Speaker 3 0:43

Hello, everybody, and welcome. You are listening to a vintage selection of The Restaurant Guys podcast. The Restaurant Guys recorded groundbreaking podcasts with luminaries in food, wine, and the finer things in life from 2005 to 2014. We are reposting this show because it's as relevant, fun, and engaging as ever. Every week, we'll post a new show, as well as one of these treasures from our library. You can find out more at restaurantguyspodcast.com. Enjoy the show Good morning,

Speaker 4 1:13

Mark. Hey, Franco. How are you this morning? Good, man. I worked- Things are good here...I worked until 4:00 in the morning.

Speaker 2 1:20

Welcome to the life of a restaurant owner.

Speaker 4 1:23

Wow, that was a tough one. Okay, so I worked till 4:00 in the morning, and Wednesday, for all you foodies out there, is the food day. Every... Well, most of the major papers- Mm-hmm...have their food section appear on Wednesday, and then sometimes Friday and- Even some of

Speaker 2 1:33

the not major papers have their- And Sunday, yeah...their foodish section that day.

Speaker 4 1:37

But being in Central Jersey, we have, uh, sitting on our desk every Wednesday when we come in, even though I get it delivered at home, The New, The New York Times delivered at home, but I live in Jersey City, so it's stolen half the time. So, so on Wednesday when I need to really have it no matter what- Well, one

Speaker 2 1:50

of the advantages of living in, in Cranford is I walk to the end of my driveway, and I pick up my newspaper- Yeah...every day. Yeah.

Speaker 4 1:55

Hey, you kids, get out of

Speaker 2 1:56

here."

Speaker 4 1:57

That ball's mine now." Um- In my little Tony

Speaker 2 1:59

Soprano

Speaker 4 1:59

robe, and I go get it. Well, uh, in Jersey City, if not always being the first to rise, some commuter gets it on their way to the PATH train. But, uh, s- Wednesday's a very important day, so we always have to read it, so we each have sitting on our desks the Times and the Star-Ledger- Mm-hmm...which is a great local New Jersey paper. And I didn't get to the papers, and it was 3:40 in the morning, and I said,"Oh, God, I didn't read the food section. I gotta know what's on there for the radio tomorrow." And I picked up the Times figuring I would just glance at the headlines, and on the front page of The New York Times, paper of record, uh, is the New York Times review of Jean-Georges Vongerichten's flagship restaurant, Jean-Georges.

Speaker 2 2:34

Yeah, and a, and a little interesting departure, Frank Bruni's, uh, review begins on page one of the food section. They do that whenever there's a four-star review. Right. Usually you have to leaf back through to the end of the food section to find the food review.

Speaker 4 2:47

Well, it's twenty to 4:00, and now I've gotta read it, right? Well, it's four stars. So wait-

Speaker 2 2:51

Anytime, uh, just so everybody knows, anytime Francis and I see one of those zero-star or even one-star scathing reviews or the far, four-star reviews, those are the ones we really sink our teeth into.

Speaker 4 3:03

Well, I mean, getting four stars from the Times, there are only a handful of restaurants that have that accolade. Mm-hmm. Uh, Jean-Georges had it already, but now he's, he's attending a, a, a panoply of restaurants. What has he got, 30 restaurants?

Speaker 2 3:14

He's got 16

Speaker 4 3:15

different restaurants. 16 restaurants? Mm-hmm. Um, a little hyperbole never hurt anybody. He had 17 restaurants. Ooh. Um, and the thing that w- what was very interesting about this article for us, and I think it's, it's great to read, and Jean-Georges is one of the finest restaurants in Manhattan, and it's a completely unique restaurant in Manhattan. Mark and I have eaten there many times. And Jean-Georges is extraordinary. Um, but it raises some interesting points about what happens when a chef who gets four stars when he opens this loving restaurant and he owns one, in this case he owned two or three when he got four stars for the first time at Jean-Georges. Mm-hmm. Now he owns 16 restaurants. How does he maintain that? And, um- The subtitle of, of Jean-Georges' picture in his dining room of the paper is,"The Everywhere Man: Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the Chef and Entrepreneur at Jean-Georges." Mm-hmm. And that's very, very difficult to do. Heck, we've got two restaurants in the same building, and I'm getting tired- running up and down the stairs. Just running

Speaker 2 4:03

up and down the stairs is hard. Oh, goodness. Much less heading off to London to run one of my restaurants.

Speaker 4 4:07

Uh, he's got 16 restaurants, and the count would be higher if one of the three places he opened, three places he opened in 2004 alone hadn't been such a patently foolish miscreant.

Speaker 2 4:16

Miscreant, by the way- It was open for- one of those words, one of those words I never want to appear in a review of my restaurant.

Speaker 4 4:21

The V Steakhouse disappeared quickly from the Time Warner Center, but not before Mark and I subjected ourselves to a meal there. And never did a restaurant deserve to disappear more. It was foolish.

