Speaker 1: This is Beer in Front, part of the Odd Pods
Media Network and the Beer Media Group. Sometimes the beer
in front of you is the best one yet. I'll
talk to people around the beer world and get their
stories all about beer. That's Beer in Front and it's
coming up now. Welcome to Beer in Front. It's Labor Day,
so I hope you're having a good labor day. I'm
your host. Dave's alatoris Beer in Front is a proud
odd Pods Media Network member and charter member of the
Beer Media Group. This week I'm talking malt Riverbend Malt
House in Asheville, North Carolina. They've been putting out some
great malt since twenty ten. Today I'm going to talk
to Brent Manning, who's a co founder of River Bend.
We're going to talk all about malt, and later on
in the show, I'm gonna have a couple malt focused
beers and this is all malt. We're not doing hops
this week. It's all malt. So I love malt. I
love malt focused beers. It was great to talk to
Brent kind of get a idea of what's going on
in the malt world. It's also craft malt month. I
did not know this until I talked to Brent, So
September is craft malt month, and I'll talk a little
bit more about that later on in the episode. But
go find yourself a good malt focused beer if you're
in the North Carolina area, get something that's made with
River Bend malt and enjoy. In beer and beverage news,
ab Morey this is a global bakery and yeast division
of Associated British Foods. They've acquired Omega Yeast. This was
effective earlier in August. I had Lance on from Omega
a couple years ago on the show to talk about them,
So I mean they congratulations to them. Hopefully they made
some nice coin on this. It doesn't say what's going
to happen to the facility here in Chicago right on
Montrose by the Expressway, or its employees, so hopefully they'll
keep this here in Chicago. But ab Morey is purchased
Omega Yeast. If you're interested in owning a brewery, Left
Hand is selling stock. They're trying to scale up. I
guess this is through a company called Funder, and they're
launching a community investment at about thirty six dollars a share,
So if you're interested in investing in a brewery, you
could check out weep Under and you could own a
part of Left Hand locally here in Chicago. If you
go to Dubtail on Sunday, September eighth, between one and three,
they're doing a gear swap in social So if you
have outdoor gear that you want to swap with other
like minded people, head over to Dubtail. They do have
this cool looking do rag that I don't have any
gear you've seen videos of me, I don't. I'm not
the outdoors seat type, but I would like this do rag,
So I might have to go on Sunday just to
get the do rag. Workers at the Stone Brewing Facility
in Virginia. Now Stone is owned by Sapporo. They've begun
a union drive with the teams, so keep an eye
out for that. Beyonce is teaming up with Nnessey to
come out with Sir Davis Whiskey. This is going to
be a fifty one percent rye forty nine percent malted barley,
and it's going to be eighty nine bucks a bottle.
So if you're looking for some whiskey from Beyonce, you
gotta find Sir Davis do Sekis is given college football
fans a chance to get some pre beer whenever a
college football team goes for the two point conversion. Check
out dose ekis dot com slash a go for dots
to learn more. It's not available in every state. It's
not available here in Illinois, but it's available I think
nine or ten different states. It's a promo with Drew Brees,
former quarterback of the New Orleans Saints and Purdue boiler Makers.
So if you need to get some pre dose ekis,
check out those com slash go for dose Not only
do I love beer, I love saltwater taffy. Like if
I get a bag of saltwater taffy, it's not last
in the day. But now lining Coogle is coming up
with lakewater taffy. This is gonna be like I don't
know if it's made with I think it's imfused with
summer shandy and real lakewater from the Great Lakes. So
you need to check out Fresh Daffy dot com slash
Liney's Lakewater. Think you can get a bag of this
for about six bucks, you know, including shipping and handling.
But I need to get this because I'm a huge
fan of saltwater taffy. Soul. Now they're coming up with
this lighted umbrella. It's a solar umbrella for food vendor safety.
So this looks really cool. This announced in Chicago this
week and it's called Soul sol Or Umbrellas. It's a
solar powered umbrella designed to illuminate Latino street vendors carts
and create a better sense of safety. So this looks
really cool from Soul. Finally, and this always happens after
I record something, but late breaking news out of Chicago.
Ravinia versus Brevinia has come to an end. Ravinia Brewing
They've announced the settlement with the festival on Friday. The
craft brewery is going to rebrand. I've talked about this before.
I've been to Vinia. I've talked to people with Bravinia.
