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Episode 1

An Astrophysicist Walks Into a Bar...

Gary introduces you to the owners of McFleshman’s Brewing Co and hosts of the show, Bobby Fleshman and Allison McCoy-Fleshman! Bobby tells his beer origin story (with a little help from Allison).

From his first sip of beer on an Oklahoma farm after a game of quarters to brewing English ales in his PhD advisor's basement while working at NASA, learn how Bobby turned a love for science into the world's favorite beverage.

Got a question about beer? Send us a message on Instagram or Facebook and we'll probably answer it on the show!

Hosts:

Bobby Fleshman

Allison McCoy-Fleshman

Gary Ardnt

Music by Sarah Lynn Huss

Recorded & Produced by David Kalsow

Transcript
Gary Arndt:

Hello everyone and welcome to episode one of the

Gary Arndt:

Respecting the Beer podcast.

Gary Arndt:

My name is Gary Arndt and with me today are the proprietors of the McFleshman's

Gary Arndt:

Brewing Company in Appleton, Wisconsin, Bobby Fleshman and Alison McCoy Fleshman.

Gary Arndt:

How are you guys doing?

Allison Fleshman:

Great.

Bobby Fleshman:

Fantastic.

Gary Arndt:

What we're going to do in this podcast, is we're

Gary Arndt:

going to talk about everything and anything dealing with brewing and

Gary Arndt:

beer over the course of the show.

Gary Arndt:

But for the first episode, we kind of want to establish the origin story,

Gary Arndt:

just like you do in any good movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and

Gary Arndt:

how you get to a point of running a brewery, how you set one up from becoming

Gary Arndt:

just a, a fan of beer and brewing.

Gary Arndt:

Because it's an interesting story.

Gary Arndt:

I think a lot of people may.

Gary Arndt:

See themselves in it.

Gary Arndt:

Maybe they're home brewers.

Gary Arndt:

Maybe they just love beer.

Gary Arndt:

And how do you get from that point of a passion for beer to turning

Gary Arndt:

it into something real, where you're making beer on a regular

Gary Arndt:

basis and selling it to the public?

Gary Arndt:

So, where does this begin?

Gary Arndt:

How do you, how do you go, what is the starting point?

Bobby Fleshman:

Okay.

Bobby Fleshman:

first of all, thanks Gary and uh, my team here for putting this together and having

Bobby Fleshman:

such a wonderful voice to introduce us.

Bobby Fleshman:

where does our story begin?

Bobby Fleshman:

maybe it's my introduction to beer in general.

Bobby Fleshman:

Maybe it's where I was living on a farm in 19.

Bobby Fleshman:

80.

Bobby Fleshman:

I was four years old we had uh, I want to say 8, 000 acres of wheat fields.

Bobby Fleshman:

And so we brought crews through and they harvested this wheat and

Bobby Fleshman:

at night they would play quarters.

Bobby Fleshman:

And if you guys are familiar with quarters, it's a game where you put

Bobby Fleshman:

quarters into a bowl, but bouncing them.

Bobby Fleshman:

And then there's rules by which people drink around the table.

Bobby Fleshman:

I.

Bobby Fleshman:

I remember being four years old, one of my earliest memories, and

Bobby Fleshman:

my parents were around the table and there were these styrofoam cups

Bobby Fleshman:

and they were drinking something.

Bobby Fleshman:

I was interested.

Bobby Fleshman:

These were, these were people that I met in the summertime and they would

Bobby Fleshman:

come and go each year and I wanted to be involved, wanted to play this game.

Bobby Fleshman:

So at some point they said, give him a shot, and they gave me a

Bobby Fleshman:

quarter, explained it to me, and I bounced a quarter in the bowl.

Bobby Fleshman:

And they said, okay, so, right, we're going to have to play by the

Bobby Fleshman:

rules, so they gave me some beer.

Bobby Fleshman:

It was some Coors Original, or Banquet, made famous by Smokey and the Bandit

Bobby Fleshman:

movie, and anyway, they gave me the tiniest amount, probably no more than an

Bobby Fleshman:

ounce, but I remember the taste still, and I remember being smitten by it.

Bobby Fleshman:

And fast forward to where we are today.

Bobby Fleshman:

I think I've always had a love for beer, but that was an awkward

Bobby Fleshman:

moment for everyone in the room.

Bobby Fleshman:

I, I related to an episode of King of the Hill where they gave Bobby

Bobby Fleshman:

a case, a carton of cigarettes to convince him that he didn't want to

Bobby Fleshman:

smoke and then he became hooked on it.

Bobby Fleshman:

It wasn't as extreme as that, but I related to that moment.

Bobby Fleshman:

But I mean, that's, it's, it's hard to know where to start, but that beer

Bobby Fleshman:

is something that's sort of been in my blood, even though my family wasn't.

Bobby Fleshman:

The family of brewers per se, we were from Oklahoma and so

Bobby Fleshman:

not even from a brewing region.

Bobby Fleshman:

And so you're a four year old beer drinker and where do you go from there?

Bobby Fleshman:

Yeah.

Bobby Fleshman:

So you fast forward a lot of years, because at that point in the

Bobby Fleshman:

world, it was all industrial lager.

Bobby Fleshman:

And before you go any further, I grew up in Wisconsin.

Bobby Fleshman:

This was a very strong Germanic culture.

Bobby Fleshman:

Going to the tavern was something that was very common.

Bobby Fleshman:

You might give a kid a sip of beer or something like that,

Bobby Fleshman:

and like most kids, I hated it.

Bobby Fleshman:

Like you taste that for the first time and it's something that you don't enjoy.

Bobby Fleshman:

Did you actually like enjoy it or was it this like, oh, I just

Bobby Fleshman:

want to be like the grown ups?

Bobby Fleshman:

Beer is the social beverage.

