Bottles bounce back, NA beer and inflation

0:00Welcome everybody to the beer guys radio show. Thanks so much for hanging out with us this week for craft beer in conversations. If you're joining us for the live stream, we'd love to hear your thoughts here with your drink and feel free to chime in in the comments. I am Tim Dennis and Brian Hewitt. How are you doing this week? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I'm a little tired today. Yeah. Yeah. A little tired. It's my own fault. I tried to jam too much stuff into yesterday. So I ended up staying up too late. So I had more things to do than I had time to do it in. And it was a bad choice on my part, bad time management. And I'm paying for a little bit tonight. But I'm all right. I'm drinking a beer now. It's fine. I've made a terrible mistake, Brian. Did you do St. Patrick's Day festivities this week on St. Patrick's Day? On St. Patrick's Day, I

1:01did in fact have a Guinness. That was the, you know what? I had a Guinness. I had a Guinness, which was lovely. And put that on social media. A lot of people liked it, which they should. And I also had picked up in kind of a mad dash over the weekend, a bottle of bush mills black bush. I'm okay. I'm okay. I know that one. I prefer that to James. And I figured that out at some point. I go, I know it's probably blasphemy or something like that. So I picked one up. I, I, it turns out that the one I picked up was the Sherry, uh, Sherry cast preserve. I've never had that before. And so I, I drank some of that. And I'm like, this is really nice. What I, it's like, I forgot it was this good. I looked at it. I said, no, this is a different one. So I got a super special, uh, uh, uh, bush mills black bush. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. From your palette memory, was it different to better than your other black bush? I'm, I am a sucker for a Sherry cast. So it adds Sherry notes to it. Yes. It's, it's better. It's, it's really, it's pretty decadent. I like black bush a fair amount. And they both, it tastes like

2:05an Irish whiskey to me. It's not just all like Sherry or anything like that. So, uh, honestly, I don't remember what I paid for it. I just like, it's one of those things where I went in there. I'm like, I need an Irish whiskey and the price is the price. I knew it wasn't super expensive. I want to say 40 or 50 or whatever it was. So it probably wasn't much more expensive than the regular one. Or I just wasn't paying attention. Either way, could call in my part accident, the worked out really well. So I feel that's one of those. Yeah. That's one of those that you, you know, it's not going to be crazy expensive. You knew what you wanted. Yeah. Or you thought you did. You grabbed the wrong one. But you were, you were close there. So we were talking about that earlier this week with gas prices because they're going up all over the place. Yeah. I don't really look at gas prices most of the time because I need gas. And I've got a gas station that is convenient to me and that I trust to have decent gas. And I don't think it's as big a problem anymore. But back in the late 1900s, there was, there was rumors or that or maybe it's just where I lived. A place is like watering down gas and stuff. And I think this may have been during

3:09the the big gas shortage, you know, way back in the even earlier late 1900s when they had it. So the 1970s, I think that would have been back in the 70s. But I remember my father saying like there were certain service stations he wouldn't go to because he said he didn't trust the gas, you know, or things there. But I haven't heard people say that much anymore like you need to check it out. But I always go to, we've got a chain called QT here, Quick Trip. We've talked about it before they got their, their Quentin time. Quentin time, yeah. They do. So they also have gas, beer and gas and coffee too. It's nice. But anyhow, but I normally just fill up and I have paid attention because the prices went up considerably and really just looking out of more of a curiosity because I really don't have a choice. If I need to tank a gas, I need to tank a gas and, you know, driving to the other side of town defeats the purpose of saving 10 cents a gallon or something like that. That's kind of my philosophy. You can look at it.

4:11I know, I know if I go to certain gas stations, they're not going to be as much of a gouges as other places. I know that I've got the places I go. I don't look at the price for the same reason. I'm not, I'm not going to get agitated every time I fill up. It's, it is what it is. I don't necessarily like it. I remember times when it was cheaper, but I just don't want to add that stress to my life. I'm like, I have to have this. I know this place typically gives me a good deal. So whatever they're charging is what I got to pay. And I just like, I'll let my life, I'll just continue on with my life. Occasionally, I look at the receipt and like, oh, yeah, that's, that's that hurt. But that's a little bit. Dang. Well, that's, I think a lot, I've heard you mentioned before you get gas when you come out and divisive me here in the burbs. So you don't have to go city prices there. Exactly right. As somewhere right in the middle of it, away from the highways, I'm like, boom, that's my QT. I stopped there. I pick up my quit and time when I want to or occasionally something else, one of my long beers. And I do the whole thing. You know, I make it a whole, it's just kind of the ritual. So yeah. And as Tyler mentioned, QT also has pretzel.

5:15Very good. Yeah, they do. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Brian Stantpatrick Day. So we went out and we did some celebrating last weekend, you know, because of fell on the Tuesday. A lot of places had their festivities over the weekend there. But there's a Irish pub up near meat kegans. I think it's called, I hope, I think the shout out, unless they got their name wrong. But we've been there a few times. They're pretty solid joint. Food's good. The beer is good. And they had the traditional corn beef and cabbage, traditional American. Yes, right. And Patrick, they bangers and mash and, you know, so I think they had shepherds pie and some other stuff. They got good cheese curds there. Brian. Yes, definitely. I enjoy their cheese curds. And they got a pint of Guinness there. They had a few of your 50, 50s or half and halfs or whatever they like to call them. I think they had some that are a little bit unique. You got one, didn't you? Didn't you get a little blend there? I did. I had to, uh, had to get to the black bush. No. Is that black bush? No, black Smith. Sorry. The black bush is the whiskey black. Yes. It's smithics and in Guinness. I love that

6:20combination. And, uh, they have it. They have a variety of them. They have one with sweet water 420 called the dirty hippie. I think it's what it's called. I think that's what it is. Uh, I didn't order that one because I love, I love the blacksmith a lot. And, uh, in fact, I picked up some, some smithics just to make those and I haven't gotten around to it yet. But I did have one when we were out and about. So good stuff, man. Good stuff. But it was fun. We fairly low profile. We didn't go crazy. We're, uh, we're of a certain age now to where we're not having 30 pints on St. Patrick's Day. But if we get us some Americanized Irish food and a pint of Guinness, we've celebrated. I think we both had some green on that day. So we've pretty, what more can you do? Really? I mean, we kind of put it all out there. I think the thing that really kept us from really going all out is I didn't think about it until much later. But there wasn't a single green beer to be seen. Like that place. I think in the past is as dyed their beer green.

