Unraveling the Art of Brewing: A Tale by Michael Uhrich

Russell Palmer: 0:24

Welcome to Front Porch Perspective, a podcast dedicated to the stories of this place And the people in it. This episode of Front Porch Perspective is part of our Montana Brewer's Series. Today, we'll be talking with Michael Urich, owner and master brewer at Carter's Brewing in Billings, Montana. Mike fell in love with craft beer as a young man in Colorado. His desire for distinctive and flavorful beer set him apart from the traditional college beer scene. Soon after completing his education, he landed in Billings and was offered the head brewing position for Yellowstone Brewing Company. This experience led him to fulfill his own desire to build craft beer his way, and soon Carter's Brewing was born. Join us for some tasty beer and tasty beer talk. Thanks for coming on the porch. Thanks for having me. This is part of our Brewer's Month conversation.

Russell Palmer: 1:18

Man, i'm excited that so many of you guys said yes to me to do this. I feel really well. I don't know. I guess I have a couple things I get to. I get to drink great beer with all of you guys And I really appreciate what we have going on in Billings, montana for that, and I found through talking to Mark and to Shay that that there's it's a lot deeper than hey, i'm going to make some beer and sell some pints And that's really been fun for me and an honor for me. You know I've got to sit down now three times and have these conversations about making beer in the business of brewing and really learn kind of some early things about these folks that do this and really love this And of course you all come from different backgrounds. But in that light let's let's kind of start there. When did you develop an interest in beer making and how did that come about?

Michael Urich: 2:14

Well, at a ripe young age of probably 1415, all my friends in high school were drinking the cheapest stuff that they could find And I tried that and that was not really my my enjoyment level that I wanted, and so I fell in love with craft beer down in Colorado. I grew up there, colorado is a huge beer state. Ironically, i fell in love with fat tire at a young age, back when fat tire was only available in the state of Colorado Right. And so that was my aha moment where my friends were getting 30 packs for 10 bucks and I was getting a couple of bombers of fat tire and enjoying that. That carried all the way through into college where I fell in love with beer and just kind of immersed myself in it. I was probably studying beer just about as much as I was studying in school.

Russell Palmer: 3:08

Yeah.

Michael Urich: 3:10

And I didn't really know why. I just knew that it was something I enjoyed and I was passionate about it. But I didn't think you could be passionate about basically something people drink and take for granted every day. I was studying journalism, yeah, at that time.

Russell Palmer: 3:26

At that time, passion for alcohol was called an alcoholic.

Michael Urich: 3:29

I would say so. Yeah, did my fair share of partying in school, but I was enjoying great beer, craft beer. I never fell in love with drinking huge amounts of volume of something. It was more about the experience. Yeah, that's kind of where it started for me.

Michael Urich: 3:48

I had a friend in college that was of age and was home brewing in our dorms. It was a dry campus And we would drink Rob's oatmeal stout out of spaghetti jars Wow, because we were so broke students that we couldn't afford to buy pint glasses. So we'd use spaghetti jars, peel the labels off of them and then drink oatmeal stout out of spaghetti jars. I remember drinking this beer. It was like thick, like oil, and we he would just brew it and we would drink it. And then we became friends and started at home brewing together.

Michael Urich: 4:22

Yeah, i started having cases of beer sitting around in my apartment underneath lamps. So cases of beer were our end tables and I was brewing a lot of beer because I wanted to make beer, not just to have it around. But I was truly starting to develop a mindset where I was almost obsessed with doing it and learning about it, got my degree in journalism and graduated, but never used my degree, had a hard time finding a job in journalism at the time And I ended up landing a job as an assistant brewer at Yellowstone Valley, which is defunct now. Yeah, my home brewing experience got me to the leg in there and then I was head brewer there for seven years and learned a lot and made a lot of beer and had a lot of fun doing it.

Russell Palmer: 5:13

So you made the black widow stout.

Michael Urich: 5:15

I used to make black widow Yeah.

Russell Palmer: 5:16

Man, that's a good beer. I miss that beer.

Michael Urich: 5:19

Still got that recipe up in my head because we'd produce a lot of it and I produced a lot of beer, mainly for export and distribution, but we were only making about seven or eight beers At the time. That sounds like a lot, but it's a little different than what we're doing at Carter's now where we've got 25.

Russell Palmer: 5:37

I think you probably have more beers on tap than anybody else. That's not like a tap room showing other beers.

Michael Urich: 5:44

Yeah, And as a business model. that is not by design.

Michael Urich: 5:49

That's just my passion. I want to have a lot of. I want somebody to walk in the door and basically walk out having five or six beers that they fell in love with. I don't want them coming in and saying well, i couldn't find a beer that I liked in the place, so it's by design in that way to entertain our customers. But I always tell people I have my head up my ass with beers so far that there isn't really any limit to it. Yeah, and I've got this creative outlet and that's where it comes out.

Russell Palmer: 6:21

It really shows when you go into the brewery and you know for those of you who don't know me or haven't seen me down there you can find me there a couple nights a week. One of the things that I really appreciate about Carter's is I love the vibe in there. It's just an old school brewery and I absolutely love that, with the old wood tables and the brewery smell and all the stuff that I love about breweries. But really there's just a lot to choose from And I think I sat down with you It was about when we started talking about coming on this podcast and I said, hey, tell me about Belgian beers. Man, i got a cool little trip through Belgian breweries, just right there. I mean, i don't really know any place else I can do that.

Michael Urich: 7:05

Good, what we're doing is working, then, yeah, Well, it's working with me?

Russell Palmer: 7:09

Yeah, for sure, and you know the people I see sitting in there. I think Yeah.

Michael Urich: 7:14

I mean I think we've kind of gotten lucky. We're in an old building there and people are like, wow, you know why is this this way? And a lot of it's out of necessity. When the brewery was started it wasn't started with a lot of money, it was kind of a shoestring thing, and so the informality and the coziness of it isn't necessarily all by design, it's just we want to accentuate the building so people feel like they're in a historic spot, heighten that experience that they're in with the beer.

