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Hey everyone, welcome to Bean to Barstool Bite-sized, where we spend about five minutes with some of our favorite people from Kraft Beer and Craft Chocolate.
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I'm your host, David Nelson.
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Today we're going to spend a few minutes talking with Jason Brewer and Zach Banke of Wandering Monsters Brewing in Cincinnati.
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In this clip, Jason and Zach talk about how to thoughtfully and patiently brew pastry stouts.
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And at the beginning, I asked Zack what they've learned more than anything else about how to brew these beers well.
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Enjoy.
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I would say be patient.
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I think that was the biggest learning point for us is like we're always running, we're always trying to get beers out, we're always trying to hit deadlines.
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And sometimes beer's just not ready.
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You know, if you put this beer on your cocoa nibs and after three days you don't feel like it's there, give it more time.
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Try different processes.
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Recirculation, I think, is is a way to skip forward in time, but it's not the only way to make this work.
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And I feel like our motto is building depth and flavors.
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You know, it's it's cocoa nibs are great, but if you can do more, do more.
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If you can do things that are different, on top and try to try to keep he from being one note.
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Um, I think that's kind of what's set us apart a little bit early for us is really trying to build things into layers.
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That's an advantage we have as a brute pub that doesn't distribute, is that, you know, I tell Zach I want like all of these beers by a certain time, but the ending message is if it's not ready, it's not ready.
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Like sometimes things just take a little longer, processes take a little longer, ingredients take longer to come together.
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So having that patience to make sure they are where we want them to be is is so important.
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I think gets lost in a lot of places because they're they're too into the weeds about needing beers to come out when they don't really, especially if you don't have a distributor like you don't really need a beer to come out.
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They can come out when they can come out when it's ready.
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I I appreciate the thoughtfulness of that.
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I think a lot of times these adjunct beers, especially, can get dunked on by some corners of the beer world as you know, as unserious or as gimmicky, but yeah, these are agricultural botanical ingredients.
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We're talking about cacao and vanilla and coffee, and they can be used as thoughtfully as any other agricultural ingredients.
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And I think it's really cool that you guys are giving those the space to breathe and giving the the brewing team, you know, the the time to dial those in.
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I just wanted to touch on something you said real quick about uh brewers that are dunking on this.
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And I feel like those are the same people that argue that are yelling at clouds about New England IPAs.
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It just kind of like, you know, it's it's people want these styles of beers.
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Do I drink a whole lot of them?
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Absolutely not, but I do enjoy them.
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Uh, but at the same time, like our guests are enjoying them.
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So continuing to to put the same effort you're making into all the thing, all of the research and effort it takes to make like a perfect Czech lager is the same type of stuff that's needed to make these sort of beers.
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And if people are still like just dismissing it because it's just a bunch of crap thrown in it, then I think they're they're in the same boat as the New England IPA people in my that hate New England IPAs because that's obviously here to stay.
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So get used to it.
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I would say to bridge those kind of points together, the way we go about making these beers, whether it be, you know, 17 adjunct Imperial Stout or Czech Pillager that we're brewing next week, it's serious in how we take uh the time to build these and to brainstorm these and to try things and to research and do all that.
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But it's still beer.
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Beer isn't serious.
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And I think that's part of what makes our customer base like us is that our beers are good, they're well thought out, they're well made.
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But when you come here, it's silly.
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Like our hot monster is fun.
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We are the experiences here, you know, are driven towards families who are here to have fun.
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And I think there's nothing wrong with that.
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And you can do that, you know, while doing the right things, you know, behind the scenes without taking everything so seriously.
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Yeah, I like that.
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I wrote an article for Wine Enthusiast last year.
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It was a defense of the pastry stout.
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And at some point in there, I said, Do you guys remember when beer was fun?
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Like this was a thing we enjoyed, right?
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Like, and I think so much of it is like beer for a long time had a chip on its shoulder because it wasn't being taken as seriously as as wine or bourbon.
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And like, I get it, you know, this is obviously a drink with a huge amount of tradition and uh obviously a huge amount of skill that goes into brewing it and all that, but like this can just be fun.
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We can actually have fun while we're doing this.
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Absolutely.
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I I think that you know, it's all the conversation we just had in that people do take it to have fun.
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You know, that's that's our brand, that's our space.
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You know, we are doing it to have fun, and it's that, and um, also to kind of connect with a bit of nostalgia too, because we brew a lot of like stuff that and adjunct things that kind of enharken back memories of you know the 90s or something like that.
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So kind of like a fun, fun while creating or recreating memories is really what the story I'd like to tell you.