Flowable Hop Products? Shana Solarte Explains!

Welcome, everyone. This is the DC Beer Show. We are @DCBeer across social media, including on Bluesky. Mike Stein,

what is in your Stein tonight? Well, I'm doing something I never do since we are introducing a new format here on the DC beer show. I'm having a hazy pale ale. Why am I having green city from Other Half? Because there is Incognito flowable hop product in here. What the hell was that? I have no idea, but we have a very special guest. We'll bring her out in a little while, but, Jake, I'm curious. What are you having this evening? I have here another IPA, another local

IPA at that. It is the precious one. It is a slightly fruited apricot IPA from maybe 500 feet from Other Half at Atlas to brews that if you're at one, you can walk to the other. You got chocolate in my peanut butter. You got peanut butter in my chocolate. Good stuff. Jordan, what are you drinking? Would it be okay to say I'm drinking another IPA? Just playing. We are three for three so far with

IPA is in two for two with Other Half. Do you have any, scrap scrapple dapple was the, one of the IPAs they dropped about a few a few weeks ago, just, you know, not too long ago, but a Citra Motueka, Eldorado and, Citra Abstract. So, yeah, having a delightful IPA, and I think the listeners enjoy this. So, Brandy, what's in your handy? So Other Half has been mentioned several times, and I'm not drinking Other Half beer, but this beer is courtesy of my Other Half who is the GM over at Other Half,

mister Matt Splane. Matt has a very good friend that comes in to visit him fairly ish often, and he brings in, local beer. He's a rep, like, wine rep, beer rep. And I am currently drinking Peabody Heights. So representing our Maryland breweries, I love Peabody Heights. I have a pixelated Pilsner. Sadly, there's not a lot of info on the can. Dear dear Peabody Heights, I don't like that. Can you put some info on the can for us beer nerds? Just, like, put some stuff on

the can. Tell me what the fuck I'm drinking. Thank you. But, yeah. So I'm I'm enjoying that after my homemade margarita tonight because it is Cinco de Mayo. I'm so excited for this evening. We're we're switching it up, and I'm fucking jazzed about it. I'm wearing my Dynasty shirt. What what are we what are we doing? Let's go. It's super exciting, Brandy. I'll fill the listeners in. We are gonna have our guests join us for basically the entirety of the show. So without

further ado, I will welcome our guest, Shana Solarte. Shana is joining us, from Chicago. But why are we having a Chicago guest on the DC Beer Show? Well, Shana wears many hats in, the brewing and beverage industries. Right now, she's currently marketing communications manager at John I. Haas who make products. So I've got Other Half, Screen City, which has a John I. Haas product in it.

But then I also have Hopewell from Port City, which is another product, from our friends at Port City Brewing in Alexandria, that uses John IHaas, hop products. But Shana sent us, an email. She wrote a press release three weeks ago, about the Michael James Jackson Foundation and some work that, John IHaas is doing with them. So we wanted to bring her on. Shana, thank you so much for joining us. What are you enjoying this evening? If you're having a beverage, what are you drinking? Hey, Mike.

I am enjoying Fuego del Sol. It's the latest release from Miluna. IPhone would be appropriate considering our, topic that we're gonna get into later on. So this is a collab between Miluna and KCBC in Bushwick, and it uses Stitcher, Mosaic, and Crush Shops from Haas. You know, just throwing that out there. It's a West Coast IPA. Breeze described it as East Coast flavors meets West Coast sensibilities. It's super fruity and tropical, but really pale, dry, refreshing. I

regret only bringing one back from CBC. She she brought a few to share with us last week at CBC, and I only came home with one because we drank the rest of them in our booth. Nice. Nice. Nice. So Can we can we give a quick shout out to Breeze Galindo, everybody? Yay. Breeze. Love Breeze. Breeze, thank you so much for, a, being who you are and being a good friend of ours and, coming on the panel and coming to DC and being in MJF and being Miluna, and

just being you. So cheers cheers to Breeze and cheers to women and beer, and cheers to Sean. Well said.

