Silver Branch, Freigeist, and More!

Welcome everyone to the DC Beer Show, and it's Oktoberfest season. We are @DCBeer across social media. Brandy, are you drinking on this lovely fall evening? Oh, Jake, I am having a Human Robot dry hop Czech style lager, so it's pretty good. Thanks to our dear friend, Bree, over at Right Proper for hauling down some Human

Robot for for Matt and I. So thank you, Brie. Love you. Speaking of Right Proper, Right Proper did a collab with the Heurich House or Heurich House for the their Maerzen beer and Lost Lagers as well. So if you are out and about, you should go support that delicious beer. I that Maerzen is really good, Jake. Have you had it? Yes. I have indeed had it. And by the way, Right Proper Brookland, now open 7 days a week, including Thursdays, all night happy hour. So

That's awesome. Jake, what are you drinking? So I've got here not a Czech lager, but a German style lager. It is Franklin's Oktoberfest Festbier from Jeff Hancock, formerly of DC Brau. It's kind of like too dark to be a Festbier and too light to be a Maerzen, but it's phenomenal. It's one of the best examples I've had this style anywhere. I took a sip. I said, wow. And then I immediately went and filled up a growler, which is something that I haven't done in a long, long

time. Growlers. It feels like another century, but, this one's worth it. Please, I implore you, make a trip to Hyattsville. Eat a giant pretzel at Franklin's. Have a bunch of sausage. Drink this beer. It's really, really good. Just like an exceptional, like, kind of like hybrid of an Oktoberfest and Fest beer. Really well done. I can't wait to try it. Thanks, Jake.

I have a actually, haven't been over to Franklin's in a while. As Jake mentioned previously, it is Oktoberfest season, and I kicked off, Oktoberfest season at Wheatland Spring this past weekend. And if you haven't been till Wheatland Spring's Oktoberfest, it is it is a sight to see. It's not only breathtakingly gorgeous there, but the beers, when you have them fresh at the farm, it it's just unrivaled. It was a beautiful crowd, and it

really just got the mood pumped up. So I'm here for all the Oktoberfest this the upcoming month and a half, starting with with Other Half's, which is tomorrow, Saturday. And, I will definitely be there. I will attend the Stein holding contest, but I'm sure I will fail. Thanks, rotator cuff injury. But I'm here for all the beer for sure. And then on 25th, the Women's Brew Culture Club is going to be back at Other Half. It's a very Other Half heavy month for us again,

but Jordan will be doing trivia that night as well. So it's a 2fer. It's a double hitter. So we hope to see everybody on on, September 25th. Jake, what's going on? And there's so many things going on. Yeah. There are so many other Oktoberfest. There's also, Port City's Wönderfest is also this weekend, and so there'll be a whole bunch of German style lagers there. They'll also still have their collab with Stone Richmond

and Soul Mega. It's an IPA, and it's got Thai basil adding some of these anis fennel licoricey notes and lemon peel. So an adjunct IPA, not something you normally see from Port City, not something you normally see from Stone or Soul Mega for that matter, but, like, a cool collab. They're gonna be taking this on the road. They did a party at Church Key last week. There'll be other parties coming up. Watch dcbeer.com/events.

Watch their socials. We also don't normally direct you towards other sites, but Fritz Hahn at the Washington Post has this great write up of the area Oktoberfests. It's worth taking a look at if you just Google Fritz Hahn, h a h n. Oktoberfest Washington Post, you'll see a whole bunch of that stuff coming up. I actually had one of those Port City Soul Mega stone beers right before I opened this Human Robot. It

was it was interesting but good. Like, it I I can't I couldn't put my finger on it, but it was it gives nothing that I've had from Port City for sure before. But definitely go check it out for yourself. It's exciting to have such a interesting collab. So it's kind of a first, I think, for the DMV. Yeah. You drink it, and you're like, this is an IPA, I guess, but and it's just like this weird, it's still very citrus y, but there's also this kind of, like, herbal savory

twist to it. But it all plays really well, even if you're not into, like, absinthe or perno or licorice jelly beans. It does not taste like that. I wanna know where the brown ales are, Jake. Do you know anybody who's making any brown ales for your girl, Brandy? Why, yes. I do know of at

least 1 brewery, local brewery, who is making a brown ale. And in fact, I think you'll be seeing it at beer fest very, very soon. Let's take it away with guest number 1. Welcome. We're here with Brett Robison and Christian Layke, cofounders of Silver Branch, as well as their art director and, media person, man about town, Chris Bonnell. We have 2 big pieces of news here, but I thought we'd do the first because it's most relevant to Brandy.

