The Future of Craft Beer w/Jarek & Sara Szymanski of Threshold Brewing & Blending

Live from Vice Beer in Vancouver, WA, with your friend, Michael Perozzo. We’re looking into our crystal ball with Sara and Jarek of Threshold Brewing & Blending to predict the future of beer, brewing, and good times in the PNW!

Featuring:
@newschoolbeer
@thresholdbrewing
@craftbeerscribe
@grandfirbrewing
@northbankbrewers
@nbbeerweek
@zerocoolphreak
@nofx
@baerlicbrewing
@trapdoorbrewing
@publiccoastbrewing
@samuraiartist
@elviejontruck
@elviejonpdx
@giganticbrewing
@vicebeer
@nathanwhited
@alittlevice

This episode of Overthinkr is:
Engineered & Edited by Xac Denton
Assisted by Charlie Berman
Directed & Hosted by Michael Perozzo
Produced by ZZeppelin

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Transcript

0:01

Yep. Ready? They found us. I don't know how, but they found us. This is Overthinker in 2025. We're back after a little hiatus, as one does over the holidays and all of that. Stoked to be back here with Jarek and Sara from Threshold Brewing. How are you guys doing? We are good. I'm stoked you're here. Thank you for having us. Thanks for having us. Beer friends and real-life friends. This is just probably going to be the most unscripted, most laid-back episode yet. We do have stuff to talk about. There are things to discuss and get into. We want to talk a bit today about just the state of the industry, how things are going and what breweries are doing to keep chugging along during these different times. Talk about what's going on with those different times, what's making them different, and go from there. But we'll get into all of that. I don't know. How are you guys doing? Great. Great. Great. Get in there? Okay. It's almost the end. Yeah. January is almost over. That is a good thing. I know coming into February, you guys have your anniversary is in February, yes? We do. Yeah. Let's jump right in to it. Tell us the details of that. Okay. It's on Saturday, the 8th of February. It's our 6th anniversary, which is- I can't believe it's been 6 years. I know. Like you say 6, and it sounds like, it's not a lot, right? But it's like a lot in beer. It's a lot in beer years. And the years that we covered were intense. Because like 6 years goes back before COVID. Yeah. In and of itself, it's just something that feels like a longer time than it really is. It was also no time. It was, yeah. Longer and slower at the same time. I almost like hate to bring up like COVID at this point, because it's like, it's so depressing to rehash. Right. But yeah, it happened. It is. COVID changed a lot. There's good things, there's silver lining with COVID, for sure. But it changed a lot of the industry, I think, from you guys can probably even attest to opening in 2019. Yeah. That's how math works, right? 2019, you guys got started, opened up. What you thought this was going to be, what you thought threshold was going to be versus what threshold is today, how's that differ? I was thinking about that earlier today a little bit. Because when we opened, our model was so different than what it is now and what it has to be now. But six years ago, it was reasonable to open with zero canning, zero immediate plans for canning. And basically, a model focused on tap room success. We did some draft distribution. But getting through that first year, going into the second year, there weren't immediate plans to start canning at all. And COVID kicked that into the fast track and high gear. Yeah, well, I think it did that for a lot of people. Yeah. You know, when we were opening, we're newbs in the industry. Like, we didn't have any previous experience. We're just passionate about craft beer and making and creating great space for people and just sprawling with it. And we thought we're going to have like a relatively difficult but easy, smooth sailing. And then, you know, like 13 months later, all of a sudden, we have, you know, shutdowns and, you know, right. Nobody goes out anymore for we thought two weeks, then four weeks. And it ended up being, I don't know, like months and months and months at the time. Yeah. It was, it was so we first kind of met you because of COVID, because I was like. Directly cause and effect was. I mean, we would have eventually, I guess, but I, my first like impression of you was like going live on Facebook for your like backyard or like your driveway happy hours or something like connecting people. Yep. And that's when I first remember like, that's what led to this. Yeah. Like what we're sitting here doing right now. It like was birthed out of the, the Beer Nerds Virtual Pubs, we call them, which was for 92 days straight. My wife and I, it was usually both of us, but sometimes it was just me just depending on scheduling. And but we would go live usually from our driveway, but sometimes from a brewery. And yeah, it was just an effort to like keep things going. But I had actually met you guys briefly. And maybe even before you'd opened, I don't, I don't know exactly what the timeline is, but at Oregon Brewers Fest 2019, which was like the last real Oregon Brewers Fest that actually happened at the scale. We're used to it happening, right? Yeah. I remember, yeah, meeting you guys. I was with Ezra from New School Beer and he introduced me to you guys as avid cyclists who either- We arrived on our bikes that day. Yeah, you were in bike gear. I remember helmets and things. And it was either you were opening a brewery or you were- Thinking about opening- Had opened a brewery. I guess we've been like- July 2019? So we were like six months in. Oh, so you had been open then. But again, it was like Jarek said, we just had no industry experience before that. And so the first year was just full of like meeting people. For the first- People that have no need to do like, you know, people that had already gone way back. And we were just trying to like say hi. Yeah, trying to transition from, you know, like seeing you on the other side as being an insider, us as like, you know, beer lovers and followers, customers. And now we're on the same side, except you have, you know, like five, ten years of experience just doing that thing. Which like, by the way, I don't think that a brewery could do that right now. Like open as home brewers with no connections. I tend to agree, because I think it was even unique at the time, what you guys were doing. We're live from Vice Beer, by the way, which is a very dog-friendly establishment. I'm sure the microphones are picking up lots of dogs. Yeah, they're just out on the patio, and I don't know whose dogs they are, but they're excited. And I think they're actually barking at us. No, I've heard that the last keg of lager kicked, and there's no more lager tonight. Oh, no. I don't think that's true. I think there's... But, anyhow, this is part of doing it live. Yeah, 2019 was still like a transitioning period for us a little bit as well. I still had like a part-time job, working my day job, and then trying to run the brewery, and like brewing, and doing other things. So, it was interesting. There was still a lot of this, you know, viking. Like, one of the things that makes, like, Southwest Washington beer unique in a sense, is that a lot of our brewers here, while they're connected to the industry now, and it took some work to do that, you know, introductions to things like the North Bank Brewers Alliance, and North Bank Beer Week, like, kind of brought that about. But like, excuse me, a lot of our breweries were opened by home brewers with no connection to the industry. So that was something we saw a lot of over here, but did not see a lot of in Portland in the last decade, maybe, you know, even 15 years, you know. You did, you usually saw, you know, part of Portland's kind of boom from like 08 to 2010 of just like breweries popping up everywhere. It was usually this brewer who used to brew at such and such place is opening a brewery here now. And this brewer from such and such a place, they're opening this brewery over here. There was, there was, speaking of dogs, there was this like, what's the word they use for dogs? I just lost it. I had it and then I lost it. What were they use for dogs? For their lineage. They're like... Pedigree? Pedigree, there it is. Yeah, that's what, that's the word I was looking for. There was, there was a sense of pedigree to brewers. And I think that that still happens, you know, you see a new brewery open. I'm sure we're going to talk about Grand Fur and Whitney Burnside more. I hope so. Yes, for other reasons. But, mostly because I'm drinking a collab of Threshold and Grand Fur here. We'll get to that. But, you know, the excitement about Whitney opening Grand Fur has a lot to do with, well, Whitney was at Pelican in Tin Barrel, and before that Legion, she's won awards at all these places. There was already a built-in sort of excitement about Whitney gets to do her own thing. We can't wait to see what happens, you know, when the shackles of whatever are off, when, you know, it's just hers. What is it going to be? And of course, it's been amazing. Yeah, spoiler, it's amazing. But yeah, like coming from, you know, homebrew, you don't have that pedigree, and you're just kind of, for lack of a better term, kind of thrown to the wolves there. Well, the thing is we didn't know, so it was, you know, we didn't know what we didn't know. