Maddie Lewis 0:07
Hello and welcome back to Spreading Hoppiness, the Charles Faram podcast today, me and Paddy are joined with Craig Thomas from Abstrax and Julie Shrago from Beachwood Brewing, all the way from the States. So could you guys just introduce yourself a bit more formally, your roles and what you do, to start off with?

Julian Shrago 0:27
Sure. Julian Shrago, I am the Brew Master and co owner, co founder of Beachwood brewing in Southern California, kind of the greater Los Angeles area. And I am the director of brewing operations, I supervise a very passionate team, but that’s the bulk of what I do.

Craig Thomas 0:46
And yeah, my name is Craig Thomas. I am the National Sales Manager for Abstrax Hops, and I get to go around to breweries and conferences, talk up our products and work with breweries to figure out how best to apply them and hopefully make an impact in positive way.

Maddie Lewis 1:07
How are you guys enjoying the UK so far? Then we spent much, much time in the UK.

Julian Shrago 1:13
It’s been a couple years for me, but I love the UK and coming back as kind of like a more seasoned beer drinker. Every time I get here, I get to seek out all the beers and the exemplary examples of each style that we just really don’t get in the United States. So it’s it’s fun, but it’s also educational.

Maddie Lewis 1:33
Yeah cool. And Craig, you trained at Heriot Wott, in Edinburgh, so that must have been quite a big move for you. Can you talk about that transition a little bit, please?

Craig Thomas 1:46
Yeah, it was a big move. I moved over here when I was 18. I went to uni at Edinburgh University when and I did a degree in history, actually. And about midway through that degree, I started to discover beer and Scotch whiskey, and really got involved and passionate and learnt all about it. And really, once I graduated, or even before I graduated, I realised that that’s where I wanted my career to go. Not a lot of Scotch distilleries wanted to hire an American with no production experience, right? So I had to take a step back and kind of understand how I could approach that. I begged my way into working at a small brewery called Barney’s Beer and and that was kind of the start of my brewing career, as a transition from coming from America to the UK. It was tough, but I ended up living here for eight years. I love it here, and for a lot of the reasons that Julian said as well. So moved back to the US about seven years ago now, and this is the first time I’ve been back in Since 2019 I guess. Yeah, it’s been a while.

Patrick Whittle 2:56
So Craig, obviously you work for abstracts, which is essentially a big new innovative brewing products company. Could you tell us a little bit more about for people that don’t know about the company, a little bit of background about the company and what it provides for brewers?

Craig Thomas 3:11
Sure, so abstracts came onto the scene amongst the legalisation of cannabis in California, and decided to take a little bit of different approach to that whole industry. Our founders and owners, they were curious. It wasn’t THC, so much they were concerned about it was all the other things going on in the cannabis plant. The problem was that there wasn’t a lot of resources out there. There weren’t, there weren’t ways to extract it, there weren’t, wasn’t any consistent studies that have really been done on that kind of thing. So they had to start at the ground zero and invent or buy or hire people who could actually drive and answer a lot of those questions they were asking about and so with that mentality, we became the authority in cannabis aromatics and that starts to snowball. We looked at other applications, you start to see, hey, what other solutions are out there? What else smells really good? What can we do with these things? And to that end, we’ve now become supplier for a number of different industries. You know, we’re talking about the brewing industry, and with that focus, we’re talking about water soluble flavours that go go into beer, and really the the one stop shop for creative expression, for efficiencies, for new economies of scale, finding different ways of making beer that resonate with people, and frankly, just makes sense.

Patrick Whittle 4:46
And are these products more suited to bigger, smaller breweries? Does it not matter?

Craig Thomas 4:52
So that’s the beauty of it. And one of the things that drew me to abstracts is we are able, we’re a fairly small company, but the impacts that our products provides are very large scale. And so regardless of whether we’re talking, you know, tiny little brew pubs, one barrel systems, or whether we’re talking million barrels like there’s a way to fit into all of it, in terms of not just our products, but our company ethos, the science that we’re diving into and providing for the industry, that analytical techniques, which we pioneered and are continuing to share, we’re really trying to be there for everyone.

