No Life 'Til Lager Episode 24 - Jack Hendler x Jack's Abby

No Life 'Til Lager Episode Twenty Four with Jack Hendler, Chief Production Officer, Master Brewer and author of Modern Lager Beer at Hendler Family Brewing.

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

No Life 'Til Lager theme song by The Bad Actors. Episode art by Molly and Lily Hendler.

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

We live for lager - https://jacksabby.com 

Copyright 2026 No Life 'Til Lager

Transcript

Welcome Jack!

SPEAKER_03 0:14

Welcome to No Life Till 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. My name is Adam Zunaga. I'm a failed master sisterown. I'm part of the creative team behind the Six Most Metal Breweries and Beer Like Indoss movie. And today my guest is Mr. Jack Hindler. He is the chief production officer, co-owner, and master brewer, as well as author of Modern Lager Beer at Jack's Abbey and uh the Hindler Family Brewing Company that is based in Framingham, Massachusetts. Hashtag we liveforloger. Cheers and thank you and welcome, Jack.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_03 1:01

Supremely grateful to have you here. If this was the last episode of No Life to Lager, it would be a good one for two reasons. Because I think Jack's Abbey was the first devoted all lager brewery I was aware of back in New York, back like 2014, 2015, at the height of like hazy New England IPA. And it was interesting enough that it it made us all kind of stop to ask why. And here we are 10 plus years later, and I'm gonna get to answer that question. So I can't wait. And the other thing is you literally wrote the book on modern lager beer, techniques, processes, and recipes. I believe it was with your uh sales director, Joe Conley, and that was published just recently in 2024. Um, so you can speak uh a lot to why then and why now. I would love to take this episode to just kind of zoom out and maybe from like a macro or meta perspective, look at what micro, small craft local breweries are doing. Why lager? Why now? Why are we talking about it? Why is there a resurgence in all this? Um, so are you ready, my friend?

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Absolutely. Um I'm excited.

SPEAKER_03 2:15

Yeah, thank you. Um, before we get to all of that, before we get to you, before

The Fest of Both Worlds

SPEAKER_03 2:20

we get to the brewery, uh, can you just tell us a little bit about the the beer in my hand and I think yours as well. I am drinking the fest of both worlds. It's a collaboration with Warsteiner. It's a My Fest Lager. I want to say clocking in at what? Is it five, nine percent? So, so not quite Bach strength. We're not drinking a My Bach. Just tell us a little bit about the collaboration with Warsteiner and what a Mayfest lager is.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Sure. Yeah, this was a really fun project. My brothers and I actually got to go out to Germany and visit the brewery and talk to them about their brewing philosophy and partner up with them on this recipe. So it's quite the opportunity. Uh, they they have an amazing brewery over in Germany, uh brewing lager for, you know, they've only been brewing for like 250 years or something like that. So they're like a new new new brewery over there.

SPEAKER_03 3:09

As long as America's been America, basically, yes.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Um but yeah, we we made a Mayfest. So we're trying to blend ideas both of American brewing and German brewing. I don't know that they necessarily make Mayfest in Germany, but it's more or less uh uh a lighter version of a Mybach, more or less like an Oktoberfest style of beer um just made for May. So we just ended our Mayfest last weekend at the brewery. So this beer sort of fits right into what we're trying to trying to achieve. Just a nice light but stronger festival style beer uh to welcome the summer.

SPEAKER_03 3:51

I love it. And I realize it as you say it, and I'm drinking it. We've never actually had a Bach beer on this show, and maybe that's just so I can get an episode get through an episode without getting a little bit tipsy, you know? Um, but as a as a lighter Bach or as a fest beer or as kind of like a hybrid between the two, because it's not quite as dry and attenuated as a fest beer, right? It's a little more kind of multi-rounded, but not as strong as a as a box. So yeah, it is the fest of both worlds and the best of both worlds. That's that's that thank you again for sharing. Um okay.

Modern Lager Beer

SPEAKER_03 4:25

Um, before we get to you in the brewery, um, I do just want to talk about like the book right at the outset, Mot Log Modern Lager Beer. Uh, I've read through the chapter on decoction and I wanted to make sure I got there for this episode. Yeah, but you know, in the in the broadest, most general sense, I would just love to hear from you directly since you wrote the book on it. You know, why now? Why was there a call or a need for this book in recent years? Um, why are we talking about it? Why are we seeing a resurgence in lager beer among modern craft breweries in America rooted in German and Czech tradition? So just a little bit about why here, why now, why did you write this book?

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Yeah, so you know, why why did I write this book? So this this book, probably the concept for this book is already going back to 2018-2019. I think I created my first Google Doc 2018 with the laying out the idea for this book.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

And I was very much inspired by many of the other Brewers Association books on beer styles. You had like Brew Like a Monk and Brew with Wheat and IPA, uh, how to brew IPA. And there is a day in the brewery, and I don't remember what the question was, but I needed to look up a practical solution to an issue we were having in the brewery. And I'm looking through all my books that I have on my bookcase in front of me here. And the the answer wasn't there. I couldn't find it. And I'm like, this seems like a really obvious hole in brewing education that uh needs a solution. So, like, there is Kunza. I don't know if you read through that book uh when you're doing your Cicero program, but that's like the textbook of beer, essentially.

SPEAKER_03 6:18

And uh maybe I should have. Yeah, maybe that would have made a lot of difference.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Kunza is one of those books where like it's it's a textbook and it tells you the problem and it tells you what you're supposed to do, but it doesn't tell you how to do it. Um, so you know, there needed to be some sort of bridge between some of the basic information out there and that textbook on how brewers tackle these problems that we all have. Anyone who's getting into lager for the first time, or anyone even who's brewed lager for many years, as we had at that point, um it's great to have some advice from lots of breweries around the country, around the world, on how they are able to make grape beer and tackle these problems that that we all have.

SPEAKER_03 7:02

Yeah, yeah. Uh no, I see it and I believe it from reading it. I mean, I just I love that the book. So, first of all, I mean, to your point, yes, by brewers for brewers, but I think you don't have to be a brewer to read and enjoy this book. It's written uh conversationally, uh with passion, with enthusiasm. So for me, it's not just like education, it's uh it's entertaining, you know, it's uh it's a good read.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

We want people to fall in love with lager reading this book, both from uh whether you're a brewer looking to brew beer or just someone who's interested in beer in general. So trying to pass that passion that Joe and I have for lager and brewing lager onto the rest of the world.

SPEAKER_03 7:45

Yeah, that it doesn't read just like a textbook that you share like a lot of your own personal anecdotes and stories within it, um, really keeps it interesting, my friend. So um I've enjoyed it through the chapter on decoction. We'll get to decoction later in this episode. Um, I do think like the single most important word and most frequently used word within modern lager beer is drinkability. And like we've spoken to that, I think, in every single episode with every brewery, but not in those terms. And I can't overemphasize, I guess, how how important that is and how do we get to this point without it? But yes, drinkability, yes, I love the shout out to Desan at Live Oak for his six-pack test, you know. And it's just what makes a beer that makes people go back for more? And I think in Lager we're witnessing a moment like where we're responding to what people want from their beer instead of necessarily telling them what they should want or drink or expect, as Kraft Brewing has been doing in recent years to a point. So I really appreciate the emphasis on drinkability, a beer that you can have more

Know your brewer

SPEAKER_03 8:55

than one of. Um, so maybe you could tell us a little bit about how that just all began for you. You know, we like to get to know our brewer, we like to get to know whose house we're in. Um, can you tell me a little bit about life before beer, some other jobs you've had, how you ultimately turned that passion into a profession, how you went from, I know a little bit about you, so like hauling ice for your grandfather's business, like up until recent years. I know you were a 40 under 40 uh at wine enthusiast in 2019. So you've clearly made a name for yourself. You're clearly a part of the community in Framingham outside of Boston and within Massachusetts and beyond. So tell us about yourself, Jack, before you got here.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Yeah, you want to know about my life before beer. I don't remember my life before beer. So I've been in now 21 years. It's my only job since college, at least. So um been a while. But yeah, you sort of touched on a you know, my real work experiences at the family ice industry. So my brothers and I grew up in a family business. We we really learned the values of work and what it means to run a business at that time. So, I mean, there's pictures of me when I'm seven years old hauling bags of ice that I couldn't even carry, just dragging them on the floor to to pretend that I'm working.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Good stance.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

And you know, whether it was driving trucks as soon as I had a driver's license or running the dock or running the the uh bagging machines. I mean, it was a big factory. I I probably is smaller than I remember it in my childhood, but probably a 50,000 square foot building with tons of refrigeration and these huge machines that froze water into ice and then move the ice into these big bins and onto bagging machines. So from an early age, really understood what it was like to run a factory, the challenges of running a factory, knowing that if it's 99 degrees in July, I wasn't gonna see my father for probably two weeks until he was able to sort out uh all the craziness that was happening and all the machines that were breaking down and all the deliveries that got delayed. So um really living that um family business for for many years until my brothers and I started our own business here in here in Framingham.

