Blankemeier, Rick. Interview January 3rd, 2025.

00:00:00Judith Downie: And that, and send that to you later. So. Okay. Well, Rick, if you will start by introducing yourself and what you do now.

00:00:06Rick Blankemeier: Oh, okay. Um, yeah. My name is Rick Blankemeier. I am a, right now I'm the quality, one of the quality engineers at a place called Hydronautics, which makes reverse osmosis filtration membranes.

00:00:20Judith: Ah, So you're still kind of in consumable beverages in a way.

00:00:22Rick: A little bit, yeah. In like the water side of things,

00:00:25Judith: Uhhuh.

00:00:25Rick: Like we make desalination elements. And, stuff for wastewater treatment and, uh, dairy processing. That's like one of our big things we do is make elements to separate the curds and the whey in cheese making. So, but we do sell elements to breweries too. And, like Belching Beaver, I know buys them and Stone does for all their reclamation operations that they have there still. So, yeah we're pretty happy about that.

00:00:53Judith: Yeah. So are they any of them using your systems for the water that they're using to brew with? Or is it more for their reclamation?

00:01:01Rick: Uh. Both. Yeah. So we have different elements that, you know, perform differently. The--one of our elements is definitely better for just--brackish--we call it brackish solutions. It's basically filtering city water or even just like slightly heavier salt water. But then we have desal stuff, which they don't use, but then we also have wastewater reclamation elements that are more specialized for that. And like high pH environments.

00:01:30Judith: And certainly something that we need around here. With our abbreviated waters supplies, which, you know, yeah. I've grown up with.

00:01:37Rick: Actually most of our clients are customers are in the Middle East and India. Actually. It's like, where a lot of it's being used. We actually sell the desal elements to the Gaza Strip's desal plant for drinking water for all the Gaza folks there. So--

00:01:53Judith: And there's probably a lot of that that's been blown up and ruined and--

00:01:56Rick: Yeah. Well, they try not to target infrastructure like that Because it also feeds drinking water into other parts of Israel too. So, I think it'll, yeah--

00:02:06Judith: Yeah. So there's some self self concern going on there.

00:02:09Rick: A little bit.

00:02:10Judith: Oh, man.

00:02:10Rick: Yeah. It's a pretty bad situation over there.

00:02:12Judith: Well, but that certainly is, is keeping you busy.

00:02:15Rick: Yeah, no, absolutely.

00:02:16Judith: So anyway, well, we'll--we're gonna start delving into your past.

00:02:19Rick: Okay.

00:02:19Judith: And of course, focusing on the brewing industry. But first, where are you from and what's your educational process or path been?

00:02:26Rick: Oh, okay. Yeah. Um, so I, my, both my parents were in the military, so we moved around a fair amount, but when I was younger, if I was gonna say like where I'm from, it'd be Colorado. And we settled down in Aurora when my parents were stationed there, and then they retired. Yeah, so we--I stayed there from basically ages, uh, six until we moved out here for work. But, uh, they--my education path's pretty similar, but I got in, I went to the University of Colorado at Boulder, and I did a combination master's, uh, a bachelor's/master's degree in chemical engineering with an emphasis on bioengineering. So I did a lot of, uh, actually it was specialized in tissue engineering. And then once I graduated, decided not to do anything with that and went into natural gas. Um, and so I did a natural gas plant and worked, you know, to set up a process for turning natural gas into hydrogen for fuel cell cars. And also for other hydrogen needs that a lot of other, you know, applications in the petrochemical business. So we'd sell hydrogen to other plants for that. And then, uh, I hated it. And so, my wife and I, well, my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, got me a homebrew kit and, uh, when I was kind of miserable and really enjoyed that. So I found a job out here, and that's when we moved out here in April of 2010. To work at Stone. And I started as a brewer and worked my way up to the quality manager there.

00:04:05Judith: Do you think it was advantageous to work as a brewer before you went into quality management?

00:04:09Rick: I think so. Yeah. Um, brewers, at least when I worked with them, I'm not sure if that's the same now, but they definitely respected you more if you worked on the floor. They called the office people, carpet walkers, a lot. And, uh, which they're--a lot of 'em are very necessary for the operation of business. But in terms of the amount of respect, they definitely respected anyone who was, you know, worked on the floor at least, and a recent amount of time, so like, and plus I had to be on the floor a lot, you know to help out with certain things. And, you know, I still enjoyed brewing, so I helped out with brewing a fair amount too. During that time.

00:04:51Judith: So going back to your home brewing, do you remember the first beer that you brewed?

00:04:57Rick: I think it was a red ale. It was just a, it was a, just a kit that came with, I think, their home brew kit that my wife got me. And so I brewed that up and kind of got hooked on that. I do remember, it was really funny though because like we just moved in together--this is in Colorado, and I needed shoulder surgery because we went on a rafting trip and my--I was like, try, I got--our boat got turned over in the rapids, and then I tried to swim for it and my arm, like, came out of its socket. So then I had to, I know it was pretty--and it was one of those things where it, uh, tore a labrum, so it was kind of loosey-goosey. So if I like stretched too much on it, it would just like pop out. And I was like, ah! So I eventually got that repaired. And so, my wife kind of helped me with my convalescence with that. But right before I got into surgery, I brewed a beer and put it in the closet. And it just went crazy and kind of, I think over pitched yeast on it, and it kind of just put like, all the clothes in there got like sprayed with yeasty beer, and then she's like, yeah--I was like recovering from soldier shoulder surgery. And she was like, "you clean this up now." So anyways, we had--we had a little rocky start to the home brewing thing, but she eventually--

00:06:24Judith: Well, she stuck with you--

00:06:26Rick: She did!

00:06:26Judith: You know, you learn not to over pitch your yeast.

00:06:27Rick: She got involved in the brewing industry too, so--

00:06:30Judith: Oh, really?

00:06:31Rick: After that, and she was, uh, she was a tour guide at Stone for a bit and then she was the--basically the admin assistant for the brewing department for a few years. And then she left there to go work at Lost Abbey for a bit at the Confessional and, uh, what's it called? The--Cardiff. And was a bartender there for a number of years and really enjoyed it. So she's--she and I are both out of beer now. She's working as a dev test for medical device company in Carlsbad. So. I know. It's like, well, we're actually earning money now, that's crazy.

00:07:10Judith: Yeah. Well, yeah, you kind of touched on a--on a pretty common theme and you know, you do it for the passion. You do not do it for the income.

00:07:18Rick: No, no, no.

00:07:19Judith: You know, you're--I'm--we're watching all these breweries right now closing, and it's this, and, so many of 'em gone up for sale and nobody's buying 'em because they just, you know, they're, "yeah, I'm gonna pour all this money in and not make any, so, you know, can't do that right now. It's just not feasible."

00:07:35Rick: Yeah. I mean, I feel like probably from like 20--you know, 2006 to about 2018 or so, there was like this, I don't know, I feel like it was more of like a gold rush mentality. I'm sure you have better perspective on it than I do, but being in the industry, it felt like people were just getting into it and thinking that either they would make a pretty decent living on doing it, and they were homebrewers or whatnot, or they were trying to strike it rich somehow and it was felt like that, you know, if you got into this niche and did well, you can make a bunch of money at beer. And I don't think until it's like economies of scale bigger, you don't really make a lot of money with that.

00:08:15Judith: Yeah. You don't. Yeah. I mean, the margin is way too small on your individual glass or can of beer to be making a fortune until you go, like you say, the economies of scale. But, uh, that's something that a lot of people went into because they were making beer and all their friends--they had a passion for it. Their friends told them they were making great beer, you really ought to open up a brewery I'll put some money behind you and yet nobody really had a true business plan or an understanding, or especially when 2020 came around an allowance for some kind of crisis.

00:08:48Rick: Right! Yeah. Like a kind of a, you know, the emergency funds or like a plan for anything like that happening. Yeah. It was, um, I mean, that was how I actually wanted to get into beer in the first place, was that I wanted to like work at a brewery, so I knew what it was like. So, you know, when I asked, you know, friends, family, and investors for, you know, starting my own brewery one day, that I know what I'm talking about. And like, what I was expecting. And then of course, like after the years went on, I was like, I am, there's no way in hell I'm opening a brewery. There's so much work and there's so much capital in terms of all the stainless you have to buy and--

00:09:27Judith: The hours you have to put in the headaches. I mean, the amount of legislation and just reporting and--oh yeah. My head swims when I look at all that stuff and just go, you know, and if you go into it because it's an emotional passion, be because it's creative. That is exactly the sort of thing that you don't do, don't excel at, hate, you know, things like that. But you were wise. You got into it and you saw what was going on and you said, oh, wait a minute.

00:09:53Rick: Yeah. I mean, it was fun and I really enjoyed, and I learned a lot and, you know, did a lot of work, especially on the quality side and learned a lot about what breweries should be doing in terms of quality assurance, quality control, and that I just wasn't seeing a lot of it. And the breweries that succeeded ultimately, like, had really good marketing and really good beer. I mean, that's essentially what it boiled down to.

00:10:18Judith: Well, and the good beer goes back to the quality control because there are a lot of the smaller breweries that don't really have the capacity to do really thorough quality control. They're doing the best they can, but it shows when the beer, you know, you've got this one beer that's one of maybe your staple beers that you've always got on tap, but it changes from brew cycle to brew cycle, which part of that is the ingredients change, but your quality control is where it's supposed to step in and say, "oh, wait a minute, this isn't what people are going to expect, and what do we do to fix it?"

