Aaron Johnson: Welcome to the Cascadian Beer podcast. My name is Aaron
Aaron Johnson: and I'm a Cascadian. In this podcast series, I profile
Aaron Johnson: the unique breweries of Cascadia, a region that has a
Aaron Johnson: strong presence in the international beer scene. Cascadia is a
Aaron Johnson: bioregion in the Pacific Northwest in the North American continent.
Aaron Johnson: It's made up of the U. S. states of Washington
Aaron Johnson: and Oregon, as well as the Canadian province of British Columbia.
Aaron Johnson: I was very fortunate to have a weekend trip in
Aaron Johnson: the Yakima Valley to witness the start of this year's
Aaron Johnson: hop harvest. Big shout to Sam Quinland for organizing the weekend.
Aaron Johnson: That was great, man, but it was really nice to
Aaron Johnson: meet a lot of people in the Yakima Valley beer community,
Aaron Johnson: and one of them being Varietal Brewing from Sunnyside, Washington.
Aaron Johnson: Founded in 2016, they've been a great addition to their
Aaron Johnson: local community.
Chris Baum: I'm Chris Baum, head brewer, co- owner at Varietal Beer Company.
Aaron Johnson: Where are we in the beautiful state of Washington?
Chris Baum: Right in the very middle of it. So, in the
Chris Baum: Yakima Valley, lower Yakima Valley, right in the middle of
Chris Baum: all of the hops. I think you saw that in your
Chris Baum: way in today.
Aaron Johnson: We have been driving around all weekend and God there
Aaron Johnson: was some beautiful ones when we're coming up. So this town is
Aaron Johnson: Sunnyside? Correct.
Chris Baum: Mm- hmm ( affirmative).
Aaron Johnson: What's the drive outside of Yakima?
Chris Baum: From my house to here is about 45 minutes.
Aaron Johnson: So, sweet.
Chris Baum: Oh, yeah. In the summer when the roads are good
Chris Baum: and in the winter about an hour.
Aaron Johnson: So, Varietal Beer Company, how long have you been open?
Chris Baum: We opened in April. We opened the taproom in April of
Chris Baum: last year, of 2018. Our brew equipment, there was a
Chris Baum: slight delay on it of about four months, so we
Chris Baum: decided to just have some contract beers made for us that
Chris Baum: we could open the tap room with, get some revenue
Chris Baum: going. Brew system landed in June of that year and
Chris Baum: then it took us about a month to get all
Chris Baum: the installation done. Then we brewed our first batch July 19,
Chris Baum: 2018, and then we didn't have our first beers on
Chris Baum: draft until early August of last year, of 2018. Ever
Chris Baum: since then, it's just been go time.
Aaron Johnson: So how did beer find you?
Chris Baum: I've been drinking beer since I was in my twenties.
Chris Baum: A buddy of mine, we used to home brew a
Chris Baum: bunch, this guy, I call him Dirt. That was like
Chris Baum: in 2003. I was brewing my first home brew batches,
Chris Baum: didn't really get serious about it until 2010 and that's
Chris Baum: when I kind of focused. I was still working as
Chris Baum: a biologist at that point and traveling a lot. So
Chris Baum: I would read a lot and listen to a lot
Chris Baum: of podcasts while I was out in the field, and
Chris Baum: then I'd come home and brew for a month and
Chris Baum: a half and then go back out for a couple months and
Chris Baum: come back and rack those beers. That got a little
Chris Baum: old so I decided I would, in my off time,
Chris Baum: volunteer my time and learn at a brewery here in
Chris Baum: town, actually called Snipes Mountain. I met this guy, Chad,
Chris Baum: who was the head brewer over there at that time
Chris Baum: and he offered me a job. That was part- time,
Chris Baum: like ten bucks an hour, washing kegs, mostly, but it
Chris Baum: was doing something with beer so I was happy. He
Chris Baum: decided to leave and go pursue a job in hops
Chris Baum: so I took over that job as head brewer at
Chris Baum: Snipes. I spent about two years there, beyond, as head
Chris Baum: brewer and then decided we were going to open this
Chris Baum: place. It's right around the corner so there was probably
Chris Baum: going to be a little bit of a conflict of
Chris Baum: interest, so I decided I would leave Snipes. I needed
Chris Baum: a job while we did this, which I thought was going
Chris Baum: to be six months or so, and it turned out to
Chris Baum: be two years.
