From Maine, With Love - An Allagash Brewing Podcast

S4 Episode 6: Flip It & Sip It

• Season 4 • Episode 6

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First you flip it, then you sip it.

It's that easy to make sure you have the best possible experience—full citrusy aroma, pillowy mouthfeel, and beautifully balanced flavor—with your next can, or bottle, of Allagash White. But there's more to this story...

  • Why flip it?
  • How vigorously should one flip?
  • Wait, do they flip the kegs?
  • What happens if I already opened it?

All of these questions, and more, are answered in this podcast!

Brett:

Here we are for Maine with Love, season four, episode six. We keep track. This one's called Flip It and Sip It. Level up. Level up, Chow says. Here we go. This is for Maine with Love, an Allagash Brewing podcast where we talk about our beer, our community here in Maine and things that generally make us happy. I'm Brett. I'm here with Liz. Hello. Hey, uh, secret question. Are you ready to level up chalice head? I'm so ready. I hope it brings someone joy out there that we say this because it really makes us laugh. I think it's the combination of like Chalice Head alone is funny, but Level Up is just like kind of so adjacent and so funny that it brings me great joy. So thanks, Liz.

Liz:

Oh, anytime.

Brett:

All right. Do you have a secret question for me?

Liz:

I do. Oh, wow. Okay. Do you have a secret question for me? No, my question was,

Brett:

are you ready to level up Chalice Head? That was the question.

Liz:

Sure, yeah. You said yes. Okay, Brett. We just got some... Late breaking news about this podcast.

Brett:

Uh-oh. It's canceled. Are we one of the top 90 brewing

Liz:

podcasts? I got that information too. Do you know what number we placed?

Brett:

No.

Liz:

Number 42.

Brett:

What? Of all brewing podcasts?

Liz:

First of all, there's 90, not even, no, Brewing Industry. Brewing Industry podcast. We didn't make it to the craft beer podcast land.

Brett:

Oh, yeah. We'd be way behind.

Liz:

But Brewing Industry, for all of our infinite wisdom, we are number 42, which is honestly a lot higher than us.

Brett:

That's true. I agree. I never would have guessed it.

Liz:

Wow. Here we are. Thank you. Thank you, millionpodcast.com. We are honored.

Brett:

That's really nice. Yeah, I saw it and I did not, I was kind of in a rush to the next meeting and I was like, I wonder, and then I didn't click more, but thank you for bringing it up. So here we are, here to talk about a subject near and dear to our hearts here at Allagash Brewing Company. Flip it and sip it. What does that mean, Liz?

Liz:

So, getting right into it. Our beloved Allagash White.

Brett:

Mm-hmm.

Liz:

is an unfiltered wheat beer. And so when it's packaged, well, you know, in any format, you're going to want to give it a little gentle swirl before you enjoy it. And we haven't talked about it a ton because we didn't– our beer was most often consumed– via draft and on premise, um, for much of our history. And, you know, we, for a long time offered, what was it? Four pack of bottles

Brett:

bottles. Yes.

Liz:

And then in 2019, we really ramped up our, uh, production of package beer. And so that's where we need your help. And, um, it's, Yeah, and so Allagash White needs a little, you know, engagement before you enjoy its best version of itself. Exactly.

Brett:

I mean, the flip and sip it is like a literal thing. Literally flip the can or bottle over, give it a little swirl before you sip it. It's that simple. We'll talk more about it, why and everything like that. But like Liz alluded to this fact of this actually has a significant impact on the flavor and the experience of the beer. And you, we've, we've done blogs about it. You can actually look it up on our website, flip it and sip it. And we've done these kind of, we've done a social post about it and stuff like that. There's like a very side by side, like visual difference where if you let this beer, you know, sit on the shelf shelf for a fairly significant amount of time, it's going to start clearing up. Like all of the haze is kind of going to fall to the bottom. Yeah.

Liz:

It'll settle.