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you guys know how much I love Threshold. Thank you. Like, it's amazing, like the immediate impact you had just kind of out of the gate, like, hey, these guys are doing something different. This is super fun. Super tied into the community in the Montevilla neighborhood. Like, there was just this sense of like, oh, this is a neighborhood spot. This is a family kind of thing going on. You know, for the longest time, it was almost impossible to go to Threshold when the doors were open and not meet one of you two. Like, you were there either behind the bar or present. Like, it was just like, yeah, this is this just feels right, which is which is super cool. And and I think not everyone made it through COVID. There's a lot of breweries that opened in 2018 and 2019 that are not here anymore. Unfortunately, yeah. We're sitting in one that opened early 2020. And you know, like, I have memories about, you know, this place, the brewery that was here before, because, you know, during COVID at the beginning, it was one of my stops on the pilgrimage of getting, you know, Bright Cans, when all of a sudden you have to, like, move all the beer that you have in, you know, tanks into pocket stuff so you can actually sell it, right? Yeah, I popped in and the guy scooped me up with some Crowler Cans, so. A lot of people don't remember this. I was talking to somebody even this last week, just at the bar, and, you know, they were asking about what we canned and what we didn't can and this and that, you know, and somehow the conversation came up. It was like, yeah, you know, in 2018, 2019, you didn't see small breweries canning. The idea of a mobile canner was kind of foreign. So that was it, too, and even craft canning, which was our first mobile canner, I don't think it was, I think it was because of COVID that they started working with smaller breweries, because before then, the threshold was like too high for... Right, they would require that you'd do like 200 cases, which is like 20 barrels of beer, which like... Yeah, so there were like, it's hard to remember now, but there were reasons for why, you know, we weren't like, and you kind of forget about it, but there were reasons why it was prohibitive to can for us in the very beginning. I think there were a lot of reasons why it was prohibitive to can. I mean, Jarek just was talking about hunting down brites. That is empty aluminum cans, they're called brites. So you just, before anything's put in it, before any labels on it, you have a brite. And so there was this like hunt for crawler cans, 32 ounce crawlers and 16 ounce cans. Like you had to go find people who had already bought some, but then weren't going to can with them and try to get it from them. There was a lot going on with that. That like, I know for me, with Zeppelin on the marketing and design side, COVID opened up this whole world of designing can labels. Like we had designed two can labels ever before 2020. Before 2020, yeah. And by the end of 2021, like we had designed hundreds of labels and it was just coming in all of the time. There was like a shift simultaneously too of like a trend away from flagships and more to like popping off new beer after new beer after new beer, which requires infinite labels, infinite names, infinite creativity. Yeah. And that was happening at the same time too, I think. Which I'm still here for. I still like that about the industry. I like the creativity. I'm still not the type of beer drinker that's like, oh, I love me my... So I'll say there is one. So I'll just say like Cascadia Coles from 5440. I love that beer. That's the one beer that I'll like. That's my desert island beer for sure. I'll have it in my fridge. Like I love that beer. Aside from that, I don't want to drink the same IPA every day. I don't want to go to the breweries that I love and find the same stuff on tap. I want different... I think that's everyone, kind of most people. And I don't think that's... You see it kind of as like a shift back towards people wanting that like tried and true, consistent, something that makes them feel like, oh yeah, like I know this. But I don't think that's the majority. And yeah, and like, when we first opened, I remember the question all the time from people coming in was like, what's your flagship? And we never get that question anymore. It took years to actually see what people like, what people ask about, you know? And even right now, you know, like half of our top lists are the, what we call flagships now, because we've been around for six years. And the other half is like either new or experimental beers. So, yeah. Yeah, I think, so we've talked a lot about the past here, kind of transitioning into like, okay, what's the future hold, you know, as we're moving into 2025. One of the things that I've talked with our mutual friend, Jake Watt, at Trapdoor. Even in this last couple of weeks, I was talking to him about- He's so like, meddled these days. Yes. He's very awarded. I know, he's very successful. Yes. Yeah. He's incredible. And he is talking to me about, you know, kind of his approach now that Trapdoor has been around nine years. And he's like, what I feel like I'm doing now is I'm, I'm not so much, you know, completely like he is still like completely recreating and coming out with new recipes, but less of that and a little bit more of going back. And instead of flagships, he called it playing his hits. He's like playing the hits of, hey, I can look back and find like recently they brought back their Normcore IPA, which is like a very Nelson forward West Coast IPA. It's got that New Zealand thing going on. Like, you know, it's great, but that's a beer that Trapdoor had made even before Jake was there that now he's brought back. And it's one of those things like, okay, you know, we could do this twice a year. We could spin on it, which is, I'm sure, great. Yeah. So not like a beer that's just on all year, every year, but just going back and being like, that one did well, let's bring it back for a season. Yeah, and I think there's something to that in the future here, into 2025, that is people need to maybe miss a beer a little bit. Like, there needs to be some, a little bit of planned obsolescence. It's a word, that's a term I learned in marketing school, long time ago, you know, when I talked about like how cars are made, like, you know. The technology is there to make the car that needs nothing. Like, we could make the perfect car that never has to see the shop and just runs for 20, 30 years. The technology exists, but we don't do that, because that would put an entire industry under, you know, if everybody bought one car and it was just, oh, we're good. So what's the beer you're depriving your Vice customers of right now? Both the guys behind the soundboard, that's Zach and Charlie behind the soundboard today, they both said Breakfast Club. Breakfast Club is the Mimosa Sour. I love the Mimosa Sour. Yeah. I'd say the other one is actually one Zach named, Linoleum. Linoleum is one that- After the Floor? Actually, after, well, yes, after the Floor, but indirectly, it's a no-effects song about a guy on the floor and linoleum just gives him something to believe in, you know, cause on the floor. Yeah. Yeah. Got a floor. At least I got that. Yeah. So- Sounds delicious. We actually have a very regular customer that when we have linoleum on, he comes in, he's like, I'll get linoleum every single time he has to say, I hate the name. Do you have any linoleum? We don't have linoleum right now. No, no. It's not on tap, not on the floor, not anywhere. No linoleum. No actual linoleum on the floor and no linoleum. You might say that the floor at Little Vice is technically linoleum. It's some kind of fake plastic floor, but it doesn't look like the linoleum, the kitchen floor that you really want it to look like. If you told me it was linoleum, I would believe it was linoleum. Sure. Probably. I don't know the actual like strict definition of linoleum. Like, anyhow. I think it has to be adhesive on one side. So you guys have some beers that people have come to know and stuff. Are there beers like that, that like certain IPAs that you're like, hey, we'll do this once or twice a year because it has its following and it moves quick. And then you find like we have found with several different beers where we're like, oh, man, that that sold really quick. And then like we follow it up a month later with another batch and that other batch. So that's the problem. Like, it might be the best tasting. But if you, you know, if you're sending that to your wholesale accounts or like, whatever, they already have, you know, they already have a case of it. They're ready for something new. So I think like these days, what we've been noticing is just there are certain styles that have been emerging or coming back, where other styles that were popular even a year ago, they cannot take the second seat or background beer. So that's what we've been kind of trying to like see and you know. And I think like that, like the beers you're talking about, that's so like, are you thinking about like stouts, like bigger stouts? No. That's what I was thinking of when you said that. When you said that, I'm thinking of like amber ales, red ales, and black IPAs. I think, but I'm talking about the ones that are like, that were selling great and now are like having, you know, they're lagging behind. Like the bigger stouts is what I was thinking of, but. Bigger stouts, I mean, it really depends, right? Who you ask, but like for us, big stouts did pretty good like last couple years, but you know, we started noticing at the end of the end of the last winter that the sales slowed down a little bit. People still love like a flavor beers, dark beers, but they want something lighter, something more approachable that they can actually drink at the pub and take four pack back home. That's one of the examples. Another example would be, I mean, we're like, hope capital of the world, right? Vancouver and Portland and West Coast IPA or Clear IPAs are taking over New England cell IPAs big time. Like when somebody comes in to the pub, to our place and like three years ago would be like 50-50 or more on like a New England cell IPA. Two years ago, last year would be more asking for West Coast IPA. And these days, when we make IPAs, it's usually like in a month, one hazy New England style and then like three or four batches of West Coast IPA. Because that's what people asked about these days. I think we're seeing that across the board for sure. Yeah, I think, I remember, I've never been big on hazy IPA, but I know that I loved Threshold's hazy IPA. When you guys made hazy, I loved it. Thank you. I mean, that's one of the reasons, so before we even opened Vice, we made y'all ready for this together. It was a double hazy IPA. Double hazy IPA. And that was huge for me, because it was making a hazy beer with you guys, which was like, look, mom, I made it. You know, it was like, yeah, this is so cool to make a hazy with Threshold. And it was an incredible- I remember you guys being there, and we were just like, oh my God, they're here with us. Yeah, it was so fun. Yeah. And it was a super fun beer. And it just- Was that like three years ago now? Or like, I guess two? I guess two. Two and a half for sure. Because it was for your opening. It wasn't even- it was like pre-opening. Yeah. Because it was like we were licensed, but we weren't actually brewing out of here yet. So it was actually for- we did a party at your place at the end of May. Yeah. That's right. Okay. I remember you knew in your 80s outfit. Yes. And we took that beer to Washington Brewers Fest in Seattle. Because we poured at that festival with only one beer. We had our breakfast club was the one beer that we were able to have on, that we actually made. The others were all collapsed. That we made somewhere else. Because there was some strategy to that. We needed to get our name