Welcome, everyone, to the DC Beer Show. We are at DC Beer
across social media. Jordan, what are you
drinking this lovely evening? Good, sir. I'm still in the Pacific
Northwest, at least in spirit. I'm having a Reuben's
pale ale. I Mix it up a bit. So, yeah, just to join the
pale ale today, sir. It's been a it's been a beautiful week thus far.
No tornado watches today or this week.
All is well. Queen b, what are you having tonight?
On this perfect, this not even,
like, summery night, it's 73 degrees. It's
brilliant. Oh my gosh. I am drinking
Good Neighbor's Lager. And Good Neighbor's Lager is a
collaboration beer between Denizens
and Brooklyn's Finest, which I love both of those
places. I sat down with Julie, actually, last week, chatted with
Julie for a bit, took some photos and such. And
we she talked about this logger and how both,
Brooklyn's Finest and Denizen's are turning 10
and how they decided to celebrate together by
brewing a lager beer, a Dortminder export lager, 6%.
It's beautiful. It is brilliant. I might have consumed 3 of
them during the time that I was at Denizen's last
week. So I think this is my last can until I can pick up
another can. So make sure you guys check out the
Denison's 10 year anniversary party this Saturday, tomorrow.
Mister Stein, what are you drinking? I am having a
do or die Irish style
dry stout. It is a dynamite beer.
I feel like the Irish Dry Stout is
to, the Irish what the destica or the
10 are to the Czechs. You see there's a 10% lager in
Czechia, which is 4% and this here is a
3.6% ABV dry
stout packed full of flavor, just enough roast to let you
know you're not drinking, let's say, a sweet stout or
far drier than an imperial stout. It's just wonderful.
And Capital Weather Gang told us this is the best day of the week
for DC weather. It's incredible. Yeah. I saw
my friend Julie from, the brew shop, and as she says,
every day is stout and porter day if you try hard enough.
So today, I'm I'm giving it my best and enjoying this
dry stout. So we've got a pale
ale, a dorkmunder style lager,
and a stout. I'm gonna add a 4th style to that.
I have here old Mecklenburg's French
style, Saison. Their brewery out of North
Carolina. Stein gifted me a can a while back, and I
really liked it. And so I had a friend driving up
and said, hey. Do you want anything? And I said, yes. I would actually
like a 4 pack of that saison, please, just like a delightful under
6% clean saison for a lovely
day before it gets to be 90 degrees and disgusting. And, you know,
we all drink Campari and soda and cenet, such as IPAs.
I figure just yeah. Okay. Got it. A lovely beer. If you're down there, check
them out. So glad to hear your friend brought you a
fresh saison from old meck, as we call Old Mecklenburg
in in Carolina, and you didn't hold on to the one that I brought you
from July 2023. I had a oh shit moment when you
said that. So thank you, hashtag drink it fresh, drink it
now. I wanna talk to you for a second. I need to tell
you how good of a time I had
at tiny beer fest on Sunday. And it
I hadn't been. I was so excited to go. The weather was beautiful.
But I'm also sad that you guys weren't there, but I know that some of
you are representing at some other places. And it feels
like summer is usually a slow sort of time,
but June has been crazy poppin'. There's so many
events. And tomorrow, 15th, there are too
many, really, almost to to list, but I feel like
we should do our piece, our part, and do a
little bit of of promoting and tell everybody where to go.
Jake. Alright. So let's start. Jordan, and as well as
Brandy too, where are you gonna be tomorrow?
Tomorrow, I'm gonna flip the script. I'm already drinking Parale's and not IPAs.