Brett:

It'll settle. And then you get a beer that, um, is reminiscent of the Allagash, what you know from the bar, but you're gonna be like, there's something, I don't know, there's something about this one. Whereas if you just flip it over, give it a little twirl, you're gonna get that full, hazy, sort of pillowy mouth feel, amazing ester profile aromatics. So it's a big deal.

Liz:

It is. And I'll say, this is not, you haven't missed some major part of drinking craft beer by like, not knowing this, like many beers you don't have to do. Many of our beers you don't have

Brett:

to do this.

Liz:

But Allagash White is unique in that way. And so I think we're just trying to spread the good word about the best way to enjoy an Allagash White. Exactly.

Brett:

And we actually, you see it on Untapped. We actually pulled a literal quote from Untapped. We're talking about Untapped a lot recently. Where the person said, different from when I had it at the bar. about a can of Allagash White, and we think this is the exact reason. Actually, the pour of it was pretty clear, so we know this is the reason.

Liz:

We should

Brett:

note that the kegs are actually stored upside down at bars, and so when they flip it to tap it, It all goes into suspension. Exactly. Yeah, we actually, we know when we're kegging Allagash White because you can see the little kegger robot and it's flipping all the kegs over. So they're all upside down.

Liz:

Yeah, they arrive at the bar upside down or a restaurant and the instructions on it say very clearly to give it a nice, you know, store it upside down and flip it when you're ready to serve. Flip

Brett:

it before you

Liz:

sip

Brett:

it.

Liz:

And that's why you get a delicious pour when you're having it at a bar or restaurant.

Brett:

Exactly. And I think that Liz, you kind of mentioned this too, but it's like, We view this as kind of a benefit of Allagash White because it's an experience. It's like an experiential beer where you take it out of the fridge, you give it that little twirl, and it's like, ah, I'm getting ready, and then you crack it open. It's great. It's kind of like a party trick, too. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely impress people. Yeah. What are you doing? Yeah. Let me activate the haze for you. Pardon me, sir.

Liz:

Yeah. Try it a few times at home. Perfect your skills. Yeah. I would say you don't have to over-swirl. We're talking finesse here, so. Gentle rotation. Yeah. Or some

Brett:

people do like rock the baby. Yeah. Rock the baby a little bit. You can roll it on the countertop. Some people do the roll.

Liz:

Yeah.

Brett:

The other one's like kind of like a cowboy lasso where you do it over your head

Liz:

a little bit. Oh, yeah. That's a good description. I like the cowboy lasso.

Brett:

That's good. Yeah, that's fun. What's your activating the haze method? How do you activate the

Liz:

haze? I think I just give it like a nice– I flip it slowly and then maybe I like twist it. once or you know two times in my you know against my palm and then open it up

Brett:

I'm on the more vigorous side I don't give a care I'll just kind of whip it around and like because we've done so so we have done many many shoots with Allagash White and I have shaken the crap out of that yeah like really shaken it up to get a good like sort of scenario and it doesn't foam that much yeah if it's

Liz:

cold because if it's not cold

Brett:

oh yeah that's true We normally do them cold ones. Yeah. Put it in a paint shaker. It's like a Simpsons episode.

Liz:

Oh, man. Oh,

Brett:

God. Yeah. No, you know what I think? I think the chalice heads, the true chalice heads among us, know about activating the haze, but they know it through a different name.

Liz:

I think it's

Brett:

worth bringing it up at this point, and that is rouse your yeast, which is what you'll literally see on a can or bottle right now if you flip it upside down and kind of small print towards the bottom. Yeah. A little fun upside down. writing thing

Liz:

we heard that as the marketing team and we're like yeah people will get that yeah and actually no

Brett:

No, they don't.

Liz:

No. It just sounds kind of weird.

Brett:

It sounds weird. It's got like a two for three hit ratio of weird words that make you go, oh, okay. Like rouse. No. No, I don't think I've roused anything other than a Allagash beer in my life. And then yeast. And actually, talking about it right now, it's like your yeast. It's like my yeast. I don't have yeast. Beer yeast is a beautiful thing, but I think when you just start to Put it on paper and say, rouse your yeast. It's just like, oh.