out there. We wanted to get a little pre-excitement going and have these events at other breweries and be like, hey, we're coming. We're opening soon. Of course, we thought we were opening a lot sooner. It ended up being mid-August is when we finally got open. And there wasn't a lot of that beer left at that point, you know? There was just a little bit to be on tap and that's it. Yeah, it was fun, though. I know. But where I was... I was about to ask you, actually, could I get the Black IPA, please? We got a beer up, Jarek. I've heard it's delicious. The Black IPA? Oh, cool. We're both drinking your newest releases, so Black IPA and then I'm the Goze Kinseko. Goze Kinseko. Goze Kinseko. Which is not how you say Goze at all. I know, but you have to with the... But I love... It was fun. No one knows how to say Goze anyway, so it's... Right. Yeah, nobody knows. But that was a beer we did with our AV Club. And the AV Club, we had a meeting here in this room. So we have what we call an AV Club meeting once a month. And basically, it's all the AV Club members come out. It's like part bottle share and part just like fun, get together and everything for our Mug Club members. That's awesome. Yeah. And so we just did like a show of hands recipe development that going into it, we all thought, we're just going to end up making an IPA. Like it's going to either be a West Coast IPA or a Black IPA. We thought, because we were like, this club, I think there's been people talking about Black IPA. We're going to go that way. But no. Long story short, like we do the style voting and sour wins. And we're like, really? And so we're like, amazing. We're like, where do we go from here? How do we, because we were going to do like, if IPA won, then we can divide it up into West Coast IPA, hazy Black IPA. And you were planning to sell it easily. Yeah. Which one of these styles of IPA would you like to make? And then we go from there. And yeah, so we're like sour. Thank you so much. Gosh. Me and Brian, we have this little powwow on the side. We're just like, okay, what is there? We've got smoothie sour. We've got like, you know, kettle sour. We've got like Berliner Weiss. We got Goza. Okay, let's throw those on the board and let's see what happens. And then we come back out and they all, they all voted Goza. And then we were like, I would vote Goza. And so we went, do you want a fruited Goza or a traditional Goza? Traditional Goza wins in a landslide. I'm like, this is the most boring result. No, it's not boring. In my opinion, in my opinion. I was so excited to see it today. But and then we did the names. And so the two names that faced off were Goza Busters and Gozei Konseiko and Jeff. Yes. And Jeff. Somebody suggested just calling it Jeff. My name is Jeff. That was, yeah. But yeah, Gozei Konseiko won. Anyhow. I'm so happy about that. What are we talking about right now? The the the the emergence of different styles. So so the fact that you're drinking, you're drinking a black IPA, you're drinking a Goza. I'm about to crack into you guys brought. I'll grab this one. You guys brought a Hoppy Red Ale. Hoppy, our first ever Red Ale. Safe and sound Hoppy Red, which I'm very excited about. I'm going to finish the one in front of me here first, but. So yeah, yeah, it's we is there. Is there an emergence in twenty twenty five of the styles that we came to love? Like like definitely in the last five years, IPA has completely changed. IPA has become just like a monster. And now you've got these like super clean, crisp Pilsner malt, West Coast IPA is everybody's about. You've got, you know, the big double hazies and hype beers are still a thing too. But like IPA dominates and even us, we have, we have eight IPA's on right now. None of them are four weeks old yet. All of them are fresh, amazing IPA's because that's just what flies out of here. Right. But now, I think we're starting to see, I saw more black IPA's this winter than I've seen in 10 years. And it seems like there's less of a like, like it's less cult following more, just like that sounds great. You know, it's not a hard sell anymore. Not a hard sell like Brown Ale? Versus Brown Ale. Yeah. I think like it's a hard sell. Just one example. You know, people have tried it all, right? And at the end of the day, some of the, most of the folks still remember like a good, more classic styles. But now with modern execution, they have slightly different feel to it. But, you know, they're good beers. I would say that, like, again, just like Black IPA specifically, I know Barelyk did one that I had this year, and I know Trapdoor did one that I had this year. And every Black IPA I had this year, I'm like, this is actually even better than I remember. Because I know that, like, hop technologies and hop practices, like how we're adding hops to beer, the whole idea of a dip hop, these different hop products, like Hyperboost, DynaBoost, CGX, Incognito, all of these things have happened in the last five years. Now we're applying that to Black IPA, and the results are way better than I remember. I'm excited to drink this Hoppy Red that you brought, because I haven't had, like, a modern red ale. I don't know the last time I had a red ale. So I think that's what, like, that would be considered as, like, a modern red ale. Like, it's, yeah, it's got the, like, Jarek, you talk about the red ale. You're the brewer. I'm drinking this as fast as I can so I can get to the red ale. Like, what makes a red ale? It's, like, it's the malt, right? It's the malt bill, yeah. So you're using, like, quite a bit of, like, a darker, more malted grains in order to get some of the color and also, like, a flavor compounds. And, you know, you use, for our one, we use combination of, like, a good, like, classic hops. And what would a, like, what would a red ale have, like, hop-wise included 15 years ago or 20 years ago? Just, like, less hops, less going on? A lot of IBUs and a lot of probably C-hops, yeah. You know, malting technology has changed as well. Let's look at this red ale. So, other than the malts themselves, is there anything different about this red ale than what you would have done for a West Coast IPA? Oh, good question. No. Well, we definitely wanted to make sure that it's not as dry as our West Coast IPA. So, it has a little bit more body. It's a little bit more malty. A little more residual sweetness. Correct. Yeah. And it's definitely hoppy, but it will age gracefully for a little bit, and the malt flavors will come out as well. And I will say, when Jarek brews, or when we brew a beer or release anything, he'll probably bring home a can or two of whatever's newest. And, but this Red Ale, the Safe and Sound, we've been recycling a lot of Safe and Sound cans at home. So, yeah. This is, this is coming home. So it's a brew by Jarek, yeah. It's like, yeah. I dig this. Cheers, guys. Try this, guys. Cheers. Yeah, super fun. Ding, ding, ding. I'll reach Jarek. Cheers, live audience. Cheers, guys. Yeah. Quite simple and effective Red Ale. This is actually our first Red Ale we've ever brewed. We've been talking about it for a couple years to finally happen. I do get that, like, sweetness. That phrase that you just said, I'm hearing that more and more from modern breweries that opened in the last five years. This is the first blank we ever brewed. Amber, Red Ale, something like that. Yeah. Might be Amber, might be Red Ale. For us, it's Black IPA. We've been telling everybody this is the first Black IPA we've ever done. We also did our first, just a month ago, we did our first double IPA, West Coast double IPA we've ever done. We've done many hazy doubles. Yeah. Never done a West Coast double. And we did. Do you think that's part of 2025? Do you think we're going to see more breweries stepping out of the... There's a criticism on modern small breweries. Man, you guys going to make anything else besides IPA? IPA, IPA, IPA. That's all you guys ever do. As they order an IPA? As they order an IPA. And as IPAs outsell every other style, 10 to 1. Yes, 10 to 1 is probably selling that way short. It's probably about 40 to 1. It's up there. And so, yeah, for those that ask, like, why do I see so many IPAs and not these other styles? It's a numbers game for the breweries, for all of us. Like, we know I can make an IPA and my wholesale accounts are going to pick it up. My distribution is going to pick up my new IPA. If I make a amber ale, let's just be real. If I make a brown ale, who's going to pick this up? And I mean... Didn't you? Well, yeah. We've made two of them. But like, let's be real here. Like, pull the curtain all the way back on Vice Beer's brown ales. Like, I... Did you have to drink them all yourself? I'll tell you about that. I mean, I started a smear campaign against brown ales. I remember. While Ezra is a very good friend of mine, you know, a lot of people actually... Like, I was getting messages of like, dude, like, you got this beef with Ezra. Like, what's it... And I'm like, no, there's actually no beef. And both of us understand there's zero beef. It's all... But you played it out hard online. We played it out hard. Like, we went at each other on this whole brown ale topic. And of course, for his birthday last year, a year ago next week, actually, we walked Ezra into Beer Mongers and there were cans and on draft a beer called Better Than Ezra. I wish I saw pictures. It looked amazing. Yeah. It was great. And, you know, was that brown ale sold on merit? No. That brown ale was not sold on the fact that no one ordered that beer going, I like brown ale and Vice Beer makes a darn good brown ale. And they say that now, though. I'm ordering this because I like brown ale. No, they were ordering it because they saw the feud. They saw the silliness. They saw the drama. They're in on the joke of the beer is called Better Than Ezra. It was a good name. It was the right name. Yeah. Well, then we did a fresh hop version, which Ezra hates the term wet hop. So we called it wetter than Ezra. That was the best. And, you know, that was our... We made nine fresh hop beers that we could not even keep around. Like, they disappeared. You know, we made nine fresh hop beers, eight of them disappeared in, you know, 10 to 20 days, just... And wetter than Ezra... Lingered? Kind of stuck around. It's like, here I am. I'm a fresh hop brown ale. Well, I will say, I mean, like, what... If you ever try to find a brown ale, if you actually want one, it's not the easiest to find. For instance, I happened to be at Belmont Station earlier today. Scouring the shelves for brown ale, I had to ask for help. You actually went to Belmont Station and said, sir, can you help me find a brown ale? I did. I