Michael Urich: 7:44

People come in and I want them to have an escape from reality. They will come in and enjoy your beer. Sit there in the nostalgia and unwind, see what happens, start up a conversation with somebody, or don't just sit there by yourself and veg And let the beer kind of take you where it's going to take you. I've always believed how cheesy it is, but you should be a beer writer. Michael Jackson, brilliant man, and he would always talk about how beer speaks to people and how the social lubricant that beer is gets us to speak to each other, like you were talking about during COVID. Everybody's saying we're disconnected. Well, beer always helps. Bring us together.

Michael Urich: 8:25

Yeah, Whether it's over an issue whether it's over a friendship, whether it's to teach each other something, beer seems to be a vehicle. That's the credit I don't think beer has ever been given. It's been thought of as something that was prohibited at one point, when really it's something that's deep in our culture, always has been, and I'm thankful for it, because there's people I've met over a beer that I never would have met, just walking down the street. I feel very fortunate to be part of that culture or a conductor of that culture. I've been a patron before and I've enjoyed other people's beers and I appreciate the fact that they're putting everything that they have. They're putting their time, effort, their passion, their all their problems all these things that make them people. They're putting into their product whether they're an entrepreneur, whether they're a writer, whether they're a doctor passionate people. It shows in what they do. Those are the type of people I respect and those are the type of people that I want to emulate. That's inspiring to me.

Michael Urich: 9:32

So, as a brewer, people always say that being a brewer is the well, that's got to be the coolest job in the world. Making a beer is cool, but once that nostalgia wears off and you see what it does to people and you see how it connects people and you interact with your customers, you watch them, you see how they're interacting together. That is the reward for me, because I know that, hey, i put something in there that bridged people together, and a lot of the intent behind our beers is to heighten that experience. So, yes, it sounds cheesy when I say, hey, i think about my customers. When I make a beer, what I really do is think about what conversations are going to be had over that, what kind of dreams are going to be made over that, what kind of plans are going to be made over that, what kind of arguments are going to be settled over that beer.

Michael Urich: 10:23

As brewers, a lot of us kind of work all day and we're doing this monotonous work. We have a lot of time to think, and these are the types of thoughts that come up in my head when I'm doing manual labor and making beer and sweating all day. I'm sitting there thinking about hey, what do people think? What are they going to think? Hey, i wonder who's coming tonight, who's going to be enjoying a beer? Those are things that go through my crazy mind when I'm thinking about people.

Russell Palmer: 10:51

When you sit down and you look at a beer, Michael, or you look at an idea for a beer, what are three or four things besides, you know the conversations that you're going to have, getting right into the baking, if you will, the cooking and baking of the beer. What are the elements that you're really interested in? Talk about some of the variables in those elements that influence what a beer becomes.

Michael Urich: 11:13

Well, first of all, back when I was in college, I was a pretty picky guy and growing up was a picky eater, knew what I liked, knew what I didn't like. And I would say in college was when I kind of diversified my palate, And so in that growth I was exposed to a lot of different people of different cultures. I ate a lot of different foods from those cultures And that kind of opened my mind to basically flavor in every aspect of life. I've always believed that, you know, other than your marriage, variety is the spice of life. So I didn't want to be monotonous, I guess you could say, when it comes to all the things I was learning. You know, I became really close friends with some Polynesian kids. I was one of the only white kids in a Polynesian club in college And was exposed to some pretty simple but flavorful Hawaiian food And my eyes just opened up And the more people that I hung out with that were different from me, the more I learned. I would say that still continues to this day.

Michael Urich: 12:24

I try to always be a sponge. If there's something I can learn, try another brewer's beer, try something I've never had before. That inspires me to, hey, let's try that let's experiment with that. You know I'll try anything once. So when looking at, say, designing a beer, there's a lot of things that can inspire you. There's a lot of things that can kind of grab you. I would say that I do a lot of consuming different beers. Anytime I see something new or something I haven't seen before, go grab a six pack of it and try it, love it or hate it. Try and be objective and try and actually learn from it so that I can put my own spin on that maybe, or decide that's something I don't want to make, Or maybe look at an aspect of that that I like that I could apply. So I would say, Back in college I fell in love with Belgian beer and drank a lot of Belgian beer.

Michael Urich: 13:21

We had a liquor store in our college town that had a walk-in cooler with probably 2,000 beers in it Wow, And you could go in. And What year is this? This was in the late 90s, Wow.

Russell Palmer: 13:34

And So craft beer was just starting to make its rise.

Michael Urich: 13:38

In Colorado. It was hot, it was hot, it was hot. Colorado was kind of one of the forefront states, but you could go to this liquor store and grab an empty six-pack holder and pick out six different beers for eight bucks or something. So my buddy and I we would go there almost every weekend when we were brewing or just hanging out. We worked our way around that cooler and just tried a lot of things, dumped a lot of stuff we didn't like, took notes on things, had a lot of fun. I mean, beer is supposed to be fun, but we were having a blast and we were. I would say we were drinking a lot of beer, yeah, but it was good beer. This was beer from places all over the country, from all over the world. We spent a lot of our paychecks there and a lot of our time there, and we probably spent almost as much time studying beer and drinking beer as we did earning our degrees And Me too, but I wasn't in the beer business.

Michael Urich: 14:38

Well, i had, i was just home brewing at the time and was working on my journalism degree. Yeah, i had no notion at all that I'd ever get into the beer industry. I just knew that I was having fun and enjoying the experience of it. But Belgian beer, especially in particular style Cezanne, which is kind of a really really small area of Belgium, is where Cezanne originated. It's called Wallonia. It's right next to the French border there Yeah, not even you know maybe 20, 30 square miles there, and there's a bunch of farmhouse breweries over there And that's where these farmhouse breweries, literally these farms, had breweries on And they would make this style of beer called Cezanne with whatever ingredients they had Obviously barley, but they'd have wheat, oats, spelt, buckwheat, you know all these different, unique things to them.

