Speaker 1: Who says beer needs to stick to tradition? You can
Speaker 1: take the best of both worlds, root them in a
Speaker 1: well crafted process and create the ultimate mashup. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Cascadian beer podcast. My name's Aaron, and I'm a
Speaker 1: Cascadian. I have a background in radio and television broadcasting.
Speaker 1: I am a music producer and have a passion for
Speaker 1: beer. I don't consider myself to be an expert in
Speaker 1: beer by any means, but I do enjoy and respect
Speaker 1: the craft and the passion of these brew masters. I
Speaker 1: want to learn from these pioneers on what sets them
Speaker 1: apart from the rest and why they choose to call
Speaker 1: Cascadia their home. Cascadia is a bio region in the
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest on the north American continent. It is made
Speaker 1: up of the US states of Washington and Oregon, as
Speaker 1: well as the Canadian province of British Columbia. In this
Speaker 1: podcast series, I'll be profiling the unique breweries of Cascadia,
Speaker 1: a region that has a strong presence on the international
Speaker 1: beer scene. In this episode, I've hopped on the sky
Speaker 1: train in Metro Vancouver and headed out to New Westminster.
Speaker 1: This city has a long history in the lower mainland,
Speaker 1: strategically placed on the shores of the Fraser river, it
Speaker 1: was a major outpost during the Fraser gold rush, a short
Speaker 1: walk along the Riverside you'll arrive at Steel and Oak
Speaker 1: Brewing Company.
Speaker 2: The next station is New Westminster.
Jordan Foss: I'm Jordan (Foss) . I'm one of the co- owners
Jordan Foss: of Steel and Oak Brewing Company.
Eric Mutal: I'm Eric (Mutal) , the head brewer here at Steel
Eric Mutal: and Oak.
Speaker 1: So Jordan, how long has Steel and Oak been in existence?
Speaker 1: q
Jordan Foss: Will have been in existence two years on Thursday. That's
Jordan Foss: doors open in existence, we started construction in May of 2013.
Speaker 1: How did that process start?
Jordan Foss: So the place came to existence, my business partner and
Jordan Foss: I are old high school friends. We were over in
Jordan Foss: Tofino, probably, I guess it would've been 2011, 2012, now that
Jordan Foss: I think about it. And Tofino Brewing Company had just opened
Jordan Foss: up. It was the first time that we'd ever seen
Jordan Foss: a brewery where you could go in just like you
Jordan Foss: could at a winery and taste the product. And it
Jordan Foss: was the first time we'd ever seen growlers before, and
Jordan Foss: taking beer to go. And so we just started chitchatting
Jordan Foss: with those guys and they were very open and asking
Jordan Foss: them where they were selling beer, and they said, they're
Jordan Foss: just selling it to Tofino and they were selling out
Jordan Foss: everything they made. We thought it was a really unique
Jordan Foss: idea and unique concept for a small community. We thought
Jordan Foss: that it might be unique and neat for New Westminster,
Jordan Foss: which is also a pretty small town, even though it's
Jordan Foss: in the middle of basically everything in Vancouver. When we
Jordan Foss: came back, we started looking into it a little bit
Jordan Foss: more. And later on that year guys like Parallel 49
Jordan Foss: and Powell street, and all those guys started opening up
Jordan Foss: and reaffirmed that what we thought would work was working
Jordan Foss: elsewhere. We decided that both being from here that we
Jordan Foss: should go ahead.
Speaker 1: Where does the name Steel and Oak come from?
Jordan Foss: Steel and Oak, it's two part. It's a play on
Jordan Foss: a very basic level, the two vessels that you can
Jordan Foss: make beer in, stainless steel fermentation vessels and/ or Oak
Jordan Foss: barrel, so Steel and Oak. But on a deeper level,
Jordan Foss: and where it actually originated from, was it tells the
Jordan Foss: tale of the city of New Westminster, which is where
Jordan Foss: I'm from, and which is where brewing actually began in
Jordan Foss: lower mainland. New Westminster had the first brewery here in
Jordan Foss: 1862. It talks about how the city was built upon
Jordan Foss: old materials like wood and oak and cedar, but it
Jordan Foss: also talks about the modern way that the city's going
Jordan Foss: forward now with us, which is where the steel comes
Jordan Foss: into play. So it's about the old way and the
Jordan Foss: new way of doing things, which is what we try
Jordan Foss: to do in our beers. And we always try and
Jordan Foss: make sure that we appreciate the past in order to
Jordan Foss: make good quality beer going forward in the future.
Speaker 1: So how did you come to be at Steel and
Speaker 1: Oak, Eric?
Eric Mutal: So I came in as a tasting room employee originally.
