No Life 'Til Lager Episode 16 - Todd DiMatteo x Good Word

No Life 'Til Lager Episode Sixteen with Todd DiMatteo, owner and head brewer at Good Word Brewing & Public House.

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

No Life 'Til Lager theme song by The Rogue Yeast. Episode art by Isabella Rose DiMatteo.

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

Werd - https://goodwordbrewing.com

Copyright 2025 No Life 'Til Lager

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome

Welcome Todd!

SPEAKER_00 0:13

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. My name is Adam Zunaga. I'm a failed master Cicero. I'm part of the creative team behind the Six Most Metal Breweries and Beer Like and Doss Movie. My guest today is Todd DiMateo, co-owner, head brewer at Goodword Brewing and Public House in Duluth, Georgia. If Kraft Beer is dead, welcome to the afterlife. Thank you for joining No Life to Lager, Todd.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

And thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

I mean, I think you have the best craft beer to go fridge of any brewery I've ever seen. I love your support and enthusiasm for No Life to Lager. I'd say half the breweries I work out to reach out to are just like fuck yeah, and the other half politefully ghost me. Thank you for being in the fuck yeah camp, my friend. I am grateful for it.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Dude, thank you for having me. I mean, at almost 46 years old, I'm either a fuck yeah or uh no fucking way. You know, because life is short. So the things you love, and anything that's gonna support an enrich beer is good about me, especially when it's lager-centric. So I'm glad it's important, glad to be part of this.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Well said, my friend. Um, so our listeners know I want to talk about you, I want to talk about the brewery, and I want to talk about your beer. Uh, first

Die Todd Die

SPEAKER_00 1:40

and foremost, can you speak to the the beers in our hand? I'm drinking die Todd Die. I believe it's a Czech-style pilsner clocking it at 5% alcohol. Uh, what's your problems with Taz, man? Why all the hate?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Clearly, it's a bit self-duprecating, but uh, you know, the the real story is uh, you

Untappd

SPEAKER_01 1:59

know, Untapped is probably the most talked-about app in the brewing world amongst brewers, mostly shit it on, and for good reason, you know, it's not that I don't think that it doesn't have its place, but if you don't qualify the user, you shouldn't affect my brewery or my friend's brewery. And I think that, you know, us brewers realize that, you know, looking at something like Untapped, especially from buyer's perspective, it drives what they purchase, right? And so somebody named Todd, and I always have joked about it being one of the worst things ever, uh should have done our uh our mile some time ago. And I was like, you know what, fuck that guy. Uh die Todd Die. And you know, again, having a little fun uh with myself, most most folks when we bring this to uh an event are like, I got a Todd in our group, and we gotta get one of these, you know, get a picture of it. So there's a lot of excitement about die Todd Die. But uh but it was actually the first uh can label we did, and it was the first beer we canned outside of Crowlers. This and uh Never Sleep. But um, I remember telling the can artists, and you can look at yours, but I was like, uh, can you just make me dying all over the place? So there's Todd's drinking poison, being eaten by a dinosaur, you know, all sorts of fun ways for uh Todd's to die. But very cute and comical, and truly keeping it little light. And just under pills, and it says Todd's are terrible and they must pay. But uh, you know, sort of an inside joke about the you shouldn't miss of Untap, sorry guys, but it's true. And uh little self-deprecating humor, but honestly one of my favorite beers.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Uh mine too now. I I love the backstory, I love that shots are fired at Untapped uh right out the gate. And I so originally I thought this might be a Simpsons reference. I was like, is it D Todd D?

SPEAKER_01 3:45

You know Love Simpsons, and I definitely when we first released it, there's some um some regulars who were like, oh, it's a Simpsons riff. And I'm like, as much as I love the Simpsons, and I truly do, it's not. But uh, but yeah, you know, we'd call this just Pilsner, but if you ask me it, it's open Pilsner. Um but it's uh like a lot of things uh for us, it's uh beer that's you know it's Czech malt and it's saws hot, but it's ondex e so it's a little bit of a hybrid and we do a uh decoction on it, so it's it's Czech. But um, you know, after going to Czech Republic uh a few months back, I had the honor of going with the agriculture group. It was amazing. Um, you definitely have to get used to diacetyl. Uh two days in, and I felt like I was getting my master's system in just diacetyl because I became an expert. Uh nice. But uh but it is beautiful, it's a wonderful culture as far as um, you know, we have plenty of beer that didn't have diet. For the first two days, I had lots and lots of it. But the uh the Czech pouring culture in the pub culture was fucking amazing. Like I loved it, super inspired by it. But um, what I found with a lot of the Czech brewers is kind of that mentality of like, well, I'm Czech, I brewed this, so this is Czech beer. Um, but we do try to pay honor to um what we can find about tradition our firsthand from uh books, brewers or our friends or whatever, um, when we're making classic styles, but this one's one that's kind of a hybrid. Uh but yeah, I tapped the eye.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Well, fuck the haters. Untapped has come up, I think, on every single episode. Um if you're listening, know that brewers are reading and your comments can do make or break, or at least make an impact and can hurt. So by all means, mind your manners on Untapped. I only use it now um to check like basically names and ABV alcohol percentage. You know, I I don't regularly log it, I don't use it as social media, I use it as basically a uh a dictionary, an encyclopedia resource tool. Um for that it has value. But going on there and like uh yeah, throwing shade or throwing shots, uh no, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

You know, I think it's great. Like I said, if they qualify the the user, totally affect the brewery. But you know, my thinking is if you don't take some sort of test that says this person knows who they're talking about, then you don't get the score, right? You just get to log, right? Because the score does affect breweries. I've had brewers, uh, and you know, some brewers love that they have a great score. That's right, you know, it's annoying. Like if you're ever feeling really good about your beer or your brews or or whatever, just look on untapped, it'll definitely uh take you down a peg or two. But you know, it's just it's it to me, it's that little bit of uh the Aurora Boris where you have the snake eating the tail a little bit. Like I feel like untapped and the users were kind of driving what some brewers were making, you know, because it was what was selling because it was scoring well, and then the retailers and the distributors were our wholesales looking at it, and uh, and so then you have the rise of a few styles of beer, right? And then all this other classic style and esoteric stuff just kind of fell to the wayside. So, you know, I I won't put all the blame on the untap because I'd just be not right and kind of unfair, but you know, we use Ollie, so I think next glass is good for something. But fuck up on tapped.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Yeah. Well, Todd, wherever you are, I guess we owe that Todd a thank you because of it helped inspire this beer. Uh, the name of this beer, uh, the can, the label art, some of the some of my favorite. Um, I guess Todd served his purpose. And if this is your house beer, uh grateful to share it with you now. So uh moving right along, Todd,