7:23All the beer was just normal colored beer. And I never, it just never struck me as anything. Like I just had my Guinness and I was like, Hey, cool. Corn beef and, and, and cabbage and, uh, in Guinness. And I'm like, awesome. This is great. And later on, I'm like, hold on a second. There was no green beer. No green beer. People take firm stances on that, man. I mean, they're, and I think you and I have talked before. I think we're of the same mindset on that. I don't care if you drink a green beer on, on San Pa. If that is the way you choose to celebrate your holiday, then do it, man. I've, I've, I've died of myself before when I didn't have one handy. You know, I've made my own green beer. It's just fun. It's stupid fun. It's what it is. And sometimes stupid fun is absolutely appropriate and acceptable. So live your life out there, green beer drinkers. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The, you know, even the craft crazy, that's where it usually comes from as a craft beer drinkers, you know, they can serve in a bomb a nation. And, uh, but guy, you have your fun, man. It's not like you're, it's not like you're

8:24drinking a year round. It's one day a year that we get, we act silly and, uh, have one or two green beers. It's just the tiniest drop of food coloring. Like if you do it right, it's seriously, it's nothing. It's like, yeah, it's like less than the amount of water. If you rinse your beer glass before pouring your beer as you should in a properly cleaned glass, it's actually less volume than the water on the size of your glass when you pour your beer into it. And it turns it green. It seriously has nothing, nothing in terms of impact to it. It's silly. Yes, but yeah, it's not, it's nothing more than that. Brian, we talked about this guy over the weekend. And I don't remember his name, but I think you did. He's an, an influencer guy that does videos in Irish guy. And the only thing I know is at the end of it, he goes, follow me. I'm delicious. Oh, yes, Gary. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was scrolling through. And of course he's got plenty to say about Sam Patrick's day and, and, and, you know, in accordance with what we talked about from comb from Guinness, he was talking about the food. He's like a, you know, corn beef. That's not it.

9:28You know, I think, I think he said bacon and cabbage. I forget already bacon. Irish bacon. Yeah. Potatoes are, you know, that he, he's a potato lover. Just absolutely crazy about potatoes, but he had a video where he was showing them dying the river green in Chicago. And I think he started out with something like, oh, the Americans are on one again, or something like that. Yeah. So he just ran it a little bit about dying the river. He's like, does anybody, did anybody ask the fish what they think about this? What are they doing down there? But they don't, they don't care for it. So he had a little rant about dying the river. And I think he generally is entertained and disgusted by some of the American habits around Sam Patrick's day. He definitely makes a lot out of, you know, reacting to all things American. And I just enjoy watching him get emotional, emotional about what people do to both tea and potatoes. Oh, yeah. You do bad things to potatoes or do weird things to potatoes as you'll see probably

10:32done on TikTok all the time. He'll get, he'll get angry. He'll raise his voice and he'll, he'll start swearing and swing with his Irish accent. It's, it's, it's, it's the, he's entertained. Yeah. He's, it's good stuff. I, it seems like a fun guy. I got to watch it. Like anything he says, even if I don't really care that much about it, I usually watch it just because he's so much fun. Good stuff, man. Brian, let's move on to our beers of the week here. And we got Brian, what, what's he got going on for the week? So I pregamed with one of the aforementioned smithics, which is a good old Irish red ale. And I bought some like I said to make black smiths. And I will be doing that at some point. I don't know if that's going to happen. If it doesn't happen tonight, maybe, maybe it'll happen on the weekend. It's going to happen like it just hasn't happened yet. But now I'm working on New Holland's Dragon's Milk Emerald IPA, which is an oak barrel fermented double IPA with Lotus and Citra hops. It's kind of a trip. It's it's not quite like a cream circle type of thing, but it's got a little, it's kind of skewing in

11:34that direction. And when I was put, when I was putting my beer list together for the, for the show, I'm like, I realized after like it was too late to change it out. It's like, oh, this is an 11 percent or so. I'm like, I'm going to sip this one kind of slowly. It's a little bit of a beast. So, and when I get done with that, and I do like it, I do like it. I think if you see that around, I get it, it works out pretty well. It's just, it's a trip of an IPA. After the show, perhaps, if I'm still standing or sitting upright, I'm going to get into Irish cream barrel aged stout from Boulevard, which is something we talked about. I think we talked about in the show. I think I recommended it in my truck and tap beer picks for the week last week or the week prior, but it's an imperial milk stout made with milk sugar imported from a holiday distillery, the maker of five farms Irish cream in Ireland. So, it's imported milk sugars in this beer. So, I've had one and I'm, I'm not sure what I think of it. So, I'm going to sit on it tonight if I get get around to it and see what I think. So, that is what I'm planning to do. Yeah.

12:39Beer Aquanation said, with your beer, you got to own anything over 10%. Your beer says, you got to just take it Brian. All right. I'm going to do it. There it goes. Nobody's stopping me. The beer certainly isn't so. Right. You know, a little bit of beer guys radio lore. Back when we were on the radio, when we started the show, the first several years, I think six or seven years of the show, we were on the radio. We started as a local radio, radio show, and then we were syndicated. And we had to do the show in segments to match with the radio clock. And in between radio segments, we'd take a little break and drink. And of course, when we were in a studio with gas and each other and that, the beer, it flowed a little more regular in the social setting like that. So, we used to joke about the poor segment. By the time we get to that, especially if we were sharing a few beers, you know, there would be times when we were a little tipsy. And there was one time we did a show. We did a