Patrick Whittle 5:35
And how did you go from being a Brewer to Abstrax? Obviously, you mentioned you’ve moved between here and the US, right?

Craig Thomas 5:43
So, my journey through my career has been pretty circuitous, circuitous, but it’s all kind of revolved around the theme of flavour. Like what got me into Scotch whiskey was my first tour of Highland Park distillery up in Orkney, and I was just, I went into the distillation room and was just hit by this wall, and I was like, oh, I need to learn about this. What are all these? It’s just this, you know, alcohol, vanilla, butterscotch, spirit notes that I was just, it was eye opening from me and from there, you know, everything was learning about flavour. How do you make it? How do you create it? How do you control it? You know, what’s considered an off flavour, and why? And so whether I was brewing, whether I was working in sensory consultancy, whether I was managing my sensory panel, it was all trying to understand aromatics and then abstracts comes along, and it was, it was the alchemy. It was the elixir. It was they had bottled everything that I’ve been trying to understand for 12 years. And I was like, I want to be a part of that.

Maddie Lewis 6:51
And Julian, have you always been a brewer?

Julian Shrago 6:56
No, I’ve been a brewer for 15 years. Beechwood is my one and only brewing job. Before that, I was an aerospace engineer for over a decade. And yeah, I really enjoyed that. I started as a home brewer in college in the mid 90s, and it was a hobby that I had on and off for a number of years, but developed into a passion when I moved to Southern California roughly 22 years ago, and eventually, just through circumstance and like really trying to know people in the industry that led to a second career in opening beechwood as a brewery.

Maddie Lewis 7:35
Cool. And can you tell us about your journey with Abstrax? How did you come across Abstrax? What was your first thoughts in the brew, before the brew even?

Julian Shrago 7:46
Well a as a scientist, I still consider myself a scientist. I always look forward to these new inventions and new methods and how can you take something that’s a centuries old tradition and have science transform it and make it better. So I was curious from the very beginning, and I had sampled some of Abstrax products, but it was when I had a beer from Russian River Brewing in Northern California about halfway through last year that was made with the Quantum Briteproduct that was also extracted from Russian rivers, select Nectaron® hops from New Zealand. And when I saw the potential of that Quantum Brite product, when it was made from somebody, select hop varietals, and like, Okay, this is it. So I immediately called Abstrax, and I said, let’s get this queued up with our select varietals right now. And late last year, we basically started making some permanent changes in both of our flagship beers, and that also led to us using Abstrax, Quantum products and Brewgas products, Skyfarm products and other beers that we were doing, and really dial in new flavour profiles or achieve traditional flavour profiles with less hop matter in the beer. And it’s been something that’s worked out great. It is absolutely better brewing through science.

Patrick Whittle 9:15
Did you ever have any apprehensions?

Julian Shrago 9:18
No I didn’t, because my curiosities lead me in that direction anyway. But I do understand people’s apprehension. I think anytime there’s something new, any thought, anytime you take something like brewing, which is seen as a very traditional, old fashioned process, it’s not something that people view as being mechanised and scientifically driven, necessarily. And so when you have the introduction of something that is very scientifically driven, there might be just like, well, hold on a second. This isn’t how people make beer, but it is absolutely a way to make things more consistent, perhaps make things. Better, but also to create new flavour profiles and aroma profiles and variety of beer that it has never been imagined before. So I see it only opening new doors.

Maddie Lewis 10:13
Okay, and you guys have obviously both spent a little bit of time in the UK. How do you think the UK market compares to that of the states, when looking at brewing and Abstrax potentially as well, the

Julian Shrago 10:29
UK is steeped in many, many centuries of tradition, and brewing is certainly one of those things that is also steeped in tradition. I think American consumers are used to new products, ever evolving products. And the UK, you know, maybe, maybe, has a slightly different consumer base. But even with traditional beers, I don’t see any reason why these products can’t be used to create traditional beers. And the benchmark for us with our flagship beers was are the consumers going to notice the difference? Are they going to say, hey, wait a second. Did you get did you guys change something about this? Yeah, something’s different. Nobody said anything. We did this months ago,

Patrick Whittle 10:29
And I’m taking you haven’t told anyone?

