Barrel Aged Stouts with Skip Schwartz – BeerSmith Podcast #321
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Skip Schwartz joins me this week to discuss innovation and flavored barrel-aged stouts. This is Beersmith Podcast number 321.

This is the Beersmith Home Brewing Show, where brewing great beer is our passion. If you want to take your brewing to the next level, visit beersmith.com, where you can download a trial version of our Beersmith software, subscribe to the newsletter, and get dozens of free articles on home brewing. And now, your host and the author of Home Brewing with Beersmith, Brad Smith.

This is Beersmith Podcast number 321 and it's early March 2025. Skip Schwartz joins me this week to discuss innovation in barrel-aged stouts. Thank you to this week's sponsors, Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine. They recently added a new collection of more than 500 beer recipes from pro brewers to their site and most let you download the

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Today on the show, I welcome Skip Schwartz from Weldworks Brewing. Skip is the head brewer at Weldworks, and today he joins us to update us on barrel-age brewing techniques. Skip, it's great to have you on the show. How are you doing today? Good, Brad. It's good to be back. It's been a while.

Always a pleasure. Yeah, I think I had you on about a year ago is what I remember. It was actually, let's see, I got it here last July and we talked about hazy IPAs. What have you been up to this last nine months? Oh man, we've had a busy nine months over here at Weldworks.

We celebrated our 10th anniversary. We also hosted our invitational festival with 45 of our good friends and brewers from all over the country here in Greeley, Colorado. We had really good attendance, about 1,200 people over the course of two sessions were here. So I think it's been a really successful nine months. We made it through another year, so that's always good. Distribution's picking up for us, and everything's feeling good.

That's pretty amazing. So you guys have only been in business for 10 years. I actually thought it was a little bit longer than that. Yeah, it feels longer, but yeah, it was 10 years. I was doing sessions probably about then with your founder, Neil, I think, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Neil would definitely have been doing some podcasting back then. He's a little bit more quiet now, but still sometimes you can find him out and about. So let's see. Back in episode 287, I had you on to discuss barrel-aged stouts, and we talked quite a bit about how you formulated and brewed your barrel-aged stout.

Uh, but this time you want to talk a little bit more about the later stages of brewing. Um, what are some of the things you've changed though recently or done recently? I think you mentioned you have some very specific things you were doing with adjuncts and also coffee. Yeah. I mean, adjuncts are something that we've kind of always played around with and, um,

We've definitely are always striving to find the best way to do each ingredient. Um, something like coffee, like you said, is like, we have a very, very strict procedure with coffee. Um,

Roasted things tend to give off that green pepper flavor. And I personally love coffee beers, but I hate when they get green peppery. So I'm very, very particular on how we do coffee. We usually shoot for about one pound to one and a half pounds per barrel on our coffee beers. So 31, 1.5 pounds per 31 gallons. We use whole bean exclusively.

And then we also we bag them and we put them into our adjunct vessel. So our adjunct vessels here at Weldworks are temperature controlled. And they also so they're basically like a mash tun. So they have be wire false bottoms and then they have a bunch of true bottoms. So we're pulling off and we're able to, you know, kind of run the beer through it like like you would in a mash tun or a lot of tun.

And then we're able to hook up a pump and recirculate. So we're able to kind of, you know, continuously recirc pretty much we're vorloffing on whatever adjunct we're using. So with coffee, you know, we're very particular 55 degrees temperature. So sometimes, you know, we're making sure that we're really cold.

It's not super cold, but it's colder than a normal extract would be for us. And that's deliberate, so we're going a lot slower. It's a little bit more closer to what they do to make cold brew. It's a little warmer than a cold brew temperature. I'm pretty sure, if I recall correctly, cold brew is usually around 40 degrees. So it's a little bit warmer, so we get a little bit quicker. Again, we don't want too long.

