Booth: Russian River Brewing Co.

This has been a privilege. Vinnie, your beers are fantastic, and the chat about your processes and the science behind them was crazy interesting. What a treat.

 

We did the same. Beer gods sent three Plinys in the two pack. We are thankful for this!

 

thank you vinny, this was great to see you in person. kind of. Pliney is one of my favs and it was great to hear your passion for brewing

 

after trying DDH Pliny tonight for the first time, I am in agreement with its unicorn status, what is your favorite east coast beer?

 

Hi all, I had a blast tonight, thanks for tuning in. Saturday I’ll jump online and answer all the questions. Natalie and I are truly humbled and honored that BA included us in the virtual IPA fest. It really means a lot to us, even after all these years. Thanks, Vinnie

 

Great questions, I covered this a little last night but in short multi-stage dry hopping which I've done since the mid-90's gives you layers of aroma contributions to the beer. By adding the first addition those hops can change the make up the hops in the beer and thus when the second dry hops go in there is potentially a new aroma developed. This might be in part to bio-transformation which typically happens if the hops are added in the middle or end of fermentation. The key is to find a yeast that is beta glucosidase positive, this is the enzyme in yeast that can liberate bound aroma compounds in the hops and thus liberating them. It is a pretty cool concept because one specific hop compound that is bound can turn into a different compound. There are also free compounds in the hops that are more easily released through regular dry hopping. There is certainly nothing wrong with making just one dry hop addition but doing multiple dry hops is just another tool in a brewers tool box. Finally, yes, we dump the cone of the tank which contains the first dry hops before we make the second addition. In fact, we dump the cone on all dry hop beers after the hops have spent 48 to 72 hours in the tank, so pretty short dry hop time these days.

 

Our water source at RRBC is from the local county water agency which draws all its water from the Russian River which originates from Lake Sonoma. Lake Sonoma is in fact 100% of our water source, Sonoma County has no other source of water so we always need rain. On the topic of water, I started pulling quarterly water samples from a neighboring winery two years before we even started construction at our (newish) Windsor brewery and continued to during construction. Each time I would also pull samples from the Santa Rosa brewpub and sent them off for testing. In the end we determined that the water is almost identical which makes flavor matching a lot easier.

 

I can't really say that we make better beer in Sonoma County than other areas of the country, there is so much great beer in the US and the line-up of beers in this fest shows that for sure. I will say though that being in wine country gives me a unique perspective when you compare beer to wine. Although there is a winery in almost every state in the U.S. but consider that most wineries are near the vineyards, whereas beer can be made anywhere because water can be filtered and adjusted and the ingredients can be shipped. Though barley is always malted near the barley fields and hop growers have their facilities near the hopyard.

 

I actually consider malt more like grapes and hops to me are the herb and spice of the beer. Consider that malt is where the sugars come from that are the fermentables in beer just like grapes are where the sugar comes from to ferment wine. Also, malt is where the color comes from for a beer and the same goes for grapes, it is the grape skin where a wines color comes from.

 

I grew up in a grape/wine growing family in Southern California and eventually when Korbel Champagne first opened RRBC in 1997 they hired me so I have been around the wine industry for my entire life and still am as we get lots of barrels from our friends in the wine industry here in Sonoma County. I'd say for making IPA's there is not much cross over from wine making but when making funky barrel aged wild beers there is a lot to be learned from wine, especially when it comes to taking care of an oak barrel.

 

Thanks for the question, we actually just built a quite large brewery and are producing 40,000 bbls a year so we are certainly not small. With the recent expansion we went from 15K to 40K bbls and that only took care of California. Beyond that Natalie and I are happy with where our business is at as well as the debt load we took on to build our dream brewery. I'm a firm believer in drinking local and support local breweries and thankfully there is a lot of great beer produced all of the U.S.

 

For sure, we plan to keep brewing DDH-PTE, it is draft only and the cans are only sold via our direct to consumer program in California as well as our gift shops. So if you are out of the state of CA but know someone here you could ship it to your friends and than they can ship it to you. For now there are only a handful of states that allow DTC, thankfully it is always been legal in CA and quite honestly, it saved our ass during the pandemic. Even if DTC was legal to more states I'm not sure how well it would do as we'd want to ship overnight and the shipping would be cost prohibitive for most...

 

Hop extract is basically concentrated hops, though it can be used throughout the process we mainly use it for the first addition which is for bitterness in the beer. I like to use it here for two reasons, first, it reduces a large amount of green matter that would normally go in for this addition which reduces the green flavor the green matter might contribute. Second, we get better yields in the end due to not having all that hop green matter material in the beer.

 

Interesting question, especially these days with so many styles of IPA being made. In short and to some degree it depends on what the brewer wants its alcohol content to be. However, a brewer can use malt to balance out the hops or add body to the beer. For example, in Blind Pig IPA, 25% of the malt bill is a more expensive English malt from Simpson Malt called Best Pale Malt. Since BP IPA is only 6.25% ABV I like to use this malt as it adds more body and mouthfeel to the beer so here the malt choice is important. Whereas for PTE, PTY, and DDH-PTE the base malt is all 2-row malt, however, our base 2-row malt we get delivered in bulk to our silos is slightly higher color than traditional 2-row malt so we gain some flavor there, it is in the kilning where flavor is developed in malt.