So, Shana, let's back up a little bit, just for our no. No. For our our listeners that may not be familiar, CBC is the Craft Brewers Conference. You were just there where you saw, Breeze Galindo, who is on the board of the Michael Jackson Foundation. KCBC, Kings County Brewing Company also has another, Michael Jackson Foundation board member, Rafa, Rafael Darmas. So tell us a little bit about your

work. You know, you sent us this press release, and I realized that some people might not be familiar, with what's going on between the MJF and Haas. Fill us in. What's what's happening? Yeah. I'm gonna take a few assumptions here and just assume most people know what the MJF is. The short version is they're a grant making organization that funds scholarships for brewers and distillers of color. And in the last five

years, they launched in 2020. I think they've sent 80 plus awardees or or given out 80 plus awards, to places like Stiebel and Harriet Watt and other great brewing and distilling programs around the world. And so, Hass, where I work, we have just launched a hot blend to benefit the MJF. It's the first of its kind for the

MJF. It's the first of its kind for HAS. And it was a partnership that sort of came together out of our mutual desire to grow brewing in a way that makes a really positive impact. Spent a lot of time chatting with the MJF board over the last few

months, working on this project. And one of the things that they really wanna drive home is that, you know, there's there's a way that the American public looks that is not entirely white but then if you look at the brewing industry and the distilling industries it doesn't reflect what the population of America actually looks like and so this is a way for some barriers to come down you know every every upper level job or even some entry level jobs in brewing and distilling require some

kind of degree or experience. And if you can't get experience without the degree and you can't get the degree because you don't have the funds or the opportunity or the connections, the MJF provides just one of many ways to to break down that barrier and move

ahead in careers for for their candidates. And we know that, the Michael Jackson Foundation has a board that looks probably more accurately like our local breweries in DC, like our tap rooms, like, our our folks in the restaurant, food, and beverage industries. So we had, Breeze Galindo, a board member from the Michael Jackson Foundation at, Foundation at, Lost Generation, when Brandy was was hosting the women in beverage

panel, two months ago. But I'm wondering about other friends or other luminary big people in in the beverage industry like, Garrett Oliver and Liz Garibay. How did you get all of these folks together, you know, the MJF? Did you did you call them all into a room? Did you have them meet you in a hop yard? Walk us through the process of this blend. Yeah. We just put up the bat signal and everybody assembled. It was really crazy. Eat a hop. No. I'm actually luckily for me, a

lot of the legwork was done before I joined Haas. I I just joined last year, but my understanding is that some of the folks on our sales and marketing teams and some of our analysts were kind of trying to figure out what a good path forward would be to do some charitable work and really, like, give a spotlight to some organizations that really mean a lot to us. And, you know, there's a lot of big movers and shakers at Haas who

just, of course, happen to know people like Aaron Oliver. And, I'm pretty sure this was maybe a CBC past or some other industry meeting where many beers were had, and this idea was sort of born out of a bar conversation as many of the best ideas are. And so we were able to figure out how how can we put together something that is very visible, something that the MJF can really run with and, something that means a lot to them and to us. And for

us, obviously, it's hops, it's quality. We wanna put forward good quality hops regardless of who's buying them or or what they represent. And so the idea was born that we would go to the MJF board meeting. So I think they meet in person once a year. I think they have a lot of online meetings throughout the year, but they were going to have an in person board meeting last fall. And a small team of us hop hop folks, went to

the board meeting. They were gracious enough to give us a little time at the end of their meeting to do some experimentation. So we brought, I want to say 16 different hop varieties from some of them were multiple lots of the same variety. So we had, I think, three different citrus, multiple mosaics, some of the big ones. And, all the board members went through every hop on their own and built their

own blends. And then once they had built their blends, we gave them some parameters of, you know, logistically, it's best if there's up to four in a blend. So 25% each or maybe fiftyfifty or 70 fivetwenty five and so on. And they, they wrote up what they wanted their blends to be. We took those blends all in this, this, you know, maybe

hour, hour and a half we were there. We took those blends on paper and pulled out some fresh samples, recreated them, put blind codes on them, and then they all evaluated all the blends together to pick their favorite. And there was sort of a joke at the beginning of the session that, you know, why are we even doing this? We're just gonna pick Garrett's blend anyway. And we said,

