300 literal yards to my backside was the historic, and thanks to South Park, super iconic venue of Casa Bonita. Anyone who moves to Denver waits for the moment to witness the high dives and diarrhea it provides, but today, my path was focused on a slightly newer establishment on it’s way to icon status on Colfax Ave. I was visiting Westfax Brewing Company just next door. Westfax has been brewing beer on this site for some time, and all without the added diarrhea effects of Casa Bonita.

This visit in particular was to talk about their brut IPA, “Just Brut It” after I’d spent a weekend destroying my liver at a giant lake in Nebraska (that lake will go unnamed, but those who know, fucking know. You know?). I spoke with the owner Anthony about the dry joy of the brut style, hops and his amazing-jack-of-all-trades role at Westfax. We even dug into the art renaissance that is going on this this neck of Denver’s Woods, but that is a story for another time.

The real meat to this story is all the learning I pulled from our talk about this new style of IPA. Everything else is just happenstance. That said, now we’ll get into the official interview.

The following is submitted to the BnL audience as Under Oath episode 003. It has been edited for clarity, but the accompanying audio is unadulterated.

Sam: Thank you for joining us today, could you please state your name for the record?

Anthony: My name is Anthony Martuscello.

S: Thank you. And could you please state our current location?

A: We’re at WestFax Brewing Company.

S: What is your current position within the Company?

A: President, owner, founder… wearer of many hats.

S: AND A VERY NICE HAVE YOU HAVE ON TODAY, I MIGHT ADD. [laughs gregariously, yet unconfidently] SO the lawyer’s tell me WE USE the term “under oath,” we use that very loosely here, but do you pinky swear that you’ll tell something resembling a mildly truthful statement today?

A: Absolutely.

S: Alright, that’s good enough for me. You are now Under Oath on BnL, Anthony. Could you please state for the record what beer we are drinking today and briefly describe it?

A: Sure, we’re drinking our ‘Just Brut It’ IPA. A brut IPA, a newer style that has some base in California. And of came out of the San Francisco Area. It is a super light, super dry, super crisp, tropical fruits, little bit of grape and ripe apple. 7.1%, 43 IBUs, so really drinkable for being a 7% beer, and the biggest thing with this beer is we’re using an enzyme to chop out some of the those long chain sugars and allow the yeast continue to basically ferment this beer out to zero. There is no residual sugar, it’s dry. So that’s sort of where the name ‘burt’ comes from – dry brut champagne.

S: And it sounds like if you’re using an enzyme, you’re getting some brute force in there to really make that yeast get after it. Alright, you answered like four of my questions already, so good work there.

A: [chuckles politely]

S: So off the top of your head, do you know what kind of hops were used?

A: Yeah! So there was a little bit of galaxy, then primarily cashmere and pacifico. So a little bit different. The hop flavor, hop notes are going to be slightly more subtle because pacifica and cashmere can really be overpowered by those big oil hops like galaxy and city and mosaic. So we’ve toyed with them before in other beers and just gotten overpowered so we just wanted to make them really prevalent in this beer and them BE [smashes a glass on the floor for emphasis] the forefront. We went light on the galaxy on purpose to not overpower the cashmere and I think most of the flavor you get in this beer is cashmere. A little bit of pacifico – and little bit of the noble pacifico that comes out.

S: [pretending to be intelligent about hops] And I like that they’re hops you don’t really hear about that much either.

I stood in a room that was maybe 30 feet wide by 30 feet long. I know people who’ve lived in condos this exact size, but I was staring down a modern brewery with a respectable barrel program artfully pieced into the space instead of staring down a bunch of options for modern living. This was the brewhouse and barrel facility for Banded Oak Brewing Company.

I was chatting with the owner Will and head brewer Chris about all sorts of things like how their outdoor fermentation tanks hold temperature in extreme Colorado conditions, how much sweat Chris has expelled that brewday and even some boneheaded stuff Coors had recently done. We weren’t on the record yet and I was outnumbered two beards to one, so I tried not be controversial. I needed to bide my time until I was the one with the leverage.