00:10:52Rick: Right. Yeah. And that was kind of--and oh, I was the sort of defacto, being at Stone, and then later at Modern Times a little bit and--but also at Belching Beaver--at Stone, I was definitely like, I felt like the quality control person for all the breweries in the area because they would come, it's like, "Hey, Rick, there's this issue. What should I do?" And I'm like, well, you know, sometimes I'd be like, oh yeah, I'll maybe do this and this and see if it works and they're like, "Oh, it worked really good!" "Thanks Rick!" Uh, but then there were other times where I'm like, uh, dump it. I'm sorry, dude. There's not much you can do without that. Yeah. It's, uh, that's kind of SOL. I just, I would not serve that in any sense or form to you know, a customer.

00:11:34Judith: Yeah. I mean, and that's hard news for somebody, but really you're not doing in favors to say, hey, go ahead and try this and see if you can resurrect it when you just know is not gonna work. That's just, you know, that's not the San Diego spirit--

00:11:47Rick: No.

00:11:47Judith: --San Diego. Everybody's been so collaborative with each other. That's one of the things, when we first started looking at founding the Brewchive®, I started talking to some brewers and they all said, oh, you need to talk to so and so, and you need to talk to so and so. And giving me all these names, of course, of people who I didn't know but it was just like, people really like each other. I would've thought in an industry where you're all trying to cover the same consumer base you'd be at each other's throats and that's not what San Diego does. Very different.

00:12:17Rick: No. And that collaborative spirit, I feel like is what really elevated a lot of other breweries and even with like collaborations and everything, it seems like that, it's like definitely an exchanging of information, but also just like better practices too. Felt like the breweries, like I know for sure that I went to other breweries, not even in San Diego, but other places and, you know, like Chicago or down south in like Atlanta and all that. And I saw see things, and I was like, oh, this is a really brilliant way of doing this. Oh, I'm definitely, you know, as our--after Mitch left Stone, Joel Grosser was the kind of brewmaster there, and he'd always say like, yeah, if you see like something at another brewery that was like, better practices, even if it's like just like safety related, or better cleanliness or whatever? Yeah. Steal that, steal with pride. He used to say that, and I was like, and he came from Anheuser-Busch, so I'm not sure--(laughter)--I'm not sure if that means anything, but I was like, yeah, steal with pride!

00:13:22Judith: Yeah. I like that saying.

00:13:24Rick: But, I mean it was about like, more about like seeing better ways of organizing things, cleaning things. Safety related, which I feel like is like every brewery would be like, yeah, no. like we understood that like a rising tide lifts all boats and everything. And we know that if a brewery was really bad, that would look--people, the average consumer, at least for the most part, we feel like doesn't really, like they lump all the craft beer in one, in like one bucket.

00:13:48Judith: Yeah. If one's bad, they're all gonna be bad.

00:13:50Rick: Yeah so that's--

00:13:51Judith: That's not the way.

00:13:51Rick: So that's what we, I think we're trying to avoid and that's why I helped out so many other breweries with their quality control issues, was that, you know, (we) were at another company. They were like, oh, they're having quality control issues, good. So we're good. But then, yeah, I was actually encouraged at places like Stone and Belching Beaver to help out some other breweries with some of their issues as long as it didn't take away from my duties. But if it's like a phone call and be like, yeah, do this, do this, this, this, hang up, it's fine. And they didn't feel like it was like violating an NDA or anything along those lines.

00:14:24Judith: Right. Did you find much opportunity with all your, with your working to go visit other breweries? That seems to be a real constant around San Diego is a lot of the brewers, front of house, back of house, whoever they go and they drink at other breweries as well, you know. It's not like, oh, I gotta spend all my money at my own brewery. I'm gonna go visit everybody else's and find stuff I like.

00:14:42Rick: Well I feel like it was actually the opposite, is that we didn't wanna spend any of our money at our own brewery because they weren't paying us enough, and then we'd give them back our money. So, yeah. I mean, me personally, I would always drink other people's beer. I would only like bring, you know, the free beer I'd get at Stone, just because I'm like, here, have some beer from Stone. And it was always polite whenever you went to other breweries is to bring gifts of your own beer and everything there. And then they would also in turn, give you free beer and like a tour of the place. And you get to see everything and that was, kind of that it was like a cultural exchange, it felt like.

00:15:19Judith: And you never know, you might wind up working with those people at some point too because there's so much cross pollination and job jumping for whatever reason within the local breweries. But then again, being collaborative and getting along with people, leaves those doors open where if you've always talked bad about another brewery, well, they're never gonna hire you if you did need a job somewhere else. You know, that's just not gonna happen.

00:15:41Rick: Although I have to have a confession that I did talk badly about Modern Times when, um, because Jacob McKean worked at Stone. And, I just, I--full like, you know, full confession. I was not, I did not enjoy him as a person in the very brief instances we worked, because he was on the marketing side, I was on the brewing side, but then he came in and did like, you know, some videos of like, me working the lab you know, the marketing stuff and he's like, you still write all this down? Like, why don't you use like spreadsheets and everything? I'm like, well, I do. I double enter. So then if I lose one or the other, like if you know, the shared drive fails, then at least I have like the paper copy of it because this is all important stuff in terms of quality control. If I can't look back and see like, oh yeah, this had this bacteria in it then, and then something happens, or, you know, it gets in a fire or lose all the saved data, then I don't have that reference to come back to.

00:16:42Judith: Or if you're walking around with a laptop and beer gets spilled in it.

00:16:44Rick: Which happens a lot. Yeah. So, I don't know. I just, I wasn't a fan of him. But then later on, I, uh, you know, when I applied for the job, I was like, oh, okay. I think he's kind of gotten a little bit less snooty. A little bit.

00:16:54Judith: Well, you know, and you know, when it's put to you in a certain way, sometimes your hackles just raise. I mean, it's like you're attacking the way I do things. And it works for me. So, you know, great. If it doesn't work for you, fine. But, so yeah. First impression sometimes.

00:17:10Rick: Yeah, I know. But in general though, I enjoyed the Modern Times beers. When the opportunity for a director brewing operations position opened up, that's where I went to it.

00:17:20Judith: Because that was, that would be a step up from where you were at Stone at the point. Right?

00:17:25Rick: Yeah. And I didn't really have a good--once I got to be Quality Manager, they kept putting people above me from outside from, usually from Anheuser-Busch. And, I was like, well, I don't really have a good career path. And even my boss at the time was like, when I put in my notice, he's like, "yeah, you know, it's, I don't see--I understand you don't really have like a path for growth here anymore." I'm like, yeah. 'cause you got, you've got where I wanted to go. But anyways. But after that, that's where I went to Modern Times for a little bit. It was only there for about two years before I went to Belching Beaver.

00:17:58Judith: So well before we leave Stone and jump to Modern Times and your experience there, of course, you know, you with Robbie Chandler--now, who is Robbie?

00:18:08Rick: So Robbie was the warehouse lead at Stone. He was the kind of the--he was the forklift jockey, the guy unloading the trucks. I think eventually became the warehouse supervisor there. But, you know, he was the guy, just big personality and just a bear of a man, big old beard and everything, and he and I just really got along well together. The funny thing was--is that when they announced that if you wanted to be part of the Spotlight competition you pair off with, you know, whoever you wanted to do it with. And so it came down to it. I was like, I signed up for it and then I was like, who do I want to brew with me? Oh, Robbie said he wanted to brew with me. And so I was like, Hey, Robbie, you want to come? He's like, oh, yeah, no, I'll brew with you. And I didn't realize that he had another partner that was already set up, so he just totally like, ditched that, that group, and then came over to my side and people were angry. It's like, I didn't, I didn't know. I just asked him.

00:19:06Judith: Yeah, yeah. You didn't poach him!

00:19:08Rick: I know I didn't, I had no idea. He didn't even tell me that. He was like, no, I'm with you on this one. So.

00:19:15Judith: Well. If he had been talking to you about brewing with you and that, that was the opportunity, I can kind of see why, but yeah, I can see feelings being being maybe a little bit hurt there too.

00:19:22Rick: And I mean, and bless Robbie, he's got such a good personality and such a, he was very jovial. He just didn't know as much about the beer brewing process as I did. So, you know, I basically--

00:19:34Judith: He, he had not been home brewing then?

00:19:36Rick: He did a little bit of home brewing, but it wasn't like when we were coming up with a recipe, you know, I was just like, Hey, just feel free to jump in if you want, change anything. But I was thinking like, let's do something different, something kind of off the wall, at least--

00:19:52Judith: Very Stone that way.

00:19:53Rick: Yeah. And let's do a black rye kölsch. And he is like, yeah, that sounds good. I'm like, no notes or anything? He's like, no, let's just do it. And I was like, okay. All right. So I guess we're doing a black rye kölsch. Sure. And we spent most of the other time talking about what we'd name it, and we were both fans of SNL and the sprockets skit that Mike Myers was on when he was on SNL.

00:20:17Judith: Boy, I don't even remember that one.

00:20:18Rick: Uh, it was like, um, the German ones. He's like, "Velcome to Shprockets, My name is Dieter," you know.

00:20:23Judith: Oh, okay. The Dieters.

00:20:24Rick: Yeah. The, yeah. And he is like, yeah, "Vould you like to touch my monkey?" You know, stuff like that. And I guess that's what with my German last name, he (was) always like, um, he's like, no, Rick, I do not to touch your monkey. But anyways, we were all goofing around and kind of riffing off each other and doing these silly little bits, but that's what we wanted to call it Sprocketbier.

00:20:44Judith: Okay. Okay. Well then that explains the name. I'll have to go back. And probably on YouTube there's some of those old, and rewatch those 'cause, it's been, it's been so, so long. So when you were designing that beer, did you have test batches that you made? How much time did you have to prepare for the competition and it--

00:21:07Rick: We made one test batch before we brewed the kind of scaled up one on the small system at Stone. So I did, you know, we did that at Robbie's house 'cause he had a better house for that, to kind of brew on there. So we just did once. And--

00:21:21Judith: Your wife probably wasn't real happy about you maybe having beer in the closet again.