Speaker 2 4:31

I've had some really good meals at lots of Jean-Georges' restaurants. Oh, over the years? Yes. Absolutely. Really, really good. One of the best chefs cooking in the world. I, I remember back, oh, it must've been'93, uh, a friend of ours said,"Listen, I gotta take you to, you know, a, a great little restaurant, relatively new in the city," and it was Jojo. Jojo? Yeah. And she just said, you know,"You gotta see this restaurant. You guys are into restaurants. You're into food. You really gotta, you gotta see what's going on here," and I was blown away. I just said,"Oh, dear."

Speaker 4 4:59

I looked to Mark,"Who was that?" And then he looked back to me who it was. So you guys are, you're out of the loop, I'm sorry. I was like,"Why isn't he saying?" A friend of ours. Now, um, he deserves great credit for this. I gotta talk about V Steakhouse for just a moment because I don't wanna take away from his, his four stars. Mm-hmm. Nothing can take away from him today, but it, it did look a little like a, a French whorehouse. It was weird.

Speaker 2 5:17

It was a weird- It looked weird funky, like, tree thing in the middle of the room. Red velvet everywhere. A red

Speaker 4 5:23

velvet tree in the middle of the room. I didn't quite get it. Not liking that. But, uh, here we talk about... He, he said, in, in the article, Bruni writes,"Dividing the attention he once reserved, uh, for the f-," he talks about another great chef who does- Mm-hmm uh, who, who's in multiple places. He's talking about

Speaker 2 5:34

people who, who go into different directions and open several

Speaker 4 5:36

places. He talks about Thomas Keller, and he says,"Dividing his attention between... he once reserved for the French Laundry in California, Thomas Keller peddles au tuna sandwiches under a Samsung sign in the Time Warner Center. Wandering far from Babbo, Mario Batali travels the country to hawk cookware and hang with NASCAR drivers," and I've been to Babbo recently, and it's as every bit as good as it ever was.

Speaker 2 5:53

I mean, recently, we've been to Lupa, uh, Osto, Babbo, uh, Del Posto a couple of times. All Mario Batali restaurants. Uh, Bar Jamón, and, uh- He's incredible and he's incredible'cause e- I, I had a good time at every single place, and some places are better than others, but I- Well, they're, they're different concepts d- exactly, but I, I had a good time at every single place.

Speaker 4 6:12

Anyway, Jean-Georges, I think, is doing a fabulous job. We probably can't get in there now. Too bad you didn't call for a reservation yesterday.

Speaker 2 6:17

Well, the, the thing about Jean-Georges and, and this review, and let's talk about some of the positives about Jean-Georges- Oh'cause we've been, we've been kind of bashing the fact that he owns 16 restaurants, where- Fashion it. I wanna be him where I was about to say, where one day I hope to own 16 restaurants In the review, one of the things that I think becomes plainly evident is that a, a restaurant, to be great, doesn't need to have flash- Mm.-and doesn't have to have balloons filled with peanut butter flavor that you ingest, and doesn't need to have all this show. I mean, they talk about the Garridons being, being simple and that, that you wheel up to the table, and you barely notice them. They talk about the service being more towards aloof than, than over the top and in your face, and a waiter, uh, putting your napkin in your lap, like some places that we've been.

Speaker 4 7:03

Yeah, you know, in Jersey, we're sort of subject to the Sopranos style restaurant, although the restaurant in The Sopranos looks pretty good. But let's go with the Godfather style restaurant or, or s- like somebody who opened a restaurant because they watched The Godfather Right and they think they know what they're doing. And, you know, a waiter in a dirty tuxedo brings you over the sugar presentation caddy with the- Right nine different kinds of rock candy. Seven colors, and there's

Speaker 2 7:25

the purple rock candy if when- That you can stir your espresso with. Yeah, I don't get that. Which, which doesn't make sense. But this is all about

Speaker 4 7:29

being, being understated, and I, I do think he is at the pinnacle of, of very traditional dining in California. Now, Thomas Keller's place Per Se, it's a little more airy, and it's g- it certainly has a California influence. But I think Jean-Georges is really at the center of what it is to dine in a very New York experience. It's a French restaurant. Mm-hmm. Um, but, you know, it's a French restaurant that uses local ingredients that's very influenced by New York, you know? So-

Speaker 2 7:51

But even the dining room, the dining room, when you sit in Jean-Georges, you're not in this... I mean, it's beautiful because you happen to be overlooking New York City with giant windows and- Over the park uh, I mean, it's a, it's a spectacular view, but it's understated. Mm-hmm. Okay? The walls are beige. The decor inside is simple. Mm-hmm. And it, and still beautiful and still well done, but it's not overly lavish, which I think a lot of restaurants try to be.

