fermentation is a pretty intense process in actually seeing fermenting liquid is pretty gnarly. It just looks like somebody's got a blender turned on inside of a tank. And all that is is the yeast eating and putting out the alcohol on co2, and then it propels them. So then they're pushing around, and it's just a big swirling tank, that if you have a delicate flavor that you add in before that fermentation, it's just gonna get driven off. It's gonna ferment out
from a humble homebrew beginning then gaining fans at Bruegel a beer festival and eventually opening a brewery business. Today's guest turned a hobby into a career. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm your host, Steve fast. This podcast is recorded on location at little beaver brewery in Bloomington, Illinois. Right here in the taproom, we will learn about what it takes to make a good beer, and also how a dream turned into a reality.
I'm Chad beavers, and I make beer for a living at little beaver brewery in Bloomington, Illinois. And for Heartland, I teach some fun classes that mostly involve beer.
making beer for a living is probably a lot of people's dream. But you just can't decide you want to do it one day and get there and he started out. It was a hobby, right? That's correct.
And I would like to say that I believe more people would be interested in a job of drinking beer making beer. We hear that one all the time.
I bet so So when did you get to the point where, you know, some people might play guitar for hobby, but they know they'll never do it for a living Sure. Or they know if they do, it'll be pretty hard to do. When did you get to a point in your brewing where you thought this is what I want to do this is more than just I want to make good beer in my garage or wherever you need it. And I want to turn it into something that I do for a lot
of it came down to really just a comment that my wife made. There was in the background for a while I wanted to make a brewery, you know, start a brewery and I thought it'd be fun. I mean, who wouldn't, but it was it was just a hobby. It was a lot of fun. I serve my beer at festivals where I could I shared it with people in line to buy beer and other things. I traded it with people all over the country. And then when I got in into it pretty far, I started entering homebrew competitions. And I was in 2015, when I was a finalist and a couple of really big ones, one of them for Sam Adams. They used to do a contest every year where they would select three winners and they would brew all three of those beers. And they'd put them out two beers per six pack once a year release. And so I ended up being a finalist in that contest. And they flew my wife and I out to Colorado, we got full access to the Great American Beer Festival. I got to stay in the biggest hotel suite I've literally ever seen. And then I didn't win. And it was one I didn't win when she said Well, if you ever want to start a brewery, now's the time, obviously people, people like your beer. So I never really pushed it because I didn't want little girls at the time. They were very young. And I didn't want to be absent. My wife's a nurse, she works full time I worked full time we didn't have money that I could just quit my job and start doing this. So it was going to be a moonlighting project. And that's really what kick started. It was my wife saying
you can do this? Yeah, I think it'd be hard to do something like that without some family support.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, let's go back before you started making really good beer, right? Because obviously at that point, if you're in the Sam Adams contest, you're making something pretty good. Sure. How many batches of bad beer did you make? Before you got something that started to be good,
I didn't really have a whole lot of bad batches. Mainly just because as I was learning, it was good to almost drink your mistakes, you know, you want to learn from your mistakes, you got to you got to kind of drink up to them. But also a lot of the hobby was it was just as much the making of the beer as it was the drinking it. And when it came to the consuming of it, I love to share it. So that's where a lot of the different festivals and things are come in. And there's a local homebrew club that I was really active in that I bring lots of beer with. Anytime I was invited to a party, you better believe I was wheeling up my cooler with the taps right in the front of it. And which was obviously always the talk of the party because who wheels up their own to tap Kegerator you know what a lot of that stuff just continuing to brew, I probably made, I don't know, half a dozen batches that I just didn't, didn't like. But then as I got into actually serving at festivals several years later, that's when I started learning that something that I don't like somebody else might love. And that was one of the biggest eye openers to me was just serving a beer that I'm like, I don't really like this, but maybe somebody else will and seeing people's face light up but it's one of the best beers they've ever tried. And here I'm thinking it's, you know, garbage to me just because I don't like it. So there's a lot that I've learned over Over the years what that too is, maybe I don't like it, but maybe somebody else does.
So did you find that when you first started to brew, was there a certain style that you gravitated towards more?
