Episode 70 - w/ Jonny and Nick of Pro-Five Brewing

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All right, and we're back. This is episode 70 of the Taproom Podcast, and I'm your host, Mike. Oh, man. Not going to lie, I'm kind of surprised we made it to 70. No, I'm just kidding. Honestly, just surprised how fast the time went by, really. And I'll be doing another thank you episode for 75 for the last 25 people that have been on the show. That's however many people have been on the show. So yeah, that'll be in five weeks.

And I'm recording this on a Friday because I am going to the Luke Combs concert tonight. And then tomorrow, tomorrow I have the LA Beer Festival with Chew and with Art. And then maybe even Matt from Mr. Fears Your Beers. Fears For Beers, sorry. So yeah, that should be fun tomorrow. I'm excited. I haven't been to Bear Festival in F knows how long, but I don't know why I said F knows. I should have just said the other word. It's fine.

But yeah, that should be a good one. I'm excited to go tomorrow. I'm going to take my little lapel mics and try to get some footage and stuff like that. So maybe turn that into an episode, but we'll see.

I'll get into some upcoming episodes in the outro, but this episode is with Nick and Johnny from Pro5 Brewing. Man, And like, it was such a, like such good dudes and like a really fun, like kind of conversation. We, you know, we kind of talked about how they got started and it was just, it's kind of a funny story. I'm not going to spoil anything, but honestly, really good dudes, a good, you know, good beer. So, and if you're in the Upland area, man, you have to check it out.

So it's like in downtown Upland, I believe they're having like some, like they were having like a lemon festival today or something like that. But I'll technically, when this comes out on Sunday, I don't know, it might still be going on, but yeah, you definitely got to get out there. I mean, and I'm excited for you guys to, to hear their story and, you know, just kind of how they, you know, they got started in their whole craft beer journey.

So yeah, some sad news though, in the craft beer world, this one kind of hit home, Lost Winds out in San Clemente. They're closing down. I believe their last day is going to be the 29th, which I believe is a Saturday. So two weeks from, yeah, two weeks from the, yeah, the 29th. I was gonna say two weeks from today, but this comes out Sunday. So, and yes, I mean, that's just some sad news.

I mean, found them about a year, almost two years ago, really about a year, yeah, a year and a half to two years, something like that. I was down at Pizza Port and the person I was with, we were looking up to see if there's any other breweries around and we found Lost Wind. So love the, you know, the decor, their merch, the beer was great. They had some good sours too. So yeah, a little sad that, well, actually not a little sad.

I'm really sad that they're closing down because that was just one of my spots. So after that time we found it, anytime I went to San Clemente, I was going to Lost Winds. So won't be able to do that after the 29th, but I think I'm going to try to get down there for their last day to be able to go have some beers and stuff like that. So that should be, that should be a kind of a good slash, you know, kind of somber kind of time, but yeah. Yeah, so sorry to hear that, Tim.

You know, Lawson's just a really nice guy. You know, everything works out for you in the end, bud. All right.

What else got this week? The NBA finals are going on. It's crazy. Both series, the teams are down 3-0. So Florida, I'm sorry, the Florida Panthers and the NHL are up 3-0. Man, they look good right now. And the cup will be in the building in their next game. So that'll be interesting to watch. I'm excited to watch the game. And then also the Celtics are up 3-0 on Dallas.

They just, I don't know, Dallas, like I said, I wanted Luka to win, but with all this stuff going on, Dallas just looks so good. I'm not Dallas, sorry. The Celtics just look so good. But yeah, so I'm excited to kind of see how that all plays out. I picked Florida to win that one. I thought the Celtics were going to win. So it looks like I might be right, but we'll see. Yeah. But what else we got? Excited for the beer festival. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

I think, cause I, I think I was looking at all the different, cause I think there's 75 different breweries that are going to be there. I think I've recorded with 13. So I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. Almost like 20% of the breweries that have been there or that are going to be there I've recorded with. So it's exciting to get to go see some people have some good beers. Yeah, it should be, it should be, uh, should be a really good, uh, really good and really fun time.

All right. Well, I'm going to shut up now. Now, I am going to, I don't know, I'm going to what? Oh, geez. Come on, Mike. Get it together. I'm leaving it in.

All right. Well, here is the interview with Nick and Johnny at Pro5. Hope you guys enjoy that and stay tuned for the outro. And we're back. I have a very, a couple of very special guests on today. Get it together, Mike. It's 1257. But I'm over here at Pro5 in Upland off of 1st and A Street. I have Johnny Navarro and Nick Fuentes, the head brewers and owners of Pro5. What's going up, fellas? Hey, thank you for having us, man. I'm glad we got

to make this happen and happy anniversary. Thank you so much. Yeah, that was a long year.

Came by fast but felt like it was so long yeah that's crazy i mean the time just flies man like yeah but that's so cool i mean you guys have a really cool spot right here and i've you know been up on a bunch of times because i was mentioning earlier my buddy uh lives down the street but i mean i've only ever been to like rock house over here yeah no they have a lot of really great places um the first brewery we went to uh changed names but is now last name and that was our first brewery

that uh me and him went together oh awesome you know always loved that place got a really great relationship but yeah no upland's got some really good gems around here awesome yeah the whole ie's got a lot of a lot of good breweries out here that's sweet um usually we start we start off with a beer and we have one here what are we what are we drinking today this is our uh west coast pilsner anniversary release beer it's uh the 183 yeah it's so we try to incorporate a lot of history

into upland into our naming mechanisms for beers and things like that and 183 actually comes from was it incorporation of upland becoming a city so it was 183 to 9 was the vote so that's pretty badass that's cool to put like you know putting a twist on it like that that's so awesome that's delicious by the way thank you thank you yeah that was i'm really happy with this there you go it's tough to put down yeah what's the abv on this one 5.5 oh yeah crushable easy drinking yeah smooth got some

nice body and mouth feel to it support the hop bill there. So it's nice. Oh yeah, it's crisp, it's clean, it goes down easy. But you get those hoppy notes to it, it's just like, oh yeah, so I said, take all my money. That's how you know it's a really good pilsner when you can taste the hop. Oh yeah. And especially like West Coast pilsners, I find that you don't like, I mean, you're starting to see them more on menus, but just not as often. I feel like people are still so into hazies that.

There's always like 10 or 12 on every menu, I feel like. No, it's cool. We're starting to see a trend of a lot more West Coast pills or Hoppy pills over there labeling them. And they're just so easy to drink. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And they pull, I mean, West Coast IPA into it too. So it's like if they see a West Coast IPA or the Pilsner, they're like, oh, you have a Pilsner? Oh, both. So it's pulling that too. So it's a happy trend right now. Oh, yeah. Two birds, right?

That's nice. But yeah, tell us, I mean, I want to, well, my listeners always love to hear like about your guys' journey, like the craft beer journey, like how did it all start for you guys? 10 years ago, I turned 25. Okay. Nick was dating my sister and he wanted to be friends with me and he was trying to figure out a way to, uh, mature that friendship. And, uh, he bought me a one gallon Bruno box set. Yeah. Dang. It was a Heff. What was it? It was a German wheat.

German wheat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was, I, you know, I went through my wife to get to Johnny, but, um, you know, we had this love for beer and at the time we, we loved beer. We'd go places all the time. And this was before like really kind of the big brewing industry took off. And so I thought Johnny just liked weird things like bars of soap that are like, yeah, like made out of beer or something. And I'm like, he's not wrong though. Yeah.

Like, yeah, this might be a cool gift for him. And little do we know, it's going to one day turn into a brewery. Pretty awesome. That's cool. First beer also came out amazing. In retrospect, it was the worst beer we've ever made. Oh, yeah. So bad. Yeah. And Johnny shared some videos and pictures with me the other day of our first brew day and our first bottling day. And my God, it was so hard to watch. Yeah. Like, what were we doing? It was bad.

But that was the start of it all and took a long time to get to this point, but we're here. Yeah, man. And isn't it like when you look back at those kind of things, it's like you almost cringe and you're like, oh, like, what was I, you know, what was I thinking? Cause I, I'm that way with the show. Like sometimes I listen to old episodes. I was like, what was I like? Come on, Mike, get your head out of your ass.

I black out pretty easily, easily sometimes. So like, I think there's a lot of good things that we do and I just totally forget. And the bad things, not even know what happened. Yeah. It goes in the back of the mind. Oh yeah. So, all right. So he, he won you over. He went through your sister to get to you. What happened after that? How did it all like, was it just like going to pepper? We just kept brewing, man. Yeah. It tickled our fancy. Yeah. No, I mean, it was great.

Everybody saw it as a cool hobby we were doing. My mom and my stepdad really liked it. And my stepdad actually had a employee that was moving out of country to Canada because he was a home brewer as well. And he was selling a system and he invited him over to see if we wanted it and to buy it. And so we were talking to him. He was showing his system. It was a cool, like, custom that he had made and welded. Yeah, three Kegel system. And it was awesome. It was a 15-gallon system, a three-tier.