00:21:24Rick: Well, she, uh, she was fine with it after that. We'd have better areas to store things at that point. But, yeah. But we brewed one batch of it, and it came out pretty well. We made--I made some adjustments to the amount of Carafa malt, which is like, that de-bittered black malt. We'd add to it. But after that, we just kind of scaled it up to the small system and brewed it. And yeah. It was Robbie and I kind of on there with the--under the supervision of Steve Gonzalez, who was the small batch manager. I think he still is at Stone, at this point. But, uh, yeah, no, we brewed that. And really, I was hoping to do well, like come in like the top three, but I really didn't expect to win on that. Well 'cause everyone else was like doing IPAs, like fun or other kinds of like, fun kind of Belgian-style beers. And I wasn't really expecting to actually do anything too revolutionary with it.

00:22:22Judith: Who were the judges, do you know?

00:22:23Rick: Yeah, it was Greg, Steve and Mitch. Yeah. So.

00:22:27Judith: The highest level.

00:22:28Rick: Highest level. Yeah. It was--

00:22:29Judith: There was nobody to go to if you wanted to contest the results.

00:22:32Rick: Well, I mean the whole concept of the Spotlight series came about from sort of the amount of unhappiness of the brewers of not having ways of being creative. So, I think it was in 2013 or 2012 or 2013, they did like the first employee survey. And, they did like a kind of a presentation on that and for everyone, and kind of understood that like there was a lot of unhappy people working at Stone at the time . And, the brewers more specifically were very unhappy with the lack of creative control that they had, which is, I mean, looking back at it, I'm like, it's, you know--it wasn't necessary. I don't know, like it was, we had a lot of really talented brewers. Very, you know, very talented brewers. And I think that they thought working at Stone that they'd get a chance to do a lot more of the creative stuff. And then they did like the creative casks thing where they would like pull beer off into a cask, do cask conditioning and add different ingredients to the base of our core lineup of beers. And that was fun. But then they also wanted to make something that could potentially do well for the company in a national release. And that's where the Spotlight series kind of came in.

00:23:54Judith: Yeah. There's that tension between personal creativity, what's gonna be marketable, and how many people wanna participate, and how sustainable a program like that actually is.

00:24:06Rick: Right. And I think that, you know, I'm sure if they reflected on it, they would've gone with a much smaller batch, and--

00:24:16Judith: Well, how big was the batch?

00:24:17Rick: Um, so, I think it was three fermenters for it, which is pretty good for nationwide release at the time, based on the distribution network. So that was, and each batch was about 350 barrels after filtration. So 350, so 700 and about just about a thousand.

00:24:41Judith: Yeah, Over thousand barrels or more.

00:24:42Rick: Yeah. And so, yeah, they, that's what they did. Of course--

00:24:44Judith: That's big.

00:24:45Rick: Next year was only two fermenters, and then the year after that was only one fermenter as far as from what I remember. But they wanted to, I think, to keep doing a little bit of that in case like something, you know, like a hit happened. Ballast Point, that was the reference of it 'cause Ballast Point had their Homebrew Mart. And they would brew, you know, a few beers and I mean, obviously that's where Sculpin came from. That's where some of their other hits, uh, Indra Kunindra. That weird curry beer that they made that actually did pretty well came from that system. So Stone wanted something similar, I think as like a sort of incubator for interesting, you know, a potential beer that could do well for them.

00:25:24Judith: Yeah. 'cause I'm thinking, I'm not clear on the date on this, but the American Homebrew Association competition, that Stone sponsored, and then they would take the winning beer and, you know, it's like Chris Banker Xocoveza. Um, Ken, now his name escapes me right this minute. I can see his face in my head! But, you know, uh, Ken did the, um, he always wears Hawaiian shirts, big guy with a beard.

00:25:50Rick: Oh! Um--

00:25:51Judith: I'm just blanking on his name and--

00:25:53Rick: Yeah. The coconut porter?

00:25:56Judith: Yeah. So he did that. And, uh--

00:25:58Rick: Yeah, I know you exactly what you're talking about.

00:25:59Judith: Yeah. And so Mo-J's come out of that, you know, so there've been beers that have come out and like Xocoveza now is a staple.

00:26:06Rick: It is. Yeah.

00:26:06Judith: I mean, that really, that went over very well. But I'm not sure when those beers started as opposed to the Spotlight series.

00:26:16Rick: Yeah. So, the Homebrewer competition stuff was at the same time. I mean, I started in 2010 and we did the first, I think the first of the Homebrew was Ken's beer. And that was the year before, I think in 2009. And then we did all those collaboration series as well. with like Jolly Pumpkin and Firestone and all those other ones. So--

00:26:41Judith: Yeah, Dogfish Head--

00:26:41Rick: There was always these--

00:26:43Judith: There was, I think, was it Dogfish Head, Stone and, you know--

00:26:47Rick: Victory.

00:26:48Judith: They would do like a triangle--Victory. They would do triangle along the, along the bottle.

00:26:51Rick: That was the Saison du BUFF.

00:26:54Judith: Each year the position of the breweries would switch around. I mean, 'cause I've got a lot of those bottles from Greg and going, what's the difference between these two bottles? Oh, wait a minute. Stone's on the top now Dogfish Head's at the top now at the apex.

00:27:06Rick: Yeah. Saison du BUFF. That was kind of one of Greg's fun collaborations with--

00:27:11Judith: Yeah. Then the wOOtstout.

00:27:13Rick: wOOtstout. That was fun. I got to meet Wil Wheaton because he was a homebrew nerd at the time. He's now sober. But, he came in in the lab and was like nerding out. And I told him, and he actually brought some of his homebrew. And then I ran it through our alkalizer, which measures alcohol content so I could tell him what his alcohol and everything was.

00:27:33Judith: Oh, very good!

00:27:33Rick: Yeah. It was a lot of fun.

00:27:35Judith: Yeah, I didn't understand how Wil Wheaton had gotten into that, but, you know, if he homebrewed, then yeah. That would--

00:27:40Rick: Yeah. I think it was he homebrewed and kind of, you know, I think probably got approached by Greg or something like that to make--

00:27:46Judith: Or he approached Greg at a festival who knows.

00:27:47Rick: Or something. I forgot what it was, but yeah. Yeah. So that was, that was a--that was a real fun part of the process. Like that was what kind of kept me going on, was meeting these really cool people, not only from like Wil Wheaton, all them, but from other breweries as well. On these collaborations, kind of like, just talking shop about how they did things differently, how we did things differently. You know, I was--I've always been kind of that person that wants to expand my horizons or best practices. I'm like, oh yeah, that makes total sense! Why aren't we doing that? You know?

00:28:21Judith: Yeah. Steal with pride!

00:28:23Rick: Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

00:28:24Judith: But yeah. Yeah. I mean, people should always be learning in my book, but, oh, yeah--Uh, so, Spröcketbier won first--

00:28:32Rick: Yeah. It did,

00:28:34Judith: And then you brewed over a thousand barrels of it. And, you know, that's a lot of gallons of beer. So, you need to promote that!

00:28:44Rick: Well, yeah. And I, and that was, uh, there was--actually you can look on YouTube. We actually did some little videos. At least the marketing team did. Tyler Graham was the I think, head--no, I don't think he was head of marketing, but he was kind of the head videographer and creative presence there. He did a really good job with us. Actually, one of the fun things that we ended up doing was actually being very involved with the making of the label.

00:29:16Judith: I was gonna ask, how was the label designed?

00:29:19Rick: Yeah, actually, I'll show you. It was, um, for the--so the Monarose, who was actually a wife of one of the brewers came in and we wanted to do like, homages to the other brewers there. So we had this whole entire like, side of the label here. And all these have like little, I guess homages or--

00:29:43Judith: References of some sort--

00:29:44Rick: References to people who worked at Stone.

00:29:45Judith: Yeah 'cause there's a rooster. There's a couple of profiles. Well.

00:29:49Rick: Yeah. Well, that's us. Yeah.

00:29:50Judith: Okay. Because I was gonna, I'm not quite sure who that--

00:29:53Rick: That's Robbie. That's, that's me.

00:29:55Judith: Okay.

00:29:55Rick: And then, so.

00:29:56Judith: Powell, and it looks like a little space--spaceman helmet or something?

00:29:59Rick: So one of the brewers we had, his name was, well, his nickname was Rooster and he's actually brewing down in Mexico right now. But he would just, like, we called him Rooster because he would just be like, "what's up Rooster?" And like, and he would just caw at us. So we wanted to have Rooster there. One of the other brewers, I don't know, we almost considered him kind of like our mascot 'cause he really--I love the guy. Robskie

00:30:27Judith: That's the letter bit.

00:30:28Yeah.

00:30:28Judith: The "S."

00:30:29Rick: He'd always just like, like a finger up and be like, "Hey, money, how's it going money?" And he had like a higher-pitch voice. And so we would--so that's a reference to him. And then--

00:30:39Judith: Pow is?

00:30:41Rick: Is for, oh gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm, uh, it's Cecil. Cecil. He's still there. He just, he was just like, pow! Because he'd always like make it like he's gonna, you know, punch you in the dick. And so he, that's where we got that from. And then this is a reference to Steve Via, who was another brewer there. And we used to draw these, like, he used to draw these stupid little faces, 'cause that's what he kinda looked like. And he'd draw these stupid little faces called, we called 'em Steve Heads, on like the whiteboards everywhere.

00:31:17Judith: Steve was here.

00:31:19Rick: Yeah. And then, we had a little tribute to the brewer that, uh, Matt, who lost his life at Stone on the forklift accident.

00:31:28Judith: Oh yeah. That's the hand with the finger pointing up.