Michael Urich: 15:35

When I first had a Cezanne, you know, my eyes just kind of popped open and I was like, wow, that's out there, that is different. It was almost, i would say, off-putting at first. How so? I'd never experienced something that was that complex and that refreshing at the same time. But it had this distinct like funk to it. Yeah, like drinking that beer, i was like I can tell this was made in a barn, because it kind of smells super funky in a weird way, something I wasn't used to. And so I kind of set that style down for a little while because I was like, well, i don't know if I like that or not Went back to drinking paleos and stout's, porters and stuff like that. And then I came back and revisited that, you know, maybe six months ago, Maybe six months later, and it really started to grow on me to the point where I would say I fell in love with that style, where then I started consuming a lot of Cezanne And everywhere I was going that was the style that I went and tried. It wasn't hey, let me try your IPA, let me try your Pilsner. It was what Cezanne you got.

Michael Urich: 16:45

And as my, i would say, my drinking life continued and got serious into brewing, i really would seek out Cezanne, and in Montana there was not a lot of Cezanne here. In fact I think there was maybe two imported versions I could find that were years old on the shelf at Osco drug And I would buy them and they weren't fresh. They were still decent, but they weren't well kept, you know. And every time I'd go back down home to Colorado I'd go to a big liquor store and pick up all the Cezanne's they had down there and they were fresher And and I would brew them at home.

Michael Urich: 17:26

When I was working for Yellowstone Valley we didn't make a lot of seasonal beers, but I was making Cezanne at home because it was just something I liked to drink. And then when we started Carters, i knew that we were going to have a Cezanne, even if it didn't sell that well, i sat down and said this is going to be our first seasonal beer. A lot of people will probably have the same reaction I did when I had my first Cezanne and say What is this?

Michael Urich: 17:55

Yeah, this isn't, this isn't, this isn't going to sell. But selfishly, i liked to drink Cezanne and I was constantly evolving my version of Cezanne to make it better. And it was our first seasonal beer And we had people come in and shake their heads and try it but be like that'll never sell. You know that's too funky. What are you doing?

Michael Urich: 18:19

And, ironically, now we've been in business 15 years, i recognize some of them same people that told me that and they're drinking the crap out of it. Yeah, they drink that all the time And I would like to say that we helped build a market for that style of beer in in buildings, for sure, because it's one of our top selling beers out of the tap room there And it's it's a regular staple product for us. So I have a lot of pride in that that. we took a risk on it, knowing that it may not pay off, but we could not take that beer off tap. We have such loyalty from that And I'm really proud of that because took a lot of research, a lot of time into that And a lot of, i guess, kind of sticking, sticking with that and believing in it. It's worked really well. Cezanne's, in my experience, are simple beers.

Russell Palmer: 19:05

They're farmhouse beers And it always shocks me at how apt brewers are to complicate a simple beer. My experience with Cezanne's in particular. If you the simpler, the better I like them. Your Cezanne has a, has a. It has a simple palette. To me There's not what's going on. Like you say is funky, it's very Belgian, it has a bit of a sweetness to it and the things that you kind of are a spice to it that you kind of expect from a Cezanne, but it's not so overpowering that you're. You know you'd be like man. Can I get a four ounce pour of that? Yeah, i mean when I originally started brewing Cezanne it was a much more complex recipe.

Michael Urich: 19:47

We were spicing it. We were using a yeast that was very, very expressive. You know it was good. But I think our Cezanne now it's very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very now has. I've simplified it. We've changed our yeast strain a couple of times. We do not spice it any more and it's more. It's more flavorful. You're out of, you're really get a lot more of the flavors out of it. I mean it's just Pilsner malt and some oats and then some, you know, kind of very sparing hops on it And then that yeast strain we're using we just let that speak for it because it's such an expressive yeast produces lots of kind of tropical fruit, white pepper, black pepper, a little bit of banana to it, and then the beer is just bone dry, not quite champagne, right, refreshing, but it's effervescent And I've always believed that a saison, even if it's a strong saison, should be super refreshing.

Michael Urich: 20:45

I always tell people, saison du pot is the world famous kind of benchmark for that and comes in 750 milliliters. Champagne bottles, bottle conditioned. I always order two of those because I know that the first one's going to last me about 10 minutes, because it's just so refreshing, so drinkable, that I literally want another one of those. And it is. It's so refreshing even in the dead of winter. It's a refreshing beer. So I like saison best bottle conditioned. I think that's the best way to have it. We do that occasionally, but our draft says on you know, i think we do pretty good with it And yeah, it's still my favorite style of beer.

Russell Palmer: 21:29

You know, when done right, it's a great conversational beer. It's a beer that people who are not really versed with craft beers can get into. Well, you know my friend and my bookkeeper, brenda, who comes in and we have beers there, it's her go to beer there. She just again and again and again and she's a bud light girl, right, she absolutely loves that beer. Yeast is something I have learned at your brewery to understand what yeast is. You know, you hear hop, malt barley and that's pretty much it right. It wasn't until I sat down with you and started talking about Belgians and started talking about some funky yeast that I really became interested in understanding of that flavor flavor profile. And you have a I kind of circling back around to the IPA store. you have an IPA on right now called what? the funk, which is a very, i guess, funky kind of farmhousey IPA And it's just, it's turned into one of my favorites. Talk about that beer.

Michael Urich: 22:38

I've got it. I'm not taking credit for that, because Shay and I collaborate on that. We become good friends recently and, i think, wanted to collaborate with each other for a while now, and Shay Dawson with the other three for those who might not know.

Russell Palmer: 22:53

Yeah.

Michael Urich: 22:54

Big, tall, skinny guy. Yeah, yeah.

Russell Palmer: 22:56

Great guy.

Michael Urich: 22:57

Good human being. We decided to collaborate on that, and he is very well known in Billingsford doing some funky and sour beers and doing a lot of the some of the more risky and time consuming barrel aging stuff like that, and so he's always got Britannum ICs around his brewery at his old place and our brewery is predominantly clean. We do some barrel aging but we do not do primary fermentation with Britannum ICs. Britannum ICs is It is a semi-wild yeast strain. Britannum ICs is in the air We're breathing right now. It's all over the place and depending upon what region of the country or the world you're in, there's different strains of it, but it's a wild yeast that came out of Belgium. They do a lot of fermentation with Britannum ICs over there and then age it in the barrel.