13:40remote show at a beer fest here. Day of the juice, I think it was. And we sat down. Was it finback or maybe a maybe nation was right next to us. M 43 or M. Yeah. But this was back when Aaron was on the show. And we finished, quote unquote, finished the show. And Aaron's like, I forgot to record this segment. It was like the second segment of the show. And I'm like, oh, no. And so we go get the guys and like guys, we absolutely hate to ask this. But something happened with the recording. Can we chat with you again? They're like, sure, sure. Now this was probably 30 minutes after we were done with the show in towards the telling of the beer fest. And y'all, we were all at least two and a half sheets at that time. And so this show, we start off totally sober. In the second segment, we sound like a group of half a dozen drunk guys trying

14:41our hardest to sound sober. And then we go back to sober in the third segment because of the way the show flowed there. So that's so that reminded Brian Sip and 11% beer during the show. They reminded me of our four segment days. In fact, every every segment can be four segment if you try harder, if you try hard enough, put your mind into it, man. Absolutely. The reference to the old nation I was making, I thought you were going in a different direction. We were seated next to old nation. And they were, they were hooked against up with cans of M43. And we were loving it. It was pretty new to us at the time. In fact, I don't think it had ever been in in Georgia prior to that. That was their debut. Yeah, it's we were taking it up. And we were thought we were done with the show. Yeah, it was fined back. And then they gave us a case of all boys and it was it was it was wild. It was a good time though. It was a lot of fun. Well, Brian, moving along to our stories here, we've got a tillray brew dog update. One day, I'm sure these guys will run into

15:43the obscurity of the news. But right now, there's still a lot going on with them. So Brian, some other information we talked to the last time we talked about them, we mentioned that there were other assets that they had not acquired as of yet. But they were likely to or something. And that has changed some. So what's latest update on the tillray brew dog? Yeah, I think we all knew it was going to happen. But till ray is officially acquiring brew dogs US assets also. And those assets include the Columbus, Ohio production facility, the brew dog hotel. The hotel's going to stay around. It's not going anywhere apparently. And the the airport location also in Columbus and other high profile pubs and Ohio Las Vegas and Denver, the Atlanta location that abruptly closed last week or maybe the week prior. I don't remember which that apparently was not part of the deal, which is pretty I'm pretty sure is why it closed when it closed. They do need to get some regulatory approval to move forward with this deal. So if we see them in the news again, maybe it'll be because

16:43that didn't that didn't happen. But I'm sure there's really small chance of that that happening very small. And who else is going to step in and buy these things right now? It's it's not the the most wonderful time to buy a big brewery like this. So till right now owns the entirety of the brew dog brand and the intellectual property worldwide, having already closed deals in the UK, in Ireland and for the Australian business units, which I think that happened during the week of our St. Patrick's Day show and they picked up a bunch of stuff over there. There was there's not a lot there, but I want to say that they valued it less than $20 million what was there in terms of the assets. Anyway, yeah. This this move fills a geographic gap for Till Ray. It gives them a foothold in the Midwest and the Southwest where they previously lacked a, you know, good regional presence. Brewdogs Columbus facility is huge. It produced over 89,000 barrels in 2024. It could be scaled up to do as much as 150,000 barrels apparently. So there's a lot of potential there. It's

17:44it's ready outfitted to produce non-alcoholic beers and other beverages, including craft sodas. And so this adds nearly 90,000 barrels or possibly more to Till Ray's portfolio. But they remain the fourth largest craft brewery and a craft in quotes, I should say, but on the brewer's association that placing them behind at Sierra Nevada at number three. And I haven't done the full math, but I think they're trailing Sierra Nevada by about 100,000 or 250,000 barrels like they could they could get up there, but they're there's still little distance between them and Sierra Nevada even with this this big jump. So man, I tell you that's that's such a misleading statistic, you know, that that a company gets in and just buys their way into being a top put on quote craft brewery. So yeah, but but so be it. And you know, as far as regulatory approval, I mean, you look at the breweries at AB and Bev or Miller, any of them own, you know, I don't think I don't think there's any way Till Ray can be anywhere close to the size, you know, if they if they've got to

18:48get the approval there, I know Till Ray's not about to become bigger than AB and Bev or one of them. I'm kind of surprised they're at a point where they need the regulatory approval, but yeah, they can make a lot of acquisitions though. I mean, yeah, yeah, that's what I was saying is like, oh, there to that point now. Okay. All right, got you. I didn't look into it, but I'm wondering what has to happen before you need that kind of thing is maybe it's because they're publicly traded company. You can buy shares of Till Ray. Yeah. So it maybe that's what it is. Again, I'm torn between they have to have some amazing master plan and they're just all stoned. And you know, so I don't know because it seems like a crazy time, even for pennies on the dollar, you know, we were talking, what was it? 43 million, Brian? It's about three million pounds, I think is what it was in that range. Yeah, about 43 million pounds. I mean, that's a lot of pounds. And and probably under like they haven't actually valued the the

19:48acquisition of the US, the properties and the Australian ones. But in both cases, I think they're under 20 million for what what each of those has. So maybe we're looking at like tops 80 million for all this. I know it's a lot of capacity, a lot of possible possible. Well, they're, oh, I forget what it was there. They're also going to be picking up the production for it. Now I shouldn't have said anything because now I can't think of it, but they're also partnering up with. Oh, it's is a honeykin, I think, right? Who that they're that they're doing. Oh, it's a carling or a car. Oh, yeah. Carlsburg. Carlsburg. You're right. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. So they have a deal to produce a fair amount of stuff. Now they've got a facility. I was thinking it's like, all right, well, they're going to they're really going to put that sweet water brewery to work producing all this. No, they're probably going to have a lot of that going through the new Rudolph facility. I'm guessing. So they've got. I guess so, man. Maybe maybe that's part of the master plan there. That's what I'm thinking. They've got the they've got they've got the people that need that

20:52kind of capacity. So they're going to put it to work right away. I hope it works out for them because otherwise, I mean, what else are these brute officers going to do? They're not they were not going to survive. So yeah. Yeah. Interesting stuff, man. Oh, Brian, sick of more brewing for those that don't recall we talked talked about them last year. There was a scandal there were the owner, one of the owners had some very, very strong allegations against him against him with some, you know, underage people there. And of course, the brewery took it. He left immediately. I believe it was his wife or former wife stayed on the business and that. But there's more changes in update. The breweries moving for making some change. So Brian, what's the latest there? Yeah. I think the last we heard of the last report is the brewery at temporarily shut down to make some changes and including reportedly changing their name. I don't know. I think we may have mentioned that. Well, this this week we learned that they did in fact reopen as club west brewing