Bobby Fleshman:

It's the social lubricant.

Bobby Fleshman:

So maybe there's a part to Both of those truths.

Bobby Fleshman:

I think I enjoyed it and I think that I wanted to be part.

Bobby Fleshman:

But no, I intrinsically liked it.

Bobby Fleshman:

But you're asking about what's next?

Bobby Fleshman:

There's a lot of years of growing up around beer.

Bobby Fleshman:

Didn't really drink much beer, honestly, growing up.

Bobby Fleshman:

Didn't enjoy it particularly.

Bobby Fleshman:

So maybe there's some answers to your questions there.

Bobby Fleshman:

I quickly realized that it was all the same, you know, as most people did in

Bobby Fleshman:

the craft that came to be craft brewers.

Bobby Fleshman:

And it was boring.

Bobby Fleshman:

Even if it was consistent, most beer was just boring.

Bobby Fleshman:

So you know, I'd let it sit and I fast forward to probably about 1999.

Bobby Fleshman:

I discover various, craft beverages such as Sierra Nevada pale ale.

Allison Fleshman:

Hmm.

Allison Fleshman:

Is that true?

Allison Fleshman:

No, cause you were when I first started dating you.

Allison Fleshman:

That was in 2002.

Allison Fleshman:

You were obsessed with one particular beer.

Bobby Fleshman:

Right.

Bobby Fleshman:

Yeah, my first.

Allison Fleshman:

Michelob Amberbach.

Bobby Fleshman:

I wouldn't say it's my first, but yeah, the one that I really

Bobby Fleshman:

threw myself into was Michelob Amberbach.

Allison Fleshman:

To the point, when we were in Hawaii one time, we found

Allison Fleshman:

a big ass Mir that we actually bought that had Michelob Amberbach, and we

Allison Fleshman:

struggled to get it into the suitcase to get it back on the plane, because

Allison Fleshman:

you were obsessed with that beer.

Bobby Fleshman:

Yeah.

Bobby Fleshman:

I think it was for two reasons.

Bobby Fleshman:

It did have some flavor relative to Mir.

Bobby Fleshman:

A non caramelized version of the same beer.

Bobby Fleshman:

but also the branding and that you find that to be true with a lot of German

Bobby Fleshman:

brands even though this isn't any longer a German brand, it, it did draw me in,

Bobby Fleshman:

I was marketed to, and that's true,

Gary Arndt:

but that's like a, that's a, a mass produced beer, not

Gary Arndt:

a craft beer, a hundred percent.

Gary Arndt:

What was it that was so special about it?

Gary Arndt:

Was it just that they were doing something different that it was available?

Bobby Fleshman:

So they were clearly responding to the first wave of

Bobby Fleshman:

craft brewers and, and Sierra Nevada is, is the most notable of those.

Bobby Fleshman:

And they were just capitalizing on it.

Bobby Fleshman:

They had access to tap handles everywhere.

Bobby Fleshman:

And so all they had to do is become a quote craft brewer overnight.

Bobby Fleshman:

And you have someone like me who was misinformed, thinking

Bobby Fleshman:

that this, this is somehow.

Bobby Fleshman:

Truly a different process, truly a different product when it, when it

Bobby Fleshman:

was only slightly different in all honesty, you drink with your eyes first.

Bobby Fleshman:

This was Amber and it did have some caramel flavor added.

Bobby Fleshman:

And so by that definition, it was, it was.

Bobby Fleshman:

I wouldn't say craft, but it was definitely more of a crafty beer.

Gary Arndt:

And I would say like through the seventies and eighties,

Gary Arndt:

I think the United States was known for a major beer producers.

Gary Arndt:

You had the Miller's, the Budweiser's, the Coors like you mentioned.

Gary Arndt:

And based on kind of my memory of it, you start to see these craft beers appear in

Gary Arndt:

like the early nineties, mid nineties.

Gary Arndt:

And so it was.

Gary Arndt:

Was that kind of when you started to pay more attention?

Bobby Fleshman:

Right.

Bobby Fleshman:

And remember I'm from Oklahoma.

Bobby Fleshman:

That's probably the last state to see anything craft.

Bobby Fleshman:

So,

Allison Fleshman:

yeah, there were some pretty significant liquor laws.

Allison Fleshman:

And so Oklahoma is one that you could only brew 3.

Allison Fleshman:

2 percent or lower.

Allison Fleshman:

You couldn't refrigerate

Gary Arndt:

it and you

Allison Fleshman:

couldn't refrigerate it.

Gary Arndt:

So, okay.

Gary Arndt:

Yeah.

Gary Arndt:

You, you, you find the, the Michelob Amber Bach.

Gary Arndt:

Where do you go from there?

Gary Arndt:

How do you, so you said you were misinformed at the time.

Gary Arndt:

How do you, how did you figure that out?

Gary Arndt:

Or what, what did you discover that took you like, Oh, there's

Gary Arndt:

something better than this.

Bobby Fleshman:

And that's where I think it, it deserves credit

Bobby Fleshman:

and probably not just with me.

Bobby Fleshman:

it, whether it was craft or crafty, it.

Bobby Fleshman:

It, it got me into what would later become actual craft beer

Bobby Fleshman:

because it broke the mold.

Bobby Fleshman:

And like I said, I think to answer

Allison Fleshman:

his question, I think we just started trying at that point.

Allison Fleshman:

We would travel a lot go down to Texas and Texas had much better

Allison Fleshman:

access to varieties and stuff.

Allison Fleshman:

And so we would buy a bottle here, buy a bottle there.

Allison Fleshman:

And just try, start to try new things.

Allison Fleshman:

And we even had a bottle collection is huge.

Allison Fleshman:

And well, it's from Shiner, Texas.

Allison Fleshman:

But I think just trying new things.

