Welcome to a special edition of Beer in Front. I'm your host, Dave's
Allatorus and Beer in Front is a proud member of the Odd Pods media network.
I talked about it last week. Old Irving Brewing in collaboration with Omega
Yeast, they came out with a new version of their Gold Medal award winning
Beezer. This has a yeast that takes away the haze from the hazy IPA.
I was intrigued. I picked up a four pack of it, and
coming up on today's show, I'm going to talk to Matthew Moldenhauer over at
Old Irving. We're going to discuss this new project, this new collaboration.
If you follow me over on YouTube, you'll see I did a blindfolded side
by side compare and of the two beers. I'm going to include the audio
portion of that a little bit later on in the show after I speak to
Matthew. But I will say that both beers were very good, and I'm
never going to do a blindfold taste again because I was completely wrong on everything,
but both beers the thing that I was not wrong on. Both beers
are excellent and you should pick them up if you're in the old Irving distribution
footprint. Earlier this week, I released an episode with Barry and Abigail over
at Pops on Hops. They have a great podcast out of Florida. We
discuss some Florida beers talked about music. So please, where you wherever you're
listening to this now, go back a couple of days when you're done with
this show and check out that episode because that was really good. Also,
summertime, not as many people listen to podcasts because they're doing other things,
and I totally get that, But if you haven't listened this summer, I
feel that the shows that have come out have been probably my best. I've
had a ton of interviews with different breweries, different people in beer and podcasting,
so please have a listen to those because I think you're going to enjoy
him. Those were really really good. This summer has been my best as
far as I feel. My interviewing skills have gotten better, the shows have
gotten a lot better. So if you haven't caught up with everything this summer,
please go back if you have some spare time and catch some of the
earlier episodes from June on. You're going to be bored. The next couple
of weeks because it's just going to be me. I have no more interviews
lined up except for one and a couple of weeks with Go Brewing. They're
a non alcohol hallock brewery in the suburbs of Chicago. I'm going to talk
to them in August, so look for that. But the next couple of
weeks is just going to be Dave, and you're going to get the fifteen
twenty minute quick fun size episodes of Beer in Front. If you have an
idea for the show, or you know somebody that wants to come on a
Jackass in Chicago's podcast and talk about beer, you could get a hold of
me Dave at beer Infront dot com. You could find me on all the
social media channels, even the new ones at Beer in Front. If you're
a fan of podcasts, you should check out my friends over at odd Pods
Media. They have shows for whatever you're interested in, so check them out.
I'm part of the odd Pods Media family. They have better shows than
mine. I mean, finish my show up. Don't just stop now and
skip over to an odd pod show. Finish mine up. But when you're
done, you could check out other great shows such as Because Fuck You,
That's Why, from the Middle, Infectious Groove Music, Supermedia Bros Married with
Television, The beard All Podcast, The Muck Podcast, The Ever Trending Story,
and grab them in the brisket. Whatever you're interested in, you'll find
an odd pod show that you're going to enjoy. So please check out an
odd pods media show one you're done listening to this one. If you're a
long time listener to the show, you know I'm a huge fan of Old
Irving Brewing. They're located at forty four nineteen West Montrose in the city of
Chicago. They're teaming up with Omega Yeast, which is just a block or
two away, on a new series called Brulett. For the first experiment,
they took their gold Medal award winning recipe for Beezer. They had the mad
scientists over at Omega remove the hazy gene. This results in a hazy i
PA that's clear. Joining me on the show again is Matthew Moldenhower from Old
Irving to talk about this. Good morning, Matthew, Good morning Dave.
I'm really excited to be here. Oh yeah, it's a lot of fun.