Speaker 1 10:32
No, not because I’m trying to withhold or not be transparent, because these products are extracted from our selected hops, it’s just a much more efficient way to get to the target that we’re looking for. And so I think if you take a traditional English beer and and you’re able to use some of Abstrax products and create the same beer and maybe even make it more consistent, I think there’s going to be embrace, not reluctance. I think if some breweries try this, and try Abstrax products and maybe not mention it, not to not to conceal anything, but I think back about this thing in the United States, you know, kind of some of those blind soda challenges that people did, yeah, and like, try this product. Try this product. I can’t believe that’s like, that’s what I’m drinking. And so I think maybe, I think a lot of these breweries here in England could fold these products in seamlessly, and the consumer would not know. And I think that’s, the true test of how successful you are.

Patrick Whittle 12:23
I’m quite intrigued about the thing you said, the way you got your varieties made up by Abstrax. I don’t know if this might be a question for you Craig, so in terms of, if a brewery had a certain year of a certain hop and they wanted to basically, essentially preserve that so essentially, can you guys capture the flavour of that year of, say, Nectaron®, and then that brewery could have that every single year, and you could just keep repeating it and so on.

Craig Thomas 12:47
Yeah, so there are two answers to that question. The first one is, if we’re talking about taking selected hops and processing them into quantum, right it, it multiplies the aromatic impact of of, you know, a pound or a kilogram of T 90s, to the point that you’re really extending your total inventory as far as it goes, as far as the numbers look all of a sudden, you know, what might have gotten you through a year of brewing now can get you through up to, you know, four or five years, if you really wanted to map it out. So that’s the first answer to that question. The second answer is, we do have a line as well, which is called our Omni flavors, where we have replicated in much the same way we did with our Brew Gas. We’ve replicated certain lots of hops and and brought them to market, and those are forever flavours. As you said, it’s not varietal or it’s not year dependent anymore. You can lock it in forever more.

Patrick Whittle 13:44
Is the picking your select variety and you guys making up? Is that only exclusive to brewers that want huge quantities of this thing? Or is there a spectrum?

Craig Thomas 13:55
No, again, going back to your point about catering to the big guys and the little guys. We process hops in a pretty small facility, as far as it goes, and we can manage batches as low as 132 pounds, which by most industry standards, as I understand. So it’s not actually a huge amount hops. No, most everybody will use 132 pounds in there, and they’re very at least at some point in the years.

Maddie Lewis 14:22
So to both of you guys, what advice would you give to any brewers looking to try abstracts for the first time?

Julian Shrago 14:31
Don’t be afraid, that’s that’s really the main advice. Don’t be afraid and be the first. Be the first to embrace the new technology and get a leg up on it. And I know that there are some brewers that I talked to in the United States, like, well, I don’t know, or I’m trying to work through some older inventory. And like, Okay, I’m gonna, like, other breweries are going to start lapping you.

Craig Thomas 15:03
Yeah, don’t be afraid. I mean, I think brewers, we need to embrace these things that come across there. They’re just continuously coming across our table anymore, all these new innovations, which, which are great. I think that there are, you know, some, guardrails you can put around your process, where the hope is that it’s very easy to trial our products and use them, and it’s just a matter of doing your homework, sitting down, putting in some time to figure out what makes you happy as a brewer and as a beverage producer. And don’t worry about what anybody else is saying as much about you know, this, that or the other thing that might sway you.

Patrick Whittle 15:46
And just to clarify, these aren’t direct replacements for all hops you would replace a percentage in your dry hop, for example.

Julian Shrago 15:54
I think most of these new products, if not all of them, are best as a supplement. I noticed that when Cryo was introduced, or Lupo Max, Incognito, some of these other products I’ve found to be great supplements or a great way to augment but I still haven’t found anything that has allowed full replacement of T 90 in a dry hopped beer like you can’t I haven’t had anything yet, but this is, this is the most promising thing, and this is a great way to supplement and augment.

