TCGP S2 E20 The Hills Have Brews with Ryan Conway & Jean-Luc Vitiello

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Cocktail. Welcome to The Cocktail Guru podcast, a. Show about food, drink, and entertainment with. A tight focus on the good life. And all things delicious, luxurious, and fun.        

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I'm Jonathan Pogash, bartender, author, TV personality, and founder of The Cocktail Guru. And I'm Jeffrey Pogash, wine and spirits, professional author, insatiable, collector of culinary, and so people tell me, an engaging toe. And my dad.        

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This is a biggie. What'S a biggie?        

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This episode. It's one of my favorites. I did something I've always wanted to do. John, since we started our podcast, I've been wanting to do a mukbang.        

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Here we go again. And finally I was able to do it because your mother and I went to the Poconos and I dropped her off somewhere. Somewhere? Where was the somewhere you just dropped her off? On the side of the road.        

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Come on. Well, there happened to have been a building there, so she went inside a. Building where you do what? Well, it's called a casino. Okay.        

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Building where you take little quarters and put them in slots and then pull handles. Well, no, you don't have to do that anymore. Okay. Obviously, you haven't been to one in a long time. Well, yeah, I guess, but I dropped her off there.        

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And then I went to just down the road to the Pocono Brewery, which is a fantastic place, and I met with the owner, Jean Luke, and the master brewer, Ryan, and they gave me a tour. We had a fantastic time. And then we drank the beer, tasted beer, then started drinking the beer, along with their wonderful oven roasted pizzas. Oven baked. Oven baked.        

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They have their own glorious pizza oven that they brought in from Italy, and it makes fantastic wow. Well, dad, you've been talking about this brewery for several months now, and it really sounds like you had a great day. I must tell you, I've been passing this brewery for years, and I did go in a couple of times for lunch on my own. And then one day I decided I'd start talking to the people there and introduce myself, and lo and behold, we were able to do this podcast episode direct and live from the brewery. Yeah, I'm sorry I couldn't join you.        

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Yeah. And among the other things, among the various things that they showed me was a cask of their Imperial stout beer, which it was in the brewery at the time. But they bury the casks in the ground yes, to age the beer. And what's the reasoning behind that? I think the reasoning is about compressing the cask and the lack of air and a cool.        

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It just ages the Imperial Stout in a way that makes it absolutely delicious when they dig up the cask and bring it out. Wow. It's absolutely fantastic. Tell me a little bit, along with all the others. Tell me more about the food, because you're really starting to make me hungry.        

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Well, the food they have a variety of food. They have barbecue, they have hamburgers, all kinds of sandwiches. But they made a couple of pizzas for us, and one was a Margarita pizza, and I think the other one was a pepperoni pizza. So it was absolutely delicious. And the pizzas go perfectly with the beer, of course.        

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And they have lager, they have several IPAs and Imperial stout, and it's just a delicious lineup of beer that goes beautifully with food. Well, I'm fully thirsty and hungry right now. Well, I am too, just thinking about it. And you'll be even hungrier after you watch this episode, so bona, petit. When I arrived at the Pocono Brewery, I met with brewmaster Ryan Conway and the owner operator, Mr.        

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Jean Luc Vitiello, who took me behind the scenes of the facility. Come along with me as Ryan talks. Us through the tour. So over here are our oak barrels that we get from Manitani. Still works.        

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In those barrels, we age our double mash burial stout. This clip right here, this is our wood fired pizza oven. This was actually imported from Napoli, Italy. This is where we do our traditional hand tossed wood fire pizzas. We have a very traditional family, and we do traditional Napolitan recipes.        

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The oven itself is at 1200 degrees Fahrenheit, and the pizzas cook in about 60 seconds. The whole oven is actually one piece, so there's no ventilation in there. The ventilation is actually that hood on the front. That's where the smoke comes out and it rises up through the chimney. So all the heat stays right in that dome.        