Liz:

Yeah. Not

Brett:

suboptimal. Well,

Liz:

and I think a lot of people probably don't even know yeast is in beer. Yes. Which is fine. 100%.

Brett:

Totally

Liz:

fine. And I don't want to make people think too hard about it. 100%. So I would say maybe not our best idea. Just not our best marketing tactic. Not our best. Not our best. And that is why we... That's a big

Brett:

L, Chalice Hanson. I don't want to put anyone down that maybe came up with this phrase or uses this phrase.

Liz:

No, no. It's technically accurate for sure. It's just not that clear. It just doesn't

Brett:

really resonate,

Liz:

I think.

Brett:

Yeah. It has served us very well. It has served us very well and we've found a new way to say it and we're getting excited about it and we're putting it out there.

Liz:

Yeah.

Brett:

Although what I think is interesting is that we used to have it on our bottles... right out of the gate, you know, 95, 96, all the bottles said it. And then at some point we decided to take it off because we felt like it was too pretentious to tell people how to pour their beer. And then I think we started seeing more and more pictures of unroused, or excuse me, unflipped Allagash whites. And we're like, oh no, they're not doing it. They're not getting the full experience. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was like a step-by-step guide. It was like four different little panels of like flip it over, spin it around, which is like honestly really helpful. It was probably maybe one of the better ways to get that information across.

Liz:

Yeah.

Brett:

Maybe we bring that back. How are we getting this thing out there? How are we

Liz:

spreading

Brett:

the message?

Liz:

Yeah. Well, we have already started– talking about it on social um we will do some more um content there and then our awesome sales team um they're the folks that interact with any bars or restaurants that carry allagash white and um we've developed some new fun training materials that have flip it and sip it uh as part of that training i think you know there's a whole it's a whole larger program on you know Things that pair well with Allagash White or how to recognize when Allagash White might be a beer that someone liked to try. And then of course, how to serve an Allagash White and flip it and sip it is a big part of that. So that's fun. We've gotten some good early feedback on that. Shout out to Todd, our graphic designer, who has developed a visual identity to go along with it. How do we even describe that? Yeah, we've like, what is that called? called? He named them the flippets. Well, the flippets, yeah. Little characters. Yeah, little characters. But he's made the bottles and cans.

Brett:

Anthropomorphize them? That's the word I'm looking for. Turn them into people.

Liz:

That's a hard one.

Brett:

Little can and bottle people.

Liz:

And one of them's, you know, the flippets, as we affectionately call them, are doing fun flips of different varieties. We've got a

Brett:

soccer flippet doing a bicycle kick. We've got a skateboarder doing a skateboarder flip. Kick flipping board, which he, the The skateboarder could be flipping, but he's on the board at the time. Or that can or bottle. The other aspect of it that I think was really fun is we, as a marketing team, kind of got a chance to go for this and just kind of turn it. We didn't have as many, I think, guardrails around what exactly that needed to go into this server training. So it was cool to be able to kind of, I don't know, dial it in. Dial it into

Liz:

just the exact. Yeah, and I think anytime your employer's like, time for some education, you know, like, and no shade to our HR team because they crush it, but we've all been there. And, uh, so I think with that in mind, we just wanted to make something fun and engaging and interactive, um, because we know bars and restaurants are very busy people and they're, you know, they've got a lot going on. And so we just wanted to make the most of it.

Brett:

Yeah. And make, also make it like a benefit to the folks who are taking it And what did we name it? The Professional Haze Developer Program, or get your

Liz:

PhD. Get your Allagash PhD. Allagash PhD.

Brett:

And what comes with it? The benefits of the training.