00:31:30Rick: Yeah. With that, with the same tattoo that we, a bunch of us ended up getting on the finger right there. Because he, it was kind of a jab at him too in a playful way, is that he recently got a--he was very religious and had some Bible quotes tattooed on his bicep. But he was like, he over-ellipseed. And we'd make him fun of him for that. It's like, that's permanent, you know, on there? So then, but that's what we all ended up getting. 'cause he, instead of just doing the dot, dot dot, he'd do dot space, dot dot and so that's what we ended up doing for that.

00:32:05Judith: Well that's really, really sweet that he's memorialized there.

00:32:08Rick: Well, and then the burning roses was actually his submission. He actually ended up being able to, um, we, oh--so Chris Ketchum down at Liberty Station, he wasn't able to brew it 'cause he passed away before he was able to brew it on the system. But they made a bigger batch of this and like another couple, like three fermenters full to honor Matt Courtright for that. So that was actually his submission for the Spotlight series. And so he and I--I think it was Jason was his brewing partner on there, but yeah. So they brewed this and it was, it's super tasty. It's really good stuff.

00:32:50Judith: No, and that's very, very touching because I knew somebody had lost their life on the work floor, but hadn't really delved into who it was or what had happened or anything.

00:33:01Rick: Yeah, it was, you know, it was that--it was 2013 and it was that time at Stone where we were growing really rapidly and there was where the bottling line used to be, they moved that down to the new packaging hall that was just built. And then they set up a--it was just an empty area there. So it wasn't really, people didn't really forklift around that area very often. So they weren't really aware of where the pillars were. The support pillars. Because there was equipment in the way during that time, but it was a good, convenient storage area until we actually ended up filling it up more with fer--more fermenters. And he wasn't-- you know, looking back on it, at the time it felt like it was a result of Stone growing too fast, not caring about the employees, et cetera, et cetera. But really looking back on it, it was a lot of unfortunately bad decisions made by Matt. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt. There were some drug use implications. I'm not exactly sure if that was the case or not, but I mean, regardless of what he was doing, it was super tragic and he ended up, pop--you know, transporting a chemical drum, turned too fast with his forks up, which is still a bad idea.

00:34:20Judith: Oh, that's gonna throw your balance off. Yeah.

00:34:22Rick: He hit the pillar, tumbled over. He tried to jump out. That was also a no-no. So there, like, there was a series of mistakes that happened during that point that if he would've done one of those things, it would've, at least he might--he would've gotten hurt but he wouldn't have died. And, so it was really unfortunate, but we all were devastated. There was so much good talent there that ended up leaving over the next year and a half pretty quickly. I mean, that was other reason why the Spotlight series was kind of, you know, I think it was gonna dwindle down pretty quick because there was just a lack of involvement there. But I mean, we, the brewers that were involved in the Spotlight series, one was Hollie (Stephenson), she ended up being the brewmaster at the new Guinness facility in Maryland. Left to do that. Chris Baker, he ended up being the brewmaster at Mother Earth. Casey (Harris), he's now the co-founder and brewmaster at Topa Topa up in Ventura area. I mean, there was so many really awesome brewers that went on to do better at the brewing industry and just great things. Yeah. And it was just hard to lose all those folks. But losing somebody like that at work, I mean, that's--

00:35:33Judith: That's very hard.

00:35:34Rick: Yeah. It's it at like Modern Times and, uh, Belching Beaver, after I left to work for those places, I always harped on safety as a huge thing because I saw what it did. When you, you know, someone gets seriously hurt or loses their life at the place, it just destroys morale. And I mean, really from some of the people that I still talk to at Stone, it really didn't recover until very recently. And that was only because I think Sapporo bought them and kind of changed--

00:36:02Judith: There was much going on. It's kind of like, you know, you--you're looking forward.

00:36:06Rick: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

00:36:07Judith: Yeah. But you still wanna remember Matt. That's, that's just very, very important. But yeah.

00:36:13Rick: Yeah!

00:36:14Judith: That's Wow. That, yeah, people don't think about what goes on behind the taps. You know, that back of house stuff, the brewery operations are--things can happen.

00:36:25Rick: Oh yeah. No, it's dangerous back there, especially in big operations. That's why it costs so much to run a big brewery, is the automation that needs to get involved with that. Because you can't do all this just with the, your, you know, strength of your back in terms of labor. You gotta, you know--

00:36:40Judith: Well, I have said, because I helped brew the last batch at Chuckalek with Sam (Samantha) Olson. It was a Pink Boots blend, and I'm a "pink booter," so I went out to help Sam and of course it was horribly hot that day and their little tiny operation. And I was going, it's hot, it's heavy, it's sticky, it's awful. I--this is a young person's job. My toes are near flame, I don't like this. But at least you know it, again, it gave me that view into the brewing process. So I had more appreciation for what brewers actually do. But I went, this is definitely a young person's occupation. And not forever because boy, your back is gonna give out eventually. I don't care how much automation you have to help you, there's still a lot that is just simply manual labor.

00:37:23Rick: Yeah. I mean, I--actually it was interesting. My wife is now working in the medical device industry. But one of the--she actually got to observe a surgery because her company does back surgery equipment and like procedural stuff and everything. And one of the people that was there was someone who worked in the warehouse most of their life at Wyeast who you know, they make the yeast that a whole bunch of breweries use and everything. And yeah it's just his spine was messed up from all the work that he was doing, from that. And I've just seen, so like the--how this amount of manual labor really does wear someone down. You can see somebody, or like, wow, that person has to be like 50 years-old and ends up they're like just coming out of their thirties. You're just like, ooh. That's a lot. That's why I was glad to where I was kind of doing stuff in the lab most of the time. If I wasn't jockeying a desk. So, yeah.

00:38:20Judith: Now, before I asked you a qu--I need to make a note to myself here about, uh, hopefully that word will remind me what I want to ask you, but I still wanna ask, because you said that after the beer was bottled, you've explained the labeling. You went on a promotional tour.

00:38:39Rick: Yes. Yeah. That was the real fun part was like over the course of about two months, like we'd go to a location for like a weekend or whatever and then fly back and then do that about three or four times. And, yeah, we went to try to hit all the major hubs. So we did like obviously a promotional thing here. Or at Liberty Station and also at Escondido. Went to Seattle, Atlanta, Cleveland and Philadelphia. From all these places. And so we'd made up with the Air District Sales Manager there, and they would take us where they would want us to, you know, sometimes it was a bottle shop, sometimes there was like a, you know, event happening or whatnot. And that was really super fun. Especially at that time. Because you know, Stone paid for everything, so it was like, okay, it was, you know, making as little as we did at the time, it was nice to go on kind of an all expense, essentially paid tour of these like, you know, places and either have the sales reps or Mitch's credit card kind of pay for everything. So it was--it was a lot of fun. Like Robbie and I got into some really good places, met some really good people and--

00:39:53Judith: Did you have to spend a lot of time explaining the beer?

00:39:56Rick: A little bit. I mean, like, between you and me and the recording, if you tasted a black rye kölsch, and you're familiar with beer styles, you're like, wow, that tastes exactly like a Schwarzbier. It is a Schwarzbier, basically. It's, uh, we wanna make something that's low alcohol, or lower alcohol. I think it was like five point a half percent. Yeah. 5.4%. And so it was something that we could probably drink a lot of during the sales tour and not get too schnockered during that time, and, but yeah, no, we--we did a lot of explaining of the beer. We did, you know, to--we wanted to make it a little bit more unique with using kölsch yeast instead of like a lager yeast. Because I don't thi--at that time, they would've, uh, I think Mitch would've been like, we're using ale yeast for this because it's gonna, we don't want it to sit in a month in, you know, in these tanks. So using the kölsch yeast, that's why I picked kölsch because it turned around much quicker.

00:40:55Judith: Yeah. Yeah.

00:40:57Rick: And I like rye. Rye is like one of my favorite grains, so. And I like, kind of like the idea of like using Carafa malt, which was originally designed to use in Schwarzbiers in Germany as a de-bittered black malt so you don't get a lot of the flavor of the malt, of the black malt, but you get the color.

00:41:13Judith: Right. Okay.

00:41:15Rick: So, yeah.

00:41:16Judith: Very interesting.

00:41:18Rick: Yeah. So we did all that and journeyed around the place and did--we had a, it was a place in Seattle where we did--we chugged boots of this beer. It was like a race and so--

00:41:33Judith: Good it was 5.4%!

00:41:34Rick: Yeah, I know. I was getting kind of, I was definitely getting a little tired of all that after, at the time. But I mean, I wasn't. The traveling part was a lot of fun, especially since they always took the--to their best accounts and their--they were just geeking out that they had brewers there to kind of help like promote it. And people came up and asked us a bunch of really good questions about the process and you know, what--how everything is, how we're doing, you know? And what do you do for all this? How, how does this work on a scaled up process, all the geeky homebrewer questions that come our way.

00:42:08Judith: Yeah. Well, and it also, you know, it humanizes Stone. I mean--

00:42:12Rick: Oh yeah.

00:42:13Judith: Stone has become such so mythic, you know, with the gargoyle and everything else. That to actually have brewers there and real people there from Stone representing Stone. It's not that big mega monolith that the bigger beer brands are, that you don't know who those people are, and they--they're so distanced from the brewing itself that you don't feel the connection.

00:42:35Rick: Well, and to kind of expand on that, at the time, Greg was very much the face of Stone. And people--and Greg had a kind of polarizing personality, still does, I think. But when you get to talk to with him one-on-one, he is like a super nice guy. Little bit awkward, you know, on that interpersonal basis, but when you get him in front of a camera or in front of a crowd, he turns into the "arrogant bastard" essentially the, you know--we joked around that it was like the Greg-face effect, back in the early days.