Allison Fleshman:

And then as we had travel, we started to discover that there are,

Allison Fleshman:

were these little breweries around?

Allison Fleshman:

I remember we went to New Orleans.

Allison Fleshman:

And we went to a beta.

Allison Fleshman:

Yes.

Allison Fleshman:

And so I think having access and just going to where there was actually

Allison Fleshman:

beer is also what's what sparked it.

Gary Arndt:

So let's let's take a step back.

Gary Arndt:

You said you guys met each met in like 2002.

Gary Arndt:

Roughly?

Gary Arndt:

Yes.

Gary Arndt:

Correct.

Gary Arndt:

How?

Gary Arndt:

because there's a, well, I was wearing an

Allison Fleshman:

eyepatch at the time.

Gary Arndt:

So like a pirate day.

Gary Arndt:

Yeah, scratch

Allison Fleshman:

my cornea.

Allison Fleshman:

No.

Allison Fleshman:

I was, undergraduate at university of Oklahoma.

Allison Fleshman:

Bobby was an undergraduate at Oklahoma city university, and we did

Allison Fleshman:

a summer research program through the physics department at OU.

Allison Fleshman:

And it was love at first, no, it really wasn't.

Allison Fleshman:

I was actually wanting to flirt with another guy but I'd scratched my

Allison Fleshman:

cornea and so I was wearing an eyepatch.

Allison Fleshman:

But we'd played a game of ultimate Frisbee with all the participants.

Bobby Fleshman:

That stereotype is true.

Bobby Fleshman:

Physicists, scientists play ultimate for that.

Bobby Fleshman:

It's

Gary Arndt:

true.

Gary Arndt:

And the reason I ask is because science is actually a big part of this story, right?

Gary Arndt:

Where it probably isn't for most brewers.

Gary Arndt:

And most scientists are probably, if you guys know, I'm guessing.

Gary Arndt:

Yeah.

Gary Arndt:

Probably find, this career path to be kind of interesting or at least different.

Gary Arndt:

speak of that route, how it, how it took you from the world of science to beer.

Bobby Fleshman:

Right.

Bobby Fleshman:

So let's see, when did I, so we were, we were in the process of discovering

Bobby Fleshman:

craft beer, but then in graduate school, it became a hobby for me.

Bobby Fleshman:

I met someone else that was brewing and we would do.

Bobby Fleshman:

Just stovetop, basically just big pots of soup in a way.

Bobby Fleshman:

We were doing this.

Bobby Fleshman:

I was getting into it.

Bobby Fleshman:

I was enjoying it.

Bobby Fleshman:

I didn't have any fantasies.

Bobby Fleshman:

I don't think at that time of a brewery.

Bobby Fleshman:

I think I was just amazed by it.

Allison Fleshman:

No, we actually, in your, after your general exam.

Allison Fleshman:

So when you're getting your PhD, you normally pick up a hobby or two that you

Allison Fleshman:

could, like, actually do and finish in a reasonable amount of time because the

Allison Fleshman:

PhD takes so freaking long to complete.

Allison Fleshman:

And so his gift to himself after he got his general exam was

Allison Fleshman:

a homebrew kit inspired by a friend of ours who was brewing.

Allison Fleshman:

And I remember you recorded your video, a video of you, Very first homebrew ever

Allison Fleshman:

and you forgot half the ingredients.

Allison Fleshman:

So you have video of this.

Allison Fleshman:

Bobby realizing like the brew is done.

Allison Fleshman:

He's so excited.

Allison Fleshman:

He's like, wait, what is this?

Allison Fleshman:

And he's like malt bag sitting on the counter.

Bobby Fleshman:

2005 making videos with these old video

Bobby Fleshman:

... Cause whatever they were, they were tiny video cassettes.

Bobby Fleshman:

I was, so it was a laborious process, doing and trying to record and

Bobby Fleshman:

edit, whatever that looks like.

Bobby Fleshman:

And for my notes, cause I knew I would not remember to write everything down.

Bobby Fleshman:

So I thought I'll just record this big disaster.

Bobby Fleshman:

And sure enough, it took me four hours to do something that should

Bobby Fleshman:

have taken an hour and a half.

Bobby Fleshman:

And then I remember being so proud and, triumphant.

Bobby Fleshman:

And then.

Bobby Fleshman:

Catching my face go white when I recognize half of the sugar malt

Bobby Fleshman:

was not actually inside of the beer.

Bobby Fleshman:

I forgot half of the ingredients.

Bobby Fleshman:

So it came out to be very, very low alcohol.

Bobby Fleshman:

I loved it when it was finished because like you do your children, no matter

Bobby Fleshman:

how ugly it was, it still felt like a triumph at the end of the day.

Bobby Fleshman:

Everyone around the room, even at that point smiled and drank it,

Bobby Fleshman:

but I can't even imagine going back and tasting that today.

Bobby Fleshman:

But no, it was a hobby.

Bobby Fleshman:

It got me.

Bobby Fleshman:

It, it got my mind off of other things cause going through the

Bobby Fleshman:

general exams is a stressful time.

Bobby Fleshman:

And it was, it was, it was a way for me to just, just have fun.

Bobby Fleshman:

And then my friend, his name was Larry Maddox, I should mention this guy, he

Bobby Fleshman:

was the first one I ever brewed with.

Bobby Fleshman:

If you want to say that homebrewing was my first brewing experience, he sold

Bobby Fleshman:

me his equipment when he got out of it and I got deeper and deeper into it.

Bobby Fleshman:

And I realized at some point that.

Bobby Fleshman:

But just like with when I was, we'll, we'll talk about this,

Bobby Fleshman:

but when I was a physicist, you can never learn all of physics.

Bobby Fleshman:

Contrary to my naivety going into that, I'll just do physics and

Bobby Fleshman:

then move on to the next thing.

