Welcome everyone to the DC Beer Show, and it's Oktoberfest
season. We are @DCBeer across social
media. Brandy, are you drinking on this lovely fall evening?
Oh, Jake, I am having a Human
Robot dry hop Czech style lager,
so it's pretty good. Thanks to our dear friend, Bree, over at
Right Proper for hauling down some Human
Robot for for Matt and I. So thank you, Brie. Love you. Speaking
of Right Proper, Right Proper
did a collab with the Heurich House or Heurich
House for the their Maerzen beer and Lost Lagers as
well. So if you are out and about, you should go
support that delicious beer. I that Maerzen is really
good, Jake. Have you had it? Yes. I have indeed had it. And by the
way, Right Proper Brookland, now open 7 days a week,
including Thursdays, all night happy hour. So
That's awesome. Jake, what are you drinking? So I've got
here not a Czech lager, but a German style
lager. It is Franklin's Oktoberfest Festbier
from Jeff Hancock, formerly of DC Brau.
It's kind of like too dark to be a Festbier and too light to be
a Maerzen, but it's phenomenal. It's one of the best examples I've
had this style anywhere. I took a sip. I said,
wow. And then I immediately went and filled up a growler,
which is something that I haven't done in a long, long
time. Growlers. It feels like another century, but,
this one's worth it. Please, I implore you, make a trip to
Hyattsville. Eat a giant pretzel at Franklin's. Have a bunch of
sausage. Drink this beer. It's really, really good. Just
like an exceptional, like, kind of like hybrid of an Oktoberfest and Fest
beer. Really well done. I can't wait to try it. Thanks, Jake.
I have a actually, haven't been over to Franklin's in a while. As Jake
mentioned previously, it is Oktoberfest season,
and I kicked off, Oktoberfest season
at Wheatland Spring this past weekend. And if you haven't
been till Wheatland Spring's Oktoberfest, it is it is a sight to
see. It's not only breathtakingly gorgeous there, but the
beers, when you have them fresh at the farm, it it's
just unrivaled. It was a beautiful crowd, and it
really just got the mood pumped up. So I'm here
for all the Oktoberfest this the upcoming month and a half,
starting with with Other Half's, which is tomorrow,
Saturday. And, I will definitely be
there. I will attend the Stein holding contest, but I'm sure I
will fail. Thanks, rotator cuff injury. But I'm here for
all the beer for sure. And then on 25th, the
Women's Brew Culture Club is going to be back at Other Half. It's a
very Other Half heavy month for us again,
but Jordan will be doing trivia that night as well. So it's a 2fer. It's
a double hitter. So we hope to see everybody on on,
September 25th. Jake, what's going on? And there's so many things
going on. Yeah. There are so many other Oktoberfest. There's also,
Port City's Wönderfest is also this weekend,
and so there'll be a whole bunch of German style lagers
there. They'll also still have their collab with Stone Richmond
and Soul Mega. It's an IPA, and it's
got Thai basil adding some of these anis fennel
licoricey notes and lemon peel.
So an adjunct IPA, not something you normally see
from Port City, not something you normally see from Stone or Soul
Mega for that matter, but, like, a cool collab. They're gonna be taking this on
the road. They did a party at Church Key last week. There'll be other
parties coming up. Watch dcbeer.com/events.
Watch their socials. We also don't normally direct
you towards other sites, but Fritz Hahn at the Washington Post has this
great write up of the area Oktoberfests. It's worth taking a look
at if you just Google Fritz Hahn, h a h n.
Oktoberfest Washington Post, you'll see a whole bunch of that stuff
coming up. I actually had one of those Port City Soul Mega
stone beers right before I opened this Human Robot. It
was it was interesting but good. Like, it I
I can't I couldn't put my finger on it, but it was it gives
nothing that I've had from Port City for sure before. But
definitely go check it out for yourself. It's exciting to have such a
interesting collab. So it's kind of a first,
I think, for the DMV. Yeah. You drink it, and you're like, this is an
IPA, I guess, but and it's just like this weird,
it's still very citrus y, but there's also this kind of, like, herbal savory
twist to it. But it all plays really well, even if you're not
into, like, absinthe or perno or licorice
jelly beans. It does not taste like that. I wanna
know where the brown ales are, Jake. Do you know anybody who's making any
brown ales for your girl, Brandy? Why, yes. I do know of at
least 1 brewery, local brewery, who is making a
brown ale. And in fact, I think you'll be seeing it
at beer fest very, very soon.
