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Episode 11

From Monasteries to Factories: Industrial Innovations in Beer

Here come the machines! Refrigeration, trains, rotary roasters, and more. Dive into the history and the significant technological advancements during the Industrial Revolution that transformed beer production. Hosts Gary Ardnt, Bobby Fleshman, and guest Joel Hermansen discuss how changes in agriculture, malting, and machinery set the stage for modern brewing.

Got a question about beer or just want to get social? Join the RtB Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/respectingthebeer

--

Hosts:

Bobby Fleshman

Allison McCoy-Fleshman

Gary Ardnt

Music by Sarah Lynn Huss

Recorded & Produced by David Kalsow

Brought to you by McFleshman's Brewing Co

Transcript
Gary Ardnt:

Hello everyone.

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And welcome to another episode

of respecting the beer.

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My name is Gary Ardnt with me.

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Again, is Bobby Fleschman

brewer extraordinaire.

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And once again, Joel Hermanson, and we

are here to talk once again about history.

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Everything we've talked about so

far with respect to the history of

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the beer, you could almost say that

early beer and beer making was all

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homebrewing to a certain extent.

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Even if like it was a monastery that

was producing large quantities of it, we

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would still kind of consider it having

been done in a method very similar to

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homebrewing, which is very different

than the way beer is produced today.

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It's done at industrial.

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So.

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In this episode, we want to

talk about the origins of the

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industrial production of beer.

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And where would you say that that began?

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Where was the transition point from

this beer being widespread, but locally

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produced and produced kind of on a,

you know consume it as you make it

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kind of basis to what we see today?

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Joel Hermansen: I think a, a wonderful

stat to share with you on this is the fact

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that, that, that last 30, 40 years of the

19th century, there's more change that

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happens in that time period to beer that

maybe happens in all of the time preceding

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those, those brief decades, going

back all the way to the ancient world,

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there are remarkable changes in beer.

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You talked about the transition, and

just to frame this contextually, this

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is in that period after the 30 Years

War, in which the brewing industry takes

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a long time to recover as a result of

the calamity that was, and it returns

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more to that cottage industry phase.

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I think when Europe goes, or when,

particularly when England goes through

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its agricultural revolution in the

early:

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something called scientific farming.

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And the process of, of farming

had changed dramatically.

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They're using a three field

system, they're using fertilizers.

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So their grain yields are,

are growing exponentially.

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And subsequently they have

more, excess grain to work with.

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They also have a population that

was lowered thanks to the, to the

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30 years war and the subsequent

plagues that, that affected it.

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So you can't really just jump

in and say, Oh, well, it was

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the, it was the malting roaster.

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And it was the, the processes that

were changed with, you know, malting

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and drying and things like that.

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You can't, you can't jump into that.

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I don't think without talking

about the agricultural side.

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So I would say that as, as kind of

my initial foray into the question,

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The other thing that I would point out,

and I'm going to lean more on Bobby

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to talk a little bit about this style

of beer cause this is something that

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we haven't focused that much on, but

when beer had been malted and dried

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before I would say before the beginning

of the 19th century, it always had

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a smoky quality about it, which is

actually its own style, that Rauch beer.

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And there's going to be

some substantial changes.

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to the technology that

gets rid of the smoke.

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Do you want to talk a little

bit about that style of beer?

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Bobby Fleshman: Yeah, I think I mentioned

a little bit on another podcast about

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the Rauk beer that's, that you'll

still find today in Bamberg, Germany.

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that's sort of the home of and

the vestibule, or what's the word

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I'm looking, vestige of the style.

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And yeah, there was a time when all beer

would eventually be sour over time, and

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there was a time when all beer was smoky

because you directly heat the grain

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in the process of kilning and malting,

and that heat source is wood burning,

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and the smoke's making its way into the

acid from the, from the smoke, making

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its way into the husk of the grain.

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And it's just part of the it's

just part of the flavor profile.

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No one would have consumed it

and said this is smoky or not.

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That's just part of that baseline profile.

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We recognize it today, obviously,

but back then they wouldn't have.