SPEAKER_03 11:28

Yeah. Yeah. So you've clearly grown up working under cold circumstances, I guess. Or you're you're used to dealing in cold temperatures, if nothing else.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

We had this awful, awful original coaster. And uh what when we first opened, it was something about like a family tradition of oh, of cold storage in the liquid arts or something like that. And no one understood what the hell we were talking about, and it didn't really roll off the tongue very well, obviously, as I'm trying to remember what the hell we we put down there. But those coasters lasted for about a year, and we did not continue with that uh that logo.

SPEAKER_03 12:08

Uh well, a valiant start. Uh so yeah, it's uh here's to working in near freezing and freezing temperatures and dabbling in the cold liquid arts or whatever it is. Um

Know your brewery

SPEAKER_03 12:20

but I think there's a clear line from that to what you're doing now, right? So uh I'll tell you what I know about Jax Abbey, and then you can tell me and our listeners what we don't know. But founded in 2011 uh by you and your two brothers, Eric and Sam. Uh Abby A B B Y. Is that a family name? What is Jax Abbey a reference to?

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Abby is my wife.

SPEAKER_03 12:43

Oh, how romantic. I had a feeling I didn't want to assume. That's wonderful. Um, okay, so here's to you, Jack, and here's to you, Abby, and here's to your union in this brewery. Um, I know that you studied in Germany. I know the brewery takes an annual trip, an annual pilgrimage uh for malt and hops um in the way that maybe you do this to the Pacific Northwest as well, but the way many Americans do to the Pacific Northwest, you do to Germany on an annual basis. Um, I know that the brewery is founded upon historical methods like decoction, like spending. Um, you've won so many medals from 2011 to recent years that I'm not really gonna count them off, but many accolades for many beers, and I think you're distributed in about 10 states up and down kind of the northeast throughout the east coast. So that's you know what we know from the website, from the social media, and I'd love to know more from you. Just tell us about founding Jack's Abbey and what drew you uh to do it in Lager Beer. Because again, I think you were the first next to Von Trapp that I knew as being logger-led, lager-focused, all lager all the time. And Von Trapp's story, not to oversimplify it because it's anything but simple, but I think uh, you know, one of the family elders just wanted beer that reminded him of his culture, of his heritage, of his people, of his community, and saw a lack of it in the Vermont market and an opportunity within that. He wanted he wanted more beers that he had more than one of at lunch, you know. So maybe your story is similar, but please tell us, please share.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I I happen to love Lager. What my first like aha moment in the beer industry was drinking a liter of Dunkelva Dunkel at the Hoffa House in Munich, and just being like, what is this? I have never had something like this before. And it's a story I tell a lot, but in 2011, there we had gone from something like 1,500 breweries to 3,000 breweries in just a few years, and a lot of IPA-focused breweries. And we thought in 2011, like, holy cow, we're late to the game. Um, we better differentiate the products we're doing. I always wanted to focus on lager, but I was like, maybe for just lager, that would be a real uh be something very special in this market. And you know, it certainly it was. I don't know how we we're not certainly not the first to only brew lager, but I'm not sure how many other breweries were only brewing lager, certainly not packaging breweries. Um and it, you know, obviously 10 years later, there's 10,000 breweries. We were a little bit premature on the market, saturated with with uh IPA. Um, I think it's only grown and become more more important in the market in the last 10, 15 years since we've been open. But we've been able to keep that positioning of brewing lager and only brewing lager now for 15 years. And it was a struggle. Like it was not, it's it sounds maybe now like this was a smart idea. This was like a worthwhile endeavor, but it was tough in the early days just to get people to even try the beer. So back in 2011 in Massachusetts, before they updated the tap room rules, you couldn't sell pints over the bar, and you can only sell beer to go. So you you would have people would have to buy a growler. So uh the one thing you could do is you could sell uh you could not sell, you could give away samples. So before people bought the growler, you could give away two ounces of beer per per style so that people could try it. And so back in those days, people would come into our tap room, they come in, they look at the the list of beers that we're serving, they're all laggers, and then they turn around and they try to leave. Um, but we were so slow in those early days that you couldn't just walk around unnoticed. So we'd have to yell, hey, come back, come back. The beer is literally free. All you have to do, we're gonna give you free beer, two ounces at a time. Wow, try them all. And if you don't like them, worst case scenario, you got some free beer. Um but that was our opportunity to to talk to consumers and be like, hey, everything you think about lager isn't true. You've been told, you've been told a story, a marketing story, and um we wanna we want to prove to you something that we are craft, we we are making craft beer um in a way that you don't yet understand, but we are gonna educate you and make sure that when you leave our brewery, uh you've really reconsidered all your positioning on what uh what a lager is.

SPEAKER_03 17:35

So, what do you think customers were expecting when they first walked into the tap room at Jack's Abbey around 2011, uh around 2012? Like, what were they looking for? Was it IPAs? Was it pale ales? Uh, was it wheat beers? Was it blonde ales? Like, what do you think they were expecting that allowed them to politely, politefully, of course, turn around and make their way to the exit before you had to draw them back?

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Well, I know what they were not looking for. They were not looking for what they thought was macro American light lager. And that was not really what we were brewing, but when they saw Pilsner or they saw other words like lager, they just made an assumption that we were gonna essentially be giving them some sort of macro light lager. So we realized from an early time that we really needed to educate and we needed to change hearts and minds as to the word lager. So from the early days of the brewery, we decided that the one way that we could change people's understanding of lager was to have a bit of an extreme take on the style. So

Hoponius Union

SPEAKER_01 18:45

one of our most popular beers for many years, and a beer we still brew today, is a beer called Hopponius Union. Uh, we call it a hoppy lager, but that is essentially a citra, amarillo, and centennial dry hops, pale, six and a half percent lager. Uh there certainly were not a lot of beers brewed like that when we opened. Um, we then went even further. We went to double IPL, we went to triple IPL, we went to barrel age baltic porter, which um for people who really enjoyed bourbon barrel aged uh Imperial Stout was an easy transition. So, really just trying to create styles of beer to change to change the thought of what a lager was, so then we can say, hey, a pilsner is not a pilsner, it's not a pilsner. There's all kinds of different pilsners. We you now believe that we make craft high-quality beer. Why don't you try something that's a little bit more traditional? A Hellas, a Dunkel, uh, a land beer, whatever it might be, and able to sort of start that conversation.

SPEAKER_03 19:54

Yeah. You know, it's it's interesting on two counts. Um, God, it just reminds me that most craft breweries are more alike than not, and all have similar stories, and we're all in this together. But, you know, I think about anyone, whether it was like Sierra Nevada or Anchor back in the day, trying to convince a bar to buy their beer and uh just being shocked about how like pronouncedly bitter it was compared to what was on the market. So it's interesting to hear. I mean, what a sign of changing times and changing tastes that people were walking into Jack's Abbey in 2011 and turning around because they just wanted more. Like they wanted more, you know, they wanted more than the beer they grew up in. They wanted more than the beer that they thought was like just beer. And that you were able to draw them back in. I love it that you uh you keep hops like uh Amarillo and Centennial and Aponious in your lineup.

