How to Brew - Beer and Barrels - Interview with Matt at Boatrocker Brewers and Distillers

Dermott at BeerCo and Matt at Boatrocker Brewers and Distillers talk about Beer and Barrels. How to check if you have a good barrel for brewing. What to do to condition your barrel before brewing a clean or sour beer and maturing in your whisky or wine barrel. We cover a lot of Beer and Wood 101 Questions including the "WTF is the nail for?"

Video: How to Brew - Beer and Barrels

Audio: How to Brew - Beer and Barrels

Transcript: How to Brew - Beer and Barrels

[Dermott Dowling at BeerCo] Hi Matt great to see you again. [Matt Houghton at Boatrocker Brewers & Distillers] Thanks for having me. Thanks. It's been a while since I've been down this way. Now, you're probably. Oh good evening everyone or good afternoon it's the evening, sun has just started to go down here at Boatrocker barrel room. I'm with Matt Horton and for those that don't know you Matt, I guess the first question would be - I know you were a home brewer and now you're a pro brewer. What got you into brewing both at home first and then becoming a pro brewer? Good question I look my love of travel and beer and it's always intrigued me. Michael Jackson the beer rider was probably one of the main inspirations and then from there travelling all through Europe, drinking lots of beer and being sick of the bland VB and Carlton Draught that's available locally, so I was just like I want to do better. I had what's in Europe, so the inspiration was definitely through my travels. Fantastic and I remember dropping in and seeing you when we were in South End and there wasn't as many barrels around in fact. I think you were brewing lots of hoppy beers and pilsners over the road. So what got you enticed into wood and barrels and beer? There was a moment in a brewery which I'm sure your viewers are familiar with, Cantillon. Yes Was a must go to sort of place.  So, I thought yep I'll go to Cantillon, have a look and never having had sour beers back 20 odd years ago now. Just being absolutely blown away by the rusticness of this cobwebbed brewery and then a jug of flat still beer that had this amazing funk and really blew my mind. So that was like I need to learn more about this. Fantastic so did you start your journey into barrels and professional brewing with sour beers and obviously we should talk about this wonderful beer we are enjoying today, your saison sour. Yes, sunshine and rainbows, designed for sunshine and rainbows basically. I tried to come up with food match and putting over the food match I thought oh well, forget the food match, lets pair it with sunshine and rainbows and I thought that's actually a better name than what I originally had, so it’s yeah very easy drinking. Beautiful, light beer. Yeah, thanks. I think with beers in general I've always wanted to have to play around with wood. I mucked around with wild organisms as a home brewer. Yeah. Doing it commercially is a different scale. Volume and everything else is very different, so wanted to make sure that I've got a lot of it through myself in, learnt myself but then there's some great resources out there. Milk the Funk, there is The Mad Fermentationist. Michael Tonsmeire is his name. He has got a book out dealing with wild beers. There is a lot of information out there on the internet. You can find anything on the Internet. Yeah. Good or bad. Well that's why I'm here today because we're gonna talk about barrels. I picked this barrel up here in a bulk buy which we're not supposed to mention where I got it from but it was in a bulk buy and that sort of thing and I look on the internet about you know barrels and brewing and there is so much conflicting information then I thought, I know someone that knows about this stuff inside out, I mean I should reach out to you! So I thought how do I know whether this Barrel is good to brew with or to put the French Toast Double Brown Ale in it. And I thought, I know, I'll ring Matt because you'll know. So how did you discover as you went through researching on milk the funk and the net and talking to your friends and brewing? What was true and what wasn’t? Yeah well, a lot of trial and error. Okay. You've got a trust your judgment as well. If something sounds questionable then straight away, you need to start looking into how that might work and think about all the possibilities that might be negative. You Question everything. Yes. Fox Mulder is always right. Question everything! Okay. Pretty much the truth about the truth is out there as well so. Yeah good point. It comes down to what you want to brew, if you want to brew as you want to brew a maple brown ale. Yes Which is quite a heavy alcohol; its beer and you want to get the spirit notes on the wood. Then you've got to look at the barrel as a clean barrel. Yeah. Whereas if you're purely wanted this brew to be a Flanders Red or Wild Ale with some description yeah then you can look at the barrel and a very different light and the wood will probably be quite different as well. And you can get away with treating barrels differently but. That's a good question or a little segway into that Matt would be you know for funky beers like Flanders Reds and Oud Bruins and things like that would I use a whiskey barrel or a wine barrel? You can use a whiskey barrel but from a commercial viewpoint and I'm talking