Speaker 4 8:16

Uh, he's actually... Finally, he ends the, the review with, I think, something that's really great and, and, and kudos to Jean-Georges. It says, um,"Jean-Georges was built on a coherent vision, smart decisions, and earnest execution. Those qualities may be missing elsewhere in the Vongerichten empire, but they're still here," and that's at the flagship, and that's super important. And I'll tell you, w- I can't recommend the restaurant highly enough. I agree. It's- For a special, for a special occasion place, we've been there six or seven times, and it is awesome. Uh, we'll be back in just a moment talking with Garrett Oliver from Brooklyn Brewery, talking about beer from Brooklyn in America around here, and it's really great. Talk to you in just a moment. You're listening to The Restaurant Guys.

Francis 10:17

Hello, everybody. Welcome back. You're listening to The Restaurant Guys, Garrett Oliver is the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery. Uh, in his time there, he's expanded Brooklyn Brewery's portfolio from just two beers to over a dozen. Um, many of his beers have won national and international awards. His book, The Brewmaster's Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food, my note, by a real man, published by HarperCollins in 2003, is a great book. Mark and I have read it and love it. Um, and it was a finalist for the 2004 James Beard Foundation Book Awards, and he talk... joins us today to talk about real beer by a real man. How's it going there, Garrett? I'm

Garrett 10:50

feeling

Francis 10:51

like a real man today. I'm making real beer. How are you doing today, Garrett? I have always wanted to put that little sub- It's a beautiful day in Brooklyn. Yeah, I've always wanted to put that little subtitle at the end of your, at the end of your book

Mark 11:01

So, so Garrett, I, I have a question for you. We refer to doctor as doctor. We refer to chef as a, as a chef. How do we refer to brewmaster? Do we call you brewmaster?

Garrett 11:10

obviously around here everybody calls me Garrett, but the title is brewmaster, which, uh, uh, if you're going to a party, that's pretty much the coolest job title you can

Speaker 5 11:19

have. You know what? It is. Like a

Garrett 11:20

quarterback, you know, but brewmaster and quarterback are pretty, uh, are pretty similar when it comes to, uh, the kind of cred that you have when, uh, you know, when you're out on Saturday night, so that's- You know what?

Francis 11:30

I n- I never realized that. At parties you get to say you're the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery- To a chick that's holding a Brooklyn Lager in her hand. That's awesome. I think that works. Well, you'd know better than we would, Gary. Exactly. All right, so tell us about Brooklyn Brewery. What... How did Brooklyn Brewery start?'Cause you were there fr- from its infancy, and, and, and how did it come about?

Garrett 11:48

Well, I knew the guys from its infancy, but actually, I was working at another brewery while they were getting going, and we always kind of figured we'd get together at some point down the road. But Brooklyn Brewery started with Steve Hindy- Mm-hmm who had been, uh, a bureau chief in Beirut for AP. He was a reporter. And, uh, later on when he got back, he was the neighbor of Tom Potter, who was a commercial banker. Mm-hmm. Uh, he loaned money, et cetera. And in their Park Slope apartment building in Brooklyn, they basically cooked up the idea of, uh, of putting together a brewery, because they were making their own beers at home, and they were really loving it, but they weren't seeing that kind of beer out there on the market and thought it was time for Brooklyn to rekindle its, uh, its brewing heritage.

Francis 12:33

Let's stop right there, and because I think this informs the rest of the conversation. Uh, what was different about the beers that they were brewing at home that they weren't seeing in the marketplace in Brooklyn at the time?

Garrett 12:45

Well, you have to think about, you go back to 1987, I mean, you barely had Sam Adams back then. You didn't have even stuff that you would see out here like Sierra Nevada from California, et cetera. So it was really before the, uh, the microbrewing movement really picked up steam. Right. If you, if you wanna- So, so on, on average, you, you know, your average bar had the, the, the, the three main beers, which pretty much tasted like seltzer water, and people didn't even know yet what else there was out there to like. And Steve had started brewing because the other reporters, uh, in... When he would work in places like Saudi Arabia, et cetera, they didn't allow alcohol, so the reporters actually made their own beer when they were living in the dry countries.

Speaker 5 13:28

Cool. Wonderful story. And this

Garrett 13:29

is kind of where this, uh, this whole thing came from, uh, for him. Now, for me, I had lived in England, uh, in the early'80s, got back from traveling around Europe, et cetera, and after a year of drinking real beer, I got back and there wasn't any real beer here.

Mark 13:44

Mm-hmm. What I, what I found a- So I started

Garrett 13:45

making beer at home, not because I wanted to be a brewer, but because I wanted to have some actual beer.

Mark 13:50

What I found amazing is when I went to Europe- I would drink labels in Europe, and then I would come back here and drink the exact same labels in the United States and, and, or in and around that same time period, and the beers here were horrible

Garrett 14:02

They were often pretty tired. Mm-hmm. I mean, uh, sometimes they were old. Uh, they had always obviously traveled for thousands of miles.

Francis 14:10

Well, and if... And some of them would be contract brewed in

Garrett 14:12

Canada. So, you know, in Europe often, you know, you, you'll have a, a brewery that is pretty much the brewery for an area or a town- Mm-hmm or whatever else, and the beer never travels all that far. So people are always asking,"How come it tastes different here than there?" Sometimes there's actually, for the big brands, a difference in the, uh, in the formulation of the beer. Mm-hmm. But often it's simply the beer is, uh, is tired.

