Port City Brewing: Let's Try New Things!

Welcome to The DC Beer Show. We are at DC Beer across social media. Mike Stein. What is in your Stein? Hey, Jake. I'm actually double fisting 2 beers highlighting women in brewing. The first is Pink Technicolor Boots, which our good friend, Lauren brewed with our good friend, Favio, at Dynasty. Lauren selected, the Pink Boots Hop Blend, which makes Pink Technicolor boots a West Coast style Pilsner. It's just really hoppy and delightful.

And as far as a Pilsner goes, it gives you that smooth, crisp lager finish with that hoppy bite reminiscent of West Coast Pale Ale. I'm also having Mariana, which is a Glow, g l o w, the global ladies of warts collaboration from the Berliner, Berliner Weiss Brewery from Berlin. It's 4.4% alcohol by volume. And this comes from hop cask and wine. Go see our friend, Jared up in

Georgetown. You love to see it. A women focused Pilsner from Ashburn and GLOW, the global ladies of work from Berlin, Germany. Jordan, what are you having this show? I bet most folks start, like, man, what hazy and from what delicious place, but we actually went in the opposite direction today. I wanted to shout out Soul Mega with the, Rhythmi and Beauty black lager. So, you know, mix it up today on a on a nice spring Friday, or at least how I hope it feels on Friday and not rainy like it's

been on Tuesday. But nevertheless, sipping the the dark lager tonight. Brandy, what what do you fancy? What are what are you having tonight? Hi, Jordan. All of your beers sound delicious. I am actively drinking the lost generation. It's so pretty. This vita, it's a Mexican style lager with Motueca hops, Motueca hops. But right before that, I was sharing this delicious beer from Port City. And it's the Alexandria's ALX 275, the 275th anniversary IPA from Port City. They have I like this little

sticker. You guys can't see it because you're listening to this and don't have eyes, on the podcast. Hopzooka dry hop, sticker on the corner. I don't know what why that caught my eye, but I love it. But, yes, this this IPA is fantastic. My friend Frank brought it to me, and it was just Frank's birthday. So happy birthday, Frank Chang, one of our members, DC beer members, and dear friends. So, shout out to Port City for making this lovely ALX 275 beer. Yeah. Jake you

Oh. Jake, what are you having? Sorry. Mike, did you wanna follow-up on Brandy's ALX beer? I was so eager to thank Frank for bringing Brandy this beer. But I said if you wanna be as cool as Frank Chang, you should join us on patreon, patreon.com/dcbeer. Come join us. Come see cool cats like Frank at members only shares. Jake, I know you'll bring something tasty to the share. What are you having this DC Beer Show? Well, it is a bittersweet

week in DC beer land. And to honor that, I've got here the very last bottle in existence of the 3 stars other half collaboration from 2015, Ricky Rose, one of the very first beers that beer. To come out of the, 3 Stars Funkerdome, red wine barrel aged with blackberries. This beer is now almost 9 years old. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. That was a other half collab from that see, this was before I even

knew Yeah. About other half. Like, I realized that they used to do all these hype collaborations, and I used to be a member of 3 Stars. I went there all the time. I live near the where 33 Stars used to be. I had no idea that it was the other half collab. Because Matt, the owner of other half Matt Money. Matt Money, and thank you. He was always at 3 Stars, and that is so crazy. Blinking back, that was one of my favorite fucking beers, and it was Other Half. Oh my god. I gotta tell Matt.

Yeah. Matt Monahan was there with, former other half brewer, Joe Lally, who I don't know exactly where he's brewing now, but I think he's somewhere in Philadelphia. I wanna say 2 s p, but don't quote me on it. But for a beer that's almost 9 years old, this has really held up. Little bit of blackberry has dropped out, little bit more acetic acid. Balsamic vinegar has come on in. Little less carbonation. The best time to crack this was probably, like, obviously, in 2015.