What do you all bring this in Snallygaster? We are going to be bringing our brand new brown ale called Fletcher's Finest. And what else are we bringing, Chris? Oh, our, GABF silver medal winning Oktoberfest. Is that why you said it's for Brandy? Hashtag brown ale Brandy. Yes. And the Brown Ale, moreover, is gonna be being served out of cask. Oh. Going full on traditional here. That's excellent. So no doubt you're gonna

see us at your table for both of those. Although you may see some of us tonight because this episode airs on Friday for the 6:45 Stein line. The second big piece of news is the potential for Silver Branch Rockville Beer Works. Congratulations. Wondering if you can just tell us a little bit about the challenges that you've faced brewing in a confined space with now room for physical growth in Silver Spring. Well, the story of having to, shift for COVID

is an old one. But for us, that shift entailed growing our wholesale much, much more rapidly than we dreamed we would. When we started Silver Branch, we always knew we wanted to be in a distribution brewery. That's why we, you know, took a 10,000 square foot space instead of a smaller one. And we intended to, continue brewing there for, years and to grow the wholesale into a place where it would make sense to

move to another brewery. But when, COVID hit, we grew, grew, grew, honey where we possibly could, and at that point in time, it was in wholesale. And so, we we got to the point where we were, nearly 3,000 barrels in production. And then when the, you know, the taproom was able to be back open, people started coming out in

greater numbers again. All of the space that we have been using, in the taproom to store empty kegs, to store pallets of beer that were waiting to go out, etcetera, etcetera, were no longer available. And so since then, it has been a constant juggling act to figure out how to, accommodate both brewing at the scale that we are brewing at, for wholesale and to accommodate all of the guests, including private events that we do.

And so I think as you know from previous conversations we've had, we actually have made 2 attempts to expand our brewing, in the past. And, now this is, this is the the next time, that we're making such an attempt, and we're super excited. 3rd time's a charm. That's right. So you all have noticed now that you've been in Silver Spring for 5 or 6 years, including the build out. How has the downtown area changed, and where do you see both events and expanded food

fitting into that? So downtown is especially right where we're situated. It's kind of interesting. I know that the Purple Line is a long held myth that nobody has believed is actually gonna come to fruition. But if you're sitting in the beer garden, you can physically see the walking trail or the bike trail that they're creating, and you can also see a lot of the construction work.

So this summer, we actually the metro was shut down going on a portion of the red line to do some pretty extensive work on building out, the Purple Line. So that, obviously, you know, going right through the center of Colesville, is is changing some of the appearance of everything. But, you know, on the other side of this, connecting College Park to Silver Spring and then ultimately to Bethesda, I think, is a really exciting change that we welcome,

you know, once that construction's done. But it looks it's it's real. They are actually building the Purple Line now. Christian, you've got experience brewing in Rockville already. When it came time to look for another brewery location, where else did you look besides Rockville? There's nowhere we did not look in the DMV area. We have been turning over stones everywhere we could possibly find a stone in the hopes of finding the magic location where, it would make sense to take

our, our production level brewing. As you know, we have a brewery in in Warrenton that's great for smaller amounts of beer, but it's never going to address any needs in terms of of wholesale level production. And so, you know, the the things we've looked at in the past have always been more industrial style places that would be able to, you know, handle semi trailer trucks loading up, beer and from a from a loading dock and things like that. So, yeah, we've looked in Virginia. We've

looked in DC. We've actually looked in Baltimore. And it's, amazing how many reasons that, a place can seem to be perfect, except for in one fatal flaw way. And