So we usually do 24 to 48 hours on our coffee. And this is really important to us that after 24 hours, we're kind of tasting it often. So we have sample valves on the tank and we're making sure that if you walk by, you know, try to go once an hour, once every other hour while we're in the building, someone's trying to taste it to make sure we're not pulling any of that green pepper flavor. And if, you know, once we get what we, what, what tastes, you know, like a really bright,

crisp, clean coffee flavor, we're going to take it off that coffee beans as soon as possible. So like I said, the quicker, the better 48 hours max is what we're looking for. Usually I think it ends up being around 30, 36 hours, but we really like, like I said, a really crisp, clean coffee flavor. I think sitting on coffee for too long, again, we'll get green pepper, but also just stale coffee, you know, coffee that sat on your desk for an hour,

Um, you know, the coffee that I probably have sitting on my desk right now after this interview will probably taste like that. Um, you know, we don't want that. We want really crisp, clean coffee flavors. So, um, you know, that's something that we were always focusing on, um, over here and, uh, stuff that we've changed in, um,

blending process. Not really much. The sizes have kind of changed for some of our stuff. We're definitely doing a lot of big blends because we do national releases of Media Noche now. We're doing about two a year.

Um, so that's something that's kind of changed just the absolute quantities that we're doing are way bigger than we ever have before. So, um, it's kind of, it's kind of fun, but when you have to go in and taste, um, make a blend of 28 barrels, it can be kind of a little bit more complicated than back in the days when we were doing, you know, two to 12 barrels. So it's definitely a learning curve, but I mean, that's interesting. Can we dive into that a little bit, but you're doing a lot of blending now, I guess, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, the blending process for us would be we'll pull nails. So if you're not familiar with that term, we actually have nails, stainless steel nails in the head of our barrels. So that's the flat parts for, again, people who aren't familiar with the terminology of barrels. So the flat parts on either end of the barrel will have a stainless steel nail in there. Again, stainless steel is very important. So it doesn't rust, create any off flavors or any contaminations into our beer.

So we'll actually have a nail in the head. We'll pull the nail and that pin size hole from the nail hole will, you know, we'll be able to pull a sample out of that way. That way we're not disturbing the top of the barrel by putting something in risk of sanitation, extra oxygen, oxidization. So, you know, we'll definitely take a little sample and that's where we'll pull the sample and then we'll sit down and we'll taste beers.

When you're talking about, again, like I said, this next release that we're doing of Coconut Media Noche for national distribution, that has about 28 barrels. So with 28 barrels, you can't sit down and accurately taste 28, 12 to 15% ABV beers. So we're doing them in sessions. So we'll do a couple at a time. We'll take notes. We'll have notes of things. Past blending sessions, we'll have notes of other things.

And since we already decided we're doing a coconut beer, so we're looking for things with heavy chocolate, heavy vanilla. If there is a coconut aspect to it, we want that. Because coconuts are sweet, we're looking for drier barrels, right?

um huge oak bomb barrels um some of our older barrels end up being really really oaky and those are great um by themselves they're not necessarily great but if they're really good to bolster that oak profile into the final beer or the bourbon profile in the final beer so

That's definitely something that we're always looking for is just unique barrels that will stand out, stand well together, but also kind of maybe push one flavor profile a little bit more forward in the final blend.

Well, I've always wondered if you have, let's say a bunch of, you know, a couple of barrels that are mediocre and you got a couple of barrels that are really good. Do you actually blend the mediocre beer with a good beer or how do you handle that? Um, yeah, I mean, definitely, there's definitely going to be levels to it. If we have a fantastic barrel, like, you know, this is perfect on its own.

We're definitely going to try to save that for a smaller blend. But I think putting some really fantastic barrels with some really, you know, some mediocre barrels is okay, depending on what flavors you're looking for. Maybe with something like Coconut Medianoche, where we're adding another, you know, an adjunct in to extend another flavor. Some of those mediocre barrels go a lot further than, say...

Um, some of the really excellent ones. So maybe you save the excellent ones for one of our non-adjuncted barrel age projects. Um, just because we want that really unique, expressive flavor that we're enjoying to stand out more. Um, but coconut, you know, it will, I don't want to say cover, but it'll kind of, you know, um,

um blending together uh tie together um some of the more mediocre barrels um i think we're lucky enough in our program and how we do our um barrels and our stuff that we don't really have too many barrels that i would say are mediocre um or less than um so we've been very lucky with that um

but we do have a lot of really extremely except like, like over exceptional barrels, um, that we are, when we get those, it's like, Oh man, I really wish we could just release a single barrel, but that's just not where we're at at this time. Or, you know, we have too many of these to release as single barrels at this point in our, in our time. You know, when we started, we did single barrels. Um, when we started our barrel age releases, we were doing a lot of single barrels and, um,

The fact that we're not able to do as many as we used to kind of does stink because we do have a lot of really, really exceptional barrels that would be fun for people to be able to taste just that one barrel alone.