I always like talking to you now. I grabbed this Thursday after work
and like the original, it's really good. But how how did this collaboration
come about? Well, it's the amazing thing that we've been, as you
said, just a couple of blocks from Omega, and we've worked with them
a few times in the past, especially like when they were first testing out
thialized the East. If you remember how big that's become in a lot of
different areas, really getting that kind of sylvin yunk blond grape aspects out of
the East. And doctor Laura is just brilliant and keeps on getting to really
push the boundaries of East. And I think brewing has always been in the
last decade so focused on hops and even before that, malt and even to
a little bit you know, lesser extent water profile, German cell pillsners versus
hellas versus check style pills. But yess, a lot of times it's been
forgotten. I think a lot of times the biggest thing that people tend to
think about yeast is maybe Belgian yeast versus not where you get those really big
fruity peppery yesters from the Belgian yeast, but not much else. And so
I love that Omega is pushing the boundaries, and we actually our production brewer,
Tim who's also graphic designer, has had this label and concept kind of
in his back pocket for a really long time, and we just saw,
especially with them pushing the boundaries on this one in us getting be one of
the first people to use this east of theirs, that we would kind of
make this the starting point of brew Labs zero zero one, and as they
get to continue to develop East and new aspects of what's going on and brewing,
that we can always be there and be good brewing partners to them.
When I poured it and I knew it was coming out from I think it
was Instagram that I saw the original post, but you know, I get
home from work, I pour it, and it's just like, and what
evil geniuses behind this? First like a week before you came out with a
twelve ounce can and then a clear IPA. I'm like, my world is
turned upside down here. Yeah, I'll be honest, even until I finally
we were at Hazy Days of Summer this weekend and we brought some of the
Brew Labs and I'd had it, and it's still like every time I'm pouring
it, I'm like, it's gonna come out hazy, right, And it's
crazy because we don't centrifuge, which you know a lot of times, especially
at the beginning of when people are making hazies, that was like how you
take out a lot of particulates and everything else, and so this is just
just the yeast that's coming out and really cleaning it up and turning into what
it is. You know, we talked before we hit record real briefly late.
You know how I think our mind plays tricks on us with color and
appearance, because when I had it on its own, I thought I was
picking up like more bitterness more like associated with the West Coast, but it's
not, because it's exactly the same recipe, correct, Yeah, And the
only difference is the yeast is our Besa recipes citron mosaic and that's it.
What's crazy to me is if you're familiar with our kind of our midwest West
Coast ipa with the more bitterness suttinel, it looks like subtenel where you have
that like little bit of that amber hue, but it's clear and it's even
crazy how our brewers and myself I think where it's going to be really interesting
and I think it's amazing. Like I saw your YouTube video where you did
a side by side. I hope a lot more people get to do that
because it is just fun to try out something that's you know, looks completely
different but taste so similar. But there's a lot of people that you kind
of have beer nerds not beer nerds people. You have some people that love
hazies and some people that hate hazies, And I think you're going to find
a lot of people that they'll see this and they'll look at it and they'll
go, well, I don't like hazies, but I'll drink that. Yeah,
Like, oh, so you like a lot of the flavor components.
Sometimes I think just certain aspects turn people off. And some people don't want
that milky, creamy color of a hazy. Some people absolutely adore it.
And if we can get a couple more people to enjoy our beers getting to
try something new, I love that. And for me, the big thing
I think that it's really cool in the future is I think how you play
with like a pale hell is really interesting. How you can kind of mix
the lines and blur the lines and get a really soft, juicy tropical body.
Maybe we can add in some more hops to the boil, have a
little bit more of best of both worlds. And I think it allows for
a lot more experimentation, even within the IPA pale hell category, which we
already know has been explored so much but has great partners that keep pushing the
boundaries. It allows us to do the same. Yeah, and it was
even weird when I did, you know, the blind taste of both of
them, the first one which was the clear one, the brew Lab experiment.
I would have sworn by mouthfeel it was a hazy, but I was
completely wrong. So it's to me it was just so weird, like I'm
going to have to do more just tastings where I don't know what it is
and try to judge it that way because I thought it was interesting. Like
I would have sworn up and down that was hazy just for Mouthfield, but
it's not. All of the yeast did was just take away the haze.
Yep. That's why I love double blind tastings. It's why it's amazing to
have places like the Great American Beer Fascinalariators, where you know they're saying you're
looking for this style and you get no other information except for tasting the beer,
and what do you get out of it? It's really interesting. Now
it's always been out. I mean we're recording this on Tuesday, so it
came out I think last Wednesday. What's the feedback been so far in this
short time frame. I think a lot of people are just kind of amazed.