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So it keeps that consistent heat all throughout the night, all throughout the day. And that's how we cook our pizzas, super fast. So this over here, this is our boiler. This is the beating heart of the brewery because that is where all the water gets heated up, turned into steam, which all that heat goes into cooking our mash, our warp. So that's where all our power comes from with the heat.        

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This is our brew house. The shelf at the beginning, that was all of our grain that we go and make all the beer in. We have a ten barrel brew house at PVC, and that is where we brew the beer. And then moving into this area here, this is the seller. The seller room is where we age the beer.        

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It's where the fermentation happens. Fermentation takes anywhere from 16 to 30 days. We have four fermenters and eight brights. So we can have about 160 barrels of beer on hand at a time, including cold storage. After taking the grand tour, it was time to taste through their beers and learn more about each expression.        

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Let's dive right into let's taste, please. So we'll start here at number one. Number one is number one because it's the first beer we ever brewed. It's called Pokawakna, named after the name where the poconos derives its name, pokawakna in lenape Indian means a stream between two hills, which is the Delaware Water Gap. So that's what we named the poconos after.        

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And now you're drinking a little bit of pocawakna. Well, cheer, light, citrusy notes on the finish. And it's just a very simple golden ale. Right, that's good. Very smooth.        

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That's really good. A golden ale. Golden ale, which is somewhere in between like a lager and an ale, is it not? Maybe a little bit before lager, it is an ale. So it's going to have a little bit warmer notes on the finish, but it's right there with, like, a blonde ale.        

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Golden ale, very light, just before you get into the loggering process. And ales are top fermenting? Yes. As opposed to loggers that are bottom fermenting. That'll be the question for our educated youth.        

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Ales ferment in warmer temperatures, they ferment from the top down, so they ferment more rapidly, so you can get a lot of bright, warm notes from it. But loggers, because they ferment in colder temperatures, they sink down to the bottom. They require that colder temperature. So the sugar basically comes down out of suspension and comes to the yeast. But it's that slow, cold fermentation that gives you those classic, smooth, cool, slightly sweet notes in a lager.        

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Yeah. I must tell you, I cut my teeth when I was in college in Wisconsin. Cut my teeth on lagers. I was drinking things like, well, nickelode. Yeah.        

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But Old Milwaukee hams, that's an old one. They're all oldies you're giving us. And also heinegan was when I really wanted to get extravagant and go all out, I ordered a Heineken with my pizza at the local spot in Wisconsin, which was called The Spot. That was the name. But as my taste buds progressed, as I started tasting more and more beers, I became undoubtedly, I mean, decidedly an ale drinker rather than a lager drinker.        

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And now every time I go out, I'm ordering ales. Well, what's nice about the ales is there's a lot more variety. There's not as many loggers brewed because it takes a lot longer in that cold process. Ales cover everything from golden ales to stouts lightest to darkest, whereas loggers, there's light beers and there's dark beers, but they're much further in between, whereas ales pretty much cover I think it's 75% of the beer market. About 75%.        

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But that wasn't true before, was it? Well, all the big guys brew loggers because the flavor stays consistent for longer. So a heineken can stay on the shelf for over a year as a logger than if it was an ale. So that's one of the reasons I think they choose to get into that. Ales are like a magnesium fire.        

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It's bright, it's powerful, very short. But loggers are like that steady burning flame. It's always consistent. It's low, light, sometimes a bit milder flavors, but it's very consistent over time. Well, call me crazy, but I find ales to be so complex, rich.        

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The flavors are just incredible. And that's why I always go after Ales. To me, loggers are much more one dimensional. Generally, we have one logger to kick into and we can get right back in the alien. Okay, give me as many loggers as you like.        

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That's fine. This is our mock chunk, named after the city of Jim Thorpe, previously known as Mock chunk. And that city has deep roots in the Poconos, and the making of a great city takes time, much like the making of a great lager, the Mock Chunk. Well, maybe I'll change my opinion about lager. This is absolutely delicious.        

