No Life 'Til Lager Episode 17 - Dusan Kwiatkowski x Live Oak

No Life 'Til Lager Episode Seventeen with Dusan Kwiatkowski, head brewer at Live Oak Brewing.

Hosted by failed Master Cicerone® Adam Zuniga. Produced by Jeremy Batchelor.

No Life 'Til Lager theme song by The Rogue Yeast. Episode art by Dusan Kwiatkowski.

Follow @nolifetillager, https://nolifetillager.buzzsprout.com

Keep Austin Beer'd - https://www.liveoakbrewing.com

Copyright 2025 No Life 'Til Lager

Transcript

Welcome Dusan!

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to No Life to Lager, a show about lager beer, the brewers who make it, and we that drink it. This is a conversation between two people over one pint, or at least a good 12-ounce can. My name is Adam Zuniga. I am a failed master Cicero and I'm part of the creative team behind the Six Most Metal Breweries and Beer Like and Dots movie. Today, my guest is Dusan Kwetkowski, head brewer at Live Oak Brewing. That is in Austin, Texas. Hashtag keepAuston Beard. Cheers and welcome, Dusan.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Thank you, Adam. It's good to be on the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Ah, thank you so very much for joining. A couple things before we begin. So, first and foremost, um, condolences. I know you recently lost your dog. Um, they are better than most of us. I still believe beer people are the best people, and brewery dogs are the best dogs. So thank you for being with us during this time. We are grateful for it. Thank you. Um thank you. And uh, you know, I think I drop in maybe every other episode that I'm originally from Texas just to see who bites. And Lee Lord from Narragansett said you should definitely talk to Live Oak. Uh, Tom Beckman from Goldfinger said, most definitely talk to Live Oak, who I know is a collaborator of yours. So uh the name keeps coming up. I left Texas um an angry, angry teenager, and uh, I'm willing to bet today you can help me make my peace with it. But uh we will get to that, my friend. Um, I think

The beer at hand

SPEAKER_00 1:50

before we do, uh, can you just speak to the beers in our hand? So I am drinking live oak, uh the Grodzicka. I think for simplicity, we will say the groats on the can here. It's a 3% Polish style smoked lager. Um I think, okay, this won gold this year. Um, in the international Grodzickiya competition hosted in Poland, followed by um Goldfinger with silver. And it's amazing that two American breweries are winning top medals in Poland for commercially brewed Grodzitchia. So if I have that correct, can you

It's pronounced Grodz

SPEAKER_00 2:30

tell me a little bit more about this beer?

SPEAKER_02 2:32

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's uh, you know, it's always great to win. Um, but yeah, when and I and I've had Tommy's Groats, and it is amazing, and you know, it kind of backs up the the uh the podium when you know the the other ones are super solid as well. Yeah. Um yeah, we uh I think they've been trying to have the uh you know the commercial example, especially uh as part of this competition um more recently because there's more breweries making the style. The uh Brovar Groad Zix team has been preaching groads for the last few years. And um, yeah, we've been making this beer since 2014. We started putting it in cans a few years after we moved to this new facility, 2017 or 18 maybe. Nice. Um, so it's kind of like uh yeah, winning winning that medal for kind of like our 10-year anniversary for making this style of beers is pretty pretty special. And yeah, just we're getting malt from the brewery and we're getting Polish hops, and we're um yeah, we're just doing our best to make it uh as good as as it is over there, as clean and and crispy. And it works, it's kind of a it fits well in hot Texas, sort of being a low gravity, you know, uh in an in an area that smoked meat is you know, smoky flavor is around and having it in a crispy beer fits. So yeah. Um that's I'm not sure. You know, I'd sometimes I'm wanting to stake out some of these stores that like we make 20 barrels every every two months, maybe two and a half, three months, depending on the time of year, but it's a pretty steady pace. There's some Groads drinkers out there that are making it so that we can keep, you know, producing it.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

So that you've been doing it. Yeah. Um, that you've been brewing it year-round as part of your core lineup before it was cool to do so. If it is now cool to do so, I mean that is really compelling. Um, that you're racking up awards for it, even more so. Um, I've never had a Grozicchio before. I love it that it's come up multiple times on this show with with you and with Tom at Goldfinger. To me, there's there's nothing really soft or imperceptible about the smoke in this beer. It's pronounced. I mean, it smells like a campfire. It's crying out for, like you said, being paired with barbecue or roasted meat. Um, it's absolutely delicious. And at 3% alcohol, it's infinitely drinkable. When you say that you get the the malt from the from the brewery there, are you so I know you're on like a good 20 plus acres of uh of oak grove. Are you actually smoking the malt yourself or where are you sourcing it from?

