Intro: The Buffalo Brews podcast.

Jason: You are listening to Jason and Craig on w b e a r radio magic bear, rah rah rah rah. We are, we are on episode fourteen point three of barely Getting Started. We have we've had a great start in the first half of this series. And I mean, there's nothing to say how the rest of this is going to go yet, but I've done the research and I've seen what we're going to be drinking, and I'm excited for first half, both of you so far.

Craig: If it's fifty fifty, then we're good to go. You know, if you're setting your expectations, well, at least half of the stuff's okay, then we're there. It's it could be all of.

Jason: Those, right?

Craig: Yeah. He's okay. All right. Five out of ten.

Jason: Hey, do we do we? Quick recap on the first two. Where are we going?

Craig: Yeah. Because this this is an interesting progression.

Jason: There we.

Craig: Go. So you know, first two beers throw out to the breweries because hopefully they hear us and say, listen to barely getting started on Buffalo Brews podcast because they've talked about us. We started with what Dancing Gnome out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, called an American ale or an American Bitter. And that was kind of pay homage and take a look at the origins of pale ale, which was English style bitters, which is a family of lower ABV and then also lighter in color beers, hence the name Pale Ale. And then we jumped to new Jersey, an alternate ending, and we tried Jigawa, which is their flagship American Pale Ale, which they're marketing as a West Coast Pale Ale, which was a little darker, a little bit maltier, a little bit more bread crust than white bread. And then had some of those good old fashioned nineteen nineties American West Pacific Northwest hops with some grapefruit, some pine, some resin, all of that goodness. And the American Pale Ale, which that really dialed in, was kind of the OG American craft beer. So difference between beer styles that developed in America versus the craft beer that came out in the early nineties. You know, the late eighties and then early nineties commercially before that, we were talking. It's mainly home brew. And then, you know, now if we are following that kind of timeline, right, go from England to the American interpretation of the Pale Ale. And now we are early to mid nineties in some of these home brewers brewing, these more flavorful beers are opening up restaurants. They're opening up brew pubs, you know, a lot more brew pubs to start with, where it's just a small brewing system and then there's some food to get you in there, because it still wasn't a ton of people that were just, if you were brewing, it was kind of more production style brewing, or you're brewing such a small amount that you were kind of like a tasting room, or you had a nice brew pub where it was basically, hey, we serve food and brew our own beer. And a lot of the original breweries were brew pubs, you know, take like Pro Street, for example, one of the first in Buffalo. But it wasn't a they didn't distribute. They were just brewing beer for in house. Right. Um, same thing with Buffalo Brew pub. I don't like the Williamsville area, the OG's. Yeah. Like one of the OG's of the country. Yeah. So they're still doing what they do and they're still offering beer. And we owe it to places like that that were just providing alternatives to mass produced, um, very single note type of beers. Yeah. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but just providing something different and, you know, creating a buzz, right.

Jason: I just had some, uh, main, uh, main beer company, uh, offerings out there not even a week and a half ago. So yeah, the Buffalo Brew pub is definitely a place for the aesthetics, the atmosphere. Yeah. It's a.

Craig: Uh, I mean, I like to bring my kids there. They're still in those places that you can go. There's a popcorn machine always going. There's a barrel of peanuts. You know, they don't care if you throw the. I'm sure they care. But, you know, peanut shells are on the floor. I own a business. And I'm like, I'm never doing that. Don't don't want to clean it up, but I'll tell you what.

Jason: Crayons for the kids. Yeah, yeah.

Craig: Great for the hardwood floors. Always shiny with that peanut oil all just rubbed in there. The, uh, just an old school, good vibe type place, you know, place that serves a fish fry all week long. It's more of a fish and chips, but then they can jazz it up. So any place that always has a potato or macaroni salad on the menu is a little bit that that just home vibe type winner. Yeah. Yeah. Here we are going on a tangent. We're barely getting started.

Jason: That's okay. So that wouldn't be us.