Speaker 5 14:34

Well-

Garrett 14:34

And, you know, so we now make fresh beer for, for, for the areas that, that, that we're relatively close to.

Francis 14:41

Now let's talk about that. You originally brewed in a brewery, or Brooklyn Brewery originally brewed in one brewery in Brooklyn. Is that correct?

Garrett 14:47

Brooklyn Brewery originally brewed, uh, just like Sam Adams and a number of other brands, originally didn't have an actual physical brewery. Mm-hmm. We went to a, an older brewery, uh, in upstate New York, and we took our recipe up there and brewed up there. So we built this brewery here in Brooklyn 10 years ago. We started shipping beer out of here, uh, in March of'96.

Francis 15:09

And how much of the beer, Is all the beer that carries the Brooklyn label brewed in that one brewery, or do you have multiple places that you brew beer?

Garrett 15:15

No. Right now we're still brewing here, and we're brewing still upstate. And having that much room, uh, in the upstate brewery allows us to age our beer, uh, for a much longer period of time, which is great because when you have a, when you have a smaller brewery and you're trying to get the beer out the door because fortunately, you know, the sales are going up and up and up, uh, for a lot of breweries that puts them under tremendous pressure so that the, uh, the length of time that you can actually allow the beer to age goes down and down and down- Mm-hmm and down, and that affects quality.

Mark 15:47

So- Well, Garrett, but you talk, you talk about aging beers. Aren't we really concerned about born-on dating? Isn't that the most important thing with a beer?

Garrett 15:54

No, actually, well, here's the thing. First of all, I mean, let's face it- I was being a little facetious to born-on date, you gotta be alive. Nice. And I, and I, and, and, and I have, I have some pretty serious issues about whether or not the beer- Okay in question has any life to it whatsoever. Uh-huh. But, but leaving that aside, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Brewery always had freshness dating, and it was the big breweries who then noticed that the small breweries, uh, were noting their freshness dates, and there was no freshness dates, uh, on the big brands. Now you talked- So let's face it, if something ta- tastes like seltzer water today, it'll taste like seltzer water six months from now, a year from now, three years from now. You know, that's- I mean, it's like Twinkies. It's kind of undead.

Mark 16:34

I, I wish that it tasted like seltzer water, okay? How's that?

Francis 16:37

You know, you know what's funny is, um, on, for those beers, th- this marketing thing came around like, arou- around like it was solving a long-aged problem. Has anybody ever had a, a, a Budweiser and said- You know, this is an old one. Yeah. Has that ever happened to anybody? Hey, listen, when we come back, we'll be talking more with Ga- Garrett Oliver. He's the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery. He's also an author of a great book about beer. We'll be talking more about that in just a moment. You're listening to The Restaurant Guys, Garrett, we talked before. We said seemingly contradictory things, and I'm hoping you can, can, uh, illustrate exactly what we're talking about with the people. You said that one of the things about having the advantages of, of having brewery space is that you can age your beers for longer, which enhances the quality of your beers before you release them, yet we also talk about freshness dating. Should all beers be drunk young, or do they benefit from age? Or, or what role does age play in, in a, in a malty beverage?

Garrett 17:27

Well, it really depends on what kind of beer it is. But the, the short... It's, it's a complicated question, but the short answer is that when the beer is still in contact with the yeast, you can have good aging. That is, uh, the yeast is still doing its work, and it's, uh, it's making a, a rounder, softer, more integrated, more sophisticated flavor.

Mark 17:48

And some people will do that in the bottle.

Garrett 17:50

It, before- As- before it gets in the bottle, while it's still intact.

Mark 17:53

I'm saying some people will even add yeast into, into the bottle in order to- Yeah to do that. And that's when you're

Garrett 17:57

doing, if you're doing bottle refermentation- Mm-hmm which we're not doing right now, but we will be doing shortly. Um, but once you've actually put the beer in the bottle, then most beers are at their best- When they have gone to the bottle. Once you've taken the yeast out, the beer is filtered, now you hopefully have a, a beer that will taste very good for several months, but thereafter, slowly but surely, the flavor's going to go downhill. And it's not like, uh, six months and one day the beer is suddenly going to be ruined. Well- But it slowly, it's, it slow- all the aromas, uh, become less fresh, and like any fresh product, it becomes stale. Now, if you, if you look at some types of beer, uh, we make one, for example, called, uh, Black Chocolate Stout. This is a type of beer where we don't put a freshness date on. We put the, the year onto it because it ages just as well as fine wine. Well, what makes that one- The original year of Black Chocolate Stout was 1994, and those bottles are tasting great now.

Francis 18:55

What makes those bottles age worthy where other bottles need to be consumed younger?

Garrett 19:00

Um, the short answer basically is, uh, they're stronger. They have higher residual sugar and higher bitterness. It's very similar to the reasons why a, a-a-a good wine will age well.