And, you know, talked to him. He was super awesome, so knowledgeable in that craft. And, you know, this was just a hobby for him. And he ended up just giving it to us because he thought he liked us, the cut of our jib, and wanted to help push that. Yeah, we, we, the first beer we actually made on the system was a pale ale, which that's, that's our go-to style. We love nice pales. And so the pale ale we have on tap, it's,

we've modified it since, but it's in, it's called the Prince Pale Ale. That's his last name. We had to name it after him since that was the first beer that we technically brewed on the, on the Kegel system. But, but he actually, he owns a brewery up in Canada now that's a mixed fermentation brewery, ships his beer all throughout the world. I mean, the guy, he's, he's doing a great job up there and, and knows his stuff. So we call him our brew sensei.

Oh, that's awesome. You're Mr. Miyagi? Yeah, that's right. So he, he, he helped us and still helps us out in a lot of ways, but was kind of the, that was kind of the kick into really trying to dial in our brewing and, and take it kind of serious. Yeah. I mean, this is homebrew at the time. And of course we're always like, yeah, dude, one day we're going to open a brewery. Yeah. It's going to happen. And then sure enough, 10 years later, we're here. That's awesome. Yeah.

That's one thing I always love. And that's what I love to hear. It's like, because it's, yeah, everybody's like, well, when you're like brewing or home brewing, like eventually you want to make the best beer possible. You want to, and you want to open up a brewery and you want to do stuff like that. But it's like, to me, it's like, yeah, the journey to get there is like, you know, the destination is the same, but the journey is different.

And that journey to me is like, when hearing stuff like that, it's just cool. Like you get to hear stuff like that. You don't get to, you know, hear those stories all that often. Yeah. Because there's a bunch of, you know, a bunch of shitty shit going on in the world all the time. So when you hear something like that, it, you know, motivates you. Yeah. Yeah. We definitely, I mean, getting this place open was quite the feat. It was. Yeah. We had the building for two years. We did it during COVID.

Wow. We, the funny thing is everything passed with flying colors. Yeah. Because nobody else was dumb enough to open up a business during COVID. Yeah. So it's like, oh, you need an inspection? Cool. We're coming out tomorrow. Paperwork was done super fast because nobody else was opening a brewery at the time. Yeah. But then, obviously, the whole, the setbacks of container issues out in the ocean. Yeah, the ports. Yeah. That was fun. Building materials. Wow. Increase in pricing.

It was a lot of fun, but, man. Yeah, because all that stuff got held up, right? Because I know there was, like, containers out there for a long time because of all the lockdown and all that sort of stuff. Man, that's crazy. Yeah. So, we weren't affected by it too much. We were doing the Chinese New Year in the port, so I was like, let's get this shit ordered and start brewing. Yeah, for sure. And what was it like finding this location?

Were you guys originally from Upland or were you guys? I was. I went to Upland High School, went to all Upland schools, lived here all my life. And initially, I think one of our partners, he had another office that he had opened in Upland and wanted to dual use his building, right? Yeah. So he had a, a 1500 square foot warehouse and we're like, yeah, we can do something small here.

So I went to the city and, and they're like, yeah, we, you're, you're zoned to do it there, but we have some grants available for downtown. So, and we're like, ah, it's, it's too big. You know, we're, we wanted to start small and grow into it. Yeah. We've never done this before. So we're like, yeah, we'll start with a three barrel system. We're good. And then they're like, yeah, it's, they told us the amount of money. We were like, okay, let's go look at downtown Upland and see what we got.

Doesn't hurt to look. Yeah. So I literally left the city building. It's right up the street here. Scrolled downtown Upland and just looking at a couple spots and turned the corner and saw a for lease sign on this building. It was boarded up. It's been boarded up for a while. Oh, wow. Saw that for lease sign and I text my bro and I was like. I think I found our brewery. I found the one. Yeah. And it was three days.

In three days, we met with the broker, talked to the family, and on New Year's Eve, signed the paperwork to sign to get this building. That's so awesome. Yeah. We really didn't have time to think about it. And hindsight, we probably would have done things a little different, but at the end of the day, this place, it turned out way better than we could have ever imagined. And we, this place is addicting. Yes, absolutely. It's tough to leave.

Oh yeah. Well, now that I'm, you know, now that I'm here, like I want to make sure like every time I come up here, you're going to have to stop by for some brewski. Yeah, absolutely. No, dog friendly, kid friendly. Yeah. We, this is your other backyard is what we're really trying to go for that vibe. Yeah. Comfortability for people. Of course. No, it's great on the outside. You have all these tables. I mean, plenty of space. And so, yeah, you guys having some live music later?

Yeah, we have two bands happening today. So, one's for the afternoon, early evening. And then we have another one in the evening. And we got an awesome food vendor today. They're a normal Wing Wednesday. You know, everybody we've been working with, they've been awesome. They've been helping us since nearly day one. And, I mean, just working with them is really cool. We meet a lot of really cool people here. It's been awesome. Awesome. It's been a really cool journey.

Yeah. Upland's a great community and the surrounding areas of Upland. I mean, this whole Inland Empire, everyone's very supportive, you know, from the brewers to the patrons of each brewery. They all, you know, hop around and they like to support all of us locals here. So it's a great community to be a part of and everyone's been very supportive. And you can see, like, even last night, our first night of the anniversary,

the excitement that everybody had being out here and being a part of it. So it's been really fun. Yeah, it was very unexpected, that initial. But usually we open up at 2, and it's good. We like it. And a couple people come in, the floodgates open. It was awesome. So many people were getting their anniversary shirt. We thought we were going to be able to do glassware all night. And, like, halfway through the night, we were like, nope, we are switching to

plastic cuffs. We could not keep up. It was gnarly. That's awesome, though. that was just night one yeah isn't it like it's cool i mean i'm sure like especially when you guys finally open like you know getting it and everything started like during covid but when you finally open and someone you know tried your beer like what was that like because i'm sure that was like a you know there's a lot of really nice people yeah yeah uh it's it's hard to weigh that because i think nobody wants

to i mean we thrive off of honesty yeah we need we can't change we We can't fix anything we don't know. People, you know, claim they love it and would love that. You know, it's mostly, only the negative reviews are written. Nobody tells us. I mean, you know, we'd love to be able to fix anything right then and there if you come and tell us, but I think it's just that inherent nature of people being polite, but I mean, for the most part.

You know, people will come and just say like, you guys are, you know, one of the best brewers and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, I don't know how much I believe them, but it's always awesome to hear. And to be fair, you know, we, because of how busy we've been since we've opened, we've had the opportunity to brew a lot more than I think most breweries would in their first year. And, you know, because of the location that obviously helps big time.

You know, we, we do get a lot of good beer drinkers here, but some people do just want to come hang out and they know nothing about beer. So, you know, we we've had, again, the ability to brew a lot and in doing so really kind of fine tune things. We're still doing it like, you know, we we've got beers in the tanks right now that have been our top sellers that we're still making minor tweaks here and just trying to trying to get better.

We we we don't feel like any of our beers are like the best representation of them. I mean, actually, this West Coast Pills is kind of. I love it. I think this is kind of the most perfect beer we have right now. The cool thing is we can change with hops, but that's another thing we don't like to do is indicate what hops are used because it can change from batch to batch, just tweaking things. And it's just, you know, we'll let people know. We know, so when they ask, we'll let them know.

But there's no point in putting it on because we have to update that every couple of keg changes. Yeah, it's just always changing. And, you know, we're always trying to get the same, like, flavor profile. So we're not, like, going from, like, a citrus, you know, flavor or aroma beer to a tropical type. It's all within the same range. But we're just always trying to do little things, whether it's more or less of some.

Yeah, I wanted to ask you guys, too, because, like, the brewer's mentality, like, you know, talking about it's never good enough, right? To me, I feel like that's one of the best parts of, you know, when I talk to brewers is because, yeah, there's always a little tweak there, tweak here. Like, you could make something as amazing as this, as this beer that we're drinking right now, and think, like, man, I could maybe do something else to make it better.

It's never, you know, there's always that, like, oh, I'm going to go here with it or I'm going to go there with it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I know, like, when you reached out to me, you were drinking the Japanese Lager. Oh, dude, yeah. I got it at Louie's Liquor. That was, yeah. That was spot. Shout out to Louie's Liquor. Yes. Oh, my gosh. She is so amazing. Yeah, they're awesome there. Oh, yeah.

But even that beer that you drank, it's, like, we just kegged off another batch, and it's so, I mean, it's getting so much better. Oh, yeah. Well, you're going to have to have that one later, too. Yeah, yeah. So. I love it. That's so cool. Because, yeah, that one was, I mean, I've been trying them. I tried one of the Hazys. It was like a light blue can. Yep, yep. I've tried that one, and then I have, yeah, that one as well.

