Episode 48
Two Breweries, Ten Paces: Collaborating with Competition
The Fogels of the Appleton Beer Factory and the Fleshmans of McFelshman's share much more than just an alley between their breweries. Explore how competing breweries make collaboration work for them.
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TIMELINE
00:00 Welcoming Back Ben Fogel of ABF
00:24 Neighborly Breweries
02:13 Sharing Resources
02:53 The Pipe Dream
06:58 The Genesis of 10 Paces Beer
07:45 Sour Beer and Bacterial Cultures
12:51 Hot Sauce Collaboration
16:37 Scaling Generation Challenges
17:06 The Lava Lamp: Cheese Curd Beer
23:04 Future Collaboration Plans?
27:13 Ben Will Be Back Next Week!
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CREDITS
Hosts:
Music by Sarah Lynn Huss
Recorded & Produced by David Kalsow
Brought to you by McFleshman's Brewing Co
Transcript
Hello, everyone and welcome to another episode of Respecting the Beer.
Speaker:My name is Gary Arndt.
Speaker:With me again are the usual suspects.
Speaker:The man who's brewing skills is rivaled only by his woodworking capabilities, Bobby Fleshman, and the professor of atoms and molecules, Allison McCoy, and back on the show is Ben Fogel from the Appleton Beer Factory.
Speaker:One of the things we wanna talk about, we mentioned this in the previous episode that you were on.
Speaker:You guys are very close.
Speaker:And by close, I mean, literally you are very close.
Speaker:Your buildings are right next to each other.
Speaker:Gary said wood, by the way.
Speaker:And you guys have a relationship that is very unlike two similar.
Speaker:I would not just say breweries, but just companies that you're literally next door neighbors.
Speaker:You're doing kind of the same thing.
Speaker:But your relationship is not what people would probably expect.
Speaker:And, and any of you can jump in on this, like you're not, well, the fact that you're on this show, I think it's kind of indicative of the fact that you're not really super competitive with each other.
Speaker:And in fact, you've helped each other out in quite a few instances.
Speaker:Yeah, actually we want to do some, I don't want to spend too much time on it, but a little bit of research to see if there, you know, are any two other breweries that are
Speaker:this close
Speaker:this close.
Speaker:Yeah, they would have to be literally
Speaker:10 paces apart
Speaker:Next door to each other.
Speaker:Well in our plan to put a pipe bridge between the two breweries for the various reasons I'll believe it when I see it When that well if it did I think that would make it ever more quote connected and close I think that would maybe the drop.
Speaker:So what so
Speaker:what do we share?
Speaker:So we are close.
Speaker:We're good friends for one In fact, during COVID, our kids were all so Leah Fogel, who's part of the ownership and all that so she actually watched the show.
Speaker:My kid and your two kids, during COVID.
Speaker:Cause we worked so closely together.
Speaker:We were all kind of like a pack group.
Speaker:and it was cute cause all the kids thought that everyone owned a brewery because they own a brewery and we own a brewery instead of
Speaker:where's your bathroom.
Speaker:My kid walks in and says, where's your brewery?
Speaker:Everyone owned a brewery
Speaker:because all the people that she hung out with.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But we own a canning machine together.
Speaker:We own a forklift together.
Speaker:Keg washer, basically a warehouse we lease together.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And we, have collaborated.
Speaker:We have our own sour beer program together.
Speaker:The countless bits of equipment.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And it's like, so, so from a small business perspective.
Speaker:We couldn't afford to just make Fleshmans own the forklift and the canning machine and the keg washer and all that.
Speaker:It would be a lot more difficult.
Speaker:So much harder.
Speaker:And so we share these resources, which is crucial in navigating a small business.
Speaker:What's that German philosophy about you only need one chainsaw per neighborhood or per street?
Speaker:It's one word and it's very long.
Speaker:Anyway, yeah.
Speaker:And it has all that definition in it.
Speaker:So
Speaker:it's just something in German.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so the pipe bridge idea is that currently we have a canning machine that we have to.
Speaker:Reassemble in either establishment.
Speaker:And so if we could do a pipe bridge, that would be a big pipe that bridges the two Buildings and so then you just hook up your beer and you pump it through the pipe And so you can relocate the beer to wherever the canning machine We're really
Speaker:just putting that in so we can put the old bank teller shoot so we can shoot beer cans back and forth
Speaker:That is what you want.