Bobby Fleshman:

No, you just have to drill as far as you want to drill as far as, as sustainable.

Bobby Fleshman:

And that's what I was doing with beer.

Bobby Fleshman:

And I realized there's a lot of science here and there's a lot of engineering

Bobby Fleshman:

here and there's a lot of architecture.

Bobby Fleshman:

there's creativity here.

Bobby Fleshman:

There's a million different disciplines that come into play.

Bobby Fleshman:

And then when you open a business, you get into marketing and sales and

Bobby Fleshman:

advertising, and you have to consider all these, these things and how far

Bobby Fleshman:

you want, you can push yourself, how much you can absorb and execute on.

Bobby Fleshman:

But I was, yeah, enjoying it more and more.

Bobby Fleshman:

I can fast forward even a little farther to explain why I went.

Bobby Fleshman:

As far as thinking about opening a brewery,

Gary Arndt:

well,

Bobby Fleshman:

yeah,

Gary Arndt:

you said you're studying physics.

Bobby Fleshman:

Yeah.

Gary Arndt:

You're not studying food science.

Gary Arndt:

You're not studying organic chemistry, something that would seem

Gary Arndt:

to be a more, you know something closer related to, to brewing beer.

Gary Arndt:

What were you studying?

Bobby Fleshman:

Right.

Bobby Fleshman:

I was studying to be a planetary scientist.

Bobby Fleshman:

I, I went that way by way of astrophysics, my, my university,

Bobby Fleshman:

University of Oklahoma is where I got my, my PhD officially, but my, my thesis

Bobby Fleshman:

advisor was from Boulder, Colorado.

Bobby Fleshman:

So I lived in Boulder.

Bobby Fleshman:

That's a long commute.

Bobby Fleshman:

It's 11 hour commute.

Allison Fleshman:

But it was actually quite fun for me to go

Allison Fleshman:

back and forth to lots of ski trips.

Bobby Fleshman:

So I was studying to be a planetary scientist.

Bobby Fleshman:

I studied galaxies.

Bobby Fleshman:

I did some on solar evolution.

Bobby Fleshman:

I did various different projects along the way.

Allison Fleshman:

You started out on cosmology,

Bobby Fleshman:

which was looking at supernova and there are a lot of

Bobby Fleshman:

things that I did back in the day, you know, to find my way in the field.

Bobby Fleshman:

But I found an advisor that worked with NASA that had been Boulder.

Bobby Fleshman:

Her name is Fran Bagonal, and she still works with the division

Bobby Fleshman:

of outer planets for NASA.

Bobby Fleshman:

So all the gas giants outside of Mars orbit, I met her at a meeting.

Bobby Fleshman:

I funded my own way to a meeting and, and, met up with

Bobby Fleshman:

her and we became good friends.

Bobby Fleshman:

She's an expat from England and,

Allison Fleshman:

she has very particular tastes in beer.

Bobby Fleshman:

Yeah.

Gary Arndt:

And so that's kind of what I was getting at.

Bobby Fleshman:

Yeah.

Gary Arndt:

Meeting her and living in her, what her house or basement, I don't know.

Bobby Fleshman:

Right.

Gary Arndt:

Was kind of one of the inflection points that brought you here.

Gary Arndt:

What happened with that?

Bobby Fleshman:

It was, yeah.

Bobby Fleshman:

Fast forward a tiny bit there.

Bobby Fleshman:

We, I moved in with her and to obviously do research.

Bobby Fleshman:

We were working on Saturn missions, Jupiter missions, studying

Bobby Fleshman:

the moons of those planets.

Bobby Fleshman:

But by that was sort of by day, that was the day job, the weekend job

Bobby Fleshman:

was making beer in her basement.

Bobby Fleshman:

So that was paying my room and board.

Bobby Fleshman:

I didn't ever spend a dime to live.

Bobby Fleshman:

And if you guys have ever been to Boulder, you'll know how expensive

Bobby Fleshman:

and how awesome of a community it is.

Bobby Fleshman:

But for me to live essentially for the cost of making 10 gallons of

Bobby Fleshman:

beer a week in someone's basement was a pretty awesome experience.

Bobby Fleshman:

I got to do that and then be immersed within a really awesome

Bobby Fleshman:

culinary and brewing scene in that, in that region, you, you run into

Bobby Fleshman:

places like, Avery Brewing Company, which was just a bike ride away.

Bobby Fleshman:

And that's a really fantastic brewery out there.

Bobby Fleshman:

Another one that no one's heard of Asher Brewing amazing.

Bobby Fleshman:

Go up the road, you, you go to the home of, It was

Allison Fleshman:

Fort Collins,

Bobby Fleshman:

Dale, Dale's pale ale, and I'm thinking of Oscar blues.

Bobby Fleshman:

And then up from there, you go to, you find new Belgium and then my, one of my

Bobby Fleshman:

favorite breweries in the world is Odell.

Bobby Fleshman:

Those are some places I was starting to discover what real beer was.

Bobby Fleshman:

So I, I had.

Bobby Fleshman:

Yeah.

Allison Fleshman:

Not only that, we were discovering what breweries were.

Allison Fleshman:

Right.

Allison Fleshman:

Because in Oklahoma, there were really two, maybe three, but

Allison Fleshman:

when you were living in Boulder.

Allison Fleshman:

And they were from

Bobby Fleshman:

the first craft movement in the 80s and

Allison Fleshman:

90s.

Allison Fleshman:

And living in Boulder allowed us to go explore.

Allison Fleshman:

And you were there for eight months and then on and off, you would go up there

Allison Fleshman:

commuting over about three or four years.

Allison Fleshman:

and so it was an opportunity to really see and taste so many different styles.

Allison Fleshman:

And the wonderful thing about Boulder and Fort Collins is that some of

Allison Fleshman:

those breweries could subspecialize.