Eric Mutal: So I started basically the day we opened the doors,
Eric Mutal: starting the tasting room with the knowledge that if we got
Eric Mutal: busier, I will help out in the brewery. Within a
Eric Mutal: week, we were busy enough that I needed to start
Eric Mutal: helping out in the brewery. And it just went from
Eric Mutal: there. I started brewing, helping out. There was an old
Eric Mutal: brewmaster Peter (Schultz) that recently left. He's taught me
Eric Mutal: a lot. I was home brewing before that, but just
Eric Mutal: started off really as a random employee.
Jordan Foss: We hired Eric originally. Now my business partner and I
Jordan Foss: used to home brew a bit, especially once we knew
Jordan Foss: we wanted to open this in New Westminster, but we
Jordan Foss: quickly realized that our home brew wasn't good enough quality
Jordan Foss: to open a brewery with. So we knew we needed
Jordan Foss: a professional brewer to open the brewery with. And so
Jordan Foss: we'd hired a guy by the name of Peter Schultz.
Jordan Foss: It's German trained, and Pete opened the brewery with us.
Jordan Foss: We hired Eric with the thought that Eric would eventually
Jordan Foss: probably step into the assistant brewer's role, which happened a
Jordan Foss: lot faster than we initially anticipated based on how quickly
Jordan Foss: we were selling beer. Pete's decided to do some soul
Jordan Foss: searching and some traveling, and he's heading back to Germany,
Jordan Foss: I think, eventually. So it worked out that Eric had
Jordan Foss: been trained up for a couple years and was able
Jordan Foss: to fill Pete's shoes and fill the roll.
Speaker 1: And so how much brewing experience have you had, Jordan?
Jordan Foss: I've had pretty much zero. Well I shouldn't say that.
Jordan Foss: I home brewed for probably a year or two, I've
Jordan Foss: taken some courses on brewing. So I do have a
Jordan Foss: pretty good knowledge of how the brewing system works, but
Jordan Foss: not enough that I would ever trust myself to be
Jordan Foss: the head brewer of any sort of brewery, especially the
Jordan Foss: amount of money you have to sink into it. So
Jordan Foss: we knew that we needed somebody that had experience. And
Jordan Foss: so that was something that we never had to worry about.
Speaker 1: How many years have you been brewing, Eric?
Eric Mutal: I had been brewing, getting close to 10 years, home
Eric Mutal: brewing, and started off small with the kits and was
Eric Mutal: going all out. And a lot of reading, even when
Eric Mutal: I was in between places and I couldn't brew, I
Eric Mutal: was just reading. I was online on forums and reading
Eric Mutal: books and stuff the whole time. So I've been interested
Eric Mutal: in it for a while.
Speaker 1: Any submissions to any beer competitions or anything as a home brewer?
Eric Mutal: I never did that as a home brewer and I'm
Eric Mutal: still reluctant. Now we do that here at Steel and
Eric Mutal: Oak, but I have my problems with the competitions. Partly,
Eric Mutal: a big thing is that you have to brew to
Eric Mutal: a style. And I don't like necessarily getting into one
Eric Mutal: specific style. And it can be a great beer, but
Eric Mutal: if it's not traditionally ESB, let's say, then it is
Eric Mutal: judged poorly. And my friends were my judges, I guess,
Eric Mutal: and they drank a lot of beer and kept coming
Eric Mutal: back for more, so I took that as a good sign.
Speaker 1: That's the real award at the end of the day, is your friends
Speaker 1: keep coming back.
Eric Mutal: Exactly.
Jordan Foss: And we have been fortunate enough to win a couple
Jordan Foss: awards for sure. And we won first place for our
Jordan Foss: dark lager at the BC Beer Awards this past year. We
Jordan Foss: also won first place for our Smoked Hefeweizen at Fest
Jordan Foss: of Ale in Penticton this past year. So we do get
Jordan Foss: to enjoy some awards here and there. But as Eric said,
Jordan Foss: Steel and Oaks is all about taking European style bases
Jordan Foss: of beers and doing something creative and different with them.
Speaker 1: Because you have a red pilsner and you have the Smoked Hefeweizen and
Speaker 1: the dark lager, those are mashups, really, between different beers. Right?
Jordan Foss: Yeah. They're beers that don't necessarily exist, especially out here.
Eric Mutal: The dark lager being the exception there.
Jordan Foss: The dark lager being exception to the rule, but the
Jordan Foss: red pilsner was a beer that we created that actually
Jordan Foss: doesn't even fit into a category and that never really
Jordan Foss: existed. And the Smoked Hefeweizen was a beer that got
Jordan Foss: done a lot in Denver, Germany, which is where our original
Jordan Foss: brewer Pete was trained, but it'd never really been done out
Jordan Foss: here. And it was definitely the beer that we came
Jordan Foss: out with first and that we were the most noticed
Jordan Foss: for, was that Smoked Hefeweizen.