I'm gonna be in Virginia, gonna be down with this, the town of Herndon,
Bitter Fruit Light Brew Movement and a number of other awesome and
amazing local and Black owned breweries will be participating
and a Juneteenth beer festival of sorts. So I'll be down
there and, really looking forward to just kind of
commemorating the event, but also this is the inaugural,
Juneteenth event for the town of Herndon. So, really looking forward to that. I
know it's gonna be a great time. There's gonna be some awesome beer and,
you know, DC beer will be in full effect, but we'll also have Eye of
the Beholder in full effect as well. So got a couple of other
things. We're doing our best to cover all the things that are happening, but but,
Brandy, I know you're you're kinda you're kinda squinting squinting your Saturday up. What
do you all have going on tomorrow? Well, obviously, Denizen's
10 year anniversary. And out at Dynasty,
there's, like, this cool, old, nice car
show going on, which sounds I don't even like cars, but it sounds kinda
fun. And I know, like, there's so many other events going on. I'm
like, my brain is, like, fried right now. Jake, do you have Yeah. What's
the other one that I'm missing? So Dynasty's loud
neighbor and Favio Garcia, Dynasty Brewer co
owner, previous employer, Lost Rhino, is turning
13. Oh, Crooked Run.
What year anniversary? Oh, like, we're not even done with Loudoun.
Crooked Run is turning 11. Old Ox is turning
10. Miesa's turning 1.
Our good friend, Judy Neff, who we saw at the excellent
Brandy hosted event at other half in March, Checkerspot,
I think, turns 7, and they're in their new digs,
thanks to, Which is gorgeous. Sam Adams Grant. Yeah. Which is
gorgeous. Yeah. You should get out there. We already
mentioned Denizens and then, of course, the
weekend after. Right? So we've got 6 anniversaries,
plus Juneteenth, plus the car show at
Dynasty. And then the weekend after, we've got
Third Hill's anniversary, the 22nd,
and Manor Hill turns 9 on the 22nd also. And so
I feel like the there isn't enough there's not not enough
DC beer to be out and about covering all of these.
Like, I'm gonna get to Denizens, but I don't think I can, you know,
like yeah. I don't know how you get hit all these loud and events. I'd
love to be at Biesa, obviously. But Yeah. I'm I'm wondering
I'm wondering, Jordan, are you gonna have a time traveling
device ready by I know you were working on
it all year last year. I don't. Is it still in prototype,
or can we time travel yet? Yeah. Well, I have a beta, but it's you
know, I I make no promises of of where what period you'll be traveling to,
so we just might not test it for this time. We'll keep it for, the
fall. I mean, your girl somehow is always
at every place at the same time, but this weekend, I can't do it.
So I'm summoning help. I'm putting up the bat signal.
So all of all of our DC beer friends and family,
we can't be at everything, but we desperately hope that
you show up and give love and and support our local breweries
and friends. Wherever you are, spread that DC beer love
around. You know if we were in Baltimore, we'd be seeing our
friend Judy Neff at Checkerspot. You know if we were in
Alexandria, we'd be seeing our friends at Miesa.