Allison Fleshman:

And so there was a brewery that just did Sours or Odell like that

Allison Fleshman:

in New Belgium for, oh my gosh, that brewery is amazing as well.

Allison Fleshman:

And so we kind of got to see all these different breweries in different stages.

Allison Fleshman:

And I think that's where we were exposed to this other world of kind

Allison Fleshman:

of being the brewery hunters, not just the beer, but also, Going after like,

Allison Fleshman:

well, what, what is an experience?

Allison Fleshman:

Like what's a destination sort of thing?

Allison Fleshman:

Cause that was, that was really the

Bobby Fleshman:

beginning of, of the next big wave of craft brewing with it,

Bobby Fleshman:

it may not have begun in Fort Collins and Boulder and lions, and Longmont, but

Bobby Fleshman:

it definitely was alive and well there.

Bobby Fleshman:

So I was seeing that you can brew 15 gallons at a time, or you

Bobby Fleshman:

can brew 150 barrels at a time.

Bobby Fleshman:

There were, there were so many different models that you could, that

Bobby Fleshman:

there was also a giant Anheuser Busch brewery right there in Fort Collins.

Bobby Fleshman:

So you get to see all the full spectrum.

Bobby Fleshman:

the water's fantastic there that that's a marketing campaign

Bobby Fleshman:

that Coors capitalizes on.

Bobby Fleshman:

I should say that.

Bobby Fleshman:

Yeah.

Bobby Fleshman:

If you go just South of Boulder, that's, that's the home of Coors and they have

Bobby Fleshman:

the largest refrigerator in the world.

Bobby Fleshman:

And that was an interesting spectrum of breweries.

Gary Arndt:

So when you're visiting these breweries, are you going there just to

Gary Arndt:

hang out and drink, or are you actually getting to know the brewers and learning

Gary Arndt:

about what they do and how they do it?

Bobby Fleshman:

A little of both.

Allison Fleshman:

At that point we weren't getting to know them.

Allison Fleshman:

We weren't we were just consumer experiencers of the beer.

Bobby Fleshman:

Yeah, can we get a tour?

Bobby Fleshman:

scheduled or not In in usually you're not talking to someone that's making the beer.

Bobby Fleshman:

It's front of house But the small ones there's a person behind the counter

Bobby Fleshman:

that does it all I should say that I should Do we want to talk about beer?

Allison Fleshman:

Well, I just, when didn't you, we first start

Allison Fleshman:

to want to open a brewery?

Allison Fleshman:

I don't even remember.

Allison Fleshman:

Was, I mean, I guess you, you can't.

Bobby Fleshman:

When did I confess it or when did I think it?

Allison Fleshman:

Oh, that's fair.

Allison Fleshman:

but no, you, you started to win homebrew competitions and our

Allison Fleshman:

homebrew club called the Yeasty Boys.

Allison Fleshman:

They got mad.

Bobby Fleshman:

Which there were girls.

Allison Fleshman:

There were.

Allison Fleshman:

there were two of us.

Allison Fleshman:

You started to like win those competitions and they got mad that they, they told

Allison Fleshman:

you, if I recall correctly, they're like, you can't enter anymore, Bobby, cause

Allison Fleshman:

you're just going to automatically win.

Allison Fleshman:

And that's not fair.

Bobby Fleshman:

Well, I think this is where my technical side was

Bobby Fleshman:

winning over, you know, it's a group of maybe 30 total members.

Bobby Fleshman:

My technical side allowed me to just read recipes and execute on them.

Bobby Fleshman:

There wasn't a lot of art artistry there.

Bobby Fleshman:

I was still feeling out.

Bobby Fleshman:

What does it mean to be a pale ale?

Bobby Fleshman:

What does it mean to be an IPA?

Bobby Fleshman:

What is a porter?

Bobby Fleshman:

And I was just executing and I realized, okay, I'm, I'm technically a good

Bobby Fleshman:

brewer, but I don't know the first thing about how to start from scratch.

Bobby Fleshman:

I don't know where beer has been, where it's going.

Allison Fleshman:

And it was also a really good group in Nike.

Allison Fleshman:

We all shared recipes, but we shared techniques and we, we even did

Allison Fleshman:

experiments with, you know, each other.

Allison Fleshman:

We'll read it all.

Allison Fleshman:

We all have to start with the same batch and then we do different things to it to

Allison Fleshman:

see what would happen, like brewing it or fermenting it at different temperatures.

Allison Fleshman:

And so there was, I don't know, I think we were all excited to

Allison Fleshman:

play, but I still don't know when we decided to open a brewery.

Allison Fleshman:

Well,

Bobby Fleshman:

like I said, there was a confession date and

Bobby Fleshman:

then there was a think date.

Bobby Fleshman:

Well, let's go back to this because

Gary Arndt:

I think this is interesting.

Gary Arndt:

If you look at like a Michelin star chef.

Gary Arndt:

There is a process they have to go through of working in a restaurant.

Gary Arndt:

They may start scrubbing the dishes and they got to be a sous chef or something.

Gary Arndt:

And basically you've got to get your reps in and what you're

Gary Arndt:

describing sounds like, okay, you could be a really good cook at home.

Gary Arndt:

You can take a cookbook and you could make Julia Child's beef

Gary Arndt:

bourguignon or something like that.

Gary Arndt:

But then there's another step where you're coming up with the recipes

Gary Arndt:

where, you know, enough about everything that goes in where you can

Gary Arndt:

figure, Oh, this would go with this.

Gary Arndt:

And so was this sort of just like your, your elementary education in, in brewing?

Bobby Fleshman:

This was the book off the shelf at, at Barnes and

Bobby Fleshman:

Noble, just, just putting my toe in the water of what is beer.