21:53this past Saturday. Not only that, but Sarah Taylor, the co owner of sick of more our co founder of sick of more and the owner of sick of more right now has agreed to sell 100% of the company to Brad Bergman, the current director of brewery operations. The sale and the rebranding are clearly efforts to distance themselves. The brewery in themselves from the the fallout surrounding the former co owner Justin Brigham, like as you said, he was arrested for some alleged horrible acts involving children. And yeah, it seems like completely removing Brigham from the ownership and involvement in the breweries day-to-day activities was not enough. Sarah Taylor's connection to her now ex-husband was just too toxic. So apparently a complete break from the founders, you know, for this brewery to survive was required. And I'm reading a little bit into that and speculating, but that seems to be the message. Before they shut down the last we heard, there was no talk about her selling thing. So the breweries being sold completely. So it and it seems like these actions may have saved the brewery as possible.

22:57Reportedly, the place was packed when it reopened this past Saturday. But you know, here's the thing. Well, the retailers who drop sick of more start buying beer from club west brewing. Who knows? And will the crowds have showed up when they reopen, keep coming back? Or will they were they just there because, oh, hey, new brewery opened and then get bored of it and move on, you know, I don't know what's going forward. But if they can keep crowds coming into the brewery, they I think the brewery can survive. So that checks out Brian. Yeah, that checks out. If people keep going to the brewery, the brewery could survive. If they briar your product, you will survive. That's it. That's it. This is 101 right there, man. Absolutely. You know, it's I'm making an assumption here that the wife honestly had no idea that anything was going on based on her actions. That seems it. So it's unfortunate for her that the, you know, that the stigma stuck with her through a business that it did seem like she didn't have any real interest in getting away from.

23:59But as a consumer and that, I definitely see, you know, the, the public opinion there, with the with the connection. So hopefully it's good for the brewery and Brian, do you know, and I'm sorry if you missed it, I was reading up on something else and looked through the notes here, but did anyone stay on with this? Like did they have the same brewer? Oh, yeah, they're keeping. I think there was like 63 employees that kept all of them. All of the employees are keeping. I think they actually hired more people. I want to say it was in the neighborhood of 16 employees. I don't have the full numbers, but that was the big thing. They actually hired more people for the reopening. So all the employees stuck around. And so that's, I mean, that's good. So this, the brewery is basically just a new name with the same people without the ownership, the previous ownership. And I mean, it's a little sad, but I can understand why people, and I don't know that I don't know the people involved. I have no idea, but I can see people just, just assuming like, there's no way she didn't know something. There's no way she,

25:01she's just looked the other way and let it happen. I'm like, I don't know. I think that's, that's an assumption that nobody that doesn't know them can make. So, but I can see that that's something that people wouldn't assume. And like, I'm not going to buy a product when I think that this is a possibility, but she's completely out or will be soon. And at that point, I'm like, where's the justification in you not buying this? Because they're, they're gone. And now all it's left are people that just are trying to do a job and make some beer. You know what I mean? So here's my thinking, man. Here's, here's my thinking. And if it was a brewery in my area, I would make an intentional effort to try and support them. If it was a good brewery, they came to same employees on the bad seeds are out of there and all that. It's not their fault. What happened in the past is basically it. So if I go there, the beer is good, show them support, man. You know, I mean, I would go out of my way to go there once, but what would keep me going back is it still is a good, you know? So,

26:05apparently, okay, also, I'll support you guys. Sure. Let's see what you're doing with this place. You know, so, but yeah, I just like any brewery, man, I'd go check them out. If they were good, then I would continue to support them. We did get some of some of Sycamore beers down here. And I think they were like right right before this came out. They were part of our Christmas beer show. And it was a really good beer. That was one of our. Yeah, I forget which place I think maybe number two, but they did like a Christmas cookie beer. That's right. And it was like we dropped our show on Saturday and like, or I think, I think maybe Friday night, the news come out. And our show was already, I'm like, great. All right. There's no way. There's no way for us to do anything about it. It's like, well, it's already in the can and we didn't even see the news until like the next week. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was a good beer. Man, if they're still making beer like that, then then by all means, you know, I've got a buddy in Ohio that mentioned he was a big fan of Sycamore because did we get that? Did they distribute here? Was that that cookie beer brought from somewhere else? No, I think this is one we just picked off the shelf. I've seen Sycamore

27:10on the shelf a fair amount. And their beers, the beer is pretty good. And I always found that can art amusing. It's it trends towards almost like graffiti ish art. Kind of remember. We'll have to see if Club West gets out and makes it down here. And if they do, we'll have to see what they're all to. I'll try it. Yeah. I'll give them a shot, assuming that they've done, they've gone through, you know, heroic efforts to try to make right what's wrong from everything I can tell, like all I can do is give them the benefit of the doubt at this point, you know? Yep. Absolutely, man, that's it. Brian, before we move on, how about we give a shout out to our friends at truck and tap? Sounds like a good idea. So once again, we're in the grips of the spring weather whip lash, t-shirt weather and pollen one day freezing temperatures the next. I think we're in the middle of freezing temperatures at the moment, but I'm not even a guess what kind of beer will be appropriate for this weekend. And we did a good job of drinking truck and tap completely out of Guinness this past week. So let's switch over to some lighter drinking beers. Maybe it'll be nice out again. I

28:12think it's it's heading that direction, but who knows? So let's get into my truck and tap beer picks for the week at truck and tap woodstock. I'm going with Monday nights gasoline dreams. It's a easy New England style pale ale, which means it's considerably lighter than your typical New England IPA ringing in at just 5.7% ABV. And I want to point out that's what that's what IPA used to be back before. Yeah. The New England thing happened. Yeah, like 5.75.5. That was IPA back in the day, but me yelling at clouds is the old man here. But it sounds downright flammable these gasoline dreams with flavors of dank resin, grapefruit, tangerine, and crushed grapes coming from Nelson Soven and nectar on hops. It's all the thrill of danger without the actual danger. Only 5.7%. At the dilute location, I'm getting Ryan Geist juicy truth IPA. Okay, this one's a little boozeier than gasoline dreams, but only a little bit live like a percentage point. So yeah, it's not full New England IPA, but so they describe this as being mouthwatering tropical and juicy.