Yeah, absolutely. When I first got into brewing, I did some really simple styles. But when I started making my own recipes, I was really into hoppy beers. So this would have been, I don't even want to try to date myself, but probably 1415 years ago, and where there was IPAs out there, but they weren't nearly of the popularity they've been in the last five to seven years. So I was really an IPAs. You know, I like to tell people I was into hops before they were sexy. And now everybody's, you know, hoppy beers. IPAs are the by far the largest segment in all of craft beer. But then, when I was working on opening the brewery, I was really in the stouts. So I brewed really big stouts all the time started working a lot on barrel aging. Um, so barrel aging. stylets is taking barrels that used to hold whiskey or bourbon or other spirits, emptying those out and then filling it with beer. And then that beer is aged anywhere from six months to a couple of years, depending on what you're going for. So,
so going back to when you were just getting started, you said you didn't make a lot of bad batches before you started to get it to the point where you're competent, at least to share shirts. So what is it that when you're teaching these classes about how to how to start over? What do you start to tell these students that so what's the important things, the common mistakes that people might make?
So honestly, a lot of it is just really paying attention to what you're doing, you know, reading the directions, and honestly, one of the things I go through and all these homebrew classes are, follow the directions of the beer kit that you bought. And I do recommend people buy a beer kit, the beer kits are made by big companies, small homebrew shops, everybody in between anyone can make their own recipe. But when you buy a made recipe by a reputable company, they're also giving you a complete recipe instruction guide for the whole thing. And with the refinements that have taken place in the last 2530 years for home brewing, not only from the farming side of the green, the way the varieties that are growing, how they're molting, these varieties to the yeast, just the the physical beer making equipment, if you follow those directions, and you have the right equipment, you're probably going to make a pretty decent beer. And that's where when I say I don't really I didn't make a lot of bad beers when I started. If I drank them now, I'd probably think they were garbage. But at the time, you know, I made it I was and I was also learning, you know, there's a lot of stuff that now I could pick up a beer and taste it that I didn't know then then I was just like, wow, it's it's working. You know, and that's a lot of what I think people kind of go for sometimes early on, too.
You mentioned just a couple of minutes ago that you make some things and even necessarily like it but then you learned that it wasn't really for your palate, but other people did like that. Sure. Did, you have to kind of train your palate to get to identify certain things with in the beer to see like if you know your people don't whine a lot, it's about balance and sure has this or that and the taste like grass or something? And is did you have to kind of figure that out as a brewer. And then so you know, even if it's not your cup of tea or tea or you know, sample of beer, that it's still a good version of whatever you were trying to do.
Yeah, and I didn't really know that until I found out other people like those styles. So I started brewing over 20 years ago. So the level of knowledge that's out there now books, videos, publications, Instagram didn't exist back then. And I guess Facebook probably didn't either. But it was just one of those things. Were looking at all the different information I had, it would be like, Oh, okay, this is what I think I'm tasting. I mean, there's been homebrew books out there that will describe off flavors, different things. I was also very fortunate because ever since I started brewing, I got involved with the local homebrew club. And with that local homebrew club, you had a group of other people who had been brewing for a long time and could help you identify and put a descriptive actual name with what I'm, for instance, I might try something be like, it just tastes off to me. Like if I was a new Brewer like, you know, I tried to make this beer that tastes like Blue Moon. And mine kind of does. But there's something weird there. And if you're just trying to read stuff and figure it out, it's really hard to take words into tastes, so aromas and you know, flavors and things. So if you're standing with a group of four people that have been brewing for a long time, and they can taste it, it's really easy for somebody who knows, especially some of the really common off flavors that can occur in beer to just tell you right there. Oh, that's this, it's, it's this, this or this, you know, and the more of the kinds of tools that are available when you start to learn those things, then you can say, oh, okay, now Now I know you One thing I couldn't describe it, but now that I know what it is, yeah, that makes sense. And now I know how to fix that on my next batch.
You mentioned following the directions, and I think with a lot of people aren't and following directions as patients. So how long does it take typically just for a homebrewer? Make a batch of beer? And are there things where people get impatient and they're not doing something the right time? Or they trip themselves up?