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So, yeah, you're this, this, this change,

though, with the advent of coke, coke is

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a derivative of coal and it's, it's used

as a clean source of heat and doesn't

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produce these, these smoky flavors.

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But also this is an industrial age.

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But also they've found ways

to indirectly heat their mash.

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So there's a barrier, physical

barrier between the two, the

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heat source in the, in the mall.

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So, yeah, that lead

weight, all kinds of stuff.

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And then also the smoke gives

you darker colors and you're

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able to make lighter kiln malts.

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And then the Pilsner malt is

invented and the rest is literally

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history because the number one beer

in the world is a Pilsner today.

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Still today, but there's a, there's a

several light beers coming, popping up

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in Europe as soon as you can make those.

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And I think previously we

talked about glassware.

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how that grew up alongside having

clear beer or lighter colored beers.

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And it would be a, a signature of

prestige to have a glass with that liquid.

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Joel Hermansen: Because before that

you would use pewter because you

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didn't really want to see your beard.

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It's all black.

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Because it was, you know,

things floating in it.

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Gary Ardnt: Let me ask you

a hypothetical question.

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I podcast once about language,

and a lot of linguists say that

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we could talk to Queen Elizabeth I

better than she could talk to her

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grandmother, that there was a period.

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In the 16th century where the

English language changed so much

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that it just became unrecognizable.

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If you were to take somebody from say

the 16th century and bring them today and

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serve them a beer, do you think that they

would recognize it or, or vice versa?

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If you were to travel back in

time, how different would their

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beer be to a modern palette?

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Bobby Fleshman: That's a great, the

only way I can answer that is the, is by

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giving you my own account of having tried.

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And I'm not throwing anyone under

the bus now because I think that

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styles are always, there's no, from

on high, there was no list of beer

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styles that existed before earth.

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We had to make it, these styles.

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I've had a slushy in the last year.

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Slushy is a beer that is 30 percent fruit

and it's got all these different flavors.

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Vanilla sometimes shows up in it.

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And I had it and I could not myself

recognize that as being a beer.

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I'm not saying it's that extreme,

but I might, I would imagine they

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would have some sort of reaction

that, that, that's related to that.

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Hopefully it wouldn't be as extreme

as mine was to it, but who knows?

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Cause these are wildly different flavors.

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Joel Hermansen: I think your, your

cask beers would, would be closer,

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Bobby Fleshman: closer, but

again, without the smoke.

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And, if we talk a little bit.

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About porters in a moment, I

kind of recapping what I've said

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previously that the porter is based

on sort of three different beers.

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It's sort of a stream of milds

and brown ales and stouts and

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different sourness levels.

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So they were, they were finding ways to

deal with that sourness at some point.

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But yeah, everything had

a certain palette to it.

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I think the sugar sweetness actually

was much higher in these beers.

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Hoppiness was much higher

to balance that sweetness.

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I don't know, Gary.

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That's a good question.

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Joel Hermansen: I don't

think they would like 547.

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Bobby Fleshman: Well, they did actually

hop beers as much as that, but,

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but they were also extremely sweet.

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So they just, they seemed

much more in balance that way.

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Not to say five 47 isn't in balance

with our intentions, but yeah,

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there is a drift in our palates.

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Gary Ardnt: And we we've

mentioned it several times.

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Five 47 is a double IPA that you make.

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It's one of your signature beers, I think,

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Bobby Fleshman: and has its own bell.

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Gary Ardnt: And Joel is a very big fan

of it, which is why we've mentioned it.

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Bobby Fleshman: It's a big ambassador.

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Gary Ardnt: Has anyone ever tried to make.

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Like these historical beers?

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Bobby Fleshman: Yeah, I would think

dogfish head probably of all the

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the commercial breweries out there

that do it Nash Nationally, they

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they probably have tried the more

than most to do that, you know

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Joel Hermansen: I I don't I'm sure there's

European brewers that probably dabble in

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that more than then they would stateside.

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Bobby Fleshman: Because you also

get, you have to get a yeast

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that's not super awesome at

making beer by modern standards.

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It's the one that can't actually

finish all the, consume all

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the sugars that are there.

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And so they built recipes around that.