29:12At this point, I think we're all conditioned to start drooling whenever we hear an IPA is juicy. So the mouthwatering part is a little redundant, but it sounds great. I like Ryan Geist what I've had of theirs and what I see it around that I do try to get it. But at truck and tap Alphoretta, my pick is six bridges, cold conditions on the glorious side pole tap. It's a German pilsner made with Eric Clea malt. And I don't know if I'm saying that right, but that's the way it looks. It apparently can produce light honey notes in a beer. And also it has a German magnum and fuel melon hops. This does sound like any weather beard to me. And I mean, seriously, German pilsner off a side pole tap. Yes, I'm signing me up all day every day. And finally at the Lawrenceville location, I'm going with tripping animals, L green creepy also on the side pole tap, two side pole taps this time. L creepy is a crisp American pilsner with earthy and herbal grassy notes, but hang on one second. This is L green creepy. That means it's a green beer, Tim.

30:13Wow. A green beer on the side pole tap. It's so delightfully ridiculous. I simply must get it. And if you get one, send me a picture of it. In case I don't get one, I want to see it. But there you have my truck and tap beer picks for the week. Get out there and have a beer too. As always, if you'd like to see the full tap list before stopping by, take a look at truckandtap.com. The taps do change quickly. So you never know what great new beer might go on in which of these might disappear. And if you'd like to see what food trucks are serving and what events are happening, trivia karaoke, live music, holiday, parties of all kinds, you can also find that at truckandtap.com. Everything you need to know can be found at truckandtap.com. So check that out. And thank you to truckandtap for your support. Thank you, truckandtap. You know, Brian, speaking of green beer, phantom had one or has that I think you spinach in it. And not one of my favorites from phantom, Brian. I can't think of what that was called. But yes, it was. Yeah. Yeah. If anybody, if anybody on the stream there remembers which one that was the phantom, we don't have Nate

31:14here to Google for us. He's he's on assignment, Brian. There was a basil goose too, I think. Was it green? No, I was trying to remember that it's I want to say it was in spontane basil, right? Spontane basil. Yeah. Oh, that was, I forget the brewery on that one too. We're getting too old or I know, I know. Mine isn't working right. But yeah, the phantom, it was it was not great. And you know, that was one of my biggest issues with phantom is that they did. They were hit or miss. Like I didn't find any any consistency with their beers. So did not enjoy those. I found it. And it wasn't I'm looking at the pictures on untapped right now. Spontane basil from Lindemann's and it was and I couldn't think of who the collab was because and it was and it was with another brewery. Mickler is a mecha. It was molecular. They did a few. They had like Spontane basil, Spontane, cherry or something, but there were a few Spontane.

32:17I think it was there. There was a time when I know I went to some some really good craft beer bar. I forget where it was, but what they had the entire lineup with Mickler of Spontane, everything. And I want to say New Orleans of all places. But yeah, we went through and drank a bunch of them. This is going back a few years back when that was the hottest thing. You know, everything spontaneous, everything wild, everything. Beautiful days. Wild, wild, wild. Yeah, that's so easy. Cougars here are saying spinach and beer magic goes. That's did they say it in in Dutch though, maybe, but are they have another one? But it wasn't we had to try it, Brian. You know, when we heard about it, but that could be it. I mean, I've seen some pictures online of that and it looks some of the glasses look like they're green and some look like they're clear. So maybe different versions of it were more or less. Yeah, it was not a pretty color and it was not delicious either. So yeah, I'm looking here. So

33:23yeah, we won't we won't hold up here, but anyhow, yes. So Phantom did one with spinach and then we had the Spontane basil. That was it. So those were professional green beers, Brian. I would try Spontane basil again because I do like basil. I don't quite remember how how it tasted. I don't remember thinking it was great, but I had a bottle at one point. I think it got opened into bottle share and I'm sure. Yeah, that sounds like a bottle sherry kind of beer. Oh, I want to try this. Well, I'm not sitting down and drinking this whole thing. Still drinking all this. I'm going to make everybody else sit through it with me. Yeah, I got this. I got this beer that tastes like a burnt car tire. I want to try it. Yeah, absolutely. You must be talking about tactical nuclear. Maybe I am, Brian. Maybe I am. Yeah, I think it's hilarious, man, whether it's food or again, we're into colons or craft beer, the nastiest ones you want your friends to try them. So it's like, oh, this is oh, yeah, you got to try this. So this smells terrible. Give it a smell. Yeah, see this, this literally smells

34:27like a donkey south side. You got to, you got to check it out. Crazy stuff. Well, Brian, uh, moving along the UK news from the UK wild times over there, but the UK has started using in a beer as an inflation indicator. Yeah, so yeah, drinking habits are changing the way the UK government calculates the economy in a very official way. The non-alcoholic beer has become so popular in the UK, but that the office for national statistics or the ONS now uses it to measure the country's inflation rate. Of course, the inclusion, inclusion of non-alcoholic beer is a direct result of, you know, broader consumer shift towards wellness and plant-based trends and all that sort of thing that we've been seeing. The, the ONS tracks 760 products. I think they call them a basket or something like that as though you were shopping. They do that annually to ensure that they represent what modern consumers are actually buying essential items. They do change drastically over time. So new things go and,

35:27you know, other things get pulled out. For example, tea bags in the UK weren't added to that inflation tracking chart until until 1980, which is crazy. When you think about how long the British have loved and been buying tea and how they've obsessed over it over the years. So, it wasn't until 1980, which sounds like a million years ago to anybody that's in Gen Z at this point. So, I guess 1980. I'm sure I'm pretty historic, you know, late 1900s there. So, late 1900s, yeah, it checks out. So, also joining non-alcoholic beer in the inflation calculation are hummus, which they spell weirdly over there, took me a minute to figure out what it was. Motor homes, pet grooming services and dashboard cameras, which kind of surprises me. Those are all typical expenses, but okay. What's interesting is that the ONS is apparently just now moving away from manual price checks to using supermarket scan data to figure out what their people are actually paying for, you know, beer, groceries and other things. And I'm wondering if this has anything to do with advancements in AI. And I guess we'll find out if we suddenly start seeing really wildly