Speaker 1: Have those beers been in the lineup from the start?
Jordan Foss: Yeah. So we opened going into Vancouver Craft Beer Week,
Jordan Foss: and our first time for anybody to try our beer
Jordan Foss: was the opening day, and we only had Smoked Hefeweizen
Jordan Foss: available at that time. We hadn't had anything else brewed
Jordan Foss: through yet. So it was the Smoked Hefeweizen, the dark
Jordan Foss: lager, the red pilsner and our Royal City Ale were
Jordan Foss: the first beers that we had come out with followed
Jordan Foss: quickly by the Dry- Hopped ESB after that.
Speaker 1: What challenges do you have as the brewmaster, Eric, to make
Speaker 1: sure everything is well balanced and the dark malts or
Speaker 1: the smokiness of the Hefeweizen isn't too overpowering?
Eric Mutal: With those ones, I was fortunate that Peter Schultz, as
Eric Mutal: mentioned before, he came in, and all the flagships right
Eric Mutal: now are his original recipes. And so I was fortunate
Eric Mutal: to have that as a base, to come in and
Eric Mutal: I don't have to design a whole lineup for a
Eric Mutal: brewery. I have one that's good. There's a few minor
Eric Mutal: tweaks that we've been doing basically since the beginning, we're
Eric Mutal: always trying to improve, but the base has basically stayed
Eric Mutal: the same. And so now as we go forward, I
Eric Mutal: get the chance to try something new, bring my own
Eric Mutal: tastes and feel to the new beers.
Jordan Foss: And I think, just to add to what Eric was
Jordan Foss: saying, that the one challenge that we had at the
Jordan Foss: very beginning is like you said, how do you balance
Jordan Foss: all these different flavor compounds and malt bills and hops?
Jordan Foss: And I mean, I'll just use the Smoked Hefeweizen as a
Jordan Foss: very good example. When we initially did that beer, we
Jordan Foss: put a certain percentage of smoked malt and had beechwood
Jordan Foss: smoked malt, and it was so overpowering. And then we just
Jordan Foss: dropped it by 5% and you barely noticed it. And so
Jordan Foss: it's one of those malts that really makes a huge
Jordan Foss: difference and you have to be super delicate with it.
Jordan Foss: And one of the things that we always strive for at Steel and
Jordan Foss: Oak is to make things in balance no matter what
Jordan Foss: they are. And I think that's why this Smoked Hefeweizen is
Jordan Foss: as popular as it is that, even if you're not
Jordan Foss: a fan of smokey beers, you normally would still like
Jordan Foss: it because it just whispers through. And for your people
Jordan Foss: that maybe not be initially into that traditional type of
Jordan Foss: Hefeweizen, the smoked quality balances out those banana and clove
Jordan Foss: notes just enough that it makes it interesting enough for
Jordan Foss: a person that might not dig traditional (inaudible) . So I think
Jordan Foss: that's why it's been such a nice, unique beer for
Jordan Foss: us. And it's what we strive to do with our
Jordan Foss: whole lineup, how to make things balance, but still peak
Jordan Foss: your interest without having to hit you over the head
Jordan Foss: with some crazy ass beer that just screams at you
Jordan Foss: with different flavors, and that's what we try to do.
Speaker 1: Did you run out of beer in the first month there?
Jordan Foss: Yeah. So in the first two weeks we ran out
Jordan Foss: of beer. Even when we started up, it's funny, in
Jordan Foss: Vancouver, which has got a pretty big industry, even though
Jordan Foss: we've only been open for two years, we're veterans now
Jordan Foss: in the grand scheme of things within this pretty young
Jordan Foss: business. And so when we opened, we had no idea
Jordan Foss: how much beer we were going to sell. We had no other real
Jordan Foss: breweries to benchmark our business plan against. And so we
Jordan Foss: thought we had more than enough tanks and more than
Jordan Foss: enough beer. And we were just wrong. The tasting room
Jordan Foss: was way busier than we ever thought it would be.
Jordan Foss: And so we had an issue where we just couldn't
Jordan Foss: make the beer fast enough. The other thing too, is
Jordan Foss: Steel and Oak makes a couple lager beers, which take
Jordan Foss: longer to make. And so we're always at a bit
Jordan Foss: of a disadvantage with how fast we can turn the
Jordan Foss: beer around and we give all our ales and lagers
Jordan Foss: a full four or six weeks. So we don't rush
Jordan Foss: anything. So it was interesting. We got a week's vacation,
Jordan Foss: which was fun, but I definitely wouldn't want to run
Jordan Foss: out of beer again. We always do walk that thin
Jordan Foss: line now because the beer does sell so well, of
Jordan Foss: trying to keep up with the demand.
