Welcome back to BierTalk — this time we’re heading to Sonoma County, California, to talk with Vinnie Cilurzo, co-owner of Russian River Brewing Company. We dive into what makes Russian River beers so famously crisp and consistent: an uncompromising focus on freshness — cold chain, low oxygen, tight distribution, and quality control all the way to the shelf. Vinnie also opens the brewhouse door and shares the thinking behind his hopping approach, recipe evolution (yes, even Pliny the Elder), and why staying relevant means never stopping the work. And because it’s Russian River, we also touch wild beer, the story of the “Vinnie Nail,” the fonio collaboration with Garrett Oliver, and their latest sustainability step: CO₂ recovery. Grab a beer — and enjoy the conversation…

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BierTalk – Gespräche über und beim Bier.

Markus: Hello and welcome to another episode of our podcast BierTalk. Today I’m very happy to again go to the other side of the planet, where it’s probably warmer than here, because we have winter time here in Germany now and we are in California, and I’m very happy to have Vinnie Cilurzo from Russian River here on air. And it’s great that you are here, and maybe you can introduce yourself a little to our listeners?

Vinnie: Sure, of course. Well, first, it’s great to be here, happy to spend the next whatever hour, whatever now time is. I’m Vinnie Cilurzo, co-owner of Russian River Brewing Company. We are a craft -brewery in the United States, specifically in California and more specifically in Sonoma County. So that’s about 50 or 60 kilometreers north of San Francisco, over the Golden Gate Bridge. So that means that any time we go to San Francisco, my wife and business partner Natalie and I, we get to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge, which never gets old, so kind of a cool part of being here. We’re right in the middle of wine country, so we have hundreds of wineries surrounding us, the Napa Valley and the Sonoma wine country. The name of our brewery, Russian River Brewing Company, comes from the actual river that runs through Sonoma County, and it’s also the wine appellation here, which has a very similar climate to Burgundy in France, so we grow a lot of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. So I’m as much of a wine drinker as I am a beer drinker. And our brewery has been open since 1997, so that makes us pretty historical in the current craft-beer -segment, where most breweries opened much more recently, and I’ve actually been in craft beer, micro-brewed beer, as it was originally called, since 1994.

Markus: Yeah, thats a long time. And also Im very curious, I hope I will have the time to come to San Francisco and then the Bay Area in the next years. A gGood friend of mine, Pete Schlossberg, is always inviting me and treating me with chocolates and whatever , maybe we will have the moment. Maybe to start right into the middle, for me, the most impressive moment when I had your beers was, when I was in Las Vegas last year for the CPC and judging at the World Beer Cup, and I started exploring the city and then I had a longer walk, and I came to a place called Zombie Brewing or Zombies Brewing. And it looked a bit strange, it was behind a bridge. And then I went there and opened the door and then there were three beers from Russian River on tap. I tried them all immediately and they were so fresh and crisp. And that was my first time and I had them on tap and so I ultimately really fell in love. And what do you think, why is it like that? What do you think you are doing different fromto others.

Vinnie: Well, first off, Vegas is an interesting market for us. Its one of our smallest, if not our smallest, markets and I like to think of it as a bit of a pressure relief valve, if you will, so if we ever have excess beer, it goes to Vegas. Vegas will get beer every month, but its volume fluctuates. And theres really only maybe six or eight places that sell our beer in Vegas on tap, so you just happened to stumble ontoand one of the very few. T and then there’s just a handful of accounts that sell it in a market, so off-premise, so bottles or cans that you can take to go, so, it’s a very small market, but it’s close to us, from California. But for the freshness factor, you kind of hit upon one of the cornerstones of our business, and one of our ethos in our model that has always been there ever since the day that we opened two-plus decades ago, and that is to focus on freshness. And obviously, we have super high standards in the brewery and were doing everything we can to make ultra-fresh beer, so keeping oxygen levels really low and all the other things that go along with that. But one of the things that you hear a lot, at least here in the States, and I know in Germany, most beer is not kept cold all the way through the distribution chain, but thats actually something that we can do here in the States if you put your mind to it, and thats something we do at Russian River. So, once the beer comes off the packaging line, it immediately goes into a cold box. When we deliver it, we sell to about 500 accounts that we deliver directly to in the Bay Area, so that would be San Francisco, Oakland, and then up here in the area where were at , so all the accounts that sell our beer are mandated by us, Russian River Brewery, to keep the beer cold. When we ship to a distributor, to a regional distributor, say in Southern California or maybe up to Oregon or Washington or to Colorado, we ship the beer cold there as well, and so the beer that you had in Vegas would have been shipped cold. And then were only shipping as much, only enough beer for that distributor to sell in the following three to four weeks, and then they have to wait for the next shipment, and they have to sell out of it. We also have, for the most part, a Russian River Brewery employee covering every market that we sell our beer in, and so their job is really less about selling beer, and theyre more a brand ambassador and a quality ambassador for freshness, and theyre making sure that the stock is ultra-fresh I, and if they find old beer, like an old bottle of this or that, instead of doing the traditional way, which would be in the United States, where the distributor comes back in and buys back the beer from the account, and then they would split the loss of that beer that they didnt get to sell with the brewery, our sales team, our brand ambassador team, our Russian River Brewery team that’s out in the street, they just buy the beer right off the shelf. In fact, I was just up in Seattle two weeks ago, brewing a beer with a friend, doing a collaboration, and I was working the market the day before with our rep up there, and we found a few bottles of pale ale of ours that was past code, and Jeremy just bought them right off the shelf, and we walked out with six bottles of our beer that were out of code. To be honest with you, they were probably still in good shape, but that’s just the ethos and values that we live by. And so that is one of the ways that we ensure that our beer is ultra fresh, and I often get texts from friends in Southern California that buy a bottle of our beer, and they say “I, is this right?” This was just bottled five days ago, and that is very common, Wand were often are taking pallets right off the packaging line and loading them right into trucks, and then they land at the distributor and because we keep low inventories at the distributor, we get ultra fresh beer out into the market, even as a 50,000 barrel brewery, which is the size we are.

