Episode 208: Marika Josephson and Aaron Kleidon of Scratch Brew With the Seasons

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Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine Podcast

Society & Culture


“People who visit the space, they understand and get that there’s this intimate quality to the beer,” says Aaron Kleidon. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a desire to add weird things to a beer just for the sake of adding weird things.” Scratch (https://www.scratchbeer.com) is decidedly weird. From their focus on beers made with ingredients foraged from the brewery property, to their intensely manual brewing process, it’s clear that the brewery is an exercise in exploring a different idea about beer—one rooted in place and time. You don’t find many breweries whose yeast choice is determined by the ambient temperature of their water or the ambient temperature of the fermentation cellar, but that’s how Scratch brews—mixed fermentation beers using their house sourdough culture (the same culture they use for their bread and pizza crust) in the warmer months, lagers in the colder months. You also don’t find many breweries who’ll change up their brewing schedule just because a storm took a tree down, and they suddenly have access to bark that they didn’t expect to have. Indeed, it’s a different way of thinking about brewing ingredients altogether. In this episode, Josephson and Kleidon explore the many facets of their brewing program, including: Building their own “spice kit” of foraged ingredients from the brewery property The learning process behind pushing ingredients further up in the boil rather than thinking about all ingredients like they would hops Methods of evaluating new or unfamiliar ingredients Brewing with tree bark and understanding the tannin contribution of foraged ingredients Channeling sense memory in drinkers by using ingredients that trigger memory Brewing with the ingredients in season, and yeasts that work in different seasonal temperature ranges The challenge of brewing in a wood-fired kettle with open puncheon mash tuns Finding “tropical” fruit flavors in local midwestern ingredients Prizing drinkability despite disparate ingredient lists And more. *This episode is brought to you by: * G&D Chillers (https://gdchillers.com): Like your flagship beer you can rely on G&D Chillers for the same quality and consistency. 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