We have a lot of people that obviously no one loved bees are and
so you're getting a lot of people who just want to try. They're like,
I don't I don't believe that this is the same thing, and I've
follow in that same boat every time I look at it. It's hard for
me to do the same type of thing. And so if anyone has black
glasses, you know I tasting glasses, I definitely recommend trying that. It's
just a really fun experiment to play with. And so far the feedback has
been great, and I hope that Omegan doctor Laura keeps on putting out new
fun yeast for us to play with at the brewery. Is there anything like
you could get like a half a pint of beach or a small poor of
beach? You are people doing a tasting. Are you doing anything like that
at the brewery. We don't have us up on the menu, but we
do tasters of all of our beers. Yeah. So you can get a
you know, a three four ounce I think it's a four ounce pour of
each and then just have him side by side. Now, if you're real
nice, you know, talk to our bartenders Katie or Chris, our GM
Josh asking to put a napkin around it so that you can have it a
little bit blind. Yeah. Now, in addition to this, you also
came out with the week before one that I love. Now this was done
with a metal band, so this is a different kind of hellis. I
thought this was excellent. What got you into this? How did this collaboration
come about? Yeah, well, we actually this is our second collaboration with
them. The first one, I guess titled Blood Letter, which is the
name of the band. We're friends with one of the lead people there,
and they actually the beer that we first did with him, which is a
red ipa, which one of my absolute favorites. But I think all around
this was something that the band, Trevor, the brewers, myself. There
was a little bit of everything that people wanted the band and Trevor really wanted
a just like a summer crusher or something that you could put down really easy
minds Trevor, you know, kind of those macro style beers, but getting
to do something a little bit different for us. This was also our first
adjuncted lagger. We used a little bit flake corn. And then this was
also our first time that we ever tried at twelve ounce can and so Tim,
our production lead, he had to readjust all of our canning line and
you know, fingers crossed, were like, we're not going to lose barrels
of beer just trying to adjust a canning line, and that one pretty swimmingly.
And then for me this was really exciting. We didn't really put any
into distro because we weren't sure twelve bounce cans we're getting them work, so
we didn't want to promise it to people and then not have any. And
then we just wanted to see how fast people would really take to a twelve
bounce can at the brewpub for us, and it's going really well. And
so as we're doing this kind of right before we're opening up our new production
facility, I think it gives us a little bit more more mindfulness of what
we can do and what we might be able to do in the future,
whether that's you know, six packs of you know, some of our core,
whether that's twelve packs, mixed packs, nineteen twos. I think this
gives us a lot of courage to try a couple new things. I had
it, and I thought it was probably the lagger of the summer. There's
been so many great breweries putting out good like you mentioned crushable loggers, and
there's just been a ton of them this summer. But that one, if
it's not my favorite, it's right at the top. I thought that was
absolutely killer and keep those coming. Well, thank you. That's very humbling.
I love to hear that, hopefully speak on behalf of Trevor and the
very is just like, we love being able to keep doing what we love
doing, and anytime that, you know, other people can enjoy what we're
doing as well, it just it warms our heart. You know. I
think most people, like if you're not like a beer geek, would associate
Old Irving with IPAs and Hazy's and right police Oka's Beezer's a huge seller,
won a gold medal for the first Hazy category. But between this and you
won another medal for Della in the Kolsh category, You're not a one trick
pony. Your Sour series is great, Your Barrel series is second to none.
What other tricks do you have up your sleeve? Are you coming out
with any new styles once the new facility opens, Yeah, I mean you're
going to see a couple of things. One is that our brewpub once we
get caught up being able to kind of meet demand of the different aspects.
They said, like, our Sour series is one of our fastest growing series.
It's been really hard to keep up with, and we've had a lot
of patients with a lot of our accounts as we switched flavors, you know,
kind of seasonally, having a little bit of auto stocks actually coming in
this August. We have a lot of a lot of old time ears that
are coming back that we haven't had a long time that we do once a
year, and we also have a brand new Triple Triple Hazy Heady Bear Apocalypse
that's going to be on its way. We're also going to have Oktoberfest coming
out soon. We were one of the people jumping in in Junior. July
comes out mid August. It's one of our favorites. It's been seeing in
tanks for three months. We're getting ready for that. Next week we'll have
our till Death German style pilsner, one of my personal favorites. It was
made for Trevor and Amanda's wedding anniversary, well wedding and now wedding anniversary,
and so we keep bringing that back, and then Dogie is coming back,
and that's one of my personal favorites. Yeah, and I'm really excited for
that. That one made it really far into the World Beer Cup and got
really good reception. Obviously didn't didn't take an award there, but we're submitting
that one to GABF as well, and so we're hoping. We're hoping that
we have a couple of new things coming down that will really excite people.