said, hello, I really need a brown ale in a can or bottle. And he went through the whole store, he only found one. They were all sold out. They must have been all sold out, except for this can from Public Coast Brewing, which I really love their brewery. I love Public Coast. They did a coconut brown ale and I bet it's great. They put coconut in a brown ale? People do that. People do that. But I saw it and I thought of you, and I thought you would absolutely love it. And I was like- You thought wrong. Well, but I was shopping for this, and I was thinking about Belmont Station there. Store is organized by beer style, right? So you have the IPA section, the sours, the lagers, the brown ales. This was in the restroom, right? Closer to the restroom. I was thinking, like, shopping for beer in a bottle shop is not unsimilar to the greeting card aisle at the grocery store, right? And so it's like, you go to, you know, the IPA is like, greeting card wise, they're kind of like the birthday card section, right? They're like happy, they're colorful, they're energetic. And then, you know, there's always like a seasonal wall, like whatever big holiday is coming up, like a wall of pumpkin beers, of how, you know, whatever. Right now, there's just Valentine's Day cards there. I was like, well, what would be like the brown ale section? Like deepest condolences. It would be, it would be. Sorry for your loss. There you go. There's the beer for you. We can try it tonight. Public Coast, yeah, we do. We have to open this. I mean, if anyone's gonna do a good coconut brown ale's Public Coast, I trust them. You posted about this on social media and I commented on it. And I said, I was like, wow, like not only a brown ale, but you put coconut in the brown ale. That did not help. I'm not a fan of coconut. I agree to disagree. I'm not a fan of coconut. So if we... But then I said, if you just put oysters in this too, you could go ahead and call it my funeral. Because that's just like my absolute nightmare is... Like that's the only other thing I can think of that I hate more than brown ales and coconut is oysters. Why would you put oyster with coconut? No one would do that. Why would you consume any of the three at all? Maybe someone listening to this podcast will be like, we did that. But they're not going to raise their hand though. Here we go. I have always wanted to do like an oyster stout. That's something we haven't done. Here's this coconut brown alie. You know, the interesting thing about oyster stouts, I've had a number of oyster stouts, particularly one that Fort George used to do like more regularly. I've had several times. And I don't know whether to call it oyster stouts. I guess it has oyster in it somehow. I don't get any like sea boogers. Like in any way, I don't get that, you know. You don't get the funk? No. What do you get oyster wise from an oyster stout? It's like a little like, it's just like a, like a salinity. Salinity. Like a little saltiness or something. Minerality. I wouldn't say briny. Maybe. Here goes coconut brown ale. I think it's delicious. Lord, help us all. You're very coconutty. I think the coconut helps with the brown. What do you think? That is hard to read. That is weird. Oh. Not in a bad way. Like it's not what I expected at all. Wow. It is incredibly sweet. It's vanilla-y. Very vanilla coconut. I'm not even picking up on much of a brown ale other than I can look at it and tell you that it's brown. It's brown in color, but I can't taste any brown ale. Yeah. Yeah. It's not brown ale. It's very coconut and very toasted coconut, which I would say, as coconut goes, toasted coconut is better. Always preferred. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Little caramelization. More complexity. I'm getting a lot of vanilla caramel coconut. I'm hearing that you like it. I wouldn't drain pour it. I'll take that. You're welcome. No. No. It's interesting. I don't know if I would sit down to a pint of it either. You know, it's in that like zone of like- Share it with friends. This is a nice little, you know, we divided this up into like four ounces each. Yeah. And that's about what I need. That's about right. I keep sipping from it. I keep coming back to it. Well, yeah, that's on you. Only Brown Ale at Belmont Station right now. So get it while you can. That's interesting. Okay. I don't know if 2025 is going to have a lot of coconut brown ales. All you need is one good one. Yeah. It's all right. It's all right. So we're talking about this year, this present time, and navigating the future here and what's happened. People have seen the articles, like right after January 1st, all the articles hit, like, craft beers down, and all this is down, and these different things, and it sounds doom and gloom. I look at those and I've commented on several of them online and tried to add some perspective and context out there, that, you know, when you see these things, a lot of these statistics that the Brewers Association is able to collect come from, like, the most rich data we have in the beer industry comes from the grocery store aisles. That is where the most data comes from. So when you see, gosh, it was six months ago there was data published on, like, beer styles in 2024 and, like, what's dominating beer styles and what has the most growth in beer styles. West Coast Double IPA was number one on growth of beer style. Because grocery stores. Because grocery stores. Haven't we seen, like, the breweries that are much larger than ours? So you guys are on a ten barrel system, right? Correct. Yeah. We're on a seven barrel system at Vice Beer. You know, your guys' fermentation is, you've got how many ten barrel vessels? We have four ten barrel vessels. We have two fifteens. Those are uni-tanks or fermenters or brides. And then we have three specifically dedicated brides tanks. Okay. Yeah. So you've got four tens and two fifteens. We have right behind us here, four sevens and two fifteens. So we're not that far different from seller space of what we can produce in a year. That's very different than Pelican Brewing Company, let's say, who is on a 75-barrel system brewing into... Much bigger than us. Much bigger. Is that bigger than, I don't know if you know, like a Breakside or... I don't know exactly what Breakside brews on. I couldn't say that confidently. I would guess Breakside's in the neighborhood of 30 to 50. I would guess one of those two, if I was forced to. But I also know like Breakside still, they still brew out of their Decom location in Northwest. I know it's not that big. I think it's a 15-barrel system in Northwest. It feels big to us every time we go there. It feels enormous. Yeah, I know. Yeah, we look at it and go, wow, so much beer. Where does it even all go? But yeah, so you look at a Pelican and this has been true of Pelican for almost 10 years running now, that their flagship beer has become Beak Breaker, which is a 9.3% double IPA. They just came out, like just this week, announced that they're doing Hazy Beak Breaker, which is a hazy double IPA. A double hazy? Yeah, almost. I think it's also 9%. I don't know for sure, but. And they can, because so much of their sales are grocery, they can move that. Yeah, not only grocery and C-store, where shoppers are often looking at the value per ABV. They're looking at. That's what I've heard. Yeah. And it's like the sense that, you know, they're taking it home, so they're not worried about drinking it at the bar. Yeah. So that's like the thinking behind it. Yeah. Which makes sense. Yeah. They're looking at, if I'm going to spend $5.50, $6.50 on a can of beer, that's craft beer, where's my value at? And that's why that segment grew. That does make sense. Yeah. Which... And like, if you're... And why, like a double West Coast or double Hazy IPA is selling more than like an Imperial Stout, because Imperial Stouts are kind of a lot to swallow anyways, but you can... Sure. You can take down a 8% or 9%. And oftentimes when you see an Imperial Stout at that 10% or 11% range, then it's also barrel-aged. It's probably not in the C-store. It might be on the grocery store. And it's probably like an 8 or 9 dollar can, right? Because it's like a specialty thing. So like if you're just comparing apples to apples on, you know, in the grocery store aisle, I'm trying to get my bang for my buck, you're going to reach for those things. Which we've seen now even like New Belgium with the Voodoo Ranger series and things like that, like that's coming into the grocery store. When you're in the grocery store, there's really kind of become this like divide where you're either looking for cheap loggers, I want my $10 six pack of something inexpensive and crushable logger, or if I'm going to spend that five or six dollars a can, I want my bang for my buck on the ABV. And I think we're kind of seeing that for the big guys. And that plays into the other like growth segment that the Brewers Association talked about, which neither of us have tapped into this market of 19.2 ounce cans. I hear there's a market for it, but... It's in places that I don't think either of us really play. No, and we can't. Yeah. So it's for the convenience stores. And I don't know. I don't know if this is a good reference or not, but when we were in Vegas this last year for CBC, for the Crap Brewers Conference, there were so many 19.2 or larger. Those were bigger. Of Stone and Laganitas and... Like, I mean... Even Domestic, not even... Yeah, even the Modellos and stuff were 19.2 in Vegas. Yeah, that's not our wheelhouse. We can't sell in those circles, but... When I'm in Vegas, it's my wheelhouse, but not the rest of this time. I mean, not from a business perspective, but yeah. But yeah, it's interesting to go somewhere else other than maybe Portland and just see what's selling and what's succeeding. But that's a different level of the game, you know, in craft beer world. Yeah. 19.2s, you know. Yeah, but I would say, I don't think we've brewed a double anything in a long time. And sometimes I feel like even pushing above 7% on our IPAs is like a lot to ask of our customers. So I was like looking at our can right here, like we brought the Grand Fur collaboration that we did. Yeah. 7% on the nose. 7%, yeah. And I think that's like the most we wanted to really do, but it's nice to have a little maltiness there. The hoppy red, 6%, I don't know, yeah. We're trying to find a balance between brewing for folks that stay at the top room and places that we sell our beer to, which is usually establishments where people like to go and hang out at. It's difficult to drink. So that's something that the average beer consumer, that beer lover who's listening to this