You know we will be in Herndon for the Juneteenth celebration, and
I just have to say there are some common threads here. Old ox
turning 10 in, you know, out in Virginia, but then
both Denizens, Riverdale, Maryland,
and Brooklands' finest, DC proper, all
turning 10. It's remarkable. You know? Julie Varady of Denizens told
us it's so infrequent that small businesses, who are the
backbone of the American, entrepreneurial economy,
make no mistake about it, If they turn 5, it's amazing. Turning 10
is phenomenal. So we give massive shout out to them. And I
just have to share a little tidbit. So for the Juneteenth well,
what's being billed as the Juneteenth Brewbilly play on
words on Jubilee, I assume, 2024, a culture and
beer fest. So our friends at Black Brew Movement have been
instrumental, we've had them on the show before. Black Brew
Movement and Bitter Fruit Brewing, Northern Virginia's sole black owned brewery,
are also gonna see black owned breweries from
DC, Maryland, and Virginia, and one of those, of course,
is liquid intrusion. I have to give a massive shout out to
liquid intrusion because they were at Dynasty for the brewing of this
beer, and Fabio was just like, man, I
I like, Andrew and Jasmine are incredible. They
have their act together. They knew exactly the moves to
be made with the this farmhouse beer that's being released, the saison,
light, spritzy, fruity, effervescent. It sounds like a wonderful beer. I
can't wait to get my my hands on it, and we are
so excited for the Juneteenth, rubily,
2024 Culture and Beer Fest.
So I want to have
pickles right now. I love pickle beer. I love
all things fermented. And Mike Stein and I just
had a lovely interview with Mike Pauley and Jinson
Chan of Sojourn Fermentary. And I think you guys
are gonna really wanna listen to this because after you
listen to how amazing this is, you're gonna wanna go visit. So
open open your listening ears. Open your listening ears. Listen
listen to, a man who finally got a brewery to name a
beer, Asian Glow. Take it away, Brandy. I'm so
thrilled to have 2 amazing guests.
And one of them I've known for many, many years, and I'm sure you
know this person as well. You've probably seen him at
literally all of the beer events. He's friends with all of the beer people.
And the person that I'm speaking of is Jinson. Everyone
knows Jinson. Jinson is what is joining us
tonight with, his co owner, Michael
Polley, and the 2 of them are starting a new brewery
together, and we have them on to discuss this. Hello, guys.
Welcome. Hey. Hello. Thanks for having us. Hey,
Brandy. Thanks for having us. Mike Stein is joining us for this interview as well.
So we're tag teaming, which is lovely. So let's get started. You're
too kind, Brandy. Let's get into it. Jinson Chan,
Michael Pauley, welcome to the show. We're so excited to have you.
Jinson, why don't you start us off? Tell us a little bit about, Sojourn
Fermentary. What is it? Where is it gonna be? What's
happening with it? First of all, thanks for having us. We are so honored
to be here at Spiro. I've been, listening to your
podcast for a long time and really enjoy whatever you guys
doing. Love it. Stojan inventory is
a project that, Mike Paulie and I and Scott
Osborne, few of us, co founded this project.
I wanna say probably, like, 3, 4 year 3 years
ago. And the idea is really
simple. Right? We want to create a space where we
have view and experience. And, we want
to bring everybody together, enjoy the beer, and
have conversation, and build relationship at the space that
we provided. And, something very, very
simple, and that is based on, you know, many years of,
my extreme high side, how we curate the
beer and also create a beer that people enjoy.
And then, Mike, you know, he also a
very, very talented brewer. He create a lot of good beer,
and I've had challenges with many, many year with,
different difficult year to make, and we always see the home run every
single time. So so the inventory
is really, something that we we love to put
all our perspectives together, and, hope that
everybody can be there, food and
beer and the whole environment. You can sit down
and, you know, enjoy it. And it's gonna be in Suffolk,
Virginia. It's very close by to
64 and 17. So you
ever go out to Autobahn, it's probably like a 5 minute
tour for you to provide to grab some beer and some fruit,
and maybe get a whole case of beer and bring to your big tub and
enjoy it. Oh, sounds it sounds terrible,
Shenzhen. Sign me up. Where do I sign
up? So, a, you're gonna get a bunch
of, Virginia Beach and
navy people because, you know, navy's right there. So you're
going to be slammed. I sadly haven't been to Virginia Beach in
before since they've had breweries there. So I am I
am due for a visit, and I can't I I'm gonna choose the best
time and go when you guys open. Which is gonna be when, Michael?
So right now, we're targeting the end of July. So last week of July, is
gonna be our grand opening. And so we're really looking forward to that. It's my
birthday month, so thanks for the birthday present, everybody.