purely commercially we were trying to capture that whiskey note with a beer that might be a clean beer. But having said that we've got some really good beer that is brewed as a sour beer, but they were intentionally put into freshly empty whiskey casks. Uh-huh. To make a whiskey sour which we do, did that about a year and a half ago now and the result was fantastic, so we thought let's do it again on a larger more commercial volume. Yeah. So you can look at it two ways but I guess traditionally if you've got a freshly empty whiskey barrel you'll put something bigger and richer that can withstand, the longer ageing process I guess once it's or even out of the barrel it'll last for a long time and so will the sour beers they'll last for a long time as well. Yeah. But I guess it depends on your blend whether you want to go for yeah that nice winter warmer or a special celebration beer that might be richer and higher alcohol. And in this case, I got two - so I was fortunate enough to get taste and so my thought was to put the maple brown ale into this one that we've got here today, and we can pull it apart and have a look and see if it's any good or not. And then this, the other one an Imperial Stout but I did hope to sort of separate them out eventually, so I have one barrel for clean brewing and one for sours. So is that possible to do? Because clearly, you've done that from what I have seen here in the barrel room here which is magnificent place, you've got you know your fantastic range in imperial stouts and you're talking about sour beers as well. So, is it possible to cohabitate clean and sour barrels in the one place? It is. In the barrel room we have, our distiller- Alex, actually started making sourdough and he basically gets the flour and water mixture, puts it in the back, open to all the elements and it's got active cultures happening. It has a house culture? It has house culture and it’s everywhere around here, so yeah, look I've known that you can't contain these organisms terribly well. But the chance of them getting into the clean beer through the wood in a six to twelve-month aging period is very rare. Naturally if you don't protect them they might in time, we douse our clean barrels, we douse with ethanol, seventy percent ethanol solution before we open the bung and have a look inside. Okay, on the outside? On the outside because there is the dust and everything else gathers and then we do all the sampling we need to do. So, would that be a good idea to do that when we get back to the BeerCo warehouse tomorrow, the next day douse that I mean more open this one here today, but I do have super kill 70% ethanol in the shop Yes, right well. It doesn't need to be super dripping wet, just enough to douse. It's been floating around from Tasmania to here and can pick anything up on the boat ride across to Melbourne. That is true. So, there is a good chance it might have something that could land in but. Okay and it's about three months old I think. I picked that up November, December just before the Christmas break and it sort of sat under the stairs at BeerCo HQ. That should still have a punchy whisky note to it and small barrels have a larger surface area to volume ratio. So, the evaporation rate would be higher in the 50% range but having said that it will still have whiskey in the wood. But the chance that has been completely evaporated is unlikely I think so you'll still get plenty of whisky kind of that. And if that had been you know more than three months or I guess we'll understand when we start pull out the bung and what would I do if I got an old barrel or one of their customers got an old barrel from a friend or something out of the buy and swap and could they condition it to bring it back up put in the whisky elements. Look you could yeah absolutely. I mean that's a twenty to thirty litres barrel, is that right? Yes, I think it looks like it's about 25 litres or something. I think so this is 59.5 kilos. Look it looks right like around 20 litres to me. Yeah it does. Looks like a twenty to twenty-five litre barrel and that's about how much beer we brewed the other day there's the other thought I had was I'm gonna fill it on a brew day, in case I need to put some more whisky in it? That beer is high gravity? Yeah. Look a good way that we haven't done it but I know people do, do it particularly with spirit barrels they haven't been used, they're dried out a little bit too much yeah. You can rehydrate with some spirit and buy something half decent. Yeah. You lose some to the wood and you can always pour out the rest, pour in later or two costs you 70-80 bucks, something or may be more a hundred. And from what you had said there was a good point to the viewers. Do we get a good spirit put it in the barrel or does you know Johnny Walker Red Label Whisky ok to condition the wood? I'm of the opinion that, like cooking and its best to use good wine to cook with. Yeah. Same going to say in the barrel, back to your own budget unless we go for a bottle of scotch, but I'd be thinking you know a local craft whisky. By Hippocampus? No, we don't do a whiskey here. Oh, don’t you? No, it’s Starward. Starward is another good one yeah. Lark obviously. That will be one I would think about you know putting in and you only need to leave it a week or two or and you just roll the barrel. Yeah So, leave it to season the barrel for a week or so. Interesting. You can find out then the wood should start swelling you lose a fair bit of spirit. Before if it's really dried out and that's twelve months plus the hoops are loose. The hoops if they're loose is a sign of an old barrel. That's their sign that maybe we've got a barrel that needs some love and attention. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah so, I recommend going to Bunnings and buying a flat head chisel and a rubber mallet, try tapping some hoops, must hit really hard, just look where you are around. Alright. Coopers are probably going to laugh at me doing this. Most of this on how to look after a barrel is on YouTube. You can find how to cooper a barrel, how to take off the hoops. And I've managed to teach myself all of it. I was going to say if you're keen you could just about learn to do anything on YouTube, Open Heart surgery if you wanted to but you might get in trouble with the authorities.  Someone has done a how-to video on just about everything, I've certainly Googled how to grow your own hops, how to smoke your own malt, someone out there has done it before. Yeah absolutely. Fantastic. Okay so we've checked the hoops Checked the hoops it’s nice and tight, looking at this barrel I'd say that is in very good condition. The next thing if you get a barrel we had bottle of bourbon barrels, they always come with a bung it’s a hard-wooden bung, so they're not easy to get out. So, the only way to get them out, you can’t just pull it out of your hand, you need to be supposed to get a screw and a hammer. Screw in I have one here, so I show the listeners that, so we will put this Barrel down, one we prepared earlier So that's the screw in there Okay And what we can do is get the bung out by treating the screw like a nail. So, you put in the screw in the bung to remove, with a hammer, this barrel being one we prepared earlier like on a good cooking show, eh Well this is probably from the same bulk buy as yours Which shall remain nameless for now and you can smell whiskey in there And those who've got smart phones which are yet probably most the population who is watching YouTube. It is dry in there but it's some you'll see a little bit of charring, the scale but the smell is still very strong. So, you'll get a good whisky note from that barrel. So, you would probably look if you don't use that in the next short while you would think right I'll use it or lose its character? Yeah and another month or two I'd be looking at putting some extra spirit in there to help rejuvenate that spirit you know. You got to remember as well once that whiskey, if you pour the whiskey in to condition it, you've got to make sure that you take it out after a week or two, you don't want to have a lot of whiskey in there before you put 20 litres of beer in because it will be way too strong. Yeah, yeah. But one thought I had while talking to you earlier about the recipe for French Toast was to share a good advice there about let's put some other maple in like the secondary fermentation. So can I put the maple in after I pour the beer it's just about finished its primary into the barrel then put another 250 ml of maple syrup in and almost have like a secondary fermentation inside the barrel? So I'm driving out oxygen and will that help fight off you know any potential wild bacteria? Yeah look you could I think your more likely for a barrel aging with a clean beer you probably don't want to leave it for three to six months approximately on the yeast. Yeah absolutely If you do a secondary fermenting in the barrel there is a good chance of autolysis, happening on the yeast so you get off flavors, you probably get after doing complete fermentation and I think the barrels as well that yeah the spirit barrels you might get half a percent alcohol out of the barrel in that condition extra abv Yeah So, you want to make sure you put in a beer that's close to seven or eight percent and hopefully find most things drop out at that abv, the alcohol content alone should help prevent anything as long as that barrel hasn't had anything else hiding in it, so it's unlikely to have any cell organisms that can survive Yeah good point! And the spirit is the natural antibacterial agent, I guess it's almost like natural disinfectant or antiseptic to the bacteria in a way It is absolutely! Look and the spirit cask spirit is uncut so it is around 60 to 70% mark anyway so that’s might be ideal for killing bacteria. Okay well that's good so what I'll do then is I'll finish the secondary luckily, it's fermenting now so I can just chuck the last lot of maple syrup it in the top, rack it off the yeast and then pour it into the barrel. And then once you've drained the maple brown ale and consumed it probably in three to six months time or at Christmas time as it would be a lovely Christmas table beer. I now want to use the barrel for sour brewing. Do I just drain it, package my beer and put you know more wort straight into the barrel or what would I do with the barrel once you've emptied it? Do you have barrels here that you continuously use? Yeah look at all our bourbon barrels, spirit barrels timed ago, we got clean beer, gets placed into them after the clean beer gets placed into them within a determined, we keep that barrel, now we have a distillery we might put spirits back into them What a great