351: The Big Friendly Takes A Down-To-Earth Approach to Award-Winning Saisons and Barrel-Aged Stouts

Explicit content warning

03/22/24 • 71 min

Will and Joe Quinlan, brothers and cofounders of The Big Friendly, just make beer. Will loves saison so they make a few saisons every year. Joe loves barrel-aged stout so they make a few of those every year. Their distribution is minuscule so their production is very small, but they do take a meticulous approach to beer making despite their small size.

In this episode, the brothers each recount their approach to the beers they make, and in the process they discuss:

building mixed fermentation cultures out of separate stock strains
resting and conditioning saison
using flavor- and aroma-forward New Zealand hops in saison
tuning sourdough yeast for beer fermentation
barrel-conditioning saison
editing malts in barrel-aged stouts

And more.

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In this episode, the brothers each recount their approach to the beers they make, and in the process they discuss:

building mixed fermentation cultures out of separate stock strains
resting and conditioning saison
using flavor- and aroma-forward New Zealand hops in saison
tuning sourdough yeast for beer fermentation
barrel-conditioning saison
editing malts in barrel-aged stouts

And more.

Support Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

Previous Episode

Episode 350: Kelly McKnight of New Belgium Highlights the R&D Behind Some of Craft’s Biggest Beers

Kelly McKnight could have done a lot of other things—she was a sponsored pro skateboarder and snowboarder in her younger years, and she studied pre-med at Harvard—but she found such solace and relief in brewing that she changed paths to brew professionally. Now, she’s lead R&D brewer in one of the beer world’s most successful innovation programs, using all of tools at the their disposal to understand flavor and expression in beer.

In this episode, the New Belgium brewer touches on:

bench testing new ingredients
the process behind reinventing Fat Tire
chemical analysis of hops and hop blends
using natural flavors in IPA
process engineering to move ideas to large-scale production
exacting dry-hop automation
offbeat fruits that work well in beer

And more.

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Next Episode

352: Chris Lohring of Notch Wants You to Brew More Distinctive Lager

Notch founder Chris Lohring loves the fact that more craft brewers are embracing lagers—but he has some strong opinions about the best way to brew them.

“‘Crispy boys’ don’t exist,” he says. “Lagers aren’t dry. Clean lager yeast is boring to me.”

Refinement and distinction are his goals, not minimalism, and he and his team use all the tools in the brewer’s toolbox to achieve them—such as adjusting mash schedules and malt bills to build body in low-ABV beers; moving lager mid-fermentation from quasi-open fermentors to conicals before later moving to horizontal tanks; reducing and timing decoctions to fit the goals of individual beers; and considering the impact of mash rests on fermentability, among many other things. It’s not one thing, after all, that makes a lager distinct—in his words, “there’s no magic bullet.”

In this episode, Lohring discusses:

why Czech pale lager is a category, not a style
how variable processes in the cellar lead to different expressions of diacetyl
manipulating a mash schedule to build body and character with more expressive lager yeasts
what decoctions do and don’t do for lagers
using small percentages of crystal malt in Czech-style pale lagers
fermenting with no head pressure, and skimming to optimize flavor and hop character
the difference between černé pivo and tmavé pivo
using American hops in Czech-style lager

And more.