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Fabulous. Nice caramel notes on the finish with a light, crisp, crisp back end. It kind of seems to be heading a little bit toward Ale. I don't know, but that's just my taste buds talking. That's so good.        

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I also have to tell you that my first Ale, and this is what got me into Ales Odly enough, was Ballantyne India Pale Ballantyne IPA. That was my first. And I must have been, I don't know, 19 or 20 years old when I first tasted it. Wow, that was a long time. Around that long, yeah.        

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Speaking of.        

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Well, speaking of IPA, our next beer up is definitely one of our most popular. That is our Wally Wilson. Wally Wilson IPA. Wow. And who is Wally Wilson?        

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It's a fantastic story. I love this one. So what year was it that they bought out the town? Roughly 19, six, I think was in the beginning of the build. So in 1906, the town of Wilsonville got bought out to get flooded in order to make Lake Wall and Paw Pack.        

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And after they made the lake wall and Paw pack, they PP and L Company built a hydroelectric dam there. And now we named our beer after Lake Wall and Paw Pack, and the town of Wilsonville at the bottom. Wally Wilson. They say on a really dry summer, you can still see the church steeple poking out of the lake. And where is Wilsonville?        

00:12:46
            

So it's at the bottom of Lake Wall and Paw Pack, which is it's out here? Over in the Poconos. So about 30 minutes away. So it's in this area. Generally, we try to relate all of our beer names to something in the area of the Poconos.        

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We are the Pocono Brewery Company. So our beer names, if we have adjunct ingredients or any kind of additions, we try to source them locally first, so that way we can if we are the Pocono Brewery Company, we want to put forth that essence of the Poconos. We want to bring out that terroir and that's delicious. I think the saying he's going for is, we are the Pocono Brewery Company because we are the Poconos and we try to embody that within the names and ingredients of our beers as best as we can. A bit more succinct.        

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Wonderful. So next up, the double. Well, we're actually going to keep going in progression of the numbers, so by the time we get to the double, we'll be almost at the end here. Great. We're going to go to number seven, which is the next number we have on tap.        

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We did skip four, five and six because we have our Ruby Wilson number four. Our Pocono Pines pilsner Pocono Pines Pills are number five and our Magic Bus is number six. Right. Which is another IPA for four, another Pilsner so a Lager style beer brewed with a Christmas tree for five and a wheat beer for six. And then we go to our first stout.        

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So you have a nice dark ale beer. I thought this might be a stout. Yeah. This is called the five seven oatmeal stout. And we embodied the area code of the Poconos, which is five 70 for that.         

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Wow. The nose is incredible. Very nice coffee, chocolate nose. And you'll pick up a lot of that on the flavor profile as well.        

00:14:40
            

Yes. This is how can we call it the baby sister to the imperial style that you make. I'm glad that you mentioned that, because this one has an older brother. Our Imperial Oatmeal Stout, the underground, where we take this beer, we imperialize it to 11%, we put it in a locally sourced whiskey barrel, which, as local as we can get, is Manitani Whiskey out of Philadelphia. Really, really great spot if you ever want to check out a distillery.        

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But they give us ten to 15 barrels a year and we bury that beer underground for nine months and unearth it on our anniversary party on Father's Day every year. So we have the little brother and the older brother, which has that really great coffee chocolate note on there as well. I've never heard of any brewery doing that with their beer, burying their beer. Do you want to hear the story behind that one? Because it's a full circle situation here.        

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Sure.        

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We're good friends with a local winery that takes one of their wines and they bury it underground. So our first year, I decided that we wanted to try that out. We took a beer, I talked to the owner over there and we buried our beer underground with the permission of the person who I had thought had come up with the idea. And it turns out, after we met Ryan and we talked about that beer and we started brewing it, he explained that his first job that Tammy got him was for that winery, and it was his idea to bring back an old tradition of winemaking that is an underground aging process. If you want to talk a little.        