Liz:

You get your Certificate of Sipitude. Yeah. That's for completing your training. Yeah,

Brett:

a literal certificate. We even put Latin on there. I think it says it's Latin. Yeah, it says Latin for flip it, flip and sip it. I literally like Google translated that. So it's pretty

Liz:

good. That's good. I hope somebody looks that up. They might. Or

Brett:

someone who speaks Latin. Someone who knows Latin is going to look at it and be like, that's wrong.

Liz:

You get an official pin.

Brett:

Yep.

Liz:

And then you get a shirt and a spinner, which is a bottle opener. I feel like that's an industry term, a spinner.

Brett:

Yeah, it's like the big bottle opener you see sticking out of the back pocket of a bartender. It's big and metal and really cool looking,

Liz:

so you've got a cool custom one. Yeah, they don't break easily, which is nice. And we've got little flip-it stickers, which are also available in the tasting room, because they're just fun. Yes.

Brett:

And a fun thing a fun little easter egg hidden within there is the pin if you as a server have completed this training and you get your pin you can come to the tasting room in portland and you get some special perks

Liz:

yeah

Brett:

by having that pin on

Liz:

yeah your phd pin being uh you know certified to poor allagash white

Brett:

yeah i like to recognize

Liz:

it yeah i think we've rolled it out we've rolled that part out in boston only

Brett:

sure trial balloon

Liz:

Yeah, and see how it goes. So we're super excited about it. Yeah. And if

Brett:

you happen to be a distributor. Chalice-ed. Or a Chalice-ed. True Chalice-ed. Distributor, restaurant owner, a person, bar owner, who's like, ah, that actually sounds pretty cool. I'd love for my staff or my employees to go through that. Definitely reach out to us. Our sales team is fired up to be given these trainings. Or your Allagash sales rep. Yeah,

Liz:

yeah. Yeah. Flip it and zip it next time you have an alligator. Wait.

Brett:

Yeah.

Liz:

Activate the haze. Activate

Brett:

the haze. You know what else we're doing? What? I actually just talked recently about how we're going to actually do this, like literally in a meeting just right before this. We want to roll this out to the public. This is for the true channel. This is for the true channel. This is a real sneak peek. Just you wait. We're going to do an online course. Oh, like a legit, like go online, take the course. We're going to have videos. We're going to do

Liz:

quizzes. It needs a soundtrack.

Brett:

We're going to take that clip that what you just did. And that's the soundtrack. But yeah, you're going to be able to get your PhD professional developer online.

Liz:

Yeah. And you too can be, get your certificate of subitude. Actually, is that true?

Brett:

Yes. You'll be able to get your certificate and potentially a pin as well. That's something you're going to want to bring home to your parents and put on the fridge. Oh, yeah. Make them proud. I mean, legal drinking age. Make them proud. Yeah. Well, you've already said the yes, I'm over 21 when you come to our site, so it'll be all legal folks.

Liz:

Yeah. Perfect. Yeah.

Brett:

I got my PhD. Check this out. I'm just spinning it. You're just spinning a beer, son. Yeah. You did it, Bobby. Tell the neighbors. That's good. That's good. You get to have a graduation party. Yeah. Yeah. No debt. Blow it out. Yeah, no debt for this one. No debt. Zero debt. This is going to be a free one.

Liz:

Yeah. I do like this little call out you have. If somebody has opened their beer.

Brett:

Yeah.

Liz:

What do you do?

Brett:

What do you do? You have, in a haze of your own, you have opened the beer without thinking, and you say, no, I forgot to

Liz:

flip it before I sipped it.

Brett:

What do you do? What do you do, Liz?

Liz:

All is not lost. Don't you worry. I think, and actually... Does Jason do this? Yeah.

Brett:

There's quite a few people at the brewery that actually pour out the first, like, third. Yeah. And then swirl the bottle, which I think is a really good technique. Yeah, that's fun. And by pour out, we mean pour into a glass.