Craig: Now, now we're, now we're there, right. We're we're at the places with the the barrels of peanuts. We're at breweries. And you know what? They need to make money to survive. And they need to have a broader appeal. And they don't want to bring in the macro beers, right? Like we opened this place to brew beer. I'm not about to put Coors Light on tap. We brew a beer and I'm not about to brew a Coors Light clone, but some people just aren't really into that American or West Coast Pale Ale. It's just too much for them. And they're still eating the mild chicken wings, and I haven't got them to get addicted to the heat yet. I haven't got them to really buy into a more flavorful beer. And they're curious. They're interested. It's buzzing. It's it's the mid to late nineties and, and people are enjoying craft beer and they're talking about it for the really the first time craft, quote unquote. Um, and they want to be a part of it just like how we were ten years ago and, you know, five years ago because we were on a boom for about five, six years from twenty fourteen to, you know, twenty twenty. And the pandemic actually kind of fueled it a little bit because there wasn't as much to do. And you could just buy four packs and have fun. But it was after the pandemic. And then, you know, like twenty three, and I think twenty three was the first year that you can kind of sense something was up in twenty four was the year I think that things started to slow down twenty twenty five. You're like, okay, yeah, I think things are definitely slowing down in twenty twenty six. It's like, yep, places are closing. Mhm. Um, because it just was too big of a boom. So what happens during the boom? How do you get more people to enjoy? Well, if you're used to macro produced lagers and lighter not. So hop forward beers. We got something for you. And what was that? That was two main beers. One was an American wheat. Or like the wheat beers, because wheat is a very soft you know, the the base malts and the wheat beers. Wheat just has a little bit more acidity to it, which makes it a little bit more tart. And then it has like a softer mouthfeel. Same thing happens when you add some oats, but you have, um, an easier drinking beer and wheat beer. So wheat beers started getting popular and what goes good with wheat beers. And I think we've done plenty of episodes about this where, you know, you can start adding some fruit additives to wheat beers. Um, so that was one that was starting to get people in. Okay. Like a lot of breweries had a flagship some, some type of wheat, right? Blueberry, wheat, raspberry, wheat, apricot, wheat. But then just having a regular beer that's not fruited. But it was, you know, mass appeal was this blonde ale. Okay. A blonde or synonymous with a golden ale, and it was basically a version of a craft beer that I don't want to say emulated, but was more approachable for someone that is just used to drinking lager. You're drinking something that is very light, very crushable, and instead of jumping too far into the IBU scale when it comes to hoppiness or too much into other types of flavor, whether it's yeast or flavor profiles, you're not typically finding in a macro American lager. You had these blonde ales. It's got a nice name. You pour it. It's still usually pretty clear. It has a nice effervescence, you know, carbonation level, very crisp, refreshing, uh, all occasion type beer, something very quaffable that you can drink and enjoy, but a little bit more flavorful. So instead of just like yellow fizzy beer water, which, you know, I, I don't want to be the one to poo poo anything because there's plenty of times that I just really enjoy. And I'll be at my buddy's house and he just hands me a Coors Light. It's like, you know what? This is just hitting the spot right now. But sometimes you just want a little bit more flavor. Right. And it's, it's not that just there's that mass produced lager taste that is good and familiar in like a cozy blanket because, you know, it's a good go to and everyone kind of has their own. You might be a Miller Lite person. You might be a Coors Light around here. You got a lot of blue light, you know, around the country. It's a lot of Bud Light. Um, and, and what we're trying is we're, we're trying to slip into something that's going to be a little bit more craft, but appeal to those people that really just want to grab something cold and aptly named and timed out because this is Edmund's oast in the name of beer is called Something Cold, so it's their premium blonde ale. Edmund Edmund's oast. They typically have all white labels on the can itself is just an old school two door fridge freezer on top. You know, one of those, um, handles that looks like it's got a hinge on it. And South Carolina, the icebox. Yes, an icebox. So something cold. Just give me something cold. Yeah.