But every time I see them there, I'm like, all right, if there's a new one I haven't tried yet, bring them on in. Yeah, this will be canned the next time we brew it. We've got to get this out. I think this is the culmination of all of our styles and drinkability that we like in all the different beers. One glass is it.

Yeah, man. So it's been awesome. That's so cool, man. Do you guys have like some favorite like kind of hops that you like to get? If you were going to brew something with it, do you guys have a favorite? So I was a plain vanilla citra guy. Okay. I love citra. I love that citrusy grapefruit flavor profile. We do use a ton of citra. We use it just out of everybody. But what was it? Our double IPA. We changed some stuff on it because it is not the same one that it is.

And we tried Nectaron for the first time and it is awesome. Awesome. Nectarine is really good. Throws off some crazy flavors. Yeah. And we, we, it's just such a unique hop in because of our lack of experience with it. We, the first time we had it, we're like, oh my God, this is amazing. Yeah. And so we use it, we use in our double. We also use in the pale ale because obviously there's a place for the, for Nectarine.

Oh, of course. Yeah. I think that's something that could go really well with this West Coast Pilsner if we wanted to make some iterations of that too. But it's just, it's a versatile hop. You can do a lot with and get some cool flavors out of it.

Yeah those new zealands know what they're doing yeah anything like for locker all that stuff oh my god that's what's the next battle yeah this west coast hills has a montueka and nelson yeah and so it gets some of that dankness uh some that fruitiness in there so it's uh it's nice those i would say are our other two favorite hops right now just what uh the montueka nelson okay we're gonna start burning a lot more of those love it that's so do you

uh when it came to like because obviously you talked about like how you know he was it that you bought him the beer or he bought no you bought him i bought him yeah okay so you bought johnny the beer well what was do you remember like the first beer that you had that you thought like oh man this is this is what beer could be that we made or even if you just drank like yeah like you know anything like sierra nevada way back when oh yeah we drink a ton of uh sierra nevada pale ale that's.

That beer's its go-to yeah yeah see that's where like you know because nick's a little older than me and i didn't you know right after turning 21 beer was not my first thing to go to um yeah it was you know harder stuff stuff that was cheaper and get me drunk faster there you go but then um i had another buddy that um he was a big beer guy and um he was like all right just try this and he And he gave me a triple Carmelite. And that was my like awakening of beer. And I was like, oh, my God. Yeah.

I was like, how was the ABV? And I think it was like 10, 10. Yeah, it's up there somewhere. Because it's a Belgian triple. And I was like, this is awesome. Yeah. I mean, my taste buds have changed now. I love it. It's always been my first one, but I cannot drink Belgian triples for the life of me now. I'm not the biggest fan of them. But that was the one where I was like, I think I like this beer thing. And then started running with it. And then, yeah, I was along similar lines.

Mine was a German wheat or the heff from Craftsman. Okay. They used to be out in Pasadena. And we would go and get that at the press in downtown Claremont. And we were like, yo, can we get some of that banana beer? Yeah. Like, there's no bananas in this. Yeah. And we saw like, I forgot what brewery it was. They made a banana bread heff. Okay. And so that was kind of my intro, like, dang, this beer's really good. And so we started getting into the beer scene a little bit.

And then as Johnny and I hung out more, you know, we would, you know, visit a lot of these local breweries. Last Name Brewery was one of our top go-to breweries. Hamilton. Yeah, Hamilton. Once Rescue opened up, we were going there a lot. There's a lot of good beer out here. Oh, yeah. And everyone's super awesome and nice. So it's always fun to go places that remember your name. And then you're like, hey, we're going to open a brewery one day.

And there's kind of like a, oh my God, a little laugh. Cause it's like, you know, we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. But no, the, the, I mean, the whole industry is so cool. It's still so niche that like, there's not Kings brewing. Oh, Jeremiah over there. Such a cool dude. Yeah. He was here last night hanging out. We're always, every brewery that comes around here, we're always just trying to pick their brains.

You know, they've, they've said it before us and, and have learned from their mistakes and, and, or just learn from others. And so we're always trying to get what we can. We're not using it, but you know, they, they, they want to help just like we want to help.

So I'm kind of passing the torch. And that was one of the things I wanted to ask you is like, Oh, ask you guys was like, what do you love about the craft beer community? Oh my God. It's so, it's so.

Family like it feels like a family it feels so intertwined tight niched and but welcoming it's yeah there's it's not a group it's not a popular it's you know guys that like beer and making beer yeah that was honestly like like us trying to get open we we couldn't wait to be a part of that brewing community that's so cool we that was like a real drive for us like because you know they've all been so supportive and it's like you know going through our struggles of trying to get open and

just knowing like we're almost there. One day we're going to be a part of this community. And, you know, now so many of them come here often just to chill, drink, have some beers, and it's super awesome to be a part of that community. And they just, like I said, they're all very supportive. Not everyone gets along, which is fine, but everybody, you know, for the most part, it's just they're always trying to help no matter what.

So our mindset is somebody's always got something to offer that we can learn from. It's not a popularity contest. No. And right now we're like the little brother because we're the newest. And so we get all the nice, everybody's so nice to us. Everybody's so cool. They're so supportive. Nothing but our success. And it's so cool because these are people that should be in other, you know, other industries would be competitors.

But it's such an awesome community. And the good thing about this community is we start getting these people out here for all these great breweries around. It's, it draws people to this community to drink beer. Oh, for sure. You know, we're right here next to Rescue. They got great beer there. People can literally hop back and forth between our breweries. Yeah. Jump over to Hamilton's, King's, Solario.

I don't want to start naming a bunch because I'll forget. And then we'll get in trouble for not naming our other friends. We forgot about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, they're all so cool. There's, there's not a brewery within, you know, a 20 minute drive that we wouldn't, you know, we'd love to go just chill and hang out and drink beers. Oh, for sure. And even like you mentioned, Josh is such a nice guy. Yeah, super helpful.

A lot of input from them. When I say this, every brewery in this area within 20 minutes had advice for us. And we humbled ourselves. We're like, what can we go ask them? We just want to learn. And that, I think, is what helped us really accelerate and get to where we are now.

It's just all the help from everybody around here. yeah a lot of accumulated knowledge that these people have and we have just benefited from it and yeah you know they've been so I can't get over that I'm gonna keep going over and over but they're an awesome set of people and it's been such a pleasure getting to know them and what not yeah that's one thing I would say about the community is just it is like a family but like you know like you said too about

how like you don't always get along but hey families like you know families fight too families you know argue and stuff like oh do they yeah Yeah. So let's see here. Do you guys remember the worst brew day you guys ever had? We got a lot of them. Yeah. And our first brew day, I felt like that was probably like the longest day of our lives. Yeah. Going from a homebrew setup and then like, oh my gosh, how long does this take?

It was gnarly. We started with Quebec East because we actually didn't even have chillers at the time. Oh, really? We needed something that could get up to 80. We'll let it ride, man. That was so bad. Luckily, we got rid of a lot of those beers super fast. They didn't linger around much. But yeah, that first brew was pretty gnarly. We always find something in every brew day that can just frustrate the hell out of us. Whether it's a four-hour boil.

Yeah. What was it? Shoot we had a We had a burner go out One day Yeah Yeah The The, starter a kit just failed on a six-hour brew day turned into a 12-hour brew day we like wrapped up we got in at like what 7 a.m that morning and we left at 11 oh yeah like the team was gone cleaned up and running we're still yeah we're sitting there on the edge of tears just like yeah no i think as bad as a brew day is i mean it's it's that work you know what you got to do the worst part is after those

days when we've messed something up and realizing all that work went to nothing so forgetting to turn on the chiller forgetting or you know some like there was a batch of um our um double ipa that the first iteration of it did not come out the way we wanted so yeah so it it didn't have anything bad and surprisingly it was it wasn't the flavor we were going for so we were like dude we put a keg on just to see yeah it sold out so fast we're like oh this beer is so bad we dumped the whole tank but

like it was just like look it's not so bad that i wouldn't be embarrassed it's just not our style and it was just look we'll get one keg we'll make our money off of the grain and the hops and that's it we're we're just trying to break even let's cover this and everybody seemed to love it and it was like shit maybe we shouldn't have dumped that yeah but i mean you know it's we'll never put out anything we don't enjoy.

Drinking i mean that's all of our beers and yeah like like that's the worst is when something that you know should have come out perfectly and finding out it's not oh my god that's worse than a bad brew day yeah yeah exactly any uh stuck mashes no none oh there you go yeah again we've we've learned from you know a lot of people in this area rice holes rice holes oh my god and then what was it i think the only not stuck mashes but only problem we have is like or during transfers,

occasionally our pumps will start leaking. Oh, really? Yeah. And that's always frustrating. Some hand-me-down pumps from a brewery that went out in San Diego. Yeah. Oh, gotcha. But, you know, it's part of the deal, man. Yeah. It's the dream, right? Yeah. Yeah. Fun. And so we say, like, we have the brewing, it's like, oh, they always say it's like 90% cleaning, 10% fun. That's all we do. Yeah. That's the only thing. What's brewing? What's clean? Yeah. Some of your guys'

favorite styles to brew and drink. Well, let's do brew first, then we'll do drink. I think my favorite beer to brew is probably the Japanese lager. Okay. I just think, you know, even like I said earlier, we're always making adjustments. And it's such a light, clean beer. You really have to be careful which way you go. Yeah. So I enjoy doing that one a lot. I love that one. It was a style that, you know, I started getting obsessed with it.