SPEAKER_02 5:39

Um we yeah, so we um there was since the early days, I guess the first half of our Groads' tenure. We were uh Weirman was making the Oak Smoke Wheat Mall, uh, which made it possible for us to make the style. Um we had some friends in um chalk brewing in Krebs, Oklahoma, that they had they had basically kind of lobbied Weyerman to, I think, add the add the product, and they were responsible for actually bringing the yeast from the Polish homebrewers back to the states after when the commercial brewery closed, and just like the homebrewers were basically just caretakers of this clean yeast for this beer. And and then in 20, I think it was like 2016 maybe there was a craft brewers conference in Nashville, and we brought some cans of Groads. I guess that was the first year we canned it, uh, and then handed it off to a friend who gave it to uh a Polish beer blogger who uh and then the Brovar Grodzitsk team saw the blog and they reached out to us, and then we went to the brewery in, or no, that was 2017, and we went the next year in 2018, because the brewery had been reconditioned and reopened in 2016, and we didn't realize it until they reached out to us, and so we went over there and did a collaboration, and then we also drove south across the border to the Czech Republic where they had been all the pieces of the original brewery were refurbished except for the malt house and a sort of a different can of worms malting. Uh, it was a little easier for them to just get started again by contracting it with a maltster in the Czech Republic that had a smoke box on the kiln still, old school style. So they were able to get oak wood and smoke uh the wheat malt. It's uh entirely wheat malt, and which is not a part not a malt that they would normally smoke or kiln at all. Um, so they would do uh a truckload, 25 tons once or twice a year, depending. And the brewery would take 20 tons, 21 or something, and we would buy a couple tons um every you know year, year and a half or something to make this this style. So the the monster in Rumtal, they smoke it and kill in the wheat, and we get it usually, yeah, it's not quite every two years, a little more freak slightly more frequently in that, but it keeps us stocked to have this you know the the um uh one of the um three founders of the Brovar Groot Cisc is a uh Shiszek is a uh has a background in malting, brewing science specifically in malting. So he worked with the malster to kind of recreate this wheat, smoked wheat malt, as you know, as best they could. And uh and then at the same trip in 2018, we also met a Polish hop grower, and it took a couple years for domestic distribution, but we can get the original hop for this beer, the Novo Tomiski or Tomisky, which is just like a novel you know, middle fruit adjacent uh Polish land race hop that was almost extinct, and uh Pavel, the hop grower, was able to um get it back from the seed bank and start growing it up, and it took him a couple years, but uh he keeps it keeps us stocked with Tomiski hops, and that's what we use just for this beer. Occasionally we'll make like a Polish pills, maybe a couple times a year, and we'll use some Tomisky or some other Polish hops. So we've got always one and sometimes two Polish beers on tap.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

I guess just one more question to plug your brain about this. Historically, uh Grodzicki has a style. Can it be uh an ale or a lager? Or has it always been lager yeast, always been lagered over time?

SPEAKER_02 10:28

It it has been in at the Brov Grodzicsk is a ale, a very clean, one of the cleanest fermitting ale yeasts I've ever tasted. Um and for us, we used this yeast uh for uh many years, but we were just brewing the beer too infrequently to kind of like sustain it. We're just like buying pitches and using it, and so we we kind of there was an in-between where we were doing uh half of the fermentation with the ale and a little bit of the lager, and then we just kind of switched to brewing lager after kind of spending time with the Brovar Gridzits guys, and just you know, it's like it's about the malt and the hops, and the beer is intended to be very clean, and we can achieve that with our lager yeast, and so for us, it's a lager, and they gave us the double thumbs up, so yeah, we're doing that. It just kind of fits for us, it makes it doable and like is the best that we can make it if we use the lager yeast.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

So, all right, Dusan,

Know your brewer

SPEAKER_00 11:50

before we get up to present day, we always like to talk about our brewers, get to know them as people, get to know them as humans on this show. Um, can you tell me a little bit about life before beer, if there was such a thing? Uh just some other jobs you've had, some other experiences in life, and ultimately what turned uh this passion into professional brewing for you?

SPEAKER_02 12:11

Mm-hmm. Um, I've been working at Live Oak for 18 years. Um before that, I was working for a small ad uh company in uh in town doing some graphic design and illustration. Um my uh I have a fine arts degree, and I've uh always like to draw and doodle, and I still do some stuff, some projects and and stuff on the side. Some I do some merch for live oak and some labels for our tapermone beers, sort of the keeper of some of our some of our branding, our like base original branding. Um is a designer named David Campa made a and it's been the same for 28 years. Um and uh yeah, so I before that, or to get I was I was working for this this company looking for a full-time job, I was working part-time after graduating, and I had been homebrewing with some buddies in college, um making some, you know, very mediocre porters and stouts and and stuff like that. And uh yeah, I just started, I was just like, okay, I need to get a full-time job, so maybe I'll see if I can at least get a another part-time job or if I can make it work and get something full-time. So I I bothered uh Swifty, Brian Peters, over at Uncle Billy's uh a brew pub that's now closed, but he actually founded Live Oak with Chip in '97.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 14:09

And he gave me um the number for uh a guy who was next door to Live Oak, who's making root beer, and was like, I know this guy needs some help. He's making like lots of root beer. The root beer business is booming. And I was like, well, if I weren't making root beer, maybe I can get a job next door at the beer beer.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

And uh and and Live Oak had gotten on my radar. I mean, I was gonna, you know, I would take what I could get, but Live Oak was on my radar because after one of my studios and in college, I had a buddy who worked at the at the bar. Anders worked at the cactus cafe across campus, and so we would finish our studio, and he would be on the employed side, and I would just be on the consuming side drinking pills was on tap to check pills. Live oak's first beer. And I got hooked on pills, so I was like, okay, making root beer and maybe getting a job at Live Oak seemed like a good idea. And uh the root beer guy was like, actually, I'm kind of good doing it myself, but I think Live Oak actually needs somebody to wash kegs, so I talked to Steve Anderson, who was the head brewer at the time, the first brew pub brewer in Austin, uh at Waterloo Brewing, which closed 2001, I think. Um I guess I had like a 10-year run. Um, and Steve hired me. I think Chip, who owns Live Oak, he didn't think we he needed another uh brewer, but uh Steve hired me. Uh yeah, and I started washing kegs and I still work here.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah. Hell yeah. I mean, so what a history in Texas beer, and I want to talk more about that. And I I love that some part of your story are roots are in root beer, leading ultimately to beer beer. That's a nice touch.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

And uh I mean, I never ended up actually doing any of the root beer stuff, but yeah, whatever, you know, whatever you gotta do.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Whatever you gotta do. And above all, I mean, um, to all the creative people kind of working in beer that found a sense of like job security and employment in the beer industry that still allowed them to explore creative endeavors. You know, it keeps coming up on this show. Um, how many musicians have turned brewers, um, and that you have a background in creative art and design. And your doodle, incidentally, um, I can't wait to unleash it on the world with this episode because it's it's truly one of the best to date. Um, but you know, here's to all the creative people in beer. And uh, whenever I put the word out to a brewery, like if you can make a doodle for this episode, grateful for it. I just know, you know, if not the brewer themselves, there's gonna be someone um behind the bar or front of house uh that's an artist behind the scenes that can do like a back of the napkin sketch or on the back of a bar coaster, and it's just gonna be extraordinary. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