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That's why they use so many hops.

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You wouldn't have noticed it, for example.

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Joel Hermansen: And for those listening

you can tune into episode two where

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Bobby's wife, Alison, will talk about the

fact that really brewers don't make Beer.

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Yeast does.

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Yeast is, yeast is the driving

force behind this entire.

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Bobby Fleshman: We just run the resort.

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Joel Hermansen: Right.

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Make them comfortable and

they're going to do the rest.

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Yeah.

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They're going to do the rest for you.

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Flush them down the drain.

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Bobby Fleshman: But while they're

here, they're going to get the best.

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Gary Ardnt: You talked about.

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Coke, which allowed for higher, you know,

coke is usually used in steel making.

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Bobby Fleshman: Right.

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Gary Ardnt: It allows

for higher temperatures.

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And it also, as things get more

industrialized, probably allows

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for more consistent temperatures.

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True.

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You know, you'd have a recipe

that was like, you know, boil us

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for, you know, I don't know if

you've ever seen actual recipes.

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There's a YouTube channel called Townsend

where this guy makes 18th century recipes

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and the recipes are always very vague.

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It's like, yes, take a duck and throw

some salt on it and cook vigorously.

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And that's all they say.

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So as we're moving towards this

modern era, we're developing things

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that are like Coke that probably

allow for more consistent heating.

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What are some of the other big

technical innovations that radically

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change brewing in that period?

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Cause you're talking about

that late 19th century,

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Joel Hermansen: Enormous changes, the

rotating roaster is, is another one.

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Bobby Fleshman: Oh yeah.

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You're looking into Germany.

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Yeah.

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I'm sorry, England.

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You get the, the roaster allows you to

make what's called black malt or, and

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they, it actually is called even today

it's called black patent malt because

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that was a patent on that machine.

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So we still call it that.

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Joel Hermansen: Now, all of a sudden you

have the ability to manipulate color.

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Yeah.

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Which otherwise you have.

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Gary Ardnt: What is this,

what does this device do?

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Bobby Fleshman: It's a tumbling

roasting machine that it's not

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that much different than a coffee.

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One, I think 50 percent of the time

you would have though in these times

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a fire breakout, so they didn't have.

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They didn't have any control

because we're talking about 450

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degrees and up in temperature.

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So you're, you're always just on the

edge of igniting the whole damn roaster.

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So only in the very modern times

that we've been able to control that.

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And so no one dared make those

malts intentionally until

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we had that under control.

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Joel Hermansen: Yeah.

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So that with respect to the

transformation of beers color.

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and different profiles of it.

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I think we'd be naive if we didn't

mention railroads which certainly

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brought beers from one place to

another at a much quicker pace,

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probably extended the dominion of beer.

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I think that, that is certainly one,

an instrument that I know you use a

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lot was developed in the 19th century.

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If you could give us just a super

fast overview to the hydrometer.

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Bobby Fleshman: Well, and thermometer.

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They're both because of brewing.

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But, but yeah, the hydrometer is a floaty

device and you can calibrate it so that it

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floats higher if it, if the liquid it's in

is denser and you can put markings on it.

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And once they were able to independently

determine the density of that, of

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that liquid, and they could calibrate

their, these floating devices, it's

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important to measure the amount of sugar.

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That's going into the word,

which becomes the beer.

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And out of that, they can predict the

level of alcohol and the government

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loves it because the government can

step in and say, Oh, when it hits

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this mark, nevermind what beer you're

making, they're going to charge you this

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much for that beer so that they were

basing their taxation on the amount of

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sugar and not the amount of alcohol.

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And there've been others that.

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Modern.

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We in modern context, we actually do

measure the alcohol, but back in the

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day, that was the way it was done.

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I think in Scotland you have shilling

beers and various numbers, and that

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was based on the strength of that work.

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Joel Hermansen: So in other words,

standardization again, where you

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can come back and be reliable Yes,

to the production of, of one style,

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Bobby Fleshman: Two countries

are responsible for industrial

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brewing more than any others.

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Belgium really stuck with its roots.

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It's very much based with monasteries

and some of the sour beer brewers of with

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intent and the saison brewers in France.