You know what side I'm on. But they're also a
small business and spending a shit ton of money on
legal fees. There's no way to become a successful business,
so they're going to rebrand. Now I'm reading this on
the Chicago Tribune that I guess the Ravinia Festival is
going to provide assistance during the transition but finally the
lawsuits over. It's done. They'll be rebranding to a new name,
but the beers and everything will hopefully stay the same.
I'm assuming they're going to but I haven't been to
the Highland Park spot, so I can't speak for that,
but I know people that work there. I've been to
the one here in the city, and I think it's phenomenal.
The beer is great, the food is great, so please
continue to support them. If you guys want to rename
this like the Beer in Front Brewery, trust me, my
attorneys will be a lot nicer than the festival's attorneys.
But I'm glad this is finally over. Wash our hands
of this and let's can can you making great beer,
great food? But definitely check out whatever they're going to
be called, and it wouldn't Park in Chicago, But I mean,
they're great people. It's a great brewery. The food is
phenomenal as well. Get that deep friede ramen. Trust me
on this one, you're gonna like it. But I'm glad
this is finally over, and I'm glad everyone could finally
move on. River Bend malt House opened in Ashville, North Carolina,
in twenty ten. It was the first craft malt house
east of the Mississippi, producing quality malt for breweries and distilleries.
For the past three years, it has been included in
Ink Magazine's Fastest Growing Private Companies and is the first
regentified malt house in the world. Brent Manning, a co
founder of River Bend, is joining me today. Brent, thanks
so much for taking time out to talk about malt.
Speaker 2: You bet, yeah, yeah, appreciate it. And yeah, just we
were one of the first us in valley malt up
in Massachusetts. We're kind of kicking off about the same time,
but yeah, yeah, it was an exciting time. You know,
around twenty ten, Kraft Beer was really really roaring into it,
this new reality, So it was exciting.
Speaker 1: Well, opening a spot in Ashville. I'm going to need
you to get me some lottery tickets or something. I mean,
you picked a great part to do this, with a
fantastic beer and brewery scene. The builds Moore one of
my favorite music venues around the country, and the Orange
Peel is there, and now River Bend. What do you
guys have in the soil and in the water that
makes Ashville such a great spot?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is. It's a great spot. It's been
you know, it's been a tourism destination for well over
one hundred years. You know, we've had a huge creative
class as part of our calling our city home for
a long time. So it's definitely a special spot. And
when my my co founder Brian Simpson and I good buddies,
we were environmental consultants together on the coast of North
Carolina and early two thousand's and you know, the the
the housing market collapsed, we went looking for you know
what what's career two point zero looked like? And uh,
you know, Asheville definitely bubbled to the top. My my
wife and I had had seen Asheville as a little
escape hatch and had gone hiking and several times up here,
got married up here, and uh, you know the old
job the old joke is after your third visit, you're
looking for a house. And uh that that's pretty much
where we were very much. You know, I loved the energy,
the creativity, and and of course the outdoor opportunities were
just incredible. Brian's a trail runner and I'm into fishing
and mountain biking, and so it was an easy decision.
The real trick was how are we gonna We had
to fabricate a job to stay here basically, so so
that that was that was the wild thing. You know,
we we looked around. I was a home brewer at
the time, and we were looking around at you know,
craft beer scene, and we're like, man, that this is
really cool that the city's got this going on. But
you know, the Brian and I are very focused on
sustainability and we we'd done a biodiesel cooperative together, and
we we started looking around and we're like, well, way,
there's no local ingredients going into this these beers. And
you know, we're such a foodie town and we're so
we celebrate all things local and you know, heirloom produce
and so forth. And we started down this path of
you know, how do we connect farmers to this craft
beer industry. You know, at the time, we weren't even
thinking about spirits. It was just one hundred percent beer.
And it was you know a lot of exciting conversations
with extension professionals in North Carolina and Virginia, and you know,
they helped us school us on you know, what what
was available to us in terms of small grains and
you know at the time that there was nothing really
in the way of small scale malt houses in the US,
and so there wasn't wasn't much of a roadmap on
that front, and so it was it was a kind
of a di y f from the get go. Brian
went and bought a meat smoker from Sam's Club and
duct taped a bathroom fan to it and that was
our first kiln and so it definitely humble beginnings there,
but it was exciting, you know. I mean we we
kind of envisioned a situation where you know, we worked
with local farmers get grain into the malt house. And
you know, this was right, so the south slope of
downtown is kind of our brewing district and so as
that was forming, we were like, oh, well, this will
be cool. You know, we'll get a batch of malt
finished and then we'll load it in the delivery van
and you know, just like the milkman will bring people
their malt. And it did not go that smoothly, of course,
but the idea was there and we were hell bent
on executing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that spike you mentioned, like working with
local family owned farms, I mean that just seems like
a win win for everyone. The farmers get their product out,
the brewers get to use locally sourced malt. I mean,
it just seems like the perfect scenario there.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, you know, And just to kind of
to frame it up for your audience, you know, we're
sitting in Asheville in the western part of North Carolina.