Many beers over many years

SPEAKER_03 20:50

Yeah, I'm glad those still have expression. But uh let's talk a little bit just about the beers themselves. And here again, you know, you've brewed uh many beers over many years, so I'm not gonna cite them all, but I think you have something like eight core beers in your lineup at any given moment, and they span from Banner City Light Lager. I think that's the official craft beer of the Boston Celtics, and that clocks in at 3.8%. Um, we have to give a shout out to your house lager Hellas, which I know I've had before during my time in the Northeast. That clocks in at 5.2 and it won GABF bronze in 2018. And then to the beer you just mentioned, uh Hipponius Union, that's the OG hoppy lager. Uh, I believe that's the biggest of your core lineup. That's at 6'5% alcohol. And that's been winning awards since 2011, since you launched, since you opened your door. So it clearly filled a need um for the consumer, for the market, that people have now like continue to interpret as like a hoppy pilsner, a West Coast style pilsner. I mean, that style. It's arguably more popular than ever. And uh it's just good to hear the roots of it, date back to 2011.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

The hockey lager thing is great right now. It is very interesting to me. Uh, the the rebranding, I think, has been super helpful, whether it's cold IPA, because I don't even think people realize it's a logger when they have a cold IPA. They're not necessarily sure what it is, but at least it has IPA in it. And then West Coast Pilsner, I think, is really smart uh style uh for marketing. Yeah, we really struggled with what we call these hoppy loggers. Um we originally called them IPLs, but no one really knew what an IPL was. Um we moved to uh to just calling them hoppy loggers or or West Coast Pilsners at this point. And you know, how you talk about these beers is really important to how they're sold. So, you know, for us, we we do our right selling IPL, but I don't know if I would recommend to uh someone who wanted to get into the hoppy logger game to call it an IPL that I'm not sure anyone else is at this point. Um, but you know, hops and lager beer is a really interesting opportunity to express hop character and to create really enjoyable beers. So I think that that's uh a beer style that could be that bridge between the craft world and the more traditional lagers. And uh, you know, it's it does appear to be progressively growing. I think there's like two or three categories for hoppy lager this year, which was very interesting at the World Beer Cup. So it's it definitely is getting more attention.

SPEAKER_03 23:40

Yeah, yeah. Um also speaking to the best of both worlds, what was popular then and even more so now, you are right. I don't feel like I see a lot of IPL's India Pale Logers in the market anymore at all. Um, it has been kind of rebranded, rephrased, repurposed, and maybe that's part of why it's seeing increasing success. Um what else? I think you have three year-round seasonals, um, a summer lager, an Oktoberfest, a winter lager, and then full circle back again. And then there's no shortage of at least 10 kind of specialty releases throughout the year. You run a loyal to lager series, um, which allows you to experiment with modern styles of beer, but still brew traditionally using lager yeast. And that kind of runs the gauntlet from uh IPA to Baltic Porter, uh, Framingham, which you mentioned, framing hammer, excuse me, which you mentioned. And I know

Core, seasonal, specialty lager

SPEAKER_03 24:40

you released multiple variants of that throughout the year. So, in uh in the broadest sense, maybe you can just tell us like how did you land on the core beers over time that you now serve and sell? Um, how did you decide on your seasonals? And uh what makes uh what's the decision that drives a specialty release at Jack's Abbey?

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Yeah, our lineups changed a lot. So in the early days, uh we were focusing very much on craft type styles, whether that it was uh IPL, Hoppy Lager, uh another beer we still brew year-round is smoke and daggers, a smoked Schwartz beer. I can't believe that beer is so alive. That's the third beer we ever brewed, and it's still moving you for that beer at some point.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

Yeah, I love it. Thank you for your service.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Uh, you know, so we make it's amazing. We still make almost a thousand barrels of uh smoked Schwartz beer every year. Um that's my it's gotta be one of the better selling smoked lagers out in the market right now. Um excellent. But we've definitely transitioned to a more traditional take. And the focus really the last few years has been very much in line with the title of the book is how do we combine traditional methods with our American ingredients, our American culture, and create something that's really unique to us here here in Massachusetts. And you know, a beer like Steffi Chaff, which is uh I shouldn't be allowed to uh name beers, but Steffi Chaff is a uh a name of a beer that uses a variety of barley called Steffi. Uh so I did a pun on Steffi Graff, which I realize I'm really old because no one here at the brewery knows who Steffi Graff is. So no one even understood why the pun was there in the first place. But I just love the beer, I love the malt, and it's just being able to use a uh heritage barley variety grown in Montana to create, in my opinion, a more authentically German style beer is hugely important to me and what we're trying to achieve

Framinghammer

SPEAKER_01 26:50

here in Framingham. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:52

Yeah, yeah. That is super cool. And I guess we should give a shout out to Framingham because why is it? I guess is your family originally from there? Is that where the family business was run or all your roots in Framingham, or was that where you chose to set up Jack's Abbey? And if so, why?

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Yeah, so my the ice plant was in Mamarinek, New York, so just north of the Bronx, north of New York City. Yeah. And but why are we in Framingham up in Massachusetts? Well, Abby is from this area, so he dragged me and then my brothers up to up to Framingham. And you know, that's where uh where we set up shops. So I was living in Natick at the time when we decided to open the brewery. I had worked at a brewery that's no longer open, but uh I was working in Boston for six years while I was going to brewing school before I decided to open the brewery with my brothers. And uh Natick is the town next to Framingham. And Framingham was sort of an up-and-coming city at the time. It had seen both the GM factory and the Avery Dennison facilities shut down. They they closed something like seven to eight thousand jobs between the two factories and really devastated the town back in the early 90s. So it was just sort of recovering when we decided to move in and we've been able to be part of the story of that redevelopment of downtown Framingham.

SPEAKER_03 28:26

I love it. Um, in some sense, maybe right time, right place, even surrounding like existing tragedy, right? I mean, that's the story of industrial America. But to Framingham's roots, I mean, maybe that speaks to why ultimately there was a uh like a thirst for lager there, because I mean lager is historically, at least in America, or maybe internationally, like a drink of uh of working class, you know? So maybe there was like a thirst or a need for it. Um, I'm just kind of it's interesting that you were able to set up shop in Framingham, which I think is just due west or southwest of Boston and ultimately like survive and be supported throughout this process when so many breweries are shuttering in recent years. So there must be something about the roots and the history there that enabled you to be part of the revitalation of uh of Framingham to present day.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Yeah, absolutely. We certainly got embraced by the town when we moved in. They were super excited that we decided to build the brewery in Framingham, and they've been so very supportive of us and our endeavors the last 15 years. So we've moved since we've moved, we were in a different building a mile down the road, and then the city really worked hard to get us into the building we're in today. Uh that was about 10 years ago now. We've been in this the new building and we're continually uh growing in the space that we're at. And yeah, certainly that connection with with Framingham has been vital to our success here.

SPEAKER_03 29:57

Uh super cool. Um, meant to be.

Hendler Family Brewing

SPEAKER_03 30:00

And I mean, you've continued to grow in in many respects, not just at Jack's Abbey. Um, but can you tell us a little bit more about like the Hindler family brewing company, which includes Jack's Abbey, Jack's Beverage, which offers contract brewing solutions to people that want to like build a brand but might not necessarily have the capital to build a brewery. Um, night shift brewing is a part of that, which I believe was founded upon New England style hazy IPA. I remember when Whirlpool, Hazy, Pale first hit the market. I was all in on that beer. Um, Wormtown, which I'm not as familiar with, I think was built upon kind of big classic West Coast style IPAs, also when like Hazy in New England was at its height. So I'm just kind of curious about how do these four entities work together? Um, for you, is it a way to experiment with styles like West Coast IPA, like New England IPA, that you might not necessarily be able to at Jack's Abbey? Were these breweries that were in need of help and you stepped in? Um, were these friends? Are they family now? Just tell us a little bit about how all these companies coexist.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

Sure. Yeah, our company is a little bit more complicated today than it was six years ago, for sure. Um yeah, this all goes back to COVID, though. We were we were a brewery that was growing, growing, growing for our first nine years. We grew double digits every single year, and then COVID hit. Our business was something like I want to say 40 to 50 percent draft beer, and that was really challenging to us. So we had an awful 2020 and realized that if we were gonna make this business work, we needed to increase production. So 2020 was a low point for us production-wise, and we quickly found partners who needed contracting services. We started small, we started with uh a friends of ours at Medusa. We were brewing a few thousand barrels for them, but quickly realized that everyone was sort of in a similar situation where the business model no longer worked at the volumes everyone was now brewing at. And there was a lot of people who were interested in contracting all their production, night shift being one of the biggest examples. We took on the night shift production, which was uh, you know, that overnight increased our production like 50% or something like that. Um, but over time, the relationship with the night shift uh ownership um it made sense for them to uh exit and for us to take over their operations and we're already brewing their beer. Um similar with Wormtown, where they were having production challenges and we were able to step in and help them with production those production challenges. Um and in the in those conversations, we ended up acquiring that brand as well. And and then also Mass Hole. So we we um created our own American Light Lager brand called Mass Hole, which I believe I sent you, right?