Know your brewer

SPEAKER_00 7:30

um, let's get to know you. Um tell me about life before beer. Uh tell me about other jobs you've had, and tell me about how you ultimately turned this passion into a profession at good word.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Yeah, I mean, so I'm 45. I got into beer. I got into like craft beer, I guess around um 22 or so. I moved to Asheville, North Carolina. And that was before Asheville was what it is now. Uh of course there was already Highland Brandon was up there, but um, I remember drinking Highland, Gaelic Gale, and sometimes hooked stout. And uh I would get 2004 20. Yeah, this is all when I had a little bit of money. Like if during the same time, if I was kind of broke, I was drinking chitty macro beer. But it was my first like foray into drinking good beer, and I'd mix in a little Guinness. And uh I remember one of the around that same time I started drinking like Sam Smith. Um, you know, I would go to I forget the name of the something life, whole life or some some kind of specialty store in uh in Asheville, and I would buy like you know the little uh bottles of Sam Smith beer moves. It was awesome, uh open up and all that. But that was my first foray into it. But um I want to say I was there for a few years and then I moved to uh back to Atlanta, and in 2005 I started working at Brickstore Pub, which is 29 uh next year. It's one of the best pubs. I'd say it's the best pub. I'm obviously biased uh in the country. It's always ranked in the top list, and all all the best people know that this is the place. And so anyway, I uh my wife you know, we were dating at the time, she brought me into this place, and you know, I was hooked. I was definitely intimidated by the amount of beer that they had. It was like pages and pages, and I was like, holy shit. And uh I ended up having the same beer over and over, it was the flying dog uh gonzo porter. And it's a strong beer, but I was you know so intimidated by the list, I was like, I'm just gonna go to this again. And I remember being like short through Gonzo's deep and asked the uh server, I was like, hey man, is it uncouth if I ask for an application? He's like, nah, we're a bar. And I was like, all right, cool. So interviewed uh you know the next week and then started working there and worked there for uh a little under 12 years. And during the last few years of that, I started um homebrewing. I'd always been a musician, so I played music for a while, but when I started homebrewing, yeah, my wife was like, Listen, pick a hobby because you're doing and wasting all this time, money, and energy on uh both these things, so choose one. So I slowly wound down the band and started selling uh music gear to buy homebrewing stuff, and my homebrewing like stand was crazy. I had this roader, you know, make it and it was expensive as hell. And I took the the half-barrel kegs and instead of using the MPT fittings, I had them build like triclamp fittings, and you know it was a pretty serious kit. I would brew it, you know, yeah, it was crazy. But I brew like three to five times a week, and uh, you know, I want to say it was 2014 or 2015, was planning to do something else. I was like, you know, whether it be a pub and the idea of owning a um a brewery or brew pub was not really on my radar, right? You know, to be honest with you. And the more I started homebrewing, the more I knew I didn't want to just go open like just a bar, you know. Not that bars are just bars, some of them are so special, of course, uh like Brickstore. Um but I actually got hung up on this idea, and um, you know, me and the beer buyer at Brickstore decided we want to open a brew pub, and the guys from Brickstore uh joined us and we looked all around the city where to put it, never thought we'd be out here in the burbs, but truthfully, I wouldn't change it for the world. I mean, the city's been absolutely incredible for us. I mean, they um, you know, they they've been over backwards to get us here, and then just before COVID hit, they helped finance our building for us, so we owned our building, obviously paying the workers on it, but still it's like you know, over the last five years, we've seen a lot of the breweries like not doing well or whatever, and a lot of times it has to do with the lease going up. Um so we don't have to worry about that, you know. Uh, so we're very, very fortunate, luckily that way. So wouldn't change any of that for the world, but um yeah, in the beginning, I uh sorry, I guess I skipped a lot there, but you know, in the beginning, I was just playing middle between the brewery here at Good Word and the restaurant. We hired a brewer, you know, and uh hired him about three months before we opened. At that point, all he and I did was work on like recipes together. I was like, well, let's do this and do that. But he was doing all the actual work. I would do some seller stuff, but I didn't really know my way around the brewery. And so after about two and a half months of being open, he left and went back to Canada. So his meats were running out. And uh, you know, he let us believe that he was gonna come back. He was gone for like a week and he finally told us like I'm not coming back. I remember the first brew, and I've told this story before uh to anyone who listened, but uh it was crazy the first time I brewed because you know our system isn't huge, it's a 10-barrel brew house, it's a three-vessel, and it has like an automation package or whatever. But um I never brewed on it. And uh the guy who had done the automation setup for us during build out had been fired because he was like a fall-down drunk. Super nice guy. But um when I went to go clean the tank the first time, I didn't know how to do that. I was like on YouTube. I mean, it was crazy. Uh, there's this guy, I'm forgetting his name, it's Jasper, something like this, on YouTube, and he's got tons of videos, and I was watching all these videos to try to figure out how to clean the tank and do this and do that, and uh I started at probably 6 in the morning, and I think I left around 3 a.m. with beer inside of a fermenter. Well, I should say work inside of a fermenter. Um and it was called Man in Motion, that was it was a table beer, and uh yeah, I just remember being like, all right, that was such a long and hard process. If this is the worst day, everything else is gonna be easy. It can only get better, and you know, it did, honestly, like you know, four to six months of tough, and we did I did try to find a brewer for a while, but there was a sort of sense of pride, like I don't want to be put back in that same position where somebody can you know leave and just upend our whole shit, and sure then I'm thrust back into it. So for a while I did both brewery and front house uh managing, you know. So I'll get get in the morning, you know, get dirty as hell, change my clothes and come and run the floor uh in the evening. And I did that for about six months, and uh I remember being, you know, I told my partner, I was like, I can't keep this up. So we promoted someone to help him, and then I took over the brewery full-time. And you know, the brewery for the first four to six months after I took over, it was fun, you know, some not fun. Um, but I kept learning, like I think anybody who knows me would probably say that I'm a very inquisitive uh person. Like um I'm a hard worker for sure, but I don't have the give up thing in my body. Like if I I'm often inspired by negative um, you know, it's my negative comments where it's like, oh yeah, I died, die. You know, I'll show you. Yeah, back down to that. So uh so yeah, I just you know, I just kept my head down and I I I would ask questions. And um, you know, if there was ever a brewer that I would become friends with or whatever, I would pick their brain. It was it was a big part of what um I owe any success that we would have is to asking people um their opinions and gleaning what I could from them.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Nice, nice. Um well I love that you're a

GAS

SPEAKER_00 15:30

musician, turn brewer, and a brewer that still hopefully plays the music or kept some of that gear. Um I they go hand in hand, every brew house has a musician, if not like a band within it, you know. And the whole like gear acquisition syndrome, gas, you know, I understand how it can translate to playing music or building a brewery. So that is that is badass. Um here's to Gonzo, here's to Flying Dog, and Hunter S. Thompson. I'm glad it inspired you to like formally get into the beer business and think about applying and kind of growing as a brewer.

Know your brewery

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Um, and all of it, you know, there are no accidents, led you to the here and now. Um that this that Duluth has been so that you know, this journey kind of began in Asheville, which is now beer mecca in its own right, uh, but that led to Duluth. Uh, I want to talk more about that and just how so good word founded what, like 2017?

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Yeah, so 2017. Yeah. So we like I said, we kind of looked around everywhere for uh it's funny, music has to do with us being out here too.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

I believe it.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

So we looked around for a while, and you know, I think everybody knows, especially, especially now, how expensive everything is, but you know, when you're trying to like start a restaurant and brewery, like it's a big, it's a big thing. Like I walk into some breweries and I'm like, damn, they're just there's so much money in this thing, and I look in the front of the house, you know, the the tap room or whatever, and it's very sparse or whatever. So like for us, we want to make sure that we really focus, especially coming from Brickstore, you know, like the atmosphere is so much a part of um who we were, who they are. And so we didn't want people to feel like they were just transplanted into some warehouse picture district. Like, we're like in and no nocturne people who were in those spaces. I get it, do what you can with what you you can. One of my favorite breweries uh and good friends of mine uh here for Cohesion, he is in a space like that, but he has made it amazing. Like I I went to this place before I went to Czech Republic, but once I was in Czech Republic, I actually the first place I had a beer was with him. Uh but I'm like, damn, he captured it so well. He took down the you know the grand space of everything, made it feel real intimate, did a great fucking job. So it is possible for it to be done.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

But but shout out to Eric at Cohesion, uh just former guest on this show, and a name at a brewery that keeps coming up. So yeah, all in the family. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Just one of the best guys ever in raped here. Um, but anyway, so we want to make sure that the restaurant had a lot of focus, you know, not that we weren't not focused on the brewery, of course, but um, but it was important. So it was either not the right location, we wanted to be around families. My original business plan had like a playground as part of the thing, depending on where we landed. Like if we had space, I wanted dollars left over because there's never dollars left over. I wanted to make a playground because at the end of the day. For kids or adults. Uh, you know, the giant Jenga, we don't do the giant Jenga. Uh we did at a time, but no, uh for the kids, for sure. I mean we were pregnant with our um third daughter at the time, you know, uh eight, you know, a little over eight years ago. And so I'm a family guy, you know, and uh I want a place where families kind of feel that. I know that's a it's a hot button issue in breweries these days. People not necessarily brewers complaining about it, but mostly like guests on Reddit and stuff like this, uh complaining about kids running around everywhere. And yeah, I don't want unattended children running around our restaurant, of course, but we want a place where families and communities feel welcome because for us, we're a public house, right? We are we're where you come to celebrate, commiserate, fucking all of the in-between, all of that. So we came out to Duluth, right? And they had just leveled this side of the downtown. And Adam, you should come, and we should talk about Little Beer, but you should come to Little Beer next year. I would love to have you here.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

I hope so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

We have about 90 brewers uh and over half open focus, almost half open focus primarily on lager. So um part, I should say. Uh anyway, it's amazing. You'll love it. You'll have plenty of uh interview time if you're gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Yeah, no, we will definitely get to Little Beer Fest.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