Speaker:That's all we want to do
Speaker:Work
Speaker:You have a vacuum on both sides.
Speaker:I understand how the bank teller.
Speaker:Oh my God.
Speaker:I thought we were going to take a tangent.
Speaker:But if you guys were to like set up
Speaker:some sort of pipe bridge right now, it's five degrees outside.
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:We wouldn't leave it in the pipe.
Speaker:There's, I mean, do you need to insulate it?
Speaker:Do you need to support it?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Oh my gosh.
Speaker:There's, there's a lot of that.
Speaker:We go into that one.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:yeah, we're, we're going through all the engineering challenges with that.
Speaker:For sure.
Speaker:The first one is you want to be clear of all the trucks that go through the alley.
Speaker:And we've already cleared that hurdle.
Speaker:So one thing at a time is on board.
Speaker:And what would you be moving back and forth?
Speaker:Oh, well, you want to jump right to it?
Speaker:Ben, Ben has more capacity to brew than we do.
Speaker:So a couple of things, we want to move finished beer over there and then, and then package over there.
Speaker:He has more space to set up a permanent packaging hall like Allison was talking about, but also, We brew a lot.
Speaker:Ben brews a lot of beer for us on his bigger system that we don't have the capacity to brew.
Speaker:And in return, I have this idea that cause our systems, one third as big as it is on any given turn of, of brewing that we can start brewing more.
Speaker:And we've done this a little bit, but more of his flavors that he's going to commit a full 20 barrels too.
Speaker:So I think the symbiosis here is going to play well.
Speaker:Our system is a 10 barrel.
Speaker:system.
Speaker:So we have,
Speaker:yeah, we can squeak 10 barrels.
Speaker:We brew twice to fill our 20 barrel fermenters.
Speaker:Ben has a 20 barrel system that he brews twice to fill his now new 40 barrel
Speaker:fermenter.
Speaker:And then you brew on it once.
Speaker:And so, to fill your multiple 20 barrel fermenters.
Speaker:And so,
Speaker:So moving liquid back and forth, Gary is what it is.
Speaker:It's, it's at various stages.
Speaker:We're going to make use of his fermentation space or his brewing space and vice versa.
Speaker:Not only that, Beer actually, but there's utilities to share as well.
Speaker:And there's utilities, for anyone that wants to get into the nitty gritty.
Speaker:I have a plan where we can connect our cooling systems for our, all of our fermentation tanks.
Speaker:Such that a valve opens when one system fails on either side of the alley.
Speaker:And it's the insurance policy on the other.
Speaker:And that's a big thing, big deal.
Speaker:Every time I opened the back door of this brewery, I'm waiting to hear that beeping sound on, on our, on our glycol system.
Speaker:The glycol, the whole episode on the damn glycol system.
Speaker:Oh, the glycol is everything because the glycol keeps your fermentation on track.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's the whole thing.
Speaker:Critical, but also air.
Speaker:Oh, and then there's literally just compressed air.
Speaker:we're going to have a nitrogen generator here sooner than later.
Speaker:Yes,
Speaker:there, there could be ways to do other utilities, but yeah.
Speaker:There's a million opportunities once we build it.
Speaker:I made it, I was going to make it a catwalk and I got that shut down.
Speaker:Oh,
Speaker:well,
Speaker:well.
Speaker:The other thing that I think is really helpful You need to have
Speaker:models going across it all the time.
Speaker:The other thing that's helpful that we share is just expertise.
Speaker:So in the last episode, Ben talked about how when y'all first brewed on your system, you just, you didn't know what you were doing and stuff.
Speaker:And likewise, like we, you know, we've been learning about all the technical aspects, but between all of us, we've got expertise in all these different fields that will rely on each other.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mentioned I didn't know how to TIG weld.
Speaker:His dad taught me how to do that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I got all the science background and various other engineering.
Speaker:And if Appleton
Speaker:Beer Factory is doing well.
Speaker:And we're doing well.
Speaker:Like, we, like, we don't want them to not do well.
Speaker:And so I think that they're, a lot of our patrons appreciate going back and forth between the two establishments.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:It's a destination.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I That's made us
Speaker:intentional, I think both sides, as to how we, we grow each of our brands.
Speaker:Because complementing each other is good.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Let's then talk about the actual projects you guys have worked on together.
Speaker:Alison's mentioned it several times, the 10 paces.
Speaker:What was the Genesis of that?
Speaker:Well, before Ben takes over, well, maybe, maybe Ben does take over.