So how did this idea came come about? Like, who
did Jinson go to Mike or Mike go to Jinson? Or
was this, like, do you guys, like, wake up and have the same dream and
you just texted each other and said, guys, I just had the craziest dream. And
you said, me too. How did how did this happen? So
Jin and I were talking, and, you know, I was kinda at a crossroads of
things. And, Jin said it was like, well, you know,
instead of moving to another job, why don't you start your
own thing and make it happen and, do that? And I was like, well, that
would be great. But, you know, there's a lot of hurdles to that. And Jinson
basically was like, well, I'll help you through those hurdles, help you figure out solutions,
and, make that happen. And so, you know, me
and my, other good friend, Scott Osborne, they always kinda had this
dream of doing that. But, you know, it's a lot of round or
taking and there's a lot of, like, unknown unknowns. And so, you know, I was,
kind of jinxed that was, like, you gotta conquer fear. You have to go through
that. And so, yeah, you really spurred me out and,
believed in me and, you know, would talk me up and blow it off smoke
where I believed it. And, you know, here we are. So
I mean, look, Jinson just being the motivator
for everybody and being everyone's, you know, cheerleader.
Yes, Jinson. Oh my gosh. And anyone who knows Jinson
knows that this is how he is, so that's fantastic to hear. I love that
story. Well, I mean, honestly, when I talk to
Mike about this, it's like, I basically asked
him, like, what else do you need to prove on your resume? Like,
you have this amazing resume already. What
else do you need to add onto it? And, why not do something
on your own? And, you know, he always have the idea about
doing something his own. And all I'm really
trying to do is just kinda, like, provide help for him to start, you
know, making his dream come true. And
and the other part of it is also a little bit selfish or
buy. Originally, I was, you know, thinking about, for hindsight,
where my craft beer bar is, you know, started in
2018, and the business plan is always called for after
2 year, we're gonna open a 2nd location and maybe a
3rd location, concept like that. Obviously,
2 years later, it's 2020, and
that's right where the pandemic happened. So, basically, the project was on
hold, and, give me more time to think about it, and then,
you know, talk to my a lot during that time as well.
And at the end, we figure, instead of open a second location,
why not we just open a brewery and create this
whole experience that I couldn't provide currently
at Highspot. Right? Because we don't brew our own beer. So having
Mike partner up, and we can brew our own beer and create a
whole new beer. That was kinda right, the whole story,
pretty much. That's super exciting. I wanna hear a little more of
the story. As we were talking with you, Mike Polley, at the
start, you had mentioned earlier on in your career
getting onboarded and being flown to Austria to
study brewing, and, of course, Austria is famous for pastry
stouts, with toasted almond. They they
really love their 10 to 12% imperial stouts.
No, but I'm kidding, but but take us from that all the way back
there, most recently I've seen your beer at Blue Jacket,
where there's not one but 2 different stouts, both barrel
aged, one with the sort of pastry stout treatment,
one straight out of, I believe it was Bourbon Cask.
So tell me a little bit about the beers you're making now and how far
you've come in your journey as a brewer. Yeah. So
it's been an interesting journey. You know, I started off making
just, multistep decoction loggers, at a time
where there was no plate of the market for that, which was fun and
interesting to, working at Cigar City and working under,
you know, I've got Pringle and Wayne and those guys, just like,
yeah, which hats off, you know, I don't know if you guys know much about
Wayne, but really keep that in motion a lot of what's
super popular in terms of, like, rethinking what IPs
were using ingredients that were non traditional.
And so, you know, that was an interesting kind of ruffle to add to it.
And then I kinda came up here in more of a leadership role,
working at Commonwealth and, you know, just building there and,
and kind of riffing out all those ideas. So, yeah, so it's been
quite a journey along the way, and I worked in different brewery as well. And,
you know, and but now it's it's really cool because, you know, I've gone through
all these different experiences and grown and learned. And even with the
breweries that we've done beers with, you know, we we actually also did a lager
with, Blue Jacket, Austrian Medicine, which is probably one of
the nearest and dearest collab we've done. And so going back to those blue
jacket beers in particular, and, dig those 2 different styles, but we were
very intentional to do, more of like a Wayne
and Wayne Lambos, you know, OG Cigars inspired
beer, like base beer. And with that, you know, there was 1 or 2
barrels within the barrels that they laid down. Down. They were exceptional. And
so I had talked to Greg and those guys for, you know, my
recommendation was can we do, like, those couple barrels as, like, the barrel select
version? And so and they get, you know, and then we also did the
treatment version as well. And, you know, the thought process behind that was just
to, again, rift on that idea of doing
culinary inspired rights. So just for clarity for the listenership,
there are 2 beers on offer at Blue Jacket right right now.