00:43:00Judith: I've seen a reference somewhere to Greg-face. I don't remember where it was--

00:43:16Rick: He just had like a open mouth, like ahhhhhhhhh, and that was like his, you know, he's angry about, you know--was it, he's angry about making sure people have good beer or something like that. I don't know. It was marketing around him and I don't think it really landed as much as he was hoping it would land. But, I think part of the pro--but I think that was part of it was when you got the brewers out there, we're just, you know, normal people making beer and really enjoying it. And I think the crowd and people really enjoyed, like actually seeing that there was actually normal people working there. We're not all just like raging maniacs.

00:43:54Judith: Well, and that's the whole thing about craft beer is it's, you know, there are people and personalities behind it as opposed to anonymous, everything's automated production, so people who want that human interaction, that human touch or, you know, craft beer is really--

00:44:10Rick: Literal blood, sweat, and tears going into this beer. I've seen it. It grossed me out, but I've seen it. No, it's, um--but yeah, no, it was--I think that was a big part and I think that's why like the cask events we did at the Escondido restaurant location and also at Liberty Station, the wOOt Fest. And when we released it during Comic-Con and we would make different casks and different beers with like, celebrities or like the minor ce--like kind of like geeky celebrities. That was fun and people I think really enjoyed seeing the brewers kind of working together with that instead of just being like you're saying against like a faceless monolith of a company, there was actually real people that work in this. You know, the ones working actually, like destroying our bodies to get beer to you. You know, and it's--that's a big part of it. I mean, that's why we were really focused on safety pretty hardcore, obviously after Matt's passing because of everything. And it was, uh, it was a big, you know, it was a big wake-up call for I think craft beer in San Diego in general because there was so many people that either knew Matt or knew about him. And then there was obviously like kind of self-reflecting of like, whoa, what if somebody died at our brewery? I mean, that was--that'd be devastating. And they saw that, so.

00:45:34Judith: Yeah. And that's part of the maturing of the industry is accepting that things aren't always going to stay the same and bad things can happen.

00:45:41Rick: A hundred percent.

00:45:42Judith: And it could happen to you just as easily as anybody else.

00:45:45Rick: Yeah. And like COVID was a big, you know, that was a huge, uh--I think the way I like to, at least I've thought about it and the way that it kind of looked to me was an accelerating event, meaning that it kind of accelerated the, you know, whether a brewery was gonna do well or--Like, you know, I think unfortunately a bad example, or a good, bad example would be Iron Fist. Iron Fist was kind of trailing off there for a bit, but after COVID it was just pretty much done. You know, it kind of accelerated that. I think if COVID didn't happen, they would've limped along for a couple more years, maybe. But I feel like--

00:46:22Judith: Hard to say.

00:46:22Rick: Yeah. I feel like COVID kind of accelerated that.

00:46:25Judith: I--well, I think it did for a number of breweries, but then we also had a whole bunch of breweries that were in process. They would already, you know, bought--things were already ordered and stuff like that. So it was, well, either we dump everything we've done so far and just take this massive loss--or hope, because who knew how long COVID was going to last, you know, people took the gamble and unfortunately now those gambles and the loans and everything else, they're starting to catch up with everybody. So we're seeing this horrible downturn right now, which just breaks my heart. Every day it seems like there's somebody else. I'm just like, no, not another one! But, you know, if you prepared properly or through the luck of the draw, whatever, some are gonna make it and some aren't, unfortunately.

00:47:08Rick: Yeah, absolutely.

00:47:08Judith: So again, the maturing of our industry locally. And I think that if we looked at other regions, we'd probably see a lot of the same thing. Areas that became hotbeds of brewing before we did in California or whatever, we'd see that they've gone through the same sort of cycle, so it's not just us, so that it just, we're here. So it really hits us hard.

00:47:30Rick: Well, yeah. And, San Diego is such a tight-knit brewing community too. It's like, you know, you hear about, it's like, oh, did you hear that? Rouleur closed. Did you hear about this? And you're like, oh, yeah, I met all those guys. I know them.

00:47:42Judith: Yeah. I went to Rouleur's last day and, you know, Tomme Arthur was there, Paul Sangster was there, Chris Banker was there. I was seeing all these people that, you know, haven't seen 'em recently, for whatever reason. And it was kind of like, well, it's great to have an old home week, but it's a terrible reason to have an old home week.

00:47:57Rick: Right. I know.

00:47:59Judith: So, yeah. But we--we'll pick up and move on, I guess. So speaking of moving on, the little note I made to myself was, when I've been over at Stone, I have been stunned by the speed at which everything's bottled. And I understand that stuff is pulled off the line like every five minutes and checked for quality control?

00:48:22Rick: Mm-hmm.

00:48:23Judith: How do you manage it at that speed? I mean, that was just stunning to me.

00:48:29Rick: Um, I mean, I've seen it happen where there's like times where I went to like, on a tour of the Budweiser facility up in Van Nuys. And they run about twice as fast, if not three times as fast as what Stone does. It--there was a guy on the line, just like looking around, like, oh, looks at the time, says it's about time for collecting a sample. And you just (makes a "tchew" sound) and it just, it's like just second nature to them. He doesn't even do that.

00:48:54Judith: But then you've still gotta run it through the process. And what if it's bad? What if you do have to pull it? How do you find it? In all that stuff that's already, you know, all this other stuff's gone through in the time it took you to do the quality check.

00:49:06Rick: Well, I think that's the thing about most beer issues, at least from, like non-sour beers. Like non-barrel-aged sour beers is that if there is an issue, then that's why you drew a lot of--you try to find the quality issue earlier on when it's less expensive to do something about it. So, like with the ingredients, try to do as best as you can as a brewery, depending on, as like how big you are. You know, like friability of malt, you're looking at the quality of the water, making sure there's no chlorine in there. You know, hops themselves, you do sniff tests, and you make sure that's stored well. So once it goes through the process, then at certain points it'd be like, well, if the ingredient's bad, we're just not gonna brew it. Which is, you know, it sucks, but at least we're not gonna like, spend that much money. If we already bought the ingredients, that's one thing. But as soon as you start investing time and labor into it, then it gets more and more expensive. So hopefully by the time you actually put it into a bottle, you know exactly what the quality is gonna be on there. But you still gotta do those checks as due diligence. So the thing about most beer is that if there is an issue with the beer itself, it's as a result--it's like, it's gonna be a systemic issue. Like, with that batch, and not necessarily with like these, like three boxes over here. That you have to, it's like a needle in a haystack, what to call it. And so that's why you try to take samples during fermentation, do taste tests before you send it to the filtration or what, centrifuge, whatever you end up doing with the finishing process of the beer. And then once it's in the bright tank, you also take samples before it's packaged. Uh, for taste testing and approval. And that's kind of the final go/no go. And then you taste it after it gets bottled or canned as well, too, but at that point it's pretty much on a truck that's heading to distribution. So it's a lot more involvement in terms of like doing a recall. If there's an issue with that. So typically if it's a off flavor issue you catch it early enough. Usually it's right after fermentation because that's where most of the off flavor issues may occur. If it's during the pr--and then you take samples, at least on our size, we took microbiological samples, like samples of it, plated it, see what grew. Made sure it wasn't a beer-spoiling organism or anything there.

00:51:35Judith: How long does it generally take for something like that to develop?

00:51:38Rick: Well, so that's, that's a--

00:51:40Judith: Coming from a non-scientist person, I have no idea.

00:51:43Rick: Well, no, it is actually kind of complicated because when you take--so I take a sample from, you know, let's say a bright tank. It's about ready to be packaged. I grow it, and look at it and there's some concerning cells that grow up there. It looks like there might be lactic acid producing bacteria on there like lactobacillus or pediococcus. That's immediately sends things, red flags up in my head. So then I inform, you know, my bosses to say like, Hey, I'd like to put a hold on this and do maybe some forced aging to see if it'll actually express itself. Sometimes you see these organisms and they grow on the plate, but they might not necessarily grow in the beer. Um, and with like a lot of--and that's where like a, I think a lot of breweries went hard on IPAs is that IPAs have a lot of hops in them, they're usually a little bit higher in alcohol, which would inhibit growth of bacteria like that if their process wasn't as clean. If you're making lagers, that's a lot harder because it's lower alcohol, it's lower bitterness, IBUs, which it also inhibits growth and bacterial growth. And so if it was like a lager that I found this in, I'd be like, yeah, we're not selling this. But if it was an IPA, I'd probably put a couple, like, you know, I get like--package a few of them put into our incubator for like a day or two and see if anything produces. And, it depends on the beer, but if it, usually, if you don't see anything growing more, or if after you plate it, you don't see any more colony forming units in there, you could pretty much say that it's not gonna grow in it. But that's typically like the bigger issue. And especially we didn't do any sort of, uh, what's it called? Uh, pasteurization at the time, too. That's actually a bigger issue for all the non-alcoholic beers we're making up now, is the pasteurization part of the process. That's the kind of the expense limiting step for it at this point. But, um, but yeah, so that--it might take a day or two, it might take a couple weeks. There's some times where it kind of like caught me sitting up at the time where I released a beer knowing that this isn't--feeling pretty confident it's not gonna grow in it. But then I'm like, well, what happens like six months from now or whatever?

00:53:59Judith: Yeah. When its sitting on a shelf in a store, especially if they, they're not rotating their stock properly.

00:54:05Rick: Or keeping at room temperature. Exactly. Exactly.

00:54:08Judith: Yeah. No, that sort of thing always alarms me.

00:54:12Rick: Oh yeah. No, it's--that's what keeps you up at night is being a quality manager, is that like, you know, there's that give and take. Like the job of the quality manager is to assess and inform your management about the risk. So, and then see how we can mitigate that risk. And so for--

00:54:31Judith: But it's not really your final call. It's gonna be higher ups that are gonna say, we're gonna pull this.