SPEAKER_03 33:10

Um Yeah, so I was tempted to drink it during this episode for the for the name alone. We did light lager with uh with Von Trapp, but rest assured, I will be cracking open into a mass hole shortly thereafter. So, but please continue.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

Yeah, so we we now have um our we have our own four brands, and then we still contract for a number of breweries, so we contract for maybe four or five brewing partners, and that's I don't know, maybe a quarter of our our production, something like that. And it helps us to um be a little bit more efficient with how we run our operations here in Framingham and helps a lot of breweries that otherwise wouldn't be as successful with what they're doing, you know. So from up for from our perspective, we're keeping local small crappers, local small crappers, and being doing what we can to do, you know, doing our part to keep the craft industry uh alive and thriving and still in business.

SPEAKER_03 34:11

Yeah, valiant effort. Um so Hindler Family Brewing Company was really created in response to COVID and to the pandemic, which I mean changed everything for everybody. But yes, you know, draft beer on-premise consumption uh existed in a way pre-pandemic that it doesn't now and honestly may not again for at least the foreseeable future. It's just it seems like at least a semi-permanent change uh and still ongoing. And breweries, I know, are still feeling the effects of that.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 34:50

Um so everyone you work with kind of initially started as contract

On-Premise shift

SPEAKER_03 34:55

partners, and you've gone on to inherit the brand for the sake of kind of uh supporting the local craft brewing community in Massachusetts.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

Yeah, absolutely. You know, the the draft beer on-premise consumption thing, it's not a simple solution. It's it's sort of death by a thousand cuts. So there the reason that it's not gonna come back anytime soon is there's nothing you can really focus on. There's too many things that are causing the issues that it it's gonna take a cultural shift in order to really change that. And so in the short term, the market sort of dictating where we're at. And um, you're you're seeing seeing the change. Obviously, it's not a great time for craft beer, but interesting that you know as we start as we're talking about lager beer, lager is one of the few parts of the craft world that is working, and it's not necessarily growing like crazy, but it is at least um uh bucking some of those trends right now.

SPEAKER_03 35:55

I mean, it's it's a bright spot. Um, it's a good story to tell that it's in the green and that it's up right now, um, where everything else might be comparatively red and struggling, um uh pre-pandemic versus post-pandemic, you know?

Year of the Lager

SPEAKER_03 36:10

Um yeah, no, I think it's a I think it's a great thing, and that's part of why we started this podcast, just because I mean the running joke for so long, right, was that it might finally be the year of the lager uh for craft breweries. And year after year, that seems to become less and less of a joke. And I love to see breweries investing more and more in it. So if that's a if that's a bright spot and some positive outcome uh in response to COVID and response to the pandemic, you know, I am personally grateful for it. And I'll I'll say again, you know, it's great that you created like a larger parent company and offered contract options to breweries that you want to still continue to see thrive in the market.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

Um we uh jump in on the year of the lager thing. So we we've sold a shirt that said the year of the lager, and it has every year since we've been open crossed out. And it's like, is this the is this finally the year of the lager? And you know, that that's an interesting question. I'm not I wouldn't say we're quite to the year of the lager yet, uh at least the crap lager. Um yeah, I think we still need to see a little bit more success. It's such a small part of the market. It's it's still under 10% of scan data right now. So, you know, I don't know what makes it the year of the lager, but I am very optimistic that lager is potentially that one thing that could can turn this around, at least from the beer perspective. I know everyone's diversifying into other products, whether it's RTDs or teas or seltzers and things like that. But from a beer perspective, I think lager, a craft lager might be the one spot that might have that opportunity to swing the tide.

SPEAKER_03 37:52

Yeah, I agree. I mean, just anecdotally, I can say from attending Great American Beer Festival around 2015-2016, I saw uh like um like a joint conversation between Vinny Trilerzo and Matt Brindelson, and everyone was tasting Pivot pills and STS pills side by side. And, you know, kind of doing what you do at GBF and like rubbing your chin or scratching your head. But it was clearly what like um what most people weren't there for. And the fact that um Russian River and Firestone were drawing people's attention to it struck me again in the same way when I first heard of Jack's Abbey and tried your beer in New York, knowing there was someone devoted to it in Massachusetts from those early years, like it stuck with me. And I love that we are seeing continued positive momentum for lager beer among craft breweries right now in this moment. And I think most breweries founded in recent years, maybe if they were founded upon like rotating IPAs, right now, if you walk into their tap room, you will find at least one, if not multiple attempts at German and Czech Pilsner on the board, because they're responding to not just like the taste and the trend, but the want and the need from customers in this moment, which is which is really interesting. And Jack's Abbey and Firestone Walker and Russian River have

Collaboration and Celebration

SPEAKER_03 39:15

all have all shaped that, and all the breweries on this show have been a part of that conversation, and I am reaping of the benefits of it. So thank you. Um in that spirit of just collaboration, talking about working with uh with Night Shift, talking about working with uh Wormtown, and also talking about the Vorsteiner collaboration we're drinking right now. Can you tell us a little bit more just about brewery collaborations, um, how you decide who you want to collab with, like what makes it different and special and unique? Because we just had Von Trapp on the show and they sent me the Austrian Export Lager, which is really interesting that you did with them. So I would love to hear a little bit more about like just um collaboration beers uh from Jack's Abbey. And uh also in that same spirit of collaboration and celebration, um, tell me about like some regular festivals and events you host and attend, because you mentioned that you just had my fest, you know, which is like the German spring celebration of Lager. Um I know you create um you participate in Porch Fest, which is kind of like a like an outdoor music series in Somerville, um, where musicians are just invited for like impromptu performances and you brew a beer for it. That is amazing. And of course, you have an Oktoberfest. So just tell us a little bit more about collaborations with other breweries Jack's Abbey has done or would like to do, and festivals and events you regularly throw or participate in at the brewery.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Yeah, so there's all interesting with the seeing with the growth of lager beer, there's this growth of lager festivals. And next weekend, there's two of them: there's Logjammin and there's the Notch Forever Lager Festival. So I'll be at the Notch Forever Lager Festival next week. Wasn't able to get to Logjamin, but I've been to the the last three logjammins down at down in Philly, so those have been a lot of fun. Um, so getting that excitement over Lager is is awesome and seeing the excitement and the brew, those are the like the events that the brewers actually go to. They need to actually enjoy enjoy being there and and having a beer. So uh I'm looking forward to to next weekend. But as far as collabs, you know, part of part of the book and the really exciting thing about writing this book was that Joe and I were able to travel across the country and across the world and visit breweries, talk to them, um, learn how they're brewing, why they're brewing the way they're brewing. And you know, we've we've created a lot of relationships with with the brewers that we we spoke with while writing the book, and we've definitely partnered with a lot of them to to collaborate. But you know, it's just nice having friends in the industry that have similar philosophies and being able to actually enjoy their company and and have a beer with them sometimes. So I you know uh all for the collaboration side of the industry. I think that's still still fun and you know, a little blip there during COVID with less of them, I suppose, but able to start getting into that again. And you know, from us, we're just looking to promote lager, so may not necessarily be an all lager, a lager-focused brewery that we're gonna brew with, but if we can help to push the the story about brewing lager uh and brew lager education, that's definitely a part of what we're trying to achieve here.