Yeah, but I mean, yeah, the doodle is like, okay. I mean, I I was like, oh, I'll just do this real quick, you know, weeks ago. And then, of course, it's like in true uh art school procrastination. I was like, shit, I gotta do this this morning.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

So Yeah, yeah. Um sometimes that's the best way. So yeah, no.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

It's a it's a sort of a procrastination can be a pretty helpful tool.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Yeah, yeah. Procrastination can be potent. And I'll say again, here's to all the creative people in beer out there. Um and getting to

Know your brewery

SPEAKER_00 18:00

know Live Oak, because you mentioned um some of the some of the well, the name Chip Mickelroy came up a couple times, and I know Live Oak has been around since 1997. Um can you just tell us uh a little bit more about Chip and the founding of the brewery, the vision and the mission originally behind it? Um I know you're 28 years young as of this April, basically. So happy 28 years and running um to you to chip to live oak. Again, that is a history in beer and a history in Texas beer. So just tell us a little bit more about Chip and the brewery itself.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

Yeah, it's I we have we have a few shirts that are gonna, you know, that say like since 97, and there's still I mean, Austin's grown a lot in the last couple years, and sometimes people see the 97, they're like, since 1997? Yeah. It's like, yeah. Um yeah, so Chip and uh Brian found founded Live Oak and on basically on Czech pills, they both wanted uh some European style, full malt flavor, full like bitter, you know, just infinitely drinkable Czech pale lager. So um they brewed they brewed the pills, and I think the first beer, it was pills and pale ale. You know, I mean it's like Sierra Nevada Paleo was like booming, you know, it was a new thing in craft, or you know, I mean not brand new in '97, but proven proven concept, and uh and then a meritin, which which got renamed and reduced, and it was became like an amber lager, and then the fest the Oktoberfest was kind of became the Meriton and it became seasonal. Um but the brewery was founded on Czech pills, and a couple years in we made Hefeweizen, and that kind of didn't do well for a while, but enough to keep doing it, and then it eventually grew. Um we make a lot of Hefeweizen, and uh, but it was kind of like Hefeweizen check pills and then the Amber Lager, Vienna style amber lager, those are the three kind of main beers for a long time. There was Liberation IPA, a pretty kind of Cascade Columbus classic American IPA, bitter, um a little bit of crystal malt that had a long standing run. Um kind of until we moved over here and then we kind of just focused more on the hefe bison and the laggers.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:45

Um yeah, it's uh yeah, it's been yeah, it's been a while.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

So um you move so you're now like directly, you're like due southeast of downtown Austin, correct?

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Um yeah, we're like across 71 from the airport. The airplanes fly over the the property.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Nice. I'm sure we'll hear it at some point.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

Um but if you're outside, yeah, then you have to pause your conversation.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Yeah. So 20 plus acres um of Oak Grove uh along the Colorado River. And where was the brewery originally founded? Where did Chip set up shop in 97?

SPEAKER_02 21:26

Uh originally it was on East Fifth Street, kind of an old kind of like you know, one-story industrial side of uh East Austin. The Cat Metro, Capitol Metro, like bus trans transpose system, uh station, like maintenance station was over there, and not too much else. A couple shops, like some storage warehouse stuff, and and now it's like right in the middle of uh town, sort of it feels like over there. But yeah, we we just moved a little bit east. And south across the river, but um yeah, big I mean, we're you have to get on the highway to get over here, but yeah, we have 22 acres and tons of huge live oaks and big beer gardens. I mean, we didn't even have a tap room at the old brewery and like Google when like Google Maps was a thing. Uh you know, we were listed as brew pub and we'd be like brewing on Friday and like you know, mucking out and rolling tubs out, and people would be like walking into the brewery and like walking up to the kegbox and we're like drenched in sweat and we're like sorry, we're closed, or or we were like, we're not even open, like we don't open to the public. We only did like tours every other weekend or something at the at that time, and we'd have to like turn people away. Sometimes they like walked over here from the bus stop, and but sometimes we'd be slow and we'd be like, all right, try the beer. So it was a bit of a roll of the dice, but we went from not having any kind of public facing uh anything to a tap room in 2015, and then yeah, then we put in a disc golf course, and then we were the last state to get the ability to sell as a production brewery to sell beer to go. So we started making kind of more different one-off batches for the tap room and being able to sell them to go. And so, yeah, the tap room business is a bigger piece of the brewery than it used to be.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Yeah. Was Texas truly the last state to grant the law and get the right to do that? Um, so we have to talk about Texas for a moment. Maybe you

Take us to TX

SPEAKER_00 23:50

can take me back because it's it's a big player in this story. But um, you know, I mean it, I say, you know, I left an angry teenager kind of the end of the 90s, early 2000s. Um, Austin was always considered the coolest part of Texas. So the understanding was I grew up in Dallas Fort Worth. Um, so if you're gonna leave, but not leave the state, go to Austin. Uh, I ended up leaving the state altogether. But maybe I wouldn't have, and maybe I wouldn't have been quite so angry if I'd known about the craft beer scene at the time, which I wasn't aware of. Um, and it's interesting because from there I've lived all over. Um I discovered beer in Germany, studying abroad in college, and it actually was Hefeweizing. That was kind of that first moment, that first epiphany of I've never had this before, I've never had a beer before. It's a completely different experience. Um but all that said, can you tell me a little bit about how the Texas beer scene has grown in recent years? Um, and how Austin in particular might have changed. Um, I live now outside of uh San Francisco, which is kind of ground zero for tech culture, kind of taking over a place that was once considered, of course, cool and artistic and bohemian. And then, you know, it kind of drives up costs and at the same time drives that out. And I know, you know, Austin is seeing an influx of uh tech companies and culture as well. But maybe it's still kind of true to what I remember. So tell me a little bit about the Texas beer scene and specifically Austin in recent years. How has it grown? How has it changed?