00:54:36Rick: And it should be. because I'm the one informing them of what the risks are. It's like--and if there's something that's like super high risk, like in terms of like something they want to do, I'd be like, no. Absolutely not. Like I, when I was at Belching Beaver, they kept wanting to do a Radler and without pasteurization and I'm like, absolutely not. Because you are adding sugar to it. Because like sugar and grapefruit juice or sugar and lemon juice. Whatever, which way you go. And if there's anything growing in there, it's going to grow a lot more you know?

00:55:07Judith: Right. Something's gonna explode.

00:55:09Rick: And I don't want that. I do not want that.

00:55:12Judith: No, that's your name on the line plus the company and everything else.

00:55:17Rick: They called me a spoil sport and I'm like, good! I am. That's my job.

00:55:21Judith: That's exactly right.

00:55:22Rick: Like, there's times where I'm like, well, this plate might not grow or might not, but I'm informing you about the risk. I'm, you know, whatever direction you want to go. I'll be happy with. But then there's other ones where I'm like, absolutely not. No, I'm not gonna have my name attached to this.

00:55:37Judith: Yeah. No, good for you. Stand up for it. So, um, when you went to Modern Times then, in 2017 as Director of Brewing Operations, this meant you were not doing quality control anymore? Or how much interaction did you have with the QC people there?

00:55:55Rick: I had a lot of interaction. I mean, that was my background. So, you know, I really wanted to make sure that we focused on the QC aspect of it and any sort of money we could invest to help out with that. Modern Times did a lot of barrel-aged beers. And so Morgan Tenwick, who was the QC manager at the time, she was kind of struggling pretty hard with that. So I ended up purchasing more kits and we kind of worked with her on how to do better barrel testing. So when I was discussing before about how, like usually if it's a tank of beers, it's gonna be bad, it's gonna, you know, it's gonna be bad. But with like barrel-aged beers and sour beers, anything you put into a barrel, you have these discreet, like mini vessels, right? And you have to test pretty much all of them.

00:56:45Judith: Yeah. It's a much more uncontrolled environment because a barrel is wood. It's not--

00:56:50Rick: It breathes. It has stuff in it. Yeah. So then that's why you have to pretty much do micro-testing on every single barrel that's going into a batch. That way if you find something in one barrel, you can leave that out of the blend. And so that's what we ended up doing for the barrel-aging program at Stone, after we kind of got hit on a few of the like big infections that came out of it. You know, we--because if as soon as you dump that infected barrel into the blend its--

00:57:17Judith: Oh yeah. The whole thing's gone.

00:57:18Rick: Exactly. So that's what we ended up doing there. So I helped out with that a lot. Because that was like low volume, but high margin stuff for us. So we wanted to do that. And then--

00:57:31Judith: And, Modern Times's reputation was really, is really reliant on a lot of that barrel-aged stuff.

00:57:35Rick: It's huge.

00:57:35Judith: I have several friends that are members and they just, you know, when the barrel-aged, you know, some of 'em have got massive cellars of the Modern Times barrel-aged.

00:57:45Rick: Oh, it's huge. Yeah. And it was really good too. And so that was one of our big priorities. The other beers, like, I mean, that was pretty much we could handle like the normal production stuff with our IPAs and whatnot. Um, the, yeah. My biggest adjustment was like actually caring about the budget. I mean, I always cared about the budget when I was on the quality side. But it was like, how do I, you know, they gave me this money. How do I spend that? What new equipment do I need? What--do I need to hire somebody else? Stuff like that. Instead of being like, okay, here's the budget. How do I deal it out to like, quality? How do I deal it to brewing and packaging? And so that was a big adjustment for me. And then of course, all the other things that happened during that time, that's when Modern Times is blowing up. They bought the Commons Brewery up in Portland. And so I had to go up there to help set them up. And you know, I think, Tim (Kamolz) and Andrew (Schwartz) did a lot of that work, and Matt (Walsh), who moved up there to take over that position as a brewer up there. And so I do a lot of that. And then we opened up downtown LA location, and then we--

00:58:55Judith: There was a lot of expansion.

00:58:56Rick: Oh. So much expansion. And, you know, that's--it kind of got to me. Plus I was still living up in Vista, so I had to go all the way down to Point Loma all the time on that. So, and then they kind of did like a whole kind of reorg. And so I got, you know, thrust out of my position there. And then I, but I already was kind of looking at leaving too. So it was, it was good timing. And then that's where I went to Belching Beaver after that. But.

00:59:22Judith: Okay. So now Belching Beaver, again, you're going back to more quality management.

00:59:29Rick: I learned my lesson that I think, well, I could have done I think a good job at that position as a, well, DOBO, Director of Brewing Operation. But it was just getting to be a lot for me. Plus I wasn't really, you know, I think Modern Times was hurting by that time with all the expansion and it really just came to a forefront. I think after like, not only COVID, but the rat magnet thing that happened too after that. So, but the, uh, but yeah, going to Belching Beaver was, you know--it was like going like, kind of going back down again in scale. And it was very much like a family run, you know? It is, it was still a family run place and all that. But yeah, just a, they were having a lot of quality issues and they needed somebody to kind of with an experienced hand to help set things up in terms of their quality systems and do the micro testing. And, because they were selling a lot of beer to China, especially the peanut butter milk stout. And that was really super popular in China. So they wanted to make sure that, you know, and Chinese are very--they will try to get as much out of you as possible for as little money. It's kind of their business, way of doing business. And so when they were having a lot of quality issues going there, I found a lot of where the issues were coming from on the bottling line, because they only wanted bottles. They didn't want cans over in China.

01:00:54Judith: Well, when I think of Chinese beer, everything I can think of is in a bottle.

01:00:58Rick: Yeah. Mm-hmm. They like it. And you know, I think they have a big recycling program for glass bottles there. So like, we send those over and it was fine, but it was just, it was, you know, they--I had to be the kind of interface on the quality side. They take it very seriously there. And so I was like showing them what we were doing, where the issue came from, how we're resolving it, being very transparent with them kind of as a, you know, since we're the supplier, they're the customer, we wanna make sure that they basically saddled us as I'm using in my new industry, a supplier corrective action where I could actually like, basically tell them exactly what we were doing to resolve some of these quality issues and being very forefront with them, upfront with them, but also holding them accountable for how they store our beer. Because--

01:01:48Judith: That seems to be a big problem with the imports. Or exports that we're putting out to other countries is how it's being handled on the other end.

01:01:56Rick: Well, because they, because, and they were--they didn't know much about the beer and how it should be stored. So I kind of educated them on that. So then they can, because the distributor, that distributor of beer, so then they can tell their customers when they come back for a, you know, as a complaint, the distributor can come back and be like, how did you store it? And it was like, did you transport this case of beer on the back of a scooter up this mountain after sitting out for like three days in like the sun? You know, it's not gonna taste the same as they remember it.

01:02:27Judith: How true.

01:02:29Rick: Yeah. And that's what we had to like, really deal with, was like--

01:02:33Judith: Well, I mean, I'm sure people don't think how their actions can affect a product.

01:02:40Rick: Yeah. Well, and craft beer over there is very new. And or, and the beer that they were used to is the mass produced stuff from like, Snow and some of the other imports in the area. You know, coming in, but not American craft beer which is a lot more sensitive. We don't at least at that point, pasteurize our beer, which helped, you know, stabilize it, but also affected the flavor. Like the non-pasteurized stuff I think tastes better because it doesn't get cooked a little bit. You know, it's not designed for that. And so.

01:03:13Judith: Well, and that's the argument Coors has made for all those years, is we don't pasteurize so you get a better tasting beer. So, you know.

01:03:19Rick: Yeah. I think they still pasteurize a little bit.

01:03:21Judith: Yeah. It's--

01:03:22Rick: But not the--that brand.

01:03:24Judith: Yeah. No, I remember their ads from when I was little. But anyway, so Belching Beaver, you were there during COVID?

01:03:32Rick: I was, yes.

01:03:33Judith: How did that work out?

01:03:35Rick: Um, you know what it was--I mean, we were all, it was a very confusing time whether I would get like furloughed during that or whatnot. But, with--at least we were considered an essential business, so we ended up doing a lot of production during that time. And actually our production increased significantly because like a lot of other breweries that were more reliant on taproom sales, we weren't as much.

01:04:06Judith: Right. You were already canning and--

01:04:08Rick: And distributing.

01:04:09Judith: --distributing a lot of your stuff, which was very different because a lot of the smaller guys had only been tap rooms and they had to suddenly turn around and get canning equipment or a mobile canner or something to keep them in business.

01:04:22Rick: Absolutely. Yeah. So that was kind of the big turnaround there was that we were able to distribute to, you know, we used the Reyes Brothers (Reyes Beverage Group) distribution, and they got us into grocery stores a lot and our beer sold really well in the grocery stores. So actually, COVID was pretty decent to us, actually pretty good. I think the, obviously the restaurants that we had, the one, the pub in Vista and then the downtown one in downtown Vista suffered a little bit because of that. But after all, kind of like more restrictions were lifted and you can do outside seating and all that it was, you know, it turned out okay. But the beer definitely was helping us survive that and we actually did really well. That was like our biggest selling as far when I was there, it was actually during COVID in terms of like distributed sales. Which was actually pretty cool. So, but yeah, I mean, it was, it was weird, like wearing masks around the place. Really not knowing what sort of, I don't know, like what, like early on what actually was like the vector of contaminant--you know, of an infection was until it was like a, it was a, you know, respiratory infection. But what the interesting thing was, is like everything else that we did to try to like, reduce the amount of people working there, we furloughed a few of the brewers, so it was kind of a skeleton crew, but then we eventually had to bring them back on because we were making so much. The, the funny thing was, is just everything we were doing, like trying to help out with some of the other friends and family of the business. We actually had, one of Troy or one of our director of sales's friends is a barber and he came in and took over our bathroom and gave people haircuts in like our single stall bathroom, because they were all, like all the salons and haircut places were closed because they weren't considered an essential business. So that's how he made money, was like every week he'd come by and be like, who needs a haircut? And then we'd just go into the single serve bathroom across the way from my office. And give us haircuts. I got, it was a really nice haircut from him.