Liz:

Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah, sorry. Pour out. Stuff it. Like, meh. This one's for my hazies. I gotta sacrifice that. Don't you dare. No. Yeah, you just pour, you know, yeah, a third of it into... your chalice, and you give the rest of it a little swirl, and you're golden. Don't

Brett:

go upside with the bottle at that point. No, not worth it. Don't stick your hand on there. I feel like try to place it against your palm of your hand and hold it in. Don't spill it on your shoes. No, don't do that.

Liz:

Pour a little bit

Brett:

out, swirl. And that is the answer to those folks who are kind of timid and don't want to turn it over and swirl it and are worried about gushing and stuff like that. Totally legitimate. concern so you can pour come out a little bit out swirl swirl swirl pour the rest in it is pretty cool to see it too because you'll see like the literal you'll see what the beer looks like from a haze perspective at the point of pouring in the third and then you swirl and you pour the rest in it's just that beautiful sort of golden haze and we saw a really good experiment recently online right

Liz:

yeah yeah um a friend of the brewery Doug, and friend to many breweries, out in Chicago. His

Brett:

handle being?

Liz:

Beer Aficionado. Yes. So Doug went to the beer temple, and he did basically a blind side-by-side tasting of one Allagash White that was not flipped before it was sipped and one that was. To a

Brett:

very knowledgeable

Liz:

beer friend. Yeah, and asked if they could spot the difference. And they got very close.

Brett:

They got pretty darn close. It got almost spot on.

Liz:

Yeah. Which is pretty impressive.

Brett:

Yeah.

Liz:

Um, and so, yeah, that was really fun to see online. Um, it's a good, every time we post about it, it's a good reminder. I think there's a lot of people that are like, ah, I knew this and I just always forgot to do it. Um, and it makes a difference. So,

Brett:

I mean, sometimes people can get a little too like into the, the flipping and sipping. And so if it, if their beer is not properly, uh, the haze is not properly activated for their Allagash white, they might be a little apt to say like, Hey, you know, to their server. I think it's a teachable moment, honestly, if you want to be like, Hey, do you Do you know about the flip it before you sip it sort of scenario? Worth it. Liz, I have a question. Do I need to flip any other Allagash beers? I think we already answered this, but I want to answer it again, clearly.

Liz:

No. Yes. Which one?

Brett:

Ski House? Yeah. Oh, Ski House. Okay, yeah. Is it on there? That's not super obvious. It's not on Ski House, though. No. Ski House is a very similar beer to Allagash White. And it's funny because I think I instinctually... flip that one a little swirly, but I don't think I like thought too hard that I like, I need to do this, but you do, you should ski house.

Liz:

Yeah.

Brett:

Yeah.

Liz:

It is a delicious sweet beer with ginger. So that one also requires it, but generally no, but every single vast majority of our beers do not require a little flippy before I sip. Yeah. So, um, but you know, You know a little

Brett:

fun Allagash lore? Ooh. This is a little rando. Yeah, gather round. Gather round for the Allagash lore. Before all of our tours in the Cellars area, we do a little demonstration of flip and sip it to show people. And it's like kind of the cool party trick sort of factor. And that came from because the person who is– leading those tours was on the same bellagash trip with me when we went to belgium it was when we were at duvel actually the duvel brewery they did that thing that very like exactly poor part of it out and then have it at the bottom and be like oh and watch this and like it was such a fun experiential sort of thing to see it was like oh that's so cool so that's like a staple of our um tour with their porn that they did that with duvel Just Duval. Duval. But they pose it as more of like an optional. Like you can have your Duval where you like decant it off of the, you know, to the very end and then you have a nice clear Duval or you can swirl the remaining. I think they said yeast, but like swirl the remaining and then dump it in the top and you get a little bit more of a hazy Duval. Wow. Yeah. It's exciting. Yeah. It's

Liz:

cool. Choose your own adventure.

Brett:

Talk about a high ABV beer though. That beer's like nine.

Liz:

It's ridiculous. I'm going to Belgium. True. In November. Are you

Brett:

doing

Liz:

it? Yeah.