I love it. But um, but anyway, so we came out here and they just leveled this side. It was like literally clay, and I just didn't see it. I didn't have the vision. I usually consider myself somebody who is artistic and can kind of see things, especially outside the box, but I didn't see it. And I think it was because I because I lived in Decatur, I was right down from Brickstore, and I'll have I had snuck into this old building that was like kind of dilapidated, and it was crossing this wonderful restaurant called uh Kimball House. It's still there, it's one of the best in the southeast or amazing. Um but anyway, I'll sneak into this building across from Kimball House, and anybody who would follow me over there, whether it be a builder, uh business partner, whoever, I'm like, this is what it's gonna be. And this building was a piece of shit. I mean, it was terrible. There was like five parking spaces, it was it was not the building, clearly. But um, I was so hooked on not leaving Decatur that it was hard for me to see value in other places. So kind of poo-pooed on this Duluth spot, and we kept looking for a little while longer, and then um one of my partners was like, hey, come back out here. There's a concert going on. It was Driving and Crying, um, which you probably know driving crying. Yeah, and came to downtown Duluth on this town green where we have Little Beer, where we have Mighty Fine R IPA Fest. And there was 8,000, they said 8,000 people down here for this concert. And I was like, I'm all in. You know, my wife came with me and she was pregnant, and I'm like, we're gonna do this. This and so I loaded her up in the car for six or seven Sundays in a row, and we looked for houses, and she poo-pooed on it, on the houses out here. She didn't want to be in the birds, and then finally the last day, we uh we found a house that we uh we both uh we're in now. We've been there for nine years. So yeah, nine years ago we moved out here, we took the building in 2016, and then we finally opened in 2017. But but yeah, so music's had a lot to do with it. I do still have a little bit of music gear, by the way. I sold most of it I kept one electric guitar to give them some 335. And I've got my Martian, my Martin acoustic electric, but I don't play them that often, man. I swear, I like I feel like at some point I'm like the old man band thing because I see this and and uh it's like all right, 55, and I, you know, like I'm not that far. But uh like let's let's play some people dead or whatever, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

I hope so. I hope so, man. Honestly. Yeah, Todd. No, you're a you're a busy man, uh, you're a family man. Uh and what's what's in a name? Why

The Good Word

SPEAKER_00 22:15

why good word? And I want to just talk a little bit more about the brewery itself because yeah, you're not lager exclusive, but you're definitely lagger-centric, you're definitely lagger-led. I'm curious if that was kind of part of your vision from the beginning. Um, did it evolve over time? Uh, so what is the good word? What's in a name? And how did you gradually come to invest uh in lager to the point of running your own festival, which which we'll get to as well with Little Beer Fest? But tell me a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

So, yeah, good word, the name. You know, coming up with a name was a little hard because I, you know, again, coming from bands, I'm a sort of a lyrical person, and I uh, you know, was a songwriter in the two bands that I was in. And so I think lyrically, but I always had a hard time of condensing names down. So outside of a few beer names, you'll see some of ours are very long-winded. I'm uh kind of like my buddy Jason Pellet from Orceus. We are you know, we're lyrical. We can't help, we can't short them that much. You know, we're not like uh our our good buddies uh Sheeling, they're good about one-word names. I have a hard time with that. But uh coming up the the um the name of the brewery was me and one of my partners, we were like talking about ad nauseum pitching ideas. Neither of us like any idea together, and and this is the true story. I'll tell you what we tell people, but this is the real story. So I say word. I'm a child of the 80s, right? I was born in 79, so I'm very used to saying word. And so if you ever take me, uh I'll usually, when I agree, I'll word is how I finish it. And so he suggested word brewing, I swear. Like as a joke, and I was like, what about good word? And that's as simple as it is, but to try to give the name a little more weight and like you know, root spa, whatever, we're like uh, you know, a place that um you know people could gather, like saying the good word, like not religious at all. No, no uh knock the people who are religious. We are in a very religious area out here in the birds, and a lot of people early on were like, oh, never meet any Christians. And it's like, nope, nope, no problem with Christians, by the way. But uh we are not that is not where we came from. But anyway, that could come up. We never thought about it that way. Yeah, what's the good word?

SPEAKER_00 24:29

But it was more like in the beginning, there was the word.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

In the beginning there was there was only one word, it was word. Um but uh you know uh this the saying from the 70s, like what's the good word? And uh you know that kind of thing. So we just kind of coupled it or cobbled it together, and we have this long thing. I'll actually send it to you after we um hang up, but it's essentially good word is made up of mitzvits of you know all types of people uh in this little melting pot. Because this little ship that we're in, like, yes, we're in the birds, but this little uh area off of Beaufort Holly, it is littered with some of the best people and best ethnic foods you can find fucking. I mean, you name some and so also I should say I'm raised by a Puerto Rican grandmother. Um so I I love I grew up kind of eating other food, right? Uh in a small town in Alabama, so um being out here has been great. My wife is uh she's half Korean, and so this is the fourth largest Korean population, I think it is. So when a mom comes here, she absolutely loves it. But anyway, so we have all these great cultures, and so we we wanted a place that was truly built of its community, and we're I mean, like if you see some of our beers, I've got a beer called uh Palmany, which is uh named for my um grandmother in Korean, but it's got my mother-in-law's picture on it. So and we have Puerto Rican, we have Puerto Rican pills in it with the Puerto Rican flag on there.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

So I've seen that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

Yeah, yeah.

Down in Duluth

SPEAKER_00 26:05

You know that uh that Duluth is um that diverse, uh, was that welcoming and accommodating to you as a brewery? Um, you know, it's worth just taking a moment to appreciate like Georgia and the Georgia beer scene, because maybe it's not one of the first states uh that comes to mind uh for beer, for food that you just mentioned, but I'm guessing there is a lot of everything when you look for it. I mean, Atlanta is such a cultural hub, like for music, for film and television production, um, and presumably for beer as well, which is why you're located what, just like 20, 30 minutes outside of it?

SPEAKER_01 26:41

So we're 22 miles from the city, and so from here to Brickstore is like 38 minutes without traffic, and anybody's been to a landlord that's doesn't happen unless it's like midnight, but uh about 45 minutes from the city. So yeah, if you want to come see us, you're gonna drive. Um we're like midpoint between the city and Athens.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Yeah. And then just what is it about Duluth? What is it about Georgia um that you would say really enabled you to find a home there? You mentioned like the city welcomed you. Um what is it that makes it that you are thriving post-pandemic and what other people are citing as like kind of a struggling market right now? What is it that you were able to set up, like a logger-led brewery ultimately, hold these uh kind of brewery-owned and operated beer festivals, uh, open a public house as a community gathering space. What is it about the people in place that enables you to do all this?

SPEAKER_01 27:38

You know, I don't know. I think that we're you know, we're fortunate. Um I, you know, I'm I was born in Georgia, even though I spent time in other states. I lived in North Carolina for a while. And if I ever lived somewhere else I'd pride in North Carolina, I'd certainly love the uh the state. Um but I lived in Florida for a little while and short time in Pennsylvania, um, but I always came back to Georgia, you know, always. And I've got family here and some in North Carolina as well. But I feel like for us, when the law changed in the the beer laws in um 2016, 2015, somewhere in there, they changed to allow breweries, not brew pubs, we have a brew pub license, um, to get away from the tasting that they had. You used to have to buy tickets for taste and all that kind of stuff, so it was like kind of a barrier point. There's still some you know outdated laws, we suffer a little bit, but for the most part, everywhere. Georgia's a yeah, Georgia's a pretty welcoming state. But um it wasn't like I don't know, I think that whenever you are audacious enough to open a business, it's not like I don't feel like I was so like, oh, I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna change the beer world. I have so much to offer because I was a fucking homebrewer. Uh I think I was just excited and naive, and um, you know, I love beer and I love uh hospitality. Like, and that's where my strength always has been is hospitality, and I think I learned how to be a good brewer. But um but why are we succeeding? You know, I don't know, we've been getting better all the time. Uh and I think it has a lot to do with our staff. Um our kitchen, our chef is amazing, his team is great, our front of the house leadership uh is awesome, they're super empathetic, you know, and they know um I don't know, they know how to communicate with each other and they know how to communicate with the guests, and I think that we've got an audience that is primed and ready for what we're doing. And I think they, for the most part, have come to learn what to expect from us for the most part. Like we have a great cocktail and wine program too. Like, again, being a brew pub, it allows us not to have just our own beer. And you know, I'm not a seltzer water brewer, I don't have to worry about that. No knocked anybody has to do it, I get it. But we have a full license, we have a bar, and we sell plenty of booze and cocktails and all that sort of stuff. Sure. Um, but as far as um you know becoming a lager brewery and all this kind of stuff, it it kind of has to do with COVID. Like we opened with laggers, right? So we had a lager three weeks after we opened. We brewed it as soon as we could, but we were always gonna have at least one or two. But I wanted, when we had the brewer here originally, the guy was from Canada. I kind of just told him I wanted to have a beer list that was very similar to Brickstore, right? When I was there, we had a very well-rounded list. It had a lot of European-style beers that included not just Saison and a little bit of lager, but English beer, and the bottless is just insane. But it had a little bit of everything, and that's what I really loved and appreciated about that is like you didn't have to be a beer geek, snob, or just you know, whatever. You it was a little bit of something for everybody. It was for the uncles and the aunts and the you know, the go and the pumps and all that kind of stuff. But uh, but uh so but with COVID, so our best food menu we've ever put out was March, first week of March of 2020. It was amazing. I'll put that menu against anybody else who is doing the for the size, and our space is huge. I was kind of saying that earlier. Uh layout, like we have a little over 200 seats. Sure, there's places that are bigger, but it's a pretty big fucking place. Um, all in the building is under 9,000 square feet, but we've only got a 2,200 square foot um space. So it's tight but not uncomfortable. I've been in some spaces where I'm always blown away by when we get done. But the menu that we had first week of 2020 was fucking incredible. I'm insane. And I say it with humble pride that I'll put it against anybody else uh that's doing that kind of food at that price point. Um it was amazing. And then we closed like a week later. And so we had all this. Yeah, or two weeks later, whatever it was. We closed within a week of changing the menu. So we had all this product on hand, and um and so we were like, all right, we'll we'll freeze what we can and let's give the rest of it away. And so we gave it, we turned to a soup kitchen. So from I think we're and we were one of the first people to find these arrays to close, but I remember closing, and you know, our partner, we were just like, Will we ever reopen? It was scary. I know everybody has that story, but uh, we closed very early on and became a