Yeah, absolutely. So the actual brew day will be different length of time, depending on your style. But the fermentation timeline is pretty consistent, regardless of the batch size. And in some cases, regardless of the beer style, but anywhere from what I tell people is expect about four weeks from the day you brewed it until it's ready to drink if everything goes perfect. And that's for a home brewer commercial beers. I mean, there's some beers that you can push out in seven days from grain to glass seven days later. And that's perfect for that beer. And there's some beers that take a really long time. But I'd say on average for a home brewer, they should look and you know, from the day they made it to the day they can drink it for two to six weeks is going to encompass most of the different styles of
beer. You know, one of the things that's interesting about brewing, at least as it's been exhibited by the stuff that you do, little lever and and even the things you were doing back when you were entering this contest is you say it's a lot of it's following the directions. And when I'm baking a cake, I follow the directions just kind of turn out the same way. Sure. But with brewing, then you got creativity. Sure. When did you start to get to a point where you are brewing where you're like, Okay, now I'm gonna start messing with things, I'm gonna start to get creative. What was the first things you started to do to, to push to change it a little bit more from the basics into something new,
trying whatever sounded good. My first foray in into like, really getting wild was a Mango Habanero beer that another brewery did. So I found inspiration for a long time. And I still do to this day, from other breweries, and I tried a Mango Habanero beer, which when I heard I was like, I want to try it, because I'm so intrigued, but there's no way that's going to be good. And I was blown away so much that I decided I wanted to brew it so and we actually make a Mango Habanero beer here now that I get requests for all the time. So because it's unique, it's different, sweet, but spicy, it's got a lot going on for it. But that was the very first time and then I started getting into coconut a lot stouts. In general, when you brew a lot of stouts, they're the most like, they're the best Canvas for playing with different flavors, because it's such a robust beer in itself that it can handle throwing a lot at it, you know, if you take a really light beer, and you add something to it, it's going to overpower that light beer. And it's way easy to just wash it out. And they don't always blend together. But when you're picking your flavors, and you come up with the right style, it's just a fantastic background. I also think that stouts to me are more of like a sipping beer like to savor and enjoy it. And a lot of these ones are, you know, 10 plus percent alcohol. So if you go trying to drink those, like you do a light beer, you're going to be, you know, knocked out by the end of the night. So it really just that that's what I found was Mango Habanero, and then got into coconut. And, you know, now we do everything, there's really almost nothing that we don't play around with so
well. So and this might be a very basic question. But as a consumer, I don't necessarily know if you want a stout to have some coconut. You can use actual coconut. Do you use Trump that helps? Or do you think coconut and this or that? Yeah. How do you start to figure out because just throwing stuff in that and at some point in the process isn't necessarily going to give you that flavor, right?
Correct. Absolutely. It's a very, very good point. A lot of flavors are really light and delicate. So if you try to take a light and delicate flavor and infuse it into a strong beer, like I'm gonna say peach, Peach is a very delicate flavor. You don't think that when you're eating a peach, because you think like, wow, it's juicy in this this amazing flavor. It's so intense, but it's not backed up by anything else. It's just that peach. So now imagine adding that peach with anything else, you know, take that peach juice and add it to anything and now really think how is that going to react. And that's what makes it a really delicate flavor. So if you add peach to a light beer, they're gonna blend well and that pizza is going to stand out. If you try to add a delicate flavor like that peach to a stout or a very robust beer, you're not even going to notice that it's there. It's going to be completely covered up.