Speaker 1: And where is your greatest demand? Is that in your
Speaker 1: tasting room or is that now supplying people?
Jordan Foss: Now it's definitely supplying pubs and restaurants and liquor stores
Jordan Foss: in this tasting room, being that it's only 20 people can
Jordan Foss: fit in there, you can only really do so much
Jordan Foss: volume and we've hit that capacity of what we're going to do. So
Jordan Foss: everything else we add after that, as far as tank
Jordan Foss: capacity and brewing capacity, all really gets sold out the
Jordan Foss: back end. So for us right now, it's about demand
Jordan Foss: in the interior. We're trying to service the island, and
Jordan Foss: of course, all of our local market as well in Vancouver.
Speaker 1: So Jordan, with you trying to expand into the interior and
Speaker 1: out to the island, what is happening in the brew
Speaker 1: house to make that happen?
Jordan Foss: Right now, it's a lot of the same stuff. So
Jordan Foss: what's happened, and what happens to, I think a lot
Jordan Foss: of breweries of our size is that your initial goal
Jordan Foss: is, you get your core line together of beers that
Jordan Foss: you think are really solid. But as any creative type,
Jordan Foss: all you want to do is keep creating new and
Jordan Foss: cool stuff for people to drink and in all honesty,
Jordan Foss: selfishly, for us to be able to drink too. But
Jordan Foss: what ends up happening is one or two of those
Jordan Foss: beers take off and they become your Fat Tug, because
Jordan Foss: Driftwood, out of Vancouver Island, sells so much Fat Tug
Jordan Foss: it's their flagship and they just kill it with that
Jordan Foss: beer. And so for us, the Royal City Ale and the
Jordan Foss: red pilsner started to take off and we were basically
Jordan Foss: forced into brewing those two beers way more than we
Jordan Foss: initially thought we would. Right now, if you look at
Jordan Foss: the brewery over there, I think we've got Royal City
Jordan Foss: Ale in three tanks right now.
Eric Mutal: Yeah, three out of the seven tanks.
Jordan Foss: And then two more are red pilsner, so we have
Jordan Foss: five of the seven tanks are two beers, so basically
Jordan Foss: we are just trying to keep up with those. And
Jordan Foss: then what had also happened is the dark lager won
Jordan Foss: that award, and then all of a sudden it's skyrocketed
Jordan Foss: as well. So unfortunately when you order equipment, it takes
Jordan Foss: three to five months, sometimes even longer, to get here.
Jordan Foss: You're always either trying to guess going forward, or you're
Jordan Foss: constantly lagging behind a little bit. So for us in
Jordan Foss: January, February, when beer season's a touch slower, we were in
Jordan Foss: a good little space and now summer's hit. We're just
Jordan Foss: trying to keep up really.
Speaker 1: How many days of the week are you brewing?
Eric Mutal: Between two and four days we're actually physically brewing.
Jordan Foss: And some days we'll do high gravity brew into the
Jordan Foss: bigger tanks, but once that a hundred (inaudible) tank
Jordan Foss: arrives in two weeks, I mean, that's six brews altogether
Jordan Foss: to get into that one tank, we'll pretty much be
Jordan Foss: going around the clock at that point in time.
Speaker 1: And you were showing me the system, it's a little bit
Speaker 1: different than normal. Can you describe it a bit?
Eric Mutal: So most breweries, they mash in to what is called their
Eric Mutal: mash lager tun, and you can't change the temperature of
Eric Mutal: your mash when you're in there. It depends on... But
Eric Mutal: most of them, you can't, you go in at one
Eric Mutal: temperature, you leave it, and that's the British style of
Eric Mutal: doing it. And it can make amazing beer. Now, if
Eric Mutal: you want the German style, which our old brewmaster Peter
Eric Mutal: Schultz did, you need to be able to change the
Eric Mutal: temperature of your mash as you go. And so you
Eric Mutal: mash in as low as 50 degree Celsius, and then
Eric Mutal: you bring it up slowly to, let's say 63, then
Eric Mutal: to 68, rest there for a while, then up to
Eric Mutal: 72. And you're getting different enzymes and different reactions happening
Eric Mutal: at those temperatures, and that lets you do different things
Eric Mutal: to the beers. Now, wheat beers benefit a lot from
Eric Mutal: that. Basically traditional German beers are the ones you do
Eric Mutal: with that. And that's how beer is made in Germany.
Eric Mutal: And so you get a different result out of what
Eric Mutal: you do. And so that limits us in how fast
Eric Mutal: we can brew because we are mashing in to our
Eric Mutal: kettle. We can't start the next brew until the first
Eric Mutal: brew is out of the kettle. It slows us down.