The closest major malt house to Iville is Breece and Hilton, Wisconsin,
and they're buying barley from you know, Wyoming and so forth,
and so it's about a two thousand mile round trip
really from the farm to the fermentor. And you know,
when we looked at at our model, we said, well,
let's go you know, a couple hundred miles and see,
you know, what can we do within that scope. And
so that that was an exciting challenge there. There was
basically not much in the way of small grains infrastructure
for North Carolina growers that were working with flour mills,
for example, growing we can grow top quality of soft
red wheat in the South as a winter grain from
October to June, and you know, but typically these farmers
are harvesting and trucking directly to the flour mill and
selling it right then and there. Our model was like,
harvest it, please take care of it. We'll take a
truckload of it as a time throughout the year. And
it was different. You know, we needed sea cleaners, we
needed storage, you know, folks, it was quite quite a
value chain to stitch together to get top quality grain
to the mallhouse in a good fashion, in a safe fashion,
I should say. You know, the great thing about the
winter barley growing season, though, is that it acts as
a cover crop, so we get a lot of environmental
benefits from that point. And then we're also not competing
with corn and soybeans here in North Carolina, the main
cash crops, so we're actually an additional paycheck for our farmers.
Speaker 1: It's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it has a lot of great benefits, and
you know, we've steadily built our network over the years.
I always joke with people, it can't be local enough.
So if I drive an hour north, I'm in Tennessee,
an hour and twenty minutes, I'm in Virginia. And the
minute I meet brewers in those states, they say, well,
what do you have from my state? And so we
you know, obviously started with a solid base in North Carolina,
but it branched out and now get grained from Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama.
South Carolina has been a little tricky, just again from
an infrastructure and climate standpoint, But yeah, trying to pull
grain out of every southern state that we can.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's cool. Now you mentioned earlier your co founder
getting the smoker out of the Sam's Club. What exactly
so you buy the grain from the farmers and then
what exactly you know A cliff notes version is you
know how you get it from the farmers to the breweries.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, yeah. So the process of malting is basically
designed to manage the enzomatic digestion of the cell walls
inside of each kernel as that are converted into a
starch or simple sugar, and so you can make alcohol
out of raw ingredients. Is just really inefficient. So if
a maltster is in between the raw grain harvest and
the brewery or distillery, you're going to basically manage that
cellular breakdown through three main steps, steeping, germinating, and kilning. Steeping,
we take the grain from about twelve percent moisture where
it's harvested it goes through three wet dry cycles up
to about forty five percent moisture. From here, the grain
is alive. We're essentially tricking the grain into growing by
steeping it. This way, the grain germination process kicks off
enzymes of release from the embryo. That adjustive work begins.
The maltsters then manages the germination process in a cool
condition for anywhere from three to five days, depending on
what type of product we're making, will go my lights
are on kicking me off again. But so that three
to five day process, we will essentially decide the level
of modification or cellular breakdown that we're looking for. And
at that point, you know, we're essentially setting the table
for is this going to be a light, grassy, floral
pilsner or is this going to be like a rich,
you know, sweet aromatic, honey toned munich. And that would
be you know, like the five day germination link. And
we couple that with a kilning regime that's twenty four
hours long. Three main steps free dry forestry and curing,
and again you're going to go anywhere from one hundred
and twenty to two hundred and twenty fahrenheit over this process,
and as the maltster designs the recipe, we're either highlighting
that grassy note of the pilsner malt or accentuating those rich,
deep toffee caramel notes of a dark Munich product. So
there's a lot of a lot of room to play.
We only have maybe half a dozen raw materials to
work with, but primarily it's barley. But we can develop,
you know, dozens of pro spot tweaking, all these.