There is before midnight, the barrel aged imperial stout, and
then there's dolphin named Ace, and dolphin named
Ace is a bourbon aged stout infused with fresh hazelnuts, cacao
nibs, and vanilla beans, and they're both wonderful. They're both
exclusively in bottles at Blue Jacket if you're interested to
try some of the Sojourn, beer now.
That's exciting. Are you excited, my Michael Polley, sorry. There are
2 mics on the recording, to get back into
Lager? Because, you know, I'm assuming when you were working for Cigar
City, which is such a cool thing to have on your resume because everyone loves
Cigar City, And, and even Commonwealth,
the lager the presence of lager has just
has a has had a resurrection. And it's so exciting for all of
us, you know, regular old folk beer drinkers.
So yes. Yeah. So with that, you know, for
me, personally, I've always loved lager beer,
you know, going to Austria, things like that. Even my beer journey started
with English beer and lagers, you know. It wasn't
these big crazy IPAs or anything like that. Even I remember
when I took the job at Cigar City, it was really tough,
even just to, like, put back highlights for what it used to be or being
not metered. Right? But I took the job knowing I was gonna learn and grow.
Right? But, so yeah, so for me,
if I had to really sum it up, I'm still the same old guy who,
really enjoys making very technically
complicated, but, clean lagers. And then,
you know, with coolest beer, which is also a very
interesting and complicated, expression, you know, like, there's a lot of yeast
general flavor. And then it takes kind of like,
a lot of restraint, to balance those beers out really well.
And then, you know, I really have a strong love for, for Belgian beer as
well. So So if I had to pick, like, 3, then those are them.
I wanna know where the name came from. Who where did
so Sojourn from entry? Like, who who came up how
did that process go about? Steve. You guys are
laughing. Oh, it's gonna be a good one. Okay. Yeah.
So, naming a brewery is a very, very difficult thing.
There are 10,000 names out there. So, you know, there's a lot of cropping things
off the list. But, yeah, the term sojourn basically means to dwell or
stay for a while. And so, you know, we just want to create a space
for people to hang out in the community and fossil community. You
know, so far we talk a lot about, beer as
an object now. But, beer is more for
me, it's more of an experience, you know, when you go to Austria
or Czech Republic and you drink beer, right? You see people sit down, sit down
a stomkisch, you know, and they're like, the only comment on the beer is, oh,
the beer feels good today, or, oh, it feels a little off, And then they
continue to drink their beer and order another one. And, you know, it's it's not
a social, experiment of, oh, I
get this, I get that, and dissecting things. And not I don't mean that
delittling to anyone, like, that's fun. But for me, you know,
it's beer is like,
part of the culture, and the experience. It's a it's a place where
you dwell and you hang out and you meet your friends and you celebrate
life together. So, yeah, that's kinda how we ride this together.
Yeah. I love that. Yes. The fermenter came from
the fact that, know, we have a very big space, and we wanted to
offer beer and cider. And then for food, we wanna
do something with fermentation elements as well. So we talked about a lot of different
things. But, you know, the one that clicked the most was to do rum style
pizza. So we brought that in and, you know, that requires a
3 plus day fermentation on the dough, or like hard process
does. But again, that that riffs off the same idea of, you
know, long slow fermentations like for lagers and and just bringing that to the
forefront. Yeah. No. Jinson is
incredible over at Highside because every time
I go, I get the pickles that are available there.
And the pickle a pickleback, this pickle
brine is incredible. So as long as that's available
at Sojourd, I think everyone's gonna be super happy on top
of the beer. Yes. Our goal is to do all things
fermented. Right? So that's why we name it Fermentory.