Eric Mutal: And we're not the only brewery to do that, we're
Eric Mutal: not revolutionary or anything in that sense, but it does
Eric Mutal: produce different beer that a lot of breweries in Vancouver
Eric Mutal: don't have the capacity to do.
Speaker 5: Eric, can you tell me the size of the whole brew system?
Eric Mutal: It is 17 and a half hectoliters, so 1, 750 hectoliters.
Eric Mutal: 15 barrel, for people that do it in that way.
Eric Mutal: And then we have tanks. We have four tanks that
Eric Mutal: are 35 hectoliters. So two brews to go into them,
Eric Mutal: and three tanks that are 52 and a half, so
Eric Mutal: three brews to go into them. And we also just
Eric Mutal: got a 17 hectoliter fermentor, so that's a single brew. That's
Eric Mutal: going to be the fun one to do the more
Eric Mutal: experimental, the one offs, the ones that we know are
Eric Mutal: great beers, but won't necessarily be the best sellers. There's
Eric Mutal: one beer in particular, the smoke lager that we've done
Eric Mutal: previously, that is one of my favorite beers that we've
Eric Mutal: ever done.
Jordan Foss: Mine too, actually-
Eric Mutal: But its doesn't sell. It's not for everyone. It's super smoky.
Jordan Foss: It's quite smoky. And then it has a bit of
Jordan Foss: a citrus kick to it as well. And I know
Jordan Foss: it's not for everyone and there's some people that love
Jordan Foss: it, but there's a lot of people that don't and
Jordan Foss: we found 35 hectoliters is maybe a bit too much,
Jordan Foss: granted that was before we bottled, so that might be
Jordan Foss: easier, but we definitely can do 17 hectoliters of it
Jordan Foss: and I'll be happy. I hope somebody else is too.
Speaker 1: Now, recently there was the first collaboration fest for Vancouver
Speaker 1: Craft Beer Week and you guys took the people's choice
Speaker 1: awards. Congratulations.
Jordan Foss: Thank you.
Eric Mutal: Thank you.
Speaker 1: For your Tu Meke-
Eric Mutal: Yeah, Tu Meke.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tu Meke. And that was done with Strange Fellows.
Eric Mutal: Yes.
Speaker 1: Tell me the story about that beer. How did that come about?
Eric Mutal: So we were asked to do... Vancouver Craft Beer Week
Eric Mutal: does a collaboration beer every year, proceeds go to charity
Eric Mutal: and we were asked to brew it and choose a
Eric Mutal: partner. I was actually away on vacation when the initial
Eric Mutal: thing got chosen. So I wasn't involved with the choosing
Eric Mutal: Strange Fellows, but we know they make great beer and
Eric Mutal: they're fun to work with. So we asked them like, "
Eric Mutal: Hey, do you guys want the brew a beer together?" So
Eric Mutal: the actual brew day doesn't evolve as much collaboration as
Eric Mutal: people might think because they don't know how to operate
Eric Mutal: our brew house, everything. So that part, that's where the
Eric Mutal: media was. There was a lot of pictures being taken and they
Eric Mutal: weren't there, but it's all beforehand when ideas are getting
Eric Mutal: thrown back and forth of, first of all, what type
Eric Mutal: of beer we're going to brew, just that there's all
Eric Mutal: these ideas. You want to do something interesting in some
Eric Mutal: way to keep people excited while, I mean, we like
Eric Mutal: to keep things fairly classic in a sense. And so
Eric Mutal: we threw out ideas, we tried different things, even just
Eric Mutal: adding tinctures of something to an existing beer, to know
Eric Mutal: how these different flavors will meld. And then there's a
Eric Mutal: few ideas that didn't work out. And then talking to
Eric Mutal: Ian, the brewmaster slash owner at Strange Fellows, it was
Eric Mutal: actually one of his assistant brewers, and I don't recall
Eric Mutal: the name of that guy, but he had mentioned that
Eric Mutal: there was an old friend in Montreal had made a
Eric Mutal: beer with these things called Tasmanian pepper berries, that it
Eric Mutal: made a really interesting beer. And we were talking about
Eric Mutal: some kind of weird peppercorn to add to a Saison
Eric Mutal: because those flavors usually meld well together. I had never
Eric Mutal: heard of Tasmanian pepper berries, nobody had. In Vancouver, I
Eric Mutal: called all the specialty spice stores around trying to find
Eric Mutal: some just to do a pilot batch. And there were
Eric Mutal: none available, but the description of the things sounded amazing.