So when in the brewing process, do you start to add things? Yes, because I imagine you got to be very careful in that process when you do it, how long you do it and how much you add so
yep. 100% So it really depends on what it is you're adding as far as when you add it how much you add, but the when you add it is probably the biggest thing So fermentation is a, it's a pretty intense process. And actually seeing a fermenting liquid is pretty gnarly. I mean, it's, it just looks like somebody's got a blender turned on inside of a tank. And all that is is the yeast eating and putting out the alcohol and co2, and then it propels them. So then they're pushing around. And it's just a big swirling tank, that 100 level, it's really neat. And I encourage everybody to look at it, you have a clear glass or plastic container, and you should keep it covered a lot of sunlight and stuff, but take whatever cover off turn on the light every once in a while and just watch it. And it's just remarkable. But a reason why I say that is if you have a delicate flavor that you add in before that fermentation, it's just gonna get driven off, it's, it's going to ferment out, yeast eats sugar, so any sweet flavors are going to be eaten and gone from. So that's why we don't add our fruit in the beginning, we add our fruit towards the end. But then. So again, it all depends like hops are added in the boil process at the end of the boil process. During the fermentation after the fermentation, all the different ingredients you use can be added in any one of the steps, it just really depends on what you're going for some flavors will add several times throughout the process, if it's something that we really want to be present, while they're things like the peanut flour that we use, when we make peanut beers, we add that into the boil so that it's fully blend it in and mixed in. I mean, it's if you think of peanut butter, it's not a light, delicate flavor like peach, you know, and so that one can hold up very, very well, we found that we have issues getting it to fully dissolve if we don't get it in there before the fermentation. So trial and error research talking to people, you know, my business trips are usually beer festivals. And a lot of times the night before or the night of or at these festivals. There's lots of other brewers that we hang out and talk with. And that's a great place to learn all kinds of new information because now you're talking to your peers. And you know, I met a guy the other day I was in a cornfield, you know, a week ago at a festival a week and a half ago, and I met one guy, I've never met him before. And I tried one of his beers. And I just started asking him some questions. And five minutes later, this guy told me every single step throughout the whole entire thing. And to the processes. He told me I'd never heard of anybody trying and made absolutely complete sense. But I was blown away. Like, I've never heard of anybody doing that. That's genius. So it's kind of neat, where you can learn from other people.
Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that. Because, you know, since you opened the brewery. But even before that, it seems like this industry and microbreweries. It's just gone. It's insane. And now there's so much variety, and so many people making things in so many places that have opened up that I'm happy to hear at least when you're meeting with other people they're open about it is not hyper competitive. Yeah, it is, but at least not within certain servers. Yeah,
it's definitely competitive. But it's also the old adage, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats. If you think about 10 years ago, there wasn't nearly as many people that were in the craft beer is now there's people that may never have a craft beer in their fridge at home. But if you ever asked them, Do you want to go visit so and so brewery, they're going to jump out and say Yep, absolutely. I mean, it's not always just because of the beer, a lot of it is kind of the culture. I mean, the lifestyle around it, you know, they're usually kind of laid back, you know, and a little bit more chilled. And maybe, you know, your average chain restaurant and things like that. And there's not a lot of chain breweries, so most of them are independent businesses. And a lot of people really like that, especially in this day and age. How do
you determine how do you keep it fun? I know you were very enthusiastic, you're talking about learning new things from people trying new things? How do you keep it interesting for you as a brewer? Or is it like, I'm a business owner, I want to find out what people like and how often to change it over. And that's really all I care about. If I want to make a beer that kind of just appeals to me, but I'm not sure if it doesn't work. It might not necessarily do that. Where do you find that balance to do that?