And then we'll also have a really small batch sour that we're doing with Miko's
Italian Ice. So we're really excited did for kind of this Italian Ice Hour
that we'll be coming down the line. And then early fall we'll be bringing
back cinnamon prost, which is one of my personal favorites that white stout Saigon
cinnamon Madagascar Vanilla just really beautiful. And if we have a little bit more
space, which I hope we will with the new place opening, I'm hoping
that we do a couple of variants on the Cinnamon pros as well. All
right, awesome, Well you have a collaboration with a yeast company in a
metal band. Whence a collaboration with a podcast coming out? I don't know.
You know, that's once we get hopefully through the end of the year
and we can finally catch up on things, then we'll be able to have
a couple more fun things coming down the pipeline. Yeah, Now you mentioned
that the hell Is, the different kind of hell Is is not in distro
yet. Is the brew Lamb's going to be available in the distribution market or
resent a taproom only? In cans? Cases only? There was a very
small amount that went out. It's Tuesday now, probably are all of them
gone from our distributor. I know I allocated some presold some system places,
so you'll see it popping up at a lot of your craft beer stores,
a couple of the Bunny's. But yeah, there's about forty fifty cases that
will be outside in the Chicagoland area. Because we wanted to people. Besides,
you're set the Brewpub to be able to kind of experience a what I
like to call Crystal beezer. Yeah, is there another brew Lab series that's
in the works or are you just waiting for what the Good Doctor comes up
with a little bit of wearing on the Good Doctor Trevor and Lands and doctor
Laura, and they're always in communication on what they're playing with and what they're
doing. We actually were very lucky as well that we have great relationships our
new brewer at the Brewpub, Matt actually was one of Omega Yeast brewers.
Okay, so uh he's over at our Brewpub now and he has a lot
of experience and a lot of knowledge and still has great relationships with them.
And so it's just always an ongoing aspect of what really intrigues them and what's
going on for us. I think it's always a little bit of having to
be patient. I always want to see what the new hop is, what
the new yeast is, and sometimes, you know, it takes ten to
twenty years for the development of a new hop. The you know, the
hot HBC five eighty six that's been around, that's been a hop that's taken
over a decade to really develop and grow and kind of get to this commercial
area. And so we are lucky that we get to be on the forefront
a lot of these aspects with doctor Laura Um. But you know, there's
a lot of trial and error. Every every really fun thing that they get
to bring to us to test. There's a lot more that they're just doing
as experiments. Yeah. Well, Matthew, I appreciate you taking time out
this morning. It's early in the morning as we're recording this, so I'm
gonna let you get going. But once again, Old Irving. They're at
forty four nineteen West Montrose. You need to head over there. Not only
is the beer gray, the food is killer. Get the cheese kurds and
thank me later. But Matthews, thank you again for coming on. This
was a lot of fun and I'm sure i'll see you at the brewery soon.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Welcome back. You're
saying to yourself, day, what's what the orange do rag around your neck?
I got a treat for you today, Old Irving. This is our
gold Medal Award winning beezer. This one hazy IPA category a couple of years
back. They've come out with the new beer, exact same recipe, but
they used the different yeast in collaboration with Omega yeast. This removes the haze
from the hazy IPA exact same recipe, the east is a little bit different.
So in a few minutes I'm gonna put this blindfold over my eyes and
have them both and see if I could tell the difference. So stay two.
Both of these beers check in at seven point nine percent. They use
citra in mosaic hops now on the new brew Lab series. If you could
see it there with the Omega yeast, they have something that they did removes
the haziness, some gene in the yeast, some voodoo sorcery magic that they
came up with. This is the first in a series of brew Lab experiments.