01:06:38Judith: Well, and that's also a bit of a morale boost that you can get yourself tidied up a little bit.

01:06:42Rick: Yeah! No, we were all looking a little rough there. Around the, the hair so it was--

01:06:45Judith: Between all the emotional upheavals and the ups and downs everybody went through, just being able to get your hair cut was a big thing.

01:06:52Rick: Oh, yeah. No, and that, and that was, yeah. Like, so my wife, that was kind of the impetus of kind of both me and my wife to kind of consider where we'd want to go, you know? And beer kind of wasn't looking to be that direction. She was working at The Confessional at the time and in Cardiff. And of course they shut everything down was like supposed to be to go only, although she made exceptions for really good customers that come in and hang out, like socially distanced inside, but still just hang out and drink their beer at the bar, like a normal person instead of like having to go beers go out the front door. But, yeah, she--they had to set up the out--and then once they were allowed to do outside service, they had to set up these tables and then break 'em down again. So they wouldn't get stolen. And it was really like taking a toll on her. And we were watching a lot of Star Trek during that time. And she was like, man, I wanna be a programmer! And I was like, oh, interesting. Okay. I didn't really expect this, because she loved, I mean, she loved the customer service aspect. Like, we got to be decent friends with a lot of her regulars that were really good and, you know, met the celebrities of the Cardiff area that like to come in. Like Haro, Bob Haro of Haro Bikes. He was a regular out there and we met a lot of, you know, a lot of really cool people, including our realtor that bought our house, we met from there. So like, her wanting to move on, like she was getting really tired of moving all these tables and dealing with the customers that were upset about the whole, like, wearing your mask and--

01:08:36Judith: The service staff got so dumped on. There was so many people.

01:08:38Rick: Yeah. Just because people were frustrated, the COVID thing, and they took it out on the service staff and they're just like, Hey man, we're just here trying to make some money. You know? Because--

01:08:46Judith: We're not any happier about it than you are, but--

01:08:48Rick: Yeah, but we're the ones that deal with it. But, and I mean, luckily enough of the regulars were, you know, kind of helped settle anyone that's like, Hey, you need to, you need to be quiet because she's doing the best she can. And she is an angel. But yeah. So, but she went to a coding bootcamp and got her certificate and then got a job at Tandem Diabetes. They make the insulin pumps for type 1 diabetes. And she was a tester for the software for the website that, you know, you order your refill kits and everything from. Um, yeah. And she misses customer service. But she doesn't miss the--

01:09:28Judith: Day to day-to-day grinding part. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Watching people have to set up and break down tables and then all the cleaning you've gotta do, it's like--

01:09:35Rick: Disinfecting and everything.

01:09:37Judith: Yeah. I got my own house to clean. Thank you.

01:09:38Rick: Right. I know. And that's, yeah. So I--

01:09:41Judith: So yeah. That would get old again, you know, just--

01:09:44Rick: Yeah, exactly. So that's what she--so that's kind of like where we were at at that point. And then, about just a little over two years ago was when, yeah, like there was kind of a, the big peak at Belching Beaver in terms of distribution during COVID. And then once everything started opening up again, I think people really wanted to go out. They didn't want to just buy beer from the grocery store anymore. So then our distribution sales fell off, but our restaurant sales went up. But the--I was probably the most expensive employee they had so they had to lay me off at that point, so. Which was good because I was actually kind of getting, I don't know, I like being in places where I learn new things and--

01:10:23Judith: It sounded like you were already questioning, you know, you and your wife both. She had made a decision to make a change and, you know.

01:10:30Rick: Yeah. And I kind of wanted to follow that. So, yeah. And then I went--yeah, I got a job at Hydranautics and that was a little bit too--yeah. I started on Halloween of 2022. Or that was my first day. It was a Monday.

01:10:44Judith: A a memorable day. To say the least.

01:10:47Rick: Exactly. No. So, yeah. So that's why I kind of, that's how I got ended up out of beer at this point.

01:10:53Judith: But while you were in beer, you were teaching at UCSD in the Brewing Extension program?

01:10:58Rick: I was, yeah. I was teaching--

01:10:59Judith: What classes and how, when did you teach?

01:11:01Rick: Yeah, so I remember like really--so it was when Yusuf first started, Yusuf Cherney first started up that--at least helped start up that program, I wasn't involved at the very beginning of it. Gwen Conley, she and I, she was kinda like my mentor--still is to a certain extent--in the business when she was at Lost Abbey. And so she was teaching the sensory classes at the time. So she actually ended up, when she wouldn't be able to make a class or whatever, she would ask me to be involved and then she would give me a portion of her money for that, which was really nice of her to do that. But I taught a little bit of that. But then, so that introduced me to them. Mitch left and stopped teaching after he left to go open his New Realm place in Atlanta. So then, Justinian took over, Justinian Caire, took over the work production class for about a year or so, but then he quit that. But then, so then they came to talk to me because Gwen recommended me. And so then I started teaching, uh, work production in 2017 -- 2018. And, I did that. At first it was pretty popular, so I did it like twice a year. I think usually like a spring and fall quarter because they did quarters there. And, but then it kind of started trailing off where I do once a year. And then last few years, it was like once every--and I taught during COVID. They wanted to have a class during COVID. So I did a whole entire remote session on Zoom and everything. The Zoom teaching, I'm sure you're all familiar with that process.

01:12:43Judith: Oh yeah.

01:12:44Rick: Yeah. It was, you know, I didn't like it just because, you know, people had their cameras off. I wasn't--I usually thrive on the back and forth, and I usually told my war stories about like, oh yeah, you should do this and let me tell you why about this. You know, like, and usually people, especially that want to go start their own breweries are kind of interested moreso in like my war stories than the actual like content of the--at least I think so otherwise they're humoring me. I'm not sure. But I know I got pretty good evaluations for on there. So, but yeah, I taught work production, recipe development for yeah--and my last class was actually, because they wound down that program. They only did the last class to help clean up anyone who still wanted to get their certificate. And that was of July of last year. Now 2024.

01:13:34Judith: Yeah.

01:13:34Rick: That was the last one.

01:13:35Judith: Still not used to last year being 2024.

01:13:38Rick: Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's--

01:13:39Judith: But yeah, I mean, it was nice that they did actually get people through the program rather than just saying, okay, that's it. We're done. You know, we don't care where you are in the program. Ta-ta.

01:13:49Rick: Yeah. They just wanted to, yeah. There was a lot of gauging interest in who wanted to complete it because I mean, it was a lot of money people spent at that time and they just wanted very much try to get all that back. And it was a nice little supplement for my--like by the time it got around here, I was like, I was okay with letting this go. I mean, I still enjoyed it to a certain extent, but--

01:14:11Judith: But you've already got a full-time job. This is on top of that. And yeah.

01:14:15Rick: I'm not even really in beer anymore. You know, like I have a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge about it and everything, and joy sharing that with people who were interested. But, you know, my last class, I only had three people in there.

01:14:28Judith: Oh gosh.

01:14:28Rick: Yeah. And one of 'em wasn't even signed up for the class, so, but they wanted to take it. That's fine! I'm okay with it.

01:14:34Judith: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, get your knowledge where you can.

01:14:39Rick: Exactly.

01:14:39Judith: So at one point you were also on the Brewer's Association Quality Subcommittee.

01:14:43Rick: Oh yeah.

01:14:44Judith: What years was that and what did that committee actually do?

01:14:47Rick: Okay. Um, yeah, no, I kind of got kidnapped into that. But it's like, usually when these like subcommittees pop up, they always need people to like, kind of fill them. And, you know, there's a few people leaving or whatnot. But, I got in that in like 2019, I believe? Because we had some meetings over COVID. It was all Zoom meetings because it was people from breweries from all over the country. But yeah, I, um, I was involved with it. It was like the subcommittee on quality. So a lot of it was just prepping for any sort of quality talks that the Brewers Association wanted to demonstrate, like the lab, the lab in a--Lab In A Fishbowl. That's what it was called. The Lab In The Fishbowl that they always did at the Brewers Association, uh, the craft brewers conferences. And then anything else that might come up to promote quality from either the American Society of Brewing Chemists aspect, or the Master Brewers Association. And we just kind of discussed about programming and talking and any sort of big quality issues that are coming up. Like the big one they were hitting on at the time was hop creep. We're doing excessive dry hops, for usually hazy beers. Uh, ended up maybe causing some refermentation because of the enzymes that were present in these hops were--because one of the bigger innovations that came out last, like fifteen years or so, was to not kiln hops as hot. Because it, it made it like less fruity. Less flavorful, so. But as a result, some of the enzymes that are naturally present in hops kind of went in and maybe did some disassembling of some of the, like dextrins and all that and started creating more simple sugars inside the bottle or can and causing refermentation. And so it was a big quality issue and like how to avoid that. The other thing that came up, and I quit after I got my job outside of beer--I basically resigned my position. They're like, yep, you're outta beer so that's cool. All right. Well, good luck. Um, but, it was the people making non-alcoholic beer, but wanting to make sure that they know they have to pasteurize it. Because that's a big quality concern. Because not only are you having risk of like bottle or can explosions, but pathogenic bacteria too. Because you don't have alcohol. You don't have that aspect that prevents things like listeria and, you know, E coli.

01:17:38Judith: It's a full different basket of issues.

