Episode Details

While UPP Liquids may be their latest home, Tonya Cornett and Ian Larkin have been brewing together, then apart, then together again, across three different breweries over the past decade and a half. Over that time, they’ve won countless medals in competitions large and small—including Cornett’s prestigious Russell Schehrer Award for Innovation in Craft Brewing—and they continue that tradition of winning while pushing and challenging each other at UPP in Bend, Oregon.

When they ran the entire German-Style Sour Ale category for 10 Barrel at the 2024 World Beer Cup, it was with drastically different takes—the beers were so different from each other, judges had a hard time believing they were made by the same brewery. But that’s the energy that Cornett and Larkin bring, and sometimes there are equally great ideas at opposite ends of the spectrum.

In this episode, Cornett and Larkin discuss:

• the unexpected success and evolution of Pinball Wizard oatmeal stout
• raising pH and increasing finishing gravity to smooth out roast character in stout
• building body with crystal malt and chocolate rye
• using Golden Promise as base malt in imperial stout
• finding the right places for difficult malts such as Thomas Fawcett pale chocolate and amber
• building a bit of punk rock into imperial stout
• lowering IBUs to shorten conditioning time in imperial stout
• entering aged Berliner Weisse into competitions
• developing and maintaining a 17-year-old mixed lactic bacteria culture
• optimizing beers for competition, from style and recipe to packaging
• understanding judging dynamics
  

And more.

This episode is brought to you by:

G&D Chillers
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Berkeley Yeast
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PakTech
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