2nd best would have been, like, 2 or 3 years ago. But I cracked this because we in DC beer land just found out that former beer director of Big Hunt and 3 stars cofounder, former co owner, Dave Coleman, passed away. Yeah. It's, it's sad news. It sucks,

Jake. There's there's no way about it. And you're right, Brandy. When I interviewed, Matt Monahan, summer before last, about the closing of 3 Stars, he said it's a massive bummer. He said it sucks. He said we worked with 3 stars before we opened other half, which is today DC's biggest brewery. And so, you know, Jake, you tweeted out, you know, what a what a loss this is. I know, you know, some people that covered 3 Stars Rise, like Jessica Sidman, who writes for Washingtonian,

you know, quote tweeted you and and offered condolences. And I just wanna read what DC Brow, which, you know, DC 2nd largest brewery, DC's oldest production brewery, said. I assume this was Brandon Skoll, the owner, founder of DC Brow, but DC Brow posted, the fledgling days of the DC beer scene were truly magical. We were all working together to build something that didn't exist at that point in time, and Dave is forever inseparable from that magic. That is how he will always stay in our

minds. So we honor a toast to Dave Coleman. If you're grieving, our hearts go out to you, we grieve with you, and we hope that his memory will be a blessing. Cheers. Well said. Cheers. Cheers to Dave. Alright. We're gonna do something to honor Dave this weekend, and that is we're gonna go out. We're gonna have some beer and have a good time at beer events starting with, Mike,

you know something about Germany and beer in history. What is a Furlingsfest? Furlingsfest is another festival. Not to be confused with Oktoberfest, not to be confused with Saint Michael's Day or Saint Michael's Festival, but Fruhling's Fest, I think you are talking about Aslan's Fruhling's Fest. Is that correct? That is correct. It is in Alexandria, not too far from port city. More on them in a few. It is not in Munich, Germany, where where often Fruhlingsfest takes place in

Munich, Germany. So yeah, definitely a German festival in origin. But in this case, we're celebrating in Virginia, aren't we? Yeah. And there's gonna be, like, a ton of Virginia breweries, ton of out of towners. And so, like, if you like resident culture during Snally, Charlestown Fermentary, Casita, Inner Voice, which is just new to the Northern Virginia market, Firestone Walker. And so that's Saturday. That should be a good time. There's also a beer fest at dock

5 behind Union Market. District Beer Fest, Meet Me For Beers and Cheers, that's gonna have some out of towners too. Nice to have, like, thick and thin out of Hagerstown coming in. Jordan, they do a couple hazies at a really nice southern hemisphere hops. They hit, like at at all gravities, all alcohol spectrums. I've had a good hazy from them at 5. I've had a good hazy for them at 9. Worth a stop if you're if you're on up 70 going that going that way. Yeah. Sold. Sold.

And, also, it was just some you know, I like to see some of the the Frederick breweries. I think they'll be at, at, Doc Fyre, as well. So definitely just check it out. It's nice to see the DMV, you know, coming out, getting together, especially for the spring weather. And, I'm so sad I missed the the Maryland Craft Beer Fest, as well. So awesome opportunity to catch some of those breweries if you miss them there at, Union Market, this Saturday.

I was so sad to miss that event. I actually haven't met missed that event in several years, but I was very busy trying to paint my house. But we ended up going afterwards, on Saturday, to Hellbender for their last minute impromptu save Hellbender beer fest, and it was slammed. The news was there. All the locals were there. All the local industry friends, even the outs out of town ish, industry friends came. It was a lovely time, and I think that Hellbender,

you know, met their goals. So I'm sad I missed the the crappier fest, but I'm sure I'll be there next year. There's a lot of stuff coming up too that I'm jazzed about. But, first and foremost, tonight, we are we were supposed to go visit Port City for the special beer release. We'll keep you guys updated if that's actually happening.

And now here to talk more about that, I'm here with Port City's CEO, cofounder, Bill Butcher, and one of the brewers, Sam Terhune. Bill, Bill, welcome back to the show. Thank you, Jake. Bill, I'm gonna put the first question to you because I think this is more of a port citywide question. I note that you all have introduced, this Brewer's Cut series. Can you tell us a little bit about that? How it came to be, why now, and what you all are

gonna be making? Yeah. The the brewers cut series is it's something I'm really excited about, and I think our brewing team is excited about it as well. A few years ago, it was I guess, at some point during COVID, we purchased a 5 barrel tank to do these experiments with. That was to be part of our barrel aging program as well as to get, this experimental, brewing program going as well.

