The Cold Side

By FermentIQ

An AI hosted podcast from FermentIQ covering real brewing topics from real breweries.... more

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FAQs about The Cold Side:

How many episodes does The Cold Side have?

The podcast currently has 4 episodes available.

The Cold Side episodes:

August 21, 2026 Your Cost Per Barrel Is Wrong, and Loss Is Why
Cold Side, Episode 4: Your Cost Per Barrel Is Wrong, and Loss Is Why
Ask a brewer what a barrel of the flagship costs and the answer comes off a card in the office: grain, hops and yeast, divided by batch size. This episode is about the second number in that division, because nobody has ever bought a barrel of wort.
The number: 12% understated. Assume $600 of ingredients for a 15-barrel batch and the card says $40 a barrel. Package 13.4 of those barrels and the honest ingredient cost is $44.78. That gap is 11.9%, and the same 11.9% sits on every cost you divide by planned barrels instead of packaged ones.
The action: Take your last three batches of one beer. Write down planned barrels and packaged barrels, then divide your ingredient cost by the packaged figure. Run it again with payroll, the building and the power bill on top, because ingredients are the smallest of the three.
Segments:
0:00 First Runnings
1:32 Hot Side: the denominator that hides twelve percent, and why Wren won't give Mac a single cost-per-barrel number
8:53 Ask BrewBuddy: "What was my packaged yield on my last three completed batches?"
10:29 Dry Hops
11:19 Last Call
Mac and Wren are AI voices. Every figure we cite, we tell you where it came from or that we're estimating it. The $600 ingredient bill is an assumption and we say so on air. The Ask BrewBuddy segment is a live query run against a real account, played back unedited.
FermentIQ is an all-in-one management platform for breweries and other craft beverage producers. First 30 days free, cancel anytime. ferment-iq.com
...more
13min
August 14, 2026 The Weekend You Get Back: Reporting Without Reconstructing
Cold Side, Episode 3: The Weekend You Get Back: Reporting Without Reconstructing
The Brewer's Report of Operations takes about twenty minutes to fill in. Everything before it — the brew sheets, the keg board, the text message to the cellar guy who quit in June — is what actually takes the weekend, and this episode puts a number on that.
The number: 60 hours a year. Five hours a month is an assumption and Wren labels it one on air, but at a forty-hour week that is a week and a half of an owner's time spent rebuilding a figure the brewery already had.
The action: Take last month's filed numbers and try to tie the removals line back to actual sales and taproom depletions. Just that one line. Time yourself doing it, because however long that takes is your problem statement.
Segments:
0:00 First Runnings
1:20 Hot Side: what the monthly report actually costs, and whether a whiteboard photo fixes it
7:56 Ask BrewBuddy: "What are my total removals for the month so far?"
9:16 Dry Hops
10:19 Last Call
Mac and Wren are AI voices. Every figure we cite, we tell you where it came from or that we're estimating it. The Ask BrewBuddy segment is a live query run against the product, played back unedited.
FermentIQ is an all-in-one management platform for breweries and other craft beverage producers. First 30 days free, cancel anytime. ferment-iq.com
...more
12min
August 07, 2026 Five Generations: What Repitching Actually Costs You
Cold Side, Episode 2: Five Generations: What Repitching Actually Costs You
Mac and Wren run the math on yeast repitching — liquid versus dry, on a 15-barrel system pitching 52 batches a year, with the cost of a dumped batch written into both calculations. The number that survives depends on whether you can count your generations, and most breweries can't.
The number: $51,600 a year on liquid yeast, or $7,525 on dry. Same brewery, same question. Both figures are conditional on tracking your slurry.
The action: Find your oldest slurry and write down three things — what generation it is, when it was harvested, and what beer it came out of. If you can't answer all three, buy fresh.
Segments:
0:00 First Runnings
0:50 Repitching: the liquid vs. dry numbers
8:16 Ask BrewBuddy: "What yeast crops do I have available right now, and what generation is each one?"
11:21 Dry Hops
12:17 Last Call
Mac and Wren are AI voices. Every figure we cite, we tell you where it came from or that we're estimating it.
FermentIQ is an all-in-one management platform for breweries and other craft beverage producers. First 30 days free, cancel anytime. ferment-iq.com
...more
14min
July 31, 2026 Tank Turns: The Four Days Nobody's Counting
Four fermenters, and you want to make more beer. What do you buy? Nothing. You go
look at how long beer actually sits in the tanks you already own.
Mac and Wren work out what four days off your average tank occupancy is worth on a
fifteen-barrel system, where those four days are actually hiding (none of them are
fermentation), and why the whole thing is worthless if you can't sell the beer.
The number: 130 barrels a year. Almost 17% more beer out of the same steel. No loan,
no permit.
The action: Pull fill-date-to-clean-date occupancy on your busiest fermenter for the
last six months and average it. If that number is more than four days longer than your
actual fermentation and conditioning time, you have found free beer.
Segments
00:00 First Runnings
01:15 Hot Side — where the four days actually go
07:49 Ask BrewBuddy — "Which fermenter has been occupied the longest right now,
and what stage is that batch in?"
09:24 Dry Hops
10:15 Last Call
Mac and Wren are AI voices. The brewing and the math are real — every figure we cite,
we tell you where it came from or that we're estimating it.
FermentIQ is an all-in-one management platform for breweries and other craft beverage
producers. First 30 days free, cancel anytime. ferment-iq.com
...more
12min

FAQs about The Cold Side:

How many episodes does The Cold Side have?

The podcast currently has 4 episodes available.