Patrick Whittle 16:33
And would you say there’s any particular trends in, is there any certain really popular flavours in the Abstrax range, like, what would you say out of the three core ranges, so you’ll see the hops, the cannabis and the fruit. Is there one that stands out as most popular from a sales point of view,

Craig Thomas 16:46
Citra® is king, I would say in the Skyfarm lineup, pineapple or mango, and then King Louis and Pineapple Express in the Brew Gas, especially with the Brew Gas, like I feel like those two strains just sink in so well with hop, you know, flavours and aromatics. People can see the parallels very easily when they smell those. And they can, they can just jump ahead and see how that can work and in a beer, especially in IPAs, and so I think that those are the ones that people trend towards.

Maddie Lewis 17:26
I was gonna say, Do you have a personal favourite?

Julian Shrago 17:31
Pineapple Express, we’ve we started incorporating that into a newer flagship, just as a very subtle background note. We’ve also used it in a handful of specialty IPAs. Just like to very much be a kind of front and center note. And that makes those beers very, very aromatic.

Patrick Whittle 17:54
Would you say, because of the Abstrax range you’ve experimented more, has it allowed you just you could, like you said, you can have those subtle, real subtle notes?

Julian Shrago 18:02
Yes, and I will also say that it’s it’s allowed some flavours to exist in beer and other beverages that we make that you really were difficult for one, if you talk to a flavour chemist, one of the most difficult flavours and aromas to synthesize or concentrate is watermelon, especially if you try and do it from the actual fruit, good luck. It just ends up tasting like cooked garbage. And there are some good quality watermelon extracts out there. They get expensive real quickly. And there are some very average quality watermelon extracts out there. But Abstrax seems to have nailed it in terms of potency, aroma impact, flavour impact and price point. The value is amazing. So they’ve like in that flavour specifically, they’ve unlocked the code,

Patrick Whittle 18:57
Great. And if you’ve got lots of new flavours coming

Craig Thomas 19:01
Always, yeah, yeah. IBefore I flew over here, I was, you know, sent, I think, about 10/15, new that I’ve got to go through and give my input on. And, yeah, we have an exceptional flavour team that’s always coming up with something new, and now it’s just our challenge to get them out to people as quickly as we can.

Maddie Lewis 19:24
Do you do like sensory trials amongst the public for those sorts of flavour, or do you have a professional panel that do all the sensory trials

Craig Thomas 19:36
So, we don’t go to the public at large, our, you know, as we unveil a new product in the lineup, it’s a lot of internal development, which includes sensory testing amongst trained panelists and, you know, our flavour team, who’s creating the flavours. Weirdly enough, the when it comes to developing new fruit flavors, a lot of that is just market driven, like, there are flavours that exist that people expect, and so it’s not so much, oh, what do we choose? It’s like, okay, what flavours do we need to get out there for people? And how do we make the best version of that? And following on from that, we might do some trials on our own, internally, in terms of brewing and dosing them, and then may even send some out to some of our close friends and partners to experiment with before they get totally commercialised. But it’s a long process, and we’re trying to, we’re trying to streamline it as best we can to just to maximize it and get people what they want

Patrick Whittle 20:43
And try and meet those consumer demands as quickly as possible. So how does your so you mentioned the watermelon thing, and other companies have tried to recreate it and it’s either been expensive, or they’ve missed the mark on sort of aroma and flavor. How is the abstract technology sort of nailed it as such, in terms of, from a price point of view, and still preserving what we when you smell it? Oh, that’s watermelon.

Craig Thomas 21:05
You know, that might be a question for our lead flavour chemist. She just seems to have magic fingers, magic palette. She just knows what, what is required. And honestly, it’s kind of rare for something to be sent back and, you know, redeveloped. Part of it is just the company ethos. And I was talking about the presentation, how we’re coming from it from a totally different angle, whether we’re talking, you know, from coming from the cannabis industry, all of a sudden you have a totally different perspective, whether that’s on hops or whether that’s on, you know, flavours that are out there. And I think that that is one of the one of our strengths as a company, is we don’t have a lot of preconceptions as to how to make flavours or how to extract hops or whatever it’s more hey, we’re going to approach it this way, and I think it’ll work. And if it doesn’t, then we’ll try a different way. And so from in terms of building a flavour, we have a very unique take on it, which, yeah, doesn’t really exist in the industry, if only because it’s coming from cannabis and it’s coming from the leading authority on cannabis aromatics that most of our flavour team has experience in which no one else can really say.