So one thing led to another, and so here we are. We've got our barrel aging program up and running, and now it's time to start with, the Brewer's cut series. And, really, the idea of it is to kinda turn the brewers loose a little bit and let them get creative and come up with, small batches of different beers that we can serve just in the tasting room for people. And it can help educate the brewers and educate our customers at the tasting room, and it should be a lot of fun

as well. And I think everybody's excited about it, to be brewing small batches of different types of beers that we can just put on tap in the tasting room and, get people's opinions. So, Sam, your batch is, I believe, an upcoming West Coast IPA. Yep. That is the plan going forward. We brewed a West Coast. The inspiration behind it being, you know, when I got into craft beer back in the day, West Coast were everywhere. You know, you had your La Canada, Sierra Nevada,

your Ballast Pointe, Sculpin, Firestone Walker. They're just kind of all over the place. Big, hoppy citrusy beers that everybody loved, and it kinda faded away a little bit. And I kind of was a little bit nostalgic for it. It picked up my back a little bit, but I I wanted to to make one with port city. And so that that is what we went ahead with. Yeah. Excellent. I mean, it's nice, from my point of view. I'm more of a clear beer guy unless the beer is optimal wit, in which case, I welcome that

haze. Yeah. You know? Some some yeast some some wheat. For the sort of these newfangled West Coast IPAs, I've noticed the incorporation of some of the more popular hazy IPA hops. Yeah. So for what I wanted to do, I I wanted to stick pretty traditional with it. You know, with the brew cut theories, we are kind of taking our original recipe beers and tweaking them a little bit. So the the main difference in this beer is gonna be the dry hop in terms

of, hops. So Citra is used a lot in hazy, but it's also a traditional west coast hop as well. So I I wanted to use some Citra, cascade, chinook, and strata are the the hops I use in dry hop. Really hoping to bring out a lot of, bright grapefruit, lemon lime, pine, dank, just, you know, big hoppy IPA. That's kind of what we're going for. Cool. Are you all running this through the hopzooka? This is the the for our listeners, Port Cities, patented proprietary,

hop back system. So, unfortunately, not for for the vessel that we are, fermenting this in. There's not a good attachment for the hapsuka, And also just the the quantities are so much smaller, you know, from a a 120 barrel fermenter versus the 5 barrel fermenter. So we're just kind of doing it the old school way. We dumped it dumped it to the top of the tank. I think the Hapazuka would probably blow that 5 barrel tank apart. I I still wanna

think that it would definitely my. Yeah. My under my understanding having seen the Hapzuka is that, it is of a of a similar size to a 5 barrel system anyway. I was gonna say it's it's not that much smaller. Right. So, Bill, you mentioned getting a barrel aging program, underway. And I've certainly noticed in the taproom, there are barrel aged beers more frequent more frequently now than there were, say, this time even last year.

What's that been like in terms of sourcing barrels, deciding what beers go in, when it's time to release them? That has been a great program, and it's another program similar to, the Brewer's Cut series where we've been able to hand off more responsibility to our brewers and give them special projects to work on. And so one of our brewers, Drew Shaw, has really, taken this project on as his own. It's really

his baby. So he's got a budget to buy barrels. He's got a budget to, buy other ingredients, and he's, basically got free reign over this program. And it's been a great educational opportunity for him. I think he's grown as a brewer, and, certainly, our customers have appreciated having, the having the the, end result of what he's been able to work with, available in the tasting room. I assume that we will see Drew at the upcoming, this fall, battle of the barrel aged beards. Definitely.