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 25:25

Um I think the biggest I think the biggest when the let's see, it was 20, it was around that same the the in 2019 when we were able to sell beer like we could sell pints of beer, but then when we were able to sell like beer to takeaway, it was also like a bit of a a little more of a homogenizing of the two licenses in Texas. There's like the manufacturing production brewery and the brew pub. And then brew pubs were also able to do more distribution, and so it got like made and enabled brew pubs to be able to, you know, get some growth volume with uh you know bars and restaurants around town. So there's a lot of there's a there's a lot of in the last like 10 years, a lot of capacity for the for the production breweries, um, a lot of new big breweries that can make 20,000 barrels a year, um, and also a lot of pubs and a lot of pubs in you know kind of in the outskirts in the in in neighborhoods. Um and some are just you know, they don't do distro, they just do on-site, you know, on premise only. Um but I mean, yeah, it's grown, it's grown a lot, and I think one thing that Texas has always, or Austin has always been, Greater Austin, we've always had a lot of a lot of lager, a lot of pills. Um our local beer rag. Um they're sort of partially retired. They do like one annual event now, and the rag isn't anymore, but Austin Beer Guide. I think we just had last month our 11th lager jam event, which is um there's beer that comes from most of the state. I think right now it's like kind of limited to the faucet count because there's like you know, there's so many breweries. Um, not all of them are represented, but it's 30 lagers from, you know, I guess it's a little bit of an invitational, but uh celebration of lager beer, and we've done 11 um and we missed a year, so it's yeah, that's been a long-standing, we've always in the last you know 10, 15 years really embraced lager. I know it's like spreading elsewhere pretty rapidly as well, but um yeah, we've always been

Lager City, Pils Capitol

SPEAKER_02 28:10

Lager City, Pilsner Capital, USA, some say I I love it.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

And of course, I I mean it's it is the right beer um for the weather in Texas, but even more than that. Like every time I go back now, I kind of realize I couldn't be from anywhere else. And um beer drinking, craft breweries, beer bars, brew pubs seem more and more present and more and more visible um whenever I do visit Texas, whereas they might be declining in other parts of the country, and that it was part of um, you know, that that original Czech style pills was part of Live Oak from the very beginning, speaks volumes uh to Chip's vision, and that you are both the safeguard um that you safeguard both the the brand and the beer at this point as head brewer and uh kind of graphic designer and in-house artist. Um it's really, really special. And uh just talking about Austin.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

It's nice to have a little bit of the a little bit of both. I also a little bit, you know, maybe four hours every other week in the growing season, I get to mow the disc golf course. And so there's yeah, keeping it keep keeps it interesting.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

And I I want to talk about disc golf as well. Um, but it's just the city of Austin itself. Like you say, keep Austin beard, which it sounds like you're doing. And as far as like keeping Austin keeping Austin weird, does it still have um kind of that that funk and that flavor and that character that it always did? You know, I spent a lot of time kind of growing up around the university setting there. Um what do you think? Like, is Austin still Austin at the end of the day now?

SPEAKER_02 29:58

Uh I mean, the other still it's it's maybe been a little bit, you know, just boomed and and and diluted maybe slightly with um yeah, just like the heavy dose of growth. But there's still some really weird little pockets that if you know where to look, it's yeah, you can still find it. But I you know the average of weird is it could be weirder, but it's still, you know, people are still people are still trying. It's uh I feel like I've made it an e a point to try to do some, you know, weirder, weirder stuff. Um you know, whenever I go out.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Yeah, I mean, Texas is a big state. Austin is a is a big city in its own way, and um I guess, you know, not to belabor the point, but I just feel like there's a little bit of everyone there doing a little bit of everything there, and I really appreciate that in retrospect. Um so here's the live oak for keeping Austin beard and weird. Um I want to talk a

Live Oak Live

SPEAKER_00 31:10

little bit more about the brewery, um, what makes you different, but uh also maybe a little bit about kind of what has kept you rolling along this track and maybe doing the same thing to some degree since '97. Because when I look at your social media, like when I look at your website, there's references to old world style brewing from Central Europe, uh to time-consuming mash. I mean, I guess that means decoction mashing, um, open fermentation, secondary lagering, extended cold conditioning. I mean, so these are all things now that we're starting to see as like the norm in the craft beer industry, um, but it definitely was not in 1997. And in addition to that, I mean, so your core beers, all of which you mentioned, the Czech pills, um, the Hefeweizen, the Groats. Um, I think you also have a Vienna Lager year-round. These are all like five, two, and under. These are all low alcohol beers, um, mostly lager beers, and that you have that as a core year-round lineup, um, and that you also package them all in 12-ounce cans, which really feel like special and unique again after so many years of 16-ounce IPA being forced down for. And for that matter, I mean, I don't know if you even right now, if I look, maybe there's a cold cult IPA on tap, but it doesn't seem like you regularly have IPAs on the board anymore. Um these are all things that I think make live oak uh like pronouncedly different since '97. Um, but you've continued to do that um for what, 28 years and running is remarkable. Um so just tell me a little bit more about that. Like what makes you different from the outset, and then why is it that you continue to stay true to these principles um year over year for almost three decades now?

SPEAKER_02 32:59

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, one thing that since the beginning and then when we moved, you know, the big the move over to the new facility was kind of a big, you know, milestone, we'd say like 1.0, 2.0. Um the thing that stayed the same was our fermentation and conditioning remained uh horizontal, which is probably the biggest difference for us. Uh yeah. Um and it works well for Hefeweitzen and Lager, um, which it's based in the the low hydrostatic pressure. Um for Hefeweizen, it's also like the shallow bed. So with like the vigorous ale fermentation that doesn't like scrub a lot of the aromatics out of the beer, we're able to retain them and like some of the fermentation byproducts like sulfur, they can just kind of work them work themselves out. But we were for for Hefeweizen specifically, it's hard to reuse that yeast over and over again, but with the uh you know fermentation luxury that it has pressure-wise, and uh we're able to get a lot of generations out of our Hefeweizen yeast, so we basically do you know 10-ish plus or minus uh alongside the lagers, which is also about 10-ish, um, sometimes more generations, and and then and the hydrostatic pressure with the lager fermentation, and then the really uh generous surface area for the bottom fermenting uh yeast is yeah, it works really good, really happy, really clean fermentations that just accentuate the malt and hop. So our um yeah, our our our equipment, our our fermentation and conditioning uh dimensions definitely a big factor. And for our production schedule with the horizontal tanks, they're you know they're uh they're they're we have like one that's like pretty open, but they're kind of like open simulating. They're a lot of they're all yeah, all the fermenters are old dairy tanks that don't hold pressure. So we we ferment and then we when the beer is done, we you know turn the temperature down a little bit, and then a day or two or three later we'll move it to a conditioning tank and we harvest manually with a food grade hoe into some brinks uh that we weigh and then we pitch usually the next day um to just keep the life cycle uh as ideal for the yeast as possible, and that also helps our uh you know long standing ability to get lots of happy generations out of our yeast. Nice um consequently,