Brett:

Amazing. You're going to be with, I think Steve, how many? It's

Liz:

like 13 of us.

Brett:

Oh, that's, yeah, that is big. Okay, not as big as your group. I thought it was going to be like 20 something because I think we were in the 13, my group was in the 13-ish or something like that. It's a great, great, great, great number.

Liz:

Yeah. That'd

Brett:

be fun.

Liz:

So.

Brett:

We'll be able to talk about that. We're going to do like Bellagash round two.

Liz:

I'm just going to bring this with me, my whole podcast up. It's very fun.

Brett:

Why don't you tell us about the Belgian trip, what it is, just so we

Liz:

can put that in front of it. We're just chatting with each other. Yeah, we're just chatting about Bellagash. After you've worked five years at Bellagash, you get to go on a trip to Belgium because we are... Belgian-inspired. Yeah, we're a Belgian-inspired brewery. A lot of the beers that at least started Allagash were in the Belgian style, and so you get to go with Rob and Jason, and they've been going every year now for however many years, and they've got some real good friends over there at this point, and that's just... It's like a week. Yeah. It's a literal week, which is just bonkers. And the fun thing is you go with people who you don't normally see on your day-to-day. So it's going to be great. I feel like there's a couple folks from the field that I'm excited, and tasting room, and production, and it's a week-long event. You go to a bunch of different breweries, and then you go to some really cool bars and restaurants.

Brett:

They've built in a lot of nice free time, too. They have a pretty good, like, you know, every day you'll have a little bit of time just to explore and stuff like that, too, to recognize it's just fun to be in Belgium, which, you know, most people don't get the chance to go to. Right. The one part of it that I feel like struck me, and I think I've said this on a previous podcast, but it really, like, is, like, you can feel it when you're over there, is, like, A, the Belgians have such... reverence for beer, like the way in which it's poured, the way in which it's presented, the way in which every single beer has its own specific glass and it's like sacrilege to pour one beer into a different glass, like all this stuff. So you see all that. And then when you get to meet these brewery owners, like these storied brewers in Belgium, talking with Rob and Jason and seeing that it's not like they're doing them like a favor, that it's like, these are like people, these are equals. These are colleagues who are like talking to each other about the business and are like doing like that. It sets you in a different sort of mindset with like Rob and Jason in particular, like what they've been able to accomplish with this brewery and with kind of the connection to Belgium and stuff. So it's pretty special.

Liz:

Yeah. I also particularly love Lambic style. beers.

Brett:

That's a good place to go.

Liz:

We've got a couple of those. That is something I am looking forward to.

Brett:

My first day, so the first day there, the tradition is you get there in the morning because you've taken a red eye and you have to stay up. You cannot go back to the hotel and sleep because you have to really set yourself up for success. Everyone has done it and it actually works out well, but it was like we went to Cantillon the first day, then we went to De La Seine and we did a tour and we were having beers and it was like probably five or six o'clock after just having a couple beers at various places where they're like, oh, we're doing a collab with DLSN. Brett, you need to come up with the name and the label. And they sat me down. The designer hustled in, and he sat down at a table, and then we came up with the name for the beer and the label. Oh, your best work yet? It was pretty good. It was pretty funny. There were some other people who chimed in and stuff, and this designer was actually kind of specific, so I was feeling him out, whereas someone would say something, and he'd be like, what about this for the label? And you could just tell this guy was like, no. But he wouldn't say it in as many words, so I'd kind of, I don't know if people had ideas. Then we came up with something that was fun. I hope your chalices feel like you've leveled up.

Liz:

We've got a really random episode. Geez Louise. That's good.

Brett:

Yeah, thanks again, Liz. Thanks, Brad. Always a pleasure. Matt, always a pleasure.

Liz:

Yeah.

Brett:

All right. This has been an Allagash Brewing production. If you have something you'd like to talk to us about or a question for our team, just send us an email at podcast.allagash.com. And as always... Thanks for listening.