Definitely. That's a big motivating factor for him. He did the beer, our entry last year, and, he certainly is gonna be, front and center this year as well. Excellent. So when I think of Port City and when I think other people think of Port City, they view Port City as sort of a little bit more, quote, unquote buttoned up in terms of the beers that are made and released and such. But you've got a barrel aged program. You've got a sour. You've got this Brewer's

cut series, but the first one was a Saison, I believe. What's going on over there? Are you all okay? Like, she's like, blink. Blink twice. I and and Sam can weigh in on this as well, but I would say, yes. We are okay. And, frankly, we've never been better. Our beer has never been of better quality. We've got a motivated team that is excited about the new projects that we're working

on. And, again, getting back to the quality, the beer has never been better, and that's something that we are always working on. We're always striving, to improve our quality, to improve our brewing practices, and to make sure that we're putting out the best quality beer possible. And I think that we've been able to show that, just by some of the competitions we've entered.

And, you know, I'm really proud of the results that we've had, and Sam is a huge part of that because he spends most of his time in our QC lab, making sure that our beer is some of the best in the country. Absolutely. I I would say we're more known for, you know, the optimal with the lagers, but, it's definitely been a lot, a lot of fun doing these newer

things. Like Bill said, bottom line is we're very dedicated to quality and excellence in our beer, which I think kind of comes through in the product that we put out. And, yes, we are okay, but we've been putting a lot of time into the into our cobblestone sour, which has really turned out very nicely. Lead brewer, Mike Benesch has put a lot of work into that beer, and it is it's tasting great. But, yeah, the the brewer cut series has been great. The

the is fantastic. We did the, the optimal, which is a pumpkin beer as well, which was a hit. And then, you know, the West Coast is one more step down the line of 1 beers we're gonna be have coming out. Jake, you heard Sam right. He did say, optimal witch pumpkin beer. The pumpkin beer in 2024. Right? And I I know that's something that, you probably thought you would never see from our brewery, but actual, Crystal Fraley, who who is our,

director of quality control. It was something that she wanted to do for Halloween, and we thought it was a lot fun. It was a cheeky little fun project, that we were able to do and have it out in the tasting room, around Halloween. Everybody had a lot of fun with it. We had fun graphics, on the tap handles, and we'll probably do it again this fall. When it comes to this Brewer's Cut series, how do you all get together and decide what comes next? Like, is there is there a brewing

team discussion, Sam? And so, like, do you and your colleagues, like, you talked to amongst yourselves, you, Christy, Adam, Drew, whoever. Hey. Hey. And then, like, then you go to Bill? Yeah. So there there have been multiple meetings about even just what kind of coming up with the whole idea of the brew cut series. Everybody is kind of like, shooting off each other, and coming up with these ideas. And then we'll sit down, and

then we have kind of, like, an application process. Everybody comes up with their ideas, submits them, and we can't logistically be putting these out every week. So we kind of pick the ones, we vote on them, and then we move forward with the ones that we're most excited about. Jumping back over to the cobblestone sour for a minute, you're using an interesting yeast that's Yeah. Helping to produce the lactic acid and and souring the beer.

Yes? Yeah. When you all decided it was time for port city to come out with a sour, and then over, like, course of last winter or so, you'd see a couple iterations of this experimental sour in the tasting room, Was this plan because of the availability of that yeast, or were you all thinking about a sour and you thought, oh, like, this yeast will be a good way to do it? Or did the yeast come first? And then you thought, oh, let's

build a beer around this and see what happens. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, Bill, but I I believe the idea was to make it sour, and then we kind of landed on the Philly Sour Yeap. Correct? Yeah. We started with the concept of, okay, let's make a sour. And then it's like, well, what is it gonna be? And it's not, all gosa. It's it's different. It's just a sour beer,

and that's why we're just calling it sour. But we looked at different ways of making it, whether it's a specific type of yeast or if we're going to adjust the pH. And Adam and Crystal, who is also our resident yeast scientist, they were the ones that landed on on on that particular strain. Bill, you were just at CBC, were you not? The craft brewers conference? Yes. I was. Do you still sit on the events committee? I am still on the events committee. Yes. There's a group

of 7 of us. It's run by Nancy Johnson. It's myself, Tommy Arthur, Sam Calgione, Bill Kovaleski from, Victory, and we get together quarterly and discuss ways to make the Brewers Association events better, the Great American Beer Festival, the Craft Brewers Conference. That's really the main, revenue producer. It's really what helps the brewers association. It's their lifeline is doing events. Any plans to do anything a little bit closer to the east coast, perhaps the 95 corridor?