Speaker 5 19:13

You know, I, I wanna- If you're talking about a red

Garrett 19:14

wine, it will tend to have higher tannin, more fruit, uh, et cetera. Very sort of light red wines don't tend to age, uh, quite as well if they don't have that, uh, that fruit and tannin to sort of, uh, soften, uh, over the years. So there, there's kinda two sides. Uh, it's like a lot of things, like cheeses. Garrett- You have fresh goat cheese and you have, like, aged Stilton.

Francis 19:36

Garrett, when we come back from the news, I wanna talk more about beer versus wine, and I wanna talk about, um, how we match beer with food and, and how you say that beer is an even better match than wine with food. Garrett Oliver is the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery. We'll talk more with him after the news. Stay tuned. You're listening to The Restaurant Guys. Garrett, you say that beer is a better companion to food overall than wine

Garrett 19:55

I think it's ac- actually is a much broader range of flavor. Uh-huh. I mean, you have to think about the fact that your, your, your average wine actually in the United States comes with a finger loop, and, uh, it's a half jug or a bag in box. Uh-huh. I mean, that's the reality of most wine. The reality of most beer is the mass market beer that we were talking about, uh, earlier. Right. Um, but that's not the stuff that we really want to be drinking with, uh, with good food. And when you get into great wine... And I love wine. I spend, uh... Just got back from, uh, speaking at the Cape Wine Conference in South Africa. I sit on wine panels for, for various magazines and things, so I love wine, but beer has a much wider range of flavor. Mm-hmm. We can deliver caramel flavors, roasted flavors, strong smoky flavors, chocolate flavors, coffee flavors, fruity flavors. There's a much wider range, uh, of, of, uh, a flavor to, to use really when matching food. So that's why when I do, uh, tastings that are wine versus beer with cheese, we do this, uh, in front of an audience. It's me versus a sommelier. We get an audience, and it's like Iron Chef.

Mark 21:02

Interesting. We have

Garrett 21:03

seven, seven cheeses, seven wines, seven beers, and we go toe-to-toe. The wine always loses- Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5 21:09

Mm-hmm

Garrett 21:10

because I've got a lot more to work with. But people tend, when they, when they think of wine, people tend to think of a really nice bottle of something wonderful with a cork, but when they think of beer, unfortunately they think of the low end- Mm-hmm uh, of, uh, of what's out there, and that's unfortunate. They're missing out.

Francis 21:27

Garrett, you've got a sommelier on this side of the microphone that wants to take you on, baby. I'm up. Bring it on, baby. I, Garrett, um, this- I'm right here this is an on-air challenge. This summer I wanna have you down to Stage Left or Catherine Lombardi, and we'll put to- we'll have the chef put together four or five courses. You do the beer, I'll do the wine, and we'll let the audience decide.

Garrett 21:48

I have not been defeated yet, my friend.

Mark 21:52

Oh, I, I think the gauntlet has been thrown. Watch the website, everybody. Let's, let's talk about, matching beer and food, and then, and that's something that... And actually, Francis and I have actually done quite a few beer dinners over the years. I know. Uh, but he's, but still- I'm competitive but still he feels challenged, I think, so. Uh,

Francis 22:08

just so you know, Garrett, just, just so you know how much we love Brooklyn Brewery, in our new restaurant,'cause Marsh- it's based on Marsh grandmother's recipes, and she's from Brooklyn, y- you, you are half of our beer list. We have every beer that Brooklyn makes, and we love Brooklyn Brewery, and- Thanks very much and that's half of our beer list up in that restaurant, and we also carry some beers in this restaurant.

Mark 22:24

Well, it's a Brooklyn Italian restaurant, and just- Perfect the, the symbiosis was, was perfect. And

Francis 22:28

a perfect place for me to kick your butt, man, when you come down. All right, anyway, let's move on to- To wine and food. To beer and food to, to beer and food. What do you look for to match a beer and food together?

Garrett 22:39

Well, there's two things you're gonna look for first. I mean, just like with wine, first you're gonna look to match the balance of the beer versus the food. You don't want a really big beer, like say Imperial Stout, uh, versus really light white fish. You're gonna blow it out of the water and it's not really going to work. So you wanna have that balance.

Francis 22:55

I get it, blow it out of the water. Funny. Yeah. The,

Garrett 22:57

the, the second thing, however, and you c- well, you could do the same thing with a wine. I mean, obviously- Right you could serve a California Zinfandel with that white fish, you're not gonna taste the fish. It's gonna be a nasty combination. So you wanna avoid that. But the second thing you're really looking for then is what I call the flavor hook, which is basically looking for the flavor that the beer has that s- in some ways mirrors some of the flavor that the food has. Mm-hmm. And here is where beer's, uh, real talents come into play because unlike, uh, wine, we can deliver strong caramelized flavors, for example. Mm-hmm. Right. So say you got a steak. Say I got two steaks. I got, you know, great dry-aged ribeyes, and I got two of them, and one of them I'm gonna put on a grill until the outside is nice and charred and it's, uh, medium rare, and the other one I'm gonna boil until it's medium rare. Who wants the boiled one? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Nobody. Right. It's really, it's really more about, it's about the meat, but it's also about that char. Right. Now, if I get a brown ale, I have flavors in that brown ale from the roasting of the malt, from the caramelization of the malt, that just link up perfectly with the flavor of that char on the surface of the steak. Those two things go hand in glove, and when they get on your palate, they kind of recognize each other and something goes ta-da, and you have a really great flavor combination. You know, I- Not like I don't like a nice Cabernet- Mm but the Cabernet is in contrast rather than harmony. See- We go, we can, we can do a lot more harmonious, uh, matching, uh, than a lot of wines can.