so, in each case, we've just been disappointed again and again. And And and not too long ago, we we kinda gave up on Virginia because, it was just gonna be impossible for any of our existing brewing team to to work in Virginia, and that was something that we weren't willing to, you know, to do is to, you know, sort of disrupt, that that team and and their ability to work together so well. So we we really started looking only in Maryland, and, we're feeling really fortunate

to have, found a spot that we're excited about. I'd like to talk to Chris because now that you have 2 locations and you're gonna be opening another location, from an artistic standpoint, is the new location going to maybe have a different, slightly different look as far as can art goes, taproom, ambiance, and look, just so you can differentiate but still keep the same kind of Silver Branch style? Well, we've always, had as as a core of our brand, the the international

brewing culture. So Central Europe, British Isles, America, and, Belgium. And I think with multiple tap rooms, we're going to try to move each of them actually into those spaces in one way or another. So more like the the Lager House and beer garden, we're sort of insinuating that it's, you know, Munich or, even a, you know, Czech style kind of beer garden taproom. We're we might lean more into the Belgian style in, in Warrenton more as we develop that space. And then the the beer works is where

we tap into, Americas. So I think we're really into the the beer cities, not just nations, but but where the the origin of certain styles come from. So we've been kind of talking about, you know, major American beer cities. We do we have some exciting, you know, like brand refreshes and then whole new lines of things, coming up.

And this is a a really great opportunity for us because not only are we able to increase, capacity for wholesale for for certain lines of beer, certain brands, we we have the opportunity to make new brands and actually maybe even new brand lines. So as an artist and a promoter, I'm I'm thrilled for for what we have ahead. It's gonna be really exciting. Awesome. So you all are about to be making, I guess, really, it's probably gonna be 2 or 3 years down the road, a lot more

beer. Do you have plans to expand beyond beer as well? Hard seltzers, something perhaps getting a distiller's license, something ready to drink, ready to drink cock canned cocktails, things things of that nature as you embark on this Rockville, a more production focused brewery. Get it? Embark? I'm just kidding. Shout out to Jake's dog. Christian, do you wanna take this one, or do you want me to? I think this is has you written all over it?

Yeah. So what's interesting about the Silver Branch brand in general is that we do you know, we we pay homage to so much tradition about where these beers come from and, you know, the the purpose and the place and the glassware that it's served in. So it's kind of hard to do a hard seltzer, with the same reverence or respect. There's no meaningful history behind it. So that's not to say that we don't have some early

ideas in the hopper. The one category that we'd really like to dip our toes into that would be imminently more possible with the development of a Rockville location would actually be Radlers. So I think that would be a better natural fit for us to get into a flavor

forward space. And I think one thing that could be compelling about doing, for example, a grapefruit radler or a lemon radler is that it would be good for marketing to maybe a younger generation, early twenties, where you can put the flavor of the fruit forward as a big component of what that's going to be, but still staying close to the Silver Branch beer brand as it stands. Let's get into pizza. I mean, beer and pizza is a natural pairing. So there's certainly

an affinity there. It seems like the the trend now, because you've got Sojourn, you have Crooked Run, Crooked Crab. It seems like when you open a brewery now, you know, they there needs to be food available, because there are people not drinking alcohol or, you know, creating more of a family space, instead of just, you know, drinking 21 and up. And it just seems like pizza is the go to. What makes your pizza gonna be

so special at Silver Branch? Well, I think, just backing up into something else that you said as part of this question, the idea that food is, kind of a requirement for a brewery these days, and I think that's absolutely true. You know, we have actually gone so far as to say that we think of ourselves as a hospitality company that has a beer a brewery brand as well, because what we really are is in the business of of giving people an amazing

experience. Whether or not they crack a beer at home and enjoy it or whether they come to our tap rooms and experience our beautiful glassware and the ambiance of our of our tap rooms. It's all about, you know, creating this idea of community for people. And, especially when you see all of the hand wringing articles that you see these days about how preferences are changing among younger people and the, you know, beer

sales are going down and things like that. Well, what isn't going out of style most certainly is the idea of going out with friends and having an amazing time. And so I think that that's part of the reason why you're seeing so many breweries begin to offer not just, you know, some small amount of of something that you can eat, but actually good quality, food of one sort or another.