Jason: So now those are in the garage. Those, those old fridges that still work.

Craig: Yeah, they're still there. That's the garage beer. The the nostalgia. So I've actually been to, I don't know how many are still there or if there's even more, but when I was in South Carolina, I've been twice, um, Edmund's has three versions or three iterations, three places that are making beer. Their first was kind of like, uh, like a magic bear type place where it was more of a beer store and you can drink beer there. And they were growing very popular and like, all right, let's start brewing some beer. And then.

Jason: Without fail, that phone will ring every time we.

Craig: Record episode two. If you check it every season, the third episode, the phone rings. They just must be one o'clock, two o'clock mark. Two and a half hours. Yeah.

Jason: Yeah, about two thirty.

Craig: So they do a lot of wine at the original location, Edmund's oast as well, even so much that my wife and I did a wine tasting there, just sat on the second floor bar, first floor, first floor was more beer to go as well as, um, beer at the bar. And then the second floor was more wine to go and wine at the bar. And I think they have a little bit of different licensing in South Carolina than New York State. But we really, really enjoyed the place. And I had gone to like Westbrook is out there. And I think we when we first got off the plane, I stopped at like another brewery. And this Edmund was like, oh, these guys, these guys have two other places. Like they're obviously doing well. I can see why. So on another night we went to like their big restaurant brewery that Obviously once they had made had made it and had become a staple, they opened up a really nice restaurant. Food was fantastic. The the beer list was just phenomenal. Tons of different styles and everything I tried was fantastic. So then we started doing some of the other stuff where, you know, we did a food tour. We, we did all sorts of things, you know, for kids. We were just able to pack more into the day. You know, there was no naps. And if it was, it was, it was a five minute cat nap versus my daughter's taking two hour naps. And we had to figure out what we're doing before and after nap. But we know during nap, we're just hanging out in the hotel room. There you go. The, um, third iteration was more kind of like what we saw around here popping up, where just taking old industrial spaces and making a production brewery like, hey, we need a twenty barrel brew house now because we're distributing beer, right? And we might as well have it as a location people can get to that's more in an urban area. And then they're serving food on, you know, your half sheet trays and different, different offerings at every place. Obviously, some of the same year round beers are going to be at all three locations. And you know, me personally, I like their their second iteration, the restaurant version the most because it's just the food was fantastic. Then there was just something endearing about the original. But I mean, it was a really just small kind of get in, get out kind of place.

Jason: That's what says here. What it's called now is the old Edmund's oast is now called Edmund's Original. Okay. And then there's the Edmund Oast Brewing Company, and then there's the Edmund Oast Exchange, which is, I'm assuming, the restaurant.

Craig: And I think because I think it was also near like a railroad. So it might, that might.

Jason: Yeah. That's what it looks like in the picture.

Craig: Yeah. That might, that might be why it's the exchange or the uh, but yeah, I mean, that one, you know, it was more of a order your beer at the bar, take the, uh, little table stanchion number to your table and we'll run your food out. So serve this purpose. And it was good, good beer, good food. But to me, you know, uh, definitely more into the full on brewing company and restaurant version.

Jason: Of it is nice.

Craig: But yeah.

Jason: Really.

Craig: Really good beers. So again, we're at five percent. So talk about a, you know, we had a four point whatever it was mid fours. Yeah. And then we went to five two. And now we're at that standard beer five percent. That's right. Something cold.

Jason: That's right. Middle of the road. A little callback on Edmond's host. If you go back to, um, barely getting started. Eight point four that's our, uh, our porters series that we are. Well, the leather jacket. Yeah, leather jacket. The American porter, which, uh, which actually was released on New Year's Day twenty twenty five. Look at that. Yeah.

Craig: So pouring this beer with a name like something cold. With it being a blonde ale, you know, I would expect it.

Jason: It's like you. It's like you own a business. Yeah. Look at that.