Markus: Isn’t that maybe also the key factor in general for American IPAs? Because if I think in Germany, of course, we have great hops and great hop areas, but it takes a long time until the hop is harvested, and then it’s brought to cooperatives, and then it’s processed, and whatever, and maybe it takes a year until breweries are really starting to brew and so many IPAs we have here simply don’t have the freshness already in the hops, and also then it takes a time to bring it to the markets, whatever. So, many years ago, when I was first time to Yakima, that was the same impression for me. I was there, and the beers were so much more hoppy, intense and crisp, yeah, full of these fruity, pliney, tasty, whatever aromas. Is that maybe also some important part of the American IPAs?

Vinnie: Yeah, when youre talking about IPA directly and West Coast IPA or American IPA or hazy IPA even, the freshness of the hops is obviously a big deal. One thing that you’ll find here in the Sstates, in the major hop farms in the Pacific Northwest that you won’t find, for the most part this is a genegeneraliszation, but for the most part, German farms, because most of them are so small, they don not have cold storage on their facilities, whereas almost all the farms here in the Sstates will have at least a small cold box. And they’re also running their hops from their farm to whoever processes for them, literally the same day or if not the same day, the next day that they were bailed and then from there, theyre going right into cold storage. So that cold storage is something thats really a focus on the hop industry here, and always has been. We are already brewing with Croppier 2025 hops, so hops that were harvested just in early September this year. We’re already brewing with some of those hops right now. So there is truly a freshness factor there. And if your hops are pelleted, all else being equal, if they’re pelleted and you store them at cold temperatures, say, I mean, our hop freezers are below freezing, so theyre 25° degree Fahrenheit, so were like -negative 3°C or something like that. Anyways, if you cold- store your hops and theyre pelleted properly, they’ll actually hold for several years, and that’s pretty well accepted in the industry, whether you’re in the US or Germany or wherever. But it’s getting to that point and trying to get them there in a reasonable amount of time. We also use a fair amount of whole Holcone hops. And here in the States, whole Holcone hops are bailed into 200-pound bales, so that is about 90 or 91 kilogrammes per bale. We actually will have those bales cut into quarter bales and then put into mylar bags that are nitrogen- flushed. And we do this because it preserves them a little bit better. So, although it costs us a little bit more because we are using whole Holcone hops, it does help us there. So yeah, from the IPA standpoint too, you also have to look at how they are stored and sold in the store. I say this all the time to our customers, “Don’t ever buy our IPA if you don’t see it stored cold in the store.” And 99% of the time it is, and that’s what our sales team’s main job is, is to drive quality with our retailer partners. But even if it’s not Russian River, if it’s a big brewery, a big national craft brewery or someone smaller than us, if that IPA isn’t stored cold, don’t buy it. That to me is the very first thing a consumer can do to protect their dollar and make sure that what they’re buying is really fresh. And then second is, when you buy that or look at that can or bottle of IPA in the store here, if it does not have a packaged- on date, a bottled-on or a canned- on date, I wouldn’t buy it either. As a consumer, I want to know when this beer was put into a can or a bottle and that will help drive my decision on how fresh the beer is and if I want to buy it or not.

Markus: That’s really impressive to hear, especially as we have the German perspective, and we had only one company which tried to start to have something like a cool chain and also fridges everywhere and trying to have a surveillance that itis really kept cold. But in the end, it didn’t work. The employees of these stores started storing their lunch inside of these fridges and not the beer. And so it was really, maybe it still has to be some time until this idea reaches Germany, whatever.

Vinnie: I’ll also add that that’s the mindset for a lot of big breweries, big distributors, here in the States as well. So that’s not specific to Germany. And I see that everywhere, in other countries that Natalie and I are fortunate enough to travel to. And so it takes a very special craft brewery in America, and it takes a lot of work to make that happen. But you can do it. But it does take an awful lot of work and you have to be able to stand behind your values, your ethos and your beer. YAnd you have to be ready to buy it back when its in cold storage still and is out of code. And that’s something that we do and really the values that we live by. And we’re an IPA brewery first and foremost. And we do make about 15%. So one five, 15% of our production is lagers, a Pilsner and a Helles. But gosh, like 80% of our beers that we sell, produce and sell as IPA. So we live and die by the freshness.

Markus: Yeah. And you were just talking about the hop cones. So what is the contribution for you that you say, okay, I still want to use the whole hop cones in my product?