Let's take it away with guest number 1.
Welcome. We're here with Brett Robison and Christian
Layke, cofounders of Silver Branch, as well as their art
director and, media person, man about town,
Chris Bonnell. We have 2 big pieces of news here,
but I thought we'd do the first because it's most relevant to Brandy.
What do you all bring this in Snallygaster? We are going to be bringing our
brand new brown ale called Fletcher's Finest.
And what else are we bringing, Chris? Oh, our,
GABF silver medal winning Oktoberfest. Is that
why you said it's for Brandy? Hashtag brown
ale Brandy. Yes. And the Brown Ale, moreover, is gonna
be being served out of cask. Oh. Going full on
traditional here. That's excellent. So no doubt you're gonna
see us at your table for both of those. Although you may
see some of us tonight because this episode airs on
Friday for the 6:45 Stein line. The second
big piece of news is the potential for
Silver Branch Rockville Beer Works. Congratulations.
Wondering if you can just tell us a little bit about the challenges that you've
faced brewing in a confined space
with now room for physical growth in Silver Spring.
Well, the story of having to, shift for COVID
is an old one. But for us, that shift entailed
growing our wholesale much, much more rapidly than we dreamed we
would. When we started Silver Branch, we always knew we wanted to be
in a distribution brewery. That's why we, you know, took a 10,000
square foot space instead of a smaller one. And we intended
to, continue brewing there for,
years and to grow the wholesale into a place where it would make sense to
move to another brewery. But when, COVID hit, we
grew, grew, grew, honey where we possibly could, and at that point in time,
it was in wholesale. And so, we
we got to the point where we were, nearly 3,000
barrels in production. And then when the,
you know, the taproom was able to be back open, people started coming out in
greater numbers again. All of the space that we have been using,
in the taproom to store empty kegs, to store
pallets of beer that were waiting to go out, etcetera, etcetera, were no
longer available. And so since
then, it has been a constant juggling act to figure out how
to, accommodate both brewing at the scale
that we are brewing at, for wholesale and
to accommodate all of the guests, including private events that we do.
And so I think as you know from previous conversations we've had, we actually have
made 2 attempts to expand our brewing, in the
past. And, now this is, this is the the
next time, that we're making such an attempt, and we're super excited.
3rd time's a charm. That's right. So you all have
noticed now that you've been in Silver Spring for 5
or 6 years, including the build out. How has
the downtown area changed, and where do you
see both events and expanded food
fitting into that? So downtown is especially right where we're
situated. It's kind of interesting. I know that the Purple Line
is a long held myth that nobody has believed is actually
gonna come to fruition. But if you're sitting in the beer garden, you
can physically see the walking trail or the bike trail that they're
creating, and you can also see a lot of the construction work.
So this summer, we actually the metro was shut down going on a portion of
the red line to do some pretty extensive work on building out,
the Purple Line. So that, obviously, you know, going right through the center of
Colesville, is is changing some of the appearance of everything.
But, you know, on the other side of this, connecting College
Park to Silver Spring and then ultimately to Bethesda,
I think, is a really exciting change that we welcome,
you know, once that construction's done. But it looks it's it's
real. They are actually building the Purple Line now. Christian,
you've got experience brewing in Rockville already.
When it came time to look for another brewery
location, where else did you look besides
Rockville? There's nowhere we did not look in the DMV
area. We have been turning over
stones everywhere we could possibly find a stone in the hopes of finding
the magic location where, it would make sense to take
our, our production level brewing. As you know, we have a
brewery in in Warrenton that's great for smaller amounts
of beer, but it's never going to address any needs in terms of
of wholesale level production. And so, you know,
the the things we've looked at in the past have always been more industrial
style places that would be able to, you know, handle
semi trailer trucks loading up, beer and from a from a loading dock
and things like that. So, yeah, we've looked in Virginia. We've
looked in DC. We've actually looked in Baltimore.