Right now, there's not. It's really the Great American Beer Festival is being rethought for this year. And so they're breaking it up into 5 mini festivals, each one with a different experience. So one is kind of a Halloween experience. 1 is kind of a sports bar experience. 1 is gonna be kind of an artist, experience kind of based on Meow Wolf, in Denver. And so there's all these different concepts, but the festival has been completely rethought, And, I think it's gonna

be a lot of fun. It was time to refresh that event. And, I think that that that it's gonna be a great event this year. The Brewers Association also is still in recovery mode from COVID. They still have, a much smaller staff than they had pre COVID. So they're trying to do what they were doing before with a lot fewer staff. So they've got their own set of challenges. And, you know, as as everyone knows, Sabre was, was canceled, and they're just focusing on the events that have

been good revenue generators. What do you have coming down the pike in terms of the Logger series, upcoming releases beyond the West Coast IPA, which should be here, if not this week, then perhaps the week after, week after that. They yeah. The the, West Coast IPA will be out in the next couple of weeks. More information forthcoming on that. But we're really excited about, our ALX

275 IPA. This is an American IPA that, the city leaders of Alexandria asked us to, work with them to make a special beer, for the city of Alexandria's 275th birthday this year. So we were, honored and certainly enthusiastic about creating a new beer, for this special event. And we released it last week, and we'll be serving the beer at several events during the summer, in Old Town and all around Alexandria. There's gonna be a whole host of activities, to celebrate the

anniversary of Alexandria. Sounds like there's a lot of a, like, sort of Chico style nutra ale yeast being, throw thrown about port city recently. No no plans to, you know, London or Conan that up, throw some more oats, wheat in there. You never know what Sam's cooking up. Sam, you got

Yeah. I don't know about all that. Well, I know as far as the the lager's theory goes as well, we do have, our Keller beer getting dry hopped this week, and then we have our German Pilsner in the tank as well, which is one of my favorite beers that we make. So that'll that'll be coming down the pike soon as well, which is exciting. Yeah. Truly for me, with between the Keller beer and the pills, the most wonderful time of the year, to Yeah. You know, walk into a Virginia store

and see those 2. Yeah. The Keller beer is definitely a staff favorite. It's it's one of our favorites, and the German pills has also really been great over the past few years. So what's it been like in the taproom knowing that you all you have all these all of these exclusives there as opposed to what's out in the grocery store, which is excellent beer, it should be said. But is it have you noticed, a little bit more buzz and uptick in on premise, coming off of Brewer's Cut, the

sour, other releases? Yeah. Definitely. The tasting room, we're having a great year in the tasting room. Like I said earlier, the beer's tasting great. We've got, know, the brewers cut series. We've got these small lots that we're releasing. We've got a whole slate of events, set up through the whole summer. We have a full time events manager and Julia is just packing the calendar with all kinds of great events, both in the tasting room, as well as out in the trade in our,

trade accounts. So, yeah, it's gonna be a great summer. We've got, the like I mentioned earlier, the 275th birthday of Alexandria. July 13th. There's a huge party down on the waterfront, with fireworks, and the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra is gonna play while the fireworks, go off, and we'll be selling. We'll have our, our waterfront beer garden set up. And then, port the Portside Festival, will be down at the Old Town Waterfront as well, June 20th 21st, and we'll be set up selling beer

and and enjoying the great music, the whole weekend. But, yeah, the tasting room has has been great. We just installed 2 Luker faucets, for our downright Pilsner as well as our pizza night, Amber Lager. So people are really enjoying that experience as well. So there's a lot of good stuff going on. Excellent. Very cool. Sam and Bill, thank you so much for stopping by. Everyone in our listenership, if you think you know Port City, you probably don't. Go check them out in