Vinnie: Yeah. So we use whole cone hops on the hot side. So we have a hop back, or a hop jack as its called. And so our brew house is Ziemann, made by a German manufacturer there. And we really absolutely love our Ziemann brew house. And when we went to design the brew house with them, this was something that we asked them to do. And they were very open to do. We actually got pushback from some other brew house manufacturers when we were shopping this around. And in fact, Ziemann had already done it once previous for another American brewery. So they had experience doing this when they installed the brew house at the Karbach Brewing Company in Texas. And so what we do is we replace a lot of our whirlpool hops, which traditionally would contribute to mostly just aroma on the hot side. And we switch those into whole cone hops and put them in a hop back. And so the wort, after its done boiling in the kettle , and I will say that we use a lot of hop extracts, CO2, pure resin hop extract for bittering. That’s something I’ve been doing since 1998. And I’m a firm believer in using this product. And then we’re also using more advanced htop products on the dry hop side, which I know wouldn’t be legal in Germany. I talked to Eric Toft from Schöoenraomer about this, and he’s always like, “Ooh, that’s illegal. We can’t do that here.” But anyway, so that’s some other stuff that we do that’s downstream that we can talk about also. But back to the whole cone hops. So then when the wort transfers to the whirlpool, it goes through the normal process in the whirlpool. And then from there, so, theres very few pellets added in the whirlpool. From there wort is transferred and flows over the top of the whole cone hops in this hop back small vessel. And then the wort exits the vessel and then to a pump. And then the pump sends the wort, the unfermented beer, directly to the wort cooler. And the idea is that the wort is only in contact with the hops for maybe five minutes. And so this wort, being in contact withfor the hops for a short amount of time, will still will extract the volatile and beautiful hop oils that we want. But then the wort gets cooled down immediately. And so we lock in those aromatic compounds into the wort. And then the wort goes off, gets aerated, yeast added, and off to the fermenter. And whereas, if you think about a whirlpool process and the traditional method of US breweries and most breweries around the world, but specifically thinking aboutto IPA, when you make that whirlpool hop addition, let’s say you have itthe wort takes 10 minutes to transfer the wort from your kettle to your whirlpool, which is average for us, fast for some probably, maybe slower than others, but probably it’s faster than most. And then the wort will sit for 20 minutes to wait for it to stop spinning. And then, for us, its 30 to 40 minutes to cool our wort down. So youre now well over an hour that those hops have been in contact with the wort. And although we are extracting flavours and whatnot from the hops, we’re also losing a lot of those hop aromas, those super delicate hop aromas, which are really volatile at the warm temperature. And they’re just going out the kettle stack. And so this is not a novel concept. This is something that Sierra Nevada Brewing Company here in the United States, which I believe just celebrated their 40th anniversary, have been doing forever. And its something that I saw at Sierra Nevada when I was still a home brewer touring their brewery years ago, decades ago. And so it’s something that we adopted here. And I really like what it adds to our IPAs. And so thats the foundation of it. So, are we leaving something behind in the hops when we discharge them and they just go to the compost bin? We absolutely are. But we also have more control of our aromas and flavours that we’re getting from the hops. And we also have more control of our bitterness because were also not extracting a lot of bitterness from the hops at this point. And then we’re not losing the aroma, because we have less contact time. And for us, we like it. It may not be the best process for every brewery, but for us, it works really well. And like I said, that’s not unique to us, but it is somewhat unique in the industry in the US, because you do have very few breweries using whole cone hops. And I think for us, it’s about 17 or 18% percent of our total hop purchases are whole cone. When you get to the dry hop stage of our brewing process for IPA, we, for the most part, are always dry hopping after fermentation is complete. We’ve removed as much yeast as we can from the cone of the tank. We add the hops to the top of the tank. And then we usually weill do a pH adjustment at this point. So, before the hops go in, we’ll adjust the pH of the beer down with food- grade phosphoric acid. And that’s because what we now know from hops is that for every pound per barrel of hops that we dry hop, we raise the pH of the beer on average of 0.1. So again, the pH will go up on average 0.1. So its really 0.08 to 0.14, depending on the hop variety, but let’s just say it’s 0.1. So for every pound per barrel we dry hop, we’re taking the pH up by 0.1. So if the end of fermentation is that the beer is, say, 4.3 and we dry hop at three pounds per barrel, we’re going to probably go from 4.3 to 4.6 pH. And at 4.6 pH, we have a hard time reducing the diacetyl from hop creep. Hop creep’s the secondary fermentation that we see from the enzymes in the hops. And so the enzymes break down the residual long- chain sugars, which are adding sweetness and body to the beer. And then we have a secondary fermentation, we have a spike in VDK or diacetyl. And so if were not lowering pH, the yeast has a hard time reducing that. And so we make this phosphoric acid addition to lower the pH, to counter the rise in pH we get from dry hopping. And then this in turn helps us get through the dry hop process quicker. And then we also have a unique process in dry hopping that all of our fermenters here at our big production brewery have a port on the back of the tank on the cone where we can insert a mixer. The brand is called Guth, it’s a German company, but we can get them here and they’re pretty readily used in the wine industry. And so we’ll mix the tank with a portable flexible stainless steel impeller mixer. And this gets the hops integrated into the beer more quickly and we get more extraction out of the hops as well.

Markus: Yeah, that’s very interesting. And as far as I understand, its a lot about two things. It’s extraction on one side, but also transformation on the other side.

And so, in terms of the whole hop cones, that means if you have this shorter contact time with the whole hop cones, you also have less transformation of these aromas and more extraction of these first very volatile, very specific aromas. And maybe that’s the explanation for why you have so different aromas on that side than if you would use it, lets say classic way. And in general, we now have a lot of experiments here in terms of the bio-transformation. Are you also experimenting with that on thate last side of the beer?