And it's, amazing how many reasons that,
a place can seem to be perfect, except
for in one fatal flaw way. And
so, in each case, we've just been disappointed again and again. And
And and not too long ago, we we kinda gave up on Virginia because,
it was just gonna be impossible for any of our existing brewing team to to
work in Virginia, and that was something that we weren't willing to, you
know, to do is to, you know, sort of disrupt, that that team and and
their ability to work together so well. So we we really started
looking only in Maryland, and, we're feeling really fortunate
to have, found a spot that we're excited about. I'd like to
talk to Chris because now that you have
2 locations and you're gonna be opening another location,
from an artistic standpoint, is the new location
going to maybe have a different, slightly
different look as far as can art goes, taproom,
ambiance, and look, just so you can differentiate
but still keep the same kind of Silver Branch
style? Well, we've always, had as
as a core of our brand, the the international
brewing culture. So Central Europe, British Isles,
America, and, Belgium. And I think with multiple tap
rooms, we're going to try to move each of them actually into those
spaces in one way or another. So more like the the Lager House
and beer garden, we're sort of insinuating that it's, you know,
Munich or, even a, you know, Czech style kind
of beer garden taproom. We're we might lean more into
the Belgian style in, in Warrenton more as we
develop that space. And then the the beer works is where
we tap into, Americas. So I think we're really into
the the beer cities, not just nations, but but where the the
origin of certain styles come from. So we've been kind of talking
about, you know, major American beer cities.
We do we have some exciting, you know, like brand
refreshes and then whole new lines of things, coming up.
And this is a a really great opportunity for us because not only
are we able to increase, capacity for wholesale for for
certain lines of beer, certain brands, we we have the opportunity to
make new brands and actually maybe even new brand lines. So as an
artist and a promoter, I'm I'm thrilled
for for what we have ahead. It's gonna be really exciting. Awesome.
So you all are about to be making, I guess, really, it's
probably gonna be 2 or 3 years down the road, a lot more
beer. Do you have plans to expand beyond
beer as well? Hard seltzers, something
perhaps getting a distiller's license, something ready to drink,
ready to drink cock canned cocktails, things things of that nature
as you embark on this Rockville, a more production
focused brewery. Get it? Embark? I'm
just kidding. Shout out to Jake's
dog. Christian, do you wanna take this one, or do you want me to?
I think this is has you written all over it?
Yeah. So what's interesting about the Silver Branch
brand in general is that we do you know, we
we pay homage to so much tradition about where these beers
come from and, you know, the the purpose and the place and
the glassware that it's served in. So it's kind of hard to do
a hard seltzer, with the same reverence
or respect. There's no meaningful history behind
it. So that's not to say that we don't have some early
ideas in the hopper. The one category that we'd
really like to dip our toes into that would be imminently more possible with
the development of a Rockville location would actually be
Radlers. So I think that would be a better
natural fit for us to get into a flavor
forward space. And I think one thing that could be
compelling about doing, for example, a grapefruit radler
or a lemon radler is that it would be
good for marketing to maybe a
younger generation, early twenties, where you
can put the flavor of the fruit forward as a big
component of what that's going to be, but still staying
close to the Silver Branch beer brand as it
stands. Let's get into pizza. I mean, beer and pizza
is a natural pairing. So there's certainly
an affinity there. It seems like the
the trend now, because you've got Sojourn,
you have Crooked Run, Crooked Crab. It seems like when you open a
brewery now, you know, they there needs to be food available,
because there are people not drinking alcohol or, you know,
creating more of a family space, instead of just, you know,
drinking 21 and up. And it just seems like pizza
is the go to. What makes your pizza gonna be
so special at Silver Branch? Well, I think,
just backing up into something else that you said as part of this question,
the idea that food is, kind of a requirement for
a brewery these days, and I think that's absolutely true. You know, we have actually
gone so far as to say that we think of ourselves as a hospitality company
that has a beer a brewery brand as well, because
what we really are is in the business of of giving people an amazing
experience. Whether or not they crack a beer at home and enjoy it or whether
they come to our tap rooms and experience our beautiful glassware and
the ambiance of our of our tap rooms. It's all about, you know, creating
this idea of community for people. And, especially
when you see all of the hand wringing articles that you see these days
about how preferences are changing among younger people and the, you know, beer
sales are going down and things like that. Well, what isn't going out of style
most certainly is the idea of going out with friends and having an amazing time.