Michael Urich: 23:52

So Shay and I were thinking about well, let's do like an IPA, but let's not do like another IPA, because there's tons of them out there. Let's not do like a regular American IPA, let's do one and ferment it with Britannum ICs And let's put some hops in there too that are gonna compliment that flavor. And so we did that. We fermented it at Carter's, that way we could sell it at both places And that wild yeast you have to be careful with. If you do it in your brewery your clean side of your brewery you've gotta basically break down anything that's rubber or permeable in your tank So that it doesn't absorb that wild yeast and stay there And it can actually infect the rest of your brewery. You could have the rest of your clean beers become funky.

Russell Palmer: 24:41

Like the COVID of yeasts. Is that what you're telling me?

Michael Urich: 24:45

So we fermented it at Carter's and had fun doing that. It took a while for that beer to finish because I'm not as familiar with that yeast as Shay is, but it turned out really well And it's a beer that continuously evolves. So when it was fresh I mean after a month of fermentation and aging on it we brought that out and the beer just had this massive pineapple funky nose to it.

Michael Urich: 25:15

And we were digging it going wow, that's amazing. We still have it on tap now And it's been several months since we brought it out And a lot more of that pineapple character has kind of dissipated a little bit And now we're getting more of this barnyard funk kind of horse hair character to it, which most people would say I don't want that beer, yeah.

Russell Palmer: 25:38

I was gonna say, dude, I don't know that that should go in your ad campaign.

Michael Urich: 25:42

It's one of those yeast strains that continuously evolves And it continues to consume sugar and kick off lots of interesting compounds. And right now it's pretty funky. There's no sugar left in it, so it's bone dry, super easy drinking. I'm glad it's become one of your favorites. It's kind of hooked you And it's funny because I think after Shay and I got done brewing that and it first came out and we first tasted it, he said to me he's like yep, i'm gonna live on this for the next couple months. This is what I'm gonna drink until it's gone, because we were both pretty excited about it.

Russell Palmer: 26:19

It's an exciting beer And for me it really influenced another level of palate that I hadn't really recognized in my beer drinking, And so I can recognize that now, which just makes me a more, I guess, educated consumer of beer, which is always fun if you're kind of a hobbyist like I am. So today you brought a couple of IPAs. You wanna talk about that?

Michael Urich: 26:43

Yeah, I did bring some of the want the funk.

Russell Palmer: 26:47

That's wonderful I have lots to say about. I actually have lots to say about both of these beers.

Michael Urich: 26:51

Yeah, not just trying to appease the host, but kind of.

Russell Palmer: 26:56

I'll take it. So we've got the what the funk, and well, should we just kind of go through a tasting here on this one?

Michael Urich: 27:05

Yeah, it's been on tap for a while, so it's completely clear.

Russell Palmer: 27:09

It's very clear which this is kind of your thing. You're not. You just won't make hazy IPAs.

Michael Urich: 27:15

I haven't yet. I mean, the haze craze has been going on for, you know, almost 10 years now, i'd say, and we haven't given into it. We've had a little fun with it. We're doing some spin-offs on it, but we're still doing some clean, clear beer and trying to get some of those flavor profiles to come through but have the beer be more stable.

Michael Urich: 27:36

And yeah, and to me, when I go in and have a beer, if it's unless it's a German Hefeweizen or a Belgian wheat beer that are supposed to have a little bit of that sheen to them, i don't know, i'm kind of old school, i guess, and I'm stuck in that. But yeah, we haven't given in on that haze craze yet. This beer did have a little bit of a sheen to it, not now, no, it did when we first brought it out, but a lot of that was the yeast was still in suspension and working so But it's kind of a this is kind of a farmhouse style IPA, and so that little rustic appearance didn't really bother me, unless we filtered that yeast out. It wasn't gonna come out of there And pretend I'm Icy's. I don't think you can completely get out of a beer, right.

Russell Palmer: 28:30

What's very clean, it's clear. It's not as clear as like a pills, but maybe a lager color, right, and we're gonna go ahead and take a taste of it here. So what you get with the beer, and trying to describe a little bit, i don't get the horse hair flavor, but right up front you get a little bit of hop. You know you're drinking an IPA and the smell is where you really can pick up the yeast.

Russell Palmer: 29:06

I think when we're talking about funk, it's not like oh, holy cow, that's funky, you know, like your gym shorts after an hour in the gym. It's not that kind of funk at all, it's almost. It's just an earthy funk, mushroomy a little bit, maybe not in flavor, but you kind of get the idea It's a soft earth kind of smell. And then as you drink it, you know, like I said, you got that hop right up front and then it's just very clean. That leaves your palate pretty quickly And you get a little bit of that funk on the back end and it's a beautiful beer, it's a wonderful conversation beer, you know. It's just, it's easy to sit down and sip and talk and do your thing with it.

Michael Urich: 29:57

Yeah, it's got its complexity to it, but I do like the fact that it's dry and your palate's not overwhelmed afterwards, Yeah yeah, and this is kind of your theme with most of the beers that I've enjoyed at your brewery.

Russell Palmer: 30:10

You are an old school brewer. Is that a fair statement?

Michael Urich: 30:13

I would say, yeah, definitely rooted in tradition.

Russell Palmer: 30:15

Yeah, so what I really love about Carter's is you just won't find an overdone beer there. It won't have too much of anything. Now listen, if you don't like a hop or you don't like malt or you know, you can find the stuff that you just don't prefer, prefer in a beer. But you're not gonna go in and find a banana infused, mulberry and mango anything.

Michael Urich: 30:41

No, i think one thing I've worked on over the years is just balanced, not to coin a phrase. I mean, cause the big guys use a drinkability and balance. But as a brewer that's important. We want our customers to enjoy our beer enough and for their palate to be sustained enough to have three or four pints and not feel like it was effort to drink and enjoy it. And yeah, so you're not gonna find the hoppiest beer at Carter's, you're not gonna find the maltiest beer, you're gonna find them. They're gonna be kind of balanced in the middle And I've never really subscribed to the extremeness out there, because anytime something's too extreme it's usually too much. I'm an American and yeah, we all like our big engines and things on steroids and you know.