The brewery tour was over, so Will and I went back around the corner of the brewery to the taproom where I set up my gear and we chatted a bit more about saisons and how easy drinking their house beer of that style is. I could feel it in my gut, now was the time to strike and put Will on the record. He poured us a couple of glasses of the beer we were about to discuss and I yanked my diesel recorder’s pull start until it slowly chugged to life. It was time to begin.

The following is submitted to the BnL audience as Under Oath episode 002. It has been edited for clarity, but the accompanying audio is unadulterated.

Sam: Thank you for joining us today, could you please state your name for the record?

Will: My name is Will Curtin.

S: Thank you Will, and could you please state our current location?

W: We’re at 470 Broadway at banded Oak Brewing Company.

S: What is your current position within the Company?

W: I am the owner.

S: Thank you. Now the lawyer’s tell me the use of the term “under oath,” we use that very loosely here, but do pinky swear that you’ll tell something resembling a mildly truthful statement today?

W: Absolutely. I’ll do my best.

S: Good enough for me. Will, you are now Under Oath on BnL. Could you please state for the record what beer we are drinking today and briefly describe it?

W: Right now we’re doing our Crenshaw melon IPA. We have a house IPA that’s a simple kind of West Coast style two hop IPA. It’s got CTZ and Chinook hops. We’ve done this for a little bit, and about 2 years ago we tried the idea of putting melon or some sort of additive into the beer to spice it up or change it up a bit, so we tried some honeydews, we tried some cantaloupe, we tried a little bit of grapefruit – which has been kind of done a lot with IPAs – and then we ran across Crenshaw melon which is not a very well-known melon, but it’s got kind of a nice bitter taste to it that compliments the hoppiness, so it doesn’t overly sweeten the beer and that’s what we were going for.

S: Do you know roughly what the ABV is on it?

W: The ABV is 6.8.

S: What hops did you use for the hop profile? [Clearly wasn’t listening Will]

W: We did ctz and Chinook. We kind of changed a little bit of Chinook in that we used it as a dry hop, so it’s not typically where you see Chinook in a lot of different IPA recipes, so I like that hop a lot. It’s probably one of my favorites because it’s got a nice juiciness to it without too much complexity.

S: Speaking of juiciness, was there any New England-ish tendencies with this beer?

W: Absolutely not. We filter all of our beers for the clarity of the beer, and that nice crisp smoothness is something that we definitely try to go for as much as we can.

S: On the other end of the spectrum with some of the IPAs coming out, did you consider applying any “brut” force with this beer? Brut IPA.

W: Maybe. You know, with the style of banded Oak, we like to go on the side of traditional so we don’t really do a lot of those kind of...

I swung by Call to Arms one balmy June afternoon to escape the heat and, subsequently, turn the heat up on someone who might know something about a recent release: Old Old Wooden Ship. Upon my arrival, I shook hands and made strong eye contact with John, one of the owners and head brewer. My eye contact was strictly a power move in an attempt to cover up the fact that his beard was gorgeous and I still can’t grow one.

We sat down with a glass of the hazy beer juice and started with the niceties. At this point, John wasn’t Under Oath, so all of the correspondence is strictly hearsay, but we mostly discussed the pros and cons of barrel aging beers and how Old Old Wooden Ship is a pretty solid step forward in Call to Arms’ attempt to curate a house flavor of barrel based beers.

John may or may not have acknowledged it’s hard as hell to go into a project like this with a desired outcome since the variables in the yeast and barrels are pretty much left to their own devices. That said, the beer turned out great. I would have stuck around and drank them dry, but I respected their desire to let others in on the secret.

So it’s at this juncture that I will relay the section of the conversation where I lulled John into a false sense of comfort to get him to go Under Oath. Chris, the other owner, wasn’t available to talk on the record due to a super double top secret meeting. He mysteriously popped up right at picture time, though. He’s very photogenic.

The following is submitted to the BnL audience as Under Oath episode 001. Audio and transcription options available.

Sam: Could you please state your name for the record?

John: Yep, my name is John Cross.

S: Excellent and can you state your location for the record?