Speaker:Take over what?
Speaker:the story.
Speaker:Oh, okay.
Speaker:It happened in 2014, 15.
Speaker:Because I was over at Stone Arch for a couple years and I helped them kick off a sour program.
Speaker:Stone Arch is
Speaker:the brewing company down the street that was pretty much the Yeah,
Speaker:they were on episode, probably the top 10, first 10 episodes.
Speaker:But Yeah.
Speaker:So I started that up and I built a bacteria culture over there.
Speaker:And pause, hang on.
Speaker:Yeah, this is a good thing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I used to say bugs and people say that's weird.
Speaker:So I
Speaker:still say,
Speaker:sour beer is made with bacteria much like yogurt is.
Speaker:And you, you were able to culture.
Speaker:And you work kind of outside of your other brewery, your other brewing area, because you don't want that stuff in the way of your clean beers.
Speaker:And you,
Speaker:you worked in a very clean environment to intentionally create these, or culture these materials.
Speaker:We were in this,
Speaker:I was in this place they call Logistics, like three miles, or maybe a couple miles away from their main brewery.
Speaker:Anyway, I started working on that, with the intention of both growing their program, but eventually having our own, because we were planning the brewery then.
Speaker:But then Ben made a, you were in Belgium, right?
Speaker:With your wife Mari.
Speaker:Yeah, we did a little sightseeing obviously and I added Cantillon to our Our list since we were over there.
Speaker:So her and I got to tour it.
Speaker:And then we brought some bottles home, which are super cheap at the brewery.
Speaker:By the way,
Speaker:Cantone is a museum as well.
Speaker:Right there.
Speaker:They're a brewery and a museum.
Speaker:Monastery.
Speaker:Are they a monastery?
Speaker:No, they kept
Speaker:the Lambeck style alive though, through the war.
Speaker:I think they, they Lambic breweries.
Speaker:Didn't get bombed.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:So you bring Cantone home and then you get
Speaker:to enjoy it together.
Speaker:And invite us
Speaker:over.
Speaker:Allison
Speaker:was having a moment about
Speaker:it.
Speaker:And I put the foil on top of each bottle with the intention to propagate the bacteria up the next day.
Speaker:I think I mentioned this on a previous podcast, but I put them in like 50 mil, little bitty, tiny little Erlenmeyers.
Speaker:And the Erlenmeyer is the V shaped glass, whatever, or I hate triangle shape.
Speaker:And then I would take that into a 500 mil and then up to eventually to five gallons.
Speaker:And then that five gallons for each one of those, So you
Speaker:stole their bacteria?
Speaker:Well, this is common in beer.
Speaker:We found it in a,
Speaker:or recycled it.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:We resourced it.
Speaker:this is not uncommon in beer.
Speaker:In fact, it's really how lager became lager.
Speaker:One, one brewery.
Speaker:had the original lager strain.
Speaker:We're still sorting out who that was but, it was shared amongst everybody.
Speaker:That's why we have lager so ubiquitous now.
Speaker:And all the different ale strains that pop up.
Speaker:Beer really.
Speaker:And beer itself.
Speaker:Yeah, all together.
Speaker:Brewers share all the time.
Speaker:That said, you know, there are brewers that, that seek to patent and to keep their, their yeast out of the market and they work really hard to filter it out.
Speaker:Entirely from their end product, so it doesn't make it into the
Speaker:But you added the Canteon.
Speaker:Added Canteon back to the, the dregs, the combination of bacteria that we had at the other brewery.
Speaker:So we made it our own.
Speaker:It, we, we've just been sort of evolving them alongside.
Speaker:At this point, I've worked with students that have quantified what's in those barrels.
Speaker:And what's interesting about, By the way, this is a 10 year program.
Speaker:People may not get that when they come here.
Speaker:they think, Oh, cool.
Speaker:There's a sour beer.
Speaker:Cause it
Speaker:really was our first beer that we brewed.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And like I said, it started 11 years ago now, but.
Speaker:We had students measure in the barrel and we see stratification of colonies.
Speaker:So there's a, it's a wildly complicated, it's a layering of, of different bacteria, different levels in the barrel.
Speaker:It's a wildly complicated program and it's, and it's wildly complex.
Speaker:So yeah,
Speaker:just to be clear, the 10 paces beer that you're brewing today.
Speaker:Yup.