Beer and soup

SPEAKER_01 32:40

soup kitchen. So we would make crowlers in the day, and it was just me and my partner for a little while for a few weeks, and then some of the other folks were inspired with what we were doing, they work we were working with us before. They're like, I want to come back with our chef, and our soup chef came back and they wanted to help us. But we would make crowlers in the day and sell those to make money, and then we were giving away soup. So we would give soup away to anybody, right? Like it would turn into like a it was really done for the service industry, um, because that's where our heart is because that's where we've been. But we it, you know, anybody in need would could have soup. And so we'd package it up and then take it away. We started getting a lot of you know news and press and all this kind of stuff about it, and it was cool. But I knew we had to be careful because it wasn't like we're trying to be exploitative and all that kind of stuff, so we did it for a few months, and then as we started bringing people back on, we were working with masks and doing to-go-only for like selling food, we didn't quite turn off the soup kitchen, right? We'd I when you start doing stuff like that and you start seeing people who are affected, because it wasn't the people who were coming in to get this, you know, soup to take home, they didn't, it wasn't COVID that was now forcing them for the most part. It was like people in need that have been in need for a long, long time. And so when you see the same people come in and being like apologetic about the food, it's like holy shit, you know, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Um it's really, really kind and a silver lining in COVID, some success, uh uh not as a result of COVID, but that you made it work and made it made the most of it. And I mean, brewery by day, soup kitchen by night, of course, the word got out that Goodword is supporting its community. That's that's that's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

Um Yeah, it was it was it was cool, but I remember trying to put it down. My wife was like, all right, what was the dream? Was it to be soup kitchen or was it to and she didn't of course she is generous, way more generous than I am, but she was just being pragmatic, like, all right, were you trying to open a soup kitchen or are you trying to open a brewery?

SPEAKER_00 34:46

And so I mean, in the same way, we've got to give a shout out to your to your wife. What's her name? Her name's Rhonda. Rhonda, so in the same way that she was like, All right, what's the job and what's the hobby? You know, what's the gig and what's like really the gig uh between music and beer? Um a good wife uh behind the scenes at Good Brewery.

SPEAKER_02 35:04

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:04

Cheers to that. Yeah, no, cheers to that.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Yeah. So yeah, we I did it on Sundays and eventually we wound it all the way down. But um, but anyway, it was you know, it was a lot of that giving back to the community like in a real visceral sort of way that I think bought a lot of goodwill for for us, and it was it was great. And uh yeah, I don't know. I I don't know. I when I see people probably have blame on tab, dude. I'm serious. I'm yeah, I'm being serious. Like, it was partly our fault too. I just remember, I mean, our fault as brewers. I uh I remember when I got into beer when I was at the brickstore, like you had to really know your shit.

Know your sh*t

SPEAKER_01 35:45

And you're seeing a resurgence of this now, right? You see a resurgence of like you have to really know what you're talking about when you're talking about beer and when you're you know educating about uh beer and all this kind of stuff. But I feel like for a while there on Instagram was like, all right, it's glute gap time, and I've got you know, the shot of on Instagram was just like cheesecake and fucking whatever is in the glass. I don't know. I'm just saying, like, so that you weren't really moving the you weren't progressing the conversation, right? It was just the chase to the bottom kind of thing. Uh no, don't get me wrong, we've made some stupid shit in the past, and that is also part of uh COVID, and also kind of getting us out of that little sort of identity crisis that I think we kind of had in the beginning. Like when I took the ship over, I was like, I don't know. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make people excited about us. And I used to send beer to you name a brewery that was awesome. I would send them a brewery, hey, I'm you know, I'm doing beer and love to host you, and not that I don't send beer out from time to time now, I definitely do, but um I feel like early on we had a little bit of an identity crisis, and like COVID definitely shook that kind of off my I mean I still even think a lot of people get imposter syndrome. I definitely do, you know, walk into a room, like a festival where there's always great brewers. I'm like, why the fuck am I here? Because my beer is fine. But no, no, I'm not I'm not re I'm not trying to get you to say anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 37:14

But no, I gotta make a I gotta make a few a few points here. So one, I think you sent me uh one of the most creative boxes of beer I've ever received. And uh yeah, again, lager-centric, very much enjoying die ta die and your bohemian pills. But the fact that it included some West Coast IPA, the fact that it included English style brown ale, English style bitter, and all of these beers kind of scratch a similar itch, uh, smaller beers, bigger character, you know, it kind of I've definitely never received a bitter or a brown ale in the mail courtesy of any brewery. So thank you for that. And you know, speaking of, yeah, there you go. I it's been said before on this show that yeah, bitter is gonna be all the rage, bitter's coming back, you know. Um, but also, my friend, I mean, um, yeah, there's been a lot of breweries and a lot of brewers out there. Maybe that we're just trying to uh follow trends, you know, but that did just make beer kind of stupid, you know, Imperial everything, pastry everything. And that kind of beer is dependent on keeping consumers stupid, which which they're not. You know, so there's no wonder that that's kind of fallen apart on Untapped, on Reddit, and social media is a factor here. So you're uh you're right to say it, man. And then, you know, imposter syndrome. I mean, maybe, you know what, maybe it's not that people are sometimes ghost to me for no life to lager. I think a lot of people are just afraid of being recorded, afraid of what they might say, afraid of that it's gonna live in perpetuity forever now. Yeah. So um, again, that you set a resounding hell yeah to this show. Uh every right to be here, no imposter syndrome at good word brewing. And I really appreciate it. I really, really appreciate it. You know, everyone's a little bit afraid. You walk into a room, your your peers, you know, and uh your colleagues, you know, and should I be here? Why am I here? And uh, everyone on the show so

Leading with lager

SPEAKER_00 39:00

far is, in my opinion, leading the craft beer industry forward as opposed to kind of dragging it down or getting it left behind. So um, can we speak to the beer itself on that note?

SPEAKER_01 39:10

Um yeah, and and and so I was gonna say, like during COVID, that's where we kind of had that light switch that kind of flipped for me. So I unless I'm interrupting you for a question, if you had something you were gonna say, I just want to make sure that because I was gonna tie that back into COVID and how we started down that trend.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

I mean, not at all, because I'm looking at your loggers. Um, you know, I see Puerto Rican style, which you mentioned, Italian style, which you mentioned, um Chinese style, Canadian. Uh I love the label. Like, let's just remain friends no matter what.

SPEAKER_02 39:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:45

Um, I had uh uh Tom from Goldfinger on the show, so maybe I can say this now, Pivo Grozicka, or at least I'm getting closer. You also sent me a smoked lager in your box, you know.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Oh yeah, conscience, design, practice.