In terms of why it's pizza, I think, you know, as Jake said at the beginning of his question, because pizza is actually just one of these food that goes magically well with with beer. And so I think you you do see that as being something that people gravitate to. And luckily, you know, if you go around to different cities in the United States, you and not just United States but around the world, you can see that pizza, is done very differently in different locations.

So, yeah, we we started, our pizza program in Warrenton a year ago when we opened there, and we have 2 very, experienced and talented chefs. And they've put together a whole range of amazing pizzas, that that we're all incredibly, fond of and and proud of on their behalf. One thing I would like to say just for context for some people, if you if you're not familiar, we are currently, have pizza available in Warrenton,

Warrenton Station. It's delicious. And, one thing I think that does set us apart is we have a secret weapon down there in Devon and, and Brian and the and the team. They're absolutely amazing. And, that that quality, similar to the quality of our beer, the food is is stellar. So that's I think that will be part of what set sets us apart. I did wanna add on to this, though, because I would say there's actually even though it hasn't fully formed yet,

we do have some plans that will make this distinct. I think the way that we're going to approach branding this is different, maybe, than how, some other people have done it because it's all within the same entity. So it's the same people behind Soulbranch Brewing Company building a new brand concept called Mosaic Pizza. And with that, we're gonna do some fun stuff. I don't wanna reveal it. You'll have

to find out when we get there. But we're gonna do some fun stuff with the pizza boxes, and it might almost look like a brewery that makes a bunch of different beer labels will also be building a pizza company. So when it's all said and done, I think you're gonna see it and be like, okay. This is pizza is a a, you know, been around forever, but the way that we're gonna do it is gonna come across as distinctively

Silverbranch. We, as the public and everyone else because I'm sure folks popped up it popped up on their Facebook feed and Instagram feed, and I know Jake got an article out today. I know that there is a lot of funding that goes into this. How you guys wanna tell us about that and how we, as the public, can help? We do. We we really wanna tell you about that because we just launched, our crowdfunding equity campaign today through Honeycomb.

And, in the past, when we have sought equity, we have, always had a relatively low minimum for the world of equity raise, but it was always, you know, between 14 $15,000, which is a lot more than, you know, a casual, fan might be in interested

in investing. So this time when it was, looked like we wanted to go ahead and and and raise money for this next growth phase, to open the brewery in Rockville and to launch Mosaic Pizza and to do some other, amazing, things that we have planned, We wanted to find a way that some of our long standing fans could be involved. When we opened, you know, about five and a half years ago, we had, prior to that, had our founders

club. And the experience of launching that and seeing the response from the community, of beer lovers and casual beer lovers who were just a part of the community and excited to have a brewery in the community, was just so overwhelmingly positive. We kinda wanted to go back and recapture that amazing feel of having the people who are gonna end up drinking our beer or already do drink our beer be involved in the campaign of actually raising the

equity we need to make this a reality. Excellent. Thanks so much. Folks, please do Czech out Silver Branch on the site Honeycomb. We'll drop the link in the show notes. It's also already up on dcbeer.com. Brett, Christian, Chris, thank you all so much for being with us. Please visit Silver Branch at Snallygaster and even before their Oktoberfest is coming up this very weekend. That's both in Silver Spring and in Warrenton if you're further

afield. Alright. Thanks, everybody. Appreciate it. See you at Snally, guys. Thank you. Thank you very much to the Silver Branch team, to Brett, to Christian, to Chris. Big things happening there. It's always nice when we see a brewery growing and expanding, meeting the demand. Of course, that brown ale is gonna be at Snallygaster, and so we thought it's Oktoberfest. Snallygaster's coming up. What better way to combine those 2 than to talk to a second guest? And so we've got

Sebastian Sauer of Freigeist, who you last saw here in DC doing unlimited and full Kölsch service at The Roost at Shelter. Sebastian, can you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about Freigeist? Yes. For sure. Thanks so much for having me on the podcast, Jake. Yeah. My name is Sebastian Sauer. I started Freigeist Bierkultur back in 2009. It's one of the very first craft beer projects from Germany. I was going around visiting other countries before, got very fascinated with

the whole craft beer movement. And that's when I started my own project. A lot of them specifically in the beginning was reviving historical beer styles from German, origin. One of the things that you're doing is you're going to be coming to Snallygaster in October here in DC. What are you planning on pouring at Snallygaster in terms of your beer? Yes. That's a exciting situation. I was invited last year already, but I couldn't come in person, so there was a volunteer serving my beers.