And I was like, Nick, we got to make it. We got to make one. And then our employee comes in. He's like, Nick, you got to make one.

And he brought him a can of it and he's like we're gonna make this i'm like yeah come on man i've been asking for like months hey johnny we should make a jeff yeah like it's his idea um no that one's awesome but i i think i like i like our i love doing our el martillo yeah that's also that one's my favorite because we also changed up a bit and it you know we add the darkening grains a little bit later so it goes this beautiful

like light super light amory almost kind of scary at first It's like, where's the color? And then all of a sudden it kicks in. And just seeing that, it was so cool. But I love that beautiful color, that aroma, that caramely, the malty. I love that one. Super balanced beer. Easy to drink. That one's my favorite one to brew. Okay. What style is that one? It's a Mexican amber lager. Okay. El Martillo. I'm starting to see ambers a little bit more. Yeah. For a long time, ambers were just not around.

Yeah. I think the Negro Modelo, that craze, I mean, it's one of the top selling beers. What, Lodello, you know, but, um... I think that has kind of been like a point of entry for people starting to drink those styles more. And there's a lot of really good, you know, light Mexican lagers out there. And we could have done that. And we probably will still do one, throw some lime and sea salt in there. But that amber, it's just, we've always liked ambers.

I mean, Fat Tire back in the day, that was one of our faves. You know, last name, their Pomona Queen. Oh, my God. I got a keg of their Pomona Queen for my wedding. That's how much I love it. That's awesome. I don't remember drinking of it because it was a busy day, but I got it. There you go. Yeah. So, but Ambers are always a really nice beer.

Pale ales. We're suckers for pale ales. Okay. That's kind of our go, like when we go to a brewery and want to see like, you know, what they're dealing with. You make a good pale ale, you're probably making good beers. Yeah. That's definitely, I think that's definitely like the brewer's beer.

Like every every you know brewer owner whatnot they'll usually go for the pale ales and it's it's a shame because we really try to perfect it but it's yeah one of our lower selling beers and i mean it is what it is and then you know we'll always make it it's for us it's uh to honor our brew sensei as well just to you know thank him for all he's done and but it's such a good style good like you know nice american pale that you can't beat that that looks nice oh definitely i I mean,

even like ambers and stuff like that too. I mean, not ambers, sorry. Pilsners and lagers. I always feel like if those, if you go into a brewery and you try one of those, that's when, and those are good. Yeah. You know, the rest of the menu is probably pretty bang. Yeah. It's like, how good is your light? If your light's good, everything's got to be great. And I mean, you know, I, what was it? Hammy Light over in Hamilton. Oh my God. That is my all time favorite crush bowl.

Yeah. Lager. Their Italian one. Yeah. The Italian. Yeah. Yeah. We had that. That was bomb.

Killer, man. Yeah. filler stuff yeah they do they good job over there oh yeah i mean you guys what you guys got going on here and i guess i love your glassware and i love like all the merch you guys have by chance you guys because i'm gonna buy one if you guys have one do you guys still have like a large in uh i got you set aside you're good to go sweet i was like glass we got you some stickers for your laptop oh sweet i appreciate

it we got you all set up man oh no thank you i appreciate that so much yeah we got some good people around us that make good stuff so it's nice yeah we get to sell some high quality things here. Oh yeah, man. It's all, I mean, everything that I feel like you guys have been putting out.

I can't like, you know, so I said, I go into Louie's and I see anything new I haven't tried from you guys and you, because you build that trust, you know, with, with the community, especially like, you know, the beer community, because you can find like a brewery that just consistently puts out, you know, bangers. It's just like, yeah, it's all right. Take whatever you guys putting out. I'm, I'm putting my money down. Oh yeah, absolutely.

And there's a lot of big ones coming up now. I mean, you look at the Green Jigs, North Parks, works, I mean, those are the big boys coming out right now, everywhere brewing. They're all killing it in Southern California. I mean, look who won over at GABF, man. There's a ton. Isam won like six medals, I think. Yeah. With that Ian. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a lot of influence from them, too. I mean, we listen to so many podcasts. Like, they really, they're not scared to put out info on there.

And so we've actually gotten some of their. I mean, that's the cool thing about it. It makes all brewers better if they listen to it, and that's competition, and you've got to get a little bit better. I mean, we all win from it. I mean, Creature Comfort's making some killer beer. Oh, yeah. That one, you know, that's one of my favorite ones I just recently tried. One of our buddies comes in, drops off new beers, and, oh, my God, it was amazing.

Yeah, we're always trying good stuff. But, I mean, yeah, them helping us, you know, them helping us as a community, it only helps the entire community, and you get better beer from it, and everybody wins. That's the best part. Oh, for sure. Do you guys remember your worst homebrew day?

Yes. Any explosions? No explosions, but it was like our second or third time doing it where we thought hey this is easy making spaghetti we got this um only to find out i don't know we'll see so we were brewing we got everything going we're good you know adding the stuff you know uh grains going and we're adding the hops at the end and um it's looking really green okay and uh i'm like that just didn't look this green like i don't know maybe it'll come out so we finish it and we're

getting it going uh only to find out um the hard part about homebrewing is on a small scale is you don't do hops in pounds or ounces or you do, you don't even do them in tenths of an ounce. You do them in hundreds of an ounce. Yeah. And confusing those two is a really big mistake. So we essentially made the worst hop water anybody's ever had. Oh, yeah. Well, so that was the same one I was thinking, but the different, so that was at your apartment.

Yeah. And on your stovetop. And so that's what I was going to say.

I totally forgot about that. Oh my God. My issue was- like that that stove could not the flame yeah the flame is there's no strong flame on that stove time okay and and it took forever to get to a boil like we literally like this is on this is insane yeah we were like don't worry we'll be done soon yeah no and my wife girlfriend at the time like now wife she hates this she loves the smell of um of wards she i smell delicious biscuits being baked and all that so she just smells horrible

like bread burning and it's like it's like driving past the miller course factory yeah you love it or you hate it but um yeah we went for my mom's several thousand dollar stove which has the best heating to my like.

You know apartment like just basic as just standard yeah so that was that was a long day that was a one gallon day so that sucked that was fun i forgot about that part yeah did you guys ever doubt you guys like dabbled in like hop keef and all that sort of stuff that's kind of going around no no we to be honest we don't get a chance to really experiment too much right now just because we're constantly brewing to try to keep up and turn it and burn it that

is definitely on our list of things to get is just a one barrel setup so we can do more skunk works you kind of you know sampling of things because you know we we want to do some weird stuff but i mean we kind of almost have to make a full you know seven barrels of everything just because that's what we're equipped for at the moment yeah so but yeah we we really get no No experimentation. We get, we try it on a brew system and you're getting it, man.

Like this hot free pills near West Coast Pills. We were so like, we were, I think that was the most thorough beer. I mean, we've done every, every other beer multiple times at this point. Yeah. But this one is like, we don't have a big window to make this perfect. We want this to come out like when we, on our anniversary and we had no room for error. We did not have the time to be able to re-brew another one. We'd have to find out really quick if... It was going to be a winner or

we're not having a good beer for our anniversary. So we lucked out hard. Oh, I mean, yeah, like I said, you guys, this one's really good. And this is the, is this anniversary glassware? Yes, yes. This is our one year anniversary. So we actually, we didn't put our anniversary on it just because we want to continue to sell it and have people get it after the anniversary. Yeah. And, you know, use it for pint nights, things like that. So we wanted to keep it. It is our anniversary release.

But, yeah, we wanted to make sure it's something that people can use. Oh, for sure. Yeah, and it's just got that splattering of all of our logos, everything we love. You know, it's a cool one. Yeah, and how did you guys come up with the name? I'm going to give that one to Nick. Let's see. How do I make a long story short? You're good. We came from the construction industry, and instead of, like, doing cookies and coffee for clients, I gave them my home group.

Okay. And so that kind of gained a lot of traction in the industry. People started following us. Yeah. So like, dang, we should do an industry-themed brewery. And a term that's used that some people hate and some people love is a Procedure 5, which is an asbestos contamination cleanup plan. Okay. So we're like, Procedure 5. What about Pro-5? Yeah, Pro-5 Brewing. Yeah, let's do that. Pro-5 Brewing. So there's enough dumb names out there. We figured what's one more.