Aaron Johnson: Well good thing you were like, I need a job while we're
Aaron Johnson: building it.
Chris Baum: So I went and got a job at Bale Breaker
Chris Baum: up in Moxee there with those guys. That was one
Chris Baum: of the best decisions I've ever made in my life.
Chris Baum: They make great beer, really organized.
Aaron Johnson: Quite a large kind of brewery too. Right?
Chris Baum: It's a regional. They've expanded a lot since I left,
Chris Baum: which was about a year and a half ago. They
Chris Baum: had just gone through an expansion right when I got
Chris Baum: there and that was, I said, " I could use a job", and
Chris Baum: they said, " Okay cool, you'll come help us figure out
Chris Baum: where we need people as we grow." I ended up
Chris Baum: brewing five days a week, which is great, and working
Chris Baum: in the lab there. I really got to fine tune
Chris Baum: my process. It was just a production job so I
Chris Baum: was just brewing and really missing the creativity of it.
Chris Baum: While I was there, we licensed our warehouse here. Our
Chris Baum: building was being built so we licensed that with our
Chris Baum: half barrel set up. We were brewing commercially half barrel
Chris Baum: batches for five or six months. It was pretty funny.
Chris Baum: You'd go to a bar and you're like, Oh we
Chris Baum: have beer, and they're like, " This is experal" and then
Chris Baum: it would be gone in like two hours and then you have
Chris Baum: to wait two weeks. That was super fun. It was
Chris Baum: good cause we got the brand going and we could
Chris Baum: legally contract beers at that point, so we did that.
Chris Baum: Got some stuff. Bail breakers and stuff at Snipes. Another
Chris Baum: little brewpub up in Natchez called Brown Yar brewed some
Chris Baum: beer for us.
Aaron Johnson: Sweet.
Chris Baum: A bunch of people actually, and now here we are.
Aaron Johnson: Here we are. So what's the size of the system
Aaron Johnson: in your brewhouse?
Chris Baum: Our brewhouse is a 10 barrel. Currently all of our
Chris Baum: SAR tanks are also 10 barrels. We're hoping to expand
Chris Baum: here soon into some 20 burrow fermenters. All made in the United
Chris Baum: States. Pinnacle, stainless, I can't remember what they call themselves,
Chris Baum: but made in Portland, Oregon.
Aaron Johnson: Right. So just down the road. Something breaks, get some
Aaron Johnson: parts, pretty easy.
Chris Baum: Yeah. Being in Sunnyside is great. It's a dairy town,
Chris Baum: so there's a ton of people who can fix things
Chris Baum: if you need to have things fixed. Also, obviously, great
Chris Baum: access to hops, but we also process a lot of
Chris Baum: fruit around here. Cherries, peaches, nectarines, all of the stuff that you want to use in beer.
Chris Baum: It's just all literally around the corner along with, if
Chris Baum: I need hops, I just go around the corner. Same
Chris Baum: with wine. It's a big wine area, so we have
Chris Baum: great access to wine barrels.
Aaron Johnson: which you've started aging some of your stuff, right?
Chris Baum: We actually had a barrel program before Oregon. We contracted
Chris Baum: some worth from bale breaker and did some barrel fermentations
Chris Baum: with Brett and then refruited. We did some refermentations in
Chris Baum: the same barrels with some local raspberries and blackberries, and
Chris Baum: those beers are just coming out now and that was like
Chris Baum: two and a half years ago, Brew program. It takes
Chris Baum: a long time.
Aaron Johnson: It is something that you're going to continue now, but
Aaron Johnson: in your own facilities, right?