But for this year, I will, serve my Otterkolong, which is my classic go to Kölsch. It's an unsheltered, Kölsch variety. And then I will have my very first beer I've ever brewed, the Abraxas, which is a, historical Liechtenhiner, which is a sour smoky beer style, which died out

just after the First World War. It's excellent that we'll see a Lichtenhanger there because Greg Engert, was just talking about some of the more unusual beer styles, but you're also sort of helping Snallygaster and Greg and Tim and Bruno acquire German beers for the festival. Yes? Yes. Indeed. There's a lot of wonderful, breweries in the Franconian area, which is the northern part of the state of Bavaria. Always need to make sure that you don't call them Bavarian because that's really what

they don't want to be called. And, there's, like, the biggest density of, breweries per in this area. A lot of countryside, breweries with, like, a wonderful lager selection, obviously, also including Bamberg smoked beer, the Rauch beer. And, yeah, there's, like, a lot of very small historical breweries which, have wonderful beers and which you can usually don't have access to. But for these guys, I was, able to, organize something. So what are the logistics like in terms of getting these

beers from Franconia to DC? In this situation, we have to make sure that we use one way kegs because typically they only use steel kegs for packaging their beers, and they're not very up for, doing too much paperwork and so on because there's this, like, small family run places. So there's only a few breweries which would be up for using even the plastic kegs because that's kind of like an unusual way for them packaging. They don't really have too much experience with it. And so we were able

to arrange that. And, yeah. So, Sebastian, you mentioned one way kegs. Are there other formats that some of the Franconian breweries are bringing? Think back to previous Snallagasters when there were a couple gravity kegs, and it was sort of the norm that there were at least be a few of those at Snallygaster. Are any of the breweries gonna be able to package and transport beer that way to the festival? Yes. We will have, 3 breweries with gravity kegs as well.

Those are the ones which are not coming back. They will be afterwards used by, Bluejacket Brewing, and, so they can package their own beer with it. So, but the other kegs, they're typically they always have to come back to the brewery and in a rather short time. And, obviously, we can't really do that Properly. It's also way too expensive to send kegs back and forth. This is why we use the, a patina,

the one way kegs for, most of the beer. Then we have a few, gravity kegs, which will be like real normal small kegs, 50 liter kegs. And to our listening audience, I would say, get those while they last, especially earlier in the day, when they're at temperature and such. We don't know the weather yet. If it stays cloudy in 60, the beer will be great all day, but it could be sunny in 85. In which case, if you're a VIP, you probably want some of those within the first couple

hours or so. Are you concerned at all about the gravity kegs in transit? Not too much because, I mean, there's, like, the the the range of breweries. There's some wonderful breweries which I would always visit myself when I go there, but they are not very stable, from the shipping conditions. So we pick the ones which I have the most trust in any way, which are still, you know, no, no,

issue with the quality of the beers. They are still wonderful breweries as well, but, I hope that they survive pretty well with the transport. And, that's why it's shipped with cooling, you know, so that, they they should be still quite quite good because we also serve them within their timing in in Europe as well. And, in Europe, the whole refrigerating, refrigerating trade is not as big as in, America. So a lot of places don't have necessarily the

cooling equipment like in in the US. So, Sebastian, do you have plans to brew in DC when you're here for Snellagaster this year? Not in DC. I will brew with Human Robot in Philly. That's the plan. And then I will brew also with some places a little bit more south of the East Coast. Bold Monk is one of them in Atlanta, and, so that should be good. I think that we'll see Human Robot and a couple of the Atlanta breweries, Good Word and Halfway Crooks at Stalingaster as well.