Horizontal vs Conical

SPEAKER_02 36:10

hoppy cellar beer is very difficult with all the tanks we have. We don't have any conicles. Um of our tanks have a varying ability of holding some pressure, so we do make a little bit of IPA. Um, you know, we're empowered with the uh cold IPA movement, so we use our lager yeast to make IPA.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 36:34

And uh I don't know, that used to be a talking point, but we kind of uh it's so hoppy. It I don't know. I mean it's the big it it it's much cleaner uh fermentation character than your you know than the IPA is probably the biggest difference. And I don't know, I it's hard to s it's hard to say how noticeable it is. Um because that's mostly what I drink at this point, but we keep it on tap. We we tried sending some out to the distro. Uh but yeah, I don't know. There's so many IPAs here, and there's so many like really good ones that's like maybe it has a little bit of a niche with how clean it is, and it's a little lower gravity too. Ours is like less than six, so maybe doesn't fit the bill for what a lot of what people are looking for with IPAs, but we keep some version of one on tap. Usually it it it's we kind of started steering towards an even lower gravity IPA called death putting death putt ale. It's like a disc golf term, it's the only kind of like sexy disc golf term or golf term or whatever. And uh we keep that a couple times a year brewed here, and then we have like a seasonal celebration inspired uh Krampus Punishment Ale. It's a cold IPA that we'll we just brewed this week that'll be for the Krampus knocked parties that we have in the tap room. So they're mostly just for yeah, mostly just for the tap room, the cold IPAs. But they are fun to make, but they're hard with the horizontal tank. So yeah, that's what we're kind of sticking to for now. Um and we we for most part we usually keep two lager yeasts on on hand, the check pills for the pills, and the pre-war pills and the big bark amber lager and the German pills and all basically all the taproom beers, the cold APAs has our 3470 German lager yeast.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

Nice. So, not necessarily by um necessity, but by choice and by design. So you're saying first and foremost, like horizontal lagering, it's not just that it looks cool, it's not just that the tanks are nostalgic. Um, less hydrostatic pressure on the beer from the top down in those tanks, uh, more kind of uh surface contact with the yeast over time, and uh easier to kind of reuse and recycle the yeast for that matter, all ultimately amounts to better beer, cleaner beer, um, more pronounced flavor, more pronounced aroma, and just more clarity kind of overall.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

Um maximizing yeast luxury.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

Yeah, yeah.

Spuds and Grits

SPEAKER_00 39:30

That's amazing. And um, in addition to the the core, I mean, and there's just a variety of kind of rotating lagers year-round that are really creative, right? I mean, I know you do an Oktoberfest, um, a smokedtoberfest. I'm assuming that's a smoked Meritsen side by side with your with your uh year-round celebratory Meritzen, uh, a light pilsner, uh Spudweiser. Um, I don't know if those graphics are you're doing, but I absolutely love the potato mascot for Spudweiser. And I've never had a beer, um, never had a beer with potatoes as a source of uh fermented uh sugar for that matter.

SPEAKER_02 40:09

So yeah, I fascinated. Yeah, no, it's it's uh yeah, the mascot for that one is great. We've done that one basically every year for the last several years.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

I love it. Um Pico pills, pre-war pills with corn grits, I mean just a series of both year-round and rotational lagers that are really creative and really expressive, but also firmly rooted in tradition, like going back to your growths here, which I'm drinking. And again, another shout out to uh to Tom at Goldfinger for also kind of resurrecting this style. But when you talk about working with um heirloom hop varieties, and you have uh, I think you

Polish Hops

SPEAKER_00 40:50

work closely with a Polish hop farmer kind of uh preserving these varieties. Um maybe it's called Polish hop farms. Can you just tell me a little bit about, you know, is that your background and heritage? Is it chips? Just what is the connection to Polish beer, Polish beer styles, and to Polish hops?

SPEAKER_02 41:09

Um the I think just with like making the Central European beer styles, Bienalager, Czech Pills, Hepovitzen, like the Groads is like the only kind of indigenous Polish um beer style. So it's like, well, it's kind of in our it's kind of in our wheelhouse. And since we're kind of doing the old world, you know, like smoked beer is sort of almost uh, you know, also nearly extinct. I mean, less maybe less now, but at a pretty l it was at maybe one point, maybe a Alaska and and the two breweries in Bomberg were making smoke beer. I mean, I don't know, they're you know, fifty twenty years ago maybe there was barely anybody, but now there's a lot more, but it's kind of fits into our wheelhouse and um yeah, it's uh yeah, the po I mean the Polish I'm of Polish descent, so I was you know didn't I just bar needed barely a nudge to add that one to the lineup. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:20

My um my wife is Polish and I talked about this with uh Tom at Goldfinger as well, but therefore I am surrogate Polish and strive to be a little bit more Polish every day. Um but I love it again that you all are um preserving this style and introducing it to new craft beer drinkers in Texas and beyond. Uh preserving Polish heirloom hop varieties, like uh I don't know if I'm saying this correctly, but Tomitzki and Isabella and using these, whether it's for the groats or for the pico pills, you know, these are now hop flavors that drinkers are not um as accustomed to. You know, they have a really firm bitterness, but subtle aroma and flavor otherwise, not kind of the beat you over the head American hop style, obviously. Um so you know, it's I mean, and then we're kind of and then we have the the pre-war pills.