Eric Mutal: It was peppery, fruity at the same time, slow burn
Eric Mutal: heat that we wanted to keep subtle. And so I
Eric Mutal: started looking around on the internet where I could find
Eric Mutal: these, found a spice store in Colorado, got them Fed-
Eric Mutal: Exed over as quickly as possible, so we had time
Eric Mutal: to do a pilot brew because we wanted to nail
Eric Mutal: down this recipe. We wanted to make sure we weren't
Eric Mutal: just winging it when it came down to the big
Eric Mutal: thing. And so we tried it out. He was right.
Eric Mutal: They were amazing. They just have this weird flavor. It's
Eric Mutal: hard to... I don't know why they're not more popular
Eric Mutal: in cooking in general because they're like a pepper, but
Eric Mutal: with way more depth. So we just kept a classic
Eric Mutal: Saison and added that to it. And it just brought
Eric Mutal: out all these things and we added some New Zealand
Eric Mutal: hops to give it a lot of floral aroma, a
Eric Mutal: bit of citrus zest in there, and everything just melded
Eric Mutal: together. A few minor tweaks after the pilot, and that
Eric Mutal: was that. So it was a lot of just back and forth
Eric Mutal: between, and that's how collaborations work and the actual brew
Eric Mutal: day is a bunch of guys sitting around drinking some
Eric Mutal: beers, which is great.
Speaker 1: Jordan, if there's somebody wanting to go down the same
Speaker 1: path as well, what advice can you give them?
Jordan Foss: I would say get a lot of money and get
Jordan Foss: twice as much as you think is a lot. That's
Jordan Foss: really, unfortunately in this business, it's very capital intensive, equipment
Jordan Foss: is cheap. And if you find early success, it gets
Jordan Foss: even more expensive because you have to buy more equipment
Jordan Foss: before you actually get to reap the rewards of any
Jordan Foss: of the profit that you may be making. And the
Jordan Foss: other thing that I say to people is that they
Jordan Foss: need to be careful based on where they're opening. If
Jordan Foss: a brewery they think is going to operate like a
Jordan Foss: Brass Neck style in Vancouver, where your tasting room is
Jordan Foss: going to be the only thing that makes you the
Jordan Foss: money, it's a really dangerous game to play when you
Jordan Foss: put all of your eggs into a tasting room basket,
Jordan Foss: and then on a Tuesday night, no one's in it.
Jordan Foss: And, and you start to sweat bullets because you've planned
Jordan Foss: a brewery to just sell through the front door, certain
Jordan Foss: breweries that do it well, Brass Neck being that one
Jordan Foss: that main example, but there isn't necessarily a ton of
Jordan Foss: room for more Brass Necks. So my advice is always
Jordan Foss: to be, be prepared to not only sell, expect success
Jordan Foss: in your tasting room, but also to allow for some
Jordan Foss: sales through the back end and to make sure that
Jordan Foss: you hustle right from the beginning, the days are over
Jordan Foss: where opening a brewery is just enough for you to
Jordan Foss: sell beer. You need to get out there just like
Jordan Foss: any job and get the beer into people's hands. And
Jordan Foss: it needs to be bloody good because a lot of
Jordan Foss: guys are making great beer right now. And the last
Jordan Foss: thing the industry needs is a lot of breweries popping up
Jordan Foss: making subpar beer and watering down the industry. What we
Jordan Foss: really need is people stepping up and making great quality
Jordan Foss: beer so that everybody else decides to try and one
Jordan Foss: up each other and as an industry, as a whole,
Jordan Foss: starts to make top notch, high quality beer.
Speaker 1: But in a friendly way.
Jordan Foss: Always in a friendly way. It's always... That's the one
Jordan Foss: wonderful thing about this industry, is that it's such a
Jordan Foss: friendly industry. We'll give each other hard times when we
Jordan Foss: win awards and somebody else doesn't or something happens to
Jordan Foss: us, but it's all good. We always appreciate what everybody
Jordan Foss: else is doing. And the beer being made out there
Jordan Foss: right now is really good. And we're all starting to
Jordan Foss: take pieces of the pie away from the big boys
Jordan Foss: and so it's more about collaboration than it is competition.
Eric Mutal: It's the only industry that I know of, that I
Eric Mutal: can call our so- called competitors and ask them a
Eric Mutal: very technical question of I've been having this issue. How
Eric Mutal: do you guys deal with it? And they'll flat out
Eric Mutal: tell me, they won't beat around the bush. There are
Eric Mutal: a few things that you don't share about your trade
Eric Mutal: secrets or whatever. But for the most part, I'll call
Eric Mutal: them up and be like, " Hey, I don't know how
Eric Mutal: to do this. What do you guys do? What's your
Eric Mutal: experience?" And I'll ask a few people and get their
Eric Mutal: input. If we're short on ingredients, if I need some
Eric Mutal: hops, I'll call them up and be, " Hey, do you
Eric Mutal: guys have this? I'd love some and we'll hit you
Eric Mutal: up the next time." There's there's just no other industry
Eric Mutal: that I know of that our so- called competitors are
Eric Mutal: this friendly to each other.