This just came out a couple days ago. I picked it up on
my way home from work the other day. I'm excited to have it side
by side. I had this on Thursday. When I picked it up,
I thought it was great, but I said to myself self, you should
have the original and see if you can tell the difference. I'm gonna crack
the arm gonna have Ruby Crackne's open poorum, and I'm gonna discuss on the
video if I could tell the difference or the difference between the two. And
I'm gonna put this ridiculous orange dew rag over my face and be blindfolded.
That's coming up, all right, So I'm gonna try This could go south
in a hurry because I'm probably gonna knock shit over. But I have the
first one in my hand. I don't know which one is, which I'll
see if I could tell the difference. This smells really good. I get
a nicer Romi here from the mosaic and the citra hops. I can't tell
you the color or if there's good carbonation because I can't see. The taste
is really good, very hazy at I'm totally guessed here and I can't see
shit. But if I had to guess, I'm gonna say this is the
og Beezer based on Mouthfield. It feels more like a hazy I mean,
it's a really good beer. I gotta set this down here and pray for
me that I don't knock one over because Ruby'll kill me, all right.
I think I have the other one in my hand. So here's the other
one. I don't get as much from the aroma on this one as I
did from the first. I think if I had to pick, I think
this one tastes a little bit better. But I couldn't tell you if this
is hazy or not, like I would have swore the first one would have
been the hazy on the mouthfield, But tasting this, I don't taste the
difference. I think I'm getting a little more bitter this at the back with
this, which would make me believe and this is I'm just totally making this
shit up as I talk, but this would taste more like a West Coast
to me. So I'm gonna guess this is the clear. But now I'm
dying to find out I look like the guy from Loverboy or something that was
the hazy. So fuck all of this. I was totally wrong on everything.
What do I know? But this tastes really good. Yeah, that's
weird. I didn't get as much aroma from the second one as I did
from the first, Like, I get a lot more aroma from this,
and I mean they're both great beers. That's really good. If I didn't
have the glasses framed properly. I couldn't see. So look at the nice
Beard l podcast and the beer in front glass. I don't know if I
could tell you which one I like more. If I do a lot of
it's probably just visual and what you think based on what you're appearing or how
it looks. The original one rock solid. It's one gold medal, so
don't listen to me, listen to judges. But that's really good too.
I don't know now that I'm looking at him side by side. I could
tell the difference in taste when I was blindfolded. I thought this tasted a
little bit better, and I thought there was more bitterness at the back and
was a West Coast So what the hell do I know? But they're both
really good beers. You could pick them up at Old Irving. The Brewlab
Series I don't know if it's going to be distributed, so you could grab
it on draft or act the Brewery Beezer you could get everywhere in the city.
You could get it a jewel. Even so, when you see anything
from Old Irving Beezer, if you're in the neighborhood, stop by and pick
up Brewlab Series one. Both of them put it in the carts and I
don't think I'm ever going to wear a pinefold again. Thanks for watching,
all right. The beer I'm going to talk about now is from Old Irving.
This is a collaboration with the metal band Blood Letter. This is a
different kind of Hellis. It's a light lagger at four point eight percent and
it's in a twelve violence can. So let's crack this open and have a
different kind of Hellis. Different kind of Hellas is a really nice light golden
color. There was a lot of carbonation here, a lot of foam.
Smells terrific. I mean this absolutely smells fantastic. That's just really good.
Get the nice malt taste up front, very little bitterness at the back.
This is something you could definitely have more than one of a flavor in this
twelve ounce can. I'm not used to having an OIB beer in a twelve
ounce can, but this packs a lot of flavor. It's really good.
OIB is known for beezer or. They're known for their hazy IPAs. Their
IPAs, but don't sleep on their loggers. This one is great, just
like Della, which is an award winning beer in itself. So OIB is
not just a hazy ipa brewery. This is terrific. If you see this
one, by all means put it in the cart. This is a different
kind of hellas. All right, that's going to wrap things up for this
week's special edition of Beer in Front. I thank you for listening. I
need to thank again Matthew Moldenhower over at Old Irving. That was a lot
of fun talking with him. Please, if you're in the area, or
if you're in their district, you shouldn't footprint pick up the brew Lab Series
one and don't forget to get a different kind of hellas. I'm taking next
week off, going to recharge the batteries a little bit. I will see
you in two weeks on Beer in Front. And remember sometimes the beer in
front of you is the best one yet. All right, have a good
couple of weeks. I will see you in two