Speaker 1: Variables going, you know, with such a vibrant beer scene,
it has to be extremely rewarding for you the team
there at River Bend, when you could go to a
local brewery and have something that you helped create.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, this is this is this feeling never
gets old, you know. We uh, it's it's been so fun,
especially as we've gotten a little bit more established, you know,
and and and we began to have we just did
some fun collaborations last week, a good good account of
ours and Knoxville, Tennessee print Shop. You know, we we
had an opportunity to develop a traditional steam beer recipe
together and uh, you know that's going to come out
in a couple of weeks. And then we've got flagship
Beers like Ashville Brewings. Perfect day, I PA and you know,
I always just it just feels great to you know,
belly up to the bar with some bodies and order
around and you know, tell everybody with pribub I'd like
had a hand in making this happen, so exactly, it's
definitely special.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned you also work with distilleries outside of
craft breweries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is definitely you know, I always tell people
it wasn't ever, it wasn't even mentioned in our business
plan to include a distillery business because at the time,
it just wasn't a thing in North Carolina. I think
it was technically legal to make distilled spirits, but it
just wasn't on our radar. And flash forward to twenty
twenty four. It's now probably about thirty percent of our business.
And yeah, and it's a different, totally different market. You know,
they're most distillers if they're doing a traditional bourbon or
looking for malt to do a lot of the heavy
lifting in terms of the conversion of that raw horn.
So we've got that's kind of an interesting challenge from
a maltster's perspective to really push enzymes to the forefront
in terms of your goals for product development. And then
on the flip side, we have the American single malt
whiskey movement that's continuing to gather steam, and that's really,
in my opinion, the best of both worlds. We get
to take, you know, all the deep rich flavors of
specialty malt that we can create here in in the
malt house, and they transfer all the way to the
finished distill it. And it's just been really fun to
explore these sort of this sort of new wave of
American single malt recipes with some of our customers.
Speaker 1: Like here locally, you know, I'm from Chicago. Like, the
barrel aged beers are really popular in the winter. If
you've gotten to a point yet where a brewery could
get a barrel from a whiskey product that you helped
create and then a beer as well, I mean, that
would just be the perfect circle. There. We're close.
Speaker 2: We're I've got some I've got some guys in in
Tennessee that are starting to circulate some barrels. Uh they're
they're called Leaper's Fork. They they they make an excellent
bottled in Bond, Tennessee whiskey and bourbon, and so some
of their barrels are getting out and about around the
Tennessee brewing community, and yeah, it's fun to connect these dots,
you know. And we have even some folks that are
are legally registered as Bruce stilleries, so okay, they sometimes
the barrel doesn't even leave the building, but it gets
to do double duty.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Can a brewery or distillery, can they call you
guys up over a river bend and say, hey, we're
looking for this specific type of malt. Does that happen?
Can you do that for them? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, our custom malt program has been a lot
of fun. It's really where we get to stretch our
legs from a creative standpoint.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's, uh, we've got a couple of distilleries right now
that we're developing some specialty malts for and you know
it's really cool because they'll they'll typically give us sort
of bookend it. They'll say, you know, we're working with
product X from this malt house in Germany and product
Y from this malt house in Canada. Can you put
something right in the middle of that in terms of color,
flavor profiles, et cetera. Or you know, we've also got
our you know, we've got a range of different smokers
and different woods that people can experiment with, so that's
always fun. You know, I've got an account that every
year they trim their fig tree, they fill up their
pickup truck and they bring it to the malt house
so that we can smoke some malt with the fig
wood and you know, just fun projects like that. Yeah,
it's good stuff.
Speaker 1: It's cool that you're the first regentified malt house in
the world. What does regenerative agriculture, how does that work?
And you know, frankly, why is it important to everyone?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this was a great step for us that
we're super proud of. So regenerative agriculture is basically a
suite of practices that's designed to restore the biological health
of the soil. And so that can include practices like
no till farming, where you're basically limiting the amount of
disturbance that's happening during the different cycles of production during
the year. You know, there's all sorts of strategies, you know,
cover cropping. Cover cropping can be as simple as a
single monocrop in an off season that just basically holds
soil in place and contributes to organic matter development. But
you know, beyond that, what we see is, you know,
this restoration of soil help also has the added benefit
of carbon sequestration. So there's a tremendous amount of benefits
for the planet. There's our waterways, our air quality, you
name it. There's a lot of winds here, and so
we're excited to support this. When we originally started the
mald House, we were organic and everything was you know,
we delivered the grain in a biodiesel powered van and
you know, we were just just as utopian as you
could possibly imagine. And we had a really rough harvest
on the second year and we kind of looked at
ourselves and ate, well, we can either start working with
conventional grain or we can close. So so the idea was, well,
let's go conventional, but you know, keep it local. And
then when this reginative opportunity came about, we said, this
is a great opportunity to come back to our roots
and really put our money where our mouth is when
it comes to the environmental stewardship side of what we're
trying to accomplish.