podcast right now might not think about. There's a difference between what we can sell regularly and sell quickly in our own tap rooms, versus what sells out on the grocery store shelves, for sure, but even other tap rooms. You know, we've made a number of beers here. One of them is Cut My Lime. It's a Mexican lager with lime. Oh, yeah. I like that beer. Yeah. Outside of this place, it's difficult to move that beer. You think because of its, like, low ABV? It's low ABV. It's a lime-added lager. You know, so, like, a fruited lager. It just doesn't do well. Our distributors kind of go, eh, eh, we're not, yeah, we're good. But in the tap room, it does great. But in the tap room, it just cranks. Like, it just, we pour a lot of that. Now, part of that might have something to do with the incredible taco truck we have here in our partnership with El Viajón. Mexican lagers go great with tacos. Every beer goes great with tacos. That's true. But, you know, that's like, you know, I expect that that moves the needle a little bit, but yeah, it's just interesting to see something do so well in house. I could probably come up with other examples of things that are not related to the taco truck, but like other beers we've had that we tap it here. Well, our micro machine, we do a micro machine, micro IPA. Yeah. It's 3.8%. Yeah. And we fly through it here, but then we send it outside of here, and it doesn't catch on. That's like the tricky thing when like, you know, you're at your tap room, your customers are like, bring this back. And you're like, I would, I would, but like, I can't, you know, I can't move through it other than the tap room. I mean, we have example, like examples of beers that you're talking about, you know, we did 3.3% micro IPA called Hopping Massive. We did that first. Hopping Massive, I remember that. Yeah, the first time we did that was like, maybe three or four years ago. We did a couple of times, and you know, like. The second time it sold much better. Everybody loves it at the tap room, you know, you have bikers, runners, and like, just walkers coming in, people drinking it, you know. So many hops, like, for the double IPA. Just like a super soft, 3.3% hazy micro IPA, delicious. If you love hops, that's the beer for you. But you know, it's difficult to move it, because when you sell it to other places, the ABV is too low. But also, I mean, it has as much hops as a regular IPA, which means you have to like price it higher, but it's got the low ABV, so people are like, eh, so like that's the problem, too. Like you make it, you know. Yeah, just because it's a low ABV doesn't necessarily mean that it took less effort or less ingredients, like it took very similar ingredients to make that as it did the West Coast IPA. So that's like the challenge of like communicating that, I guess. It's easier to tap room, because we have a control over it, right? But it's difficult to like persuade other folks. Another example, Grodziskia, you know, amazing beer that originated in Poland, where I'm from. Super light, you know, gently smoked wheat beer, that's really refreshing. All credit to Threshold for repopularizing Grodziskia. We played a part, but not, we can't take full responsibility. No. To the world. I'm giving you full responsibility. To the world. Great Notion doesn't make a Grodziskia without Threshold making a Grodziskia. Like, it's a domino effect, and that domino effect started with Threshold making this smoked light beer, like, what is it, like 3.4%? 3.4, yeah. 3.3, 3.4. The Cruz, you call it? The Cruz, yeah. And it's just a Grodziskia is how it's pronounced. If you're listening to this and don't have visuals, you might have seen this beer and called it a Grodzitzki. Or Grodzor. Or Grodz. Or Grodz. Yeah, all of those are wrong. It's pronounced Grodziskia. Grodziskia. Grodziskia, yeah. Yeah. Amazing. I learned from the best. Yeah. Well, you know, I think when you are, I mean, it doesn't hurt that he's Polish. Brewing a Polish, you know, a 700 year old Polish style beer. Yeah. Absolutely. And that was, yeah, it's a beautiful beer and we brew it. These days, and I've talked to other brewers, like I know Von Ebert does one. I know Living House does one. And we've all kind of like concurred. Steeplejack does one. You can get away with it, like one batch a year. Because of it's harder to sell. It doesn't move super fast, but we all want it to. It's been getting some momentum, which is great, you know, and we've been trying to do our parts. We've been trying to like, I do too, get some folks from Poland to help us out. You know, we, you guys did the Grodziskia event. What was that like in June? That was Portland Beer Week event? That was in May, right after CBC, because everyone was, like, all the Polish guys were like state side for CBC, so they came up right afterwards. That was such a cool event. That was cool. Just to listen to all these Polish hop growers and Polish brewers talk about this very specific style of beer. And then they even brought bottles of Grodziskia from Poland. So we got to taste that next to your Grodziskia. That's like the most fun part, right? Try to say Grodziskia like five times fast. Grodziskia, Grodziskia, Grodziskia, Grodziskia, Grodziskia. Doesn't work out too well. I call it, like, we call it Polish lawnmower beer, you know, because it's like low ABV, it's super bright and easy. It's smoky, but it's really delicate, you know? It's a very delicate smoke. It's just like this essence of smoke over this, like... The smoke kind of goes away after two, three sips. There's a wheat in the malt bill, too. It's 100%. It's 100% wheat. 100%. Well, there you go. Oak-smoked wheat. Yeah, oak-smoked wheat. It's so good. If you can find yourself a Grodziskija, go get it. Rude with Polish hops. Rude with Polish hops, too. Rumor has it that we might host the first Grodziskija Invitational Fest in Portland in a few months once the weather opens up. We kind of did that like tentatively last year, but we just, so speaking of like the guys that were in town for Grodziskija day back in May, they and more flew out just a week and a half ago for our Baltic Porter Invitational that we held at Threshold for Baltic Porter Day. That looks so awesome. It was the 10th annual Baltic Porter Day. These guys like flew in. There were like twice as many as I thought there would be. There would be like 10 of them. They showed up. They had graciously agreed to bring some Baltic Porter bottles, like special stuff, but I was picturing like maybe five or six bottles, so I really undersold it online. But they came and they brought over three dozen bottles, and not even cans, like bottles, right? They're very heavy, and so it was this incredible. We had 10 Pacific Northwest brewed Baltic Porters on tap. Awesome. From Oregon and Washington. From breweries around the Northwest. And then in the back of the brew house, our brew house, we had this like amazing table, like covered with really, really beautiful Baltic Porters. And we were so sad you couldn't make it. It was super fun to like compare Baltic Porters brewed here, and then stuff that the guys brought from Poland. Yeah, but that was the fun part. And that's incredible. And that goes back to like we were talking about 2025, like is 2025 the year of different styles making their reemergence? Like it's really fun to see you guys do a Baltic Porter Day, which is a style that like... Got a Baltic Porter fan on there. Applause from the live audience. Like to do a Baltic Porter Day, so rad. To do a Gruduskiya Day, don't threaten me with a good time. We might make a Gruduskiya. I could do that. Yeah, we're definitely going to bring it back. Like that is just a fun thing. It's a fun thing, I think, for the beer industry and the beer world. Like I'd encourage everybody listening, like branch out a little more. Try a little something different more often. Before COVID, there was a whole lot more diversity of styles out there. COVID kind of zeroed us in on what sells. It was all of- Everything's tight. Everything was tight. I hate to say that it was all about money, but it wasn't really all about money. It was all about survival. Yes, it was all about survival. It was all about, gosh, if I'm going to brew something, I'm going to put the ingredients into something. Do I put that into a Baltic porter that's going to take me four or five months to move through the whole batch, or do I put that into a West Coast IPA that's going to be in and out of here in 45 days? I mean, thankfully, styles like Grodziskia and Baltic Porter have a longer shelf life. They do? So yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, they're like low, you know, minimal hops. They do, but when you're in survival mode, you're not thinking about, you know, what's my tap list look like five months from now? Is there certain styles that are going to live longer on my tap list and I'll leave them up there for four months and that'll be fine. And I'm okay with that for that style. You know, you're thinking about, I'm going to make this batch of beer and I want to sell this batch of beer as quick as humanly possible. Like if you see them, you know that whoever brewed it was very, very, very passionate and persuasive about it, like with their whoever they're, you know, they're answering to. And we often take a risk. If they don't answer to anyone, then you just- Yeah, right. And you know, we're a relatively small brewery, you know? Yeah, 10 barrel, you know, our production is not even 1000 barrels. And we take risks because we hope that we can introduce customers to new styles. We can make an impact, impactful memories, and, you know, do something different. At the end of the day, 10 barrels of beer, for us, 7 barrels of beer, it's a drop in the bucket. Or the greater Pacific Northwest beer market, you know, for us to make a fresh hop brown ale is just, you know, a ridiculous thing to do and not something... You're not going to see the chutes do that on a 90 barrel system. You're not going to see, you know, bigger breweries do that on these giant systems. But as smaller breweries, we can kind of do that. So smaller breweries are also far more dependent on the foot traffic through their door. Like that, that means much, much more to a vice or threshold. It's hard, it's hard, it's good. A ruse, a trap door. All of us are smaller. Yeah. But I think, you know, it's like, because we're so dependent on taproom traffic, we work doubly extra hard to, you know, create a good environment, do interesting events. All the stuff that bigger breweries probably don't have to focus on. And I think it's a harder path. Like, it's, I can say that. Like, I have to, I do all of our events and it's like, it's relentless. It's like week after week after week after week after week. And it's, you know, it's a lot of planning. It's a lot of communication. But you get that like community because of it. Right. And that, that's the payoff. That's the payoff. I mean, yeah, I 100% agree with that. I think, you know, smaller breweries need to be leaning into creative events. Like, what can you do? I love something that gigantic brewing is doing next weekend. It coincides. They're always doing, yeah, they're my role model. Yeah, they're always doing some weird events. But it coincides with your anniversary event. But they're doing a hibernation liberation event. The whole idea of being like coming out of dry January, coming out of hibernation. Yeah. It's the hibernation liberation. And it's like a dance party. They're serving oysters, which is gross. You're not going to go. I'm definitely going to Threshold's anniversary party that day. Saturday, February 8th. I might go, I might stop by Gigantic and say, Hi, I'll have a beer and not an oyster. But we have an event here at Vice as well. That's me and Eldy and then one of our regulars who's done a lot of artwork on our cans, Omar. Cool. We all have a birthday, like in the next few days. So we're like days apart. Oh, thanks. Are you getting older? They're not as happy when you get older, you know. Every year you're just like, what, really? Oh, jeez. I still like my birthday. Anyhow. So Saturday the 8th is going to be? Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on. But like we just had this stupid idea to make it a triple birthday. Just like we're calling it Los Tres Amigos Birthday Party. And we're all- And now it's an event. And now you're going to- Now it's an event. It's going to be a busy day. It's going to be great. Yeah. Now it's going to be a fun day for people here. And that's just like the building, the community. That's not an event that beer dictated. It's not a beer release. It's not a beer thing. It's all about friends and- Yeah. It's about just getting friends together. Having people around and doing something fun. And I feel like there's a piece of that that's just, as people talk about market saturation, and it's like, if you think on any given night of the week, any given night of the year, how many people are going out and getting a beer or an alcoholic beverage within five miles of your location on any given night? How many are going out that night? So I think about that all the time, just within five miles of here, how many people are going out tonight, this bar, that bar, that bar, that bar, add them all up? It's thousands of people. Yeah. So what do I need to do to give them a reason to come here? To be a part of that decision when they're looking on their social media or checking their email or whatever it is and they're like, oh yeah, going out tonight, going to grab something, I'm just going to stop somewhere after work. What do you do to just give that extra reason? I think that's part of beer in 2025, is I've talked to other brewers that, brewers and owners of incredibly exciting breweries. I don't want to name names on this in particular, just because I don't want to reveal that someone's struggling. But they're breweries that I would say three and four years ago, people didn't have to try to sell beer. They made beer and it disappeared, and it just worked, and it was just, there's that terminology of shooting fish in a barrel. It was just like, man, just everything's happening, everything's coming in, everything's wonderful. And then all of a sudden, things change, the ecosystem changes, and people's habits change. People's habits change. Or they're just not as new as they were, whatever it is. Maybe it's a newness thing. But for whatever reason, you can't... I've seen it even with bottle shops and tap rooms. Again, won't name names, but places that just, for the last 20 years, I've known as, they have the best beer. They have the best tap list in Portland all the time. There's probably five places I could name in Portland that are my go-to places that I just know they always have the best tap list. I love them to death, but I'm seeing even those places are like, on this night of the week, we have this going on, on this night of the week, we have this going on, there's more events, there's more reasons to choose us, reasons to come out beyond the beer. Right. Because... Because they didn't used to have to do... They didn't used to have to do that. Yeah. Because they just had the best tap list. And they just knew that, and they were just full every night. And the beer used to be the primary player in the whole situation, and now the beer almost becomes a background for whatever you want to do that particular night, right? So you're looking for something like music or entertainment or maybe like a food pop-up or maybe for, I don't know, craft market or trivia night, right? Yep. Yeah. I mean, we've noted, even with our like, you know, weird span where we had a, you know, 2019 first year and then COVID was, you know, weird in terms of like assessing taproom traffic, but we're doing more events than we've ever done before because that's what it seems to take to like get people in the door consistently. And sometimes I worry about that a little bit, like, well, for a couple of reasons, but sometimes I worry, you know, like customers that aren't there for the, like they're the customers that literally, like preferred it the old way where you just come in, have a beer, nothing's going on. And those customers, I think, are a little turned off by constant events, you know? Like any given night, you're going to walk in and something is going on, you can't just like sit and have a beer in peace. And I worry about that, like losing that a little bit, but, you know. Yeah, you're not wrong about that. I mean, I'm literally like, that's hitting me all at once right now. And I think about like how we try to mitigate that. I know we've done some events here that have been really exciting because like one that I point to was our first year anniversary. This guy approached me and said, I want to do a VHS swap meet. And I was like... Which sounds cool. I thought it sounded stupid. I was like, you really think people are going to come out for that? Like, how's this work? And he was like, don't worry about it. I'll get it together. He's like, I've already, you know, like a couple days later, he was like, I've got eight vendors on board. It ended up being 10. And he said, I have this group on IRC. I have Chano. It's great. Yes. But this was like a customer that proposed this to you? Yeah. And then the customer like, did all the like work? Like, that's a gift. Yeah. That's a gift. He organized it and I was like, all right, you know, here's where you'll lay it out. We did it out on the patio and outside and everything that year. And I was like, it's all you, man. And I remember showing up here that day. We opened at 11 a.m. and I showed up at about 1045, expecting to just see all these vendors still like scrambling to set up or whatever, you know. Nope. All the vendors were locked in and there was a line out our door to get a beer at 15 minutes before we opened. And I was like, oh, this is a whole different thing. And what it did for us is it brought in a lot of people. If you know Vice Beer, you know we have like this 80s and 90s vibe and like this little den area in the back where you can watch VHS tapes and stuff. Like there was something that spoke to those people in such a cool way that like so many people I met that day that had never been here before that I see here once a week now. Like they're still here all the time. That was like, that was so unbranded for you. I don't know why you were... They're still bringing their VHS tapes and they're bringing their trinkets and goodies and putting it all over our space. And I'm just like, cool. I'm glad you found your spot. Like that's such a fun thing for that to become a community. And I think it's events like that. Like it's not the ones that you think are gonna go well. You put tons of work and energy into... Doesn't have to be trivia or bingo. Although our trivia nights, it took a while, but they took off. Yeah, ours too. Yeah. You just gotta keep going on it. Just gotta be consistent, yeah. But yeah, it's often those events that are... Personally, you feel passionate about and then people tend to follow that. We're doing a new one here. February 22nd, I got talked into having... It's a synthwave night. There's gonna be two synthwave artists. Like back here in the brew house. Yeah. Yeah, with the lights. I'm not even sure what that means. I don't know. It's... Well, I do know what it means. I know what the music sounds like. I do know what it means. I'm not exactly sure how someone like plays synth wave here. Is it more than just like pressing play on the computer and it just like goes? Oh, I thought it was pressing play on the computer. Yeah. I don't know. There's key words. I'm excited to see what that looks like. Yeah. Because it just... Yeah. You got like a strobe light back here or something. You got like a whole... You're Zeppelin. You have everything. Yeah. We have a light bar and a fog machine. Yeah. You have a light bar and a fog machine. Yeah. That's a lot. Yeah. There's some fun stuff. We had a fog machine once at the brewery, I remember now. We got a 911 call. We have one of our beer tenders here is Nathan. And Nathan, he's down at Little Vice a lot. He does $2 Tuesdays down there at Little Vice and does Friday and Saturdays there. What do you sell for $2? Like a lager? No.$2 Tuesdays? What do you sell? It's called $2 Tuesday. Oh, sorry.$2 Tuesday. Yeah. Because not exactly $2.