well, don't worry. We'll we'll double blind it. You'll never know whose is whose. And then we wound up picking Garrett's, which is funny. Go figure. But that yeah. We got them all in the room, thanks to the MJF getting them in the room for us, and we just sort of crashed the party. Yeah. But, a good bit of sensory going on there as well. And then even with the double blind, highly academic, you couldn't you couldn't, you know, escape the the Jedi mind trick of of

the of the great, Jedi, Garrett Oliver. That's exactly what he would say. Well, there's an interesting tidbit, that you had put in the press release that even though, you know, the the sensory was double blind, the Citra hops that were selected come from the Losa Farms in Wapato, Washington state, which is the only Mexican owned hop farm in The United States. So I think it's really interesting that, you know, there's been a big buzzword about meritocracy, as as we're

dealing with these absurd, executive orders. But it's it's really fascinating that, you know, a Mexican owned hop farm would be the Citra that was chosen. As you mentioned, there were three three lot was it three lots or three different, Citra, hop yards that were presented? Yeah. Three different pallet lots of Citra. And so as we're I I'm assuming then all of the hops smelled were pellets. Is that accurate? These were all a % pellets. And since I'm asking

you about hops, it seems to be that pellets are still the industry standard, but I keep hearing this buzz buzzword, flowable hop products. And Jake tried to educate me, three years ago on hop products. I still don't get it. So I'm hoping since we have an expert because you've worked for Cicerone, you worked for Dovetail, you worked for Omega Yeast. You've been doing education in the beer world for a long time. What the hell is a flowable hop product? There are lots of lots of different

flowable hop products. Some really geared toward bittering, some geared toward flavor. Ultimately, they're just different types of extracts that can be made from hops. And so you were mentioning Incognito earlier. Incognito specifically is a flavor aroma product product using. And really what it does is just really boost up efficiency for the brewer without losing quality in, the variety specific flavors and aromas. So what you get is a mega concentrated product that is

cheaper to ship, lighter to ship. Since there's no green matter, you don't soak up beer. So then you get, you know, more product in the fermenter, meaning more product in front of the consumers. And that's just, that's one of, of several different, I'm looking at a chart that I have next to my my desk, that I look at all day just to reinforce what's in here, and I'm counting, you know, a half dozen just by a glance. There's lots of different global products, but that's, that's a

popular one for sure. So is it is a safe way to look at flowable hops, just hop concentrate, basically, just for like like abstract Incognito, it's just pure hop concentrate that that helps make the make the brewing process more efficient. Is that a safe way to look at it, or is that too too general? No. That's that's a

perfect way to look at it. It's just a % hops, but in a super concentrated package, that varies on usage, but you could probably get, you know, what would be the equivalent of five grams per liter in in pellets that you probably only have to use about one gram in Incognito. I'm I'm probably getting those numbers not exactly right, and one of our sales guys is gonna call me when he listens to this. But, you know, if you can fact check me.

So for those of you who haven't seen Incognito in action, it looks kind of like it comes in a laundry detergent plastic bottle, and you're essentially putting that, into the warp, like, usually pre whirlpool. I'm most familiar with Mosaic because I think area brewers like to use that. Popular hop, it boosts, those kind of, like, dank berry flavors that I think Jordan and I, in particular, are looking for in a hazy, and I find mosaic as a just the plant itself to

be very temperamental. Like, early harvest is way different than late harvest. Sometimes there were years where it was giving off this kind of like oniony, allum y flavor, and other times, much more strawberry, raspberry, blackberry. And so I just wanna say, I mean, Mosaic Incognito, has been a game changer for me because now I see that as opposed to just mosaic, and I go, oh, this is something that tastes like what I think mosaics is gonna taste like. So well done.

Forward and Liquid Intrusion have a collaboration in honor of governor Wes Moore, and they've got mosaic and mosaic Incognito in it. And the whole it just pops with this great berry no. It's really well done. So kudos to you and the team for that. Yeah. I'd love to hear that. I I mean, our our sensory team really puts in the work to to develop the the hop hop lot blend that goes into becoming