That's cool though because i mean yeah i would have never would have thought that yeah yeah yeah people sometimes think like oh did you guys play sports like five guys on the team you have five owners now it's just dumb dumb name i mean it would have been better if we did have five we have a little bit more right so yeah we couldn't even squeak away with anything you play full court basketball with subs that's for sure yeah there you go should we grab another beer before yeah heck yeah all right

and we're back we got a another brewski here we're drinking the japanese rice lager the hanma i love it i love the can artwork too because i was that's what i wanted to ask you like we'll start with the can artwork who does your guys can work that's all nick okay to an extent that's pretty that's really we had some people help us out that's a lot of credit saying calling it art by the way no honestly like we we went with the idea that we wanted to keep everything very similar kind

of like you know pure project oh yeah they'll throw some one-offs in there, but, our identifier, our logo on there is the Pro 5 cursive. And then we kind of mess with things and the... What's the...

Character what's it called the japanese oh the kanji kanji yeah that was johnny's ideas to throw the kanji on there yeah because it had to have red red with the white because it's got that cool off-white color um nice gold print gold lid on top but it had to have a kanji yeah the hanma and kanji pops off that can yeah that one's my favorite so far and the cool thing is they they leave they leave a lot of because we you know there's they're blank canvases they look cool they're trying to

of associate color with styles yeah but it also leaves it open so that hey we want to do a special edition um you know we throw some art on that blank space and yeah yeah and anybody that actually knows how to do art they have a canvas to do it so yeah so let us know yeah no if you need a guy oh my brother does that oh no i can tell you about it i'll take yeah yeah i like it oh yeah he does yeah he does a bunch of he does some kind of work

for another brewery awesome okay that's cool who Who does you guys merch take? Is that like same thing or? No. So we, one of my buddies is a project manager for a very large merch company that does like work tours. All the major bands. A lot of bands, comedians. Yeah. So he's got good style. He knows, you know, what pieces sell. He recommends what to go with. And then we've had some people do some logos for us and some logo packs.

So we just kind of pull from all our resources we have to make some stuff. So, it's been awesome. Got some sick logos. We got a lot of fun ones that haven't even come out yet that we're excited about. That's awesome. We just always want to do high-quality stuff. Yeah. No, we want things that are not just, you know. One and done. One and done. Yeah. We want, like, we almost have. That sounds so weird. We want to have. Just as cool merch, good merch, quality merch, just like our beers.

We want to have good quality. And, I mean, we want something that you actually want to really wear. For sure. It might be a little more expensive, but it's good stuff. Yeah, good quality. I mean, dude, I think I have, like, my dresser is, like, two big drawers, fully dedicated to brewery shirts. Heck, yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. I got the same. I started collecting all the shirts, and I love them. You'll see me in – what was it? I usually brew in other brewery shirts.

Yeah, yeah. And, like, I'll jump up to the front desk, and people are like, oh, you work here? I'm like, yeah. I was like, oh, I got a last-name shirt on. You have to cover it with a Pro 5 sticker. Right. No, no. We're all cool here. Yeah. No, it was – yeah. So that's the other thing is we're going to be doing another come, you know, this next year. After we burn through these logos and whatnot, we're going to get another one made.

Okay. We're going to do that again and just, you know, keep it out.

We haven't announced it yet, but we got two new hats that just we released this week for our anniversary. And they're super sick, but we're going to do one and done. So as soon as that style sells out, we're on to another color, another logo. And those are the rope ones, right? Yeah, the rope ones. I saw those on Instagram. Rope hats are back. Those will be our limited releases. A lot of people really like them.

I think they're an easy canvas to work with. with, uh, they have tons of colors, so we're just going to do one-offs and as they sell out, they sell out. So I love the new color. It's called biscuit and it's like this yellowy mustard. And it's just, I, when he sold me the name, I'm like, yeah, we got to get that color. Yeah. Probably gonna, I'm probably going to buy one cause I've got to buy something so I can support you. So I, so I can do my, do my part and support.

We give away a lot of stuff here. So good luck. Yeah, no, but I mean, cause that's probably the, cause I love hats. I'm always, I'm always wearing, I'm not wearing one today. Those are like my golf hats. I love the rope hats I'm always buying. No, that was the idea behind it was like we do a lot of golf tournaments because one of our partners also has a golf league. And so when they do events, you know, we usually set up on one of the holes.

Usually try to get the earlier ones that way we get them before they're having a full day of drinking already. Actually, we have a beer parsky or Blondell. Okay. Yeah, it's, I don't get to say it often, but when I'm on the golf course and I'm putting, I like to yell par, ski. It's more like double. Yeah. But yeah, it's, that's our golf beer. So we want to have some, we got a lot of golfers that come here. So we want to have something like that. Some merch for it as well.

Yeah, we're going to do some like a golf shirt. Yeah, we're going to get some nice, again, they'll be expensive, but it's a nice quality polo you can wear on the course that it's got our brand on there and stuff. So we'll get, we'll do a golf drop. So you guys both like golf? No, not even a little bit.

John was quick on the joy. I like golf. Oh, I'm shitty. I like to putt. Yeah, I'm not the best out there. I could hit like a 20-foot putt, but I cannot get it on the green. Yeah. I like going to Topgolf, but then my back hurts the next day, and then I'm like, why did I do that? Oh, yeah, because the Topgolf's not far, right? It's over by the Topgolf. No, right around Ontario. Yep, yep, yep, just south of Hamilton. Yeah, we got some buddies that are opening

up a golf place over here. off the freeway too. And they, yeah, Link 52. The indoor simulator, cool stuff. So we'll, our beers will be there. That's awesome. Yeah. I wanted to go back to homebrewing just a bit because I wanted to ask about, like, when you guys were doing it, were you guys just doing all, like, all grain or were you guys ever doing like extract or anything like that? The first one was an extract.

Yeah, we only did one extract brew and then once we got, once we were gifted that Kegel system, we jumped into all grain right away.

And then Nick, I mean, during that whole process, one of the the like pacific brewers civic brewing supplies more beer the they're both super helpful they carry all great ingredients and then everybody knows nick whereas i'm more of i feel like nick's a really smart assistant nick's like the the guy who's uh wheeling dealing getting the you know talking to everybody he's a lot more social than me i'm uh i'm more of like Like, hey, Nick, somebody wants to talk to the owner.

Damn it, Johnny. But, no, I mean, it's been great. It's been, you know, those friendships there were really cool early on. They had another wealth of knowledge, especially when Nick was. Getting going and he'd give it to me. We'd be there a lot. They would try, oh, try this beer, you know, made by another home brewer. Yeah, I got to brew a lot for, like I mentioned earlier, the gifting to our clients. Yeah. So I had a chance to brew a lot with that.

That's awesome. More beer and Pacific wine. Our Pacific breweries, they were very supportive in helping us out. Like, there you guys. That's awesome, man. Yeah. If you guys were going to give advice to, like, a home brewer or somebody that's wanting to open up a brewery or even just get... To get started home brewing, like what kind of advice would you guys give? I would say experiment, brew, try.

Don't be nervous. Just start. Yeah. Don't be afraid to ask questions, whether it's from home brew supply store you're getting it from or. Your local brewery. Yeah, local breweries. We were gifted hops one time. Actually, this is a really good story. Yeah. We, I was, at last name, one of the brewers or one of the managers there, you know, we had told him that I was, you know, doing home brewing stuff.

Stuff and so he's like dude i got these hops they're from new zealand we're never going to use them or they gave us you know and so do you want to take them i was like yeah dude i'll take them he's like here's the deal though you got to bring in whatever you make so we can try it oh love it and i was like heck yeah dude so i did the prince pale ale okay and use these hops and i brought it in and they're like dude there's an off flavor in here yeah and i'm like really what do

you what do you get and then he passed it to the other beer tender he's like oh yeah definitely uh there's something there's some kind of contamination there whatever and we as we you know went through and figured it out it was um it was corny it was uh it was an off flavor of corny like. And at that time, we weren't really focused on water. Just kind of threw in a Camden tablet that actually didn't dissolve.

And so, you know, I could have been hurt. Like, ah, you know, he doesn't know what he's talking about. But that changed our perspective on brewing and getting more detailed and like, okay, we're going to start dialing our water process. And so, actually, he worked at another brewery and I went in there one day and me and Johnny were talking to him. I was like, dude, you may not remember, but one time he gave me hops.

Scene goes yeah i kind of remember that i was like well now we're opening a brewery he's like no way so it came kind of full circle but that that only that only happened because you know we were open to feedback yeah and and so you you gotta have thick skin yeah absolutely that was gonna be my suggestion too is like don't let one bad beer kind of weigh you off of the hobby it's you break a lot lot of eggs when making an omelet like it's you're gonna have a really good beer and then

maybe dry spell of five bad beers and it's just comes with the territory and it's a learning curve you know pull as much resources go to your local brewery but also be because your recipes aren't your recipes they should be as fluid as anything like yeah something's not working know that no Have enough wisdom that somebody might have a better palate or something.