Craig: Gotta keep these.

Jason: Call it three for three.

Craig: Three for three. Pouring. Pretty darn close. But this, this looks like we're taking a step back to that first beer that we had. I can see my finger.

Jason: I'm tapping it a little more than the first one. Yep. Yeah.

Craig: So again, another beer with a nice head. White foam tight, small bubbles. Uh, a little bit of rocky head, meaning like little like craters.

Jason: Sure.

Craig: And you know, something that looks like it's a well brewed beer. And it is very similar looking to a lager. And that's what we're looking for. We're not looking for it to taste like a lager, but it needs to be approachable. You know, the blonde or golden ale. It's an ale yeast, which also for craft breweries, it's not as it's not lagered as long. So you can like kind of turn and burn and brew more batches of this than you would a pilsner or a, you know, American lager.

Jason: Right.

Craig: But appeal to the masses. So as we sniff and take a sip, I'm going to be looking for something similar to the first beer, more of a widely approachable, just kind of tastier version of like a macro beer. So a little. Well, I guess we'll take a sniff.

Jason: Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to I'm trying to discern the a little different there. Got a little retronasal on that.

Craig: You know what over the the last time we met was the holidays and the wintertime, where for like six months out of the year you have a stuffed nose. Oh, right. I had too big of a. I'll tell you what. I can tell you how to taste it a little bit. Now, I went up my nose.

Jason: But there you.

Craig: Go. Um, definitely you could smell a little bit more of that malt, a little bit more grain, a little bit. Just when I say that it's just a little bit more bready, a little bit more like when you go to a brew house and you could smell that spent grain. Sometimes that's how the beers taste. It just tastes how a brew house smells. So yeah, a little cheers before we dive in.

Jason: Oh. I mean, is that a little more of that? That like, almost like a barley that I'm picking up there? Is that what I'm getting on the nose?

Craig: That's what I got up my nose. Yeah. That's where, that's where I say it was um, smells and tastes like what a brew house smells like. Yeah. That, that barley cereal grain kind of vibe. Okay. So it, if you, if you take with this beer is not much bitterness, right? Not sweet, not a sweet beer, um, meaning unbalanced and too, too much of a malt forward beer, but it does have that like grain. This is what discerns it from the mass produced macros. A lot of those mass produced beers are using fermentable sugars from unmalted grains, or unmalted sources to provide some fermentable sugar and attenuation without adding much flavor, or this being an all malt beer. It has grain like flavor to it, and it tastes like there's more ingredients in it, right?

Jason: Where somebody might take a, you know, a, a mass produced, you know, a mass produced, some, you know, some sort of macro beer. And that's what they're hitting all day while they're at a family outing or something like that. I, I could do this. Like this is something that I could attack all day and.

Craig: Yeah. And it's, it's a step up from that.

Jason: Yeah.

Craig: So, you know, serving its purpose and in an introductory beer without being a lager because a lot of craft craft beers were craft ales when they first came out in the nineties and plenty of people making craft lagers, but it was like. It was really hard to get people to buy into, hey, why don't you buy this lager that's fifty percent more than the lager you're drinking? Mhm. It was kind of like, hey, we've got something to offer that the other guys can't offer you. So this beer is close to that, but you can taste the difference. And the fact that there's more going on with the grain. It doesn't just taste like that old school dad's beer flavor. Mhm. It has this more complex bread note to it where it's not all right. I could taste some malt and then there's hop to finish it, and it's fizzy. All right, it'll do. It's got this. All right. I'm chewing on some crusty bread. It's not dark crust, but it's crusty. It's more that artisanal loaf of white bread and not necessarily a sourdough loaf, but something that's got a little bit more bite to it, a little bit more crunch in its crust where you know that that sandwich, even though it tastes the bread, tastes very similar to white bread. It's it tastes more artisanal because there is more ingredients and more love put into the beer. Um, not that the, the, the science or the art of it is lacking in the other beers. This just has more of an artisanal, uh, vibe. It is something cold, right? It's nothing that is going to be, uh, breaking the mold on. Oh, I've never had something like this, but if you had a casual American lager drinker, if you gave someone that drinks blue, regular blue, or like regular Budweiser and they tried this, to me, this has more of a slight sweetness as well as more of a, all right, this, this has some real like bread note to it and has that subtle happiness at the end to balance it, but not like that American West Coast Pale ale. We just tried where there's some residual grapefruit pine that's just kind of finishes as that slightly sweet, malty, uh, light beer, but like you said, can drink all day. It's gonna go good with food. It's just a very standard introductory beer for someone getting into craft. It's what you would expect with a little bit more flavor that is not just shattering what you're used to. When you try something that's really hop forward or really yeast forward, it's something that you're familiar with. Yeah. Yet tastes like it's worth a buck more.