SPEAKER_03 42:43

I love it, I love it. Yeah, no, um uh as good a reason or better to collaborate than most. And uh and shout out, of course, to Notch and of course to Human Robot, and I know someone else is hosting um Logjamin this year, and I hope you're gonna be able to do that Wayward Lane this year up there outside of home this year upstate New York. Yeah, and I hope you have a great time representing at Forever Lager. Um speaking about your book again, there are a couple questions I've just always wanted to ask brewers. And again, since you literally wrote the book on modern lager beer, um these are a few just for you before we move on to kind of wrapping up with uh I always love to have a lightning round and something I ask everyone at the end of every episode. Um, but there's a couple questions I would love to hear from your

Oxidized Hops

SPEAKER_03 43:35

perspective, just that I think about pretty regularly. Um, and I would like to know. Um, talking about um Okay, first of all, so uh oxidation oxidized hops. I would imagine that within 10 miles of you and I both sitting right now, like a problem with most beer on the shelves um at any given retailer is. Is oxidized hops, like hoppy beers that have started to like display notes of honey, of sherry, call it what you will. And it's a little bit contrary to like the narrative of I mean, this is probably both fact and fiction, how IPA was invented, right? That like brewers would dose, right? Would dose some casks with extra hops to survive the journey to India and over like a rolling secondary fermentation, you know, because hops have like an anti-uh bacterial, antimicrobial property, like the beer would show up in better shape and be more drinkable. There's that word again, drinkability, than it had before. So I'm just kind of curious about shelf life. Um, take a beer like um Hipponius at Jack's Abbey. Like, what do you consider the proper shelf life and conditions for a beer like that? And I would just like to know at what point do hops go wrong? At what point do hops go bad? Is this a consistent problem just because we're searing we're seeing such heavy-handed dry hopping uh in the market and in modern American craft styles right now? And it's as simple as the fact that they're not being boiled and these alpha acids are not kind of broken down in that way. So the hops are just kind of living in this tiny head space in the bottle of the can or what have you, and oxidize so quickly as a result. Um, this is one I hope for the brewers and the beer geeks and the beer nerds out there, but it bothers me, it keeps me up at night, and I would love to know what the solution might be. So tell us if you agree. What is your principle and your philosophy on this?

SPEAKER_01 45:37

Yeah, hoppy lager is a real problem. So the beer is never better than when you package it, and there's a whole lot of things that can go wrong. And you know, shelf life is you know, shelf life is variable. Is that beer stored on stored room temperature in a in light? Well, maybe if it's in a can doesn't matter, but and how was it packaged? Was it packaged with a lot of dissolved oxygen or not? So, like, you know, you might make a great beer and it's not really drinkable a week later. You might brew a great hoppy beer and it still tastes great because you kept it cold and you had really low dissolved oxygen 90 days later, uh 120 days later, but you know it's uh it's a bit of a problem because you don't really know what you're gonna get when you buy a hoppy beer if it's not been packaged that week. And you know, it also depends on if the beer has been filtered because you it's a little bit more stable at that point. But I, you know, you can't really give an exact date for hoppy beer, um, but it is a challenge. I would just say fresher the better. But I believe for our hoppy beers, because we now brew non-lagers for some of our other brands, is we give anywhere from 60 to 120 days, depending on the style of beer that we are brewing. We have really strong control over our dissolved oxygen and we try to keep our beer uh it's at least stored always cold in distribution, but then when it gets to a package store, you don't necessarily know how it's gonna get um stored. Uh so it could potentially be outwarmed. So that's why we kind of give that varying window depending on on the style of beer. But generally, I guess we we do see this growth of hoppy lager, but you know, for generally with lager beer, you're not necessarily too concerned about hop oxidation, except if you're talking about like kettle hot side hop oxidation, which is an important part of lager brewing, um, yeah, which is a very different type of oxidation versus what you would see from from dry hopping or hops that are in a in a finished product.

SPEAKER_03 47:46

Interesting. Is so is that the culprit, just the extensive amounts of dry hopping that are happening in modern pale ale, IPA, double IPA, triple IPA, filtered or not, West Coast or Northeast. Is that what is kind of leading to oxidized hops in the market and shorter shelf life? Or is it not as simple as that? And I I hear you that you're saying it must be so frustrating to work so hard on something and then realize how little control you have once it leaves the brewery in terms of the conditions under which it will be delivered, stored, purchased.

SPEAKER_01 48:24

And half of it's the consumer, even if it's cold in every part of the distribution, the person who buys it from your brewery the day you produce it, puts it in their 90-degree car for a week, forgot about it, takes it out, yeah, and then it's like this beer is awful. Like, what what did you give me? So, you know, once it leaves your brewery, there's just not a lot of lot of control there.

SPEAKER_03 48:45

I just again, once it's a hoppy log, whether it's a hoppy logger or um a hoppy IPA, I'm just like I am incredibly skeptical knowing how many variables there are and what happens um after it leaves the brewery that anything over 30 days um won't have like a questionable oxidized quality.

SPEAKER_00 49:05

Yeah, that's uh I'm sure you've had your experiences with

The 5th Ingredient

SPEAKER_00 49:10

uh hop oxidation.

SPEAKER_03 49:11

So, you know, I would uh Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, we will say fresh is best. Uh fresh is best. Um and there's one other question on quality um I want to address with you because I didn't get through this chapter, but I started it, and I love it that you talk about carbonation being the fifth ingredient at beer. And maybe those who know know, maybe that's nothing new. And on this show, I mean, I have been so spoiled. No one has ever, ever sent me uh like a like a bad beer uh or an off beer uh for no life till lager. I have noticed with this resurgence and this renewed interest in natural carbonation, I have had beers that like to my taste um are undercarbonated, are undercarbed in the can by the time they get to me. So it makes me wonder, so A, maybe because like I mean, we most of us grew up on soda and we're just used to like hypercarbonated products, including beer, maybe it is just a difference of perspective, or maybe something is getting lost in the brewing process, or maybe more likely in the in the uh in the packaging process. So I am just curious, like if you really want to retain like fine pinpoint carbonation practicing these methods, practicing croisoning, schunding, uh into the final product, um, into the can, into the bottle, how do you feel like you really retain uh the proper level of carbonation in the final beer?

SPEAKER_01 50:45

Yeah, you know, there there really shouldn't be any difference in carbonation, whether depending on what type of carbonation process you're doing, that should be something you're testing. So if you're getting undercarbonated beer, I wouldn't necessarily blame the process. Uh maybe just a misreading of that. But, you know, I think it goes into some of the one of the big points that Joe and I make in the book is that there's so many myths and misunderstandings surrounding lager beer, the production of lager beer, how and why you do certain things. Just the way we talk about lager in general, even ourselves, whether uh brewers who brew lager, we we use this language that really stereotypes what lager is. We always talk about clean and crisp. We always talk about um these uh things that don't necessarily translate or actually make sense to what what lager is. And when I, you know, carbonation being a good point here is that uh even in the US, with all the lager production happening, there's very few brewers that are doing natural carbonation. Um, maybe a handful that we met. Uh so you know you don't necessarily have to make to make great lager, you don't necessarily have to do natural carbonation. But you know, if you go to Germany, by law, all the CO2 that is in the beer is through the brewing process. So you think of Ryan Heitzgeboat, there's four ingredients that you can have in beer. It's mall hops, water, and yeast. Carbon dioxide is not one. In fact, um every other drink that you have lists carbon dioxide as an ingredient. So I actually have a seltzer right here. The first ingredient is carbonated water. So the FDA requires that you put CO2 on your ingredient list. CO2 is an ingredient. We are taking it from an external source, we're putting in that beer. Beer has that odd, it has this odd situation where you don't need to put the ingredients on the can. And I don't even know if most brewers really consider CO2 to be an actual ingredient. It's just something that's part of the process. But uh, if you are adding CO2 from an external source, that external source is probably coming from an ammonia plant, it's probably coming from some sort of natural gas facility. Uh, the CO2 that we're using in our breweries comes from questionable manufacturing practices. Now, yes, it's been processed in a way that is deemed food safe and food grade, but if you don't have to add that to the product, uh you're better off for it. And you know, you should, even if you are um gonna force carbonate your beers, you should be testing your CO2. You should be making sure that that CO2 meets your specs, it doesn't have off flavors, uh, that you're filtering it so that uh you don't put in something that you actually don't want in your finished products.

SPEAKER_03 53:46

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's just maybe it's there's just not as much romance and fanfare around CO2. Uh it's not as much fun to talk about as malt, hops, yeast, and water, you know. But uh, I guess you don't realize it until it's missing or it's off, until like your beer is flat or close to and realize how important it is. So if nothing else, um I guess just I appreciate in this book that you draw attention to it as the fifth ingredient and how yeah, a whole chapter on carbonation.

SPEAKER_01 54:23

So exciting stuff.