Bobby Fleshman:

And, and at that point, I, I'm sure I did start to come up with my own recipes.

Bobby Fleshman:

There was, there was information on the internet.

Allison Fleshman:

Oh, I could totally take over on this story.

Allison Fleshman:

You did start to, Oh, I remember.

Allison Fleshman:

So one, it was, Brewing Classic Styles by, was it Papacian?

Bobby Fleshman:

that's Jamil, Zayn's chef.

Allison Fleshman:

Oh, so that was one.

Allison Fleshman:

But in our homebrew shop, it was called Learn to Brew in, it

Allison Fleshman:

was actually in Moore, Oklahoma.

Allison Fleshman:

but, the guy, I love the

Bobby Fleshman:

tornado.

Allison Fleshman:

Yep.

Allison Fleshman:

Tornadoes going through all, all the time there.

Allison Fleshman:

But he had an all grain section his name was Chris.

Bobby Fleshman:

Should explain all grain.

Allison Fleshman:

Oh, all grain is when you start with the grain

Allison Fleshman:

and you only use all grain.

Allison Fleshman:

you're the brewer, go.

Bobby Fleshman:

Yeah, you can start with a can of extract made

Bobby Fleshman:

famous by the prohibition era,

Allison Fleshman:

which if you are starting home brewing,

Allison Fleshman:

that's the way to start.

Allison Fleshman:

But if you want to do recipe development, move over to all grain once you

Allison Fleshman:

kind of get the technique down.

Allison Fleshman:

But what Bobby would do is he would walk in and it would take forever.

Allison Fleshman:

I swear I waited so long.

Allison Fleshman:

And he would walk in and just like, Put his hands in one of the bins of

Allison Fleshman:

grain, eat on it for a little while, walk to the next one and he'd add a

Allison Fleshman:

little bit of this grain and that grain.

Allison Fleshman:

And it took him forever just to pick the damn grain.

Allison Fleshman:

But what he was doing, I think at least, was he was like starting to understand

Allison Fleshman:

flavors from like a foundational level.

Allison Fleshman:

And then.

Bobby Fleshman:

For at least wanting to understand.

Allison Fleshman:

Right.

Allison Fleshman:

And now that I, I, I know you now as a brewer, I see that

Allison Fleshman:

recipe development happen.

Allison Fleshman:

When you taste grain, you're actually tasting the finished product.

Bobby Fleshman:

So we're, we're kind of talking about recipe development.

Bobby Fleshman:

You end up talking to brewers, sharing secrets, going on the internet.

Bobby Fleshman:

There's another piece of this story though.

Bobby Fleshman:

And that's like owning a brewery and brewing as a professional, those dues

Bobby Fleshman:

are paid not by making recipes because a brewery doesn't want you to walk in

Bobby Fleshman:

and start making recipes and when you start making beer that they already sell.

Bobby Fleshman:

There was a German brewery a few miles north of our house in Oklahoma,

Bobby Fleshman:

and a really good one that had been there since I think the late eighties.

Bobby Fleshman:

It was fantastic.

Allison Fleshman:

It's called Royal Bavaria and it's in the

Allison Fleshman:

absolute middle of nowhere.

Bobby Fleshman:

Yeah, I recommend anyone finds yourself in Oklahoma City for a

Bobby Fleshman:

layover, just drive a few miles south.

Bobby Fleshman:

It's worth it.

Bobby Fleshman:

they had a 10 barrel copper clad brewing system built in Germany, which is just

Bobby Fleshman:

exactly like we have here in the end.

Bobby Fleshman:

I, maybe that inspired me to open the brewery we have or

Bobby Fleshman:

use the equipment we have.

Bobby Fleshman:

I wanted to know how they were making beer that tasted like that.

Bobby Fleshman:

So I'd kind of gone, this is backing up a little bit from the Boulder story.

Bobby Fleshman:

This is before I even met the people from Boulder.

Bobby Fleshman:

I wanted to know how beer like that can be made.

Bobby Fleshman:

You know, German, German lager from the source is just incredible.

Bobby Fleshman:

And I still think about the smells and, the taste of that

Bobby Fleshman:

restaurant and that brewery.

Bobby Fleshman:

So anyway, I started to get closer to that group.

Bobby Fleshman:

They, they sold at some point in the early two thousands and I got to know

Bobby Fleshman:

the new owner and the new brewer at the time as they were transitioning.

Bobby Fleshman:

And I got to go there and helped deconstruct these old German recipes

Bobby Fleshman:

and, and we're, you know, we're brewing and we're doing tank cleaning and

Bobby Fleshman:

we're milling grain and we're doing, it's not a huge brewery at all, but

Bobby Fleshman:

when it's just a couple of guys on a, on small equipment, you get to

Bobby Fleshman:

know a lot about production brewing.

Bobby Fleshman:

Fast forward from that, there's a big brewery in Oklahoma city that

Bobby Fleshman:

I got connected with through that network and I was washing kegs

Bobby Fleshman:

and hand bottle, hand canning.

Bobby Fleshman:

Inordinate amounts of, of product through rudimentary equipment.

Bobby Fleshman:

We had a boil kettle that was, I can mention this brewery because, you

Bobby Fleshman:

know, they did what they did because they didn't have the, they didn't have

Bobby Fleshman:

quite the resources they do today.

Bobby Fleshman:

It's coop, C O O P, or co op, depending on how you might, it looks

Bobby Fleshman:

like co op, but we always say coop.

Bobby Fleshman:

they're a great brewery, fantastic IPA brewery in Oklahoma, and

Bobby Fleshman:

I wanted to get to know them.

Allison Fleshman:

I should add that you are doing this at the same time

Allison Fleshman:

as you're still finishing your PhD.

Allison Fleshman:

So normally you would leave at 4 a.m.

Allison Fleshman:

to drive up into the city to go to coop and then you'd come back.