Jason: I, and it's a good way of looking at it, is that somebody who, who hasn't played around much with craft, this is a good way to introduce it to them without. I mean, and just saying, this is craft beer in one of its most basic forms. And, you know, I think I think somebody could migrate to this easy still on the nose. It's it's it's unique to me. It's almost like a.

Craig: It does.

Jason: Have.

Craig: Some.

Jason: Fruitiness, you know.

Craig: A little bit of floral.

Jason: Yeah. Like it almost like, uh, you know, if you were, I don't know, I, I, I'm not, I don't spend much time in the South, but like, if you were walking through a, like a citrus orchard, you know, like a little bit of a mix of, um, like earthy and.

Craig: Not just the citrus, but the blossom.

Jason: Yeah, yeah. There you go. There you go. Yeah. A little maybe lightly floral.

Craig: The lightly floral. I think that, you know, this is an ale. So a little bit of those esters and, you know, floral notes can come from it. I don't know exactly which hops they're using. No. But without them being super bitter hops, you know, sometimes instead of it being bitter or grapefruit or resin from the American hops, depending on what they're using, it could be a little bit more of a floral subtleness to it and I. I get that with this I get a nice malt forward without being caramel, right. There's no, this isn't anywhere near an amber ale. This isn't it's it's white bread still with some bread crust. It's not toasted. It's not it's not bitter. And there is like a hint this one's got like the first little, little like estuary hint of some ale yeast to it, but very, very subtle.

Jason: Yeah. And yeah, they don't have any, they don't have any, uh, breakdown of their hop profile on this. So yeah, I guess it was just have us guessing. Yeah.

Craig: I mean, for a beer with a old school fridge on it called something cold. Mhm. Pouring golden like this, you know, this was clarity was right there with the first beer, but the color was a little bit in between the first and the second beer, just on a very light gold or even just gold color on the SRM scale again, nice little bit ahead to it. Yep. Nice finish with the carbonation. This one I do feel this wasn't as dry as the first beer. If we're comparing first beer to third beer.

Jason: No, first one was definitely dry.

Craig: Yeah, it finished with a little bit more crisp, crisp flavor. Both with the, um, kind of hops that they were using with that Perla and, uh, Centennial. And then also with the carbonation, this one really only gets its crisp finish from the carbonation, but there's a little residual sweetness. And I think that's what helps carry that slightly fruity or floral ale yeast note, which is subtle. It is super, super subtle. Yeah. And you know, we're dissecting this beer versus someone that just wants you to toss them something cold from the fridge, right.

Jason: If you're in Charleston, I mean, I've been there a couple of times because I lived in, uh, I lived in Sumter for a few years, so I used to go to Charleston once in a while. But knowing where it's at, looking at the map, if you're heading, you know, I twenty six out of Columbia and you're heading right into Charleston. Charleston's most famous for their bat for the military Battery Park, the the famous row houses. So those run kind of like right in the same neighborhood there. Um, but if you go about, I don't know, about three miles up the hill, um, all three of these locations are kind of huddled together right off of I twenty six and, uh.