way to keep it clean! Absolutely and reuse that whole cycle of wood and spirit then beer and back to spirit and wood. But what we might also do is when we get a number of barrels that are Bourbons or Whisky barrels where they are used once for beer they are not suitable for the second generation clean beer, the second use, preferred use technically I guess it's not that that good. So, we've turned them into sour barrels. So, once you've used a barrel say two or three times with clean beer without going back into the distillery you're saying it starts to lose any of the Wood whiskey. Yes even for a second use, we tried re-doing a clean beer in a barrel to see if we could get do it refill straight away yeah with Ramjet into Bourbon barrels. But the effect is just not wonderful. Okay so you notice that I drop of in the wood character and the whiskey character. Yeah, yeah it was massive. So, it's like I came, for now we're just going to turn live Bourbons into sour beer, reciprocals. But now with the distillery we might put something else in them and then we will see how it all turns out. There is still enough flavour that we find that sour beers like Flanders Reds, would get enough character in that. It’s far more delicate beer body wise and like we punch you with sourness, but it's not necessarily hasn't got that sugar or that high alcohol, so less need for the wood. So, you can get a lot of wood character in a short period of time. So, it can work nicely like that. Yeah right, so it’s certainly yeah tailoring your style of your brewing to the age of the barrel or the number of uses. Like I was just thinking there too as you were talking about that maybe if it's some a barrel that we've done one or two clean beers and you could even put like a like you see the red sour or a golden sour, something light or delicate that you don't want too much wood character Absolutely and that’s exactly what we are doing Yeah okay great. Because you'll draw it there I mean the whiskey out there, the whiskey was but most of the spirit but all of it that wood flavour out. So, what's left in there it'll be enough for a beer where your diminishing returns so a Golden Blonde or a Flanders Red in it will be perfect. I guess some of the questions I am thinking out loud here but some of our listeners would have some, if they're looking to buy a barrel, is there anything they should look for, say they are inspecting one, they come across one second hand or there's a bulk buy on or something? What sort of things should they look for in terms of the quality of the barrel or knowing that that's something that they can be able to get those repeat used to set up? Yeah, I think one of the important things, there's small little whiskey barrels they are generally very compact, not a lot of issues can go wrong like they stay, doesn't mean that there can be a lot of issues. But one of the key things that can happen quickly with larger barrels, like wine barrels, will have on the top you know might get a crack in the Stave where it is split and that's a sure fire sign that you'll get a lot more oxygen exposure, so you need to monitor and ask yourself whether the beer going to put in there is really in a suffer from that by higher oxygen exposure. That's one of the easiest signs to spot. Other than that, you've really got to trust your nose. Again, the torch on the phone or a little mage light, if you've got one look inside it. And what should you be looking for inside? Spirit barrels less so a problem but I think with wine barrels, one of the biggest issues with wine is Acetobacter, mould and I guess to a lesser extent tartaric acid crystals. Yes yeah. They can be removed tartaric acid crystals but if they're left and some wine as you see barrels you shine the light in and it's like Aladdin’s cave in there with the light glistening off all the little tartaric acid crystals and what we've done with pull some of those barrels apart and there's a thick crust, we have tartaric acid crystals and what happens underneath that, that provides a perfect little home at the harbouring acetobacter and other wild yeast and bacteria. Good if you want to make vinegar, not good if you want to make sour beer. Exactly and so what happens is it even if you steam it, you're not removing it and so it stays underneath is provide that I guess basically a full of things that can ruin your beer very quickly. So a quick look inside if you see any blue mould, white mould, the good thing is run your finger around just inside the bung hole, put your finger in the bung hole and run it around and see anything comes out on your finger and that's often another favorite hiding spot because as the barrel fills up it might be full to the brim over the bung and so they'll be moisture in that top a little bit and if you can pull out to scrape out some blue or white moulds then you probably say no thanks. Okay. Yeah and again it was smell - if you can smell vinegar its good chances for the acetobacter. If you can tell something smells not quite right, it might be like a blue cheese smell, it could be something a bit musty, then you question how good that barrel is going to be, if you have to spend $300, $200 that is a lot of money, for a lot of time taken to fill it up with beer. Yeah, all the time to brew it and then fill it and we've certainly seen some of our customers and the