So when you're blending, do you do a test blend at a certain scale and then scale it up? Is that the basic technique? I mean, we do, like I said, we do sessions. And then the session usually ends with like the favorite barrels being blended in and going, okay, this is good. Do we do a full 28 barrel blend? Unfortunately, at the current moment, we don't. That's probably something that we should change. But we kind of just trust in the fact with, you know, I've been here for six years now.

When Neil's around, you know, he's been doing this for nine years of, you know, the business has been 10 years, but meeting OJ Blennings for nine years, you know,

You know, Derek Gold, our director of operations, has been doing this. Him and I started around the same time, which is about six years ago to this week. So we've been together doing blending for a long time. I think we kind of trust our process and know that, like, if we have a good blending session and if we have three good blending sessions, that we're going to create a really good final product. So usually with something that large, we do not do a full blend of that. Yeah, yeah.

Well, let's switch to some of your newer beers. You recently started a collaboration, Oatmeal Stout, with Old Elk Brewing, is what you said, at Fort Collins. Yeah. What's different about brewing an Oatmeal Stout recipe versus your traditional Imperial?

um yeah actually so it's old elk distilling in fort collins and they're um they're a producer yeah they're um really great people um we've kind of worked with them over the years we've released a couple media no trays with them and done some other projects with them um but they uh make a fantastic bourbon um and we're we're working on this project with them it hasn't um this is actually the first time we're talking about this because it's so new um but we're

We're pretty excited about it because most of our barrel-aged stouts have been really big, 12%.

sweet, these really sticky long barrel-aged processes, and we're moving to a shorter barrel-aged with a 6.3% oatmeal stout. Medianoche probably could be considered an oatmeal stout just because of the amount of oats we're using, but this is like a traditional oatmeal stout. The grain bill for this is pale. It's got some victory malt, some crystal 42-row,

Midnight wheat, some pale chocolate. Pale chocolate's kind of like our signature. I really like to amplify that chocolate character without getting too much roast in there. And then, you know, some Munich 10.

So it's like I said, very, very traditional oatmeal stout, old school, like I said, six to 6.3%. So we're looking at like a low OG, like a 16 Play-Doh OG versus, you know, um, our media no chase, like 32 to 38 Play-Doh. Wow. Um, so that's like, uh, 1139 and SG. So very, very big.

Versus the O'Neill style, you know, like I said, it's 16.5, which is 1068 SG. So, you know, we're looking at...

Very, very different starting points. And we're hoping that we can kind of the beer that we were looking at when we were mimicking this is kind of Dragon's Milk from New Holland. A fantastic barrel aged beer, but it's but it's available year round. It's available in four packs. It's super available. And that's kind of what we're looking to start with. This project is have a you know, this will be the first time we're offering four pack 16 ounce beer.

cans of barrel aged stout um which we're really excited we're going to be able to offer it at a very um you know competitive to our um you know our adjuncted stouts and sours price point so i think it's kind of cool it's a really good way to get people into barrel aged beers um that you know a nice shelf price but also something that you can just drink a whole four pack and not you know and be able to walk around and do stuff still you know so it's a lower abv but um

This is just a question, but are your other package stouts, are they available? Barrel-aged stouts, are they available in a four-pack? Are they available in some kind of a

Those are in 16-ounce, 16.9, so 500-milliliter bottles. Okay, so large bottles. Yeah, larger bottles. So about, you know, 16-ounce is probably a big pour, so it's made kind of the split. So, you know, eight-ounce per person if you split it with another, with your partner. But, yeah, this will be the first time that we've really put in, and even when we've done some canned barrel-aged stouts over the years, but they've always been like –

bigger cans or you know two pack cans so this will be the first time that we've really tried to do a low abv um super cost effective and uh four pack 16 ounces so i think it's something to just kind of bring people into our um barrel age portfolio at a

lower price point to kind of just introduce you if you're not familiar with barrel age or if you are just kind of give you something else to to to sip on and in between those big medium oj's that are kind of more of like i want to say a special occasion uh drink yeah