And honestly, we thrive off of people giving us any kind of hints, criticisms, or suggestions on what we can do to fix it or what might be an improvement. And, I mean, we love our recipes, but they are not written in stone. We change them all the time. Yeah. I mean, you should look at the West Coast IPAs and how the whole industry has changed how they're making them now. Oh, for sure. So, you've got to always evolve. Yes. Yeah. Thick skin and change is the only constant. Oh, yeah.

And you've got to fail to be able to grow. Yeah, absolutely. And again, just brew. Yeah. Brew, brew, brew. Brew as much as you can. Your friends will love you. You'll get new friends. You'll get a lot of new friends when you've got beer to give them. Oh, yeah. But, yeah, that's what I would suggest. Definitely. I mean, those are obviously great suggestions because I feel like, yeah, you need that kind of critical kind of feedback.

Yeah. In order to just, you know, because at one point in our life, we all think we're like the best at something or really good at something. For me, it was like Mario Kart or something like that. But I'm pretty good at drinking beer, though. And then one time you're humbled and you're like, I'll never play it again. No, it's. And, you know, actually, one more thing, too, on that with homebrewers is if you're able to join a club, a homebrew club.

Yeah, we just had one this Thursday. Yeah, we had the Inland Empire Brewers out here. We got the Horse Thieves. We got, gosh, why can't, there's another brewery. I can't think of it right now. If we don't name it, we're sorry, but we acknowledge you. At any rate, there's a lot of wisdom out there. You know, some of these brew clubs, they have people that have brewed at large breweries, and they know what they're doing. So they'll do tastings.

You can bring in your homebrew, and they'll give feedback and notes to what you can do to make it better. But if you're really serious about it or you have the time and you want to get better, join a homebrew club. That's awesome, man. I only have a couple more things. I don't want to hold you up because I know it's the anniversary. No, we're good, man. We're good, dude. We're chilling. It's a nice crowd right now. Dude, this is our...

That's the one thing. All right. I'm going to say... It actually worked. Just so you know. I'm going to say it right now. The one thing, if you do open a brewery, try to make time to enjoy said brewery. It is so far and few between where Nick and I can just enjoy some beers and enjoy it.

I think we had Dan Kelly here. He's a lead singer for a band, Fortunate Youth, which is totally awesome. Huge amount of friends that helped make that happen. And it was a great night, but... It was such a chill group of people that enjoy this guy. It's a really niche kind of music following that he's got. And super awesome. And usually we're here to help those days. And it was fine. They didn't need us. So Nick and I got to hang out, relax, and enjoy a music act that we had booked for once.

We sat and enjoyed beers. We didn't have to run beers and everything. So it was really cool. So yeah, this has been awesome, man. So no, don't worry about us.

We are good. um we don't want to hold you up oh no this has been absolutely also we got a pretty good team yeah our our staff they're pretty awesome we don't we hardly have to worry we're just here to make sure uh nobody it's mostly you have to make sure the customer's not doing stupid yeah because it's like it's one thing if our employees you know have to tell a customer what's up it's another it's like look man i'm i'm i'm the owner i need you i'm asking you to stop yeah

yeah luckily we don't have to deal with that yeah no no it is far and few between everybody i mean you don't go to a brewery it's not it's a different culture vibe than a bar it's here now families it's this is this is a fun spot oh for sure i feel like like when when breweries were like first starting to get like you know crappers were really starting to open more like when it started to kind of blow up a little bit that's like people oh cities couldn't like distinguish

the difference between what the bar was and a crowd a brewery was but yeah i mean it's it's. Yeah, I'm so happy those lines have really been like established that it's like, you know, that's a big thing Nick does with my sister and niece is they love going to breweries when they travel and go into places and so, you know, it's such a nice, easy space, you know, when it's, when it's good and let her run around playing, my daughter said the other day,

she's like, daddy, I want to, I want to pour a beer. I want to drink it. I was like, what? You can't drink till you're 21. She goes, no, no, no, just, just drink it.

Yeah that's funny yes like there's a dude walking down the street one day she goes dad that guy needs a beer and i was like i love you yeah she's gonna be cool uh we're gonna make her as cool as we're gonna absolutely get her introduced into this uh when she's uh older and whatnot but yeah i mean at least 12 right i guess yeah that's so that's so freaking but uh no it's it's it's cool um brewery vibe you can't beat that it's nice you know it's chill relax

and yeah you you You go out of your way to, you know, go to a brewery because, you know, you like the style. You don't just, it's hard. It's very rare where somebody just meanders in, you know, just to get drunk. You're enjoying beers. You're relaxing. And it's fun. It's a good afternoon. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, I'll drive 45 minutes to get here. I'll drive an hour to get here. I'll drive two hours to get here if it's a cool-ass bar. Oh, yeah. No, I've done that several times.

My wife and I do a lot of stuff with our dogs because we've got corgis and we're those weird people. Oh there you go but um it's a lot of stuff in san diego area but it's the best because it's like we're doing something out there that means we get to go to a cool san diego brewery.

Was it uh went to electric out there it was super cool yeah um first time going there and then um, there's another brewery but we didn't have time and i'm like i can't think of the name of them but uh they had a cool like outdoor market going on and i was like oh nice only had more time but electric was awesome they had some really killer like i had a triple that i'm not the biggest triple guy nowadays. I'm trying to stay lighter, but that was killer.

Yeah. Yeah. I like to, I get down there a few times a year, but like I even like to go to Carlsbad too because of great, great, great breweries. Oh yeah. Yeah. Like Vista and stuff like that. But do you guys have a, like a desert Island beer? The problem is I like so many. That's the, that's the issue. Desert Island six pack. Six pack. Is it a mixed pack or is it just one?

You know, you know, so I think for me, if I had a desert Island beer and that's all I drink for the rest of my life, I would probably say Sierra Nevada pale ale. Okay. This is where I'm going to sound trashy. And I'm kind of proud of it. So, Nick's Badger Party, we had it at Havasu. I was going to say that, too. Hold on. This is a craft brewing. No, no, no. I 100% know. And it was sort of a BYO, what was it, 64-pack or 36-pack weekend.

And, you know, everybody by course. And that's cool. It's a great river beer. I'm not going to knock it. I'll drink the hell out of that at a ball game.

You know they're it's a good drinkable beer sometime yeah i drank one the other day yeah but i mean i brought my favorite of those type beers which would probably be that just closest to water but i love it it's pabst blue ribbon oh i brought i was the only one to bring a 36 pack of pabst and mine was the first to go because i was drinking my past so i i would say that's that's between between PBR and Miller light is those two would be my my outside of a craft those would be my two okay

sure for I I've told the story on the show before but me and my buddies used to have like. It was essentially, it was just like a basher pad, like in the mid to late 2000s. And as soon as you walked in, it wasn't even a dining table. It was a pool table. And then we had rooms designated for smoking cigarettes. I don't condone. I mean, I still do it, but kids don't smoke. But we would have a room for that. But we had two kegs on tap at all times. It was Stone IPA and PBR.

Yeah. Dang, dude. Those are two extremes, dude.

Yeah, that's awesome. yeah so we had like one like a refined palate and then like you know our water yeah yeah that's awesome no that's that's awesome i remember oh crap we uh that was the best part about upping our brew system as uh it was at my um my mom and stepdad's house that we had that because they had a house that we could do it at yeah and side yard and um we was it i was it one day we were looking for a kegerator because we now have enough beer to fill a you know corny keg and so we

went down picked it up it was a boy yeah it was a boy scout that were doing like a rumpus sale thingy and they had it online and you know we picked it up and then nick's like 150 bucks or maybe not even that yeah it was great quality whatnot and it was it worked and we just had to change the lines and all my river was like i can't drink this beer anymore i guess little boys want this yeah they're selling it for their boy scouts i mean i'm i'm i'm actually an eagle scout so So I was like, yeah,

of course we're going to buy it even if it doesn't work, guys. But no, and I mean, that was the coolest part when we got to get that type of thing. We go to my mom's house and we get to start pouring our own beers out. So I 100% get that feeling. Oh, that's freaking cool. Is it like, I don't know, when it comes to just craft beer, I want to say just beer in general.

Like you know because i mean i think the one of the ones that i really like loved initially where i i went to like the there's a world bistro in escondido for stone and it was like i had dogfish head oh yeah my touch and i was like that that beer when i saw the beer i was like that's your gold nail right yeah i was like what is that it's your gold nail one well i don't know honestly don't even remember it was just like because i haven't had it since but i remember trying it And like,

cause back then it wasn't easy to like, you couldn't find craft beer anywhere. Like in like two, from like 2006 to like 2010. Oh, probably later than that actually. Cause when it blew up in kind of 2015, when things got really crazy, but it was, I remember there were days we'd go out in the pool and it's like, so we'd go to Johnny's parents house and.