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But then you look at the Germany, as

we talked about in the last episode

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with Ryan Heitzke about standardization

and then England as well, they

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became such a global superpower.

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They, they just industrialization changed.

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everything there and they're able to

make, they were ahead of Germany for a

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while in terms of, production volume,

but also in terms of technology, they

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were taking it everywhere in the world.

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They had such a huge

market for their beer.

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Gary Ardnt: What about bottling?

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Joel Hermansen: Before we get to bottling,

we'd also be remiss to, to ignore

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the, the technology of steam power.

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Which can, you know, all of the

machines that are, that are, you

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know, powering these, these breweries

that are starting to appear in

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Europe, putting steam in them as a,

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Gary Ardnt: No, obviously if you're

going to have a gigantic brewery, it's

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going to be machine based and it's

going to require a source of power.

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But the reason I bring up bottles is

because even if you had this industrial

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facility, If it's just creating kegs of

beer and it ships it out, there's going

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to be a limit, I think, in terms of

freshness that as far as how far you can

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transport it and how long it can stay.

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What did bottling do?

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Because once you bottle something,

you're sealing it, which is kind of

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different from the way beer had been

served You know, up until that point,

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Bobby Fleshman: Right.

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I would say though, at the end of

the day, the, the bottle and the cask

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are going to, to some extent, age.

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Similarly, the, the bottle though

allows for, more individual purchasing.

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So I can only, I can only speak

to what I would imagine would

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have been a distribution that

you wouldn't have seen before the

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creation of the single serve packet.

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Joel Hermansen: Yeah.

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And I think World War I accelerated

the use of, of bottled beer because

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when you're supplying that much

beer to the men in the front lines.

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Bobby Fleshman: Steel cans as well, right?

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They had steel cans.

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I'm not sure what they were lined

with, but yeah, it's probably nothing.

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Yeah.

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So that's frightening.

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Joel Hermansen: Yeah.

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And you know, that, that time period after

World War I is you approach, you know, the

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Volstead Act here in the United States,

but in the depression as well, that's

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when people start to drink more at home.

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And, you know, prior to that, if you

were drinking, you were going out.

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to drink, as opposed to,

you know, drinking at home.

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Well, we're, we're

particularly here in Wisconsin.

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We're used to, you know, to doing both.

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Yeah.

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That, that wasn't really an option before.

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Bobby Fleshman: Fast forward hundreds

of years, just a quick comment.

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Since the pandemic, we've seen

people shift, hard into cans

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that take it home and it's, it's

shifted our, our, our approach.

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Gary Ardnt: Oh, with regards

to what the cans were aligned

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with, I believe there were 10.

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so a tin can is not a can made of tin.

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It's okay.

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It's a can that's lined with tin.

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Got it.

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And, I know this because I did an episode

on food canning and the first canning

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of like beans and stuff like that.

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I believe it was the lining with tin

that allowed it to kind of happen.

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Got it.

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So I'm guessing that probably

did the same thing with beer.

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Bobby Fleshman: I assume.

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Gary Ardnt: Yeah.

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Joel Hermansen: So the

greatest technology though.

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of this time period is not the

heat structure for malting, it's

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not the rotating drum roaster, the

train, the steam power, bottling.

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It is the isolation of yeast

and the science behind yeast.

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Bobby Fleshman: Microbiology.

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Yeah.

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Joel Hermansen: Louis Pasteur, they,

they change every, I mean, people

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forget he actually worked in a brewery.

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Yeah.

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Bobby Fleshman: The, the thing that

I, I, maybe I've mentioned this

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previous episodes, but biochemistry

was born, microbiology were born

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from, from the field of brewing.

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There's a lot of, we just glazed over

a lot of engineering accomplishments

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that the Germans were able to

give the world from, from brewing.

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But I was going to say in

the Louis Pasteur Context.

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Louis Pasteur was able to show that

you can take a yeast cell, kill

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it, split it open, and then you can

put sugar into what remains of it.

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And then that sugar will change.

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it'll go from starch to sugars.

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It'll break down the chains.