Vinnie: Yeah. And I’ll also add, just to clarify, that on the dry hop side, we are using pellets. So we’re using pellets on the dry hop, but we are using whole cones. So yeah, your explanation is correct on the hot side, but yeah, pellets. And then we also use a lot of concentrated pellets. So they go by different brand names, whether it’s Cryo or CGX, and Haas has their version as well as Steiner. So we’re using those as well, which we see helps reduce hop creep. But anyways, back to bio-transformation, thats something, it’s still a pretty big buzzword, at least here in the United States craft beer world, amongst small breweries that are focused on IPA. It’s not something weve really looked too deep at because I think it’s a very, very difficult thing to quantify whether you have it or not, because most breweries will talk about bio-transformation based on academia saying that it does or does not work with this yeast or that yeast and at this point in the process. But if you’re a small brewery and you don’t have the ability to then do a side-by-side a brew that doesn’t have that same process, you know what Im saying? To do a control and then do whatever your process is to try to trigger bio-transformation. How do you really know if you’re having bio-transformation or not? And let’s also call a spade a spade that here in the States, it’s that typical American mindset, if a little is good, a lot’s better. And when I started out brewing at my first brewery in Southern California that was called Blind Pig, which is now our main IPA brand outside of Pliny the Elder, it’s our single IPA, if you will. It’s our number two selling beer now. It was revolutionary to dry hop at one pound per barrel. Now, one pound per barrel is, if you’re not talking about concentrated pellets or anything like that, just straight T90 pellets, one pound per barrel here in the United States is pedestrian. It’s not a huge dry hop load. I mean, you have breweries whose average dry hop load is four pounds per barrel, five pounds per barrel, albeit these are small breweries, but still it is a sizable amount of hops that are going in. And so I bring this up because, is it really bio-transformation that we’re seeing, or is it just the sheer volume of hops that we’re adding to the beer and you’re just creating these super intense aromas and flavours?

Markus: Good question. And really also a great difference fromto the German amounts of hops, which are normally used for beers here.

Vinnie: Yeah. And I don’t mean to downplay bio-transformation. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I’m just saying that most people that talk about it probably haven’t been able to do research and do a side-by-side with or without whatever that process is. And I guess from that standpoint, I’m just a little more scientifically minded. I’m definitely a very artistic brewer, but there needs to be science behind it as well. And at the end of the day, I just feel like, you know what, if the process we’re doing works and it tastes and smells great, then that’s fine. And I’m good with that.

Markus: Absolutely. And you mentioned Sierra Nevada. And I think for me, maybe the big difference is if you look at the iconic Sierra Nevada products like the Pale Ale or the Torpedo Extra IPA, these were still based on, let’s say, a British-like idea with crystal malt and all that. And I think you were one of the first to remove these crystal malts and, like, open the canvas for the hops. Is that right or was there something in between?

Vinnie: Yeah, that’s the one thing even early, early on, if I look all the way back to Blind Pig, where I still have my old brew log recipes, you know, yes, we did use some crystal malt in our IPAs, in my IPAs, but it was a very small percentage, 2% to 3% of crystal 15 or crystal 40. And we did this for a long time. But even when the rest of the U.S. craft beer industry was growing with IPAs, most breweries were making their IPAs much higher in crystal malt, much like what you had mentioned with Sierra Nevada, Torpedo and whatnot. And yes, their IPA and a lot of other large craft breweries‘ IPAs still have some crystal malt, whereas we were always on the lower end. So our beers always popped a little bit more. We certainly weren’t the first brewery to explore removing it completely, but it’s something that we did many, many, many years ago. And, you know, I think of, and you may have some listeners that say, “Wwell, aren’t your consumers, your customers, you know, used to what that flavour profile is?” And yes, to one extent, but, you know, I think our consumer is also open-minded enough that if we can make the beer better, then that is good for them as well. And I’ve always thought of our recipes as more concepts rather than a concrete recipe that is just locked in and we can’t make changes to it. You’d be shocked if you looked at the Pliny the Elder recipe from 20 years ago to what it is now. The main through- line is the two- row base malt. There’s sugar added for a drier beer for the fermentation. And that also helps us reduce the fan levels, the free amino nitrogen. But also the other only, like, main through- lines is the Simcoe hop and then Amarillo being the number two hop. Past that, you know, all the hops are much different. In fact, we just recently added in a brand new hop called Tangier and dropped out a few hop varieties. You know, it’s always been a citrus-focused driven flavour profile along with pine and stone fruit. And so, this new hop Tangier allows us to get a nice orange quality, a citrus quality, as opposed to having to blend a few hops together. So, I’m always looking and I do a lot of work in our pilot brewery on new hop varieties to try to think about how we can incorporate them into the beer. And one of the ways to make the flavour and aroma in an IPA pop is to really just use a clean canvas. And yes, most smaller to mid-size breweries here in the States are not using crystal malt in their IPA. They’re using either Pilsner or two- row malt as the base. And sometimes with or without a percentage of dextrose sugar as well, as part of the fermentation mix. Now, with that said, you also need to look who your clientele is and your market. And for us, our market and the people we sell to are, you know, are open-minded enough and they trust Russian River Brewing Company. They trust the quality of our beer. They trust that every time they buy a bottle or can of our beer, it’s going to be super high quality. But they also trust in all the R&D and the pilot work I do in our pilot brewery to make our beers better. And we’ve always been very transparent about it. Weve never been secretive about the fact that we are often, you know, trialling things in the pilot brewery. And if they work out, they will eventually work their way into our beer. But I also think that’s whats kept us relevant. You know, Russian River Brewery is now 26 or 27 years old. I can’t even remember. So, we’ve been around a long time. And, you know, one of the things that has kept us relevant, and let’s talk about Pliny the Elder, our number one selling beer, our double IPA, is that the recipe has evolved with the palatelet. And so, at least for our customers, they want to follow where we’re going, which is making the beer dry or making it more hop-t forward. Whereas someone larger who has more of a wider audience and a broader audience, like Sierra Nevada or New Belgium or whoever, you know, they may still stick with the model of putting crystal malt in their IPA because they’re marketing to a broader audience who maybe wants a little more sweetness, you know, in the beer. And thats’s one of the things that that ingredient is going to give. I was just at the Craft Beer and Brewing bBrewers rRetreat, and it was at Sierra Nevada Mills River, and one of the other guest breweries there is from Florida. And he was talking about the IPAs he makes and how he still has more of an old- school IPA. And what he was referring to was that it still has some crystal malt in it because that’s what his customers want. And so, it’s important to not just move your recipe because it’s what you want. You do still need to know that your customer is going to be open to that. And that’s one of the great things about having, we have two brew pubs, so each of our brewery locations have a restaurant attached to it, is that we have direct communication with the customer. And so, I can make a beer and we have a brand we have a thats called Rn&D, so capital R, lowercase and then capital D, so like research and development. And anytime a customer sees Rn&D on the chalkboard, they know that I made that beer in their little five-barrel pilot brewery. And so, our bartenders and servers can get direct feedback, and then I can extract that feedback from our front- of- house team and learn, you know, like, well, did they like this, was this too much, was there not enough flavour, so on and so forth.