SPEAKER_03 54:24

Yeah, that's what's that's what's next. That will be my pleasure reading as I go on Memorial Day weekend holiday coming up. So ha ha. And of course, this episode will launch after that. Um, but yeah, I will again say thank you for the book and thank you for the service, and thank you for letting me pick your brain a little bit because these have been the questions that kind of keep me up and keep me going for no life to lager. Um can I ask you a few, just a few, a few fun questions before we wrap up, and then we're gonna have to talk about decoction because Jack at

Abby's playlist

SPEAKER_03 55:00

Von Trapp made me promise to give you more than a more than a word and more than a sentence for decoction. So we're gonna do that. But before we get there, um tell me a little bit about brew house music. I would love to know what you and what your team like to listen to at Jack's Abbey while you're brewing.

SPEAKER_01 55:18

So admittedly, I have not brewed a beer myself in a few years now. We we've updated our computer software, so I no longer know how to brew. So I don't uh you won't find me in the brewer's office very regularly.

SPEAKER_03 55:33

Um I was gonna ask, like, how hands-on you still are at this point. And of course, like this is your I'm sure this is your this is your baby and your presence looms large, but I wasn't sure if you were actually like day-to-day brewing.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

Well, I am involved um at the brewery every day. I'm more on the quality innovation side these days. I'm not actually doing um the day-to-day brewing anymore. So uh we do have a pilot facility, so every once in a while I'll be on the on the brew deck of the seven-barrel pilot uh testing something out. Um, but more often than not, I am uh working through process changes, working through new recipes, working through new ingredients and trying to um continuously improve. So that's the whole goal is that you know, we're we're not resting on our laurels. We always think we can make our beer better, whether it's processed through less DO or it's a new malt variety. And you know, malt something we didn't talk about really, but malt something that's on my mind a lot, that I talk about a lot. Um, you know, certainly hops get a lot of attention in the craft beer space. Uh, I'd really love to see barley get a little bit more attention. Um, you know, how many brewers actually know the variety of barley that they're using? Um, you know, when it comes to American T-Row. Frankly, I don't even know what varieties of barley come in our bulk. Turo, American T Row deliveries is not really all that important, but I can tell you every variety we use on the lager side, why we're using it, and really trying to get more involved in the brew house operations and how we use our malt to really distinguish our beers and create unique products here.

SPEAKER_03 57:24

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're right. Maybe malt, maybe everything is under discussed compared to hops in this moment. Um, and uh, part of why we started this show and part of the twists and turns I've taken in the beer industry were motivated by the fact that I've forgotten the taste of malt. So I agree with you, it's a primary importance. We have to get a shout out to like a local maltster where I'm based, um, in Alameda, Admiral Malting, just because their slogan is no malt, no beer. That is the fundamental truth. That is the fundamental truth. Um, so regardless of whether you're brewing day to day or not, tell us a little bit about what you used to like to listen to when you did. Tell us about what your team likes to blast at Jack's Abbey there in Framingham uh uh to get the job done throughout the day. What do you and your team like to listen to?

SPEAKER_01 58:11

Well, it varies a lot, and I know which brewer is brewing based on what music is going, whether it's like death metal, I know what which brewer is listening that. I know if it's fish, which brewer is on shift. I know if it's uh if it's like classic rock who is who is brewing. So we have we have six brew shifts a day because we have two brew houses, three shifts. Um and so there's a lot of different opinions. So there certainly is not one style of music that's it's that's happening. It's uh whoever gets to be in charge of of the music at any given time. So you got two people every shift fighting over uh what channel or or what station needs to be playing.

SPEAKER_03 58:56

Yeah, well, that uh cements my ongoing theory that in every brewery you will find a metal head, but I've had to kind of expand it to say you'll you'll also find a dead head. So yeah, you will hear metal as you will, the grateful dead or fish, but I'm glad you have both and everything in between. Yeah, yeah, that is uh the the battle for good and evil, the fight

To pasture or pasteurize NA

SPEAKER_03 59:25

for the yeah, for the playlist, for the radio dial, for what have you. Yeah, it's very real to this day, but I'm glad you have both, and I'm glad you come from a musical brewery, Jack. Um what about non-alcoholic beer? And this question I think is good for you just because we've talked a lot about the response of the craft beer industry to COVID, to the pandemic, how it had to uh adapt and change since, and non-alcoholic beer is a part of that conversation because we've seen a rise in the category, in the quality, in the consumption ever since uh the pandemic. So just tell us a little bit about what you think about non-alcoholic beer. Do you make it, do you sell it? Do you serve it? Um, how does it fit into the modern conversation with lager when people are trying to drink less beer, lower alcohol beer, non-alcoholic beer? What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:19

Non-alcoholic beer has been on my mind a lot recently. We've actually invested in a tunnel pasteurizer. So we have a tunnel pasteurizer at the brewery. It is not currently installed yet. We're hoping early 2027 we will have that operational and give us the ability to actually package uh NA beer. But I guess my opinion on the style or the category over the last few years is that we've seen some fairly remarkable improvements in the quality of non-alcoholic beer in just a few years. My opinion a few years ago was that there really wasn't much drinkable, and now there's just an amazing quantity of really high-quality product out there that is really, I think, going to help grow that category instead of, you know, so you're gonna enjoy an NA beer when you get it now because they taste good for the for the most part. Um, and that's a that's a big shift and something that we're excited to get into. So we're working on a few styles ourselves, both lager and uh with some of our other brands here at the brewery to figure out uh what makes the most sense for us. You know, the big problem with NA beer is that it has to be pasteurized. So the pasteurization is something you need to consider when you're developing these recipes. So hoppy beer does become a little bit challenging with these beers because the year, you know, as you already talked about hop degradation and oxidation, you're basically doing that to the beer as you're pasteurizing it. So it will uh make you have to reconsider your recipe a little bit. But these are the things that we're uh jumping into now uh as we prepare to launch beer next year.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:10

Nice, nice. I mean, I'm glad you uh see a want and need in the market, and uh, you know, hats off to any brewery willing to address that. Um just do you feel like alcohol? There is narrative around alcohol now that almost seems like it's an additive, like like people like just like brewers just go in and kind of add it to the beer for the for the effect, you know. Whereas alcohol is also arguably as an essential ingredient in traditional beer as anything else we've been talking about, carbonation or whatever. So alcohol, you know, it has body, it has flavor, it has character. And just what do you think the best way is to address that, to brew for that, once the alcohol is removed or not present?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:55

That that is the challenge there. And I I think part of it is you're not necessarily trying to fool people anymore, but you do want to create something that still tastes good. So um, you know, there is an ethanol in it, right? It is a different product, but you can get closer than you have been in the past with some of these new technologies and yeast strains, and um there's some other interesting processing changes that we're we're working on to make NA beer to to build body back up, and but you know, again, like is it gonna be 100% the same product? No. But again, I think it's more about creating an experience that's uh enjoyable, whether or not it's an exact replica.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:44

Well said,

Drake 'Masshole' Maye

SPEAKER_03 1:03:45

very well said and much agreed. Um on that note, I always kind of move here just because there's so many, there's a lot of celebrity partnerships around in a beer right now, which is really interesting. And you know, we could talk about that in itself. But um, I like to ask breweries just um celebrity, however you define that, someone you would like to work with, partnership, however, you define that, someone you would like to work with. I mean, Jax Abbey has obviously worked with uh the Celtics, the Bruins, um, Trader Joe's. I mean, God, that is definitely a celebrity in the beer world. Uh so is there anyone else you would like to work with or partner with in that respect that's on your wish list? Or here again, just talking about like collaborations. You know, what uh type of celebrity, what type of partnership would you like to do that you feel is really fitting to like the spirit and the character of Jack's Abbey?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:41

Yeah, that's a that's a tough one. Uh Jack's Abbey is definitely focused on promoting lager, which I don't know that that's necessarily something that lines up with celebrity uh partnership, but one of the fun beers that we do is Mass Hole Light. And there are plenty of massholes that are celebrities, at least celebrities to us in Massachusetts, that could be a lot of fun to partner with. I think one of the funny things was at the end of the uh Patriot season, um Drake May was asked if he was a if he felt like he was a mass hole and he hoped that he could be an honorary one. So maybe he would want to partner with Mass Hill to uh promote that beer.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:23

Maybe an honorary mass hole. Um to me, like those are the the best answers to this question.