Michael Urich: 31:32

Yeah, we can be extreme here, we know that, Yeah, but when it comes to a beer you gotta be able to drink it And it's good for business if people are sitting there having pint after pint and enjoying it and not feeling like palate fatigue where, oh my gosh, I can barely finish this beer because my palate's just like enough.

Russell Palmer: 31:52

No.

Michael Urich: 31:53

I've never heard anybody come in and say gosh, you know, that's like way too sweet or that's too hoppier, that's no. I think that we've mastered the art of balance in it, and I think that also comes from the fact that I'm a brewer but I'm also a beer drinker, and if I can't drink my beer because it's too much of any end of the spectrum, then something needs to change. Yeah, yeah, needs to change.

Russell Palmer: 32:21

Let's talk about the origins of an IPA and how did it come about in our history.

Michael Urich: 32:29

Well, legend has it that you know the British troops. Britain is a huge pale ale country. That's something they've been known for. They got great water for making pale ales and make an English bitter. So they like these nice hoppy beers.

Michael Urich: 32:48

Well, when the troops were stationed all the way halfway across the world, in India, right in India, they're shipping these big oak hogs head casks of beer on a ship all the way around the bottom of the world all the way up to India. You know, it'd take like six months to get there and beer'd get there and it'd be spoiled. Well, the troops didn't like that. They're under duress and they want their beer. And so they figured out that hops this was the point in time where hops became a little bit more to the forefront.

Michael Urich: 33:22

The Germans had used hops, of course Belgians used hops, but they didn't really recognize the capability of them. So they tried making a little bit stronger beer, higher in alcohol, to preserve the beer, and then they would add these fresh hops to the casks. Basically dry hopping is when they started doing that And they realized that the beer would get there and it wasn't spoiled. You know, the hops were actually a preservative created an environment in there that was not conducive for bacterial growth, and so the beer would take the same voyage, but it'd get there. The beer was a little more bitter, a little more hoppy, but it wasn't spoiled.

Russell Palmer: 34:05

But to the British palette. that was okay.

Michael Urich: 34:07

Yeah, They were used to bitters and yeah, so they just wanted the beer to be fresh, they wanted the beer to be palatable instead of dumping it, and so it became a thing and they coined India Pale Ale And so that was kind of an experiment gone completely right, because now in England you find India Pale Ale. You find India Pale Ale all over the world for different reasons. Obviously, it doesn't take six months to ship a you know, cask of beer across the world.

Michael Urich: 34:38

So that's the origin of it And it's come full circle from just being something like that to now. There's eight different styles of IPA double IPA, triple IPA, you know, hazy IPA, session IPA There's all different kinds of IPA. So the Americans took what the British did and put our spin on it and then ran with it Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Russell Palmer: 35:03

So But at the base level it's a beer that is dry hopped.

Michael Urich: 35:08

Yeah, it's traditionally. It's gonna have a little bit more bitterness to it because you're gonna have a higher alcohol to it. You're gonna have a little sweetness to it. So you wanna balance that sweetness with some bitterness. And then the aromatics. Yeah, i believe all IPAs have to be dry hopped. So after fermentation you add hops to it and it ages on the beer And then you pull those off and you're left with all the essential oils that you.

Russell Palmer: 35:36

They give you aromatics, but not any more bitterness to it So literally you're floating hops in a in a bat.

Michael Urich: 35:42

Yeah, yeah. At that point the beer is fermented. So you have alcohol in there and the alcohol acts as a solvent and Can extract those essential oils out of the hops. You only want to do it for a certain period of time. If you just leave hops on there for a long period of time You can have some ill effects to it or vegetal characters to it.

Michael Urich: 36:05

So nowadays we've got the technology and the and the wherewithal to Basically extract the aromas we want out of those hops, get them out of there and then we're left with these massive, amazing aromas that, of course, tannelize your senses and make you want to drink it. It's amazing, i would say. In the past 20 years the hopfright alzid have come out that have been bred To create all these wonderful aromas and flavors that you never thought could be in in a beer. From tropical fruit to papaya to citrus, pine Hops that smell like gooseberries and smell like wine grapes. There's all these hops out there that pretty much any flavor or aroma you can think of. There's a hop out there that can get you there.

Russell Palmer: 36:50

Mm-hmm.

Michael Urich: 36:50

So it's, it's an interesting time.

Russell Palmer: 36:54

Yeah, and this is cat cascading back no pun intended to You know people who are growing hops and thinking about flavor profiles and what they're growing and how they're growing, and Say you know you're seeing the same thing with with malts and which we're doing some really great malts in Montana.

Michael Urich: 37:12

Yeah, when I moved here I'd heard about Montana's a you know big agricultural state and I'm like, well, yeah, i'd better be. It's almost as big as Texas, it's huge, right. And We grew barley down in in Colorado. My, my grandparents on my dad's side grew barley for Coors, but they never drank. They weren't. They weren't drinkers, they just grew barley for Coors. And so I Was. I knew that states like that were we're good agricultural states. I didn't realize until we actually got our hands on some malt from Montana and started using it how important That is. But we have some of the best barley in the world.

Russell Palmer: 37:56

You know, as you're talking to these guys that are growing barley, are they thinking about this in their barley? Are they thinking about what it's gonna taste like in a beer?

Michael Urich: 38:03

Yeah, i think you know they're farmers, they want to be in business, they want to stay in business, they want to be able to keep their farms.

Michael Urich: 38:14

and It used to be that all the barley would just go to the big guys, right, but with craft brewers growing now we have access to those things, we have a connection with the grower and a lot of those farmers are craft beer lovers, mm-hmm, and they, they pride the fact that Their barley is going into a beer that is made in the state of Montana and Supports the state of Montana and generates revenue for the state of Montana, whereas the big guys, a lot of that money was going elsewhere, mm-hmm, they'd get paid for it.