And you aged the oatmeal stout in bourbon barrels, but you're doing a shorter age on this one, I think, versus your traditional. Why is that, and how does that affect the finished beer? So I think – so the reason why we're doing the shorter age, one is because –

The lower ABV, we think that we can really get some of the lower ABV, but also the lower gravity. I mean, like I said earlier, the median OCHEs that are aged 20 months or longer, you know, 18 months is the minimum before they're eligible for us to start tasting and blending.

uh here that's just kind of our rule 18 months so um the median oj just has so much sugar and it's so complex and we do these long 30-hour boils and the extreme bitterness we're talking like 120 ibus versus the oatmeal style is about 50 ibus so we're looking at this like really really weird starting beer with median oj that requires barrel we treat the barrels as an ingredient and it needs a lot of time and we're trying to we're making a beer with you know

lower starting gravity, lower ABV, lower IBUs. So we're hoping that we can kind of make it get a lot of the barrel a lot quicker and that way we're able to put it out quicker. And just that way, again, it helps with our costs because we're not sitting on barrels for as long. So that will also help

Pass that down into that six, the 16 ounce four packs is just having it a little bit quicker. So we're hoping that we get a lot of oak character really quick and a lot of that bourbon character really quick. Working with a local distillery like Old Elk, we're actually able to get

the barrels super quick. So we haven't finished the beer yet. The beer isn't in barrels yet, but it will be, you know, those barrels, they're going to be emptying those barrels while the beer is in tank and then bringing them over while they're like freshly emptied. So we're talking emptied for 24 to 48 hours. So there'll be the freshest barrels we've ever filled here.

So we're hoping that that helps with that. Just getting really fresh barrels, having those, they're still wet from the walls are still wet from bourbon. And just hoping that that just helps keep the process going a lot quicker. So we're really excited about this project. Well, you started doing some barrel aged stouts with flavoring recently. Are those based on your Imperial stout recipe or did you do something different here?

Yes. So the flavors that we do, we've been doing since day one. We started in 2015 when we opened. One of our first beers was...

was a coffee stout, just regular. And, you know, that's kind of what kind of got us a lot of attention. And over the years, our flavors, the flavors that we've done and the adjuncts that we've used have kind of really got our attention or got people attention to us. You know, so we've had very unique flavors in our barrel aged beers for a very long time. And so we're continuously trying

trying to find new flavors, new combos, but also just kind of revisiting stuff that we really enjoy. One of our first bottle releases ever for Medianoche for our barrel aged stuff was a coconut Medianoche and a vanilla Medianoche. And, you know, those just kind of set the tone for what our barrel program and what we were going to do with our barrel program right off the bat. And those, those two releases. So yeah,

To this day, we continuously are looking at, you know, when we release Medianoche, we usually do, aside from national releases, we usually release non-adjuncted. So, you know, just straight barrel alongside an adjuncted, which would be, you know, some kind of fun flavor, some sort of, you know, coffee, coconut, all, you name it. Anything that tastes good in pastry will taste good in our stout. So we've tried everything and we're still trying to experiment, try something new, which

We try to base it off of things that we've liked from other beers in the past and kind of try to find ways to tie it all together in barrel-aged stouts. Now, coconut's fairly hard to work with, I would think, because it's got quite a bit of oil in it. How do you handle something like coconut in an Imperial Stout? Yeah, coconut and oil are very strange, and ours, if you're familiar with any of our

Barrel-aged coconut beers, they do usually have an oil slick, which is really rough on our head retention, which is okay, though. For this style of beer, we think it's okay to have, when you're pouring it, it comes out kind of motor oily and then has just a very little head that kind of dissipates pretty quickly.