$2. It's $2.50. Oh. It's $2.50, and it is one select beer each Tuesday. And from the beginning, I said, my promise is that we will never use this as a, like, kill the keg special. Because that's what I thought it was going to be. Nope. Nope. It is always going to be one of our newer beers. And what we do is we set aside one Sixtal. And that one Sixtal for that week is $2.50 a pint. On Tuesdays. On Tuesday, which used to be the worst night of the week. Right. Now, it is usually the best night of the week at Little Vice. And we sell, you know, it's a 11-ounce pour for $2.50. And even though it's $2.50 for that 11-ounce pour, we move that Sixtal. It's about 51 pours we get out of that Sixtal. And it ends up being almost double of what we would have sold that Sixtal for at Wholesale. Yeah. So we're still... So it's still pencils out. We're still selling that for, yeah. Plus people are there drinking various other, like... It's about community. It's about bringing the people together and everything. And, you know, this last week it was our Black IPA. And not everybody wants a Black IPA. They still come in. They have one or two $2 Tuesday beers. Geez, that's smart. But they go on to other things. I want to steal that a little bit. It's up for grabs. I'm not... I don't... I claim no ownership of it. You haven't trademarked $1? I have not trademarked $2. So, see, we don't have 250 pours, but we have pierogi nights on Fridays. You have what? Pierogi nights. Pierogi nights, yeah. So, that's what's been really bringing people into the door, too. Everybody knows pierogies. I was born and raised in Poland. Polish food is difficult to sell, and it doesn't look attractive most of the time. Wait. So, food as part of this, too. You bring up food. Yeah. We down at Little Vice are starting to do, this Friday is actually going to be our, well, we've done a food pop-up with Elvia Home down there. We're doing a barbecue food pop-up with Flavorsmith. Cool. And that's going to start a more regular Friday, Saturday, and Sunday food pop-up down there. A trend for 2025 that I see happening is more breweries going away from trying to be a restaurant and brewery and allowing someone else to be their kitchen. Yeah. I'm already seeing it happen with- I mean, I saw Gigantic just like about to transition. They are. Well, yeah, like they're, so they- Can we break some news too? Like a very limited small audience. You guys listening? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, Gigantic Brewing's Hawthorne location. Well, I saw their post about it. So I think it's like public knowledge, right? But like when they opened, it was their first location of three- You know who it's going to be? No, I don't know that. Oh yeah. I don't know that. Oh, go ahead. I don't think I'll get in trouble. Go ahead. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. It's Elvia Hone. Oh, wow. It's Elvia Hone who does our tacos and everything here. So they're like growing, they're like hiring, and they're like, wow, that's so cool. Elvia Hone, they're going to open their first part of March and do a grand opening event, March 15th, taking over. So Gigantic's like tried to run their own kitchen there and everything. Yeah. And it's a lot- It's harder than it looks. Yeah. When you're running a brewery, it's a lot to run a kitchen too. It's a whole other business, it's a whole other beast. Excuse me. And I think more and more are figuring that out. You look at Great Notion, used to run their own kitchen in their Northwest location, now it's Pizza Thief. Amazing. And everyone I talked about there is just so relieved to be able to once again focus just on the beer. Right. It brings the brewery back to focusing on the beer, and brings the... So I think a big trend of 2025 is we're going to see more breweries saying, hey, our kitchen is actually this other brand, this other thing lives here with us to do this. We're seeing it with Irrelevant is about to open up here in Vancouver. People are super stoked on that. That's a whole cool thing. You're going to see even more of that now. Particularly, so the state of Washington, this just came up this week. It's House Bill 1602 is a house bill that is proposing that liquor control rules are not tied to, so currently, I'll try to explain this as easily as I can. So currently, if, like with us at Vice Beer, we can sell our beer here ourselves over our counter. We cannot have liquor here in any way, shape or form, no hard alcohol, because we do not have a kitchen that serves at least eight menu items. House Bill 1602 is proposing that a kitchen operated by a different entity, but on the same property, can serve the purpose of being the kitchen for that whole property. Which just sounds obvious. It sounds like a no-brainer. But it takes legislation and like a change. Yeah, it's just one of those rules that's like, why is this a rule? It's always felt that way. It's always been like, why does this have to be a rule that we have to make our own food under this business license in order to do this thing when someone else is here with a different business license, doing exactly that. I'm sure it's like in the law where it has to be like a certain distance with proximity and like all of that, but. I almost feel like a lot of those lawmakers, they have no idea about socializing and spending time in special places like breweries and places that build community like our places. I'll tell you, we're lucky in Washington that one of our house representatives is Kevin Waters, who is one of the owners of Backwoods Brewing Company. He's done a lot of good things to, I mean, it's not just a vested interest. I mean, sure, he wants Backwoods to do well, I'm sure. I mean, they do their own food, so they're not even- Right, they do their own food. But he understands, he's been around the industry and he's seen that with different tap rooms and stuff where he's like, yeah, these people could have food trucks here and have their brewery here and all of those rules, particularly with a second location too. So with our Little Vice location, because we don't have our own food service there, we can't allow kids there. We're 21 and up there. That's not our choice, that's what's prescribed. If we had a food truck there that was tied in with us, and they're here when we're open, they're open, we would be able to allow kids there because there would be the food service that's required. I think that's what we're all facing. I saw Living House just introduced hard liquor in their spot. These days, it's like you're just trying to not eliminate any customer. We get customers coming in pretty often. They're like, oh, you don't do cocktails. We're going to go somewhere else. You just want to be in a space that you can welcome as many people as possible. Right. You want to give everybody that comes in with a group, that group may be led by two or three strong individuals who love craft beer, but with them is these other folks that beer is not their thing. How do you keep them there? How do you make sure they will come back next Tuesday or Saturday? Yeah. How do you make them part of the community? How do you welcome them in? I think that opens up a lot of potential avenues. I think that seeing more breweries, partnering with outside food vendors that become like these married brands, just like when people come here to Vice and El Viajon, it's about 50-50. There's people who come here for tacos that go, oh, it's at a brewery. Perfect. And then there's people that come here because, oh, I heard about this brewery. Sweet. They got some cool tacos. Great. It's a 50-50 thing that goes both ways. And I think you're going to see a lot more of that. We're already seeing that. I think it's going to get turned up. I think places that... You were saying, when you think about this place, you're like, the percentage of people that are going out on any given night, giving them a reason to come here. And there are so many reasons why people wouldn't come here. If you don't have food, if you don't allow kids, if you don't have hard... All these reasons could turn away a certain percentage. But if you have those things, then you're increasing your odds that they're going to make their way over. You're removing the barriers to them coming to this place. And so, yeah, I think that's a big one. I think we're also going to see more breweries and taprooms introducing... Maybe this is an unfortunate thing, but I think we're going to see more breweries and taprooms introducing hard alcohol, more cocktails on draft, or full bar kind of things. I think we're going to see more of that. And so that's actually an interesting thing for breweries, because maybe they don't want to hire a full-time mixologist and have to... Because once you do something, you're saying, we're going to do it well. So if any brewery does that, it means, okay, we've got to do it well. And the availability of amazing batch cocktails, straightaway cocktails, they're fantastic. And that's all you have to do is just like... I've seen breweries that do... They just do a really refined whiskey list. Yeah, oh yeah. That's their thing. I just focus on that. Or I can think of one that does a really, really well curated tequila list. That's their thing. You know, so it's like, you go there and it's like beer, beer, beer, beer, but we also have tequila. And we can do these things with tequila, but they're very... And they get known for that and then they're... Yeah, they're still trying to be known for something rather than like try to be everything. Do it all, yeah. Yeah, they're either the whiskey place or the tequila place with what they're doing. I've seen that a few times. I haven't seen that, but that's cool. I like that. We would do vodka, obviously. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah, we'd have like an amazing vodka selection. What is that thing called when we collaborate with Threshold? Which we've done three collaborations with Threshold, and each one has involved... Brewer's cocktail. This little brewer's cocktail that is like... So usually the tradition is to do a hot scotchie, it's usually called, which is hot wort. Yeah, it's hot wort, and we add some whiskey to it on brew day. Like that's common. Those guys are not what's happening. Very common. But we don't do that. That is everywhere. So we pull up to Threshold, and Threshold is doing... Mad dogs. Mad dogs. That's what it's called. We do mad dogs. And they're like chilled wort. You had ice, and you took the wort and you chilled it with ice. What else did you do? Well, it's like super cool looking shot. It's a tall clear shot glass, and it's got like the layers. So it comes from my early days when I was in college in Poland. Fun days, you're 18, you can actually drink and stuff. I don't think Polish brewers actually do this at their brewhouses, but we certainly, well, in Poland. Yeah. So long story short, it's a shot, and it's pretty much raspberry syrup, wort, good quality potato vodka from Poland, and a little bit of Tabasco sauce, and it's chilled. Tabasco sauce. Kind of. And I will say, and I will say, you said you wanted to talk about Whitney Burnside. Oh yeah, we didn't get to that. She doesn't do shots, but on the Brew Day collaboration that we did with them for our couples therapy release, she caved. She did it? And she liked it. Oh yeah. It's better than coffee in the morning. I would eat it, it blew my mind. You do it, and it wakes you up. This is like goose bumps. Raspberry syrup. It's good. Yeah. It sounds weird, but it's good. I promise. Because of the gravity, it ends with the syrup, and so you get the sweet and a little bit of Tabasco spice. So I don't think you even taste the vodka. It goes down really easy. It was crazy. It was so good. And in small amounts, it's like a chard glass. What is it, like three ounces? It's like three ounces. Yeah. It was so good. Spicy. We adjust spiciness level. I almost said that's my favorite part of brewing with Threshold, but no. These two people are my favorite part. They're a lot of great parts. Yeah. That's way better. You don't have to entice me with Mad Dog Shots to hang out with you guys. We still will. But they're really good. We mentioned Whitney Burnside. The first beer I drank here today was this couples therapy. Couples therapy is a sixth anniversary West Coast IPA that you guys did. It's official party releases for the anniversary party on the 8th. Awesome. Whitney and Doug, who opened Grand Fur two years ago, came over with their amazing daughter, Annie. We had a beautiful brew day. We along the way got into the, and you'll relate to this too, Michael and Bria. But it can be challenging to be married to your business partner. Hence the name couples therapy, because there's some trauma, there's some stuff. And but if you have couples therapy, you know, out now, you can make it last. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, Whitney and Doug are a dream, and Doug, who is a very, very great chef, a famous chef, renowned chef. He hails from Texas, does amazing things with meats, and he like shot up his hand. He like volunteered. He's going to roll his smoker out to threshold for the party. Oh, wow. Okay. And do meat. I wanted to say this in the very beginning, so I hope everyone listened through to the very end. I hope so. I hope so. He's going to roll his smoker all the way out for the party and do something special. Zuggies, smoked meats. Yeah. Saturday, February 8th. I've been telling you guys all night. Saturday, February 8th. The party. At the anniversary party for Threshold. That's awesome. Yeah. I'll be there. I know they will. I know they will. Yeah. It's going to be great. Yeah. I'm super stoked on that. Man, we've talked about a lot of things. I guess the only other thing which is kind of a downer. But 2024 was the first year since, I believe it was since 2008, that more breweries closed in the US than opened. And I see that as a trend that continues. I unfortunately see that as a trend that is going to eliminate two types of breweries. Breweries that don't have good brewing practices, and breweries that don't have good business practices. Those are the two things that tend to eliminate a brewery. And that, I think, is what we're gonna see more of. Or just bad luck, you know? That can happen. That can happen. I mean, we saw closures here in 2024 that were a result of you're at the end of your lease, and the landlord has decided to demolish your building to build a large mixed-use space that's gonna be, you know, retail on the bottom and eight floors of apartments above it. And so your one-story small space is not gonna be there anymore. That is, we have seen that. That would be bad luck. Or, you know, businesses that were based on conditions in, you know, before COVID, and now, you know, whether it's location or whatever, right, location that used to be good, now it's not so good. That's hard, too. Anyway, yeah, lots of reasons. We plan to, we plan to stick around. But, you know, but I will say, it's like, it's, it's, it's, it never gets easy. Right. And it only gets harder. Neither of us is printing money. No one's printing money. We're not, we're not going on wild, extravagant vacations and, and. I see the trend of small brewers taking over, you know, people passionate about doing what they do and, you know, supporting the community and. I've said it many times. I think that breweries are becoming what, we're about 20 years behind coffee. And if you look at what coffee was doing in the late nineties, early two thousands, it was becoming that community space that was suddenly on every corner. Like you, you, you used to have to look for a coffee shop and then, and then all of a sudden it was everywhere. You couldn't go to the grocery store and not, there's a coffee shop. Right. And, and I think beer is kind of becoming that where it's more readily available. But with that, there is going to be a requirement of quality from the consumer. I think the consumers are getting smarter to go, hey, this is good beer and this is not as good. And this doesn't quite justify my, my expenditure, my, my $7, $8 pint. Yeah. I don't feel good about it. That reminds me of, you know, 80s, 80s, 90s, you know, one summer hits, you know, and things become hot and, you know, there's a really good song and like goes away and nobody hears it. Right. You have those one-hit wonders of. Yeah. When you're wanderers. Yeah. I think, I think there may be some of those. You know, I think, I think there are, there are a lot of breweries. There is a saturation kind of effect. Yeah. But I think. I think everyone's surprised it didn't happen sooner. True. Because I've heard this, like, brewery bubble conversation was happening in, like, 2017. For like the last 10 years. For like the last 10 years. Oh, yeah. 2015 even. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, when's the brewery bubble going to hit? Yeah. And, like, no, we keep opening breweries. And I think it's the accessibility. And I think more breweries are going to be more concentrated on their neighborhood. Yeah. And what's? Smaller footprint, leaner. Totally. I think that's what's happening. How did Washington do last year with, like, closures? Closures? Tapro's and Brewers. So this is something that actually Washington Brewers, we went out to our Washington Brewery Summit, and I had this conversation with several different people. The idea that Oregon does a great job covering their breweries and talking about their breweries. Like, we have New School Beer, we have Willamette Week, we have the Oregonian, which actually the Oregonian just transitioned their beer writer out of beer writing, so they don't have a dedicated beer writer anymore. Which is another kind of indication. It's a little bit of an indicator. But all that said is that there are several entities that care enough about the beer industry in Oregon to track things and publish articles like, 2024 featured whatever the number was, here's the closures of 2024. We saw that article from New School not that long ago. 35, yeah. 35, yeah. We don't have that in Washington. No one has their thumb on it that closely. Part of that is I know in terms of licensed breweries, there's almost 200 more licensed breweries in Washington than there is in Oregon. So there is a lot more to try to keep your thumb on. So like Seattle trying to cover Washington, like Vancouver too is a lot. Yeah. Seattle trying to cover Vancouver or even Seattle trying to keep a thumb on what breweries are open or closed in Ellensburg, or way out on the peninsula in Port Angeles. These are areas that I could name a brewery or two in those areas, but I bet you there's eight to ten. I just don't know their names. There's a lot more in Washington. It used to be easier to keep track of breweries. Definitely used to be easier. I think there's more going on in Washington. The answer to your question is we don't know. We don't know what closures looked like in Washington, but if I had a little more time to think about, I could probably come up with a list of a number of them, but it wouldn't be comprehensive in any way. There's just so much going on. Portland has and continues to have some amazing beer coverage that to me is indispensable. I don't know where we'd be without New School, Andre, Oregonian, and his predecessor, and Warren, like so many folks. Jeff, Jeff Alworth. And then you even got, today, we talked about Gigantic's thing they have going on. They were on Coin6 today. They were on the morning show. Right. They've been hustling hard, honestly. I respect that. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, I love Ben Love's hustle. But the fact that there is something to go on, like, here in Washington, I don't even know, you know, I try to poke the Colombian. Yeah. And they write about us from time to time, but there's not like a dedicated food and beverage writer even. So to me, that's like, I mean, in losing Andre Diorga, that's concerning to me because the mass public is just, you know, absorbing whatever is out there. And if no one's telling them that beer is important and exciting, then they won't know. Right. And I think part of it is us as the beer community, like when you see something from a Seattle Times or an Oregonian or Willamette Week that relates to beer, share that, like that, comment on that. Like, let those publications know this community is here and we're thankful to get this news and this information. We like to have this. And of course, you know, as much as I make fun of Ezra, there's not, I've not seen better beer coverage from an independent source like that, or even a major source, a major funded source. I've just not seen someone care about this industry on that level, like them or hate them. Yeah, like props. Yeah, and I do, except on the internet. If you see me comment on Ezra's stuff, that doesn't count. It doesn't count. Yeah. I think he's like worse to you than you are to him online. So it's true. It's a two-way street. He digs at me 100 percent, but then he's here a lot. And dude takes me to Denver to go to GABF. So he does do that. There's love there. But I mean, it takes passionate. I mean, when I think about Jarek and I or like Doug and Whitney, like we're waking up every morning. All we're thinking about is threshold. That's all we think about until we fall asleep. And that's why the business can succeed. I think that's what it like honestly takes for a small operation like us. And Ezra goes way back in the industry. You do too. And I think it's the same way for both of you. And that's why, and it shows, you know, and we're so lucky to like have such a passionate community of beer people and lovers. And I think that's what's going to make 2025 great is that community. The community of folks that love beer, that are still excited about new beers when they drop, that are still excited about new openings, they're excited about new food pop-ups, new food kitchens, moving into new breweries. Like all of those things adds up to like that passionate community is what's going to keep this scene alive. And vibrant. Agreed. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. Dude, this is awesome. So good. It's fun. We're probably gonna talk more, but. We love beer. For now, that was it. That was Overthinkr.