Michael Urich: 38:45

But I think there's a sense of pride knowing that we can use malt that is grown in Montana and our. we use a lot of malt that is malted over in Butte. now, right, they have a big facility over there and they're making some great stuff and a lot of our beers are made They're a hundred percent Montana and that's that's really nice to say that, hey, this is a hundred percent Montana malted IPA. That that shows people that, hey, we're using local products, we want the money to stay local and And and we're trying to benefit the state.

Michael Urich: 39:20

Yeah so there's a lot of pride in that.

Russell Palmer: 39:23

Yeah, absolutely, and Amazing beer coming around. So, speaking of cascading. Next on the list is well, it's called an IPA in a lot of in a lot of Breweries and tap rooms, but it's really not. It's a dark ale.

Michael Urich: 39:38

Yeah, good segue to the cascading in dark, yeah, yeah, i think as broad as IPA has become anything, that's a hoppy Beer.

Michael Urich: 39:50

If you put IPA behind it it'll sell, or at least people will pick it up and try it. But this is a beer that I like to give homage to the people that created it Up in the Northwest Mm-hmm, you know Oregon, washington And a little bit of Idaho there. That's where this style generated, and so I like to call it cascading in dark ale, because just like I don't believe IPA should be hazy, i don't think IPA should be black either. Right, they're not, you know, right, india pale ale. If it's black, you can't, it's not really pale. So I like to kind of be authentic and transparent with how we name our beers. So if I'm gonna say this style came out of the Northwest, we're gonna give it that that credit. But yeah, cascading in dark ale came out, i would say, 25 years ago, out of the Northwest. Sure, brewers were making a Dark, slightly roasty beer, mm-hmm, and then hop in the shit out of it now dry or wet hoppigan.

Michael Urich: 40:50

Both it's dry, hopped It's dry.

Russell Palmer: 40:52

It is dry hops like an IPA and like most hoppy beers, so so one could be forgiven in in today's vernacular for calling it an IPA, other other than it's just not pale, sure, yeah, that's alright, man, we have a spill over here. Thankfully, michael has his brewers britches on and we're just soaking it up. So yeah, unlike the other one, it is definitely not clear. This is a dark ale.

Michael Urich: 41:26

Yeah, this is opaque. I mean, if you hold up to the light you'll get a little red hue Coming through there, but it's black and it comes with a thicker, thicker head, a denser foam on the top. Yeah, that comes from. There's a pretty high proportion of Oatmeal any of oats in there.

Russell Palmer: 41:45

Mm-hmm.

Michael Urich: 41:46

It's a pretty dry beer, but we use oats in there just to give it some body, mm-hmm, and so that nice, like kind of off tan head comes from the use of oats in there.

Michael Urich: 41:56

Mm-hmm the other thing I want to point out about with hoppy beer is that hops In an IPA you should have. All IPA should be pretty heady, mm-hmm, because you've got protein in beer and you've got all these hop oils That you put in, say, an IPA is real hoppy In the head. There, the head compromise of protein and then those hop oils, so they're bonded together and then you have carbon dioxide escaping the liquid, which maintains that that head. That head will sit there for an hour or overnight. You know I've woken up many a night in the morning with half an IPA sitting on my My end table in my living room and the beer still got a head on it. Uh-huh, i just didn't finish it, yeah. So yeah, i mean plus, that head is gonna give you all the aromatics too. I mean, if I try and pour beer with a good head on it, that way You get all those aromatics that are volatile just coming out of the glass and Right into your nose and this one has a very nice aromatic.

Russell Palmer: 43:04

I ran into this beer for my birthday party Mm-hmm, certainly by accident. I think I was coming in to get an IPA and Your pilsner, which is also really very nice or a very drinkable for the masses beer. Yeah, if you're having a party or something like that where you don't know what people are gonna like that, the pilsner down there is a great go-to. Everybody liked that. And then I was looking at, you know, i think in a derailed or one of your, one of your standard bears there, and you brought this out as a taste for me. I Immediately ordered a keg of it, served it at the at the birthday party, you know, got what I expected.

Russell Palmer: 43:42

People who are not Not craft beer people had a hard time with it. But people who who like and appreciate craft beers and particularly people who who appreciate ales. It sparks some conversation. You know the conversation. Wow, it's hoppy. Like an IPA is an IPA, is it is. It is an ale, it is. You know What is it. So that made it very, very interesting. But I'm gonna take a drink of it and I'm gonna try and describe it from my point of view and you tell me where I'm right or wrong or whatever. So, like the, what the funk you do, you do get some hop up front. It lingers a bit longer. It lingers a bit longer I don't know if that's, that's the Odin, it or or what. You taste a bit more multi-carmily aftertaste on it. You do not get a funk smell with it. It it is. It is just more of a classic kind of Man, kind of a kind of a cross between a stout and an ale smell on it.

Michael Urich: 44:51

Yeah, a lot of people look at this as Or the best way to describe it is is kind of almost like a porter. You've got that dark malt character to it But then it's hopped like a double IPA. Yeah, so it is a. It is a hop forward beer. A Lot of our our clientele that like dark beer love it Mm-hmm. A lot of our hopheads love it Mm-hmm, because it's kind of the marriage of both. It doesn't have quite the roast character that a stout has, correct, we're using a malt in there that is super dark in color but it's deep-bittered. So It's a malt that we're using to get mainly color and a little bit of that Toasted marshmallow character, but not so much as to compete with the hops too much, because we do hop this. This is twice as hoppy as as the what the funk Mm-hmm. This beer has the second biggest hop load, only second to our double IPA, you know. So it does have a ton of hops, but it's got that malt character that we have to use more hops to balance it with right.

Russell Palmer: 46:01

Well, what I, what I like about it and really what I like about all your your beers, michael, is is I Can take a drink of this and go, wow, that's got, that's got some hop in it, okay. And then, oh, okay, here comes the malt, okay. And then, as we're sitting here Just having a conversation, like you know you would in a brewery, you sit there, you you'll, you'll let that, that drink go down and and and you're there for 30, 45 seconds, maybe a minute, your palate's clean again. It's like, okay, i'm ready, i'm ready to do this again. And What's great about balanced beers is You don't weary of the beer halfway through your pint.