Chris Baum: Yeah. We have like 40 wine barrels or something right now,
Chris Baum: all wild and sour stuff. That was actually the reason
Chris Baum: we started the brewery, was to be able to make
Chris Baum: farmhouse and, and wild stuff. Realizing down the road that
Chris Baum: we would need to brew clean beers because you make
Chris Baum: money on those a lot faster.
Aaron Johnson: And they take less time.
Chris Baum: A lot less time. And so we have very focused
Chris Baum: on wild and sour. Also really focused on lagers which
Chris Baum: obviously take time. That's one thing about our system is
Chris Baum: we have three bright tanks and usually you'd have, if
Chris Baum: you have a condition tank, you have four union tanks
Chris Baum: to one bright tank, have three bright tanks and four
Chris Baum: unis, but that's just because I like to age my
Chris Baum: lagers in a conditioning tank, not in the keg. So that's
Chris Baum: why we did that. Some people say we're crazy.
Aaron Johnson: So what was the communities response then when you opened?
Aaron Johnson: How was attendance at the brewery.
Chris Baum: People are excited, really excited. There was nothing in Sunnyside
Chris Baum: where you could go with your family and your dog
Chris Baum: and have a beer, and we have a food vendor
Chris Baum: on site every day we're open and a big yard
Chris Baum: outside and we're really focused on families spending time together.
Aaron Johnson: There's tons of board games and toys.
Chris Baum: Tons of board games, toys. Just this weekend we had
Chris Baum: a science programme focused on early childhood learning. They just
Chris Baum: learned about water out in the yard while their parents,
Chris Baum: you know, brought them, and then this lady led this
Chris Baum: class with these kids and they're running around out there
Chris Baum: in the yard and it's really, really cool. The community
Chris Baum: response has been better. We're always blown away. How gracious
Chris Baum: people are to us. All the high school reunions happen
Chris Baum: here and wedding pre parties and, it's been incredible. One
Chris Baum: of our local farms, they just celebrated their centennial. They
Chris Baum: had it here. It's the guy who takes our grains. So we're like, "
Chris Baum: yeah, of course you can have it here."
Aaron Johnson: So this is the hops growing region.
Chris Baum: Mm- hmm ( affirmative).
Aaron Johnson: What are some of your favorite hops that come out
Aaron Johnson: of here locally, and are you going to be making
Aaron Johnson: some fresh hop beers here in a few weeks? Cause
Aaron Johnson: we're just at the start of harvest weekend right here.
Chris Baum: We're making a lot of fresh hop beers. Last year
Chris Baum: we did four or five, did four here and I
Chris Baum: think we might've done one outside, I can't remember. This
Chris Baum: year we have fresh hops planned with Holy mountain out
Chris Baum: of Seattle, Stoop Brewing out of Seattle. We have a three-
Chris Baum: way collaboration. It's not a three way, but branded three
Chris Baum: way thing, but with Fort George and Wayfinder out of
Chris Baum: Portland and in, what's the name of the town where
Chris Baum: Ford George is?
Aaron Johnson: Astoria.
Chris Baum: Astoria. We're brewing with Barley Brown, out of Baker City, and
Chris Baum: a buddy of mine's coming up for that too, down
Chris Baum: in California, this guy, Charlie Johnson. Super rad guy, great
Chris Baum: brewing mind and a fun guy to hang out with
Chris Baum: and a great friend. So we have that going on.
Chris Baum: Whistle Punk out of Spokane, Single Hill and Brown Yar,
Chris Baum: we're doing an all- valley collab, so it'll be upper
Chris Baum: valley, mid valley and lower valley. I'm talking to Alex
Chris Baum: from Three Weavers right now about her, I don't know if
Chris Baum: she's available, but we're going to do a cashmere at
Chris Baum: the very end of the season. I love that hop. It's just a really exciting
Chris Baum: time to be here. People love fresh hops. I like
Chris Baum: making fresh shops, like drinking fresh hops. It's awesome.