Francis 24:28

You know, I think it, it is interesting because we do b- we've done beer dinners. Every year we do at least one beer dinner, and it, and it really is true. It's the same principles that are... I mean, I, I'm sort of puffing up a little bit'cause I wanna entice Garrett down to do a dinner at the restaurant. But, um, you know, it really is the same. You're looking for, and I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, it's the same as in wine. It's what any sommelier does, or a, a beermmelier would do, I guess, is, is you're looking for a situation where one plus one equals three. And, you know, the first step is to sort of get things in the range. You know, don't have the Imperial Stout with the light white fish because they're gonna kill each other. But then you wanna get beyond where they sort of just, they go well together and they don't hurt each other, to where there actually is a marriage there and you say,"Wow- These two, these two things together are better than either one of them apart. Is that what your goal is?

Garrett 25:09

E- exactly. I mean, let's face it, anyone can match up, uh, some nice sausages with, uh, with a nice beer, and it's almost always gonna work. I, I like to go for things which are hopefully, uh, people are a bit more surprised, and they're kind of like,"Wow, I've never, I've never tasted anything happen like that, uh, between a, uh, a food and a beverage." One thing when I was working on the Brewmaster's Table that I noticed reading a lot of wine books, as I did, just to kinda see how they talked about flavor, was how many things they said didn't go with wine. And if you look at the way Americans eat today versus the way they ate, say, 30 years ago, you look at, okay, you know, one night I might have sushi, then I might have Mexican food, Indian food, uh, Thai food, et cetera. And I'm not saying that there are no wines that can work with, uh, with those foods, but you're really kinda trying to stretch it- Right compared to what you can easily do with beers. I cannot tell you how many really good Indian restaurants I've been to, top Indian restaurants, where I've seen, say, two-thirds of a bottle of Barolo left behind on a table. Yeah. And, you know, very good wine, but an absolute train wreck with the food. Right, and we talk, we,

Mark 26:23

we- And so, so a

Garrett 26:23

lot of sommeliers try to make the, uh, the, the wine go where it really doesn't want to.

Mark 26:27

Yeah, we talk about those kinds of things a lot. One of the places that I think sommeliers actually have a lot, a lot of trouble matching their wines with food that I think there are, there are certain beers in the, in the world that are a much more natural complement, and one of, one of the things you talk about are with salads and with vinaigrettes and with greens. There are very, very few wines in the world that, that go with those types of things. We... Uh, whenever we're doing a dinner, we have a problem with, with, with wines maybe tasting vegetal when paired with vegetables or vinaigrettes. How do you combat that in the beer world?

Garrett 27:02

Well, the short answer is wheat beer. Um, the Belgian-style wheat beer and the German-style wheat beer are, are, are excellent for salads. They're very light in their bitterness. They can tread, uh, uh, as lightly as the lightest white wines. Plus, they have, uh, they have carbonation, and carbonation should not be underestimated. It really is something which can refresh the palate, scrub strong flavors off your palate, and lets flavors come back tasting fresh. So even with very heavy dishes, that works to your advantage, but also with salads. And if you have a vinaigrette going on, especially if you have, say, some citrus or whatever else happening at the same time, you can do a Belgian-style wheat beer that has that brightness from the fact that citrus is actually used in making it. They add orange peel and coriander, uh, to, uh, to the beer, uh, before the fermentation, and that becomes part of that flavor profile. Our

Francis 27:58

guest, our guest is Garrett Oliver. He's the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery. And if you want to learn more about him, we're gonna put links up to his book and also to Brooklyn Brewery at our website, restaurantguysradio.com. We're gonna talk with him when we come back about seasonal beer and bottle-conditioned ales. Hey, Garrett,

Mark 28:11

when we do this little beer against wine-off thing, do we have an unlimited budget?

Garrett 28:17

Hey, you know, you, you can spend as much as, as you want to. after my last, match up, my, uh, my victim- said that next time he was gonna bring out the nukes. But at the end, you know, he had brought out a five Putney Tokaj- Nice from Hungary. Nice. And I said,"Dude, you already used your nukes.""You know, you don't have anything left." I've got, I've got so much, I got so much stuff back here- I love it to come in with. So yeah, bring it on.

Mark 28:43

Have a good time. Well, you only, you only got one more Putonya that you could possibly put- put out there.