Speaker:In reference to the separation,
Speaker:you're using the same bacterial culture that you got.
Speaker:How many generations down the line are we?
Speaker:You know, that's the thing.
Speaker:We don't really know.
Speaker:Yeah, I understand, but the point is origin story.
Speaker:But it is that lineage, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:That's what we're trying to do we may be
Speaker:fumbling over our words But we're that this this is our opportunity to at least start that but yeah, we could do a lot better job marketing this So
Speaker:the ten paces branding
Speaker:it
Speaker:brand is the joint Brand of the sour beards.
Speaker:Yeah that we've made and we foster and it's it's all brewed in the basement of ABF yeah So Because you have the room, and we've got these barrels, and we've got this, like refrigerator room thing.
Speaker:It's environment control, yeah.
Speaker:And so yeah, that's our sour beer program.
Speaker:And we don't just
Speaker:do this for a long time just to, just to make it a long time.
Speaker:It, it's how long it takes to acidify and develop these flavors.
Speaker:Because one bacteria will kick in when another one is now dormant and it takes months
Speaker:And what's fun is the brand Ten Paces, so I think we're building it into kind of this idea of like the dueling breweries.
Speaker:So we're 10 paces apart, so it's like a duel.
Speaker:and at any time you should be able to go into either McFleshman's or ABF and you'll see Tin Paces and then the name of the beer.
Speaker:Who's
Speaker:Paces?
Speaker:Who measured this?
Speaker:Cause I went out there once and I actually checked and I got eight.
Speaker:It was mine.
Speaker:I would perceive that as a joke.
Speaker:Yes,
Speaker:I am very short.
Speaker:That makes sense.
Speaker:Also,
Speaker:ten sounds better than eight, doesn't it?
Speaker:Eight paces, ten paces.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Maybe we were a little bit diagonal when we measured it.
Speaker:Maybe we were a little bit into it at the time.
Speaker:It wasn't very influenced.
Speaker:We also make hot sauce together.
Speaker:Well, yeah, you're jumping way ahead.
Speaker:Well, it's a part of the 10 Faces.
Speaker:That was an idea that I think I came up with, and then my then head brewer, Shane Butner, is a foodie, and hot sauce lover.
Speaker:And I think he had been working on some bench top stuff at home.
Speaker:And I put it to him to, put in front of us some options that we settled on one particular recipe that we eventually scaled up and threw into these barrels all, Tabasco, how they do their, their program.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So what, what, Why can we do hot sauce?
Speaker:Okay, now there's fermented hot sauces,
Speaker:and then there's hot sauces that people make and they dump vinegar into.
Speaker:That's not what this is.
Speaker:This is fully natural production of acids, and it's using the same bacteria that's on the produce, and as well as what's in the staves of those sour beer barrels that we, we formerly used to make sour beers.
Speaker:And it's So the barrel
Speaker:goes, so it makes a lambic.
Speaker:Well, first it makes
Speaker:a cider.
Speaker:Oh, that's fair, yeah.
Speaker:That's what we're used to.
Speaker:It's a cider and then it makes a lambic and then from there it makes
Speaker:another sour, but one sour or another.
Speaker:And then eventually, to be honest, we're not using barrels that we love in the beer because we're, we're, with beer, we're looking for some very nuanced production of different aromas and flavors.
Speaker:But when we're talking about a hot sauce, we're looking for some pretty bold production of acid and some pretty bold flavors.
Speaker:It'll be heavily salted, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:So we, we take barrels that are no longer.
Speaker:What I would say, the highest quality for making sour beers.
Speaker:So we just have this constant use of these barrels.
Speaker:These, they're beautiful, they're beautiful barrels.
Speaker:If you've never walked up to some of these wine barrels that come from France or the West coast in America, they are really well produced and we want to keep 'em in our family as long as possible.
Speaker:The bourbon barrels that we'd use for different projects, those are good furniture.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:After,
Speaker:so you're making hot sauce in wine barrels?
Speaker:Oh yeah, it takes a good year.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay, Gary's gonna, again, can I pretend to be Gary?
Speaker:Why aren't you advertising this?
Speaker:There ought to be a sound button, a button.
Speaker:No, seriously, it's just like hot sauce.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We
Speaker:have it.
Speaker:Yeah, we, it exists.
Speaker:That's all it is.
Speaker:It's like, it's hot sauce that we make, but you're not, we need to explain like, this is, like you said, this distinction between a vinegar based and one that's like fermented or not fermented.