Michael Urich: 46:44

Yeah, or just get your taste buds overloaded. Well, that's by design. I've been brewing long enough that I know a lot of adjustments to make to things to get the end result that I want. And of course you know the beers ready then. then we taste it. I usually take home a growler of it that first night and really Sit down and get into a lather, you know, Take an hour or two to to drink four pints of that beer and think about it before we release it. If the beer hasn't been named, I'm usually by the end of the growler I've got a brainstorm of what I want to call it, based upon how I'm feeling and what I'm thinking of and Kind of like what the beer is basically telling me.

Russell Palmer: 47:28

Right And so I would think by the end of a growler You have some pretty creative names.

Michael Urich: 47:33

Yeah, and then the next morning you wake up and then you, you scratch out the ones that are probably not appropriate Yeah, oh yeah or the ones where you were like, well, yeah, that was, that was definitely a fourth pint name, and I don't know if that's a good idea, but usually one out of those names is is something where it yeah, a Lot of times I won't have a beer named until after the beers finished. Yeah, because I want to. I Want it to be authentic.

Russell Palmer: 47:58

Well, yeah, not just marketing.

Michael Urich: 48:00

We can have a beer where we say, okay, we're gonna call it derailed. I Knew our IPA was gonna be called derailed From day one. Sure, before even made it, you're on the railroad tracks, for goodness sakes right, and I knew it was gonna be a big like flavorful IPA. And There you go Blackened. I brewed blackened. It was the first brew on our new brew house in 2011 and it was basically I wanted to make that style and I wanted to test our brew house and see our efficiency and see how it worked.

Michael Urich: 48:37

This is the only beer we've won a medal at Great American Beer Festival for. We got a silver in 2011. We were very proud of that, this beer. We made it and I just said this is Cascadia and Dark Hill Got the beer finished, got it carbonated up, took home a growler sat down that night, stayed up, i think after the kids went to bed and stayed up and drank. The growler took notes on everything and I had this idea. I thought, well, we got to do a play on words, kind of, so that it's marketable, but I don't want to use black IPA. I had had some experiences with some Cajun culture and food and they do a lot of blackening of things.

Michael Urich: 49:24

I was thinking, why don't we just call it blackened? I had a bunch of Metallica fans say, oh well, it's after their song, and I said, no, but catchy. But I said, no, we're just going to call it blackened. Cascadia and Dark Hill. It took a while for people to get that because they thought, well, what is it? And I said, well, we're not making a black IPA, but if that's the language you speak, this is a black IPA, this is a blackened IPA, and so that was something very simple. I didn't want to call it oil, water or opaque this or whatever.

Michael Urich: 50:04

By the way, that's how I name most of our beers is. usually it's the growler rule. Take home a growler. The beer doesn't have a name yet by the end of the growler, i've got one.

Russell Palmer: 50:15

So, in those situations, who influences you Is your wife. Sit down and have some beer with you. Does she just not understand your obsession with this, or is she fairly in tune with it?

Michael Urich: 50:29

I will say that my wife is my biggest cheerleader. Yeah, she mine too. No, she she's very supportive because as brewers, i would say that we are we're our own version of crazy. You know our obsession with beer. A lot of people don't understand. You know, if you're an artist and you paint and you're obsessed with your painting and you're a little quirky and crazy, people get it because they look at it and they go that's a beautiful painting, beer. They're look at it and they go well gosh, you're so into beer. I mean that's just that's kind of weird or that's that's too nerdy, but really I mean, if you're into, wine.

Russell Palmer: 51:06

They don't say that.

Michael Urich: 51:07

No, no, no, It's much more refined refined and nuanced. And you know, I have a good friend who sells wine and I to this day, give her shit all the time and say like, nope, beer's better, beer's more complex It is. I have respect for wine, but beers, beers, beers. Got its time coming again, you know beer's going to get its credit.

Russell Palmer: 51:29

I think it's. I think it's here myself. Listen, I'm only making this isn't an as an analogy. I'm not. This isn't a political statement, but kind of, in the world today, there seems to be this conflict between just really honest working class people and this kind of elite thing.

Russell Palmer: 51:50

Ok, and it's interesting because I think beer is just an honest. It's hard to bullshit. You can't. You can't set something on the palette and sip it through a glass and spit it in a bucket and go, oh, that's a. You know, that's a ghost train in 2018. Ok, this is not going to happen. And you're going to set this. You're going to set a pint in in front of 100 people And if 80 of them go, that's the worst shit I've ever drank in my life. You know, you missed Right, right, right. It's an honest, It's an honest art. I think Now, taking nothing away from vineyards and winemakers and there's great wine and American wine has really come a long way, like American beer. But I think that's the point in this country. People really, whether they're drinking wine or beer, they just want a good, honest selection And I think you do that very well.

Michael Urich: 52:54

Yeah, i. I respect Winners and winemakers. I respect them for what they do. I think that they do great job. The thing about brewers is that we don't really have an excuse. Necessarily, we can't say, hey, we had a bad grape year, this is what it tastes like, you know. I think beer is complexity and also our flexibility, like we have a lot more things to do to create a product that is consistent. So if you're just making a soft block in 2022, you're saying, hey, we got 2022 crop coming in and here's the grapes we got, they can blend to try and make it, you know, but some of that blending is not allowed, right? Nope, it's got to be a straight varietal and here it is. And if somebody says, well, this isn't tropical enough or not punchy enough, it's kind of subtle, that's what you get.

Michael Urich: 53:50

You know, brewers, we can have a shitty barley crop come in or we can have hops that got hit in the hail storm and we got some in, We've still got to say, hey, look, this IPA is going to taste this way and this is what we want to do with it. We can't say, oh no, it was a bad barley crop, So here's your crappy beer, Right? No, we're going to say, hey, we've got to take those variable ingredients and as brewers, that's our skill. We've got to get to that end result with whatever we've got.