Aaron Johnson: Right. So then you said they're going to get a couple more tanks in, but what's
Aaron Johnson: the future here, what's the plan? Are you going to do
Aaron Johnson: any packaging line, ship it out, or?
Chris Baum: We're talking about canning right now. For us, quality is
Chris Baum: everything and there's a lot of beer sitting on shelves
Chris Baum: right now, so we're being really cautious about that. We
Chris Baum: want to be able to control our own growth. We're
Chris Baum: not with a distributor. We have no plans to go
Chris Baum: with a distributor anytime soon in the state of Washington.
Chris Baum: If we go into Oregon, we have to. We want
Chris Baum: to grow, but we're not looking to be a large
Chris Baum: regional brewery by any means. We're very content with our
Chris Baum: little nook here in Sunnyside, and if we can continue
Chris Baum: to keep the community happy and full of good, I
Chris Baum: don't know, I think we make really good beer.
Aaron Johnson: And you do. You were very kind of bring a
Aaron Johnson: lot of crowds over to the place that we were staying at
Aaron Johnson: and these are solid beers man.
Chris Baum: Thanks.
Aaron Johnson: Absolutely love them.
Chris Baum: There's been a lack of good beer in this portion
Chris Baum: of the Valley. A lot of, you know what I
Chris Baum: mean? Snipes, it's 20 something years old and they've had
Chris Baum: a lot of success, but they kind of do what Snipes
Chris Baum: does and we wanted to provide something different than that.
Chris Baum: So that's what we're doing. I make pretty much all
Chris Baum: the decisions, as far as what we brew, how it's
Chris Baum: brewed. Definitely, my business partners, they have a ton of
Chris Baum: input but pretty much I have creative control over everything
Chris Baum: and it's really fun.
Aaron Johnson: Right.
Chris Baum: Yeah.
Aaron Johnson: So if somebody was wanting to go down the path of opening up
Aaron Johnson: a brewery themselves, what would be some advice you could give them?
Chris Baum: I would say get a job in a brewery for
Chris Baum: a couple of years and learn your shit. Just make
Chris Baum: mistakes on other people's dimes. I am not kidding. I
Chris Baum: get asked that question a lot and basically have a
Chris Baum: lot of money. Make sure that you understand that you
Chris Baum: are going to be given a pay cut because if
Chris Baum: you have enough money to open a brewery on your
Chris Baum: own, you're doing pretty well for yourself. But really I
Chris Baum: would stay focused on quality, have a plan and get
Chris Baum: some experience or plan on hiring someone who has a
Chris Baum: lot of experience and pay them well. That's my 2 cents.
Aaron Johnson: All right, cool. And your two favorite hop varieties here from the Valley?
Aaron Johnson: I mean cashmere, you already said.
Chris Baum: Cashmere, look, I'm a huge fan of cashmere. It's going
Chris Baum: to be more than two, just so you know.
Aaron Johnson: All right.
Chris Baum: Comet is always at the top of my list. Huge
Chris Baum: fan of citrus, obviously.
Aaron Johnson: I'm a sucker for citrus.
Chris Baum: Yeah, citrus. It's just really great hop. Man, we use
Chris Baum: a lot of, palisade, is a huge favorite of mine.
Chris Baum: I love palisade. I get a lot of people like
Chris Baum: raise eyebrows at me, but I mean you were drinking
Chris Baum: a lager last night. It's just a great clean American hop.
Aaron Johnson: It's so solid.