but coconut is something that we have, like I said, we've rested our hat on for a long time. We like to think that we do a really good job with coconut and that's why we do so many different coconut barrel aged stouts throughout the year. For our national release this year, like I said earlier, we're doing about 28 barrels blend. There'll be over 2000 pounds of coconut in this. It'll require weeks of,

processing the coconut into and infusing the coconut into the beer because of the tank sizes. So we'll be doing different sessions. So how does that work? I mean, you're dropping coconut right into the fermentation tank? Are you making a tea? What are you doing? Yeah, so we're taking – usually we do a blend of –

75% toasted coconut to 25% raw chips. Um, because we have the pasteurizer, I feel comfortable enough using, um, raw chips. If you don't have a way of sanitizing those chips, I personally would not recommend using raw coconut, even though raw coconut does really have a really awesome flavor. Um, especially when paired up with toasted coconut. Um, so usually we're bagging that and then put it in that adjunct vessel that I was talking about earlier with the coffee. And we're putting that in, um,

Usually for about three to four days, if it depends on whether it's a static rest or recirculation, depending on needs in the brew house for the pumps. You know, we do have a limited number of pumps, so sometimes tank cleans and other things take priority over coconuts. But if we have the time, we'll recirculate it. That's usually about three days. But if we don't have time,

then we'll rest it on just set static rest on the coconut for about five days. Um, we're shooting for a 2.5 pounds per gallon, which is an astronomical amount. It sounds like an awful lot to me. It is a ton of coconut. Um, usually when we put in, we fill our adjunct, our 12 barrel adjunct tank. Um,

Um, usually we'll put in, like I said, about 11 barrels of beer and we'll get 10 out. So we're losing about a barrel of loss due to absorption, which is, uh, like I said, a huge amount. Um, I like to say our coconut stout is, um, very, um,

wasteful but the end product is so good that it's worth it um you know a lot of other breweries probably don't want to go that go as high as we do on coconut just because of the loss um but we really really enjoy it and i think like i said a huge thing to me is the blend of toasted and raw because we're getting two different um flavor profiles from each the toasted has the um you know

Really nice, crispy, some toast, some like burnt almost flavoring, while the raw is kind of more creamy, coconut, like coconut cream, like in your pina colada. So I like having both in there, but I don't like having it at a 50-50, 75-25 blend is kind of where we landed. And we're very happy with it.

And how do you balance the flavor? I mean, how do you decide 2,000 pounds or two and a half pounds per gallon is the right amount? Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing was just experience. We've definitely tried more, and we've seen diminishing returns above two and a half gallons. Don't get me wrong, we've done it before. But I think at a certain point in time, you're just adding more.

way too much sweetness and getting just like kind of the same amount of flavor. So that's kind of just where we landed as the perfect line of not getting losses, not too much sweetness. Don't get me wrong. It is still very sweet, but it's not as sweet as say three and three and a half pounds, which we've tried.

We have done, you know, one pound per gallon and one and a half pound per gallon, which we do think does create a really good product. And we do that for things like, let's say, like our coffee coconut, where we want other flavors to come through. But on just the straight coconut, we go pretty hard. That's amazing. Well, you've got some other interesting beers in the works. Let's see, you've got Oreo Marshmallow and Vanilla Bubble Wrap. How do you...

How do you get a flavor like Oreo into the beer? Yeah, so Bubble Wrap is a cool project that we've been doing every couple years with some of our good friends in the brewing industry. It's Other Half in New York, The Vale in Virginia, Side Project in St. Louis, and then this year we're adding in

angry chair down in Tampa. And so what this project is, is we all kind of pick a barrel that kind of really represents our barrel program. We split it up and we send each other parts of that barrel. When I say parts, I mean liquid from that barrel. So just like a keg. And then we each take in each other's barrels and then we blend it in house with more of our stock.

and then we all kind of do what we want with it. And it's kind of a fun project because we'll all throughout the course of the next six months, we'll all be releasing our own version of Bubble Wrap. And then some people like to do not adjuncted. So side project usually doesn't add adjuncts to theirs. And we like to do something a little bit wild.

Oreo marshmallow vanilla is something that we did the first year that we did this project. And we haven't brought it back since. So it's been about probably five years since we've done that, which is pretty crazy in my mind because it feels like just yesterday. But Oreo is just something that has always been really fascinating that we use regularly.