Craig: Yeah, I would definitely, definitely worth visiting all of them. Yeah. They were, all of them were different enough where they provided a, its own experience. And depending on what experience you're going for, I would, uh, you know, guide you from one to the other. So hopefully I gave Edmund's oast its due praise when it comes to the fact that there's three close by iterations, yet each provides a little nuance, right?

Jason: A little uniqueness to each one. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I remember going back to when we, when we had the leather jacket. I mean it cannot was similar black and white, you know, simple art, nice clean, simple beer.

Craig: Reminds me a lot of like frost out of, um, Vermont, like their IPAs, all white cans. But frost is just texts. I mean, there's no pictures on it. Just has the name of the beer on the front. Maine beer company similar where they might have a little bit of a drawing on the on the can or the bottles, but very simplistic clean label. That's what these beers are. You know, they have some different, uh, offerings, but very traditional in their beers. Um, but a very, you know, varying amount of offerings and, you know, to kind of set up the next beer and recap the first three, you know, we, we started with the origins of, you know, a true pale ale, which was bitters in England and then the American version of it. And then we went to the first like true American craft beer. American Pale Ale, which was a little bit more caramel and amber in color, but not quite an amber ale, but definitely darker than these beers. But it was, you know, pleasant for us with its happiness and slight bitterness. But it was by no means a bitter bomb. Right. But also something that, hey, if this is like the new beer of the era, of the, of the movement or the culture of craft at the time, it might not appeal to everybody. So then we ended up with this golden ale or a blonde ale kind of synonymous. And these are your gateway beers, so to speak, for people. Great word. Yeah. Yeah. Just people to get into the craft beer scene without, you know, having to bite into a pine tree and just be turned off by it. And, and kudos to the industry for realizing, hey, people are loving these beers, but there's also a ton of the demographic that's just not ready for it and may never be. They just might not like it. So we want to be successful. How do we include, you know, the inclusion? And that's one thing I've always liked about craft beer is it's very inclusive. And then you started getting into like the hipster breweries and it's like, oh, if you're not drinking this and we named our like, what's the name of this beer? Something cold, right? Like it's not a crazy, you have no idea what type of beer it is by the name of it. So, uh, very nice brewery. That's not pretentious by any means. And it's, it's got offerings for everybody. And this beer, along with this style being something that in the mid to late nineties was kind of like the olive branch from the craft beer world to the macro drinking beer world and saying, hey, we've got something for you, and we might just talk you into trying something else while you're here.

Jason: Well, definitely contenders.

Craig: Yeah.

Jason: We're contenders.

Craig: Couple. A couple of these guys. The next thing you know, you're trying something. And after wetting your whistle, it's not as in your face. And next thing you know, you're digging into a bucket of hot wings.

Jason: Right. I think, and I think when I was plugging in some information, the AI was pulling up food suggestions, which I don't know how accurate that would be. But one of the things it did say was buffalo wings, which is which is hilarious.

Craig: Well, Buffalo Wings goes with beer quite a bit just because there's notes of spice that need to be tamed with some sweet malt. And then there's crispiness that needs some carbonation to cleanse the palate with all the, you know, deep frying that's going on. So just a really good beer food.

Jason: All right. Hey, we're three episodes down. We got one to go. We're going to bring it back home to the. And I'm going to say it right now, is the most recently crowned five time medal award winning Strange bird out of Rochester is going to be the subject of our last episode in this series. Uh, I mean, I've been having fun with this, and I look forward to how we, uh, how we finish this series out. Yeah.

Craig: For something called Paler Pines. You know, we're, we're seeing a nice, uh, diverse iteration of each beer and, uh, looking forward to the last one with you.

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Um, so. Yeah, three, three down and we will see you in a, in a few weeks here for our final episode of series fourteen. Uh, Jason. And he is. Craig, uh, to you, we extend cheers.

Craig: Cheers.