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Bit about that, So back in antiquity, if you didn't have the money to dig out and build a wine cellar, your next best option would be to bury it underground. Once you hit a certain depth, the ground is going to be a consistent temperature all year round. There's no air exposure. And it's especially nice aging it on wood because you have the angel tax, which the water inside will evaporate out and you'll lose volume over time. If you ever go to a distillery where they're aging something for decades, they'll open the barrel and it's like, halfway full.        

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They didn't fill it halfway. It's just that natural distillation over time of the evaporation just brings it into a more concentrated liquid. But when you age it underground because there's water in the dirt, that water has nowhere to go. So it just flexes in and out, in and out of the wood, and you just keep rolling more and more of that Char, that vanilla note. Now, does this one go into oak barrels?        

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The Oatmeal south does not. Only the imperialized version. We tend not to put lower alcohol beers into barrels because there's more room for error and bacteria growth and things, and we end up with some sour beers, which we've done before, and they're really great sour beers. But when it comes to the stout, we really like that high alcohol. The coffee is coming right through in the middle of the mouth.         

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It's fantastic. Thank you. The beverage has to be 11% at minimum to basically clean itself to stave off bacterial infection, which is why we age our imperialized doubt. We get it up to at least 11% alcohol by volume, so that way we don't have to chemically stabilize it. We don't have to put any more preservatives in it.        

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It just keeps itself clean as it ages. And all of these will go very well with food. Yeah, absolutely. Pizza. Especially pizza, for sure.        

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What's a better combination than beer and pizza? Absolutely. Nothing better. Nothing better. We can continue on.        

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Yes, we can. So, in continuation, we're actually talking about another beer that has a little brother and older brother with a barrel aging process, and that's number 14. This is our Appalachian cider. We call it the Appalachian because it's locally sourced apples from the Poconos, and we live at the hardest points of the Appalachian Trail, so we named it the Apple Appalachian Cider. It's number 14.        

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So take a look at that. It is a bone dry cider. We ripped all the sugars out of that. So you can have some really crisp apple notes on the finish and not so much sugar or sweetness that you've noticed on the regular site. Not sweet.        

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Not sweet. It's like hard cider. Yeah, absolutely. Because we get it fresh pressed the night before we brew it. We don't have any preservatives.        

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There's no extra chemicals added. We only add sugar if it doesn't have enough to start jumpstart fermentation. But otherwise, it is a completely pure cider. Nothing added to it. It is raw and real.        

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And because it's that real natural flavor, you get that fresh, crisp apple flavor on the front end, and you can only get that if you have something that's really fresh when you make it. I'm philosophically opposed to trucking in ingredients because you don't know. They give you a list of everything that's in it, but you don't know what's in it. They could put whatever they wanted. Someone could put their feet in it.        

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Sure. Who knows that someone could go swimming around. I've known the family that presses those apples since I was three years old. I've been picking apples and strawberries and getting produce from Heckman's Orchard my entire life. So we know exactly where the ingredients are coming from and where are they located?        

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They're located about 30 minutes away from here in Effort PA. Wow. And I go there every year. We know them personally, and that's why we choose to stick with them and stay local with that and amongst other ingredients that we put in everything. And what's the alcohol level?        

00:20:23
            

That is 6.8%. 6.8. Very good. So its older brother is 14.5. So we took 55 gallons of that and we put it into one of those whiskey barrels from Manitani Whiskey and aged it for how many months?        

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It was a much shorter age this time for two months because it didn't have that alcohol content. We had to make sure that we had no air exposure. Like, we had to be very vigilant about this one because it is at risk for bacterial infections. But if you're vigilant about it in and out two months, but it picks up a lot of that really nice whiskey flavor, the vanilla note, because there's no sweetness in the cider, all the sweetness from the whiskey really comes out. Wow.        

00:21:06
            

Yeah. That is really interesting. That is delicious. This is also served at a lower carbonation, like you talked about that Imperial stout in the bottle earlier. So slightly lower carbonation.         

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So you can really pick up on those whiskey notes and it's not being broken up by that aeration.        