We do an Oreo beer with a local ice cream shop every summer to kind of kick off our stout season. And so Oreo we've become very familiar with. And that's, you know, a big thing again is just getting the right stuff. So we get Oreo pieces.

We usually do about 200 pounds in six barrels. So that's about 35 pounds per, or sorry, 1.2 pounds per gallon. Again, a very high number. That's astronomical. That's a little crazy too, yeah. Another irresponsible stout. Again, when we make our stouts, I like to say that they're irresponsible stouts because they're not the most cost-efficient, the most...

savvy way of doing it maybe, but we like to really make sure we're hitting all the flavors that we say we hit. So when we're adding in these coconuts into our adjunct vessels, and the thing with something like

Oreos is they do start to kind of break down. So you have to be very careful with filter filtering it afterwards. So we put it through a candle filter usually because you'll get some of that mush in there, having a little bit of that oil slick from the coconut, a little bit of the oil coming off, like in the coconut beers is okay. Having a little bit of the oil that's going to come off the cream filling of an Oreo is okay. But I think actually like having like full on,

like a trunk of oreo some people might enjoy some people might not i know so i'm trying to understand are you are you putting the actual cream in as well just now we're putting we're putting a full so we get oreo pieces like like um just crushed up oreos and we were actually putting those into the beer and recirculating on top of it so parts of it are like so we're actually pulling it right out from the oreo

It's amazing. Are you, what about vanilla bubble wrap? What does that mean? So, so, so the bubble wrap is the name of the whole beer. And then we're for when we're doing the Oreo part, we also have vanilla beans in there. So for vanilla beans, we,

um, it can be really tough to do vanilla beans really well. Um, I think we have a pretty good process. So we are cutting and cutting vanilla beans. We, we do scrape out the inside, but then we are also still using the bean itself. Um, you know, I know that there are other ways of doing it. If I was a home brewer, I'd probably put it in a blender with vodka, but we cannot use any sort of, um, ethanol in our brewery other than what we produce. Um, just because it's illegal, that's fortifying. So we don't do that, but I,

You know, I know that people have had great success at home brews using bourbon or vodka to sanitize. Again, that's part of the reason why we bought a pasteurizer was to make sure that we can use ingredients like vanilla that aren't sanitary, like Oreos that aren't sanitary necessarily for beer spoilers. They are sanitary, but you know what I mean? And for beer spoilers, they're not necessarily sanitary. And so that's a big, big reason why we bought a pasteurizer was our barrel aged stuff.

Well, you're also introducing a double barrel Ambarana beer. What does double barrel mean? And also what's an Ambarana? Yeah, so...

Double barrel to us, a lot of breweries do things differently when they consider double barrels. But for us, we're aging a beer in barrels for at least 12 months. And then we are taking that liquid from that barrel and put it into a secondary barrel. Sometimes to finish it for six months. Sometimes we age again extended times. The longest we've ever done, we did a triple barrel. So we went from...

One set of barrels, after a year, we transferred to another set of barrels, aged it another year, went to a third set of barrels, and aged it for a third year. It was one of the okiest beers we've ever made.

Very dry. Pretty moderate in tannins considering the amount of oak that it touched and the length that we aged it for. So it was three years, three separate sets of barrels. It was a very crazy beer. We probably will not do that one again just because of the time and effort it took to make sure that we were staying on top of that one. But it was a lot of fun to do it and say we did it. So when I talk about double barrel for this...

So, um, Amberana, we'll go into Amberana first. So Amberana is a tree that is grown in South America. Um, it's, you know, in Brazil, Peru, um, Argentina. Um, so when we're looking, uh, the, the big one that they use it for is called Kachasa. It's a spirit, um, that's made of sugar cane in Brazil. Um, and it's, you know, they use Amberana, uh,

wood to make barrels. And then they aged this cachaca, which would probably be closest compared to rum because it's sugar cane. But I would say it's not very close to rum. So yeah,

It is aged in this wood from this tree in the Brazilian rainforest. And Ambarana is this crazy wood. It literally tastes like apple pie and cinnamon and has these really, really, really awesome flavors just from the wood itself. And getting Ambarana barrels in America has been a thing that we've been trying to do for years. And so sometimes you'll see Ambarana wood coming in and cachas has been aged in it.