Markus: Maybe this is even the biggest challenge, because if I think back to the days in Berlin, I wrote a book about all the Berlin craft breweries like 15 years ago. And when I came back five years ago, and wase’re talking to those who were iconic 15 years ago, most of them said, “Okay, it was great when we started when all the craft beer ideas in Germany, in Berlin started, people came in every day, wanted to have the new beer, the new shit, and try it the next day, something different, and whatever, it was like a roller coaster. And now, 10 years later, they don’t look at us anymore, because we are now the old guys, and we are the guys that have been there.” So they go to other ones, to newer ones, which make more, more releases for whatever things. And I think that is that is quite tough to, on one side, be innovative and productive and go to these demands. And on the other side, to keep something, some iconic, some continuous beers, like like other breweries in Germany, which have beenare existing for 600 years, more or less doing the same beers all thisese time, and still on the market. So that’s, I think that’s, that’s really a difference or a challenge if you start a new brewery, like 25 years ago, and find a way to be, on one side, still these new guys which make the interesting, trendy stuff and the others, on the other side, to have a business with a with a customer base, which are used to specific beers and like them once and once again, and stick toon the on the brand.

Vinnie: You just hit the nail on the head with what keeps Natalie and I up at night and why I was up at 3.30 this morning laying in bed because, I’m always thinking about what I can do to our beers to keep them relevant and keep them focused and keep the consumers focus on us. There is a trend here in the United States for many small breweries to not have a flagship beer, meaning they don’t have one main beer that represents them. I feel, and Natalies, the same way, we feel very fortunate that we have a beer like Pliny the Elder, that is our number one beer that represents 60 or 65% of our total volume production. It makes planning much easier. But it also gives us a lot of, you know, different batches to keep making it better and better, just like, you know, the German breweries you mentioned, you know, that only make a handful of beers. There’s something really magical about being able to brew the same beer over and over again and dial it in and get your process down. I love that and I’m happy that we have,e, you know, that and that, you know, really, four or five of our beers represent like 98 or 95% of our total volume, with one of those being 60 or 65%.

Markus: Yeah, when I was talking to Jamie Bogner some, no, maybe a year ago, we were, of course, also talking about the IPAs and the development of the IPA and the pale ale. And he mentioned that more and more breweries start to more or less brew them as lagers, so use lager yeast, and so change the whole idea of that. Do you have an idea about that?

Vinnie: Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting you bring that up. We’re doing a collaboration with a brewery in Los Angeles called Highland Park in January, that arguably was the one that brought this to the forefront. Interestingly, Matt Brenelson from Firestone Walker and I have talked about this on and off over the years, but Bob Kuntz at Highland Park is the one whothat really brought this to fruition and has a really great story. And I’ll be at their very small brewery. You know, he’s also the one that brought West Coast Pils to the forefront and would actually be a really interesting interview for you to chat with him, because it’s a modern version of Pilsner with an IPA flavour profile. But yeah, so he ferments all of his IPAs with lager yeast. So you are starting your fermentation cooler, but not as cold as a classic Pilsner or Helles or whatever other lager style, but definitely cooler than if you were using an ale yeast. And so we do make some IPAs where we are using lager yeast for that fermentation. And what you get is an even cleaner fermentation profile. You get fewerless esters, which again, here in the States, breweries are trying to have a super clean malt foundation, a really clean yeast contribution, and then let the hops really pop. And then you continue the process as if it’s an IPA, and the beer warms up through the fermentation so that when you’re dry hopping, you’re up to dry hop temperature, which is 68° Fahrenheit or 20° C, and off you go. And you do have more sulphfur. You have a little bit more sulphfur, but that’s not a bad thing because with that extra sulphfur, you have a little more shelf stability. It’s acting as a preservative. But I do know that some breweries also fight a little acetaldehyde in their IPA when they are fermenting with lager yeast. So there, it’s really a balance of not fermenting too cold, but fermenting warm enough to where you’re blowing off some of these quote unquote “off” flavours, but also cold enough to where you’re achieving what you’re trying to achieve, which is a cold fermentation to have a really clean platform. So yeah, we do do do this, but it’s not our regular process. Our regular yeast for our IPAs is Chico yeast, which is of course a reference to Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and the yeast that they started with. And rumour is, is that that yeast originally came from the Ballantyne Brewery, which is an old IPA brewery, which has some great history, in the middle of the mid- US. I actually don’t know if that’s totally true, and I’m not even sure if Ken knows that or not. But regardless, it’s a workhorse of an IPA, and it’s sort of the equivalent of 34/70, but on the ale side. It actually ferments quite cold for an ale yeast. It can ferment warmer. It’s pretty clean. Yes, it does have some ester contribution, but not a huge amount if you ferment it on the lower end of its spectrum. And 34/70 is kind of that same way. You can ferment it really cold. You can ferment it warmer. They’re just both super flexible yeasts that are, I’d say theyre related in the sense that they have that ability to really be flexible in how the brewer wants to use them.