Bring our own ice chest and so like i would stop at you know either the liquor store or bevmo or total wine i would get the beers that i thought were going to be really good so a bunch of different ones and so he would bring his and so we'd you know get shmammered in the pool just drinking all these different styles of beers oh yeah there's nothing like dang drinking by a pool oh yeah no it's the best absolutely like me and my buddies would go

to like cost plus world market it and get like uh what do you want to call it like uh mississippi mud oh gosh mississippi mud or like ballast point way back when oh my god that was mine was it long blue fin blue fin yeah oh my god that was i love blue fin and then original sculpin oh yeah i could i could crush those i'll still drink a sculpin all the days but the big thing i loved getting was sammy adam summer packs oh dude those ones are so awesome yeah

so we're actually rocker was my favorite it okay it was their like rattler equivalent or shandy s okay yeah we got a lemon festival coming up in downtown upland a couple weeks oh nice so everyone always tries to do something lemony so we're gonna do a lemon shandy oh i love a good shandy yeah it'll be a blond ale base but we're gonna use yuzu yuzu lemon okay uh puree in there that's dude that sounds like it's gonna be we've

done some samples man it's killer it's gonna be so good yeah you guys gonna can that not at first because I worry we'll sell out of it pretty quick. Yeah. So our problem is like we want to have way more cans out there. We've got to sell through some because it takes a while to catch up. Also, canning really sucks. Oh, gosh. It's just me and Johnny canning right now. Well, that's the other thing. We have an awesome – we lucked out hard.

I'm going to say this whole brewery is really based off of really good timing and luck. 100%. And, like, a really awesome brewery in Flagstaff. Mother Road. Mother Road.

Oh, I've been there. They were selling beers. years nick was like on instagram or no it's on pro brewing sorry and he was just scrolling through and he like i think we were we were looking we were looking we're looking for a keg washer and a canyon line popped up we were like oh he freaked out he was like dude we got one i was like so what's wrong with this canyon line and it's like nothing we're just trying to get rid of it like there's got to be a catch no yeah there wasn't

man they just they they were it was i I won't say the price cause I don't want to call anybody out or anything, but they just basically like almost gave it to us for what the price is of a canning line. They were so cool about it too. Like we let, we kept asking them questions and whatnot. And again, it goes to the community. That's such a great, awesome. And I mean, they, you know, you know, we're a smaller brewery. They were like, Oh cool.

Yeah. We love, you know, you know, to go to you guys. And we're like, you know, confirming it. And we're like, okay, I, I've got the hotel room already reserved.

Dude, we drove up there without actually confirming. We were like, screw it, dude. We're driving. There's like seven breweries within walking distance of our hotel. So we're like, we're going all the way. We essentially tell them, we find out the day that it's going. We leave the next day to go get it. And then we come back the following day, which is a really bad idea after a day of drinking at every brewery we go to. So hungover, driving from North Arizona. But we were so excited.

We're like, it's going to be a long time until we go to Flagstaff. And yeah, it's a great, great beer. Oh, yeah. Over there. Really good food at Mother Road, too. They have like, they have these mac and cheese, like fried mac and cheese. Oh, yeah. We did. They had like really good tacos. Yeah, yeah. Which is awesome. It's so funny because you don't, you forget, like you get there. You're like, am I in Colorado? Yeah. Like it's so nice and mountainous. Yeah, yeah. And then it's like,

oh, my God. And then it's like, oh, yeah, it's Arizona. So good Mexican food. So good. Yeah yeah although there was one restaurant I think it's called the Mexican restaurant or something oh yeah that's all that's all it said I bet it's terrible yeah so oh yeah but it was it was such a cool like like you know and then you know asking them you know they've been awesome with like help on it and then realizing oh how many guys you have working it you know the canner.

Two. He was looking at it. And he's like, we have like five or six guys. Each guy watching a session, they're like... To be fair, that's how we do a lot of things here. But, yeah. Cannons, it's the... It brings the worst. Don't ever come to us on a canning day and you're not going to get the real us. It's going to be the worst versions of us. We're so much nicer than that. But we do want to can a lot more of our beers.

You know, the the shandy we want to the the west coast pilsner we're going to can the pale ale the west coast ipa the raspberry raspberry wheat beer and can yeah and then our seltzer our blackberry seltzer is like our number four seller it's like um and it's we try to make it our staple because you know brewery x got huckleberry it's enough it's the only time i've gone to a brewery and i'm not against it or anything but i ordered a seltzer and i loved it oh it was so awesome and you know

i'm not better than anything i when the what was it kind of ours yeah no when the no you and we got so day drunk off of uh seltzers when they first came out like a mass mart white like 72 white clothes oh my god i'm like dude i don't even feel drunk and then like two minutes later i'm sleeping in the pool yeah i've had 14 of these yeah legs are half in your body's out oh yeah but uh no i mean we're we're trying to make our blackberry as you know kind of our staple,

and we definitely have to can that. Everybody always asks us, they're like, this is our festival seltzer. It's like, well, once we get our cans, we'll make that a thing. Yeah, for sure. That's awesome. Do you, I wanted to ask you guys too, like, do you guys have like a, cause like pop-up, like, I mean, cause I know you guys have like obviously big, a bunch of stuff, big stuff coming on this weekend, but.

Food trucks and stuff like that around or yeah so no every day we got a different food vendor i know you guys do trivia and stuff like that too yeah every tuesday yeah trivia tuesday all right how's it one of our employees loretta she's awesome she loves doing it she kills it that's sweet it's it we come a long way from our first trivia it was literally, me nick and our two wives and now what was it we had a couple earlier this god we had taylor night taylor swift night okay i saw that one

you guys posted on instagram it was the craziest tuesday i sold so many blackberry so that was the first time it was the number one seltzer that was awesome yeah and i mean those swifties i love them to death yeah we're definitely we'll probably do some like a lot more music like 1989 album red whatever it is we're gonna do a lot of taylor swift so we do we have some friends that are some swifties so well wasn't my what was I said,

we just got back from France and the whole trip was based around going, my wife and her friend going to a Taylor Swift concert. Yeah. Yeah. So I was like, okay, I guess we'll add a friends trip around that. Yeah. But no, we have different food vendors every day. There's just, it's such a, like a cool community. They're all so awesome. We work with so many good vendors. Yeah. That's awesome. So we try to have something

new every day. The community, they love supporting them, coming in and having their food.

It's a great thing we got going on here. For sure.

I always like to ask too like your favorite food to pair with beer I usually do like tacos, wings, burgers or you know stuff something like man that's I'm a nice I, I'm a ribeye kind of guy okay another one because I can really honestly I'll drink anything with anything I'll drink beer with cookies I. Beer's just kind of my go to but nice ribeye this Japanese lager I'm allergic to seafood but I'll do a teriyaki chicken oh there you go sushi roll nice Nice.

And the Hanma pair is super nice. Those would say my. Nah, it was our El Martillo and some like nice, like street tacos. Oh my God. And I mean, it goes with that style. I'm excited to try to see what goes with the Pilsner. Yeah. Cause it's the first, I mean, we've been trying it since we've had it, but I mean, it's never been like around food. So I'm excited. I think, I think today's going to be the day. It's some hot wings and some Pilsner.

I was just, I didn't even know that that was there, but I was like, yeah, you could, I think hot wings would be good, especially with something like this or even with the Westy. Yeah. Because you get that bright, kind of clean finish, but you still get, like, you know, you'll get, like, almost bringing out the acidity in the wings. I'm sure that'd be great. No, and they have a killer spicy Korean wing. Oh, okay.

I think that would go really well. But actually, today, so they make their own sauces also. Oh, nice. Our boy Aaron, he's an awesome dude. Love the guy. So their chipotle barbecue sauce, it was made with our El Martillo. Yes. Oh, my God. I love that. I remember that he gave me the first little sample of it. I got a bottle of it. I was adding it to everything. It was so delicious. Oh, that's sweet. So they'll be serving that up today. It'll be nice.

I love cooking with beer because usually I'll have one while I'm cooking. Oh, yeah. Because you only need a cup of it. But I got this whole big. We did our brown ale once with brats. Yeah. Just soaked them in there, boiled them in that, and then did the onions after it in that brown ale.

So good. good that's you well when i talked about cooking with cores when i make my brats that's oh yeah that's uh yeah that's a good one it's it's yeah they say you probably shouldn't put a whole tall can in there but i put a whole tall can yeah yeah they say a lot of things yeah you know what do they know right yeah one for you one for the brat yeah exactly you bought a whole 24 pack what are you gonna do with them yeah one last question i have for you guys your worst hangover

you ever had and was it coming back after picking up the candy i i feel like that was one of the worst because it's been a while since i've gotten as drunk because at a certain point we stopped drinking beer and we started going to bars oh and we started mixing hard and oh my god my wife's gonna be mad i yeah i don't know how we got back to the room we walked oh no i got that but i mean like there's like that brown out we're like we're good

we're good we're walking the direction johnny drink like 77 beers there you go sounds like andre the giant i mean it was just it was one of those it's been so long since i've actually been drunk because i i keep telling i always tell nick i think i'm like immune to beer yeah in the sense of like i have to try we try everything and even days i do not want to drink we have to make sure everything's good actually so strong brewing was here the other day and they they he asked me he's like.