Speaker:fermented, but
Speaker:well, it is from it.
Speaker:Yeah, it's,
Speaker:You know, it's only through conversation.
Speaker:Like this podcast has been so helpful in us realizing the stuff that we, cause we just, it's just day to day work for us.
Speaker:And
Speaker:it's sidework.
Speaker:It's true.
Speaker:It's side work.
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Most people just think like, take some hot stuff, put it together, mix it up.
Speaker:Hot sauce.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that's not what you're doing.
Speaker:Not at all.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:No, I know.
Speaker:I didn't know that.
Speaker:So, and this is the way I approach business and at some point make it as complicated as true.
Speaker:I was going to say exactly that having been be a spiritual partner in business is good for me because I do make things really complicated and I, and I spent a lot of time like building story and products and spreadsheets, but, but then I don't really spend time marketing and, and, and I don't, This is where we do suck.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We could do a lot of more.
Speaker:We can do a lot more.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We're not
Speaker:great at it either.
Speaker:And, and, but I really think a lot of it is because this is, these are side projects.
Speaker:These are not our main focuses.
Speaker:We're
Speaker:both, we're very small businesses.
Speaker:The two of you are leading both businesses.
Speaker:And so the number of things that y'all have on y'all's plate on any given day
Speaker:It definitely gets kicked to the bottom of the page.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Like we're, we're making it, but yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We're not going to take the time to really tell anybody, but we need other people's help with that.
Speaker:My hope is that we're eventually going to scale to a place where we have enough employees that we can parse out these projects.
Speaker:I don't want to continue adding projects over and over.
Speaker:Oh, the market keeps telling us to keep doing new stuff, but that's another conversation.
Speaker:But the reason we, ironically, the reason we do it is to generate revenue.
Speaker:Like, energy and buzz around it, except that we aren't doing a good job.
Speaker:It's true.
Speaker:We've now created another product that needs more.
Speaker:It needs a way to get it advertised.
Speaker:So we can advertise for the other thing.
Speaker:buzz dare I bring up Lava Lamp?
Speaker:Lava Lamp.
Speaker:Lava Lamp.
Speaker:This happened after drinks.
Speaker:Okay, I know what you're talking about.
Speaker:And I've always felt.
Speaker:I, I, I. I don't, I would not categorize, I would not put this into the bin of good ideas, but I also would not put it into the bin of bad ideas because I think that they're So what we're talking about here is beer with cheese curds in it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:In clear bottles or clear bottles, which is, I
Speaker:thought was one of the smart things about it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's what spurred it.
Speaker:We were at a table next to us where we're sitting now.
Speaker:We were having beers and us and stone arch.
Speaker:I think you saw an Oliver from Hop Yard from Illinois.
Speaker:Who come to Wisconsin in gift shops.
Speaker:Yeah, that's who you sell it to.
Speaker:This is a full on.
Speaker:This is you market this to fibs No, this is
Speaker:Not meant to be good beer.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:This is not for us.
Speaker:Anyone that goes on
Speaker:them, anyone that goes on untapped and gives it a score.
Speaker:And then they say cheese curd beer.
Speaker:It's not what I, what I usually come to expect a cheese curd beer.
Speaker:I'm like, how many cheese curd beers?
Speaker:You know
Speaker:that now that the internet exists.
Speaker:You can say something like, surely someone has done that somewhere that falls into that category.
Speaker:Yes, someone has put cheese curds into a beer and sold it.
Speaker:Although I, after we did that, people came forward and said, I would use this cheese and that base to pair with this food.
Speaker:I'm like, guys, you're taking this way too seriously.
Speaker:And we had some, More staunch brewers that really didn't like what we did.
Speaker:It was definitely not Reinheitsgebot
Speaker:well, no.
Speaker:Man, we're going to get into a whole others thing, but I'm going to say on the record, you got, you really should pasteurize that stuff.
Speaker:It was a gimmick.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:Pasteurization is something that we're doing with all non alcoholic and, should I say, food based beers, but pasteurization is a thing.
Speaker:So Lava Lamp exists.
Speaker:Mm hmm.
Speaker:Actually, do you inhale?
Speaker:One and done.
Speaker:Is it?
Speaker:Is there any cans left?
Speaker:Okay, I'm so sorry.
Speaker:I mean just a handful
Speaker:for posterity.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I want to go back to the 10 paces thing.
Speaker:Because, the real stuff.