Allison Fleshman:

Then you'd actually go.

Bobby Fleshman:

I would be filling kegs and washing kegs.

Bobby Fleshman:

One side of the room I'd be washing kegs, maybe, you know, one at a time,

Bobby Fleshman:

obviously on a keg washing machine, but on the other side of the room, I

Bobby Fleshman:

have eight of them filling at a time.

Bobby Fleshman:

So I'm over here filling and I'm washing and filling and washing.

Bobby Fleshman:

And this is all before I go to class at eight to finish my

Bobby Fleshman:

dissertation and so on and so on.

Gary Arndt:

So is, was this a part time job or was this sort of your

Gary Arndt:

way of becoming an apprentice?

Bobby Fleshman:

Yes.

Bobby Fleshman:

And yes, yeah, it was my way.

Bobby Fleshman:

I said, Hey, I'll work for free.

Bobby Fleshman:

I need the experience.

Bobby Fleshman:

And they put me on the lowest rate Cause breweries don't have money, you know, it's

Bobby Fleshman:

not like they can just for the, but you know, I, I made, I earned the money and I

Bobby Fleshman:

was milling grain and I was I can explain this in a future episode, but we were hand

Bobby Fleshman:

canning and crazy amounts of beer there.

Bobby Fleshman:

It was a laborious experience.

Bobby Fleshman:

The boil kettle was either on or off.

Bobby Fleshman:

So I was in charge of running the boil because if you left it on a second too

Bobby Fleshman:

long, it would shoot out the manway.

Bobby Fleshman:

And if it's not long enough, you don't get the IPA you're looking for.

Bobby Fleshman:

So you put the scrub at the, at the bottom of that pile to do that.

Gary Arndt:

I've known many people that have gotten PhDs

Gary Arndt:

and the process seems horrible.

Bobby Fleshman:

It's horrible.

Gary Arndt:

Like, it basically consumes your entire life for several years.

Gary Arndt:

The fact that you're doing this in the morning seems to indicate at

Gary Arndt:

least at the back of your mind or sometime that this is really kind

Gary Arndt:

of what you wanted to be doing.

Allison Fleshman:

we knew by then that you were going to finish

Allison Fleshman:

your PhD, but you weren't going to stay in, well, stay in "science."

Allison Fleshman:

I use quotes around that because science is beer and beer is science.

Allison Fleshman:

but you, the goal is

Gary Arndt:

That's a shirt by the way,

Allison Fleshman:

Go team.

Allison Fleshman:

we knew that you weren't, you were going to complete the PhD,

Allison Fleshman:

but that then you were going to move on into the brewing industry.

Bobby Fleshman:

So for a lot of reasons, obviously you want to finish your PhD.

Bobby Fleshman:

I mean, I had, I think it was nine years,

Allison Fleshman:

Eight eight.

Allison Fleshman:

Okay.

Allison Fleshman:

So I took seven, you took eight years.

Bobby Fleshman:

And this is post, this is my postgraduate career was eight.

Bobby Fleshman:

it included effectively, it included three years of

Bobby Fleshman:

professional researcher in Boulder.

Bobby Fleshman:

So even though I hadn't yet received my, my doctorate, I was sort of

Bobby Fleshman:

in some sense passed ahead of the publications to make that happen.

Bobby Fleshman:

There were a couple of publications though that I still lacked.

Bobby Fleshman:

So that's what made it difficult as I had to continue to finish those while

Bobby Fleshman:

I'm, I know I'm training to be a brewer.

Bobby Fleshman:

I know this is what I want to do.

Allison Fleshman:

You were actually writing one of them

Allison Fleshman:

while you were in beer school.

Bobby Fleshman:

I was in brewing school.

Bobby Fleshman:

I was thinking about this yesterday, having a conversation and remembering

Bobby Fleshman:

how much shit that, I have, we have done, like the same time oftentimes, and

Bobby Fleshman:

I finished my fifth publication while I was studying microbiology and chemistry

Bobby Fleshman:

to become a master brewer under the Institute of Brewing and Distilling.

Bobby Fleshman:

So I, my mind was being just pulled in so many directions to

Bobby Fleshman:

think that I was able to do that.

Bobby Fleshman:

And I think it was only because we lived apart at that time.

Bobby Fleshman:

I lived in California and Allison lived in Oklahoma.

Bobby Fleshman:

That I think both of us professionally were doing quite well at that moment.

Allison Fleshman:

That's true.

Allison Fleshman:

No distraction

Bobby Fleshman:

And she she was taking on her first research position, teaching

Bobby Fleshman:

position post having her phd and here I was still writing a fifth publication

Bobby Fleshman:

post having written my dissertation,

Allison Fleshman:

but you had also I mean, there's quite a Research is never done.

Allison Fleshman:

You just kind of walk away, but you had already done the work and so it but

Bobby Fleshman:

It was it was not it was it was a lot to it wasn't just Hit print.

Bobby Fleshman:

It takes some analysis and some work, but.

Bobby Fleshman:

Yeah.

Bobby Fleshman:

So we've done a lot of multitasking.

Bobby Fleshman:

Gary's right.

Bobby Fleshman:

I think that was, that was symbolically the time when we decided to open

Bobby Fleshman:

the brewery when I'm cleaning kegs at four in the morning before

Bobby Fleshman:

wrapping up the last few pages on my dissertation on the same day.

Allison Fleshman:

To get into beer school.

Allison Fleshman:

So the, the master brewers program at UC Davis, it was

Allison Fleshman:

like a two year waiting list.

Allison Fleshman:

And then you were on the list to get in, in 2014.

Allison Fleshman:

And then they called and said, guess what?

Allison Fleshman:

There's someone that dropped off the list.

Allison Fleshman:

You are now in this year.