Michael Urich: 54:20

There's some years we've had malts that are super high protein. It's hard to get a beer clear with those, or the yields are down. You don't get as much sugar out of that barley that year. We don't have that excuse to say, well, it was a bad year, No, we've got to suck it up and we've got to make it work. And that is that's something a brewer I think prides himself in is that we've got to do that. Most of us have to do that. We have to take what we're given and we've got to make it work. So nothing against winemakers, but I think brewers have to have another challenge that we address.

Russell Palmer: 55:00

So let's go back to conversation. We're coming out of the pandemic. We've got a lot to talk about from a societal level and a political level and all the things Everybody's in. Everybody knows this. What are you hearing in the brewery? Are people coming back together again? Are you hearing conversations that are more uniting? Are you hearing people who disagree being able to sit out and have a conversation over a beer and maintain pleasantries and be interesting?

Michael Urich: 55:31

Yeah, i would say for the most part, yeah, you know.

Russell Palmer: 55:34

Not seeing the partisanship in a brewery. No, thank God.

Michael Urich: 55:38

I would say you're still seeing about 40% of the people that are not coming out necessarily. Yeah, they're still Still Larry, yeah, they're still Larry. But the people that are coming out are just, they're happy. They are so happy to be able to have the right to come out and to do it and to be able to gather. Things aren't going back to normal like they were before and they may never, but they're getting closer to something where people feel a little bit more like they can take a deep breath instead of looking over their shoulder or being apprehensive and and uncomfortable.

Michael Urich: 56:13

So, yeah, i think the shell shock is not quite as sharp right now, right, which is refreshing, because when I see people gather and have a good time and are there enjoying themselves, man, i feel a lot better in my heart than I do when I see people fearful. Yeah.

Russell Palmer: 56:32

That's Man people dash. I just remember people dashing in getting their growler and dashing out It was. It was almost clandestine. Of course I've got, i got to enjoy a lot of great growlers of beer from all over town, but boy, i miss the gathering so much.

Michael Urich: 56:49

Well, when that's your only option, you'll take it For sure. As a people person, i like seeing people happy. I like seeing people gather. I like seeing people shake hands and hug and embrace each other. I don't like division. I like seeing people scared out of their gourd or intimidated or losing friendships and bonds. That's not something I'm comfortable seeing.

Russell Palmer: 57:15

Yeah, Well, you know we're recording this podcast at the time where the you know we've got the deal going on in Canada with the truckers and Trudeau and it looks like today is the day they're going to kind of clear, start trying to clear things out. I was watching this this morning and, knowing that we had this conversation coming up, and I thought, you know, it would be really cool if they just laid out a big table with some steins and a bunch of beer and set Prime Minister Trudeau and all the folks on one side and the truckers on the other and said you know, we we can talk about everything but this block. We can talk about anything but the blockade through the first two pints. After that we'll talk about the blockade. You know, we might come to an agreement by the end of the day just over some good beer.

Michael Urich: 58:06

Well, don't forget, back when this country was founded, not everybody that was sitting at those tables was in a complete agreement. No, and they were. They were having some issues, yeah, and that stuff didn't just like come out in a nice uniform way, that took time and was hashed out In taverns. Yeah, and thank God If it wasn't, if it was just okay. Well, we have one chance to make this work. Or, you know, we're going to work this out via email or via messenger or courier.

Russell Palmer: 58:42

Right? No, and the truth of the matter is, as we look at things right now, on any given issue, you've got a third that are four, a third that are against and a third that are kind of like. I'm still trying to figure out what it is And, interestingly, back in the Revolutionary times it was the same way. We have this idea that it was, you know, the British against a whole nation full of patriots. No, it was the British that had about a third of the population were loyalists, a third were patriots and a third were like geez, let's just move on, because I got a, you know, i got a family to raise and a crop to bring in, and this is where these things happen.

Russell Palmer: 59:23

But yeah, you're absolutely right, the conversations took place in taverns, and I think this is why the good Lord gave us this so early in our existence, because he knew we would need something to oil the wheels of conversation, and I think it's done so well. So what's coming up for Carter's in the future? What are you working on now? What are you interested in now?

Michael Urich: 59:51

Well, coming out of the pandemic, I mean, we're still, you know, we're still trying to rebuild some of the loyalty and stuff like that that was broken during the pandemic.

Michael Urich: 1:00:01

So we're working on doing that And we're also working on a rewards program. Yeah, it's cool, the people that kept us in business during that pandemic. I can't thank them enough. So we're we're looking at ways to kick back to our customers and reward them, thank them for being loyal to us, because without them, you know, we wouldn't have made it through the pandemic and we wouldn't we wouldn't be where we're at right now. So that's one thing we're trying to do to show our, our appreciation that, hey, you guys were local, you guys support us. You, our brand and our place means enough to you that you have supported us for 15 years. Yeah, we can't be tickled enough about that. So that's one thing we're working on.

Michael Urich: 1:00:47

We're also trying to, you know, stick to what we're doing really well. Yeah, a lot of the trendy styles we're not really jumping on board with that Because I think, just like a trend, trends going to cycle, it's going to, it's going to be prevalent one day and the next day it won't be. So we're going to continue to focus on what we're doing well quality, something we're always investing in. We're always trying to make better beer. We're also trying to have a much more local presence.

Michael Urich: 1:01:13

You know, with the pandemic a lot of bigger brands from out of state that have great beer don't get me wrong have moving into our market And so what we're trying to do is reestablish ourselves locally. The pandemic kind of got in the way of that a little bit because we're still a draft only brewery, we're not in cans or bottles and stuff. So we're still trying to make sure that we have that local market presence. Being a small brewery, but I want to see, when we come out of this pandemic fully, that we grow In a regular market. You either grow or you go home.

Michael Urich: 1:01:50

And we want to grow. Yeah, you know, i don't want to do anything else with my life. This is, this has been my calling. We've had some setbacks and stuff, but we've been able to steer the course and I do believe that we can continue doing what we want to do, as long as we remain who we are. Yeah, you know, authentic and transparent, and all about the beer.

Russell Palmer: 1:02:37

Thank you for listening to Front Porch Perspective. Check out other episodes on front porchperspectiveco. No-transcript. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you. Welcome to this episode of Front porch perspective.