person. Thanks, Jake. It's been great being with you. Yeah. Always a pleasure. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Sam. Happy 275th to Alexandria. Go get yourself dry hop, blow up, all that good stuff. Alright. Am I gonna see

anybody at Metro Bar on Sunday? I think that John at Metrobar and I have kind of outdone ourselves with this beer list. Jordan, there's only one hazy. It's a pale ale, but it's Nelson Sowvin, Virwaka. Yeah. Oh. From Blue Jacket. Well, it's also gonna be delicious. It's not easy. I onions, multiple lagers, social the thing, Jake. None of these beers are pasteurized. So the potential for them all to be mildly hazy

is there. What I think you're getting at is Jordan is known for being an aromatic beer aficionado. It just so happens that the vast majority of these aromatic beers are pale ales, you know, double dry hopped, triple dry hopped, irresponsively hopped, if you will. Yes. But, you know, the saison can be hazy. There's there's no harm in that. But I but I should give you credit, Jake, for pulling out all the stops and really getting a broad breadth of, DC and DC metro breweries for

this metro bar event. You know what? Mike Stein, that was a beautifully said statement. Irresponsibly, hopped. I think that breweries should start they should, like, pay you for that little, that little segment of words that you just spoke. I want to know several things. A, Jake, will you report back on how amazing this weekend's beer is gonna be at Metro Bar? I will be heading up to Easton slash, Saint Michael's, so I'm gonna go visit Lyon Distilling and,

RER and and Tannik, probably. So I will report back on how those beers are standing up and maybe bring you guys some stuff back. Nobody would turn down, like, anything from the Teneic Sour program. Bring me on location, bringing goodies to the DC Bear share, please, and thank you. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And and, Jackie, you know, I I appreciate you. You're still thinking of of me and the and the hop heads for even having a hazy option. Pale ale is is better than no ale. Right? So so, that

that's good. But, you know, I I do think and encourage people to drink out drink drink more than hazy's. At least try. This is a variety of awesome craft beer out there. And I'm actually hating. I wanna miss the the this weekend's playlist, but I'm gonna go out west instead of Pacific Northwest and, check to make sure that the hops are growing as expected and, try some beer in Seattle. And we'll report back, but make sure the Pacific Northwest is

doing their job so that all the brewers are happy. But, I'll miss you guys this weekend. Jordan, I know we haven't seen you or heard you on the podcast the last few episodes, and it's because you were taking as ASL classes, at Streetcar 82, which I'm donning the shirt. How how did those go? How did your ASL classes go at Streetcar? They were awesome. They were awesome. You know, I've actually considered, because you're I mean, there's $50 for, you know, 4 classes, so just

just imagine $50 a month. Imagine what you pay for Netflix, but you can learn ASL. So, and also I have craft beer and support a local brewery. So it's it's really an awesome awesome beer. I mean, having a food truck is is really dope. So I would encourage other folks, you know, just like you did, Brandy, like, I would I would encourage other folks to to to check out ASL courses, and also just check out Streetcar 82 because the

bureau's phenomenal. And I wasn't just drinking hazy's for the record, but Jojo was delicious. That's that is the hazy I had, when I was enjoying myself. But, we had awesome beers, and and shout out to street car 80 2 for sure. Alright, folks. I think that's what we've got for this week's episode. The next episode after this is going to be a special one indeed because it's it's gonna be episode 100 of us on The DC Beer Show. We gotta shout

out our amazing, producer and and papa beer. Producer extraordinaire, Richard, for putting together a brilliant episode. And with 100 episodes, we have to honor, like Memorial Day, all of the countless hours cut on the cutting room floor that Richard has spent making us sound brilliant and not like the super nerds we are and all of the other brilliant things on the cutting room floor. Thank you. Thank you, producer extraordinaire, Richard. Thanks, Richard. Oh, and thanks,

Reese. Alright, folks. We are @DCBeer. Across the socials, dcbeer.com/patreon, if you'd like to support us, and we'd love for you to do so. Be excellent to each other. Tell your loved ones you love them. Keep it 100. Alright. Thanks, everybody.