36:33incorrect numbers, you know, associated with their inflation rates. But I guess they actually sent people out to go shopping and buy these things and see what they actually cost, which seems like a very weird and error prone way to do things. But, you know, it does. Yeah, some of the things that are still done manually are just just kind of mind boggling. You're like, really? Really? That's a... In 2026, you're still just doing this manually? Yep. Yeah, that's gosh, man, it would date me. I mean, it's been 20 years ago, but we're talking the 2000s now, not the late 1900s again, but, you know, doing inventory for grocery stores. If anybody's ever seen this, you basically have a calculator that hangs... You use a hip belt and it hangs on the side of your hip. And, you know, these people get... Brian, totally not beer-related, but there's hired guns in the inventory world. Like, guys that are really fast with using one of these hip hang in 10 keys. And, you know, these guys, I mean, I'm talking like people who are contracted

37:37to go to tropical islands and stuff and do inventory because they're so fast and accurate with them. I think I've seen this. It hangs down the side and just like spastically, you know, with their fingers. Yeah. I'm curious what they look like now, but they were fairly good size. I mean, there's a fairly large size thing like that hung down there, but yeah, if you're ever going and see someone looking at the shelf or something and just whacking on a 10 key calculator on their hip, I bet they've changed. That was 20 years ago. So, I bet there's some update to technology, but anyhow, very manual to do these these inventories in the store. I'm just trying to envision like, yeah, they send me to exotic places, islands and stuff. What do you do? I just like, I calculated. I do inventory, man. I go out and do inventory. That's it. Yeah. It's a weird world. That's, that's what I want. I want a reality TV show about the lives of traveling inventory crews because it would be ridiculous. So, you never got that.

38:42Would you Brian? They're party lifestyle that just, just getting lit up every night, party and like crazy, just rolling in cash. And like, how do these guys have so much money? All they do is add stuff up like, man, gotta, gotta master that 10 madness, madness. Brian craft moved to cans is cooling. We know it's been up and down, going from bottles to cans, cans, really cool thing. And now it seems that's cooling off, Brian. What's the scoop on cans? Yeah, this is interesting. According to drinks business and some comments from the Bruce Association, craft beer in the US may be falling out of love with the aluminum can. For, after years of aggressive growth, the craft beer industry shift from glass bottles to aluminum cans does seem to be slowing down. And the, that move to aluminum cans may actually be reaching a ceiling at this point where like, we may come to a stop in terms of the growth anyway. As of 2025, nearly four out of every five craft beers are sold in cans, which I don't think

39:43will surprise anybody these days, you know, just go to any store, you can see it. A massive jump from even a few years prior to that. So every year, it's been, it's been a big thing. And everything seemed to be chugging along nicely with the cans until March and April of 2025. And what happened then? Well, yeah, that's right. 25% tariffs were imposed on aluminum, which includes cans forcing some breweries to reconsider their packaging choices. So the preference for cans isn't uniform across the US. Rhode Island is almost entirely cans. I think they're, I think one of the biggest, they're like 92% of the craft beer that they have in Rhode Island that they buy is in cans, whereas states like Mississippi, Kansas and Louisiana still have bottles making up nearly half of the market of it. I think I like 45, 46% of their beers still in bottles down there, which is interesting. It's definitely not the case that case to my recollection here for sure, but the cans will always, you know, probably dominate for outdoor activities, anything like that,

40:45but glass bottles will hold a strong niche for premium and special drinking occasion experiences. You know, opening a corking cage of 750 of Lambick is always going to feel fancier than cracking open a can, but on the other hand, you know, a bag of full of still Lambick. I mean, that may be even more special than a corking cage glass bottle, but anyway, anecdotally, I haven't seen a big shift to glass in my visits in the beer store, but I have seen it recently, and it kind of struck me is there's some new glass bottle options like, oh, that's in glass bottles now, and I can't specifically remember what it was, but I was a little surprised by I'm like, I would not have expected to see that in glass. It's typically something I see in cans. So I have noticed a little bit. I don't think that we're, you know, fully switching back to glass at this point, but we're definitely slowing down. I think so. Yeah. You know, I never had an issue with cans for craft beer. Okay. To back in the day, Brian, your canned beer was your cheaper

41:53beers, your drinking beer, you know, you're fill up a cooler and head out on the weekend kind of bears. If I got quote unquote nicer beer, I liked the bottles. I thought it was a more premium product there. And, you know, as as craft grew and a lot more stuff was put in cans, I didn't mind it by any means, you know, but I do still like a bottle, like you talked about, especially with something like a 750 of, you know, a lambic of goose or even a big stout, you know, it kind of the whole process of it there, the pomp and circumstance of opening one of those big bottles. It was always nice. It made it more of an event. It made it nicer, but yeah, I don't mind. I like the convenience of cans, especially if you're, you know, you're going to have a few there. It's a lot easier to get rid of, you know, then, you know, toss those in the recycling bin than then all those bottles lighter to carry. That's for sure. I'm thinking about, it just remind me of you saying that what do we open? It was like a cheruboam of, was it a quad? St.