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You could make some interesting flavored ciders. Yes. Well, we actually take both of these and do a few mixed drinks. Like on our cocktail menu, we have something called the strawberlation cider, where we take strawberry puree and blend it with the apple cider, giving us a nice fruity note on the finish. And since it's really dry, it almost leaves room for other sweetnesses to be prominated in the front.        

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So that strawberry really comes out, giving you a sweet cider without having to have any residual sugars defined inside that beer, because usually ciders will have, like, sugar added in the finish to add that sweetness to it. And we're not here to add anything to this beer. The apples do the job, and we let them do the work and create this awesome piece. So there are some delicious and innovative and complex cocktails to be made. Yeah, absolutely.        

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We're not only brewers, we're also drink gurus, if you will. Yes, you are. I can see that. I've always said that brewing is a fantastic conflux of science and art because as scientific and as precise, you can make all of your measurements. At the end of the day, art is subjective.        

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And you're always going to get someone who takes your finest beer, takes a sip and says, this sucks. Well, yeah, just like mixology. It's part science and part art. Mostly art. It's a lot of fun too.        

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I love mixing. So the next one to dive into is going to be the one that you've tried to pick up almost every time. Yes. Is our Wally Wilson double Dutch dippa. That is our double IPA.        

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So we've taken Wally. We've imperialized it to what percentage on that? That's going to be a 9.8%. 9.8. Really nice, sweet caramel note on the front.        

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Absolutely. You're also going to get some citrus notes on the nasal, some mosaic hoppiness, which is going to be very citrusy grapefruiting. And then the flavor profile is just a really nice smooth. That high alcohol content doesn't come out on the back end because all of those sweetnesses and hop textures really blend together given just a smooth flavor. I think my favorite part is it's really the finish because you get a little bit very lightly on the walley.        

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But especially with the double IPA, you get that caramel note right on the finish. And that's probably my favorite part about drinking it. This is what won me over to the IPA category. That's why you're here today. That's why I'm here.        

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No. And when I was here for lunch, I had the Wally Wilson IPA. But I didn't even know about the double Dutch IPA. The double Dutch. Well, at the time it wasn't available.        

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I think we brought this out in December. Yeah, towards the end of December. So it might have been either. Just came out just after you got here. Wow.        

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I'm so happy to be here. Now that it's available, the Imperial beers. We have to limit ourselves when we do it because A, they take up a lot of time, they take up a lot of space. But it's also a huge brew day to make them. Jean Luke, he starts the day at 10:00 at night, starts brewing all throughout the night.        

00:25:04
            

I'll take a nap and then show up at about three in the morning to keep on that mash process because you need to go through so much grain to mash out. It winds up being like a 16 hours work day. And then you just on and off fall asleep and wake up and make sure that valves hit do that. Oh yeah. It's a never ending process.        

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Almost no time to eat, right? But there's time to eat. And guess what? Guess what we have and back. We have some luscious pizzas and another brew.        

00:25:39
            

Wow. This is incredible. This is incredible. Thank you, gentlemen, for this incredible taste. Look at this.        

00:25:49
            

So me and Ryan will share one and you can have one yourself. Thank you. Diet. All these beers are going. I'm not able to eat an entire pizza like this.        

00:25:58
            

Some of it most often, I share with my wife. She's busy working. And gambling assiduously. Yes. In the casino and working very hard.        

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Well, we'll see if she's done well when you have to sell one of the cameras. Yeah, exactly. We're down another camera angle. Exactly. So, in front of us here, we have a margarita pizza, fresh mozarella cheese, homemade tomato sauce, and fresh basil cooked in our wood burning oven imported from Naples, Italy.        

00:26:35
            

And that oven is incredible. Ryan was he temperature? Oh, he fired it up.        

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He's not only a brewer, but he's learning how to make pizzas. Anything that has to do with fermentation, he's in it. And also the beer that I've brought out is our basil cezanne. This is number nine. This is a cezanne brewed with what is that?        