Speaker 1: So tell me about bottling day. Do you have a
Speaker 1: bottling line here?
Eric Mutal: Yes we do. so we've got it's (Mahim) bottling
Eric Mutal: line that most breweries in Vancouver around our size have,
Eric Mutal: which is great because that also means issues. We can
Eric Mutal: all chat about it and spare parts, so that's great.
Eric Mutal: It's mostly a great machine, sometimes very finicky and it
Eric Mutal: takes three people to operate, menial loading and unloading of
Eric Mutal: the bottles. And then one person that's there watching it,
Eric Mutal: making sure everything is working properly.
Speaker 1: So it's just kegs and bottles at the moment, Jordan,
Speaker 1: no cans?
Jordan Foss: We do do cans. We started canning our Royal City
Jordan Foss: Ale. So our Royal City Ale is an American blonde
Jordan Foss: style ale. And it was draft only up until March,
Jordan Foss: April, I guess, of this last year. And it was
Jordan Foss: our most popular beer, number one seller, especially in the taste
Jordan Foss: room and in New Westminster itself, Royal City is what
Jordan Foss: New Westminster is actually called, or it's nickname is the Royal
Jordan Foss: City. And then we thought it would be a great
Jordan Foss: beer to put in cans. So there's a great company
Jordan Foss: in Vancouver called West Coast Canning and they have a
Jordan Foss: mobile canning line. Good dudes. So we started to can
Jordan Foss: that in the tallboy 473 mil (inaudible) cans, four packs,
Jordan Foss: and quickly found out that there's no faster way to
Jordan Foss: deplete your stock of beer than putting it in a
Jordan Foss: can. The one wonderful thing about 650 mill bottles, and that's
Jordan Foss: the other warning that I always tell to other breweries
Jordan Foss: that are starting up of our size, 650 mil bottles. As much
Jordan Foss: as you can love a can, the 650 mil bottles
Jordan Foss: allow you to control your growth a little bit better.
Jordan Foss: The margins are better on a 650 mill bottle, but
Jordan Foss: even putting that aside, you don't sell through the beer
Jordan Foss: as fast in a 650 mill, which sounds insane and silly
Jordan Foss: to say that you don't want to sell as much
Jordan Foss: beer as fast as we do now. But when your
Jordan Foss: main constraints are size of space and how much capital
Jordan Foss: you have in order to invest more tanks, slow growth
Jordan Foss: isn't a bad thing. As soon as we put beer
Jordan Foss: in cans, we actually don't have Royal City Ale in
Jordan Foss: cans. We haven't had it for four weeks because we
Jordan Foss: sold out in a week and we just can't make
Jordan Foss: it fast enough. So as much as I love having
Jordan Foss: cans, and I do, we probably should have waited till
Jordan Foss: we had some more capacity.
Eric Mutal: But they're great. When I go camping, I grab some
Eric Mutal: Royal City Ale, and I go hiking-
Jordan Foss: And it's a good beer. It's a beer you want
Jordan Foss: a four pack of, and it's refreshing. And so I'm
Jordan Foss: not surprised we sell through so much, but-
Eric Mutal: But that's the reason we have three tanks full of
Eric Mutal: Royal City Ale right now, is because of that.
Jordan Foss: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What is your favorite beer that you make to pair
Speaker 1: with your favorite food?
Eric Mutal: Ooh, see the beer's the easy one. The food to
Eric Mutal: pair it with.
Jordan Foss: What's your favorite beer that we make?
Eric Mutal: I'd say the dark lager. And I mean, this probably
Eric Mutal: switches, but I feel I go back to the dark
Eric Mutal: lager more often than any other beer I go back to.
Jordan Foss: See, whereas, I probably drink the Royal City Ale the
Jordan Foss: most, but I would actually say that my favorite beer
Jordan Foss: of our flagships that we do is the Dry- Hopped
Jordan Foss: ESB. But my overall favorite beer that I think we've
Jordan Foss: ever done is the Smoked Honey Doppelbock. But the beer
Jordan Foss: that I find pairs the best with food, and when
Jordan Foss: I'm trying to do that, is the red pilsner. The
Jordan Foss: red pilsner is always... the Royal City Ale and red
Jordan Foss: pilsner I always say are 1 and 1A, the red
Jordan Foss: pilsner has a nice multi backbone, but it has a
Jordan Foss: crisp bitterness. So I really like Thai food and Indian
Jordan Foss: food and something with some heat. And the red pilsner
Jordan Foss: is fantastic with food that has a little bit of
Jordan Foss: heat to it. The bitterness just accents it, but it
Jordan Foss: also describes your palette so that you-
Eric Mutal: The sweetness is there at the beginning, but it ends
Eric Mutal: up crisp. So yeah, I agree completely.