X spirit has been aging and we were lucky enough to get six that, um, only held, um, bourbon for about, um, six weeks. So we, we have a, we have a couple of those, these Ambarana barrels. Um, so what we did is we took, um, something that was aged for 20 months in, um, 12 year old Rip Van Winkle bourbon barrels. And then we moved it into these Ambarana barrels. So, um, we made probably what I like to call one of the most expensive, uh,

um, barrel aged stouts that we've ever made because Ambarana wood is so expensive. The 12 year old Rip Van Winkle or 10 year old Rip Van Winkle barrels are, were very expensive. Um, and then, so once we're in the Ambarana barrel, we've been resting now at this point for about eight months, we're really excited to pull that out. So we're going to get a lot of these really crazy, um, bourbon expressions from the, the Rip Van Winkle barrels, but then we're also going to get a lot of this like pie spice. And I, when I tell you that

Amberana stuff that comes out of Amberana tastes like an apple pie. It tastes like an apple pie. It is so crazy that it has, you know, the cinnamon, it tastes like, um, you know, the spice just, it's, it's so crazy. It has a little bit of, have you had a chance to sample it yet?

Yeah, so we actually released a double barrel Ambarana beer when we first got them. We did a quick six month age in them. And like I said, it's just it's one of my favorite things maybe of all time was that first one. And I'm very excited for this one because we did an extended age on it. Plus, just that those Ambarana barrels are so unique. There's really I don't if you've never had it, there's nothing else like it.

Um, in barrel age without adding in apples and cinnamon yourself, this is just all from wood and it's just something that I've been so excited for, for a long time. And, um, you know, Neil and I have been searching for these barrels for the better part of five years and to be able to find them, um, has been really awesome. I mean, at one point in time we discussed, uh,

um flying to brazil and renting a u-haul uh in brazil and driving them back ourselves but we were finally able after five years um it would be pretty rough drive i don't think uh there's a reason why we never actually did it yeah probably not a good idea yeah um well finally uh you have a bam bam nochi no noche noche which supposedly tastes like washed white chocolate and fruity pebbles

And I guess it's a sour beer too, is what you're saying. Yeah. So how do you do something like that? Yeah. So Bam Bam Rubble Rubble is a sour beer that one of our sales managers

Our sales guys, Mike Nelson, came up with years ago, and it's based off Bam Bam Cereal. So there's a local shop here, sub shop, that makes Rice Krispie treats with different cereals. I think they're kind of common at this point. Sure, sure. So marshmallow and –

marshmallow and cereal. So he kind of had the idea, let's do something that tastes like the Fruity Pebbles cereal with marshmallow in a sour beer. And so we kind of did that, and it's been something that's been one of our longest-running sour brands that we've done. It's very successful for us, and it's really awesome. And this year, with it being

Coming up, we're leading into next year. Our 10th anniversary was this year, but our 10th anniversary for Media Noche and Juicy Bits will be next year. So we're kind of leading up. We're kind of looking at all the fun things that we've done over the years and finding ways to kind of combine them with this 10-year celebration of Media Noche. Did you put the Fruity Pebbles right in the beer? So we do put Fruity Pebbles right in the beer.

Um, and then for this stout, we're going to do white chocolate cause we think it sounds a little bit more fun. Um, so this won't be sour. This will be based on our sour beer. We're going to make a media noche and then we're going to combine the name. So, um,

Um, like I said, but the fruity pebbles, the Oreos and all this stuff, does it go in the mash? Does it go in? Yeah. So with, with in the, um, sour beer, it would go in the, the mash as well as some in the, uh, in, in like the adjunct vessels later on. Um, but for this barrel aged out, we're going to do it all after the aging. Um, because, you know, I didn't have the foresight to make, uh, to put fruity pebbles into the mash of a random media noche, uh, three years ago, you know, somebody's idea, but

But if I did, that'd be really cool. Maybe we'll do it now just because we're talking about it. So yeah, now that we're done aging, we'll pick out some barrels that have some really good characters that have some white chocolate characters. And then we'll go in and we'll kind of add...