SPEAKER_00 39:58

Yeah, that's another one I've never seen before and a rarity in the market now. Um so all these beers, you know, uh, some of them are historic kind of styles and recipes, but some are not. I feel like uh do you put plantains into your plantains into the Puerto Rican beer? Uh Chinese, Chinese lager, uh Chinese style lager is a rice lager. I just feel like you're thinking like a chef. I feel like you all are thinking like a chef, uh like a culinary medium, you know, like a cook when you're making these. So um, yeah, tell me more about how COVID started to wind down, how the lager started to wind up.

SPEAKER_01 40:31

Totally. I will so I will say thank you for saying all that. That really means a lot. I always try to like, because I think there's I don't think there's only so much you can do in beer, right? Because Sam McCow Jones and his collaborators have done such cool stuff with beer, very funky. I I learned lessons along those first three or four years, three, four, five years, first few years, um, about how much risk I wanted to take. And I decided to start a really peeling back uh as far as um how much I wanted uh to do. So typically, if it's a classic style, there's not much I want to fuck with. Like I just want to keep it simple and let's mess with recipe as far as maybe not ingredients outside of adding plantains, which was a new one, but um not too much within that realm. But I'll come back to that because the plantain was a good one. So, yeah, during COVID, we did one contract group. So check this out. I've never we're so small, we're never having space, so no one we would never do a contract group. But when COVID hit, we were so strapped. I was making crowlers and we started running out of beer, and there was a huge brewery that was in planning. They they honestly opened and closed some things called Iron Shield, but the guy who was the owner and brew master over there was our consultant of the beer. We hired him. He's a great guy, but he was trying to get this non-crawler contract, and I forget the name of the brewery, Brighton Side or something, forget the name, maybe it's Brighton Side, I can't remember. Anyway, he was like, Hey, if you do this um beer for us, I will pay you. And I was like, Cool, how much? And uh he told me how much you do. I was like, well, I can buy you know three or four uh rounds of lag beer for, you know, like ingredients for lager beer. And so I did it. I did one claw one uh contract brew and I was able to buy a bunch of deal for lager. And there was a brewery, it's gone now, uh Blackberry Farm uh brewery, uh Buckberry Farm, so that the brewer's gone. Um so we had made a lager with them, I think just before COVID shut down. That was the Any Day now. Um we came up with the name right after COVID a bit, but we had brewed it right around there. I think it was like February, and uh Andy Day now was a joke. Uh the the cover art is like Casablanca, but the Any Day now was a knock to Donald Trump's first presidency because he was like, any day it's gonna go away any day now, it's gonna leave, and everybody may have COVID again. I was like, this fucking idiot. And so it came from that, like this notion that like someone who has no fucking clue what they're talking about can give us this false sense of hope. And maybe that's what I don't know, maybe false sense of hope is good sometimes, but when you got a big good Trump impression right there. When you had a dummy uh like that saying it, uh anyway, so it's a jab at Trump, um, which obviously the Canadian one was too. It's more of an apology. But um anyway, uh so that was not our first for any loggers. We always had at least one or two loggers on at all times back then. But when COVID hit and I got that contract money, I brewed everything was a logger in all six fermenters. And so I'm like, all right, now let's see what happens. And so we kind of just flipped it a little bit. And it was like we're still gonna do pop forward view, we're still gonna do it.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

do English beer and Saison and we'll do some uh sour beer uh fruity sour sometimes and uh mixed culture stuff and but we're gonna focus on lager and English beer that's gonna be our primary thing is is that and that came from where we wanted to be placed in the broom world or where I wanted to up uh climb up to and so yeah that was all in 2020 and so that's when that kind of trajectory started for us and we just keep you know keep down that road and everything that we can learn uh like I was saying earlier we we do and um yeah it's good stuff I mean it's gonna disappear you're never gonna hear it again again you know maybe some silver lining in COVID

Post-pandemic Pils

SPEAKER_00 44:50

here because I mean we should stop to appreciate kind of where we are now where the beer scene is now versus where it was five, six years ago because so much of what you do, you know, extended cold conditioning 35 degrees below uh minimum of lagering for four weeks uh schmunding uh capturing natural carbonation croisoning spurring uh spurring secondary fermentation with freshly fermenting beer decoction mashing we'll talk about that a little more doing all right yeah uh sidepole faucets I see that you are on the Lucre perfect pour mission so Lucre Faucets is going to be teaching a class I think and preaching the good word of a Czech sidepole faucet at good word yeah yeah so I mean this was not the norm in the American craft beer scene five, six weeks uh years ago and you along with everyone who's been on the show to date has changed that narrative so now we can enjoy it uh present day and you know in the midst of all of that all of that technique all of that time all of that labor um what else would you say just kind of makes good word a little bit different from um some of your brothers some of your sisters uh some of the other breweries and colleagues out there on the landscape you know um you do lagers along with English style ales which I love you know along with IPAs so you don't discriminate you offer a full portfolio um but that you are flying the flag for lager beer in this way um just tell me a little bit else about what you feel like really makes uh your work at Goodword stand out among the rest um man I don't you know that's always such a tough question because I don't think we're in my favorite brewery yet on here already Ashley Ashley Best Brewer in America.

SPEAKER_01 46:41

The name has been mentioned on every single episode uh that she has uh taught and shared and helped other breweries and inspired other breweries true industry leader true legend so shout out to you Ashley and Biersatt she's a real one she's awesome she's great um but yeah I don't know that we're doing something so different I mean like but to name another brewer who's also great um Kevin Davy uh you know and I'm paraphrasing I can't remember I always feel like I when I'm quoting somebody I'll fuck up their actual quote but you know it's that adage and I know he said something with the fact on one pocket after I heard almost it's not the one thing you're doing it's all those things along the way in the process that are like really stitching it all together. But I feel like we were making really good work for a long time and our selling practices were you know fine but we've gotten those better uh we're filtering our beer now we're trying to make sure that practice is just as good you know canning beer you know all the things that we do down the line from start to finish and that starts with like sourcing you know great quality uh malt and hops and of course fresh yeast we've got a lab here I mean I don't know many breweries that have a thousand barrels uh produced a year that have the resources as far as the lab that just over the years I've just acquired a lot of lab shed and now we have two people they're not full-time lab people by any stretch but I've got two different folks uh two different ladies that work here Courtney and Grace Grace has a master's in chemistry and Courtney has an undergrad um they both work together on building SLP and then uh Courtney helps the day to day we had creature comforts uh director of quality here yesterday Daniel LePage not just testing stuff um for us as far as deo goes and and all this in our brew house because we don't have some equipment like some of this equipment is like prohibitively expensive like a deal meters like 12 to 20 thousand depending on how much you get so depending on what you get um they're checking our DO levels and then he spent some time with um Courtney and Grace in the lab because we've got a UV hood we want to start growing our own yeast we we do prop some yeast but I'm trying to grow it from you know 50 mils up and all this and so you know HCR machine so he's working with them on making sure we have things from A to Z just so we can you know have all this working uh working great but we've you know we run all of our uh beer not just through uh sensory but through um um you know lab analysis like we have spectral photometer for all of our docile trucks we don't just go oh wow I warmed it up do you get it you know like not that there's anything wrong with it you should at least be doing that but uh but you know so I don't think there's anything that makes us different but if there's somebody who I know and trust and is gonna help me I'm gonna friggin' listen and uh again again actually as long as we believe you know it's she's just great man and the best brewers and she's not not the only one who shared we've got plenty of people who shared with us um the best brewers just they share you know they're an open book and that's how I've always felt the best brewers and the best people sharing's caring.