Our customers, honestly, when I mean, I'm still here almost every day, just running into people in a hallway or outside or you know, walking past them in the tap room. And just People tell me all the time that hey, I tried this beer and it blew me away. This is amazing. Or when are you going to have this beer again? Or hey, I was at such and such brewery and I try this have you ever thought about doing a style like that? Just those are the kinds of things that I love to see that the customers are engaged that they love to be able to give some input and stuff like that. And there's beers that I've re brewed specifically because people see me here in the ass and sometimes it's every single time they'll see me and that might only be ever The other week, but I'm like, you know, there's one person that's super vocal about loving that beer. And then I'll like, let's do it again. And then that wasn't the only person that was very excited to see it. But there's just so many options. Now you, you know, with variety, and I, kind of learning new stuff is really what drives me. So we're always looking at, you know, oh, here's a new yeast product that's on the market, or a new hot product, or here's this new equipment that supposedly can do this, let's look into that. Innovation is kind of a big thing for me is, I've never been one to say, well, this is how it's done. And this is how you do it. It's always like, hey, there's other ways to do it. And it just depends on, you know, what your goal is, people always ask, you know, like, do you patent your recipes and things, and you cannot patent a recipe, the reason being, is there's more than one way to get from point A to point B. And it's known, you know, at least at our government level at the patent office, because I might be able to make a beer that tastes exactly like yours. And we could use completely different ingredients. And it's just there's that much different varieties and ways of doing things. And as a homebrew level in our club, I know, we did this a few times where several people would brew the exact same recipe. And then everybody would taste them all side by side, not not a contest to see who did it better or worse, or whatever. But just to show how much variety there can be from system to system, or you use this company's green, I use this company's grain, but they're called the same thing. You know, just switching out a yeast, you can make a completely different beer, just using a different yeast, changing a hop. I mean, there's all this different stuff that we kind of set up ourselves for the constant change in variety, just because I really liked that. And that's a lot of what drove me to homebrewing in the first place. And in craft beer, there's an app called untapped, which is hugely popular mine, a lot of people a friend of mine, Jesse would always tell me that he got into craft beer, because he found that app untapped. And it felt like an adult video game. He's like, you get like ribbons and medals and awards and mean, you can tag your friends and your friends can, you know, tap you and it's just a social media for beer drinkers, but
no interest in finding Pokemon. But if I can find some beers and drink, I mean, yeah,
and those are all all the different things that people are looking for is fun, variety, and new and we have fun with variety.
So if you ever in the process of creating something or trying something, have you ever had any happy accidents, anything that you didn't intend to do? Or it turned out different? You're like, oh, wait a minute.
Yeah, I know that there is I'm just kind of drawing a blank and let they'd be. Well, for instance, we just there was the bn nut fest, and that's festival whatever it was downtown Bloomington a few weeks ago, and we did a beer for that. And it was all I could think of was peanut butter and jelly. And there's a lot of a lot of breweries have done peanut butter and jelly beers, but they're usually from what I've seen stouts or Porter's dark beers. And then it's the jelly portion is usually strawberry. I don't know about you, but I grew up on you know, it's all Concord grape, as you know, grape jelly is jelly to me. And so I thought, well, let's just see if we can make a beer that tastes like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So we used to believe it was a wheat, the wheat beer base that I went with on that. And it came out tasted exactly like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And that was you know, it wasn't really accident, you know, and I've had that conversation with people that just lucked out, and it came out perfect. And they always tell me, it's not luck. It's that, you know, it's that experience. It's that learning. But when I actually teach the heartland homebrew classes, there's one thing that I always mentioned. And that's when I first started brewing, I was reading books, I was about the only information a few online forums and things at the time, too. But I was reading a book and the guy was talking about how he could pretty much sip a beer, drink a beer, and then turn around and create a recipe and brew a beer that tastes very similar. And then after a few tries identical to that beer, and I always, you know, I just wanted to call Yeah, right, you know, okay, sure, buddy. And then found a time when I started getting into contests and stuff where I would drink something from another brewery and say, I want to brew something like this. And then it would come out very, very close. And then that's when I kind of realized like, Wow, that guy who wrote that book actually knew what he was talking about. And I've now progressed to that level that I thought was a farce and there's no way anyone could do that 15 years ago and now here I can then recreate it and and honestly go a step further and say not even this is the beer I want to make but this is the flavor that I like the peanut butter and jelly and say how can I make a beer that tastes like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? When I say happy accident because it happens on the first try a lot that I'm just like wow If I won't change anything on this recipe, this is what I was going for. But I approved hundreds and hundreds of batches and all kinds of different systems and sizes and styles and everything. So it's that collective experience and just constantly learning to I brewery podcasts that I listened to constantly. I get newsletters and publications, and you know, everything all the time. So I don't stop learning. I, you know, every time I hear somebody did something different with beer, like what, how, who would? How can I learn more? And is that something that we should try? Or, or not?
And you said, You've been doing this for about 15 years or so
I've been brewing over 20 Now, but purposely that story, it would have been? Yeah, about five years professionally.