Francis 28:47

Exactly.

Mark 28:47

If

Francis 28:48

you, if you, um, uh, for all the Hungarians listening, you understand the wine. You've only seen all your

Garrett 28:52

weapons, but

Francis 28:52

you

Garrett 28:52

don't know what I

Francis 28:53

have. It's... You know, but I'd like to see them. Either way, if I lose, I win. If... And if people aren't listening to what, uh, haven't, weren't listening to the last segment, Garrett Oliver is the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery at Catherine Lom- we love Brooklyn beers. We're not really enemies. But, um, we, we carry all of them at Catherine Lombardi, and Garrett's gonna come down, and we're gonna do a, a beer versus wine dinner to see... He's gonna match the best beers he can with a number of courses dinner. We're gonna match the best wines we can, and the people who come to the dinner are gonna decide what's best. And then, uh, the loser's gonna have to wash the winner's car outside. That's what's gonna happen. That's, that's what we're doing, in front of everyone right after the dinner, uh, in a bikini. Yeah.

Garrett 29:28

Well, just make sure you

Francis 29:29

use a shammy. Yeah. Okay. Now, now, um- Hey, listen, Garrett, I'm bringing the minivan. Get ready. Okay. So let's talk about, seasonal beers. You come out with a number of seasonal brews in addition to the many beers that you, that you normally produce. What, what makes a beer seasonal?

Garrett 29:43

Well, just like with wine, you know, you'll often tend to drink, uh, wh- more white wine in the summer and more heavier red wines, uh, in the winter, the same is true of beers. Th- you'll see wheat beers, which tend to be light and fruity, uh, going up in the summertime, and then during the winter, some of the stronger and darker beers will come up, and that kind of links up also with the way that we're eating. Uh, you're not likely, for example, to have a heavier stew or cassoulet or something like that in the middle of the summer. You're more likely to be eating fish or eating relatively lighter meals. Mm-hmm. So there's not only that, though. There's also a long-standing tradition of brewing beers specifically for holidays. Um, you know, so for the, for the, for the winter holidays, for Christmas, et cetera, for, for, for, for Easter, for basically every little holiday you could ever imagine, a few hundred years ago, people would brew beers specifically for those holidays, and that still kind of, uh, is a tradition which, uh, which, which has stayed out there. And, uh, you'll often see, um, around the winter holidays, you're gonna see beers come out of, uh, out of most breweries. It's a celebratory time of year, and the, the brewers like to celebrate as well.

Mark 30:54

Do, do you guys do that at Brooklyn?

Garrett 30:56

We do. We make, uh, we make several. W- uh, probably the best-known one is Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout, which is, uh, an imperial stout. It's about 9%, and has a big sort of coffee and chocolate flavor. Great with desserts or sitting with, uh, with a good cigar in front of the, uh, the fire in wintertime. it's a very nice, uh, very nice winter drink. But, uh, we also have our barley wine called Monster. Mm-hmm. Which is a barley wine, as you guys know, is a strong type of beer that was originally meant to age just like wine- Right and to have that level of complexity, and it's, uh, over 11%, and actually does get better over time.

Francis 31:33

is your barley wine, uh, carbonated? It is. Is it?'Cause sometimes barley wines- It's

Garrett 31:37

not, it's not, it's not as highly carbonated as most beers- Mm-hmm Um, you'll see some barley wines, especially if they're going to be re-fermented in the bottle over a long period of time, uh, they'll gain more carbonation over time slowly but surely. But to the average American, they would seem somewhat flat.

Francis 31:54

Well, now you alluded to, uh, earlier in the show that y- you might be working on, uh, what, what we'll refer to as a, a bottle-conditioned ale, or an ale where there's yeast in the bottle, an ale that continues to age because it's still in contact with yeast. Brooklyn hasn't done anything like that. Are you thinking about doing something like that?

Garrett 32:09

Uh, we actually are doing something like that. We will be putting in the bottling line, uh, i- at the beginning of the summer. Mm-hmm. And hopefully by the autumn, uh, we'll have, uh, our first beers out. It'll be, uh... We'll start off with a Belgian, a strong Belgian-style beer. It's so I wanted to, uh, to, to, to make one of those because the ones that I have had I've really enjoyed.

Francis 32:28

You know, let me ask you, now y- Brooklyn Brewery started as a microbrew by anyone's standards, and you c- well, contract made you beer up north, but you were very small production. But you've grown. I mean, it's, it's... You're very fashionable. You have a lot of brand penetration. Everybody knows w- what it is. I mean, I'd love, I'd love it if nobody knew who you were but we were, and we were helping out a struggling brewery, but we're not. You, you guys are, are very well known. As you grow, how do you retain the values of, of a small craft brewery?