Markus: Yeah. And there is some logic behind it. If you think that maybe American IPA started with bringing it more and more hop- forward. So first you reduce the crystal malt, also the malty part, make it more like a canvas for the hops. And then you may even reduce yeast aromas to have even more space for the hops, which is somehow logical for me. So, interesting. And now we have a lot of cold IPAs and all that stuff here also, which we get from the States and many nice beers among them. In general, I think that change in the beer world, at least in Europe, but probably also in the States, also goes another way, because people are drinking less or at least different. Also, they maybe have less money or they spend less money and they want alternative drinks like kombucha and hop water and whatever things. So in general, the alcohol consumption goes down and the interest on alcoholic beer goes down. Do you have this also at your brewery, and are you developing other products too?

Vinnie: You know, the only alternative thing that we make is hop water, at least right now. I mentioned that we add some advanced hop products. They’re flowable liquid- extracted hops. So basically super concentrated hops into a flowable form for some of our beers. So that replaces some of the T90 pellets. And we have reasons for doing that. And you can take some of those same products and make hop water and make a really clean, nice, easy- drinking hop water. That’s really the only thing we do. We don’t make non-alcoholic beer. We don’t make seltzer or, you know, FMBs, so.Those things just aren’t in our purview. Our real focus is just staying on our lane. We know what we’re good at. We know that we can always do better. We never rest on our laurels. You know, Natalie and I always say that we run our business with a little bit of paranoia. We’re always looking over our shoulder, always thinking that someone can do better. And that’s what drives us to keep making better and better beer and be more sustainable and do all the things we do that keeps our business healthy. You know, we’re going to have 5% growth this year. We had 7% growth last year and a couple percent growth the year before. You know, in the history of Russian River Brewery, there’s only been one or two years when we haven’t had any growth. And I’m also a firm believer that, to be successful, you don’t need to just keep growing. You know, the wine industry here proves that every year, that you can be a 10,000 case winery and do that year after year after year and not grow. You find other ways to, you know, you raise your prices a little bit, you find efficiencies, so on and so forth. And so, you know, for us, our business is pretty healthy, given the climate. And we’re very, you know, humbled and honoured that folks will continue to buy our beer even after all these years. But, you know, we also work our butts off to do that. But we also have made sure that were staying in our lane, like I just said a minute ago. And staying in our lane means that we don’t need to make seltzer. And I don’t have any issue with anyone making seltzers or kombucha or whatever you have to do to survive. If that’s what you need to do and your customers buying it, great, but it’s just not who we are. I have made, or I shouldn’t say made, I’ve attempted to make non-alcoholic beer three times in our pilot brewery. By the third time, it tasted as good as most of the major NA beers here in the States, but it didn’t taste any better. And with that in mind, you know, we haven’t released any NA beer. I’ve dumped them all. Would I like to have a non-alcoholic beer for our two brew pubs? I would. I would like to have one that we make, but until I can make one that meets, you know, what I think I want the flavour to be, we will continue to buy a non-alcoholic beer from another brewery. So we serve Firestone Walkers 805, which I think is one of the best non-alcoholic beers here in the States. And I’m fine with that, because they can make a better version of it than we can make. And but like I said, we’ll just stay in our lane and just try to keep focusing on making all of our beers better, and have better shelf stability, flavour stability, aroma stability, all that stuff.

Markus: First of all, it’s great to hear that your business is doing well. So I’m very happy about that. And second, I think it’s maybe the first time I ever heard from an American brewer that the main focus is not to grow. For me, that was always the big difference between most of the brewers I know here in my area, in Franconia, because if you ask them, they would never say, “We want to grow”, because they produce what they can produce. And they are always on that level and they won’t make more and they sell everything they produce. And that’s good for them. And when I went to the States, always the first or at least the second sentence was, okay, wwe have that plan of that growth and that growth and that and then we sell and whatever. And so for me, that was always a big difference. And I’m very, very, very happy to hear that also that thinking is there somewhere at least. That’s great.

Vinnie: Yeah. And all the growth we’ve had, this 3three to 5% growth, that’s all been organic. It’s not forced. We don’t tell our sales director, “You must find 5% more growth.” It’s just her telling Natalie and I, “Wwell, this is where the market’s going.” And if she came to us and said, “Twe don’t have anywhere to, there isn’t anywhere to grow”, that’s fine too. In fact, that’s what I expect every year. And we’re actually pushing up against our total capacity here at the brewery. And we aren’t looking to add more tanks and grow. And that’s actually what got a lot of breweries in trouble, is that they grew too fast and they invested too much. And then that loan payment was just too much to handle and they closed. And it’s really sad here in the States right now. There’s a lot of breweries closing small and large, and a lot of old iconic brands that are closing, going out of business. And that’s somebody’s dream. That’s someone’s business that’s closing. And although there are probably too many breweries here in the States right now, it’s still, it sucks for somebody in their business.