So our plan, white chocolate is such a hard flavor because white chocolate is mostly just cacao. I mean, it's cacao butter. So it's like the waste of chocolate process added with sweetness and vanilla. So it's really, really, really even more fatty and oily than, say, coconut. Great for head retention, right? It's even worse. And the flavor of it isn't really much. So what we're going to do this year is we're going to use pieces of –

of white chocolate itself, just regular white chocolate. But then we're also going to do a huge vanilla addition. And then we're going to do a light cacao nib addition to try to really nail in that white chocolate flavor. I've heard of people have really good success with that. And then fruity pebbles, we're going to get a lot of fruity pebbles and we're going to do very similar to what we do with Oreos. And we're

think we're going to try to start pretty low. So, you know, instead of 1.2 pounds per gallon, we're probably going to go pretty low, try for like a 0.5, see how that goes. And then we'll continuously introduce more until we get to a flavor that we think is really good. That still sounds like a lot to me, half a pound per gallon, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a lot of fruity pebbles. It's a lot of fruity pebbles. And luckily, we've been able to start sourcing stuff in these large quantities and find ways of doing it because that's always a struggle too is finding stuff. But I think we have it prepared. This will be kind of a smaller run because of its uniqueness and potentially just a little bit more of like a selected audience. Yeah.

be a much smaller run than something like our coconut that gets national distro. So you don't need 2,000 pounds of Fruity Pebbles? No, no, no, no, no. I'm hoping that we can get away with enough that maybe if worst case scenario, we can just buy all of the Fruity Pebbles in our area.

Awesome. Well, where can folks buy and find out more about Weldworks Brewing and Weldworks beers? On all social medias, we have stuff, weldworksbrewing.com or weldworks.com. We do have a tracker. We're available in, I want to say, 30

I was going to say, you've got pretty broad distribution now. Yes, we do. We have a lot of really great distribution partners, and we're doing a lot of distribution. So Juicy Bits should be all over the country. And then again, the 2025 Coconut Medianoche will be releasing in April, and that will see more.

pretty much all of our distribution partners should be getting some. So be on the lookout for that in the stores. We're very excited for the first time to be able to bring coconut to a large audience. It's been something that we've been working on for two or three years now, bringing more media no chase to a larger market and to be able to bring one of our favorites to more people is just awesome.

Yeah, so I mean, your mainline beers like Juicy Bits, those are available very broadly, but I assume a lot of these specialty stouts are probably more limited distribution or no? They are. Just the allocation, the amount that's sent out is a little bit different. So the markets are probably based on, you know, the distributors will probably all get equal chances, but how much they buy and where they bring them is kind of their decision, and the pricing is their decision. But, you know, we have a pretty reasonable price that we like to see.

that we, we recommend. And hopefully, you know, it's able to get to places where a lot of people are. I know New York city will probably get a lot. They tend to get a good amount. And then, you know, other big markets would be like Iowa. So they'll see some, I can't think off the top of my head, North Carolina, of course, Colorado, California. So Texas. And your location in Fort Collins too. Our location is in Greeley, Colorado. We will have that. You're good. El

Elk Brewing. Go ahead. But yeah, so what's your, so can you tell us where you're located for folks that might want to drop by the taproom? So we are in Greeley, Colorado, right downtown of Greeley, Colorado, which is about 50 minutes north of Denver. And if you're familiar with Fort Collins, we're about 40 minutes southeast of Fort Collins. Well, thank you, Skip. I really appreciate you being here today and taking the time to join us again. Yeah. Thank you for having me.

My guest today, the one and only Skip Schwartz, head brewer at Weldworks Brewing. Thanks again, Skip. Thank you.

A big thank you to Skip Schwartz for joining me this week. Thanks also to Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine. They recently added a new collection of more than 500 beer recipes from pro brewers to their site. And most let you download the Beersmith recipe file. The new Craft Beer and Brewing recipe site is at beerandbrewing.com slash beer dash recipes. Again, that new site is beerandbrewing.com slash beer dash recipes.

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