club's in particular they will get a barrel and then work together as a team. Now and then brewery should they put it in which is a smart way to do it but like I say you know have all that work if you've got a poor quality product I guess it's pretty difficult to make a good beer. Yeah absolutely and I think that's one of those things you just go to trust your instincts, the nose is one of the most sensitive organs in your body, so I pick up something that's not quite right, it smells like oak or a nice red wine or the white wine then it would be great. Well thanks for taking time but before we wrap up today there was a couple other quick ones I want to talk about. We're talking about whiskey barrels today. I don't have a wine barrel on me but is there any particular preps if any of our customers are buying wine barrels or got access to a wine barrel, whether it's a small one or a large one that they should do before they put the sour beers or things into it? Yeah look absolutely I think if you get a larger format barrel as a home brewer, you may not be filling it up straight away. Yes. One of the easiest things it's not ideal amount of water but the scheme of things is probably not that bad if you can make a solution of Potassium Metabisulfite and the citric acid. I forget the exact amounts. And you then create, basically dissolve that in hot water, put that into the barrel and you fill up that barrel to the brim.  [ed. Notes If I’m emptying a barrel that had funky beer in it and I know it won’t be used for a couple weeks then it gets a hot water rinse to clean out the leftovers then a 1/4 to 1/3 full of warm water along with a mix Citric acid and Potassium Metabisulfite. About 1/4 cup of Citric and about a 1/3 cup of Potassium Metabisulfite per 12-14 gallons makes a nice holding solution or solution inside the barrel. Embrace the Funk, June 2014] Okay, would you fill that with like 80 degrees or boiling or? You don't have to fill, I think if you're gonna reinvigorate a barrel for immediate use then you use boiling hot water. It can you reduce from dissolve the chemicals and then just fill it up with tap water. Fill tap water otherwise you'll taint the wood. So, you just want to make sure then that will help swell a barrel, keep certain things at bay, the only downside with that is thinking about out of steam ones together. This is an easy way to be able to keep your barrel swollen and effectively bug free, but you need to replenish that liquid probably every two to three months. Okay. So, you want to use it in that time frame so that find a local winemaker or a local brewer who has got the steam one, seeing that barrel okay and then sulphur which means little sulphur discs. And then do we light the candles you light them Yeah put them onto a little bit together get it yeah coat hanger along with it mostly with a couple of sulphur little disks on the end, light them with a lighter or matches and then put it in a little sulphur. Okay no problem in a wine barrel but I'm thinking that might be a bit of a dangerous thing to do in a spirit barrel. Yes, spirit barrels no flames. Yes, no flames, just warning me. Yeah for safety, you know that's great and then two other things I guess we can't come all the way down for your wonderful barrel room and enjoy your saison sail without asking have you got any special releases coming up out of barrels whether they're Spirit barrels or with sour barrels in 2018? Yeah, we've always got barrels and new beers coming in. Now we've got obviously Ramjet is one of the big ones. We've got a very special one coming up in with Good Beer Week but we can’t tell you what that is until the launch. Congratulations for that one. We've got the return of Banshee. Our 14% Barleywine obviously that’s been in Starward whisky Barrels. Right and if customers are watching from interstate or abroad how would they, do you have something like the I don't know the Boatrocker barrel club or something where people can sign up for alerts because I guess the thing is you're, okay you've got a lot of barrels in here but still probably not enough for everyone and everywhere and if they go to the local bottle shop and I can't find that is there any way they can? That's right we're in the process of launching a club called kinfolk which you'll be able to join, pay quarterly fee and get guaranteed options on our special limited edition and release beers. Access to special releases, okay fantastic. I’m in. Do you filter your beer in case a home brewer wanted to do harvest the dregs? No, we don't filter so feel free. They're really this, what is in there is in there always. So some of our sour beers we've got Pediococcus, multiple strains of Brettanomyces and  we've got a beer that is 100% spontaneous fermentation, Braeside beer spontaneous fermentation that is coming out later this year as well and that is full of wild bacteria and they are unpredictable and we even the fresh food source we have to carbonate when we add sugar, doesn't secondly fermentation then you'll get some dough actually thrown up by the Pediococcus and that takes about six to eight weeks to get reabsorbed by the Brettanomyces. Nice well that sounds like a lot of fun what we won't say that for another video episode on how to wrangle dregs but if there's people who try one of your wonderful sour beers and really fall in love with it