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And so what he was able to

demonstrate at that moment is

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you don't need something alive.

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to cause biological processes to occur.

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So what he understood at that

point, and, and I maybe even

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named, was the amylase enzymes.

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He was able to identify their enzymes

inside of yeast, they don't require

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the yeast to be alive, and out of

that was born biochemistry, and out

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of that was born everything that

we appreciate in modern medicine.

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Joel Hermansen: Gotta

come back to that quote.

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From Charlie Bamforth, beer is the

basis of modern static civilization.

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It seems that all of these, these

things are being generated from beer.

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I mean, we started with

agriculture and now we're at,

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we're, you know, at microbiology.

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It seems that there are so

many intersections for this.

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Bobby Fleshman: So that's, this

is a long winded answer of why

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would I choose this career, right?

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Everyone's like, why'd you choose it?

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It's just beer.

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No, it's clearly not just beer.

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There's a lot here.

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It will never end.

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Gary Ardnt: As we go

through the 20th century.

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And I should say we are recording this

in Wisconsin, and I would say for most

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of the 20th century, this was the center

of beer making in the United States.

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Many of the biggest brands,

Schlitz, Pabst, Miller, Blatts,

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whatever they were all located here.

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And as these beers became

bigger many communities.

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At least in Wisconsin, I'm

guessing in many other places,

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had a local brewery where we are.

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There was an Adelaide

Brewery just a block away.

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Other communities had them

and they all kind of died out.

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I would say 1960s, 1970s, and we wound

up in this place where we had only

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large industrial beer, you know, makers

and strangely enough, that almost was

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the seeds of it's, you know, every

revolution as the seeds of its own demise.

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Was that kind of then the start of

craft beer making and craft breweries?

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You think, I mean, you can see the

cycle where it gets industrialized

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and it gets so industrialized

that it kind of loses something.

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Bobby Fleshman: Well, the T

Tolar movement, it's definitely

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where this story begins.

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And, and I think that even the

women's right to vote, I think there

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was, there's a whole long story.

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Gary Ardnt: The suffrage movement

and the temperance movement are

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highly intertwined in a way that

I think has been forgotten today.

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Bobby Fleshman: Talk

about a butterfly effect.

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We've just opened up 17

different podcasts, but yeah,

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Gary Ardnt: I, and to be fair, America

had a huge drinking problem in the

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late 18th and early 19th century.

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Bobby Fleshman: It was opportunism though,

for, for people to take advantage of that.

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But yeah, I think to answer, just answer

your, your question on it's on its face.

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Yeah.

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I think that the, the craft beer

movement definitely came about because

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of industrialized and, and monopolized

nature of the beer industry, for sure.

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Yeah.

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Gary Ardnt: I collected beer

cans as a kid in the:

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and there weren't a whole lot.

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There were some regional

breweries you'd find cans for.

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But it's not like it is today.

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You know, Appleton had its brewery.

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Oshkosh had its brewery.

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Now there's how many different

places that brew beer in just this

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city, which is not a huge city.

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Bobby Fleshman: Right.

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It's when, when we, when we were

moving here, planning this, there

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was one brewery and I think now there

are some small ones, but I think

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there's seven now just in our town.

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Yeah, that gives you some.

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Gary Ardnt: But in some ways I

suppose you can think of this as a

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continuation of that same process.

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That the industrialized the

industrialization has made the

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tools and the technology so

available and abundant, right?

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That's something like this is possible.

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Bobby Fleshman: The problem

now is the economics.

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That's the only thing.

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Now, the barrier for the small breweries,

there's a volume you have to hit for

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it to make sense and and that's where

we are in the craft beer industry.

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And that's that's for a

whole other episode for sure.

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Gary Ardnt: Before we close this up,

what are your, your kind of your thoughts

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on the process of industrialization?

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Do you think it was, I

mean, obviously it was good.

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It allowed, you know, beer to

become more standardized, but

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what do you think was lost?

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If anything, because there's

always a, a trade off, right?

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Bobby Fleshman: Yeah, I think, right.

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I think we've definitely lost.

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I think even today we're, we've

discovered what are called kveik

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yeast from Norway, Sweden, some, I

forget which countries they originate.

