Can you describe the history and inspiration for Ten FIDY Stout?
FIDY was originally brewed in Lyons in 2006. We had some time to do new, different beers that had a longer tank time and FIDY and Mama’s Little Yella Pils were made around the same time. FIDY was based on a homebrew recipe of another brewer who was working with us at the time.
How is Ten FIDY made and what about this process reflects the price tag?
It’s a time-consuming, labor intensive process to make Ten FIDY. FIDY is made with nearly 50% specialty malts like Munich, crystal malt, chocolate malt and roasted barley. These malts are all more than twice as costly as our base 2-row malt. As if that weren’t enough, we take only first runnings from TWO MASHES to fill the kettle. This means that we are leaving a lot of sugar that could be sparged from the grain, but it would dilute the high-gravity wort of the first runnings. If we had another kettle we could sparge the grain left after collecting the first runnings and make another beer from the wort we get from it, albeit a smaller gravity brew. The point is to get very high gravity (lots of sugar) wort in the kettle. After boiling the wort is concentrated further and we end up with a 25 Plato original gravity wort. Here’s the thing: that’s just half of a batch. After that we perform two more mashes to collect another kettleful to make the other half. So we’re using almost three times the amount of grain we use for 100 bbls of Dale’s Pale Ale to make 100 bbls of FIDY. Besides the extra expense for ingredients and labor the tank residence time of FIDY is longer, too. This gives it extra time to mature in tank before packaging.
Do you recommend aging Ten FIDY?
Once it’s in the can or keg you can drink it right away or you can cellar it. True fact. We don’t put a shelf life on it. We are archiving a certain amount of each batch to release in limited quantities at a later date. I have two cans of ’07 sitting on my desk right now. We recently tapped a few kegs of year-old FIDY that were amazing. It’s great to see how the beer matures over time. The intense roasted character subsides and blends with the big crystal malt in the beer. The alcohol fades into the background so you don’t realize the double-digit ABV as much. It rounds out nicely.
With Sour Cherry Ten FIDY aged in oak barrels, and Stranahan’s Whiskey Barrel Aged Selections of nearly every brew, it seems Oskar Blues has a bit of a barrel aging program happening behind the scenes. Are there any plans to expand on this?
The Sour Cherry FIDY was just a single whiskey barrel full of beer. I filled that barrel with more FIDY after we emptied it. I haven’t tried it in a while to see if the bugs took to it, but when it’s ready I’ll throw some more cherries in there so we can have another small amount of the Sour Cherry FIDY. Mostly the beer will be available at the brewery and at Home Made Liquids & Solids. We’ve aged our beers (all of them, including the Pils) in Stranahan’s barrels for the last few years. We’ve put the barrel aging program on hiatus for a while so we could focus more on the main business at hand. We just finished racking the barrel-aged ODB Barleywine and it’s pretty effing good. Any barrel-aged FIDY in house is minimal right now and may all end up getting cherries. Other than that, there is nothing else is in barrels right now. We’ve been oak aging all of our beers, though. They’re coming out quite nicely, with big, spicy oak flavor and vanilla. We’re looking at the possibility of getting new oak barrels and firing up the program again soon. Where the beers end up I don’t always know. When they’re ready they always end up at our place.
Ten FIDY is your only seasonal beer. Can you tell us if there are more on the horizon, and if so what they might be?
We occasionally talk about that but there’s nothing in the works for now. We did just brew a big batch of Deviant Dale’s IPA which will be on tap at all Colorado Old Chicago locations starting January 24th. They’ll be the exclusive outlet for that beer until February 1st when we’ll tap it at our places.
Oskar Blues was the first craft brewery to put beer in a can, now there are more than 70 brewers canning, what are your thoughts on the trend continuing to grow?
It looks like it can only increase. There are established bottling breweries adding canning to their packaging and new breweries foregoing bottles altogether, choosing to can instead. With already reputable breweries moving to cans it’s giving more and more legitimacy to the fact that cans are the superior package for beer. We’ve done a lot of the work to help persuade the craft beer-drinking public of this, and we can all see how that has helped others move to cans as consumers become more accustomed to seeing craft beer in aluminum.
I've always thought it would be really cool if Oskar Blues produced "bombers" in larger cans. It would also be a great way to set another example in canning craft beer. Is this a possibility?
Certainly. We talk a lot about producing a big-ass can. Years ago we talked about going straight to 40 oz. As we grow and get more packaging equipment the possibility of seeing a 16 oz. or larger can from us will be greater.
Have you been surprised by the success of Gubna? At Mile High alone, it is our 2nd best selling IPA, and one of the 20 best selling beer SKUs in our shop.
I’m really glad to hear how popular the beer is. It’s an aggressive, challenging beer so it surprises me somewhat to hear how well y’all have done with it but apparently you have an adventurous clientele. I think that the beer rating websites help people make more informed decisions about purchasing premium beers like Gubna. That, coupled with beer sellers doing in-store tastings definitely helps to make a $14 four-pack seem like a worthwhile venture.
Oskar Blues Home Made Liquids & Solids has been a huge success in Longmont. What are the differences in the two locations, and Is the Lyons location still considered your home-base?
Yes! Lyons is where it all came from and it’s where it’s still happening. Every Oskar Blues beer on tap in Lyons is brewed in Lyons. We brew Dale’s, Mama’s, Gubna, Gordon, Chub and FIDY in Lyons and serve them right there. We don’t filter the ales in Lyons, only the Pils. In addition to the main brands, we brew an ever-expanding list of specialty beers in Lyons that are available there AND at Home Made Liquids & Solids. We have a larger selection of beers at Home Made Liquids & Solids (43 taps) than in Lyons where we can serve up to 10. We serve every brand that we package at Home Made Liquids & Solids in addition to as many specialties of our own from Lyons that we can provide, sometimes up to 14 different Oskar Blues beers. The unfiltered core brands in Lyons are a big draw for me. That’s how we’ve always done it there, and the beers are different and worth the trip. What you won’t find in Lyons is the assortment of other breweries’ beers. We haven’t had a guest tap there in a long time. It’s all Oskar Blues, all the time.
What's next for Oskar Blues?
Another big year of growth! We’re getting five 200-bbl fermenters and one 200-bbl bright beer tank delivered to the Longmont brewery so we can prepare for the increased production planned for 2011. We’ve added more people to our sales team both locally and out of state to help us grow and keep the beer fresh everywhere. Our brewing, cellaring and packaging teams are all getting ready for the challenge. We’re about to fire up our new keg washer/filler that we bought from Sierra Nevada last Fall and we’re adding new equipment to the brewhouse to help us get more brews per day. The addition of a wort receiver will add to our daily brewhouse throughput capabilities which will benefit all of us.