SPEAKER_00 49:59

Yeah but you know over the years and I've got two guys in the brewery now besides myself one guy's been full time for a while just started training him to brew um probably two months ago and he's doing 95% of the brew day but I'm still here making sure like it's all good because I'm always worried about like not being hands-on with that um so that's why I was like if you see somebody pop out I'm looking this way it's probably because we're finished off the brew day but he's great but um him uh play and then uh Andrew who has a lot of brewing experience from other places but we weren't hired in the brewery so we came on he got a job as a server and then he started bargeing and then he's managing he's like you know I'd love to get back in the brewery so we were doing two days and now we're doing four days but you know we're you know uh it's it's uh shared knowledge back there like we are such nerds as far as process goes we're constantly talking about this or sharing things that we're reading on our signal chats and stuff like this but uh we're just trying to get really organized uh all the time I mean here's to a a good team at Goodword and the fact that you have a full lab uh for your size and scale like that that is different so that goes back to maybe being a musician and a a home brewer and your gas your gear acquisition syndrome uh that's impressive that's unique honestly um for our yeah yeah and um I think thinking back on it it might have been Kevin Davy in our very first episode that said uh bitter was gonna British bitter was gonna be the uh the next big thing in the craft beer industry so maybe he did predict some of the future there um there are two things I can see that clearly clearly do make good word different so uh one the emphasis on the emphasis on being a public house um and you

Going public

SPEAKER_00 51:50

spoke to this before I think uh um being a community gathering place but also the emphasis on um yes um comfort and hospitality and like Southern comfort and southern hospitality are very real and very distinct uh the food you offer the menu you have looks amazing and then you have a full wine and cocktail program also makes a big difference so uh I just you know what does it mean to you to be a public house why the emphasis on not just good word brewing and bar or pub but what does it mean to you to be a public house you know I mean the idea of a true publican it goes back to hosting people and you know like I feel like the vibe of a brewery is so much different than a pub right when I think about a brewery I think about a couple of lonely white dudes uh sipping I don't know I'm I mean it's not like start being a dick uh but I don't know but when I think about good word I think about this a collective community made up of all sorts of folks uh and I don't I mean that's now it's like I'm belittling others to try to make a point and that's not good but uh or the idea of others but um I don't know I think that a public house is uh place for everybody and you know again I and I and when you come you'll see like I said we're Duluth and John Street which is a neighboring rural town it's John Street has people with a little bit of money and it's you know very suburban uh and I feel like there's a juxtaposition between that and Duluth and Deford Highway and I feel like we've made it pretty obviously hopefully for everyone that is around us that we are for everybody.

SPEAKER_01 53:45

And that's one of the reasons we do a Puerto Rican style pills and have a big party for it and we have you know my friend DJ Fernando come and do Puerto Rican food that day well Puerto Rican features not a whole many script or anything like that. And then we do a Korean style lager and then we did the Chinese style lager with masterpiece which Masterpiece is a Sechuan restaurant right down the road it's fucking incredible. We did a pop-up with those guys and we had features that we did we want to be like hey listen we see you we are you like we're not just this stuffy bunch of fucking white people you know I mean like and um I always consider myself Puerto Rican because I was raised by a Puerto Rican lady um so I always make sure people know hey I see you I got you yeah yeah so I I think a long a long way around not answering your question but it's for everybody.

SPEAKER_00 54:37

It's for everybody. I mean it just sounds like you're extending a very warm welcome uh to everyone who walks through your door there. Yeah yeah um

Little Beer

SPEAKER_00 54:45

and then uh talking about the festivals I mean the fact that you have multiple brewery own brewery operated festivals which are the best kind of beer festivals happening right now yeah but uh little beer fest the small beer festival uh I think you just did the fifth one as an annual lager fest um and the sixth one has all already been announced for next year um mighty fine West Coast IPA festival just happened for the first time I want to say and Les Bon Saison Oyster Fest uh the fourth one coming up in September so tell me a little bit about this just these festivals are a labor of love it's a lot of time it's a lot of work it's a lot of money um and they don't necessarily make money from it so just tell us how you do not one not two but three um some of the logistics some of the planning some of the selection that goes into it like does that also fall into your into one of the many buckets uh you hold or how does it work how does it all come together oh yeah I definitely am the one doing the festivals um it's it's great you know like the first little beer uh one of my partners was helping me um coordinate it but it was me reaching out the original idea though for Littlebeer and we did it in June 2021 was we had hoped to do it sometime later in that year.

SPEAKER_01 56:12

We reached out to the city and they were like oh this sounds like a cool idea this was January or February of uh 2021 and they were like this sounds like a cool idea hit us up again you know next year or later this year maybe we can get on the calendar for the fall like okay and then they reached out seven weeks before the date because the date we did the first one because something fell off the calendar like can you still pull this festival off seven weeks before the festival and I said yes I can and so I originally wanted to have logger only beer but it was still so heavy COVID time you know a lot of people were like I can send beer but I can't come and I was like well I knew that I had to beat down the ratio of who's gonna just send beer or who's gonna be there right because the festivals were like oh yeah yeah we'll we'll have such and such brew but you just have a volunteer pouring it's not the best right and and I get everybody's time it sucks to to travel and it's expensive and and all that stuff. We have people and and sometimes I send just beer uh to fest so I get it. But um but anyway when I started getting the nose from the original 25 or so brewers uh that I wanted I was like alright so I need to think outside of the box so I started opening it up and over the first couple years of being open we made a lot of friends a lot of them weren't like necessarily lager centric brewers but they made lager and so we had about 55 brewers uh out there and some make great lager um and instead of doing it on town green we we did it right here uh in what they call Parsons alley so that first fest we did was thrown together it was cobbled together like very very quick um the city helped in an immense way uh we closed the road off we sold probably 160 tickets so we definitely lost money the first year but it was such a cool vibe even though it was so hot it was like June June 5th 2021 is when we did Little Beer One and we're like cool we didn't make any money this was so fucking cool though we're gonna do it again and it was the outside of pills and love I think it was the first I think it was the first lager fest in country I don't know maybe I'm not but pills and love a lot of these twice yeah I feel like the ones still running today like all the the newer ones like your generation lager fest will say um all kind of started around the same time give or take which is also amazing it shows the direction the industry was heading but yeah pills and love kind of set the model and then we got to give a shout out to Firestone Walker for this standard of like you know if you're gonna pour you got to have a brewer present.

SPEAKER_00 58:52

You got to have someone who can speak directly to it.

SPEAKER_01 58:55

Totally totally so then you know to to kind of keep it going it caught so much momentum with in the brewing industry with brewers. Like it wasn't like you know it's getting talked about on you know magazines or anything like that brewer publications. It was literally like this festival is fucking great. Yeah there wasn't a lot of people there but it was a brewer hang and so that's what we realized it's like all right we're just gonna treat the brewers like fucking royalty and it'll be fine for the rest of it take care of itself yes yeah hell yeah and and so the next year we put it on the town green we added about 20 more brewers and so it was around 70 or so the second year 6570 and we still didn't make any money the next year and then little beer three we saw it like uptick in ticket sales and we thought it was just going to pop off on year three and it just didn't but um it was still so much fun and so cool and we had leftover beer and I started realizing the way to make money was to like ask for a little bit less beer right and so by the time Little Beer 4 happened we made money. I mean I know it sounds crazy to say it we fucking made money. This year we made money too it's not like it's so much we're gonna be like all right we're retiring but yeah you know it's a lot of concerted efforts uh to to get it done so when you don't come up in the red it feels good but uh of course but LeBon you know like I like you mentioned this is the fourth LeBon. So LeBon originally was going to be like the um the VIP for little beer it's like oh we'll have like you know Saison Goods we'll have all this sort of stuff and I was like I feel like little beer is kind of the antithesis of VIP so we don't do a VIP like session. We have like a VIP you can buy a mug and then whatever but it's not like you don't get in an hour early you don't get nothing you get a bigger glass.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:40

With Little Beer Fest it's just the emphasis so it's not just all lager but the emphasis is on low alcohol and you know it's happening in a time where beer festivals are becoming under increasingly just increasingly scrutinized for being drunk fest you know oh yeah uh for high octane high alcohol so I mean just what was again the vision and the mission there and I'm seeing it more and more. I think uh Long Beach Beer Lab down in Southern California just launched like a crispy beer fest a little bit yeah yeah so we're seeing it more and more but there's something to this model that is working and if you're saying it's now turning a profit for you I mean even better.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:17

Yeah I mean we lost money on Mighty Fine don't get me wrong so the money we made for a little beer we lost on Mighty Fine this year but we got a plan for Mighty Fine. But um so there is criteria for a little beer right it is lager focused right so it's every every brewer has to bring one lager and one it's supposed to be English beer but it can be another lager or something that's five and a half percent ABV or lower.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:40

But both English beer is coming back again. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:44

I've been saying it for five years that it had being English beer and it's funny year one like two people besides us may have had an English beer but slowly but surely like now everybody not everybody but I'd say like a third of the brewers are bringing English beer now which is cool and I've had people bring casks and stuff like this as well. But um but you know I've I've got love for hops too