Incognito and any other flavor and aroma product. So they're trying to get as sort of as true to the classic mosaic or whatever variety you pick as it can be. And, I don't know. It's pretty cool to work with a lot of very smart people. I'll add, Shanna, you have you have, quite a bit of experience, in beer education. You know, you worked for the Dovetail Brewing Company, which is sort of notorious for having

beer nerds work there. You know, in production and sales, you know how to tap a firkin on the bar top, you know how to make decoction sound interesting, water profiles and the heaven's water of of Pilton and, you know, dovetail is well known for having an educational component. You work to put some manuscript books together at the at the Cicerone,

organization when you were there. You've worked now on the backside of brewing the supplier side, first at Omega yeast, which is a yeast, supplier, and now with Hass, with the hop supplier. I'm wondering what you do these days to keep your your passion ignited, your educational flame lit, as you are, you know, someone known in the industry for for educating people. How do you continue to educate yourself and keep that passion to educate beer brewers, consumers, and

and others? That's a great question. I I think a good part of it is that I have so many years of just being a big nerd, and I seek out new information wherever I can find it. And part of the excitement of coming to a hops company was that I hadn't really spent a lot of time around

hops. The the brewery I worked at is not known for being a big hop forward brewery, so it was kind of like, you know we've got noble types and and they're there they're there to support and some of the beers have a little more hop than others but nothing like we're seeing and you know this entire group is drinking IPAs right now now. So at at Dovetail, IPA stood for I prefer alt beer. And that's that's great. I mean, I love it there. I I still go drink there all the

time. Yeah. I think I think for me, it's, it's been really helpful to have this technical and educational background to sort of inform my role in communications and in marketing, because I think you can ask a lot of people who work in specialized in technical fields that a lot of times the comms team or the marketing team doesn't really know what the company does. They're just brought in because they're, they're good at their jobs. And, and I think that's, that's great.

But I'm filling a role that's, Hass hasn't had. So I've been able to kind of make it my own and develop communications in a way that is very education forward. And we have a lot of folks on our team who are, like I said, very smart, a lot of them smarter than me about a lot of things. So it's, it's cool to be surrounded by folks that are just fountains of knowledge. I, I had it working at Omega as well. Getting to just sort of pop my head into Doctor. Laura Burns office whenever I want is

something I really miss. I could text her anytime, but it's not quite the same as popping my head in the door. So, yeah, I I I definitely miss having training as a more regular component of my job, but I don't feel like it's completely gone, which is nice. Well, it's it's great to have you here on the show, Shana, and and and we're excited, for all of the work that you're putting in and Haas is putting in. Can we ask you what your favorite hop is?

Is it a new world hop, an old world hop? You know, what what what would you say your favorite hop is? Controversial answer, maybe for someone who works for an American hop company, but I'm, I'm a really big fan of Saphir hops, and I think that's just many, many years of drinking hoppy lager. If I had to pick an American hop, I mean, we just commercialized crush last year, right? Right around when I came on board and I love crush. I think crush is just

an awesome, awesome hop. It smells so good. It smells the same, practically the same from, from field to glass. I mean, you rub the fresh cones, you rub the pellets, you rub rub the dry leaf, and then you have beer with crush in it. It's kind of all the same, like, peach mango smoothie vibe. I love it. That's really cool. Two different hops, wonderfully, decadent in their own

regard. But we should we should let folks know, Shana, that if brewers or friends who are brewers who are listening are interested in getting the MJF hot blend, will their purchase of the blend, be you know, will it go towards something? What is Hass doing to to help with this blend? Yeah. So the MJF blend is not just, a the name alone. It is also, charitable donation from each pound sold. So for every pound of the blend sold, we will donate $5 to the MJF, which

we've got about 5,000 pounds of the blend available. So you can sort of extrapolate from there. We were pretty stoked to help them on their most recent fundraising campaign with a big match. And, I don't know if you saw the photos from their party during CBC, but they raised $200, which is pretty rad. So we're we're stoked to be part of it. We're stoked to keep it rolling. If anybody's listening is trying to get their hands on it, reach out to your