Garrett 32:55

That's a very good question. I... That's pretty much what I was giving my talk on when I was speaking to the winemakers down in, uh, in, in Cape Town in South Africa. And a lot of them were very worried about, uh, consolidation of the wine business, et cetera. And I told them that basically when y- whatever it was that made you get- into making wine in the first place, and in our case making beer, then that, it's that vision that you have to serve every day. Mm-hmm. And as soon as you stop serving that vision, you know, it's time to go home. You might as well go do something else because frankly, you know, we're all pretty bright people. It's the same as the restaurant business. If you don't love it, go home. Become an- Mm investment banker or something else where you can make some money- Yeah. you know, much, much more easily.

Francis 33:38

You know-

Garrett 33:38

You know, we, we could be millionaires. But instead, we decided to do this.

Francis 33:43

You know, it's funny, Mark and I, Mark and I always say,"You know, if you're smart enough to make a little bit of money in the restaurant business, you're smart enough to make a lot of money doing something else."

Garrett 33:49

Exactly. And, and what's really a shame is when people start out following their passion, and then it just turns into a, a, a job. And really that's, that's fear. And what I really think is, uh, is true of the best brewers is that they still get up in the morning and they serve that passion, that vision that they had when they started out, and that's what makes every day interesting and fun.

Francis 34:15

Our guest is Garrett Oliver. He's the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery, and we'll be talking more with him in just a moment. You're listening to The Restaurant Guys.

Mark 34:20

Uh, Garrett, you know, I have my personal favorites of style, styles of beer that I like from different places in, in the world. Do you have an area of the world that you kind of favor as far as, beer styles? Other than Brooklyn?

Garrett 34:32

Well, we brew a really wide range, so we ta- we're taking our inspirations from, mostly from the UK, from Belgium, and from Germany, which are, you know, the, the, the, the major countries. What's interesting is watching now that we have 1,700 breweries in the United States, watching a lot of the European breweries come over here and pay attention to what we're doing. So that's, uh, that's really interesting. I mean, I can't pick one, though I have to say that, uh, if you had to pick one country, the you might go with Belgium just because they- They're very idiosyncratic. They have certainly kept more of their brewing traditions perhaps than any other country in the world, and they have such a wonderful wide range of, uh, of beer flavors out there. they tend to do very much their own thing, and a lot of the beers are like little works of art, and I think that's, uh, that's really wonderful.

Mark 35:28

Um- What, what I love about Belgium is each little brewery is, is doing indeed its own little thing, and as you go, even from one abbey to the next abbey, the, the beers are very different.

Garrett 35:37

And, uh, they tend to be great food beers. Um, you have a lot of very complex flavors that you're getting from yeasts and, uh, a- a- and various different ingredients, et cetera. So they're very, they're very free in the way that they, the, the, the way that they do things. But, uh, we're very proud of the fact that we now sell about 10% of our beer, uh, over in Europe.

Francis 35:56

Wow. That's awesome. Which count- what countries are buying Brooklyn Beer?

Garrett 35:59

Um, well, especially, uh, the UK, but also, uh, Scandinavia. So if you go to any, uh, if you're ever in Copenhagen, you go into any supermarket in Denmark, uh, you can find Brooklyn Beer.

Francis 36:10

Garrett, I'll tell you something. I, I, I love your beer, but if I'm in Denmark, I'm not drinking Brooklyn Lager. I mean, I'm glad the Danish are drinking Brooklyn Lager.

Garrett 36:19

I don't blame you-'cause now there are so many, uh, wonderful Danish breweries that have popped up in the last two years. So if you end up going that direction, send me an email, and I'll, uh, I'll tell you where to go'cause they're making some nice beer. Excellent. One of the great things about, you know, having the book out there and the popularity of the brewery is, you know, we do get the opportunity to go all around the world and talk to people about, uh, about beer, but we're still a, a very small brewery. It's, uh, it's funny what you're saying. It's like, oh, you guys are really popular, and it's great that people are enjoying the beer and that the, uh, the brewery is growing quickly. But if you look at the, the breweries that are out there, I mean, uh, bigger brands like Samuel Adams are still more than 20 times our size. Mm-hmm. And then Anheuser-Busch is 80 times their size.

Speaker 5 37:01

Yeah. Yeah. You know what I

Garrett 37:02

mean? We're, we're kind of that overnight success story that takes 20 years. You know, like, you know, like you- Somebody says, Hey, you guys have been going through the roof. You're like the big new thing." You know, we're like,"Okay." You know what? Yeah,

Mark 37:14

we understand. You know what, Garrett? 14 years later.

Francis 37:16

Garrett, I think we share a lot of, uh, a lot of similar values, and I think we should get together and do a little beer and wine challenge over the summer. Absolutely. Thanks for coming to be on the show with us. Thank you, Garrett. Thanks for

Speaker 5 37:24

having me.

Francis 37:24

All right, take care. That was Garrett Oliver. He's the, uh, brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery. You can find out more about Brooklyn Brewery and his book, The Brewmaster's Table, at our website, restaurantguysradio.com. Hope you've enjoyed the hour listening to us. I'm Francis Cha. And

Mark 37:36

I'm Mark Pascal.

Francis 37:37

We are the Restaurant Guys.