Chris Baum: Yeah, I love palisade. I use a lot of mosaic. I've been
Chris Baum: brewing with mosaic for a really long time, since before
Chris Baum: it was mosaic. Of course, all the HBC stuff is
Chris Baum: great. There's some exciting stuff coming out from HBC and
Chris Baum: there's a new one coming out called " Brew One" that
Chris Baum: was developed by Reggie Brulotte. I don't know if it
Chris Baum: was found or, I actually don't know. I've heard rumors
Chris Baum: about it. I don't want to speculate, but it is
Chris Baum: a weirdo, but in a good way. They just had
Chris Baum: a beer brewed the other day and it was pineapple,
Chris Baum: just this intense pineapple. But I could see it. If
Chris Baum: you weren't careful, it could go over into kind of
Chris Baum: a rubber tire store kind of the thing. But the
Chris Baum: beer that I had it in was from Hawes. They're
Chris Baum: an experimental brewery up in [ inaudible 00:15:43], I don't know what
Chris Baum: they call it, but my buddy Jeff and Max brewed
Chris Baum: that beer and it was good. It was really good,
Chris Baum: and so I'm excited to try that out. I know
Chris Baum: Perkins Jeff at YBH is talking about it too.
Aaron Johnson: I saw a couple of cans on his line there
Aaron Johnson: with some brew one in it.
Chris Baum: So it's a strange deck,
Aaron Johnson: Right.
Chris Baum: All the classics cascade. I actually like, I don't use
Chris Baum: it much, but I really love Columbus, early picked Columbus
Chris Baum: as an aroma hop is just super dank. It's a
Chris Baum: really nice dry hop. They're just in a rye beer. Really good.
Chris Baum: Yeah, I don't know. That was more than two.
Aaron Johnson: Yeah. There you go.
Chris Baum: At the top list; cashmere, comet. That's where I'm at currently.
Chris Baum: I can't get enough.
Aaron Johnson: Right. And then these co- labs that you mentioned for fresh
Aaron Johnson: hops, are they just going to be smashes or are
Aaron Johnson: they just going to be some different kinds?
Chris Baum: The Holy mountain one, we did it last year and
Chris Baum: I'm hoping that Collin will want to continue the tradition.
Chris Baum: It's early. We do have loads of farms just outside
Chris Baum: of Toppenish there. Did you meet Junior?
Aaron Johnson: No, I didn't.
Chris Baum: He's a great guy. That whole family is awesome. That's
Chris Baum: a (inaudible) .
Aaron Johnson: Sweet.
Chris Baum: Yeah. So hopefully Collin will continue to want to do
Chris Baum: that every year. But it's like a Keller pils.
Aaron Johnson: Awesome.
Chris Baum: So we use that more as an ingredient than a
Chris Baum: focus. We actually had a keg leftover. We just held
Chris Baum: it back and tapped it this May and it was
Chris Baum: brilliant. It was awesome. It wasn't a Keller beer anymore,
Chris Baum: but it was really good.
Aaron Johnson: Thank you so much dude for your time. Really appreciate it.
Chris Baum: Thanks for coming down.
Aaron Johnson: It's great. And it's a great facility you built, so.
Chris Baum: you're welcome back anytime.
Aaron Johnson: Thank you. Big thank you to Chris and the rest
Aaron Johnson: of the team at varietal for their time. Really appreciate
Aaron Johnson: it. It was great meeting everybody in Yakima too, by
Aaron Johnson: the way. Big shout out again to Sam Quinland from
Aaron Johnson: Lillooet, the hop farmer up there. So it was a
Aaron Johnson: great weekend. Looking forward to going back and exploring more
Aaron Johnson: of the Yakima Valley. If you enjoy this podcast series,
Aaron Johnson: I really hope you hit subscribe in your favorite podcast
Aaron Johnson: app cause that means you'll get the show when a
Aaron Johnson: new episode is released. If this is your first time
Aaron Johnson: here, you can dig back in the archives. There's a
Aaron Johnson: lot. This is episode 68 so there's a lot of
Aaron Johnson: episodes that checkout. If you want to follow us on
Aaron Johnson: social media, you can, by going to Facebook at facebook.
Aaron Johnson: com forward slash Cascadian beer, on Twitter at Cascadian beer
Aaron Johnson: and on Instagram at Cascadian beer podcast. For more info about
Aaron Johnson: this brewery and to see some photos from it, you
Aaron Johnson: can go to the website at Cascadian. beer. Thank you
Aaron Johnson: so much for your time. I really do appreciate it.
Aaron Johnson: And until next time, remember, support your local.