Mighty Fine

SPEAKER_01 1:02:05

like you mentioned earlier so we've been wanting to do a West Coast IPA fest for super long but I when I was in Denver outside of being at beer stock Alice and Slow Port of course um I was drinking some West Coast IPAs and then I was I had a beer dinner with the guys at Fauna Flora and they had this super unique West Coast IPA called Godzilla Kudzoo flowers and it fucking was rocking my world and I was like holy shit and and I used to be a hot fan I used to love like the wars of uh you know the mid uh 2000s early 2000s and we all didn't we all did I I love it ruination was one of my favorite years but um anyway so all of that like spurred the idea for the West Coast IPA fest but we didn't have a good I I was looking at the calendar and I was like alright if Little Bears meet here I need three months to put this other festival on then three months for Le Bon and then it'll be three months ish before our you know seventh anniversary so our eighth anniversary this year. So happy anniversary yeah thank you very much so I was trying to plot all that out and on the calendar it sounded good but it just wasn't enough time truthfully but um mighty final was great that we had a bunch of umprouvers from the PW and the west coast come and visit next year though what we're gonna do we're gonna move um so littlebeer will be March 28th I think last Saturday March and then we're gonna figure out what to do with Labon this I always show up to say it's gonna be the last year for Littlebeer or Lebanon but this might be the last year for LeBon I don't know. It's so small it's so easy to do it's just trying to find out a good time to do it. But I got that's TVD but we're gonna move mighty fine to um the first Saturday in November and it'll coincide with our ninth anniversary.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:53

Yeah yeah um well they are all your children yes all three festivals and I'll say it again happy anniversary and you know one thing I do also want to ask you um before

California love

SPEAKER_00 1:04:05

we do move to kind of our our rapid fire the last few questions I like to ask everyone who has no lacto lager uh parallels between lager beer and west coast IPA um and is it all related between one festival that kind of inspired you to start the other because like if I'm not drinking lager beer um I will typically reach for like a West Coast IPA or a pale ale always under 7% always bracingly bitter always beautifully filtered and it does kind of scratch a similar itch I gotta say like I find it inspiring in the glass in same ways and likewise refreshing you know refreshing. So what do you do you think there's any kind of symmetry any kind of parallel there or is it just you know you like your loggers you like your west coast IPAs and that's why you have a festival for each but do you see do you see one that would drive a drinker of lager to West Coast IPA or one that would drive like a drinker of West Coast IPA to loggers I think is there a parallel path well I don't know if I I don't know I guess I'll say this from for me like I can see a person who really loves Lager looking at West Coast IPA and be like man they're typically really well made or whatever because it's they're balanced in the way that ABD but they're pretty balanced like I think it's easy to pick on like hazy gears which I do think those can be great as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:24

But um yeah I don't know I think that the more and we've learned a lot about hops I'd say hops been using a long time but uh I feel like we've learned a lot in the last like year or so with hops and I've been referring more hop forward brewers and they are they're smart they're really smart about how they I don't know why I say I'm surprised I don't say that but the way they approach uh beers man they're like really thoughtful I think and I think that a lot of times it can be easy if you focus mainly on European styles and be like oh yeah there was a bunch of fucking hops and They're just gonna be fine. You know, I don't, I don't, I feel like the brewers that I am referring to, Cloudbursts, the Pine Houses, and Russian River, of course, is amazing. Um, all these brewers are really like mindful and they know their hops so well, and they work with these really, you know, like Coleman farms who use some Coleman um uh citra and it's fucking lights up. It's it's crazy. Like, so I feel like in some of the um farm breweries in the country that are focusing on you know chirwa as far as the malt goes. I'm not a big um craft malt person. I get the thing behind it. I just think that sometimes the brain wants to be a little louder than it should, and I think about it in the sort of concerto, like everybody's got a part to play, don't take a solo. But I feel like I maybe I don't love the craft malt quite as much, but I I'm really starting to appreciate the cra like the small farm hops, you know what I mean? Like uh so I don't know if I can draw similarities in in any real any great way, but yeah, I've met some really great hop brewers bidens. Those guys are very thoughtful and smart about how they make uh their IPAs and make markets ass off of.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:25

You know, I guess I just I asked because these are kind of the two broad styles of beer that I still really love, love to drink, you know. So if I can find any symmetry between one and the other, I'll take it. But they're always the first styles I reach for. Um and there's a time and a place for both, that's for sure. And there's festivals for both, thanks to you. And I feel like I'm also seeing more kind of West Coast, uh, more emphasis on West Coast uh among the festival circuit as well. So

Let's stay friends no matter what, ok?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:50

all good things. And I guess uh we also just want to say thank you to our Canadian neighbors. I don't know if it's Canadian malt that's going into your Canadian lager. I'm assuming it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:02

I mean, let's stay friends.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:04

Yeah, let's stay friends no matter what, okay? Um, but yeah, it's a multi-pale. You know, like uh I it's funny because I hate the word some cat, some little catchy trendy things like crispy boy or it's crispy or whatever. It's kind of annoying, but some shit should be fucking malty, bro. And so let's stay friends no matter what, okay. Uh is a uh as a very malty pale ale. Um started with a pretty high um starting gravity and it's pretty full finishing, but it's supposed to be, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:37

It's a pale ale, it's not a lager, it's a pale ale.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:39

No, no, it's a pale lager.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:41

Um pale loger, got it.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:42

Uh but anyway, it's a malty one though, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:44

Like it's meant to be.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:46

But you know what I mean? Like everything's everything's gonna be crispy. It's like not everybody can be fucking 1.2 play-0.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:51

So yeah, you know what I will say, you've never heard crispy boy on this show spelled B O I. So uh yeah, I'll take it. I will keep running without it. Um good stuff from good word. Um, let's move to just a few last kind of rapid fire questions, Todd. I know your pubs, uh your public house is getting ready to open for the day, but

Dry Ginuary

SPEAKER_00 1:09:15

uh say as much or uh as little as you want about this. Um non-alcoholic beer, just the rise in dialogue and the algorithm pushing sobriety, pushing temperance, um, and the fact that that category is growing where all other categories of alcohol might be struggling at the moment. What do you think? Do you offer it at uh uh Goodword at the pub there? What are your thoughts about it?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:39

Yeah, we for sure do. I mean, so we've got uh two different NAVs, uh, and we've got some NA cocktails that actually just got in today. Um, so I think that to not offer it would be kind of silly. And uh I told you at the top of the show, like I've got cans over here, but I don't usually drink during the week, especially during uh brewing or anything like that, um, unless there's an event or something like that going on. So, and you know, honestly, that was lessons from COVID. It's like, you know, trying to make sure I've got a handle on my own self. And so I appreciate and respect everybody um as far as trying to gain control over that, but I think that alcohol as a recreational um thing is great. It has made some of the worst conversations better, it's made some of the worst news easier to handle. Um I think that it's I think that it anything in excess is uh good, right? You know? Yes. But I also think it's just kind of positive to talk about it right now. It's like, I don't know. When I see somebody saying they're sober, I'm if there is a reason you're sober, fucking awesome. Great for you. Um but uh campaigning for it a little bit, I don't know. I'm I'm a campaign for mental well-being and mental health in general, so I'm a little torn about campaigning it, but I don't know. Uh I'm gonna sit here and I want to talk about alcohol until they ban it. So hopefully that never fucking happens. But uh I don't know, man. Do whatever you think is best for you when you think it's right. Um as you're not hurting anybody. So I don't know. That's my two cents. Uh uh I think it's mostly trendy in some ways, but if you're doing for health reasons or for personal reasons, so be it. That's your fucking business, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:30

Yeah, yeah. Uh wise words and um good words to live by. You know, again, I think social media, you know, talking about you mentioned untapped before, you mentioned Reddit before, social media, I think, is a huge factor here. And the volume around sobriety and temperance right now, you know, I mean, it does kind of remind me a little bit of like uh for like pre-prohibition, you know, it's just reaching a height and it's kind of changing the nature of the game. And when Kevin was on the show, you know, we said uh dry January alone is just kind of messing with supply chain and what brewers need, you know, because it's putting just so much so much hurt in sales that month. So um it's a good job.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:08

I didn't coin that. That was uh told to me by Maddie Hardrobe.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:14

Dry January. Good line. Yeah, good stuff. Um, so to each his own, good to have alternatives and good to have options, and good to know you can get it at Good Word when you need it. Um, but I'm with you. I will uh preach the good word of low alcohol, high quality beers uh until it's banned, and then find another way to do it. So there we go.