SPEAKER_02 43:10

That one's like, you know. They're the uh the former brew master for Molson Cors, Greg Casey, came out with these like really awesome papers and I think a book and maybe another part of the book, um just talking about American lager beer history at the end of the the like mid-1800s, early 1900s, and the pre-war pills that we've been making is like just rooted in that uh German brewing. It's from a recipe from like 1912 that we got from a lost loggers, uh logger society in in DC that one of the members or grandparents worked great grandparent worked at a couple breweries around. That time in 1900s, early 1900s and 1912, or maybe slightly before that. And using this, it was, I think we kind of got the credit for it, but it was German brewers that helped us get the adjunct brewing uh up to speed, which you know just took off uh uh corn and barley, you know, shelf stable, clear, bright, crispy beer just was I think there was they were doing it maybe five years and then over in Germany and then um and using other different types of adjunct, but corn, and I think they were using a lot of rice and and maybe some potatoes and beet beet sugars and and and stuff, but corn was super available over here. So that's why that's why we use it, and we got the credit for for coming up with that, but you know, we were like celebrating that American style uh of beer, and so we have like the pre-war, we call it an early American Pilsner, and it's 40% corn grits, yeah. And we do a cereal mash, and then we just have one the one mash vessel, so we like cool down the corn grits, and then we do our step mash. And so it's like a it's like a little over four hours just to do a um mash for that beer, but it's uh yeah, it's a crispy, it's it's five percent, but it I mean you can drink it in like yeah quickly. It's a good yeah. So we're kind of balancing out the European styles with our our own early American style of beer, which is you know global now.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

Yeah. And thank you for sharing all of these. And a recurring theme on the show, maybe with every brewery that's been on here, you know, whether we're talking about corn, whether we're talking about rice, is that adjuncts don't necessarily have um potatoes, beets. I've never had uh I've never had beer fermented from beet sugar. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 46:08

Uh I haven't either, I don't think. I guess it's in the textbook, so I know they're doing it.

SPEAKER_00 46:16

Just the point is, you know, that adjuncts don't necessarily have to be a sign of uh of weak beer, of shitty beer, of diluted beer. Yeah, no. Yeah, when used properly and when used flavorfully, they can be really compelling. And again, really handsome in the glass, as you say. So uh here's to all of your year-round and rotating loggers, be they from potatoes, be they from Polish heirloom hops, be they from corn grits. I love it. Um, and

Made in the shade

SPEAKER_00 46:45

one other thing we just have to say, just talking about how different live oak is, I mean, is your setting, is your location, uh the oak grove along the Colorado River. Um I wish I could say I've been and I will visit someday. I have been to Jester King uh in Austin, which also uh sits on just like a beautiful kind of hillside landscape, country. And um, it made me realize how important just sense of place is to a brewery. And you clearly, you clearly

Disc Golf

SPEAKER_00 47:15

have that at Live Oak. And you mentioned disc golf. It allows you to have an 18 basket course, uh, which I think was designed by you, DeSan. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 47:24

So yeah, me and uh our brewer facility uh guy who we've worked together for over 10 years, Sam. Uh yeah, we put it in in 2017. It was like nine holes. We sold one of our old, it was like our old hot liquor tank to our old spent grain farmer and uh bought nine baskets. And then 2018, nine 2019, we got a couple more baskets, and then we bought the re remainder and we put in teapads January of 24 and we hosted the uh US the US women's disc golf championship, uh, which is one of the one of the four or five majors tournaments that we hosted the uh the juniors and masters uh divisions out here, which is a big deal to see like just a major being played on our course. So yeah, it's like uh if anybody's played disc golf here in town, it's similar to Zilker. It's like shorter, not super easy, some challenging holes, but good for beer drinking. It's not a it's not a beat you up uh super long, off in the brambles sort of course. It's it's fun.

SPEAKER_00 48:52

I know that so I know your course is consistently ranked among the among the best of whoever is ranking disc golf. And for anyone who hasn't played it, like myself, I mean it seems like to be successful in beer, you have to be successful in some form of golf, whether it's traditional golf or disc golf or some golf. So maybe can you just give us a quick breakdown what it is, how it's played, and why does it go so well with beer drinking?

SPEAKER_02 49:19

Uh it's the rules are uh really similar to golf. You're just trying to get the item into the basket in the least amount of strokes possible. Um one of the keys is just being able to uh enjoy the flight of the disc, any any kind of frisbee player. I mean it's you kind of get hooked if that's you know, it's just like it kind of clicks. Um and but you have instead of clubs, you have discs that fly slightly differently. And uh just for beer drinking, it's just like even if you're not doing great, it's still like a nice walk in the park. If if you know if the scenery's nice and we have a lot of big oak trees and shady spots, and you know, even if you're not doing well at the game, you're still out walking around in in nature. In the courses, they just take they don't take as much maintenance as like larger ball golf courses. They don't have to have the grass be particularly you know well manicured. Um so it's it's just kind of a low impact course install sport. So um yeah, it fits for us. I mean, we had to, you know, we had to mow this, we had to mow the lawn anyway, so yeah. Might as well have a fun activity that we can do. And we we also like we do put lights on the baskets and we have glow plastic disc golf discs and have tournaments at night when we're either trying to beat the heat in the summer or when the daylight changes in the winter time and you get off work and you can't play golf because it's dark.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:15

You just get your UV light and charge up your discs, and then it's just you know, throwing frisbee in the park.

SPEAKER_00 51:20

And that's that's what Noctoberfest is. So I've seen this is kind of the this is also the

Nachtoberfest

SPEAKER_00 51:25

this is the backdrop of a lot of the brewery festivals you host and some of the events you have. Um, like Oktoberfest, uh like Nocktoberfest. I think you have a Rauchfest, a Rauchbierfest, you know, and disc golf is an extension of that or like a direct component of it, right? So an Oktoberfest is the idea is everyone's going out and drinking your Oktoberfest and playing like disc golf with uh glow in the dark frisbees essentially at night, right? Which sounds like a good time to me.