00:27:01
            

Five pounds of fresh basil? Five pounds of fresh basil leaves. So, this, with the margarita, is the perfect combination. So it's kind of in the tradition. Of a Belgian somewhat a little bit with a special blend of yeast that we blend two different yeast together that help give us a nice peppery finish.        

00:27:22
            

So it's almost adding a little bit of salt and pepper to the end of your pizza. Well, you know what this is called when you do a podcast and you eat at the same time? What's that called? It's called a mukbang. A mukbang.        

00:27:35
            

And I have always wanted to do a mukbang. We have not done one yet. I'm honored on our podcast. I'm glad. This episode has been a bunch of first.        

00:27:44
            

It has been for beer. The first mukbang.        

00:27:50
            

How about you make a pizza later? And this will be the first time you made a pizza? I have never made a pizza before. There you go. We'll see what you got.        

00:27:59
            

This is the crust. Just incredible. We make all of our dough fresh. We make it every morning. Enzo makes all of our dough fresh.        

00:28:11
            

Every morning, Enzo comes in to make all of our dough fresh. Maybe that's why he was late. So, I'm not sure if Ryan told you about the oven, but, again, it is imported from Naples, Italy. It's built as one unit. So a lot of the wood burning ovens you'll find in the US.        

00:28:30
            

Are two to three parts that get plugged together because they're very heavy, a lot of fire resistant concrete in there, and so on. What that does is, when you have to put those together, you create spaces where heat can escape. And the whole point of a pizza oven is to retain that heat within the oven and feed it into the pizza as hot as you can. So, our oven maintains a temperature between 901, 200 degrees, depending on how many pizzas we're actually making at a time. And it can only do that because it's one piece and so this pizza actually cooks in about 60 seconds.        

00:29:06
            

It just flash cooks it. You can actually see on the side here where you have darker spots and lighter spots. That's because that flame is just shooting heat at it. But what I love about it is it's not burned. Not burned at all.         

00:29:20
            

So many wood fired pizzas come out burned and I could never quite understand why that was happening. The reason is because since that temperature in the oven isn't that 900 to 1200 degrees, the deck is still so hot, it takes longer for the top of the pizza to cook. So that deck burns your pizza. So unless you're constantly cooking pizza and putting the pizza on that same spot, cooling that deck down, you'll never actually have a consistently cooked pizza all the way through. Whereas at the temperatures we're running, the top and bottom are cooking within 1 minute consistently together.        

00:30:00
            

And voila. It's also really cool to just watch because you put all of your ingredients on top, all the cheese and everything, and you can quite literally watch it in real time. The cheese just settles and melts down. You watch the dough rise on the crust. This is really interesting because the dough crust is very soft, it's very doughy.        

00:30:26
            

It's like putting your head on a down pillow. It's just very gentle, soft, delicious way to make a pizza. And I don't think I've ever had a crust quite like this before. Well, thank you. Enzo is the best, but the pizza oven is also a big piece of that.         

00:30:50
            

This is what we've done my whole life, actually. I was born in the pizza industry. It wasn't until ten years ago that I really got into the beer world.        

00:31:03
            

We used to own another restaurant about half hour away from here called the Lunar Rosa. And my grandfather father actually came from Italy and helped us build a pizza oven there. And that's how we brought the wood burning pizza oven industry. I want to share this pizza with my friends here. So when we decided to get into the beer world, we also wanted to make sure that we were bringing in something else that we love, and that's the pizza.        

00:31:31
            

So we took the game room out of what was there and built an entire stage basically for the pizza oven. Because these pizzas are cooked, as you saw, right in the middle of the dining room, pretty much. And that's one of the best parts. You can come up and watch pizzas get made all day. It's really great.        

00:31:50
             

But this beer goes so well. It's just incredible. Not just this beer, but this beer is designed specifically for this. Try it out. See how the double dutch You've got this one right here.        

00:32:02
            

That's the double dutch. That's what I was really anxious to try with the pizza. I think one of the most fun things that's been operating PBC is that fusion. Of Italian cuisine and beer brewing, because a lot of the features of Italian cuisine are simple recipes, high quality ingredients, and your flavor just comes from fresh, high quality ingredients. So we get to try to emulate that with our pizza, our food, and our beer.        