The thing about that is that I think a lot of people would have problems, like getting themselves motivated. It sounds like you were constantly motivated to, to just move forward in the into the things you can do. There was enough variety.
Yeah, it's fun, you know, and homebrewing, it was awesome, because I can do whatever I wanted and give it away to anybody. Now I can do whatever I want, and people come and buy it. So it's, it's pretty awesome to work
out like that. Yeah, well, first thing I want to ask you about this, this is more on the business side of things, because there are probably lots of great brewers out there that can make some great here. But they might not necessarily have the business sense. I know you have a business background, you have a marketing background. Sure. How long of a journey was that to figure out basically, as you're building a brand, right? Absolutely. How difficult was there to get it to the point where you could set yourself apart from all those other ones.
I was in a really unique situation, because I was doing that not knowing I was doing that all those years that I was serving my beer at beer festivals. And I was sending it to people around the country just trading homebrew that I was showing up at festivals and other states and just sharing beer and wine with people. I call myself little beaver brewery just because that was me. I had my own brewery on untapped. So when people tried it, and they liked it, they could check into it. And that was really unique then for home brewers, I would imagine a lot more of that kind of stuff now. But when I would serve at Burleigh, there was a lot of people that were blown away that I wasn't a brewery, where can I buy your beer? This is my favorite beer of the day. I'm sorry, like I'm making my garage and like, so can I buy it for me like no, I legally cannot sell and therefore I don't. And it was just one of those things that I was just kind of doing it all along. And not even knowing that, that what I was doing then was going to benefit me in the future, I would give the advice to anybody that if you think that there could be the chance that you want to go down that pathway, then do something similar, you know, just come up with some way to brand yourself. And that's really what it comes down to is just branding yourself. And then I think that's what worked out pretty well for us as I branded myself in the community. And that's who I was and what I did. And so when I kind of switched gears from one business to the next, it just kind of flowed well, I felt like I had respect in the community. So it wasn't like, Who's this guy coming out of nowhere? You know, it's like, oh, wow, that's awesome. Let's go support it.
I guess one of the things I should ask is, so you teach a couple different classes. One of them was introduction to homebrew and the other one is about this is kind of my class because I'm too lazy to actually brew beer, when I could just go get it. Yeah. But it's kind of how to enjoy beer in a different way. And it's the parent.
Absolutely. So I think the food and beer pairing is probably been one of the most popular ones that I've done now. And it's I I've kind of been using it as a I'm telling you this unofficially, of course, Steve. But kind of a roadmap to get into doing some beer pairing dinners here, that will encompass the whole entire facility. But it's a really big undertaking for us because we've never done that kind of thing here. And we have a pretty busy restaurant when we're busy. So trying to find ways i i ultimately did it because working with Heartland faculty, we thought it'd be a fun class. But after the first one, I saw the response. The second one, I saw the response that people they still run into everybody's that's attended, it's really kind of become a regular customer here. So I've been excited about that and thought I need to build on this. How can we get get some more people here, but it's really just designed if you want to come out and have fun, and then learn a little bit about beer and how it can play a role with food. My I always throw in a bad example, the last two times, everybody said my bad example actually was really good. And that bad example is trying to take a very, very flavorful beer and a very, very flavorful food. So you take like a loaded supreme pizza, and a big stout with cherries and cinnamon or whatever in there. It's really flavors that may clash. Whereas there's a lot of ways that you can I talked about delicate flavors earlier with the peach and stuff. You know, if you had had a peach beer, do you really think that would go well with chocolate fudge cake? Probably not, you know, it's just kind of learning a lot of those different things but ultimately, I think The students that come for it are just having a really good time. Everybody seems to make a couple new friends, man and they all walk away having a lot more knowledge than they did just different level of respect for beer and how many different intricate things come in to creating it really. So I think it's been a good class and definitely one that I'm excited to see stick around.
Well, Chad, thanks for having us out here today. It will be February.
Anytime Steve thanks
Chad V versus a brewer and founder of little beaver brewery. He also teaches brewing and beer education classes for the continuing education department at Heartland Community College. For more interviews about education, entrepreneurship, and more. Follow random acts of knowledge on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you found this. Thanks for listening