SPEAKER_02 51:54

Yep. Yep. I mean, it's just you know, normal fest party during the day, and then it's just something that we can do with what we have doing low disc at night. So yeah, we have it's like that was part of like the knocked golf series, which is just like our night golf, you know. Um, we're starting to do more of those. Like about once a month, we do one. We're doing one for the Krampus Punishment Ale release. And uh yeah, we'll probably do one for the Route Fest too. But awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:24

Yeah. Exceptional. Um, and I think one last question before we just move on to a series that I like to ask everyone before the end of each episode. But uh, because you are uh kind of the steward of the brand at Live Oak, it's worth asking. Um

Dream of the 90's

SPEAKER_00 52:40

I I do see a lot of 90s throwback in your style, in the branding, in the beers, in the social media. Um, you know, I mean, references, of course, to like King of the Hill and Beavis and Butthead, because Mike Judge had lived and worked and was inspired by Texas. And um, you know, you make a Weisenbach called Primus, you know, like so. I'm guessing this is no accident. And, you know, maybe everyone thinks that the decade that they grew up in or became aware in was the greatest decade. And in my case, that is that is definitely the 90s, and I've longed for it ever since in retrospect. But can you just tell me a little bit about that? You know, does it influence your style, your design, um, or the 90s an inspiration for the brewery since you were founded, since 1997?

SPEAKER_02 53:33

Um, yeah, I mean, I think so. Yeah, the 90s are sweet. I mean, Mike uh he's does our he's in charge of our social media and he's 40 something. He's you know, he's a a child of the 90s. Um, so he's I mean, it definitely comes across for him too and me. And yeah, the breweries from the 90s and the 90s are back, and um yeah, the 90s are the 90s were fun.

SPEAKER_00 54:03

Yeah, the 90s were fun, which I don't know if we can really say about any of the 2000s to date. So yeah, they're back. Maybe they never went away. Um, but it's part of what makes live oak both like um kind of relevant and topical in the moment now, but also so kind of nostalgic and appealing for me, and I'm guessing for many of your fans and loyalists and drinkers there in Austin. So yeah, yeah. Dream of the night.

SPEAKER_02 54:30

Maybe we should double down on that more, uh, you know, since we're old.

SPEAKER_00 54:36

Yeah, yeah. Forever young, but we're all growing older. Um well, let's do this. Uh, I just want to take a moment for a few more questions, uh, just that I like to ask everyone. And you know, everyone kind of has a different perspective just based on where they're based, where the brewery is. Um

Near Beer

SPEAKER_00 54:54

beer, you know, you mentioned uh just it's only recently that Texas was able to uh you could do like to-go beer directly from the the tap room there. So just the rise in temperance, the rise in volume around sobriety. Um, are you seeing that? Are you feeling that? Do you offer an NA alternative at Live Oak? Um, just your feelings about non-alcoholic beer and non-al non-alcoholic everything at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 55:21

Um yeah, I'd be a bit, we'd have to do some, you know, uh process upgrades, I think, to do it um well ourselves. We just kind of hit the low, you know, the groads. We have a light beer that's on tap right now that's like two eight. Yeah. Slightly less. Um but you know, getting too getting too low or NA, I don't know. Yeah, we're not quite equipped to make it uh safe and tasty beer. But uh yeah, it's I mean, dry January is brutal.

SPEAKER_01 56:00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:01

Um everyone else is there's some good ones though. I mean you know, there's some some days or weeks or multiple day stretches where I'm drinking a lot of beer, you know, socially or just for work, or um, I'll keep sometimes some bottles of NA beer in the fridge just, you know, because I'm getting older. But uh I mean the Heineken is the best. I mean it's mostly like the macro beer that's the best, but some of the some of the craft ones that are doing like the membrane fril filtration where it it is beer and they're just taking out the alcohol and they're not it's not a too like arrested fermentation sweet multi-flavor. Um when it's yeah, when it's like dry and um yeah, there's some good ones. But I I I kind of just tend to drink the macro ones occasionally, but um I I do really like if I if I come across one, I am very interested in trying it just for you know sensory just yeah, just to to try it. Very very remain a very food flavor motivated person. So trying, I'm even I've even been doing like some for a while, three years, I was like, ah, I'm not judging beer, I don't want to get stuck drinking like crappy beers, but I tried doing some judging with our Texas Crap Brewers Cup this year, and it was actually really fun. And yeah, you know, there's some that aren't great, but it's the flavor adventure of of judging it is fun. So I'm gonna try to do do more of that. But you know, I'm interested in trying NA beers. But yeah, there are more for how many there are, I still kind of I'm failing to try as many as there are, but I do love there's some good ones.

SPEAKER_00 57:55

Yeah. I I do love and really appreciate that that Live Oak is approaching this and offering their own alternative um of 3% and below um beers available, um, like the growths, like the light beer you have. Um yeah, it uh they kind of go hand in hand with the rise in uh dialogue around non-alcoholic beer. You know, people are talking more about low and next to no alcohol. So the fact that you can produce uh a near beer at 3% um and below, you know, still with pronounced character like the growths I'm drinking, like to me really scratches that itch when you want more but less, like at the same time. Um so yeah, great, great minds. And um, I love that you think of beers in terms of kind of both food pairing and culinary flavors. Um this isn't related, but whenever I have maybe it is related, like whenever I've done beer judging or like a BJCP competition, I'm always grateful when I get the rock beer um category just because it's something that's so easy to ruin by being heavy-handed. And then when you try them and when you have a series of good ones, you realize how much people, how much thought brewers and homebrewers are putting into this style, knowing how quickly it can turn like overly smoky and overly meaty. And um again, whether we're talking about oak smoked malt or uh beechwood smoked malt, which I think is more historically used like in the in the rock beer style.