42:54Bernardis quad? Probably San Bernardis, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, oh geez. They closed. But now, it was an H mug. Okay. All right. I was thinking of something more recently, but I'm like, I've seen some larger, larger bottles of like an anchor Christmas ale. I'm like, man, bring those back. They do bring big ones or do we open one of those in the studio too? And that was, that was great. I'm like, those are fun. That's, that's a lot of fun. And I got to point out with that, that sort of thing. You're not going to get that in a can. And that volume of beer is going to age differently and better, I think, than smaller bottles of, you know, anything. So I like that, I like that to that option when it's available. It's difficult now because nobody's buying that stuff. But man, I love it when you crack open a good quad in a large volume. I think that it does, you do result in a better, more interesting beer at the, at the end result of aging. So it does,

43:54it's nice. And so we don't, so we don't throw out acronyms and then not tell what they are. H mug is holy mother of gatherings, which is a big, a big bottle share we had here in Atlanta. I haven't heard anything about it in the last couple years. I don't know if I'm no longer on the, the VIP undercover list or I know they were toning it down the last time I went that, because it got to be quite an event. And it was all, but that was where people brought out the best to their best. I mean, people would save up stuff all year for that bottle share to bring it out. You always had good stuff happening. It got wild in the beers that you could have were incredible. Is it? Yeah. The problem was was trying to not drink too much and being able to remember what she did when you were there. I can see, I can understand them scaling it back because people just got lit. I mean, that, that was a thing. So you got a little crazy, little wild, little wild. Brian, we had our friends from Guinness on here last week and more Guinness news this week, but Guinness has pioneered or did pioneer a statistical test that is now used by all of science. That sounds like a broad claim, Brian. What is going on? It is. It is. And

45:00it's something I didn't know about or I would have mentioned it last week when we had a comb with this. But yeah, a modern science owns a debt to Guinness for developing this statistical tool. And I'm not talking about the nitrogen poor or the widget that came back up within the 19 days. They didn't invent that. And we should thank him for that. But that's not it. Back in the early 20th century, about 1906, Guinness sent their head borer William C. Lee Gossett to the University College in London. They needed him to figure out a way to ensure quality and consistency when scaling up production without having to test every single ingredient they went into their beer every single time. The problem was the testing small samples of hops for resin content was it's difficult because these small samples often introduce noise. It doesn't represent the whole crop. So, you know, you happen to grab some really bad or some really good hops in your sample and that's going to throw off your results. So you might think that, oh, these are really good. These are terrible hops. And it's just one or two hops that kind of make a mess of it.

46:00So how do you know if your small sample is good or in line with expectations? At the time, all anybody was doing in math and science was large scale testing, which would ruin a lot of your ingredients. You just a huge amount of it. You test all of it. That's how you knew. So by comparing the averages of small sample sizes to the average of larger sample sizes, Gausset determined how much the two differed and the process he invented was the tea distribution. His test letters were, his tests were later refined by a mathematician by the name of Ronald Fisher, which allows the statisticians to determine whether the sample means differed from the population means and means like in terms of statistical sense. If they did, if they differed in a significant way. So if the the sample mean differed from the population mean in a statistical way, basically, is my sample more or less in line with the entire crop or is it really off? Today, this mathematical tool is used by researchers in every scientific field from astronomy to

47:05zoology. And I basically stole that from the article because it was cute A to Z. But yeah, it's just basically coming up with a way to statistically figure out if you've got a good sample. Does this represent the whole or not? And can you use a small sample? Because before that, nobody knew how to do testing without testing everything. So pretty cool, pretty cool. Okay. All right. Science, see in mathematics. Science, a little science. It's a little. Yeah. I'm trying to see because it's like they're taking a smaller sample size and comparing it to a larger sample size. But if they're taking the larger sample size anyhow, it isn't that I guess it would probably be a larger sample size, but it's not as large as it would have to be if they didn't use this tea dish. So what you're looking for is you may have to do a large one to set up like an initial kind of goal of baseline. And then afterwards you can in the future use smaller samples against that baseline. So you might invest the fair amount of

48:07your product in the first one, but then you don't have to do it continuously. Yeah. And then you could use some math to figure out like, all right, are we in line? Are we good here? Or do we have an issue here where this is like noticeably more resonance or less resonance in terms of hops or more proteins or less proteins in terms of like grains or whatever. So that's that's the idea. Heavy on the math, but very very good in terms of reducing the waste of resources, basically, is what it winds up being is otherwise you're just throwing a bunch of stuff away to trash and all your hops, man, your malt and hops, basically. Yeah. Nobody wants that. Nobody does. So like once you rip them apart, you can't really put them into a beer like they're all messed up, you know, so well, well, I mean, you could throw them back in there, man. I guess one in the beer. It's boiling. I mean, maybe it's possible. I don't know. All right, Brian, beer history or historic beer, I should say we always love here in this kind of news. Another discovery discovery beer is great. This time in the US of A in the

49:08state of Iowa, they discovered a hundred year old beer cave. Yes, a perfectly perfectly preserved piece of brewing history discovered in Iowa. It's it's a bit like stumbling on to a time capsule full of 19th century refrigeration technology. Yeah, I don't know. But anyway, the team renovating a property of an old brewery in Cascade, Iowa's named the city, they unearthed a beer cave that hasn't seen human contact for like a century. So there were rumors that cave existed. People like saw benches of it in I guess historical text, but nobody had any kind of physical evidence and there was no indication it was there. The discovery was made when the construction crews identified architectural structures during an excavation. So they were started digging and boom, there we go, like there's arches. Before modern cooling, these caves were essential for maintaining a cold environment for beer storage and loggering. And it probably means that these caves were were probably for hyper local beers like the those beer the beer that was was was stored and

50:12loggered there wasn't making it far away from that because there wasn't refrigeration to to take it elsewhere. So very regional or very like close knit, probably neighborhood drinking stuff, but not far from the caves. Anyway, the massive subterranean structures were built entirely with physical labor, probably assisted by horses and basically no modern machinery. That's that's what they're saying. Anyway, the state apparently has a long history of these underground cave networks, particularly in Iowa city, another city in Iowa, obviously, and they were used for both making beer and moving beer around. And it's also possible that there is a connection with this beer cave and bootlegging during the prohibition. Though that's a little bit of speculation at this part, there's no actual specific evidence for that. But the timeline works out really well. The prohibition about 100 years ago is when it started. And there was a fair, I saw some references to an Iowa city. I think beer mafia is what they called them. So there were things going on in