Markus: Yeah, I was very shocked , the last one I heard about was Rogue.

Vinnie: That’s the most recent one. And before that 21st Amendment. And when we were designing our big production brewery here in Windsor, California, which is just a short 10- minute drive from our brew pub in Santa Rosa, where we also brew and most people think of Russian River, one of the technical consultants we were using, he would, when we laid out what our, hes, someone we’ve known in the industry for years, but when he really got to know Natalie and I, and he’s, and he’s Belgian , he’s Flemish. So, you know, he has that idea of, like Trappist monasteries. He knows all about that. He, Floris would always say, “You and Natalie, you are like monks. Like you don’t grow your business. You’re not into growing your business. You think more like a monk does, with, you know, with the Trappist breweries that make beer.” And I always thought that was funny and wore it with a badge of honour and yeah, so, yeah, but there is a lot of truth in it.

Markus: But there is a lot of truth in it. What one thing, I have to ask, for a friend who is a very skilled home brewer and he has a lot of barrels where he is experimenting with and he uses a thing he calls the Vinniewind nail. And I think that refers to you. And he asked me if I can ever can talk to you, I have to ask you if there is a story behind that.

Vinnie: Yeah, so to give you a little background, I’m guess my claim to fame in the beer industry, is the double IPA, because Im credited with making the first modern, double IPA in the beer industry, back in 1994. And then the second thing is, is the Vinnie nail, so named after me. So essentially, when we started making barrel aged beers, I didn’t have a way. I was to pull a sample out. And if you know anything about doing, like, wild barrel- aged beer specifically, which is what we do and what were known for. When you add the pretend to my seas, you form a pellicle or a film yeast on the top. So if you use a traditional wine thief to pull a sample out, you break the pellicle and that’s not good because the pellicle is what protects the beer from too much oxygen. And with the pellicle, the only oxygen you’re getting is the micro- oxygenation through the wood. So the thought was, was to drill a hole in the head of the barrel. And then I stick a stainless steel nail in the head of the barrel. And so you then use a hammer, the backside of a hammer, to pull the nail out. And then you have a cup and the sample just trickles out of the nail, and you can kind of control the flow by the, if the bung is in or not, and the barrel is vented, and then you put the nail back in. It’s always important to have an extra nail in your pocket or I tuck it into my watch band. Funny story ,,Natalie gave me an, I watch for Christmas a few years ago, and it’s got a stainless steel band that I can pull tight. And that’s where I stick the nail. So it’s a use of my, I watch that. I didn’t know that I, that I would actually, you know, use for that reason, but you pull the sample and the, the, the beer comes out and its below the level of the pellicle. And so that’s the reason behind it and how it got started and, why I did it originally. I had looked at a bunch of different things that you could use, to put in to that hole and most were either too big or they were too clumsy, or it just wasn’t the right fit, but a nail, a stainless steel nail was perfect.

Markus: Absolutely. And it really works perfectly even in my friend’s cellar. So that’s great, yeah.

Vinnie: Yeah, it works. It works well. And it’s, and I get, and I’ll be honest, I chuckle to myself whenever I see a picture of, you know, in a beer magazine or a story about, you know, someone pulling a sample and they pull the nail as, as it’s called, and they’re taking their sample. And I’d think back to just how like simple and utilitarian and why I did it. And we’re really, you know, that’s another part of our business that’s, that’s growing again, our sour, wild, funky beer programme. Every, all these beers age in used wine barrels, or we have fooders. So upright wooden tanks that we’dve bought from wineries, that didn’t have a use anymore. You know, these beers were once about 10 or even 12% of our total beer sales. And then, no, from probably 2018 to 2022. So, through the pandemic, also the, they dropped and you know, back in the 2010 to 2015, it seemed like every brewery, at least in California, was making some form of a wild beer. So to some degree, our sales got diluted just by other people making them, but slowly and little by little as other breweries stopped making them. And we’re one of the only breweries that distributes our wild beers throughout the whole state of California, where we sell 80% of our beer in total, just in California. I mean, it’s 40 million people live here. It’s a small country in and of itself. So we have a huge marketplace and an audience, those sales have gone back up and we can almost like can’t keep the wild beers in stock, but the differences is we’re selling a lot more draughft wild beer instead of bottles, which is fine. We’re well take it either way. And I’m just excited that people are still drinking, these types of beers and theyr’re curious about it. And again, you know, as a lot of these breweries havethat we’re doing, it have dropped out of this part of the market, the overall quality of the wild beers being sold out in the marketplace has gone up, because those of us that are still making it like the lost Abbey, Beachwood, a little brewery in Southern California. And there’s, and you know, like Allagash on the eEast coast, from Portland, Maine. And there are’s many more that are still in the game, but the quality level is up again, because everyone that’s left already was already making super high quality wild, you know, funky barrel- aged beer. And here we are again, those same breweries are now the ones left and the quality is there. And that’s really exciting.

Markus: It’s about quality and innovation in a way. I know our hour is coming to an end, but I have two points I want to spotlight a little bit. One is the alternative grains idea. So you had this project with Garrett Oliver about Fonio, and I would just be curious or be interested about your experiences with Fonio and how it went and if there is a continuation on that.