And so I think that that's part of the reason why you're seeing so many
breweries begin to offer not just, you know,
some small amount of of something that you can eat, but
actually good quality, food of one sort or another.
In terms of why it's pizza, I think, you know, as Jake said at the
beginning of his question, because pizza is actually just one
of these food that goes magically well with with beer.
And so I think you you do see that as being something that people gravitate
to. And luckily, you know, if you go around to different cities in the United
States, you and not just United States but around the world, you can see that
pizza, is done very differently in different locations.
So, yeah, we we started, our pizza program in
Warrenton a year ago when we opened there, and we have 2
very, experienced and talented chefs. And they've put together
a whole range of amazing pizzas, that that we're all
incredibly, fond of and and proud of on their behalf. One thing
I would like to say just for context for some people, if you if you're
not familiar, we are currently, have pizza available in Warrenton,
Warrenton Station. It's delicious. And, one thing I think that does set
us apart is we have a secret weapon down there in Devon and, and
Brian and the and the team. They're absolutely amazing. And,
that that quality, similar to the quality of our beer, the food is is
stellar. So that's I think that will be part of what set sets us
apart. I did wanna add on to this, though, because I would say
there's actually even though it hasn't fully formed yet,
we do have some plans that will make this distinct. I think
the way that we're going to approach branding this is different, maybe,
than how, some other people have done it because
it's all within the same entity. So it's the same
people behind Soulbranch Brewing Company building a new
brand concept called Mosaic Pizza. And with
that, we're gonna do some fun stuff. I don't wanna reveal it. You'll have
to find out when we get there. But we're gonna do some fun stuff with
the pizza boxes, and it might almost look
like a brewery that makes a bunch of different beer labels
will also be building a pizza company. So
when it's all said and done, I think you're gonna see it and
be like, okay. This is pizza is a
a, you know, been around forever, but the way
that we're gonna do it is gonna come across as distinctively
Silverbranch. We, as the public and
everyone else because I'm sure folks popped up it popped up on
their Facebook feed and Instagram feed, and I know Jake got an article out
today. I know that there
is a lot of funding that goes into this. How you guys wanna tell us
about that and how we, as the public, can help? We do.
We we really wanna tell you about that because we just launched,
our crowdfunding equity campaign today through Honeycomb.
And, in the past, when we have sought equity, we
have, always had a relatively low minimum
for the world of equity raise, but it was always, you know,
between 14 $15,000, which is a lot more than,
you know, a casual, fan might be in interested
in investing. So this time when it was, looked like we
wanted to go ahead and and and raise money for this next growth phase,
to open the brewery in Rockville and to launch Mosaic
Pizza and to do some other, amazing, things that we have
planned, We wanted to find a way that some of our long standing fans
could be involved. When we opened, you know, about five and a
half years ago, we had, prior to that, had our founders
club. And the experience of launching that and
seeing the response from the community, of beer lovers and
casual beer lovers who were just a part of the community and excited to have
a brewery in the community, was just so overwhelmingly
positive. We kinda wanted to go back and recapture that amazing
feel of having the people who are gonna end up drinking our beer or already
do drink our beer be involved in the campaign of actually raising the
equity we need to make this a reality. Excellent. Thanks so
much. Folks, please do Czech out Silver Branch on the site Honeycomb.
We'll drop the link in the show notes. It's also already up on dcbeer.com.
Brett, Christian, Chris, thank you all so much for being with us.
Please visit Silver Branch at Snallygaster and even before their
Oktoberfest is coming up this very weekend. That's
both in Silver Spring and in Warrenton if you're further
afield. Alright. Thanks, everybody. Appreciate it. See you at Snally,
guys. Thank you. Thank you very much to the Silver Branch team,
to Brett, to Christian, to Chris. Big things
happening there. It's always nice when we see a brewery growing
and expanding, meeting the demand. Of course, that brown ale is
gonna be at Snallygaster, and so we thought it's Oktoberfest.
Snallygaster's coming up. What better way to combine those 2
than to talk to a second guest? And so we've got
Sebastian Sauer of Freigeist, who you last
saw here in DC doing unlimited and full Kölsch
service at The Roost at Shelter. Sebastian, can you
introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about Freigeist?
Yes. For sure. Thanks so much for having me on the podcast, Jake.