00:32:31
            

We try to have really fresh, high quality ingredients, and we make beers that I don't want to call them simple, but if it comes down to having 14 different grains, well, can we cut that down? What are the flavors that we want to distill? And let's aim for that. I would rather have three pronounced flavors in a beer than 14 muddy flavors in a beer. Simplicity is bliss.        

00:33:01
            

The Margarita pizza, like you said, is four ingredients, and it's delicious. So you could put more ingredients on that, and it'll just get better. But my thought is always, simplicity is bliss, because you could put a bunch of ingredients on a pizza that isn't good, and it'll taste okay. But if you can get down to the bare basics and have a pizza that is addictive, like this one is, I think you've done something really great.        

00:33:33
             

And what's the difference between the cezanne that we're drinking and the Double IPA? So the cezanne, the biggest difference is that it has an adjunct of basil in it, so you get that herbal taste to it. The yeast we use is also a special blend that we create. So the yeast that we use gives it a really nice peppery finish. But with the Double IPA, you get a lot more of the sweeter, multi flavors combined with the bitter hop notes.        

00:34:07
            

So this one is a lot more herbal, a lot more peppery, whereas Double IPA is multi and bitter. One thing I always like to talk about when I'm teaching classes, which I do on wine mixology and beer as well, I always include beer, is the importance of yeast and how yeast, even when it comes to it's, more obvious, I think, with beer. But with wine as well. Yeast contributes so much to the flavor of a beer and wine that it's often ignored. The yeast is actually the brewer.        

00:34:44
            

We're just pushing water in the right direction for yeast to do its job the right way. There's an old saying in the brewing world where brewers make wart, yeast makes beer. And when it comes to, let's say, Champagne, one of my favorite wines, yeast is everything. And I'm referring to champagne in the province of Champagne in France. True.        

00:35:09
            

Champagne from France is yeast driven, whereas California sparkling wine, for example, is fruit driven. Yeast. I didn't know that. Yeast is what contributes to most of the flavor in an aged Champagne. It's really remarkable.        

00:35:27
            

It's also really fun because my degree was in fermentation, so I learned a lot about wine and beer, but also a lot of food fermentation. One third of all foods on Earth are fermented foods, and you have a lot of the obvious ones, like sauerkraut kimchi, and you have a lot of less obvious ones. Bread is a fermented food. Chocolate is a fermented food. And it's this really cool process of utilizing microbes to transform a substance into something more flavorful, more nutritious, more edible.        

00:36:01
            

Have you ever heard of harkarl? No. So Harkarl is an Icelandic delicacy and it is fermented basking shark you told me about. This basking shark is toxic to humans, but when fermented, the microbes break down those toxins to make it into an edible food source. Apparently it tastes absolutely foul.         

00:36:26
            

The gentleman from Weird Foods tried some and he said it was the worst thing he's ever eaten, but I guess it's just an acquired taste. I don't know. People are eating it. I'd like to try it. Can we get a basking shark in?         

00:36:40
            

Let's go.        

00:36:44
            

So I think we've done something cool here because we've saved the last beer that we have on the flight. Oh, good. For just towards the end of the pizza. And we can almost consider this a dessert beer. This is our walle.        

00:37:00
            

C 137. It is a hibiscus tea infused kettle sour.        

00:37:10
            

It is on the line between an IPA and a what were we talking about yesterday? Most like a shandy. Almost like a shand. You're going to get some real nice tart notes in there. Our souring is at a is at 3.14 on the sour scale.        

00:37:32
            

PH balance. PH balance. That's really good. And it brings out some really bright, rosy notes on it. Another cool thing about that beer is it's our, I think, fourth version of Wally.        