SPEAKER_02 59:24

For the German ones, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:25

The German ones, yeah. You know, um the fact that you're able to give these beers like pronounced character without being overwhelming is really, really to your credit. So very much enjoyed. So um, yes, here's to a low beer and near beer, uh, when they are as good as your light American pills and your grzitsch, yeah.

Alright, alright, alright

SPEAKER_00 59:45

Um, celebrity loggers, there's a few on the market right now. The names keep coming up just around like the Kelsey brothers and Hulk Hogan, rest in peace or power. I definitely saw him do his thing in Dallas when I was growing up. Um Celebrity loggers, you know, just uh what do you think about the culture around them? If live oak was gonna make them one, uh, who would it be and why? Kind of what's your idea of celebrity and what kind of beer would you pair with it? To figure this answer, this would be a good one for you in Austin.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:14

Uh huh. It's a fun one. Um I mean, I think celebrity beers are good. I mean, I wish there was more celebrity beers. There's all these, you know, celebrity uh tequilas and whiskies and stuff. Celebrity beers. I'm happy, I'm happy to see it. It just brings more attention to beer. Um if those celebrities could focus some attention on bringing back draft beer, making draft beer sexy again, um, that'd be great. Um let's see. I don't know. I don't I I'm not good at keeping track of the pop culture celebrities. I don't know who's our who's our who's Austin's.

unknown 1:01:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:05

I mean McConaughey, but like there's a McConaughey's beer that already kind of has his namesake.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:10

I don't think it's his beer, but oh and there's pretty sure it's not, but um And there's so many plays on dazed and confused out there in the beer world. You're right.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:21

Uh yeah, I I'm struggling just to think of a local celebrity that would be the kind of caliber to have a beer.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:31

Yeah. No, no need, um, yeah, no need for a name. I do um, well, again, uh, I love the call celebrities to endorse draft beer because we know draft is struggling um across the board nationally in the on-premise now. Um so yeah, getting a meaningful and impactful celebrity relationship going with beer uh that endorses kind of going out to the bar and actually having it on tap. Yeah, that could be really interesting.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:58

Yeah, it's a there's better margin celebrities.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:01

There you go. There you go. Um well, let's see. I think uh Charlie Sheen is coming out with his own in a beer. So who knows, maybe he will uh relapse. Wishing you well, Charlie. But uh maybe, yeah, maybe he'll relapse and uh want to do the real thing. We'll see. Um

OG Double D

SPEAKER_00 1:02:19

okay, decoction mashing. We just we addressed this for a moment. I don't know if that's part of what's cited uh in kind of your uh old world, uh old school style style labor-intensive mashing techniques.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:32

Um but part of the it's part of yeah, double decoction and the check pills for just building that that biarded uh malt flavor into the into the beer so that you can have it be balanced against the hops, the bitter forward, uh hop forward beer. But it's yeah, it's yeah, it's uh it's necessary. And we import our Czech malt that's um we bring in 20-foot containers and and dump it out into our silos to it's the base pills malt for all the beers, but we we we bring that malt in specifically for the the Czech pills, yeah, and it's uh Czech hops. It's yeah, we're trying to duplicate uh the original beer over here. So decoction mashing is yeah, our the our our cooker is uh it's makes beautiful wort. And it we don't have a decoction vessel. We do we send it back and forth between our mash kettle and ladder ton. But um yeah, it makes it it it does a uh a great job.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:52

Yeah, yeah, hell yeah. So a resounding yes to decoction mashing and in the ongoing debate um to decoct or not, I just I hear you when you're saying that we're trying to, we're doing our best to recreate the the original thing, and if this is how they originally created it, that's why we do it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Um, Dusan,

Beer is good for you

SPEAKER_00 1:04:15

is there anything else you want to say, just on behalf of yourself, on behalf of Live Oak? And uh, what do you tell beer drinkers out there? Um, whether they're approaching their first round at 21, approaching their last round at 101. Um, just what do you want to say to the beer drinkers out there in Austin and beyond?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:37

Um, beer is good for you. Uh uh I mean, we're lucky to be able to, you know, make a living making a food product that's so enjoyable and brings people together. So yeah, we just gotta keep people keep uh thanks for everybody that keeps drinking beer, and uh, you know, it's better draft is Beth, it's fresh, it's the freshest, and uh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:17

Um beer is good for you. I will drink to that right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:21

Yeah, does a body good in moderation?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:29

Yeah, moderation responsibly.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:31

Drink responsibly, also good advice. Um, moderation in all things is key. But you're right, you know, beer is good for you, high-quality beer. You know, it is a high-quality food stuff. Um, I'm sick of going to the doctor and having beer treated like cigarettes. You know, like you drink a single beer, you're taking your risk in your life. Um, so I think the that's part of why I asked the NA question and just the dialogue around beer and drinking right now. I think um needs to be uplifted and change on several levels, but uh medical perspective.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:03

Yeah, I mean you can't eat you know, Big Macs and French fries every day and then drink the beer, and then you know Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:10

That's all part of the beer. Exactly. If you're drinking fast food, if you're drinking soda, it doesn't matter if you're drinking less beer and you can't blame the beer you drink as a result. So um, yeah, here's to beer, here's to good beer, um, here's to good beer for a good cause, doing good things for you. So um

Goodnight and Good Lager

SPEAKER_00 1:06:30

Dusan, thank you so very much. Um you're part of a great and growing community. And like I said, the name Light Vote keeps coming up, whether it's from Lee Lord at Narragansett, uh Tom at Goldfinger, your brother in Grodzitchia. Um another shout out to Kevin Davy for the cold IPA style. You know, and it's just uh such a pleasure to sit and talk with you and pick your brain for a moment. So um if you like what you're hearing, I will say take me back to Texas and get me on the disc golf course. Um, help us hit the road and make a better kind of beer show. So until we get there, I will say good night and good lager. And to you, Dustan, to you, Live Oak, thank you so very much. Cheers.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:20

Thanks for having me, Adam. Thanks for making a Lager podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:23

Yeah, more to come.