Graining In

This week, the guys get blessed by the presence of Luke Pestl. Luke owns what many would say is the best brewery in Canada and it was a blast talking to him, particularly on our home turf in Milo. After addressing the obvious question of how he wound up in Piscataquis County with his wife and three children, we get into a wide variety of topics like his history in beer, Bellwood's philosophy. and what makes Canadian beer culture unique. Luke shares a ton of insight on the value of food in a brewery, maintaining company culture, and grinding to become the best beer maker in the world. The fact that he does this all so well in the face of Noah's excessive use of the word "kinda" and Matt's even more excessive Drake questions is a true miracle.

Noah and Matty decide to go down the rabbit hole that is spontaneous fermentation.  The conversation bounces between why lambic-style beers are the top of the mountain for so many brewers, experiences and thoughts on the style, philosophy on how a coolship (R) should be used, and ultimately why it's worth bowing down to Belgium. Through Matty's relentless questioning, he discovers his employer may very well be completely full of crap (anyone hiring?). Lastly, it'd be a be shame not to mention that God finds his way onto the golf course on this podcast about "beer".  

This week, Matty and Noah had the pleasure of getting southern hospitalitized by Evan Richardson, chef and owner of Eaux in Portland. Evan made his way to Maine from the Big Easy and is tirelessly proud of that fact. His restaurant serves food that pays deep homage to Louisiana and Creole (NOT Cajun) cooking while also embracing the indigenous flavors of Maine. The concepts of fusion, balance, and adaptation run throughout our conversation, and we find parallels between kitchens/restaurants and breweries/taprooms, and also find time to judge inter-episode mullets. Ultimately, some genuinely inspiring perspective is shared from a guy that hates trash, loves fast casual chains, and just wants to "Do what he does, and do it well".

The guys sit down and recap a beef-squashing collaboration brew with Novare Res and attempt to dissect the deep love of Taras Boulba from Noah and brewers at large. The eccentricities of Belgian breweries also comes up, which leads to a surprisingly decent conversation about how branding - intentional or incidental - influences everyone's beer drinking decisions, whether they realize it or not. Weaved throughout the episode are hints that Matt may be illiterate and that Noah may soon legally change his name to "Like".

This week, we record at Novare Res with one of its owners: Shahin Khojastehzad. He preciously fell in love with better beer at and age at which many people haven't even been buzzed, and he and offers a uniquely honest take on the history of Novare, balancing local with global, maintaining standards, and the value of pub culture. We also dig into Novare's quest to get better while staying true, leading to a very open discussion of why they stopped carrying Bissell Brothers after they changed their house yeast and ultimately why they got back in the saddle together. Shahin overdelivered in a conversation we were already excited for, and beyond being extremely interesting, he's the best player the Three Bay Sink will likely ever see.

This week, Noah recounts his experience doing a two-way collaboration with Other Half, first in Portland and later in the wild world that is NYC.  We weigh in on brewing in one of the most human-dense places in America, the resolve required to become a bike messenger, Other Half's Green City, and beer festivals as a whole. The perils of consuming exotic urban shellfish and the joys of observing amateur wrestling are also contrasted as we try to worm our way through the Big Apple.

This week we sit down with Josh Schlesinger, owner and founder of Sleek Machine Distribution. We talk about the three-tier system, how it has shaped the beer industry today, and how it has changed since it first went into effect after prohibition. We also get into the recent wave of legislation changes that seem to be empowering breweries, what it’s like to run a distribution business in Maine, and the resolution to stay small. Also, aliens.

This week, we record from Noah's dad's garage and hold a weigh-in for the pros and cons of beer collaborations. We also chat about public speaking with a mullet, Napoleon Complexes, and struggle to connect Sammy Sosa to Trillium.

This week we talk with Zach Page, Director of Brewing Operations at Lone Pine Brewing. Zach shares his story - from growing up in Indiana, leaving a PhD program at Brown to become the second employee of Trillium, and ultimately his decision to start fresh in Maine. We get tales from the early days of brewing at Fort Point and moving north to help Lone Pine navigate a huge expansion. We talk a lot about scaling production alongside company culture, a little about Zach's aggressive modesty, and just a touch about t-shirt cannons and unicorns.

This week we talk about releasing a podcast and the fact that we just realized we should probably do an introductory episode to attempt to explain how we got here and why. Here is said introductory episode.