Got decoction?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:30

It is not like, yeah, it's not the celebrity name that's known, it's the local celebrity that's loved and unknown, which would make for some of the most creative collaborations around beers like this. So yeah, I love it. Well, here's to all the mass holes out there listening. Um, and that brings us to decoction mashing, Jack. Um, so again, honoring my pledge to Jack at Vaughn Trap. Uh at this point, I ask everyone like uh yesterday. No, why or why not? Um, we're gonna talk about it just a little bit more because I would love to hear both a yes and no answer from you and some of the arguments for both why and why not. Um the chapter on this in your book is really interesting because from the outside, from the outset, it says like historically decoction was not for gaining consistent extract from undermodified kernels of barley, it was not to optimize uh enzymatic activity at various rest temperatures, and it was not necessarily for consistent temperature or boiling, you know, when thermometers were not yet invented. So it's just funny because if I was given like an essay question right now to talk about the roots of historical decoction, those are all the three answers I would have given off the top of my head for why. So from the outset, you prove those as um not entirely wrong, but definitely not right. So I would love to hear from you yes and no, and why or why not for decoction mashing in a modern brew house?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:07

That's a great question. And it's one that we tackle a lot and something I'm very passionate about. I'm a big proponent of decoction mashing, but only if you're doing it for the right reasons and with the right styles of beer. I wouldn't recommend making an American light lager and triple decocting it, for example. Um, but if you're going to make a Czech-style Pilsner, maybe that would be a very appropriate method to make that product. And you know, it goes back to my point about myths and misunderstandings, is that a lot of the things that are unique about lager, we don't understand why they are part of the process. And either we just do it because they're part of the process or we don't do it because we say uh it doesn't, it's not needed anymore, you don't have to do it. And both are sort of correct, like you don't have to decoct anymore. Um, and arguably there's a lot of times you don't want to decoct, you're actually gonna make the beer worse off. It's gonna depend a lot on the raw materials that you're using. And you know, you think about those myths about decoction. You know, we here in the year 2026, we read this method of brewing from 400 years ago, and they did this weird thing, and we're like, why the hell would they do this? And we try to use what we know about science, what we know about ingredients, raw materials, and we try to make an explanation for a process that they did 400 years ago. Um, and we then say this has to be it because there's no other me or reason you would do this. Uh, you have to you have to really ask the the the brewer 400 years ago, what the hell is going on? Why are you doing this? And you and when you really see some of the data coming out of the limited data that there is from that period of time, you realize that the problems that brewers had 400 years ago were very different from the problems that we have today as brewers. And the the problems that they were solving for were not the problems we're trying to solve for today. And because they came at it at a different lens, they had to be creative in how they process beer. So, you know, if beer just started being brewed today, there probably wouldn't be decoction. And in fact, there really only was decoction in a pretty small area of the world. It's Bavaria. Um, it definitely bleeded into the Czech brewing culture, bleeded into the Austrian brewing culture. But the English brewers, the Belgian brewers, the French brewers, the everywhere else, there is no real history of decoction brewing. And if you look at these reasons why brewers were decocting and those myths of why they decocted, then why the hell wasn't everyone else doing the same thing? Why is it just this small area of the world that's doing it? And the problems they were trying to solve were unique to them. So the two real big things that caused these challenges were the Ryan Heiske boat and the Brow Ordnung, both of the things I talk about in the book. But around 1400, Bavaria was actually a wine-growing region. They didn't brew a lot of beer. Uh the climate got very cold. Uh grapes didn't grow anymore, grow well. So they transitioned their alcohol industry to beer. So why is the Rheinheits vote in 1516? Because the government's got to control this shift from grapes to barley, and they need to feed people, but also have alcohol. So they they kept the wheat for bread, they kept the wheat for the the royalty, and the the brewers got the barley. You know, we think of barley today as this really premium product, the only thing we really want to make beer with. But in reality, beer is made with barley because it's not a great food staple. So brewers got the worst food crop, not the best brewing crop. The brewers really wanted wheat. Wheat had some real advantages to brewing, and the only ones who got wheat were the royalty, the nobles. Um the royals. And so, why is barley problematic to brew with? Because it has this husk on it. And today we utilize that husk to help with our laundering. But if you're a brewer in 1516, required to use 100% barley, getting to the starch on the inside of that barley seed is near impossible without boiling the crap out of it. Um, today we don't have that problem. We just don't get barley that's in the condition that it was at that period of time. And so I see they had just had very unique challenges using 100% barley. Everywhere else in the brewing world used honey or wheat or oats or um other fermentables that were easier to use, and their their need to get every last bit of starch out of barley just wasn't um as important. And obviously, today we don't have that issue. So why are you still decocting if you don't have this issue that they had 500 years ago? Um you know that that that's then the argument. Like, why do this? Um the interesting thing today is that the top decoction brewing, so you're broiling the barley and you're destroying all the enzymes. So you're doing one thing, you're actually accessing the extract from the barley, but on the flip side, you're destroying all the enzymes, so you're no longer getting fermentable sugars. So the beer you're actually fermenting 500 years ago has something like 40% attenuation. So if you brew a 12-play-hough beer, you probably get like a 2% beer, maybe a 2.5% beer coming out. Um, versus today, you brew a 12% beer, you're at five, five and a half percent, uh, you're at double the ABV. And today, brewers, particularly in Germany, when they are decocting, are using the decoction method to increase attenuation. So you have this historical method developed to get extract, but destroys attenuation. And today's brewers are trying to keep the tradition alive, but doing the exact opposite by increasing the attenuation of their beers. And it's a very interesting um transition over, you know, that's probably the last hundred years where that shift has happened. Um, but it's still traditional, even though it's doing the exact opposite thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:35

That, okay. My single biggest takeaway from this chapter and from your book was we can't necessarily approach historical decoction from a modern brewing standpoint, and vice versa. As you just said, you know, historically breweries maybe head to decoct to yield a high protein, uh, dexterous wart to survive extended cold condition conditioning and maturation and to keep feeding the yeast over that time. I think the everyone knows the Reinheitzka both the brow or nung. I'm sure maybe I've read that on some level before, but you really drove it home and uh I and how important it was to the production and evolution of lager beer. So, yes, I get it that like um you can't necessarily approach then as now or now as then. There is one point when you cite like um there is text from the medieval ages talking about like a 14-hour brew day in the context of decoction. Uh, this might sound like a bit much, but reading that, the fact that I am a fan, an observer, a supporter, an interpreter, like that somehow makes me feel connected to my humanity and the history of this species. I know that sounds that sounds a little bit over the top, but that is what beer means to me and does for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:52

Can you imagine having to mash for 14

Czech your appelation

SPEAKER_01 1:14:55

hours? Like that's a crazy amount of processing of what takes probably your average brewer right now. They're mashing in for like 30 minutes, maybe an hour or something. If you're decoctioning, mashing, like our longest mashes are three hours, and we're doing double decoctions in three hours. So it's a big transition.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:12

Um, I appreciate the answers on the show that I've been given in terms of just, you know what, we want to brew a traditional uh Czech lager in homage, uh, in homage to it. So we're gonna approach this just another ingredient and a part of their process. Um the Czech thing is interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:29

I, you know, I I I hate to like preach, but Czech lager, which I did not know, is a geographical appellation, and you can only be called Czech beer in the Czech Republic if you do three things. You have to double decoct it, you have to use Czech ingredients, fair, and you have to use a two-stage fermentation process. So you need a ferment in one vessel, rack it to a lagering tank. Um, and you know, just like here in the US, you can't call your sparkling wine champagne. There is this tendency, I think, for American brewers to call their beers Czech style without doing any of the things that is required to be Czech beer. Um, and something that we didn't know about when we wrote this book, something that we've changed since. So anytime we do call a beer a Czech style lager now that we brew here at the brewery, we ensure that we meet those three requirements that it's double decocted, two-stage fermentation, and uses Czech ingredients. Obviously, there's no legal requirement here in the US to call something Czech lager, but I still think it would be fair to at least reconsider the use of that term if you're not gonna abide by what the rules of Czech beer are.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:48

That's really interesting. You know, it makes me think. So going back to the point about you can you can go to any brewery now that was maybe founded upon IPA and find a German or a Czech pilsner on their lineup, right? And and I've been doing that, and I will often have like their Czech pills, which is objectively good, but unremarkable or unidentifiable in a lineup. It really tastes similar to