 

Lots of hops in PTE and DDH-PTE:

Simcoe, Amarillo, Warrior, Cascade, Centennial, Citra, Crystal, Chinook. This is in different formats also: extract, T90 pellets, whole cone, and T45 (cryo) pellets. As I said last night, over the years I've made minor tweaks to the recipe and have brought a couple new hops into the beers to keep them fresh. But at the end of the day the main hop in PTE is Simcoe with Amarillo backing it up. Simcoe contributes the pine and grapefruit notes while Amarillo contributes notes of stone fruit.

 

I have had Monkish's Blind Pug, in fact Henry reached out to Natalie and I first to make sure we were cool with him making it. Great beer!

 

When I made the first Double IPA in 1994 at my first brewery no body made the comparison but as more breweries made Double IPA often there was a comparison between the two styles due to the alcohol and back than more crystal malt was used in Double IPA but mine was always lighter in color and body. I don't think they are close though, I'd say Barley Wine has more of a malt backbone while Double IPA is definitely more hop focused.

 

The 2021 PTY release which as some of you know was online only was tough for us. We made 8,000 mixed packs which included 4 PTY bottles and we had 200,000 folks waiting at the door step of our web site when we put the beer up. It sold out in a matter of minutes but in the end our e-commerce was not equipped for this type of release. We already knew we wouldn't do this in 2022 but after that we knew for sure we wanted to be back to our normal release with folks coming here as well as us shipping kegs to our loyal draft accounts. Yes, the community missed the revenue, however, Natalie and I didn't want a beer release to become a super spreader event so in the end taking a year off as it relates to an in-person experience was the right decision and I know many in our area were happy we didn't do the in-person release.

 

For sure, home direct to consumer (DTC) delivery in the state of CA will continue. As I mentioned in a previous post, DTC saved us big time during the pandemic.

 

No crystal or caramel malt in any of the Pliny recipes these days. There used to be a small amount of crystal malt in the Pliny recipes but a couple years ago we removed it and switched our base malt to a slightly higher color base malt so we get some color there and instead of crystal I use Munich 30 malt to gain a little color and mouthfeel. Crystal malt as it turns out stales beer more quickly so in the end removing crystal malt from any IPA is a good thing for shelf and flavor stability.

 

When we first made PTY we specifically chose January to brew it and release it in February as that is the slowest time of the year in the brewery and thus we have tanks open. That still is the case today, we don't have enough capacity in other times of the year when we are busier. Plus it is like Christmas, it wouldn't be special if Christmas happened more than once a year .

 

Once we scale a recipe up from a smaller batch we will than start making small tweaks and if the initial batch doesn't meet our standards we will either dump it or more likely blend it away to the point where the consumer can tell. We now have a 5 bbl pilot brewery so making test batches is super easy and fun.

 

Safety is the first thing that comes to mind, safety in the brewery is always the first thing to consider. After that, super high quality ingredients and from there the basics of sanitation and right behind safety is keeping oxygen out of your process. If you don't own a dissolved oxygen meter I'd start saving your pennies now for one. Though it is still expensive, Gusmer Enterprises sells what is probably the least expensive DO meter but even than it is $7K, but, quality cost money!

 

Actually the first batch of beer off our new 5 bbl pilot brewery was the original Inaugural Ale from Blind Pig Brewery back from 1994, this is widely considered the first Double IPA in the modern micro/craft beer industry. It was fun for Natalie and I to re-brew this, I've been thinking of brewing it again on a larger scale is it is kind of a look back at what IPA once was in America which is way different than today.

 

Final post, there was lots of questions asking if RRBC plans to increase distribution in other parts of the country. As of right now the answer is no (sorry). I'm super humbled and appreciated of all the love, but when we expanded a couple years ago with our dream brewery in Windsor, CA, the plan was to first fulfill all the back orders with our loyal accounts who have supported us for years and than to fill in the empty spots in the state where we thought we could sell beer. To Natalie and I the beer business is a life style yet it is stressful enough being an IPA brewery and trying to keep our beer cold all the way through the distribution chain. I already don't sleep much at night as I am often having a Mind Circus worrying about the freshness of our beer. In my next life I plan to be a Pilsner and Saison brewer (less shelf and flavor stability stress). As I said earlier, I'm a firm believer in drinking local beer so with that said, support your local brewery! If you are thinking of taking a vacation come on out and visit us, in normal times we have an amazing customer experience and the tour of the Windsor brewery is pretty great with three tasting stations along the way, you start out on the brewhouse floor than go upstairs and look down at the rest of the brewery including a visit to our koelschip room. Sonoma County is an amazing place with lots of outdoor activities and tons of great beer, food, and wine.

 

Looking through the feed, am completely humbled with your responses to all the questions, mine included. Am 100% impressed with your knowledge and passion for brewing, which stands out with the time you took to answer during the Cyberfest and now. You brew the best beer I have ever had in my life. Edgar said it best, it was a religious experience for sure. Sending peace and good energy toward the RRBC. Stay safe! Hoping to visit for the Younger release someday!