Hulksters

SPEAKER_00 1:12:35

Um moving right along. Uh celebrity loggers, you know what? This one I usually ask people just you know, there's a few on the market. Uh, who would it be and why if you were going to make one? Something different for you, though, because I know you like Ashley at Beerstadt. You have wrestling as part of your um part of your events, part of your festivals. Yeah. So um Hulk Hogan died recently. I'm sure there was a huge spike in sales for real American beer. Um RF good there.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:00

I liked him as a kid, but fucking bullshit lately.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:05

I mean, he's kind of like we know we know what you think about Donald Trump, so I'm guessing by extension we can guess what you think about Hulk Hogan now.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:12

Yeah. Anyway, yeah. Sorry, Hulk Hogan fans, if you're out there.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:19

Same thing as a kid growing up, icon, you know, later years, questionable beer, never had it, but probably questionable. But hey, um, I bet sales are soaring for them right now. And this isn't wrestling, but garage beer from uh Kelsey Brothers. I mean distributed in 50 states, uh, 300,000 barrels this year to date, uh, 4 million CEs, 4 million case equivalents sold nationally. Um it kind of puts this whole, all the doom and gloom around the beer industry in perspective because that's a lager beer, very straightforward, simple. I think they offer like a light American lager and then a lime variation. They've got some uh quirky marketing and obviously some celebrity backing, and they're doing extremely well. So I guess I wanted to ask you just your thoughts on these beers, on celebrity loggers, and then just why do you think wrestling, why do you think pro wrestling pairs well with craft beer, with beer festivals? Why are they so much fun and sometimes better together?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:23

You know, I'll I'll speak to the wrestling first. I feel like there's something very blue-collar about American lager, right? It feels down home. I think that, you know, maybe this is just running from the 80s, but wrestling was definitely a blue-collar. It felt like a lower, you know, middle, lower class kind of thing that you'd be into where you bugs were like taking pillows and wrestling with pillows and wrestling each other, you know, like emulating the wrestlers. So I don't know, I feel like those kind of go hand in hand. They're you know, carnal, they're like carnal things, watching two people fake battle it out and uh actually drink here. Um kind of work well together. So I don't know, I think they're it's kind of symbiotic. You know, I didn't know how the wrestling was gonna be um out there for Mighty Fond. But it was fucking awesome. We've been talking about doing wrestling here for a while. We almost got Rick Flair. Uh he's been in the restaurant uh before, and I was too fucking shy to say anything to him. Uh he was drinking wine, of course, but I was like, gosh, I'm gonna pour through.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:26

Well, Rick, if you're listening, come back for another visit.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:28

Yeah, he was drinking red red wine or something, I can't remember. But anyway, um the city had wanted the wrestling, so they they uh because they tried to get Ric Flair down here before and it didn't work out. So I was like, yeah, let's do wrestling. We were supposed to have ladies arm wrestling too, but it didn't work out the rest failed to make it something like this. But uh next year. Next year. But uh as far as the celebrity stuff, I don't know, I don't have a problem with it. I think that anything that turns people into drinking lager, beer, or beer, keep keep drinking beer with alcohol in it, uh is a positive for everybody in this industry, right? You know, even you know, even Budweiser's like as long as somebody's selling beer, I think it's good. You know, keep it kind of relevant. Um again, I you know, I hate to see people doing bad, but you know, our we're we're doing good. We're we're up like over 23%. So we're that's inside the restaurant with making more beer, bye. Thank you. Um so yeah, we're we're fortunate.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:30

So we're uh I mean that's been a recurring theme for breweries um that own uh a restaurant, that operate a pub, and that are content to serve their community and become a gathering place. I've heard that across the board. You know, if you strive, if you're if you're if you're trying to take over the market or making a bid for shelf space and national distribution, then yeah, you definitely need the Kelsey brothers on board at this point. But if you're content to own your own backyard, uh there is a way. Uh so I'm glad to see you thriving and surviving.

Definitely maybe decoct

SPEAKER_00 1:17:00

Um decoction mashing, we know it's a part of your process. You know, I always ask people in a single word yes or no, um, unless you want to deviate. I'm I'm guessing you would say yes. And without going just too deep into it, though, tell me a little bit why, how that has been part of the standard uh since you've been brewing lager beer.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:19

So we don't decoct every single lager. There was a time where we were, but I kind of go back and forth, man. Honestly, like I love beer that has a great depth of malt character, but you know, I also think there's something to be said for the hot side DO, right? And so we use some um oxygen scavenging things to kind of beat down some of those DO numbers within the uh the uh brewing process and the decoction process. But um also I'm a fan of a couple quick steps to have a super clean, you know, lager. So I'm a little bit of both. Do we decoct mostly? Yeah, we mostly decock beer. I think it it I don't know, it when we're looking at it, it's funny because we were talking about this earlier, and one of the newer guys, Andrew, I had mentioned, he was like, So how long will we decoct this? And you know, whatever led this conversation. If we're talking about the chairman pills, 10-15 minutes for us, that's it, it's gonna be cock done. Yeah, if it's gonna be a check beer, it's gonna have multiple decoctions and it's gonna be 15 to 20 minutes for pill beer. And then for Martin, we do we typically and I lied to him, actually, I don't think about it because we I said triple and we did 25 minutes, but we did double. We after last year I decided to stop and triple that one. But um but 20-25 minutes for beer that's gonna have a little more color, but I think it adds this great depth of flavor. But you know, I think that you can get great results without that. You know, we use undermodified malt uh for the most part when we're doing um those decoctions, but I also think that if you take a modif highly modified malt and you boil the shit out of it, you're going to get more flavor out of it. Just you know, whether it's needed or not, that's not the point.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:08

We're not doing this because we're trying to, you know, we are trying to make a point. And it's that we don't care how much work it takes, we're gonna fucking do it because we want to make the best figure we can make. And so that's why we continue to, you know, what it's a Japanese saying, it's uh went in Japan, recently was fucking amazing with the whole family, me and my wife and three daughters.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:27

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:28

Uh Kitan. It's that you know, uh honing, always honing. Iron sharpens iron sort of mentality. That's why I surround myself with good people, good good brewers, smart buildings.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:41

So um, yes to decoction, uh, but a resounding maybe depending on kind of what you're trying to do and how you're trying to make it. And definitely maybe I didn't know uh buying under modified malt uh was an option, but it makes perfect sense.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:53

Uh if you're typically if you see that whole floor-malted thing. Uh like when we were when I got to go do the Czech agriculture trip this year, which was great, um, we went to uh Ferdinand and they do the which is uh creating that region, but it's in the Czech Republic, and they make the four-malted um malt for environment. But yeah, typically four-malted is under modified from what I understand. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:20

Uh Todd, well, I'll say it again. Good stuff. And uh my last question for you.

First beer, last words

SPEAKER_00 1:20:25

Well, first and foremost, is there anything else uh you want to say to our listeners? Um any way to watch for news regarding uh Little Beer Fest, Mighty Fine Fest, and uh Le Von Saison Oyster Fest coming up. And then, you know, to end, what do you want to say uh to anyone who's approaching their first beer at the age 21, give or take? Anyone who's pondering their last beer at the age of 101, give or take. What do you want to say uh to new and old beer drinkers out there alike? Um not old, seasoned, we'll put it that way.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:00

There you go, okay, nice. You know, I've had this saying about beer for a while since my Brixwort days, and it's kind of like it, you know, don't crowd resplilled milk because it's only fucking beer, right? It's wonderful that we are that I own and many of my colleagues are in this field to be able to be making beer. I love it, I absolutely love it. Uh it's a wonderful way to spend the day, even though sometimes I feel like my hair is on fire. Um so yeah, I mean, young or old, it's only beer. And you should enjoy it. And don't fuss over too much, don't think about it too much, just drink it. Unless it's terrible. You're only gonna have so many. So choose a good beer to drink. Uh and then the last thing I'll say is uh the first thing you said was craft your dead, welcome to the afterlife. And uh hopefully everybody can kind of you know put a little bit of that sort of mantra so we can keep this this train rolling because you know we need yeah, I feel like you know, and it's such a incredible brewer. It's like to see anybody uh close, but when you see like incredible beer, it's like shuttered like fuck. So whatever keeps people interested in craft beer, let's all sort of get around that.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:22

Yeah. Well, if craft beer is dead, welcome to the afterlife, and I'm glad to be here, Todd. Thank you very much.

Goodnight and Good Lager

SPEAKER_00 1:22:30

Thank you. Uh if if you like what you're hearing, uncensored, uncut, and live uh from Good Word Brewing Public House in Duluth. Uh, yes, like, follow, subscribe, put it on untapped, put it on Reddit, or don't. Uh we just thank you for your ears, and we want you to help us hit the road and make a better kind of beer show. So to you, Todd, uh, to you, Good Word. Thank you for sharing Die Todd Die with me. And I wish you all a good night and good lager. Cheers.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:06

No, no, no, no, no, no.