Speaker:I came in here a lot and 10 paces was the thing I would order every week.
Speaker:This was the, the straight Lambic.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We haven't talked to him.
Speaker:Which has not been on the menu in a while.
Speaker:It's been a while.
Speaker:We got some good shit in the barrel.
Speaker:And then all these false pretenders under the 10 paces label, including a Berliner Weiss, which to me is kind of its own thing.
Speaker:And now it's being called 10 paces and I'm just like, what's going on?
Speaker:This
Speaker:is our, this is our inability to market.
Speaker:And I got no problem
Speaker:with Berliner Weiss.
Speaker:It's.
Speaker:Fine beer.
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:So what?
Speaker:What is being put under this label?
Speaker:I Think everything that goes through our barrels.
Speaker:Yes through our cellar next door is So Berliner
Speaker:Weiss is gonna be half yeast half bacteria, is that correct?
Speaker:What's that?
Speaker:Berliner Weiss is made half with yeast and half with bacteria.
Speaker:So
Speaker:Berliner Weiss is what pays the bills in the sour program because it turns quickly.
Speaker:We can make it in a couple months.
Speaker:It didn't answer the question, does it?
Speaker:It's soured
Speaker:upstream, so you sour it right off the bat.
Speaker:So you
Speaker:use yeast and bacteria?
Speaker:Yeah, you start with bacteria to sour it, and you finish it with yeast, yeah.
Speaker:I mean, we have, we have been working on more traditional versions of it, which take a little longer, but they're nothing like our Lambics or our Flanders.
Speaker:Now Lambic
Speaker:is all bacteria, right?
Speaker:There's no yeast.
Speaker:Lambic
Speaker:style.
Speaker:We should make sure that we say Lambic style.
Speaker:Cause there's Lambics is only from one place in the world, the Sin Valley.
Speaker:Belgium, but like champagne.
Speaker:Yeah, it's like that.
Speaker:So we all say lamb.
Speaker:We need a better way Sonambic is what they call the Sonoma based lambic.
Speaker:So anyway, we need to figure out a better way to call it describe these That is made spontaneously traditionally speaking you're supposed to open the the the Windows to your, wherever you have, let random
Speaker:yeast come in and you just let the
Speaker:air blow through and it brings all the flora with it.
Speaker:And it just spontaneously makes this thing sour.
Speaker:And that's how it's made in Belgium.
Speaker:We don't yet do it that way.
Speaker:So there's another reason why it's really a lambic quote style,
Speaker:more reason we need a pipe bridge.
Speaker:Oh, you can hook up the cool ship over.
Speaker:Huh.
Speaker:Mm hmm.
Speaker:No use.
Speaker:I was going to suggest that.
Speaker:Mm hmm.
Speaker:It goes on and on.
Speaker:But that's done in, you're going to get a mixture of yeast and bacteria when you do that.
Speaker:the yeast that you have though are not good for making beer.
Speaker:They're not going to be able to tolerate generally the alcohol that we're talking about.
Speaker:They'll, they'll tucker out at a certain level and then, and then you have what are known as brettanomyces, which is itself a yeast.
Speaker:But Wait,
Speaker:is that a bacteria or a yeast?
Speaker:It is a
Speaker:yeast.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And it's, it's really really closely related to what we normally brew with.
Speaker:We use, Cervicier, and it's related very, very closely to that Saccharomyces.
Speaker:Go team.
Speaker:But makes different flavors.
Speaker:But it makes very different flavors and it's very natural in the environment, but it can only tolerate up to so much.
Speaker:And, but then it's a low and slow game with that, with bread.
Speaker:It will, it will drudge on and it takes months to get there.
Speaker:So back to Gary's question, it's, we call it 10 paces.
Speaker:If it's a sour, if it's been soured.
Speaker:Is that right?
Speaker:I think that's a good, that's a good way to say it.
Speaker:Beer.
Speaker:Sour ale.
Speaker:Any of the Lambics, the Flanders Reds.
Speaker:And the Berliner
Speaker:Weiz, which is the quick turn.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And the hot sauce.
Speaker:And the hot sauce.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So you can, we're almost like, we're working this out amongst ourselves right now.
Speaker:As we're staring at each other.
Speaker:Everyone's hearing our brainstorming right now.
Speaker:For the record.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Like, I guess I see it even, it is all fermented, soured stuff at this point, but could it include.
Speaker:Some other non sour thing that we do.