Yeah. My name is Sebastian Sauer. I started Freigeist
Bierkultur back in 2009. It's one of the
very first craft beer projects from Germany. I was
going around visiting other countries before, got very fascinated with
the whole craft beer movement. And that's when I started
my own project. A lot of them specifically in
the beginning was reviving historical beer styles from German,
origin. One of the things that you're doing is you're going to be
coming to Snallygaster in October
here in DC. What are you planning on pouring
at Snallygaster in terms of your beer? Yes. That's
a exciting situation. I was invited last year already, but I
couldn't come in person, so there was a volunteer serving my beers.
But for this year, I will, serve my Otterkolong, which is my
classic go to Kölsch. It's an unsheltered,
Kölsch variety. And then I will have my very first beer I've
ever brewed, the Abraxas, which is a, historical
Liechtenhiner, which is a sour smoky beer style, which died out
just after the First World War. It's excellent that we'll see a Lichtenhanger
there because Greg Engert, was just
talking about some of the more unusual beer styles,
but you're also sort of helping Snallygaster
and Greg and Tim and Bruno acquire German beers
for the festival. Yes? Yes. Indeed. There's a lot
of wonderful, breweries in the Franconian area,
which is the northern part of the state of Bavaria.
Always need to make sure that you don't call them Bavarian because that's really what
they don't want to be called. And, there's, like, the biggest
density of, breweries per in this
area. A lot of countryside, breweries
with, like, a wonderful lager selection, obviously, also
including Bamberg smoked beer, the Rauch beer.
And, yeah, there's, like, a lot of very small
historical breweries which, have wonderful beers and which you can
usually don't have access to. But for these guys, I
was, able to, organize something. So what are
the logistics like in terms of getting these
beers from Franconia to DC? In
this situation, we have to make sure that we use
one way kegs because typically they only
use steel kegs for packaging their beers, and they're
not very up for, doing too much
paperwork and so on because there's this, like, small family
run places. So there's only a
few breweries which would be up for using even the plastic
kegs because that's kind of like an unusual way for them packaging. They
don't really have too much experience with it. And so we were able
to arrange that. And, yeah. So,
Sebastian, you mentioned one way kegs. Are there
other formats that some of the Franconian breweries are
bringing? Think back to previous Snallagasters
when there were a couple gravity kegs, and it was sort of the norm that
there were at least be a few of those at Snallygaster.
Are any of the breweries gonna be able to package
and transport beer that way to the festival? Yes.
We will have, 3 breweries with gravity kegs as well.
Those are the ones which are not coming back. They will be afterwards used
by, Bluejacket Brewing, and, so they can
package their own beer with it. So, but the other kegs, they're
typically they always have to come back to the brewery and in a
rather short time. And, obviously, we
can't really do that Properly. It's also way too expensive to send
kegs back and forth. This is why we use the, a patina,
the one way kegs for, most of the beer. Then
we have a few, gravity kegs, which will be like real
normal small kegs, 50 liter kegs. And to our listening audience, I would say,
get those while they last, especially earlier in the day,
when they're at temperature and such. We don't know the weather
yet. If it stays cloudy in 60, the beer will be great all
day, but it could be sunny in 85. In which case, if
you're a VIP, you probably want some of those within the first couple
hours or so. Are you concerned at all about the gravity
kegs in transit? Not too much because, I mean,
there's, like, the the the range of breweries. There's some
wonderful breweries which I would always visit myself when I
go there, but they are not very stable, from the
shipping conditions. So we pick the ones which I have the most
trust in any way, which are still, you know, no, no,
issue with the quality of the beers. They are still wonderful breweries
as well, but, I hope that they survive pretty well with the
transport. And, that's why it's shipped with cooling, you
know, so that, they they should be still quite quite
good because we also serve them within their timing
in in Europe as well. And, in Europe, the whole
refrigerating, refrigerating trade is not as big as in,
America. So a lot of places don't have necessarily the
cooling equipment like in in the US. So, Sebastian,
do you have plans to brew in DC when you're
here for Snellagaster this year? Not in DC. I will
brew with Human Robot in Philly. That's the plan. And then I
will brew also with some places a little bit more south of the East
Coast. Bold Monk is one of them in Atlanta,
and, so that should be good. I think that we'll see Human
Robot and a couple of the Atlanta breweries, Good
Word and Halfway Crooks at Stalingaster as well.