00:37:48
            

So Wally we kind of like build different styles of beers based on Wally himself. So this one is named Wally C 137 because it's a Wally from another dimension. It's a Rick and Morty play where this is Wally from Another Dimension, where the world has been cronenberg. Ryan has a car and the brewery is 3ft to the left. Right.        

00:38:18
            

Wow, that really goes well with this pizza. Yeah, all of them are going to go well with the pizza, for sure. But that is a real good finishing beer as well as it's another beer that we like to do mixed drinks with because it's got that sweet sour note to it. So it blends really well as a cocktail, too. And that tea that we use in it, we get it sourced from Morgan Rake, which is a local coffee and tea grower in Blakely, a little bit.        

00:38:46
            

South of Blakely in Effort PA. It's called Morgan Rake Coffee Roasters. And as a history of the poconos she actually resides in, as well as runs her business out of the old Effort Hotel, which, if I'm naming the person right, I'm pretty sure Lincoln stayed at that hotel at one point. And if not, Lincoln, another important president. That hotel has been around for almost 200 years now and they're in the process of restoring it as well as you can walk through and go to their antique shop and their tea and coffee shop.        

00:39:26
            

It's a really cool local spot to just check out as well as get some delicious products from. And that's another reason why we choose to choose them. Yeah, we love history, too. That's one of the reasons why we started this podcast, as a matter of fact. Thank you so much, gentlemen, for this incredible tasting, for the fabulous pizza.        

00:39:47
            

This is just beyond my expectations. It's just been an incredible well, thank you for incredible time here at Pocono Brewery. Thank you very much. Wow, dad, that all looked amazing. I mean, their facilities and the beer.        

00:40:06
            

The food looked like you were having a ball. Really? I was having a blast. Even though it was pouring rain outside at the time, it was tropical downpour, but we were warm and toasty and cozy inside, having great beer and great food. The food tasted great.        

00:40:25
            

It smelled great. The beers smell that the place is permeated with the scent of fine beer. So it's a great experience, and I recommend it to everyone. My favorite. Yeah.        

00:40:38
            

What was your favorite? Did you have a favorite beer? Yeah, the IPA. You do love IPAs. I'm an IPA fan, and I really love oh, here's the thing.        

00:40:50
            

They have an IPA, and they also have a double IPA. Oh, right. So a little higher alcohol for those. Yes, those were my two favorites. Dad, if our viewers or listeners are interested, where do they go?        

00:41:05
            

Should they stop by? Yeah, well, if any of our listeners or viewers are in the Poconos, you should definitely stop by and try it for yourself. It was, as I said, raining that day, so we didn't get to use the outdoor facility. But they do have a beautiful patio outside, which is great when the weather is nice. And it's in the Poconos, but near a town called Scott Run, Pennsylvania.        

00:41:34
            

Right. So it's that section of the Poconos. So it's really neat, quiet little place and a beautiful area, and anyone can just drop by and tell the Jean, Luke, and Ryan that you saw the podcast and then sit down, enjoy, and have great food and great beer. So they should drop our names? Is that what you're saying?        

00:41:59
            

Yeah, they should definitely get will that. Actually get anyone anything? It might, yeah. No. Don't know.        

00:42:09
            

Always worth a try. What was your favorite? Did you have a favor? If you find some space in your car next time, maybe I can tag along with you and mom. Well, only if you introduce me to Christy Brinkley.        

00:42:23
            

Oh, right, when we had Christy Brinkley on. I understand. Exactly.        

00:42:29
            

But thanks for watching, everyone. We'll see you next time. That does it for today's show. If you enjoy what we do, please. Rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast.        

00:42:42
            

You can also support the show with a small monthly donation to help sustain future episodes, just click on the Donate button at the top of our website and choose your donation amount. To learn more about our guests, visit www.thecocktalgurupodcast.com or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or TikTok. The Cocktailguru podcast is produced by 1st Reel Entertainment and distributed by Eats Drinks TV, a service of the center for Culinary Culture, home of the Cocktail Collection, and is available via Anchor, Spotify, Apple, Google, Amazon and wherever you listen to your favorite shows.