J: We are at Call to Arms Brewing Company. [Mild conversational kerfuffle] I don’t know if you want an address or not…

S: No no, just the brewery is fine. A little bit of mystery is not a bad thing. Could you please state what your role within the company is?

J: Yeah absolutely, I’m the co-owner and head brewer.

S: Excellent, thank you. Now, we do use the term “under oath” very loosely around here, but do you, you know, more or less swear that you’ll tell something resembling a mildly truthful statement today?

J: I pinky promise.

S: That’s actually what I wrote in there but it autocorrected to Piney so pinky swear is what I was looking for. Thank you for getting into what I need to be actually doing there. All right good enough for me you’re now under oath on BnL. Now could you please State for the record what beer we are drinking today and briefly describe it.

J: Alright today we are trying beer called Old Old wooden ship and it is a port barrel aged sour Saison.

S: It is delicious, thank you.  Do you know roughly what the alcohol percentage is?

J: The ABV is 6.1.

S: Can you recall the Hops that were used, if any?

J: Yeah actually we used a little bit of bittering hops that was sorachi-ace, and the bigger hop was the aroma addition in the whirlpool and that was the huell melon.

S: Excellent. Any glitter to speak of?

J: [Laughs just a little too loud] No Glitter this time.

S: For the record anything New England-ish about it?

J: I’m going to go ahead and say no. It does have some pleasant haze but…

S: It does have that juicy color.

J: Right, right, and in this case I guess a normal part of the process.

S: A happy accident. Any pastries used or harmed in the making of this beer?

J: No pastries and no cheeseburgers.

S: Not even ingested?

J: None. [laughs with uncertainty]

S: Alright, excellent. So if this beer was part of the Trump administration, how long do you you think it would last until getting fired or indicted?

J: Oh my god it’d be fired like day one.

We changed it up this year and brought Laura Lodge back *after* the Big Beers Belgians and Barleywines festival. We talked about all the great things that have been going on with the festival now that it has two years at Breckenridge under its belt including the sessions that just kind of come together and the ones that work themselves out at the last minute.

Find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and feel free to stalk accordingly.

Our first official guest of 2018 is none other than Zack from Chain Reaction Brewing Company. It’s a shortie, but a goodie. We talked about all the cool shit Chain Reaction has coming up at the brewery in the next few months and have a very quick recap of Zack and Sam’s experiences at the Big Beers Belgians and Barleywines festival that took place up in Breckenridge the first weekend in January. Dig your ears in and crack a beer. Fuck those New Year’s resolutions.

Hassle us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Welcome to 2018! We ring in the new year with a very special one on one episode with a friend and fan of the show from Minneapolis. Sadly, Sam is not a scheduling wizard, so Pete was not able to attend, but our Guest Pyrate Mike was perfectly able to carry the show in his absence. Dude’s traveled many places and drank many beers and whiskeys, so we talk about that and how great Nic Cage is.

Rate your Nic Cage movies to us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Welcome to our first official “holiday” episode of the BnL Podcast. We called up some friends and family to talk through holiday stories and have a laugh. It was a great time hearing about what goofy holiday shenanigans everyone gets into!

Holiday with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Don’t believe everything you hear. Despite all the false accusations of birthday wishes, we actually just had a regular old show with Desiree of Spoiled Beer Brat Productions talking about the appropriate season for stouts, favorite events to cover for the year and what it would actually take for her to drink a Budweiser.

Drink with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Man, we did up GABF for 2017 and it was an intense weekend. Sam gathered the crew who came and helped shoot video, take pictures and drink the beers to go back through what we saw, smelled and drank. Relive the whirlwind that was us Making America Great American Beer Fest Again, or MAGABFA.

We’ll make you proud to know us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

This week’s show sees us chatting up Kyle, the Colorado sales rep for Full Sail Brewing company. We talk about beer, restaurants and some of the terrible beers we had growing up. Kyle also gives us a sneak peek at some of the new shit going on at Full Sail, who have been going strong for a few decades now. Pete had to bow out early, but Sam still worked him over with a few Would You Rather’s for the loaded questions section. Great chat. Grab a beer and listen up!

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.