Timing is everything

SPEAKER_03 1:17:15

like all their other brewery, all their other beers, and like probably very similarly made to their ale production, right? And no shame in that, but it doesn't have like necessarily the character or the identity or the depth of flavor I've seen otherwise. So at that point, I started to think, well, they're clearly not built for decoction. So maybe this is the difference for uh decoction or an argument to like decoct or not, as you say in your book, right? But and I'll just finish this and then give you the last word and we'll move on. Ever since then, you know, I have really come to realize and appreciate um like I had friends at uh Geist House reach out recently and say, Hey, we just put a beer in the tanks that we think you'll love, come visit in a few months. And I'm like, oh, that is, and they don't decoct. And I'm like, I think that is actually the secret to why I am so drawn to and why their beer tastes so good. The fact that they are giving it the kind of time and space and real estate in their brewery, the love and the labor to nurture this beer over a period of months to enjoy. So that's not an end-all-be-all answer to decoct or not. But to me, it is a really compelling argument that well, yet another ingredient, which I think you have said, we know Kevin Davies said on this show, that like time is arguably as important to your beer as anything and everything else. Do you agree?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:42

Time's incredibly important. It doesn't necessarily mean that it has, you know, what is the time though? I think it's gonna vary based on the type of beer. And uh, you know, I think the the crispest crush of most crushable beer we brew is done in two weeks. Um, and you know, it's the least flavorful beer that we brew, we put out in two weeks. On the flip side, we're brewing beer that we're putting out in eight weeks of similar ABV. Uh and you know, it it depends on the the techniques you're using to brew it, and every style of beer has a different reason. I you know that's that's one of the big things for me is that we talk about clean, crisp, neutral flavor or no yeast character. Uh, to me, that's really boring. So, you know, not that I don't like American Light Lager if we brew one ourselves, but and it has a time and place. But you can be really interesting with lagers, have a lot of character in beer, and that often takes longer to make. The longer you lager, you're probably doing that for a reason, depending on your fermentation process. Um, and you're probably also getting what would otherwise be an off-flavor in your beer. And we talk about off-flavors a lot in the book where people have this aversion to thinking that lagers should never have any off-flavors. But in my opinion, the best lagers have arguably a lot of off-flavors, at least compared to American Light Lager. When we first started fermenting beer, we did it, we were technically flawless. We did a modern hybrid fermentation. We started cold, we let the beer warm up. We didn't have any ester, we didn't have any fusels, we didn't have any acetaldehyde, we didn't have any sulfur, we didn't have any diacetyl. There was not a single flaw you could point to in the beer. But in the end, the beer was boring. Um, and the one thing that really changed the flavor of the beer is when we started to naturally carbonate. So, what what happens when you naturally carbonate? You're close, you're bugging that tank and you're trapping all the off-flavors. And I always, in the early days, was like, why can't I make beers like the Germans? I keep making these technically really quality beers, but they don't taste like Bavaria. And as soon as we started naturally carbonating, it was like, oh my goodness, my beer tastes like Bavaria now. And I realized Bavarian beer tastes like fermentation character that would otherwise have left the tank and left a very neutral beer. But in the end, because we kept all that fermentation character, that off-flavor that um would be otherwise an off-flavor in American Light Lager, we really increased the drinkability, we increased the uh the uh enjoyment of that beer, the flavor of that beer. Um, so I think it's important about how we talk about lager, why we're lagering beer, and um some of the expectations of the flavors we're getting.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:40

There is there's clearly no one answer to this. I love all the emphasis on process in your book, but there's clearly no one process to achieve one desired end. And I will say, like, you definitely made me want to visit Franconia. Um, I visited Berlin, visited Munich when I was in college. That's where I had my beer epiphany, maybe similar to your own,

The verdict on decoct

SPEAKER_03 1:22:05

but never really, never really traveled to Franconia region. And um, I think that would be probably one of the most like dynamic beer trips you could make. And to your point, you will not see one of the same things expressed the same way from one brewery to the next when they have among one of the largest collections of breweries per capita for that area. So I think just to wrap up this this talk about decoction, um just in at the end of the day, at the end of the brew day, does it give uh enhanced malt character that you can't necessarily achieve with specialty highly modified modern malts?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:47

Yes and no. It depends on how how you're decocting. So uh and also depends on what malt you're using and when you're decocting. So if you're doing the Czech style double slash triple decoction, absolutely the the you cannot replicate the flavors. Uh, you can you could I know a lot there there are plenty of modern uh Czech brewers that still use some specialty malt when they're making pale lager, but they are still double decocting, and that double decoction process is a very important part of the flavor profile of those beers. Um, that being said, if you're using highly modified malt and you're doing what we would call a simplified decoction, you're gonna get the least amount of character in that beer. And it also depends on how you're heating it. If steam is at a lower temperature than direct fire, so there's a lot of different reasons from a flavor perspective that you might want to use it. Um so the more decoctions, the hotter the temperature, the less modified the malt. These are all gonna be factors on the intensity of the flavor contribution. Uh, it can be from almost unnoticeable to the only thing you notice in the beer. Um, and then the other thing is thinking about the raw materials you're using. We have this just, in my opinion, we have this propensity to just go to the simplest malt possible, the simplest type of mashing program. Like we think about how brewers are hopping these days and the lengths they go to to incorporate hop flavor. Like you could spend hours dry hopping or adding all these hop products to a tank of beer, but can you really not spend an extra hour of mashing to create some really unique flavors or use some new new malts? You think about all these local craft malters who are either using local heritage, um, regional varieties of grains that may not have the same modification level as the big malsters, or you're purposely going to malts that were processed in a certain way that require you to use the coction in order to get the most out of them. And that's something that we're certainly looking at when we're getting malts. We don't want the commodity malt. And you know, frankly, that's the German malt we get from Europe as well as the Turo we get from the US, they're all designed to do a 30-minute, not a 30-minute, a five-minute uh mash. Uh, they're not designed for decoction mashing. And what you get is a lot of beer that tastes very similar. If you want to create unique products through barley versus hops, you're gonna need to look at varieties, you're gonna need to look at different modification levels, and he might require you to decock those grains in order to get the same sort of extract and efficiency out of them, but also create really unique flavor profiles that distinguish the beers that you're brewing versus uh the commodity malts that are currently available.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:45

Ah, well said. Okay, my friend. Um, well, Jack at Von Trapp, that was for you and Jack at Jack's Abbey. I'm gonna say

First and final beer

SPEAKER_03 1:25:55

thank you because I definitely learned something in the process, and I hope everyone else did as well. Next episode, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming with to decoct or not and why or why not in a single word and a single sentence. But that was that was really interesting. And I I thank you for sharing. Um, before we go, and this is one last question that I like to ask everyone. If you're talking to someone pondering their first beer at 21, uh, I don't think you ponder beer at 21, but considering their first beer at 21, um, and then maybe pondering their last beer at 101. Um, just what and why? Why should it be Jack's Abbey? What should they drink? What do you want to say before we go to all the beer drinkers out there about Jack's Abbey and Jack Hindler Brewing Company?

SPEAKER_01 1:26:44

That's uh that's a that's a deep one. Um, you know, I I would say our our you know, my current brewing philosophy, my current uh uh motivations and things that get me excited is is really uh finding recreating American, American land beer, American-inspired lager beer. Um we do that through a lot of different products here at the brewery. Um, you know, I already mentioned Steffi Chapp. It's that that beer that uh really utilizes a unique variety, variety of barley, but um trying to recreate beers that are unique to us, not just recreating German beer, recreating Czech beer, recreating American light lager, really being thoughtful about the ingredients we're using, the ways that we're processing them, and getting something that's unique and uh true to ourselves here uh in Framingham.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:39

Yeah. Yeah. Um well I hope to join you at some point for a pint in Framingham.

Goodnight and Good Lager

SPEAKER_03 1:27:46

Uh if not two, three, four, five and on. So Jack, I really appreciate you joining. Um I will say thank you to Jack's Abbey. Uh thank you to your brothers, Eric and Sam. And thank you to Abby of Jack's Abby for sharing your time with me, which is arguably no more important, uh the most important thing to Lager Beer. And um, thank you for sharing your beer with me, your time with me, and joining No Life Till Lager. So if you like what you're hearing, yes, like, subscribe, follow No Life Till Lager. Help us hit the road and make a better kind of beer show. Help me back to the Northeast so I can share a pint of Lager beer with Jack in person in Framingham, Massachusetts. And until I get there and until we get to where we're going, I will say good night and good lager. Jack, thank you so very much. Cheers.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:42

Thank you. Cheers. No life to lager.

unknown 1:28:52

No life to Logger.