Vinnie: Yeah, yeah, I love, that was such a great project and we, you know, we absolutely love Garrett and all he’s doing. And you knowI, if your listeners don’t know about the Michael Jackson Foundation, I encourage them to look it up on the internet and all the good work he’s doing there. And then he’s got this Fonio project that started out with Natalie and I trying some of his Fonio beers in 2019. And then, last year he asked us to be a part of the Bbrewing for Iimpact, collaboration, which was a global collaboration that also included Guinness and Carlsberg. And we were lucky enough to be the one US brewery. They asked to be a part of it. And so we made a Belgian blonde ale, that was inspired by a blonde ale that we were drinking at West Flutter in their blonde, back in 2022 when Garrett and Natalie and I were travelling together in Belgium. And so we kind of used that as the inspiration, thenat made a Belgian blonde ale that had 30% Fonio. And it went over really well in the marketplace. And we even made used Fonio in our kitchens at the pubs. And so if your listeners don’t know, Fonio is an ancient, Western African grain thats 5,000 years old that has the ability to grow virtually in sand without any irrigation, no fertiliszer, no pesticides, no insecticides, so on and so forth. It really is an incredible grain, has great flavour. When you eat it, it has this kind of nutty quality to it. But in beer, it comes off as being like a lychee fruit or a Sauvignon Blanc white grape type of flavour. It’s really cool. So, even past that project, we’ve continued to use it. We use it in our, in our saison, that’s called Robert. We make a blonde ale that we actually have the Fonio blonde ale on right now. And we’ve continued to tweak the recipe, but that’s now, just using our Chico yeast. So it’s a really clean beer, it has the colour of like an industrial lager because the Fonio lightens the colour up so much. We’re using a little bit of Nelson hops from New Zealand, kind of melds well with those flavours from the Fonio, and we’re using 30% Fonio in the grain bill. This year, 2026 coming up, we have a partnership with whole foods where theyre going to be featuring our Fonio beer and all of the whole foods that we sell in mostly here in California, but a couple of the other states we shipped to as well, that they’re going to have this, focused on Eearth Dday, which is in April. So that’s pretty cool. So yeah, we we’ve continued to use it and I’m super excited, and really just happy for Garrett and honoured that he asked us to be a part of the project and it really got us into using it.

Markus: Yeah, that’s really great to hear. And I must say, I tried some of the beers he made with athe Senegalese brewer in Africa and I was really surprised.

Vinnie: The Fonio Guinness was amazing. That was my favourite of all the ones I tried.

Markus: Unfortunately, I haven’t tried that, but maybe there is the opportunity in the future. The other point I want to talk about a little is, you are just installing a CO2 recovery equipment at your facility, and I would be curious about how was the decision was on that and what do you hope to achieve with it?

Vinnie: Yeah, that was so seven years ago when we opened and started building our production brewery, our big production brewery, we decided that we were going to install CO2 recovery down the line. And so we designed it into the facility, but couldn’t afford to put it in then hindsight, that was a blessing in disguise, because there’s been so much more advancement for small CO2 recovery equipment from just seven years ago to now. So in the end, we went with Daluem, just an absolutely amazing company. And we are really thrilled with what we have. So yeah, we did a lot, I did a lot of research the last few years. And then, you know, last year and into early this year, we installed all the hard piping and whatnot ourselves. And then they came in and helped us install the equipment. And so we’re now a 100%hundred percent off the grid. We don’t buy CO2 anymore. We send CO2 to our Santa Rosa pub as well. Weve even sold a CO2 cause we have an excess CO2. We’ve sold CO2 to another local brewery and since July 23rd, which is the day we turned it on, we’ve collected, about 225,000 pounds of CO2. So it’s pretty, it’s a pretty exciting and something Natalie and I have always wanted to do. We have a lot of sustainability built into our brewery. We have a wastewater treatment plant that treats all of the, it’s a pretreatment that treats all the brewery effluent. Most of that water gets treated at the end and refiltered and comes back into the building. And that’s our cleaning water for all the brewing. So our CIP is all reclaimed water. The whole landscape of our property is, is watered with recycled non-potable recycled water from our municipality. None of the rainwater, leaves our property. It all goes into the ground and then naturally into the aquifers or it flows out tohe wetlands that we have. Some day we’ll be able to run all of our toilets on the recycled water. Once some of the regulations change here in the state, and then solar would be the very last thing we do down the line. And we picked solar last because it’s the most expensive.

Markus: Fantastic to hear. And really interesting how big the change was between the first days when you started and the challenges then and what do you have now.? And that also leads me to maybe my last question. So if you would sit down with your younger self at the very start of your brewery journey, what would you say to yourself after all that perspective?

Vinnie: Yeah, that’s a shocking that we’ve got to where we are. I would have never thought that, you know, we would be a 50,000 barrel brewery. We did it very slowly, but were thrilled, you know, with what we’ved done, but yeah, just a total surprise. I didn’t think that we’d ever be at this level. I always, I remember going to Sierra Nevada as a home brewer and seeing the brewery and how pretty and shiny it was and just how tight it was and immaculate and efficient and just like, I would have never have thought that we would have had a facility like that. And you know, we’re humbled that people drink our beer the way they do and you know, honoured that, that we’re still relevant and in peoples conversations about beer. So, yeah, I think a younger Vinniey would have been shocked that, to see what beer has done for us.

Markus: And not only for you, also for us, I’m a really big fan. So thank you very, very much for your time, for the information.

Vinnie: Yeah. I hope you can come visit us sometime and maybe come out for our Plinyplenty of the younger triple IPA release some day.

Markus: I will do my best. Thank you very much and have a nice day.

Vinnie: Take care.