Is it a brewing or beer company? Because we would
like to experiment with, all kind of fermentation,
if possible, And I I think, you know, people like
that, as simple as a pickle, and
people draw to it and, so many use of it.
And I I think it's clear, very interesting experience. I agree.
I personally love pickles and all things fermented,
So not everyone does, but I do. So you say this this space
is gonna be huge. And so what should
people expect when they come to visit at the end of
July? To be specific, our space is 9,248
graphic. Jeez. And, I mean, we have
probably about 40, 50% of that will be production.
Right? Okay. And then, lots of food kitchen there as
well. We will we we kind of very
fully divided space out for family
friendly area, where, you know, people who have kid can come
in and they have a I want to call it a stay stay for them.
And then we also have a space where we call it a indoor beer garden,
because we open up the garage door, it connected to an
outdoor space, like a patio. So we call it indoor
outdoor beer garden. It's gonna be huge, and because we have, like, a outdoor
space that has, like, a bay where we can perform, like, live
music there, and we also can host some community
event, at the space there. And, we have
this ice well, we're gonna put all the glassware
to the temperature same as the beer. So if you just sort of
hang out with your happy hour, we could maybe 2 or 3
TV there. You can watch a spa, hang out with your friends, or if your
company have, like, happy hourly, whether host your staff, we have a
big order. Well, so the space is huge, and we kinda,
like, cater it to different demographic
and, you know, be inclusive in all kind of people
who want to enjoy their life a little bit. That's
brilliant. I love that. That's it sounds incredible. I can't wait to
visit. Any parting things the DC beer listenership
should know, before we let you go, Jinson,
or Michael? Yeah. We're excited to, you know, host you guys, when
you're driving through, and, please be on the lookout, you know, if you see me
there, definitely say hi. I you know, a big thing for me is, you
know, building community and making time for people, making time to share
beer. And so, yeah, I'll be the one who's pretty much always
there. So, yeah. Yeah. We even have, like, the little stop and chase table that,
if you see me sitting there, definitely come hang up. I will definitely do that.
Well, you guys heard it here, on DC beer.
Michael Polley and Jinson are opening
a fermentory. So all you pickle lovers, all you pizza
lovers, all you beer lovers, check check lagers.
We're we're so excited, and I know Mike Stein is excited.
So Mike's gonna have we're gonna have to take a little road trip. What do
what do you think, Mike? I'm ready. Do you see beer on location? Sojourn for
Menerey. Let's go. Well, oh, again, like, we are planning to open
in end of July. If you ever plan to put down in the
south in Suffolk, just stop by. Thank you guys for having
us. It's a pleasure to meet you, Mike Sine and Brandy. Thanks,
Guy. Cheers. Thank you so much. Looking forward
to Sojourn. Alright. Yeah.
There's a lot out there. I feel like, we should deputize all of the
listeners. Take pictures, tag us in
stuff, send us stuff on IG so that we can make an epic
reel, following all of his anniversaries, parties,
celebrations. And make sure you come visit us for our
June beer share at Silver Branch in Silver Spring, the original Silver
Branch. I want to see your beautiful faces and all the
lovely beer you bring. And, we gotta build this community
one one little person at a time. Well said. That'll be
Sunday 23rd, 2 to 5. RSVP is up on
Eventbrite. You will see former podcast guest and
perhaps future podcast guest Mike Earl there, I hope. Fingers
crossed. Which means that you'll probably see some of the DC beer crew drinking
Ralph beer, I hope. Fingers crossed. Alright. Love
I love you all. I'll see you very soon. Come drink beer
things with us. And if you're not with us, tag us. We wanna see all
the things. Right? Right, everybody? Right. Right. 2nd and third.
Yeah. Yep. Atdcbeer.com. Lots of new articles for
you. Lots of events in the calendar. Breweries, bars, there could
be more. You could just submit them. Dcbeer.com/events. We're at
dcbeer on the socials. Alright. Be well, everybody.