Is it fine and hard getting drunk off your own brewery? And I was like, what? He goes, yeah, it's a thing, man. Breweries, they can't get drunk off their own beer. They go to other beers, our breweries, they have a beer and they're getting drunk. And I'm like, so you guys are hammered right now? And they're like, well, this is number two. And I'm like, so. So you guys are drunk right now or what? But I don't know. I get bad hangovers,

so I couldn't even tell you which one. Oh, my God, he's the funniest thing. He'll even be slightly drunk and he's like a zombie. And you know when Nick's hungover because, like, He doesn't talk for like six hours. Yeah, yeah. And then like he'll eat so much too. Yeah. Okay. Oh my God. One time. I'll tell it. I've cut back a lot. I don't get that drunk anymore. So one time at that apartment that we cooked the beers at, my sister and him, we were just drinking. We were just playing games. Yeah.

Drinking. This is before they're kids. So they were just, we were going hard. We had dinner. We made an awesome dinner.

Yeah. And like everybody was shmammered. so they just spent the night at our house and then like nick was like dead and then he's like he i need to use the shower i was like okay so it showers in there man three and four yeah and so like the shower is going and you know i'm hearing it and like i kind of like go to sleep and i wake up and it's like six and he's been in the shower for like three hours chapped just like oh my god It was just like, oh, my God.

He's the most ridiculous guy. That's kind of my MO. Maybe it happens. I'm a shower guy. But I think the Mother Road in the most recent history is the worst hangover I've had in a while. There you go. Also because we had a six-hour drive out of us. Oh, yeah, that's rough. It's never fun. Oh, yeah. One time, because I used to drink a ton of Jameson. Oh, man. I cut back. At one point, I would save the empty bottles. When you're a kid, you're like, oh, this is going to be badass.

I'm going to make a display of it. To be fair, Jamo picklebacks are kind of like. What are you from Boston all of a sudden now? Dude, just that salty, briny, the pickle juice with just a chaser for a Jamo. Yeah. Dude, I had like 250 empty bottles in my apartment. Dang. But it was over like a four-year span. Okay. So, I mean, it was kind of spread out a little, but. 52 weeks in a year, man. Yeah. So, I drank a bit. Let's not do the math. Don't do the math. I shouldn't do the math.

But like one morning my brother came because he like well i was running out they had a back house i ran out the back house from him and he came pounding on the door he's like mike wake up because he calls me mike even though my name is jonathan but he's pounding on the door, he's like i left my keys back there i gotta go to work and i'm like rolling out of bed like well i wasn't even in bed i was on my food i was on a like a

little futon i had that converted into a couch rolled off that was just in my underwear no shirt on, stumble to the door, I open it, and I say, hello. Like, I'm the one. Like, I'm on the phone or something. But yeah, my brother tells it a lot better than I did. That's awesome. Yeah, it was pretty shitty. Oh, GMO. GMO, GMO. Yeah. Rough night. Oh, to be young again. Yeah. Okay, what's your hangover cure? Legends. Oh, obviously a shower for Nick. Yeah, for sure. I don't think it makes

it worse. You're wet and you're fucked up.

Sorry to interrupt you. No, you can curse. uh two cheeseburger meal for mcdonald's with a oh with a diet coke and uh six chicken nuggets there it is sweet and sour there's like a like semi-local place legends over here legends burgers and that's that's what was it a double cheeseburger with a chili cheese right oh that greasiest like delicious like the only like any other day i would be like i couldn't handle it but hangover days that's the like i need that okay that's the one i love

that might probably be like a wet burrito from somewhere and maybe like i don't know and vitamins yeah yeah vitamin, multivitamin in the morning they can have a vitamin up now johnny it's getting old i'm 37 and i'm like i'm pounding like i got vitamin d you got a men's one a day for guys under 50 you got it you should probably start doing that yeah but yeah that's probably that's that's usually my i go to but sometimes i'll cook it because i'm actually a

pretty productive hungover person but then once i get back into bed and i'm eating i'm like out no that's that's the killer is like all i want to do is sleep and yeah it makes it worse like that you know that lethargy like i'll pay $42 in uber eats for a cheeseburger meal for mcdonald's yeah $42 in fees yeah yeah i even think that day like all we did was hang out at my house that morning and like i think i went and got like cheeseburgers and that's literally what we ate.

Yeah. It was just like nobody was, nobody was in a good mood. What about to end the night? He's like, same thing. Shower, two cheeseburgers. No shower. Man, that's a tough one because cookies. There you go. He's a big sweetie. 17 cookies, I'm good. What's your favorite cookie? Chocolate chip, just straight up. I'm a pecan sandies guy myself. My mom calls me an old man. That is such an old man. Just dunk that sucker in milk. It'll be all right. You got any moon pies? sandys.

Whoopie pies yeah, I like ice cream that's my good like I'll just eat like, I had a pint of beer and I'll have a pint of Ben and Jerry's or something fish food the best oh my god, that's the one for me Del Taco or Taco Bell for me I'd probably regret it the next day but three Del Taco beating cheese burritos that's the one yep back in the day back in the day del taco for sure was the night you know three chicken soft tacos french

fries and a diet coke yes or the or the real bad one three mini cheese burritos a double what was it a double decker yeah or double dell yeah and then quesadilla with no green sauce oh and a large fry and then diet coke you're probably gonna go there tonight, actually it sounds pretty it sounds pretty good yeah yeah oh man but nick johnny this has been been super fun man i really appreciate you guys let me come down and you know be able to sit over here and talk with

you guys and yeah anytime man you know we don't have to go man oh no i'm gonna stick around i'm sticking around this is a celebration man oh no we appreciate it man this has been cool we're super happy you reached out um you know um. Super happy to be here. It's been an awesome year. Super happy we got to do this for our anniversary and be here with it. Yeah, I was like, dude, we got to do Anniversary Weekend. That's cool. Yeah. So appreciative and just can't thank you enough.

I'm grateful to you guys because, I mean, I get to come here and have a couple beers with you guys and hear your story and just be able to hear what it took for you guys to get where you are now.

And you guys are putting out banger after banger. and just honestly just keep up the keep up the great work i mean and i'm gonna i'm a really honest dude so i will tell you like if i don't like something but i mean i've been drinking your guys beer for a little while now and i i love it and that's awesome and that's all we ask honesty yeah can't get better without it so i appreciate that well cheers fellas and um make sure you come down to and up come down to upland there's a lot of breweries

around but make sure you check out Pro 5, it's on 1st and 8th. Yes. Nailed it. Yeah, downtown. I did like three, four takes in the beginning. Say your name again. It's my name. Mike or Jonathan? I don't know. Peter Clavin. Sidney Clavin. Peter, it's Sidney. Pistol Pete. Alright, and we'll end it with, so yeah, I love you, man. I'm trying to think of another quote from that movie. Laters on the mid-day.

Love it. Thanks again, guys. Thanks, man. Awesome. Hi, my name is Catherine, and I've been here since opening day, so I've been here for a year. And my favorite would probably be the Double IPA. Hello, my name is Matt, and I've been here ever since we've opened up for about a year now. And my favorite beer on tap is the Hanma. Hey, my name is Mandy. I've been at Pro-Fi since we first opened a year ago.

Um my favorite on tap is the hazy notice to comply but the spicy pineapple seltzer and our micheladas are also one of my favorites all right guys well i hope you guys enjoyed that like i said i was able to get a couple employees at the end too so that was nice i always like doing that when i have the chance um like i said just really great people if you can get out there go and support really nice guys really cool looking brewery they always have live music

they have food vendors there all the time they do trivia they do a bunch of different stuff and it's all great so you definitely got to get down there and maybe you'll see me down there because i get down to upland quite a bit to go visit my buddy so i will definitely be going there all the time they're just really really great people really great merch too all right well let's see i got some upcoming episodes so next week is the tustin brewing with danny after that That would be the Brew

Dude West Virginia with Nick. And then the Beer Belly episode. That should be good. And then the Chris Williams episode that was with the Chris Williams is the competition director for WBC and JABF. So that was a fun one. I didn't want to keep them too long. So it was a short one, probably around like 30, 35 minutes, but I might throw something else at the, at the end of the episode when that was good.

Also the thank you episode will be after that, maybe the LA beer fest, or I might combine the Chris Williams and LA beer fest, depending on how, how much recording I get done tomorrow. And then next week, I'm going to be recording at Last Name Brewing in Upland with Hannah. So I'm super excited. She's the head brewer there, so that should be fun. And then I think on the 29th or 30th, I'll be recording at Brewheim.

So those would be the next, let's see here, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, potential eight episodes. So I mean, I really, I mean, after that, I won't have to record for a while, but I'm going to take a couple weeks off and then get back on the grind.

So yeah all right well i will let y'all go all right tap fam i hope you guys enjoy the rest of your week enjoy your weekend be safe have a few brewskis remember support local drink local do all that stuff and if you're betting on uh if you're betting on in the end. Music.