51:13this area with with results to caves and people like, you know, trying to avoid the early stages of prohibition by hiding their booze and caves. So that's pretty cool. So the interesting thing is with these, I've seen other things were caves like this are discovered and obviously we're not going to use it to age beer. But I have seen where people have used caves like this. They've bought them and they use them to age cheese. Okay, age grew here. So it's possible. Maybe that when they've discovered this, this may become a cave for aging cheese in the future, which would be a very cool thing. But again, there's no no reason to believe that. I think they're trying to turn this, this the whole thing into like apartment buildings, which would be of a tragic shape. But you know, we've got a little beer beer cave beer seller history here in Atlanta, Brian. So the Atlantic Brewing Company that was one of Atlanta's historic breweries and they they survived prohibition by selling ice. They sold ice in that. But what is now the underground parking garage for the

52:17Atlanta Hilton, where like Dragon Con and stuff. Yeah. That was previously their beer seller area there. So a historic breweries beer seller is now a parking garage for a Hilton hotel right here in Atlanta. That is pretty cool. Yeah. Fascinating stuff, isn't it, man? I do, I do like stuff like that. So I say kind of jokingly, but I think that kind of stuff is cool, man. And they did, I did when looking up some information on historic breweries in Georgia, you know, we have the Atlanta History Center has some good articles in that from from way back about some of the old breweries that were here and that and I just I find that pretty interesting. I have a very very small collection of brewery on which is a word I will continue to struggle with actually saying, but I've got like half a dozen bottles. Some of them I think my oldest one is like eight late 1800s. I've got a bottle like 1890s from a brewery out of Macon, Georgia. And we actually had a listener of the show a few years ago. They found an invoice again, I think from the like the late 1800s, it was for

53:23delivery of like two cases of beer and it was like a dollar 23 or something like that. And they're like, hey, I've heard you guys talking. I thought this is something that may interest you. I have no use for it. They sent it to us, which it was very nice to them because I do like that. It's very cool. Yeah. Yeah. That's very cool. Yeah. Brian in a beers all over the place in celebrities love to put their names on some liquor that seems like something that is super super popular. You know whether it's a gin or vodka or whatever. But now George Clooney is going to put his name on some non alcoholic beer. Yeah. Apparently George Clooney made a killing with his forget what it was Costa Migos or something like that tequila. So he's moving away from tequila and I think others celebrities are moving away from like tequila and other spirits. They're starting to look at the beer cooler. So George Clooney, Randy Gerber and Mike Meldman, I don't know the other two, but I know who George Clooney is. They have partnered to create a non alcoholic beer called Crazy Mountain. The brand is launching with two loggers, original and lime. They are of course looking to tap into

54:28the explosive growth of an A beer. They see an opportunity here, obviously. And yeah, there's a wellness trend and all that sort of thing. So of course, the beers are low calorie. Each 12 ounce serving contains about 65 calories. Instead of removing the alcohol after the beer is brewed, this is kind of interesting to me. They're following the path of making a beer that never had alcohol in the first place, but they don't specify how they're doing that. They call it a unique process. And they don't say if that's a special strain of yeast, which we have heard is a thing that some people are able to do now. Or if it's something else, like chemically, sciencey, something that they're doing, no idea. But apparently Crazy Mountain is currently rolling out to select markets, but you can buy it directly from their website if you'd like to give it a shot unless you live in Georgia. So CrazyMount.com, two six packs will set you back $27.98 plus shipping. And I found out that they don't ship to Georgia because I went in there to try to figure out how much they hit you up for shipping. So I could tell people that they told me they don't ship

55:31to me. They wouldn't tell me what the shipping was. So I have no idea. So it's going to be a little bit more. But you're looking at you were getting close to you know, they have $14 ish for a six pack. And you have to they do them two at a time. So you don't order just one. You get two. So I don't know what shipping is for that. I hope it's inexpensive. But the cans are interesting. They're they're basically cowboys like riding a horse and like doing some roping. So they're in the process of roping something or other very very bright colorful. They basically look like they're wrapped with a very nice picture of cowboys. So yeah, fancy Brian. Yeah, pretty neat. It does sound nice, man. I wish them lots. Yeah, you know, back when non-alcoholic beer first started shipping, they did ship to Georgia. That's athletic brewing. I got a couple orders from them and had them shipped to Georgia. And then I went in there and went to order and couldn't pull it. They're like, we can't ship to your state. And you know, we know the fellas over there at at athletics. I love

56:33it. You have a problem with shipping. So you just email the president and founder of the company. That's right. It's asking what's up. So let's go. He's like, yeah, he's like, no, Georgia. They flew through basically was one of those things. And we've had a lot of issues like this where there's no law specifically prohibiting something. Therefore, it's technically legal. But as soon as someone tries to make something legal, they're like, oh, we didn't know you were doing that. And it becomes illegal kind of thing. So what the short of it is that Georgia classifies non-alcoholic beer in the same category as alcoholic beverages. So therefore can't ship it into the state of Georgia. I and I know you we can't talk sense in these people there. They're their buttons. They're bought and paid for. But the thing is is this never had alcohol to begin with. So this is not just non-alcoholic. This is alcohol free or the other terminology, which there was never booze in this to begin with. So it should never be treated the same way. It's it less. This is done in a very weird way under bad, you know, controls or whatever. There's no there is no chance that this has alcohol

57:36in it. Like this is perfectly safe for anybody to try. Assuming it's stored and made properly. I mean, obviously I can't vouch for what they're doing. I don't know what they're doing. But that sounds sauce Brian. It does. Yeah. I have to say that because now I can like somebody's like, well, Brian said it was great and perfect. I'm like, no, I didn't. I don't know what they're doing. They haven't told me anything. Yeah. They have to at least send me a six pack before before I'll sell out my credibility like that. Come on, George. Send us a six or joy. Yeah. Let's see what's up on it. No, two six packs. That's the only way they ship. It's kind of that's it. Okay. There you go. Make it easy. All right. Good stuff. Well, y'all that about wraps it up for a show this week. We appreciate you joining us and hanging out. Again, if you enjoy what we're doing here, we would love it if you would tell a friend to tune into the show. If you really enjoy what we're doing, then go to patreon.com slash beer guys. We'd appreciate your support there. And again, if you are a patron on support, you get into our discord and we'll also give you a link each week after the live stream to join us for the after party. With all that said, we hope that

58:40you do have a really, really good week and don't forget to drink local cheers.