Speaker:Is it, is it together?
Speaker:Is it the, yeah.
Speaker:Is it the sour or is it just the, the collaboration too?
Speaker:So that is a, that good
Speaker:question.
Speaker:A good point.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, that was gonna be my next
Speaker:question.
Speaker:Where do things go from here?
Speaker:Well, I, I have on the slate to do about a dozen different Belgium beers.
Speaker:I can never find time to do, never find tanks to do them.
Speaker:So there's a possibility that it goes into that and this becomes an entire Belgian brand, right?
Speaker:We can, we can really look at it that way with, as you point out, Berliner Vites being the odd duck there.
Speaker:But I, I think we don't know.
Speaker:I think everyone's hearing us brainstorm in real time here.
Speaker:I would, I like the name.
Speaker:There's a story behind it.
Speaker:I would just like tighten the the branding.
Speaker:Yeah, I guess that would be what do
Speaker:we have branding?
Speaker:I mean you do whether or not you think yeah Not
Speaker:you in control of it Yeah, not controlling it is is still in some ways controlling it letting it be I think
Speaker:you could do ten paces lambic ten paces Whatever right colon this.
Speaker:Yeah You but maybe just create a space where we define it as it's going to be this type of thing.
Speaker:And that's what we're going to call it.
Speaker:And then you maybe could make a series of beers out of it.
Speaker:We
Speaker:definitely have spent a lot of mental energy on it.
Speaker:And Alex Schultz is part of this conversation as far as he's our graphic designer and for all of our labels.
Speaker:And he's got this concept where the alley itself between us becomes The, the center of the label and you kind of get to see the back of each building and he's gonna, he's thinking about different hues that you can apply to each different label without having to make something really complicated and ornate each time.
Speaker:So I think there's something to that and it celebrates the actual separation of the buildings and, and it pictures both of the breweries.
Speaker:And I like the, there's been a couple, so our Flanders Red, I think, is that the one that's dual flirtation?
Speaker:That's the one that we do Black Currants in.
Speaker:It's
Speaker:an homage to Concentration for anyone that's out there that's a fan of Russian River Brewing.
Speaker:But just this idea of like, we're kind of dueling breweries, but we're team members, but it's the kind of leaning into that fascination that people have that we're not competitors, that we actually work really well together.
Speaker:That's why I like the name of 10 Paces.
Speaker:Yeah, that's exhausting
Speaker:to have to keep saying that because it's never even been on my mind that we're competing.
Speaker:The slice, the slice of pie, I always bring this up, the slice of pie that we're competing, that we work, that we sell beer to, the people that do it.
Speaker:Like out in the market.
Speaker:Yeah, why would we compete over that teeny little slice?
Speaker:There's a whole Pac Man out there, way more, to go after as far as the Miller drinkers.
Speaker:We can convert people.
Speaker:There's no reason to compete over the scraps here.
Speaker:I don't mean to call who drinks here the scraps, but you know what I'm saying.
Speaker:It's a teeny slice.
Speaker:They have
Speaker:an alley with two hands shaking across the alley.
Speaker:Aww.
Speaker:But behind their back is a loaded gun.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:There is a really corny iteration.
Speaker:Where Bobby and I are standing back to back.
Speaker:Mm hmm
Speaker:Cartoon
Speaker:bodies.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:I've since thought this is kind of violent but but like a six shooter looking down the the rounds of a six shooter each Each hole represents a pepper which represents the strength of the hot sauce.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah something there There's there's stuff that we can work.
Speaker:There's some ideas on the
Speaker:business of marketing
Speaker:It comes from somewhere, right?
Speaker:When I got started, I was in the same boat as you guys.
Speaker:And eventually I just realized it's all marketing.
Speaker:It really is.
Speaker:And I realized that when I met some of the stupidest people I've ever met in my life, we're very rich and it was all because of marketing.
Speaker:I would not go with that far, but I would, I mean, okay.
Speaker:If you have a lot, a lot of money and a lot of marketing made, but I think you got to have a product.
Speaker:You got to have product because you got to get them to come back.
Speaker:I think you can get them in once with marketing, but they come back for the story and the, which is marketing and himself, but they're coming in for the product that they paid money
Speaker:equally, equally important.
Speaker:Yeah, I, I, I would actually maybe argue marketing is even more important if I had to pick one, but I wouldn't say it's a hundred percent marketing.
