each other and go, go back a bit and, you know, I'm, I'm doing my, my projects at the moment where I'm working on like draft and it's obviously, you can imagine it's like, but it's not in a can. How much harder can it be? It's like really hard. It's really, really, really hard. And the, the funny thing is like post acquisition, like only one person left the business during the acquisition and he probably would've left anyway because he's having a baby. You know, and it's like, and even then, he hasn't left yet, and, like, we keep saying, like, he's supposed to go this month, but it's like, I can, like, I can tell that, like, it won't be forever that he goes away and comes back, and it's like, we're still very, like, it's still a shit show, so we're very much in charge of it, you know, you know, but anyway, you know, it's, it's been great talking to you, but, I, I, you know, My team has been trying to get ahold of me for an hour, but this was more enjoyable. So I was doing it. So I'd like to apologize to my team if they're listening to this now, which they probably will do. It was me ignoring you because I was on this podcast. And on that excellent note, thank you so much Jordan, I appreciate you. appreciate you. too. What an incredible personality in the brewing world. it's so great to have Jordan on. And yeah, their beers are doing really well. Their brew has been acquired and doing really well. So it's great to hear. If you enjoyed this podcast, please hit subscribe or follow and make sure that you share it with your brewing friends. from all around the world as I really hope to grow the reach of this podcast and what will be very soon the YouTube channel for the people who are listening to this. We might just be on YouTube now but this episode will be live on YouTube over the next coming months. So if you want to see us in real life, see you Jordan, see me, go check out our YouTube channel on the Modern Brewer Podcast. Thank you so much and I will catch you on the next episode of the Modern Brewer Podcast.