Maddie Lewis 22:26
So my final question to both of you again is, what is next for you both in at Beachwood, at Abstrax? What’s next for you guys,

Julian Shrago 22:38
Continuing to increase efficiencies through the use of Abstrax products and other newer, innovative products to see if we can not only make our beers better, but at the very least, the bare minimum, just as good, and reduce certain costs, increase yields. We have to do that margins are getting squeezed from every angle, and I don’t see businesses, brewing business being sustainable without innovative products like this.

Patrick Whittle 23:12
What sort of percentage yields do you find in sort of real time?

Julian Shrago 23:15
We don’t have a centrifuge or a filter. We clarify everything through Finings, but through the Abstrax product alone. I say like it depends on the beer, but we’re seeing a two to 3% increase in yield, that was great. There are newer cold side, anti foaming agents that have also increased our yields that are separate from what Abstrax makes. But with hazy IPA specifically, we’re seeing really big increase in yield there, like upwards of 10 to 12%

And that outweighs the cost of the Abstrax in terms of, obviously, what you would spend on hops and what you’ve saved on in yield and things like that.

Well, using the abstracts products is cheaper anyway, even if I didn’t see an increase in yield, the equivalent dosing rate. So when it comes to Abstraxs, half an ounce of quantum bright is equal to roughly one pound of hops. So I guess what that means is, if you’re going to translate it, which is, say roughly 200 and I’m doing the math in my head, 250 milliliters, is equivalent to a about eight to nine. Yeah, eight to nine kilograms of hops.

Patrick Whittle 24:28
And it’s not nearly the same price as it’s nine kilograms of hops.

Julian Shrago 24:32
Once I pay for my hops and I pay for abstracts to convert them, it’s still like a 50% reduction in cost, per kilogram.

Maddie Lewis 24:41
Wow, that’s very impressive. Game changer, yeah,

Craig Thomas 24:44
And that’s, you know, to answer your question about, you know, what’s next for me? That’s the reason I joined Abstrax, is I, you know, I smelled the stuff. I thought that it, you know, I thought it would help a lot of breweries. And I wanted to be a part of that. And at the moment, we’ve, you know, we’ve gotten around to quite a few, but I don’t know how we have almost 10,000 breweries in the US. There are many more around the world, and I think all of them have the same problems at some level, and I like being part of the solution. How can we help you fix and obviously the efficiencies game is a big part of it. I’ve always been a number cruncher myself, and that’s just, you know, a side benefit to it.

Patrick Whittle 25:28
And the fact you’re able to make those savings and increase your efficiency without affecting the product or potentially improving the product by adding new or new products, creating new products, in general, that’s sort of a win win isn’t it?

Craig Thomas 25:40
Yeah do a lot of Win Win, wins

Patrick Whittle 25:44
All positive. Well, I think, that’s my last question.

Maddie Lewis 25:49
So yeah, if there’s anything you guys wanted to add, but yeah, no. Thank you for coming today and speaking to us. It’s been great.

Julian Shrago 25:55
Thank you for hosting pleasure. This has been my pleasure. Great.

Maddie Lewis 26:00
Cheers.

Hi everyone. So for this week’s Five Minutes with Faram, we are at Brewing Brothers. So Hi, Billy. Could you just introduce yourself? Please

Billy Ericksson 26:15
I’m Billy so head brewer, Brewery Director at Brewing Brothers in Hastings.

Maddie Lewis 26:20
So Billy, what’s your favourite hop?

Billy Ericksson 26:22
I would say historically, probably Mosaic® is something we’ve always used here and a lot of our core range, so I’d probably have to stick with that.

Yeah, yeah. What is your favourite beer?

That’s a very good question. I should probably say one of ours. But I think my favourite beer that I’ve tried was a Idaho ® green hop in Idaho at a brewery called 10 Barrel Brewery. It’s like a 6% green hop on cask, which I think a lot of the time is quite hard to find in the States, done well. But this was done really well. It was really tasty. And, yeah, like 6% IPA, so it’s delicious.

What’s your favourite of your range then?