Haas reps. If you don't have a Haas rep, shoot us an email, and we'll we'll find you one. Awesome. Thank you, Shana. We're we love we love to see it. We love to hear it, and we wish nothing but success to the MJF. Thank you so much. I think it's really cool that we have, a hop representative on because we talk about beer so much. It's such a huge aspect of

all of our lives. And, having a hop expert and someone representing one of the biggest, hop, deliverers, I'm gonna say deliverer, producer and deliverer, is is really a big deal, and thank you for coming on. This is this is really cool. I'm so excited for some of the upcoming events we have going on. We have, we

have the Maryland Craft Beer Festival this weekend in Frederick, Maryland. So many of us have gone to that. We've even taken a bus there in years past. Hashtag junket, Papa beer. So this weekend, the tenth, is Maryland Craft Beer Festival in Frederick. Frederick's fucking adorable. I wanna give my accolades and flowers to Frederick because, you know, I I noticed a lot of our local DC beer friends and members live up

there. You know, they're lucky because they have tenth Ward and a bunch of, you know, local breweries, but, was on my, my second women's panel for the month at Other Half who uses Paws Pops, tying it back, book ending it. But, you know, you know, I come from the gin distilling industry, and McClintock and to the Ward are are crushing it up there. So massive shouts to Frederick. So if you're up in Frederick this weekend, come to the Maryland Craft Beer

Festival. The women's brew culture club gets a hefty half off discount for our tickets because we wanna see more women and non binary folk in the beverage industry coming to events. And please join us. Seriously, please join us for our May beer share, at DC Brow. We're we're gonna be at DC Brow this upcoming Friday on the sixteenth, and, I'm jazzed because, we haven't been at DC Brow in a hot

minute, and they are making some banging beer. And then we'll be back at DC Brown at the end of the month because, drafts and crafts, is gonna be there. So we'll be pouring heavy. I'll be pouring for lost gen, prepping my lovely local brewery. And then our June beer share is in at Sovereign, and our July beer share is at ChaCha. So we we we've got some good stuff coming up. DC beer, fam,

we're gonna be living the best life. We're gonna be giving our summer girl and theys and thems and he's and us vibes, and we'll be drinking the best beer. And cheers to hops, cheers to women and beer, cheers to us drinking beer, and, cheers to beer in general. Brandy, I

should ask you, do you know what our beer of the month is now that we're in May? Mister Stein, I feel like you chose the beer of the month, sir. So, you are the one to talk about the beer of the month. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. A minute. But you thing about it, sir. You did the words. I just didn't know those. The beer of the month looked good. Shout out to Katie, the the general manager at Bluejacket, who I'm checking out her wonderful, robin's egg blue nails on this great

photo you took of Midwest condensation. And Bluejacket is the brewer for Midwest condensation, the Czech style pale lager. It's only 3.8%, but it's full of flavor. And you can get it at the woman owned Brew Shop in Arlington. So check us out, dcbeer.com or go to patreon.com/dcbeer. Remember that members get 10% off so you get that discount if you become a supporter. Jake, what are you looking forward to as we look towards May? I also wanna say, this weekend is also Mother's Day,

which sparks joy. For some of us, I can realize it's also complicated for others. I just wanna shout out to moms. We love you. Moms, beer is for you as well. It's not just for, like, a bunch of bearded bros. So thank you. Don't do what Bullfinch Brewery did in Syracuse, which is have a giant sign outside saying that their brew brewpub was, quote, unquote, husband daycare and boyfriend daycare. That's shitty. Don't do it, Bullfinch. Do better.

Oof. Rough. Yeah. It was a big yikes because I walked over there and wanted to, like, oh, like, let me grab a pint. Saw that sign and went, nope. I'll be going someplace else. That is how you lose my business real quick. I don't do that. It's 2025. Beer is for everybody. Mom should drink too. Happy Mother's Day. Well said, sir. Well said. Oh, beer is for everyone. You guys, the the listeners can't see what we see, and, there was a beer is for everyone sticker just flung upon the screen, and I

applaud it so hard. Thank you. Thank you to, everybody, and thank you to our guests tonight. Jake, do you wanna take us out? Yeah. I think well said. Beer events galore coming up. It's May. It's meibock season. I know it's raining right now, but there'll be flowers after the rain. A lovely rainbow. Everybody go out there. Patronize your local brewery. Support local. Hopefully, tariffs haven't hit yet, and so things are still as they should be and not

20 to 50% more expensive. Be nice to your fellow people, beer workers, beer servers. Go out there. Drink on the patio. Tip well, and we're at DCB across social media. Check out the reels that Brandy's doing over on Instagram. It's good, good stuff. Alright. Bye, everybody. Thanks. Cheers.