So the weather is going to turn cooler here soon,
and we certainly see cans of the Freitas Dortmunder
export and the Kölsch. Mhmm. Do you have
plans to bring in the,
Eisbach? I believe it's, Guten Nacht Marie back
to the States. There is still some left
because it's such a specialized type of beer, which you make.
It's always interesting because of the US. Typically,
it's not legal to make it for most breweries, except they
have a distilling, license. For us, it's very,
yeah, normal to if if you have the equipment, but nearly nobody has
it. But there's some of that beer still in the
US, so we wouldn't brew it again,
but, yeah, you could still find it somewhere. We'll be chcking
out Glover Park's hop casket and barrel for that.
Commonwealth, which brews in Virginia Beach, does have
a distillers license, and so that allows
them to freeze beer, removing the
water, keeping the alcohol, and making an ice pack. And
so they do one, but it is pretty unusual
to find here in the States, not just because you need the distiller's
permit. Yes. That's just like it's also very, expensive
to produce generally, obvious for obvious reasons. And,
the interest in Europe is not the biggest.
Typically, you have, the oni styles which are
used for the the ice blocking is,
weizenbock and the doppelbock. And there's not much variety
around it, but we actually, you know, use a lot of different
styles as a base for it. We have made a different, amount
of, smoked, beers as a for the icebox,
which are turning out wonderful. And, everything from,
like, a mango grocer to barley wine to imperial stuff.
So it's, for us it's very fascinating, but obviously,
the trend is going to more easy, crushable,
sessionable beers rather than these, strong boozy
beers, which were a bit more popular a few years ago. It's
interesting that you mentioned a mango gossa. To me,
as someone tangentially involved in beer in the United
States, when I look at Bavaria, I think of these Franconian
lagers. I think of Bamberg and their smoked beers.
Are you seeing a bit more of the US influence there? Are
some of these breweries making an IPA, a cold IPA,
a hoppy lager, Gosa with, nontraditional
ingredients, say, without, Woodruff or raspberry syrup in a
Berliner Weiss, things of that nature. It used to be
a little bit more popular in the meantime, but I would
say that the whole craft movement goes down a lot. I
would say nearly everywhere, at least speaking for Europe,
but in Germany specifically. So craft beer never
really got to the point that it became a bit more
mainstream or so on. There was some interest in it, but,
it definitely is is the niche of the niche. So we
talked a little bit about the market for beers
in Germany. How are the
Kölsch and the Dortmander selling in the US? I mean, you've
now been coming to the US probably for about off and on 10 years
now. Have you seen that market change? I mean, it's
a different different production
in this way. I mean, we always used to, brew the
beers in Germany and send them to the US. And
since about 6 or 7 years, I changed,
that I started to produce the beers directly in the US so that
they would be, fresh and, in the more favorable
container and, also better pricing at the same time,
for the consumer. And, so it has changed quite a lot.
I think the peak of imports was
about depending on the brewery, obviously, but I would say
for most of the imported breweries, it was about 2014,
2015. And afterwards, the whole import, game
went down for all the breweries from outside of the US. This is
why we also changed to to have a production in the US.
And, then the the the the kirsch was always very
popular as an imported beer, and then afterwards also as
the domestic produced, beer. But the
general the the Korsch was still, okay, but the lager
subject got way more interested, or the the the
American consumer got way more interested in lager beers. And
we'll note that all of those styles and more will be on display at
Snellagaster. We will see you there, and we will cheers
with Gravity Lager. Thank you so much again, Sebastian,
for coming on the show and for your work in bringing
beer over. Much appreciated. Thanks so much for your
time and, for your interest. Hope to see you,
obviously, very soon at Snallygaster, but, obviously,
hopefully, also seeing and sharing with, all the listeners
as well. Thanks so much. Thank you so much, Sebastian.
Tickets still available. By the way, if
you like DC beer and you enjoy this sort of stuff, dcbeer.com/patreon.
We depend on the support of listeners and viewers like
you. Alright, everyone. Go forth. Enjoy the
Oktoberfest season. Drink something pumpkin if you want
to. You're allowed now. You're at DC beer. Be
well. See you guys at Snally and at all the
Oktoberfests. Cheers.