01:17:40Rick: Yeah. So that was a big thing that we talked about there. But it was, it was a good time. It was nice because I felt I was coming full circle. And one thing I forgot to mention was I was an intern at the Brewers Association when I lived in Colorado. And I helped work on the craftbeer.com website. And so I--my boss was Julia Herz, who's very famous in the industry.

01:18:02Judith: Yes. I've met Julia.

01:18:04Rick: She is a firecracker, full of energy, and she was very proud that I got a job at Stone. Um, you know, felt like she did her part to get some of these craft beer and evangelists in positions there. So, but yeah, she, that was kind of fun. So I got to be there for a year. And then we moved to out here from Colorado to work in the beer, the brewing industry actually in general. So I felt like going back to the Brewers Association, you know, at least on a subcommittee. I was like, oh, I'm doing things! It's good. I'm back here where I kind of started my little adventure.

01:18:45Judith: Yeah. Contributing to the industry in a broader scale than just, than just the locals. Not that there's anything wrong with just helping the locals.

01:18:52Rick: That's a hundred percent right. Yep.

01:18:54Judith: So, so then you were let go from Belching Beaver and you were already kind of looking to, you know, get out of the beer industry anyway. You kind of realized the financial repercussions of working for passion rather than--

01:19:10Rick: Yeah. You know, it's, yeah. It is crazy how I was the Director of Brewing Operations for Modern Times was a very well known, very widely appreciated brewery at the time. And now I'm getting paid about 50% more than when I was--as a Director of Brewing Operations. Which is one of the highest positions in the company, so. It's just the way that it ends up working I think with that.

01:19:32Judith: Different industries have different pay scales.

01:19:34Rick: They do.

01:19:35Judith: It's just the fact of life, sadly. But, are you doing any homebrewing anymore?

01:19:40Rick: Um, no, I'm not, not homebrewing. I did get a little still, so I've been kind of home distilling.

01:19:48Judith: Okay. So you're kind of going, I mean, we are seeing more and more distilleries popping up.

01:19:54Rick: We are. Just, I mean, between you and me, it's just easier to distill because you don't have to worry about the fermentation quality or anything. You just, especially if like, I don't wanna spend like a weekend doing homebrewing anymore, just I'd rather do things around the house. Maybe play video games, but, you know, I'm not a into the, like, spending your weekends, like slaving over hot, you know turkey fryer burner, like I used to. But I do like the idea of distilling. I mean it, like--and it's all stovetop too. The way I do it. So it's, you know, it's simple.

01:20:29Judith: Very small batch.

01:20:31Rick: It's very small batch. Yeah. And so, I make like little, like, you know, like, I call ghetto fermentations of like corn and sugar. Kind of like this, like real moonshine. And I've done like, did a little mash and did some like maybe try to do my stint at like a single malt whiskey essentially. But right now my favorite thing is that they have actually a fair amount of wine in the break room at my wife's work. And so--but no one ever goes through all of that. So we have a bunch of like, half bottles of wine. So I make brandy out of it.

01:21:09Judith: I was gonna say, you're not gonna drink that are you?

01:21:11Rick: No, no, no. That's why I just distill it and make a little, uh, a little brandy. And then we put little, um, you can buy from like home brew stores online, like little like swirls or of oak. And then you put that in there. So you have oak-aged brandy. And that's like one of my things I do.

01:21:33Judith: Oh, how fun!

01:21:34Rick: It's easy too. Because you just pour a bunch of wine into this, put the lid on, and there's like a little coil and you keep that filled with water to cool it down and just brandy comes out of the condenser. I don't have to do a second distillation on it. It just, it comes around 20% or so. Which is plenty. I've done like the three times distillation ended up with like a mason jar this full of like a hundred and like sixty proof.

01:22:02Judith: Whoa! Goodness.

01:22:04Rick: Yeah. I was doing a little bit when I had access to lab equipment, so I was able to measure the potency of what I was doing. As long as I gave a sample to our brewmaster.

01:22:13Judith: There you go. So, being out of the industry, do you still enjoy any of the local beers?

01:22:20Rick: Oh, yes.

01:22:21Judith: Or are you just so focused on your distilling now?

01:22:24Rick: Oh, no. I'm not. It's like a maybe like once a month thing that I do. But, um, the yeah. Actually our kind of local like watering hole now is Battle Mage Brewing. That's where we go all the time. I actually--

01:22:38Judith: I would assume you've walked over to Henebery then?

01:22:40Rick: Henebery's right there.

01:22:41Judith: Since they do the rye whiskey. Yeah.

01:22:43Rick: Yep. Yep. They have like a little, you know, they have a fun little collaboration.

01:22:48Judith: They're very collaborative. I mean, because I go to Henebery and meet up with friends Friday nights. So they can go down to Battle Mage and get glasses of beer and bring it back to drink it at Henebery. But they can't take the, any of the hard liquors over to Battle Mage. You know, I find that sort of dichotomy very interesting in the, you know, it's like--

01:23:07Rick: Just alcohol. It's these alcohol rules, man. It's--they're so arcane and esoteric sometimes, you're just wondering, like, I don't know if you've heard of Yuseff's getting married story?

01:23:19Judith: No. Mm-hmm.

01:23:20Rick: Oh, gosh. So, you know, Yuseff being co-founder of Ballast Point then eventually Cutwater. He met his wife, now wife, um, she is the owner, or was the owner at the High Dive. I believe down there. And, you know, they dated and then they wanted to get married and they got married. But when they were processing their marriage license it got denied.

01:23:48Judith: What?

01:23:50Rick: Right. And they're like, well, what's the deal here? So it turns out as a result of the legislation that came out after Prohibition, it is illegal, or at least is--yeah, it's illegal or not allowed to have someone who owns a distillery or brewery marry an owner of a bar because they're worried about tied-house.

01:24:16Judith: Tied-house. That's extreme. That is crazy.

01:24:20Rick: So she, the, uh, and I totally forgot Yuseff's wife's name. Wife's name. And I'm friends with her on Facebook and everything but--

01:24:27Judith: Yeah, and I'm--I know her name and it's, well, it's just like--

01:24:30Rick: She speaks German and Spanish. She's lovely. Awesome person. But she had to sell her stake and the High Dive in order for them to officially get married, which they did at Valley High. And it was a whole thing, but they was like, yeah, we tried to get married now part deux, you know?

01:24:49Judith: Yeah. But the fact that anybody would even dig that up, I mean, we're talking a hundred years ago.

01:24:55Rick: Right! I didn't even think that. It's like, we know those old laws on the books that nobody enforces anymore. But apparently it's still a thing. They wouldn't allow it so.

01:25:03Judith: That's crazy.

01:25:03Rick: I know. I--it was kind of crazy to, I don't even know how they found out. Like how would you look that up? Like really?

01:25:09Judith: Yeah.

01:25:09Rick: I mean, because usually it's like, there's this person, there's this person, or you related? No, okay's. Let's do this.

01:25:14Judith: Yeah. Really, you know, you've done your blood tests and fine, you know? Great. You're now legal. So, oh, that's amazing. I hadn't heard that story.

01:25:22Rick: No, that's one of my favorite stories to tell, especially for history buffs.

01:25:25Judith: Well, it's a perfect example of how arcane our laws are and how they need to be cleaned up.

01:25:31Rick: A hundred percent.

01:25:31Judith: And of course, you know, with former President Carter passing away at a hundred, the fact that he actually gave homebrewing that kick to become, start commercializing. A lot of people are bringing that up now. And as you know, a way to remember him, you know? Oh, yeah remember Carter was the one that, you know, made home, homebrewing able to go commercial and stuff.

01:25:53Rick: Yeah. My dad was never a Jimmy Carter fan. Because you know, during--he was in the military at the time and he did a lot of pay cuts for the military. Of course, when Ronald Reagan came into play, we went into a lot of debt to give the military pay raises.

01:26:08Judith: Which they needed.

01:26:09Rick: But, he always says like, yeah, that's the only thing, good thing that Jimmy Carter did was legalized homebrewing.

01:26:16Judith: It certainly wasn't the fact that the brother brought up Billy Beer.

01:26:18Rick: Yeah. I was like. I was gonna say, I think it was more like his brother. Yeah.

01:26:21Judith: I think he had to apologize for Billy's beer.

01:26:26Rick: Billy Beer!

01:26:26Judith: Yeah. That's wild. Oh, Rick, this has been absolutely wonderful and very intriguing seeing your path through the ins and outs of the San Diego brewing industry from being brewer, but also working it through quality control. Because I think quality control, well, even proper packaging, those are unsung heroes. You know, if you don't treat the product right, it's not going to fly. And especially now after COVID with everybody expecting everything to be packaged, it makes a huge difference.

01:27:03Rick: No, it's, um, I think that's one of the biggest hurdles that many breweries run into is like really taking it seriously. You can't just like, put things in bottles or cans like you did when you were homebrewing. You really have to think about like, the steps that it takes to get there in order for it to be considered a high quality product. Going in. And of course quality is subjective. It really is. But the fact is, is that, you know, and of course the joke is that, quality is subjective, but it is the same definition as porn. I know it when I see it. You know. Or I know it when I taste it. So it's, you know, it's been hard at certain points to get to that point because a lot of breweries don't take quality issues seriously until it really seriously affects them or their brand.

01:27:55Judith: And some don't ever take it seriously. And that's the reasons they're no longer open.

01:28:00Rick: Exactly. Yeah.

01:28:01Judith: I mean there are some names I could name and I won't.

01:28:04Rick: Oh yeah, no, same, same. Yeah. But it's always the--it was always the case where if I knew they were trying to take it seriously and sometimes they just didn't either have the financial or the scientific expertise to go through it or the experience to do it, then it's like, I'll take you way more seriously because you want to, instead of some of these breweries that take pride that they don't, sometimes. And there was a few of those.

01:28:29Judith: Yeah. So, well, on that note, I will end the recording.