Allison Fleshman:

Can you come?

Allison Fleshman:

And we knew about a month before you left for, Davis.

Allison Fleshman:

I think we had about a month to plan.

Bobby Fleshman:

so we had the opportunity and we took it.

Bobby Fleshman:

It wasn't just because it was faster.

Bobby Fleshman:

It sped us along by at least a year, if not two.

Bobby Fleshman:

but the way that that program works is if you turn down a slot, you

Bobby Fleshman:

get sort of filed back the, it was, it was, could it be even longer.

Bobby Fleshman:

So this is an opportunity and I'm sure we'll talk a lot about

Bobby Fleshman:

it later, but this is one of the best brewing schools in the world.

Bobby Fleshman:

And I applied as a, having a, you needed a physics degree, a

Bobby Fleshman:

biology degree, a chemistry degree,

Allison Fleshman:

Some sort of science background.

Bobby Fleshman:

Needed some things, something STEM in order

Bobby Fleshman:

to get in on, on these programs.

Allison Fleshman:

And it was a six month intensive or maybe five month intensive.

Bobby Fleshman:

Yeah,

Allison Fleshman:

session or

Bobby Fleshman:

it was six months.

Bobby Fleshman:

It was, was a class of 39 and I was the only non chemist

Bobby Fleshman:

or biologist to Gary's point.

Bobby Fleshman:

It was, it was a tough change of career for me and I'm nothing if not tenacious.

Bobby Fleshman:

And what's the word of that, Alison, what would, how would you describe me?

Bobby Fleshman:

When I fixate on a, on a goal?

Allison Fleshman:

I have a lot of words to describe you.

Bobby Fleshman:

I know I shouldn't open that up to the wide answer,

Bobby Fleshman:

but I had decided I'm doing this.

Bobby Fleshman:

I can do this.

Bobby Fleshman:

I'm not gonna be as good as of a chemist or biologist as everyone in this room,

Bobby Fleshman:

but I can learn what I need to learn in order to to make up that difference.

Bobby Fleshman:

And when it came to the engineering side of that program, they were, they were

Bobby Fleshman:

the ones that were sweating bullets.

Bobby Fleshman:

And I was fine with that.

Bobby Fleshman:

It took me two years to ultimately to pass all the examinations to get my, it's

Bobby Fleshman:

the Institute of Brewing and Distilling.

Bobby Fleshman:

They're based in London and they were operating out of UC Davis.

Bobby Fleshman:

They were operating one of their testing programs, one of their training programs.

Bobby Fleshman:

And I made it through engineering and I made it through physics.

Bobby Fleshman:

I actually made it through chemistry, those modules, which

Bobby Fleshman:

were 15 pages, each a handwritten.

Bobby Fleshman:

three days or one day per module.

Bobby Fleshman:

But I didn't make it through the biology for a full year.

Bobby Fleshman:

And so

Allison Fleshman:

you took the test twice.

Bobby Fleshman:

I took it a second time and only offer it once per year.

Bobby Fleshman:

And I, we, at this, at this point, fast forward, we had actually

Bobby Fleshman:

moved to this town of Appleton.

Allison Fleshman:

You were a physics professor and I was a

Bobby Fleshman:

Professor at Lawrence University and I'm kind

Bobby Fleshman:

of meandering here, but I guess I'm just trying to say that.

Bobby Fleshman:

I made a lot of, commitments starting with that job cleaning kegs four in the

Bobby Fleshman:

morning to open a brewery and I was going to get it done and, and finishing my

Bobby Fleshman:

PhD in a lot of ways was a step toward opening a brewery because you have to

Bobby Fleshman:

show investors that you will finish something as insurmountable as that was.

Bobby Fleshman:

it was a, it was tough as Gary points out.

Bobby Fleshman:

It's a, it's a commitment and you can't just wish yourself a dissertation.

Bobby Fleshman:

You have to be all in.

Bobby Fleshman:

So, I hope that doesn't come across as though I was just, checking a

Bobby Fleshman:

box when I got the dissertation.

Bobby Fleshman:

I love that life.

Bobby Fleshman:

I love that career.

Bobby Fleshman:

And, beer just kind of, sucked me in and, and it was just the next, next chapter.

Allison Fleshman:

It was funny though when we when we told my parents, your

Allison Fleshman:

parents, like, Hey, you know, I think he's going to stop doing the whole NASA thing.

Allison Fleshman:

We're going to switch over and he's going to go into a, be a brewer.

Allison Fleshman:

They're like, what?

Allison Fleshman:

They were very upset by this.

Allison Fleshman:

And then, you know, come to find out that there's actually so

Allison Fleshman:

much more science in beer than anyone could ever really imagine.

Allison Fleshman:

It really does make a better pint.

Bobby Fleshman:

I get asked a lot.

Bobby Fleshman:

What is it like not teaching?

Bobby Fleshman:

What's it like not being a scientist?

Bobby Fleshman:

And I'm still a teacher.

Bobby Fleshman:

I'm still a scientist.

Bobby Fleshman:

I have a different classroom.

Bobby Fleshman:

I have a different venue, different topic.

Bobby Fleshman:

You don't turn that off.

Bobby Fleshman:

A physicist is a problem solver.

Bobby Fleshman:

That's what it is.

Bobby Fleshman:

And if anyone wants to understand what physics is, I always describe it that way.

Allison Fleshman:

Yeah.

Allison Fleshman:

Don't go off Big Bang Theory.

Gary Arndt:

Let's pause here.

Gary Arndt:

And then when we come back in the next episode, I want to talk more

Gary Arndt:

about beer school, as opposed to, you know, there's the art and science

Gary Arndt:

of brewing and then how eventually you came to open McFleshman's.

Bobby Fleshman:

Perfect.

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Respecting the Beer
A podcast for the science, history, and love of beer

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