So the weather is going to turn cooler here soon, and we certainly see cans of the Freitas Dortmunder export and the Kölsch. Mhmm. Do you have plans to bring in the, Eisbach? I believe it's, Guten Nacht Marie back to the States. There is still some left because it's such a specialized type of beer, which you make. It's always interesting because of the US. Typically, it's not legal to make it for most breweries, except they

have a distilling, license. For us, it's very, yeah, normal to if if you have the equipment, but nearly nobody has it. But there's some of that beer still in the US, so we wouldn't brew it again, but, yeah, you could still find it somewhere. We'll be chcking out Glover Park's hop casket and barrel for that. Commonwealth, which brews in Virginia Beach, does have a distillers license, and so that allows them to freeze beer, removing the

water, keeping the alcohol, and making an ice pack. And so they do one, but it is pretty unusual to find here in the States, not just because you need the distiller's permit. Yes. That's just like it's also very, expensive to produce generally, obvious for obvious reasons. And, the interest in Europe is not the biggest. Typically, you have, the oni styles which are used for the the ice blocking is,

weizenbock and the doppelbock. And there's not much variety around it, but we actually, you know, use a lot of different styles as a base for it. We have made a different, amount of, smoked, beers as a for the icebox, which are turning out wonderful. And, everything from, like, a mango grocer to barley wine to imperial stuff. So it's, for us it's very fascinating, but obviously, the trend is going to more easy, crushable, sessionable beers rather than these, strong boozy

beers, which were a bit more popular a few years ago. It's interesting that you mentioned a mango gossa. To me, as someone tangentially involved in beer in the United States, when I look at Bavaria, I think of these Franconian lagers. I think of Bamberg and their smoked beers. Are you seeing a bit more of the US influence there? Are some of these breweries making an IPA, a cold IPA, a hoppy lager, Gosa with, nontraditional ingredients, say, without, Woodruff or raspberry syrup in a

Berliner Weiss, things of that nature. It used to be a little bit more popular in the meantime, but I would say that the whole craft movement goes down a lot. I would say nearly everywhere, at least speaking for Europe, but in Germany specifically. So craft beer never really got to the point that it became a bit more mainstream or so on. There was some interest in it, but, it definitely is is the niche of the niche. So we talked a little bit about the market for beers

in Germany. How are the Kölsch and the Dortmander selling in the US? I mean, you've now been coming to the US probably for about off and on 10 years now. Have you seen that market change? I mean, it's a different different production in this way. I mean, we always used to, brew the

beers in Germany and send them to the US. And since about 6 or 7 years, I changed, that I started to produce the beers directly in the US so that they would be, fresh and, in the more favorable container and, also better pricing at the same time, for the consumer. And, so it has changed quite a lot. I think the peak of imports was about depending on the brewery, obviously, but I would say for most of the imported breweries, it was about 2014, 2015. And afterwards, the whole import, game

went down for all the breweries from outside of the US. This is why we also changed to to have a production in the US. And, then the the the the kirsch was always very popular as an imported beer, and then afterwards also as the domestic produced, beer. But the general the the Korsch was still, okay, but the lager subject got way more interested, or the the the American consumer got way more interested in lager beers. And we'll note that all of those styles and more will be on display at

Snellagaster. We will see you there, and we will cheers with Gravity Lager. Thank you so much again, Sebastian, for coming on the show and for your work in bringing beer over. Much appreciated. Thanks so much for your time and, for your interest. Hope to see you, obviously, very soon at Snallygaster, but, obviously, hopefully, also seeing and sharing with, all the listeners as well. Thanks so much. Thank you so much, Sebastian.

Tickets still available. By the way, if you like DC beer and you enjoy this sort of stuff, dcbeer.com/patreon. We depend on the support of listeners and viewers like you. Alright, everyone. Go forth. Enjoy the Oktoberfest season. Drink something pumpkin if you want to. You're allowed now. You're at DC beer. Be well. See you guys at Snally and at all the Oktoberfests. Cheers.