Oh, probably. I think I’d have to say our OG, which it used to be called Gallaghers. Again, it’s a 6% IPA single hop Mosaic®, so that kind of ties in the first two questions, but it’s developed like a really sort of funny cult following around Hastings, where everyone’s had their night on OG, where they’ve drank way too much OG. And, yeah, it’s a tasty beer.

Maddie Lewis 27:23
Great, cool. So do you have a favourite food and beer pairing?

Billy Ericksson 27:26
Can’t go wrong with beer and pizza, I would say. Yeah, so one of our flagship Pub is just beer, wood fired pizza, nice and casual, nothing fancy.

Maddie Lewis 27:38
Favourite topping?

Billy Ericksson 27:40
Oh, that’s a good question. I like a white pizza, so without all tomato sauce, yeah. And then I would say sausage and Neopolitan broccoli ferriali, which is like a sort of brined broccoli.

Maddie Lewis 27:53
Nice. Do you have a favourite beer destination?

Billy Ericksson 27:56
I would say I’d be drawn to the States. My wife’s from Alaska, so we spent a fair bit of time up there. And it is really good for breweries. It’s a really cool place to have around just, just be a beer tourist in Alaska.

Maddie Lewis 28:11
So what’s your favourite pub in the world?

Billy Ericksson 28:13
I have to say the Imperial, yeah, yeah. It’s home. You know, broccoli pizza, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Nice.

Maddie Lewis 28:20
So what’s one item in a brewery that you couldn’t live without?

Billy Ericksson 28:23
Forklift. I love a forklift. We’ve got a terrible driveway and a bit of nightmare to transport pallets on pump trucks across it. It sort of work. So me, they are a tasting tap, cool,

Maddie Lewis 28:34
Nice. What would be your favoUrite song or album or music that you’d play during a brew day?

Billy Ericksson 28:40
It is just me, I’m prone to putting some country music on.

Maddie Lewis 28:43
Oh, love country favourite artist?

Billy Ericksson 28:46
If we’re going sort of more modern stuff, Tyler Childers, or Zach Brian, or something like that.

Maddie Lewis 28:51
Zach Brian’s a classic

Billy Ericksson 28:52
yeah, but then, Johnny Cash is a bit of a more of a crowd pleaser, because I’m sort of the only one who likes country. So if anyone else is in I have to compromise a little bit.

Maddie Lewis 29:04
Can you can you blast your music throughout the brewery?

Billy Ericksson 29:07
Yeah, yeah. Doesn’t bother anyone

Maddie Lewis 29:10
you weren’t in the brewing industry, what would you be doing?

Billy Ericksson 29:14
Probably building. My dad’s a builder, but sort of yeah.

Maddie Lewis 29:19
How did you get into brewing in the first place.

Billy Ericksson 29:21
I always liked beer, and I have a thing about having to know how things are made, I guess. So I started looking into it, and thought, that sounds fun. Did some home brews. They didn’t go very well. I knew Ned and Charlie, who are the brothers of Brewing Brothers, from working in their dad’s pub when we’re a lot younger, and just that, when they approached me and said, We want to, you know, start this thing in Hastings Brewing Brothers, I said, who’s doing the brewing for you? And they didn’t have anyone, so I said, I’ll give it a go. So kind of jumped in at the deep end, I guess.

Maddie Lewis 29:59
What’s your favourite beer festival?

Billy Ericksson 30:01
I don’t know if I have, like, a specific one, but I love a country pub beer festival, when it’s out in the garden. There’s a marquee, there’s some local casks, maybe some really strong still cider.

Maddie Lewis 30:12
Do you have any good local ones?

Billy Ericksson 30:14
Oh, yeah, there’s loads around here. I mean, it would be very hard to pick any, maybe, like the Six Bells in Chilling Eye. So now they they do really good beer festival. They’re a big live music pub, but it’s like out on the sticks, so it’s nice, yeah.

Maddie Lewis 30:33
Do you have any interests or hobbies outside of brewing?

Billy Ericksson 30:36
Foraging would probably be primary one, got a dog. So it’s sort of, we just spend most of the time in the woods or on big walks.

Maddie Lewis 30:45
So what does that entail?