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These are yeasts that are made, used to

make loggers quote at high temperatures.

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And these yeast were lost to the,

they were lost forever until they

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were discovered in the last 20 years.

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So I think we're now we're,

we're actually playing catch up.

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Trying to connect back with those,

some of the styles that existed,

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I think is a treasure trove.

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I don't think they're gone forever.

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It's not like we're reaching back

10, 000 years trying to discover.

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yeah, I think we, we probably

did lose something there.

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What did we gain?

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Well, we have a stable supply chain

and we have ingredients available to

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us because of the biggest brewers and

tech now technologies that are used

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within and outside of the beer industry.

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Gary Ardnt: In the island of Falsbard

up in Northern Norway, they have a seed

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bank where they're keeping copies of

like all the various seeds for plants.

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Is there anything similar for yeast?

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Maybe not a doomsday fall, but

like, you know, someplace that's

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trying to categorize and create

a library of these yeasts.

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Bobby Fleshman: So it's easy today,

quote, easy today to cryo store yeast

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for perpetually for their forever.

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I would say in the last, well, 60 years.

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That's been the case.

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I'm just throwing a number out there, just

having a very little knowledge about it.

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But I know that any brewer who's of any

scale keeps their beer on ice, so to

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speak, even if they're not using it,

even if they haven't used it in 60 years.

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Budweiser probably has, but

Their own series of yeast.

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They've gone through

over their, their time.

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That's still cataloged away.

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Yeah.

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I don't know if there's like one global

one because there's a lot of proprietary

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nature behind this, but the big boys,

definitely the medium boys to little guys,

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maybe not so much collecting wild yeast in

your backyard as a whole whole new thing.

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And it was done

inadvertently all over time.

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It's uncountable number of yeast.

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Joel Hermansen: There's probably

incredible biodiversity in

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the yeast species, too, that

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Bobby Fleshman: I'll read up on

the origin of lager yeast, and we

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should talk about that at some point.

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Because that's a remarkable story.

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I need to make sure I

get all my notes right.

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Because I'm not a microbiologist,

but I'll do my best to tell that one.

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Joel Hermansen: He could

be by your next episode.

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Bobby Fleshman: Well, let's bring one on.

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I'll find one.

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Gary Ardnt: All right.

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We are going to be talking more about

the history of beer in the future.

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There's a lot more to be said and

there's a lot more deep dives we can

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do on some of the topics we touched

about, but I think that does it now.

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Joel, do you have any last

thoughts about beer history?

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Joel Hermansen: Well, I do.

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I, I, I would be remissed cause

we kind of glossed over it.

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early as something that was

going to change beer, but

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then we never came back to it.

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But we should just give a quick shout

out to refrigeration, which was a

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late 19th century phenomenon that

that, that revolutionized brewing

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almost as much as yeast probably did.

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Bobby Fleshman: Yeah.

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Ultimately it's what led to Anheuser Busch

being the largest brewer in the world.

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Now they're, they're AB and Bev and,

and, but yeah, for sure they, and

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they had the rail, they had access.

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:

To the rails and

refrigeration on the trains.

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There's so many things that are happening.

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Yeah, for sure.

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Refrigeration is And then the rest

of the world benefits as well, right?

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I think

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Joel Hermansen: my takeaway from

our discussion today is just

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there's so many intersections

between these, these technologies.

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And, you know, we've come back

to it that that beer is the basis

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of modern static civilization.

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It's just a great way to look at, I

think the history of beer that it seems

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to beer is almost like a grain that when

you soak it, it sprouts, it seems to

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sprout all these things, whether it's

writing or government or technology,

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it's, it's, it's an exciting thing.

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And I'm just glad you were

able to have me on today.

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Gary Ardnt: All right.

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Well, until next time.

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If you're a beer lover, make sure to

join us on our new Facebook group, where

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you can talk to other beer aficionados

as well as the podcast hosts, and you

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can support the show over on Patreon.

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Links to both are located

in the show notes.

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And until next time, make

sure to join us for another

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:

episode of Respecting the Beer.

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

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