Speaker:Yeah, I've learned that over the years.
Speaker:It's exhausting trying to get it the story out there, but it's important.
Speaker:So, what does the future hold?
Speaker:I mean, I know you guys have talked about like some future plans about, you know, increasing capacity.
Speaker:Is that something you think you would do together or at least?
Speaker:Just
Speaker:not, not even the 10 paces necessarily, but just, the brewery's five, 10 years from now.
Speaker:Well,
Speaker:I'll jump in front of front real quick.
Speaker:I think we want to see both breweries running as much as they can run, right?
Speaker:And if, if they're not brewing as much as, you know, two or three times a day, then there's no reason for either of us to be thinking about expanding on our own to another brewery.
Speaker:We need to make sure we're, we're maxing both facilities out in my mind.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We have a lot of brewing capacity here.
Speaker:I mean,
Speaker:So there's that's where I stand on the future I don't have plans to open another brewery because Ben's got a lot of capacity next door I'd rather buy tanks and and or to help fund tank installations next door.
Speaker:I think that's much more Intelligent as far as growth.
Speaker:I think what also is just to continue to invest in this spot of downtown Appleton And make both places that much more of a destination
Speaker:I hereby dub this block the brewery district.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I mean,
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:I mean, who's gonna contend or or contest that?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Out of five breweries in this town.
Speaker:Is there five?
Speaker:One, two, three.
Speaker:But back to ten paces, I think that the future has to be.
Speaker:We gotta put some some muscle behind that.
Speaker:We cuz we put too much energy into it.
Speaker:And it's such a, it's some of the, it's some of the best sour beer in the state.
Speaker:That is true.
Speaker:And, and I'm not just saying that.
Speaker:Oh yeah, we had a friend from Miller come up and taste it.
Speaker:I pulled nails in the barrels this week and I'm just blown away.
Speaker:Oh yeah, so I have a friend who does yeast propagation for Miller Brewing, so she's in charge of Some pretty high level microbiology at a little brewery called Miller.
Speaker:She brought her friend, colleague,
Speaker:who's like the sour beer program expert.
Speaker:Oh
Speaker:yeah, so they all pulled nails and agreed it's some of the most incredible combinations.
Speaker:Pulling nails means you, from the
Speaker:barrel, you have these little stainless steel nails that you can pull out so you can sample.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:That's what pulling nails means.
Speaker:Should have had those samples before us, before we started this episode.
Speaker:Oh, yes please.
Speaker:Yeah, it's some extraordinary stuff.
Speaker:Sounds crappy,
Speaker:Lightlogger.
Speaker:Yeah, stupid blogger.
Speaker:The gold medal winning, Lightlogger.
Speaker:Last question, when is the Lambic style 10 cases going to return?
Speaker:You know, honestly, it's about, it's about logistics now, it's ready to go.
Speaker:So we'll get it out as soon as we can get to it.
Speaker:I would say in the next
Speaker:month you'll see it.
Speaker:We are actually out of Squirrel?
Speaker:We are out of Sour right at the moment.
Speaker:We are out.
Speaker:Yeah, we, we're all, yeah, because there's gonna be a lot of fruited options coming out.
Speaker:I think we have four new fruited options coming out.
Speaker:Two versions of Flanders, some straight lambics.
Speaker:I just heard that tart cherry is going to be one of the flavors of 2025.
Speaker:Oh, we're way out of that.
Speaker:All we
Speaker:got to do is start 11 years ago and then we can be ahead of things.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:Who makes up this stuff?
Speaker:I don't know, but it's.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:I think the flavor, it's all
Speaker:big cherry that's behind it.
Speaker:, I
Speaker:think the flavor of pistachio is another one.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Oh, flavor of 25 is neo prohibition and we'll have a whole episode on that.
Speaker:Sorry, I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer.
Speaker:Oh, boy.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:This non-alcoholic thing.
Speaker:I'm all about it.
Speaker:Stop talking.
Speaker:I'm all about the, the January, for health reasons, but we should all be aware that there is a, there is a movement out there.
Speaker:Until
Speaker:then, we'll have a lambic out soon.
Speaker:Please come enjoy.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:That's going to wrap up this episode of Respecting the Beer.
Speaker:Make sure to subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast player so you never, ever miss an episode and join the Facebook group to get updates between the episodes and join the show over on Patreon.
Speaker:We actually have T shirts now.
Speaker:And until next time, please remember to respect the beer.