Billy Ericksson 30:47
You kind of have to know what you’re looking for. But depending on the time of year, you know, if it’s autumn, I’d be looking for mushrooms. And then it would just entail going for a nice walk with a basket and a dog,

Maddie Lewis 30:58
Ending in a pub?

Billy Ericksson 30:59
Normally ending in a pub, yeah, and then you’ve got some nice forage ingredients to take home and make a meal with this.

Maddie Lewis 31:05
What’s the last beer that you brewed?

Billy Ericksson 31:07
Hannah does most of the brewing these days. But I would say the last one I was working on was our Reforestation, which is kind of our climate positive pale ale. We use it as a bit of a catalyst to develop our like sustainable side. So we use it to, like to try it out new things, you know, we plant trees for every keg sold. Our whole roof is covered in solar panels, stuff like that. So we’re trying to use it. And then, any future plans we have, ie, nitrogen generation, or CO2 recovery, or we do a lot of composting as well. We kind of use the Reforestation as a as, like a catalyst for that. And we also look all English hops, a lot of the Faram’s, new varieties, like Olicana®. It’s got Ernest in as well. I love Olicana®.

Maddie Lewis 31:51
What about Olicana do you like?

Billy Ericksson 31:53
I think it’s, yeah, it’s a new world flavours in an English shop. I think is, it’s such a nice thing to find. I think it’s, is ahead of its time, been developed really well, yeah, just like I like the flavours that comes and gives. It’s so nice hop.

Maddie Lewis 32:05
Do you use that in many of your brews then?

Billy Ericksson 32:06
We use it in a few we were using it in our table beer. It’s heavily used in our Reforestation. We have used it in a collaboration we did with Docker Brewery, just kind of like an all English, New England IPA, if you like, with a Thylaced yeast, try and draw out those sort of tropical, sort of new world flavours.

Maddie Lewis 32:25
So Fuggles or Golding?

Billy Ericksson 32:27
I think there’s a lot of either of them. We don’t brew that many traditional styles, which I think they really suit. But I don’t know. Maybe I think I’ll probably go Goldings,

Unknown Speaker 32:36
My last question, what’s next for you in the brewery?

Billy Ericksson 32:39
We’ve got a lot of expansion this year in terms of tank space. We’ve got some new tanks coming in next month. I think it’s exciting because, you know, one, it’ll allow us to keep up with our own production, but we should have enough space to start contracting for other people as well.

Maddie Lewis 32:54
Great.

Billy Ericksson 32:55
So there’s some breweries around who are, you know, on the smaller side, and need that extra capacity, I think with what we’ve getting in, it will, it will max out our capacity in this brewery. We’re not going to move anywhere, you know, so it will be our total capacity. This year I can’t see us using all of it so, you know, to be able to contract and, you know, do contract bridge further is, I think, would be a nice, nice nice thing. This year we had, it was our eighth birthday, so we invited eight other local breweries to come and sell beer as well, a really nice community thing. Had a local tattoo parlor come up, and they were doing tattoos, and they were really busy all day. We had a toads tournament. Anyone get brewing? Brother? Tati, yeah, Dan, who is like Brewer assistant, and Draymond and bit of everything, really, he, I did encourage him to get a little BB drawn, freehand commitment to the cause. Exactly, I appreciate that. Exactly We do. We do. We tried to do a lot, you know. And I tried to squeeze in one, one sort of special collaboration every month, you know, alongside the core range, just to sort of diversify a little bit.

Maddie Lewis 34:05
Do you have a collaboration from last year that you know, you really loved, or,

Billy Ericksson 34:09
Oh, we did some great ones last year. One of the smaller local breweries I was talking about is with a brewery called Bad Boy Brewing, and it’s two guys, they’re just really fun to work with, which had a real laugh, and they come up. And I was sort of also in collaboration with a local band who are doing quite well. Sounds good fun? Another community, yeah, a lot of the stuff we do is try to be quite community led.

Maddie Lewis 34:29
Anything you want us to add?

Billy Ericksson 34:32
No I don’t think so. No, I think good questions. We’ve covered everything, yeah, pretty much everything covered

Maddie Lewis 34:37
Great, well. Thanks very much.