Jordan Foss: So I'd say my favorite beer definitely flagships would be
Jordan Foss: ESB, I think, even though I drink Royal City Ale
Jordan Foss: the most, but red pilsner pairs the best with food,
Jordan Foss: best beer overall for me is Smoked Honey Doppelbock. So
Jordan Foss: I guess that's, that's a loaded answer.
Eric Mutal: Try it all.
Jordan Foss: But I've said this before, the beers are like our
Jordan Foss: children. And you like each one of them for a different
Jordan Foss: reason and some sell better than others. And the ones
Jordan Foss: that don't sell as well, that you know is the
Jordan Foss: highest quality beer, we make this beer called (Roganvison) ,
Jordan Foss: and it is lights out and other brewers just love
Jordan Foss: it, but it doesn't sell that well because people get
Jordan Foss: scared by the name Roganvison. And I don't blame them because-
Eric Mutal: They don't even know how to pronounce it, first of all.
Jordan Foss: But anyways, I like them all for different reasons. But
Jordan Foss: hopefully that answered your question anyways.
Speaker 1: Who's inspiring you at the moment. What beer is really
Speaker 1: inspiring you?
Jordan Foss: Oh, that's a really good question. Eric, do you want
Jordan Foss: to take this one first?
Eric Mutal: I get inspiration all over the place. So I don't
Eric Mutal: know if there's just one particular. I mean, there's a
Eric Mutal: lot of great brewers in Vancouver, all over, but I
Eric Mutal: get inspiration from a random beer that a friend brings
Eric Mutal: over, could be a home brew that a friend brings
Eric Mutal: over for me to try. And it could be a
Eric Mutal: lot from eating. So different flavors that meld well together
Eric Mutal: at a restaurant that I go to. Or if I'm
Eric Mutal: watching a cooking show on TV, I'll be like, those
Eric Mutal: flavors would well pair well together. And let's see how
Eric Mutal: I can incorporate that into a beer without being overpowering,
Eric Mutal: but just using those basic pairing techniques.
Jordan Foss: And I'll say I get inspired by a lot of
Jordan Foss: our local brewery friends. The boys over at Dageraad who
Jordan Foss: we're really good friends with, they always inspire me anyways
Jordan Foss: because they make just Belgian style beer and they make
Jordan Foss: lights out phenomenal award winning, lots of award- winning beers,
Jordan Foss: but it never sells as well as it should because
Jordan Foss: it's a big, bold beer that people are afraid of.
Jordan Foss: And it's a beer that you'd buy for a special occasion.
Jordan Foss: And what I love is that they don't care. They
Jordan Foss: aren't going to sell out just because they want to
Jordan Foss: move more product. Ben could probably make a lights out
Jordan Foss: IPA, but he doesn't. And they stick to their guns.
Jordan Foss: They do sell out of their product now, but they've
Jordan Foss: never wavered from that. A lot of the beers they bottle
Jordan Foss: conditioning takes eight weeks, which is insane. But they do
Jordan Foss: it because they care about quality the most. And the
Jordan Foss: boys over at Four Winds too, who everybody knows about
Jordan Foss: because they always win. They won brewer of the year
Jordan Foss: in 2015 for Canada. And they won beer of the
Jordan Foss: year this year. And we've always been good friends with
Jordan Foss: those guys. The first collaboration we did was with those
Jordan Foss: guys and they always inspire us just based on how
Jordan Foss: much creativity that goes into what they do. Both those
Jordan Foss: boys (Kylo) and Brent come from restaurant backgrounds, and
Jordan Foss: you can really taste it in their beer that they
Jordan Foss: are mixing and matching flavors based on how you would
Jordan Foss: pair are food together. And so that always inspires me
Jordan Foss: for sure, just any brewery that's making great stuff. And
Jordan Foss: then there's other breweries that inspire me by just doing
Jordan Foss: cool branding and marketing initiatives, that from a business perspective,
Jordan Foss: I'm always in awe of that, how smart they are
Jordan Foss: and how I wish I had thought of that first.
Speaker 1: Right. Thank you so much guys.
Jordan Foss: Thank you.
Eric Mutal: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Big thanks to Jordan and Eric for their time and
Speaker 1: showing me around the brewery. If you find yourself in
Speaker 1: their tap room or see their bottles in a local
Speaker 1: store, I suggest the red pilsner or the black lager.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this episode of the Cascadian Beer Podcast. If you want to
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