Speaker 1: Looking at the press release that Emily sent over from Radcraft,
looked like revenue was up one hundred and thirty five
percent over the past three years, placing you on inc
Magazine's Top five thousand fastest Growing private Companies. So not
only are you doing things at riverbend the right way,
the business is growing, you're getting national attention for your work.
That has to be extremely satisfying as well, because one
you start a business to make money, So I mean
that has to be really rewarding as well.
Speaker 2: It is, it is, It's it's been quite the ride.
We made a big jump in twenty eighteen. We went
from a ten thousand square foot facility to about a
sixty thousand square foot facility and you know, big machines
versus just our traditional floor malt and you know, it
was a big jump. And I think you know what
we find the most you know, satisfying about the INK
five thousand thing is that you know, we're making an
agriculturally based product, manufacturing it in a week long process.
So this is this is old school manufacturing basically. And
if you look at a lot of our cohorts on
this INK five thousand list, and not to take anything
away from them, but they're in tech, and tech is
inherently easier to scale than agriculturally based manufacturing, and so
it's pretty gratifying that we've been able to kind of
hold our own across in that kind of modern business landscape.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially you know, you're kind of taking on big
agra here, so getting able to do things to right
way like you're doing it, keeping it local in private,
that's fantastic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it feels good. And you know, we very
much appreciate the support from our brewers and distillers. We've
got typically in a given year, maybe about three hundred
across the region that support us and then and those
are large and small operations, and it's it's been really
gratifying to grow the business we're We started, we had
two ten ton vessels and the floor malt in our
expanded sixty thousand square foot facility, and we're now at
four ten ton vessels and on our way to processing
about five million pounds this year, so quite when we started,
we did I think forty thousand pounds the first year,
so it's it's been quite the ride from a single
truckload to five million pounds.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, my cousin still lives in Ashville, so
I'm going to have to nice Yeah, I first, and
some stuff my way. You actually you mentioned and you
got married there. She was probably in the band that
performed at your wedding because she's all been doing that
for years, emporium. But yeah, so I'll have to have
her send me some Ashville beer so I could have
something that's made, you know, from River Bend.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, we've got a great contingent here. You know,
we've got our buddies at Asheville Brewing, Twin Leaf across
the street, Wicked Wed silicoa Dissolver. There's all sorts of
options for picking out local stuff. So yeah, she should
be able to put a nice care package together for you.
Speaker 1: Oh that's awesome. Well, Brent, I really appreciate you taking
time out this morning to talk about Malt, to talk
about River Bend. And this was really great. I hope
everybody's enjoying this because it was really fascinating to learn
about your company and also the basic you know, how
you go from farmer to glass.
Speaker 2: Right, right, It's always fun to watch the light bulb
turn on. So yeah, I appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1: All right, Brent, take care of yourself. We'll talk to
you later, sir, all right, cheers.
Speaker 3: If you like fun, then you're gonna love the beard
Out Podcast. It's a podcast where we talk about two
of the greatest things in the world, beer and weird Out.
Speaker 4: And frankly, we talk more about weird Out than anything
because he's.
Speaker 3: The gift that keeps on given.
Speaker 4: So join us as we talk through weird Al's career,
what he needs to us, and we have some very
special guests on to discuss the magic that is Alfred
Matthew Yankovic.
Speaker 3: Beard Out part of the Odd God's Media Network.
Speaker 1: Oh that was really great. I think once again Brent
Manning over at River Bend Malt House for coming on
and talking about malt September as our recording this and
this episode's coming out on the second of September. We're
day two into craft Malt Month. You could find if
you go to their website craft maltmonth dot com, you
can learn all about craft malt. You could find places
near you, malt houses near you that are doing things
the right way. This is really cool. There's a couple
places in Illinois downstate that do this, so this is
really cool. And frankly, you don't know you buy a
beer at you know, your liquor store or whatever. You
don't know where the malts coming from the hops are
coming from, So this is really cool. Hopefully we could
get more breweries involved that will purchase malt from these
local independent malt houses supporting family farms in everyone's region.