and I think I want to get a head start on sour brewing one of the ways to do that because there could be multiple you know lives of the house culture as they could have still get off the bottom of your beers and culture it up so we might show that. I'm done. I guess it would be remiss of me not to ask the question I asked you before when wandering around my soil of the Nail. Why the nail? Why does everyone hammer a Nail into their barrels? Yeah very good question, there's a gentleman in America, Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing Company a very famous brewery. They work in inches; they have Home Depot and McMaster and which we don’t have here but have Bunnings instead. So basically, Bunnings sell flathead stainless steel 2.8 millimetres nails. So, you're recommending a stainless-steel nail. It is stainless steel but rust free one six stainless steel. We get a drill bit less than 2.8-millimetre diameter nails, we get a trade pack of drill bits on now that a 2.5 millimetre, so the hole will never be bigger than the nail. So, it's basically like a nice tight seal. It allows us to then draw a sample quickly of our barrel beers that forms pellicle. That means we are not disrupting that pellicle on the top of the barrel by putting a wine thief in or a beer thief in. It allows us to draw a sample that gives representative generally at the middle patch of the beer and it's just quick and easy from the front access of the barrel without having to get in as you can see over racks. It's hard to get on top and often also wine thief in from the top so a nail in the end is perfect. That is a good point. So, it is bit of a work around. Yeah you couldn't get into rows two or three on that case. No so I was gonna use a ladder. And would you do the nail to for your Imperials and your stouts and the wines? Well when we own the barrels we do, when we don’t own the barrels we, Like sometimes you'll with your relationship with Starward something you'll take a barrel on them does it go back there? That’s right. We sometimes have a loan agreement sometimes we buy the barrels off them yeah but generally the burden barrels yes, we put something in. It's a nice virtuous circle wasn't that very sustainable? It is yeah for as long as the wood, give something to both spirits absolutely. So, I guess before we depart and top three tips for home brewers looking to brew beer and barrels. What should they you know if someone walks in and I'm sure they do probably every Thursday Friday night and pick you up and say Matt I have got a barrel gonna do a brewing it, what advice do you have? Um...smell the barrel, inspect it, and make sure it is in sound condition. If it is in sound condition you trust your instincts that it smells good, and then look out for what you wanna bring into it. And join it to join it to a barrel to get it ready for taking the beer. Does it need to be swollen? Do I need to put spirit in it to reabsorb? Then last, I think more about the aging of the barrel. Once you put the beer in I recommend finding your beer if it's a big beer just to help get rid of any yeast. If you see something in, make sure it’s crystal-clear before your beer in. Absolutely once it's done that then I would also recommend aging of beer, put somewhere cool without too many fluctuating temperatures, ideally below 20 degrees. It is gonna be great if you have got that. Maybe under the stairs Under the house, in the cellar. Absolutely and if it is swollen like this, maybe somewhere in woods like a nice cold place... Yes, yeah somewhere in the centre of the house where there are no windows, or I guess the other thing too you could even like somewhat fermentation fridge, you could get a fridge which would. Absolutely Mould and use fridge, something that's going to keep it constant. Yeah, another thing to remember with a small barrel like this is that things will age faster so what live here superior liquid ratio is much bigger. So, I guess after like we want age some of these for three months, six months but I'll recommend it might be on the shorter side of things. Yeah so you would recommend some tasting in you know with the nail or maybe you can do it with a wine thief I guess. Yeah absolutely where we get we have sterile pipette, so we just get right ones so that it does not contaminate but you could look at after a month and the taste. And don't taste too often because all we are doing is exposing that beer to oxygen every time you open it. Yeah and then not the number one and two enemies appear as an oxygen and haters and. Yeah and the other things remember I didn't point out the wooden bungs are okay I figure Silicon bung well. Once you remove that wooden bung and fill it with the air popper silicon bang. Absolutely Yeah exactly. Not a problem. Okay well thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure popping down to the Boatrocker barrel room and we'll update you all with more information on the French toast double brown ale in the next episode. Thank You so much. <End of the Interview>

References and Bibliography for further sauces of brewspiration!

1. Milk the Funk http://www.milkthefunk.com/
2. Michael Tonsmeire, The Mad Fermentationalist – Homebrewing Blog https://www.themadfermentationist.com/
3. Michael Tonsmeire American Sour Beers
4. Embrace the Funk https://embracethefunk.com/2014/06/23/barrelcleaning/