This is really cool. I know when I spoke to
Billy Goat Hop Farm, I mean it was the same thing,
like learning about how local independent places like this really
make craft beer and make craft beer better. And it
would be great to see more breweries utilizing craft products
from smaller independent companies. So please check out craft Mault Month.
They have a list of events around the country that
you could participate in. You know, malt houses around the country.
Check for your state. I love this logo, Brent. If
you're listening, you're a big shooter. I need to buy.
Send me a link where I could purchase a Craft
Malt Month T shirt or hat because I will definitely
buy this and wear this proudly. But enjoy Craft Malt
Month everyone, and please check out craft Maltmonth dot com.
All right, the beer that's in front of me now.
After talking to Brent over Hat River Bend, I wanted
to have some malti focused beers here for the week.
And luckily it's Octoberfest season, so everyone's coming out with
an Octoberfest. I'm going to have one from Lakefront up
in Milwaukee. They put out some really good stuff. This
one is a Marsen style. Now you'll find two different
kinds of Octoberfest beers out there. One is a Marsin
one is the fest beer. They're both great, But this
one happens to be a mars And style. I'm looking
forward to it. According to the can, it's amber red
and color and multibody make this an excellent German style lagger.
So who am I to argue with the great folks
over at Lakefront, So let's crack open. They're Octoberfest. Wow,
what an absolutely gorgeous color here, dark amber, ruby red,
spectacular color. Good boam, what a great aroma. You really
get all those malt notes out of the aroma. Being
so IPA heavy in the craft beer world, it's nice
this time of year just to have a good malt
focused beer. This one smells great, it looks great. I
can't wait to taste this here. Oh yeah, man, that
is so good. You get all the sweetness up front,
very smooth, good clean finish, good mouthfeal here. There's no
bitterness to this whatsoever. This is just outstanding. Now, this
is five point six percent alcohol, something you could have
a couple of. You might want to throw some brats
in a pan with maybe a can of this and
steep those bratworths in this Octoberfest here from Lakefront, I
think you'll be in good shape. But no, this is
just a really good beer. Yeah, that's something I would
drink all the time. I mean I should have grabbed
more of these. I think this is that good. I
love this time of year. Every brewery out there seems
to have an Octoberfest or something special for the autumn.
This one is absolutely top notch. If you see this
from Lakefront, if you're in their distribution area, I would
definitely put this one in the cart. Great look and
can I love everything about this. So if you see
the Octoberfest from Lakefront Brewery up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, definitely
put it in the cart. You will not be disappointed,
all right. Next up in my Malty Beers, there is
another mars in Octoberfest. This one is from Central Waters
in Wisconsin. I love everything that they put out. This
is a five point five percent alcohol beer, and let's
crack it open. This is another one. Beautiful color, good
foam here, smells really good. Yeah, I get a lot
of that malt in the aroma. I think it smells excellent.
Oh yeah, really good. Nice and sweet. Maybe a little
bit more sweet than the first one that I had.
But I'm really liking this. It's got an ice clean,
smooth finish here. I'm really liking this one as well. Yeah, No,
that's good. That's good. Everything from Central Waters is great.
I remember maybe ten years ago or so I was
up there, did a tour, had some of their stuff.
I think I still have a growler from Central Water
somewhere in the Beer in Front Studios. But no, they're
a great brewery up there up in Amherst, Wisconsin. If
you see anything from them, you definitely have to put
in the cart. That's good stuff. This Octoberfest is another winner.
So if you're up in Wisconsin, or if you're in
their distribution area, you need to pick up Central Waters Octoberfest. Lagger.
Put this one in the cart as well. Well. All right,
that's gonna wrap things up for this edition of Beer
in front. I thank you very much for listening. I
also want to think once again Brent Manning, co founder
of River Bend Malt House in Ashville, North Carolina, for
coming on and talking about malt. If you're in the southeast,
you have to find some beers made from River Bend.
I think you're gonna enjoy them. I need Tracy. If
you're listening, my cousin Tracy and Ashville Tracy, we need
to talk. I need to get some Ashville beer as
I'll send you some like meat from Chicago. If you walked,
we'll do a swap. So I'm looking forward to trying
some stuff from the Ashville area and made with the
malt from River Bend. Once again, thank you for listening.
Have a great week everyone. I'll talk to you next week.
And remember sometimes the beer in front of you is
the best one yet.