Hiking throughout WNY and the outdoors brings memories of Jungle Jack Hanna, who is retiring from the public after 50+ years. Listen to the interview with Russ William from Windy Brew about their early days, what's going on now, and what's coming up.
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Coming up, the winds of change are here. I sit down with Russ William from Windy Brews to talk their then, now, and the future. The Buffalo Brews podcast starts now. Welcome everyone. It's that time of the week, Brews Day, and you know what that means. I'm Jason Ettinger, your host, and thank you for joining me today, just as you do each and every Tuesday. With the continued road toward normalcy, I'm hoping that you're all being able to put the activities of being cooped up at home behind you, and instead getting out and getting away and getting things done. You know, I encourage you to go out now. Make plans and make memories and make it your own, and most importantly, as I tend to say like a broken record, make it your own path. I steered away from the whiskeys and bourbons that I typically drink, and I'm sitting here drinking a Solar Winds Pineapple Jalapeno Cream Ale from Windy Brew. It is a classic American cream ale that is brewed with a pineapple puree and roasted jalapenos, and it's made with galaxy and mosaic hops. Now, some of you may be pondering that, and some people may be turning their nose up at it, but I encourage you to try this. On my initial sip, you definitely get the pineapple flavor right up front, but it isn't the heat that you get from the jalapenos, but rather the spiciness that goes along with it, and shockingly, to me, on the first sip, it was a welcome combination, so I'm about halfway done with this right now. Actually enjoying this after getting back from my interview that I had with Russ William at Windy Brews, which you're going to hear in a few moments. I went out there for a few hours today after hiking about seven miles on the Finger Lake Trails, sat down and had a flight conversation with Russ, and one of their delicious pizzas that they have on hand this month, a special that you'll also hear in the interview is steak pizza. I highly encourage you to go out there and enjoy some time at Windy Brew. They're located at 733 Route 20A in Strykersville. As you know, I completed the Western New York Winter Hiking Challenge in mid-March and wasted no time signing up for the Summer Challenge that's going on from the end of March through the middle portion of November. I also brought on board with me for the challenge my ex-sister-in-law, so we have been planning and taking on some of the hikes for the Summer Challenge, starting with last weekend, which would have been Easter weekend. We started on Saturday by heading out to Emery Park and taking in four miles out there. I had been to that park before, but she had not, and we both are fascinated by water and waterfalls and we like to be around it. Emery Park has a great opportunity to see lots of water. Up close or from up high, the photo opportunities are fantastic, so we spent a few hours down there hiking around the water, getting some great photos, going on and off trail to discover new areas, and still have the opportunity to go back at another time and take in some more of the trails. The following morning, we got up super early before the crack of dawn and we drove out to the Beaver Meadow Conservancy Park and did about four and a half miles there and did the trail in reverse because I wanted her to take in the sunrise over Beaver Pond. When I was there over the winter, the pond had been completely frozen over and I had the park to myself and it was great seeing the sunrise there and standing out at the far point of the pond that overlooks the water and as the sun would come up, you could hear the ice creaking as the surface of the ice would warm with the sunshine. Now obviously it's the summer challenge and the pond was no longer frozen over, but we captured some fantastic, I shouldn't say we, she was the photographer, she captured some fantastic photos, some of which I will drop on the Facebook and Instagram site that shows the sunrise over Beaver Pond. We took in the trail in reverse from the recommended trail that was given to us for the challenge and then when we circled back around, we realized that we were still the only car in the parking lot and it had been almost three hours. So here it is Easter Sunday and realizing, okay, well everybody's at Easter service and we have over 500 acres of park to ourselves, so we started wandering around and taking in more trails and now that the sun was fully up, we went back down by the Beaver Pond and took in a completely different view with more birds and more sounds going on around us as all the animals had woke up. So that was Easter Sunday for us, a fantastic start to the winter hiking challenge and we'll be back out in a week or so to take in more. Growing up in Sherman, it was not uncommon for wildlife shows to be on the television on a fairly common basis, especially on the weekends when we were winding down. I always remember shows such as Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, Wildlife Adventures with Marty Stolfer and one of the stars that we used to see on TV a lot that had more of a kid's feel was Jungle Jack Hanna. Now this is in the days before the Crocodile Hunter and Jungle Jack was a staple of the Columbus Zoo from the late 70s, right around the time I was about, I would say six, seven years old and he left there in about 1992 and he had still served as a director emeritus to the zoo. In a news release from last week, his family states that Jack has been suffering from dementia and is going to officially retire from public life and they said that it is believed that he has Alzheimer's disease and it's quickly progressed within recent months. Jungle Jack Hanna is 74 years old now and he was a huge advocate for improved wildlife habitats and he focused on connecting the community with animals. So Jack has three daughters that are basically the spokesperson for the family and they've been very supportive of his career and his contributions over the period of his life and I believe, if I remember from the news last year, I think he had finally retired from the zoo in 2020. I remember watching Jungle Jack growing up on a lot of, like I said, kids' platforms, children's shows. I always loved when he was a guest star on Johnny Carson, David Letterman and he was always putting a great face on the Columbus Zoo, which to this day is one of the most attended zoos in the United States. It is still a goal of mine to go there and it was the goal to go there knowing that it was the home of Jungle Jack Hanna. He was the guy that you would always see on television and in photos, those signature khakis, Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures. I remember from about the time I was probably about 18, 19 years old and then Jack Hanna's Into the Wild, which I watched for a little while in the late 2000s and then another show that ran as he was older that was called Wild Countdown. I only saw a few episodes of that myself, but they stated that his health had been deteriorating quickly, that they wanted everybody to know that he still had a great sense of humor intact, which you saw that come through time and time again in television shows. He really spent his life connecting people and wildlife because he believed that people seeing and experiencing the animals were really a key to engaging impactful conversation. I always look back at my father and all the things that I learned about wildlife and being in the woods. I contribute a lot of that to those shows that we would watch on TV, but as a kid relating more to Jungle Jack. In his continued years, best of health to him and his family and seriously, thank you Jungle Jack for your contribution to my childhood. All right, Jason, you've gushed on long enough about Windy Brews. Now tell us about it and give us the interview for the love of everything holy. I'm going to read this directly from their website when it states about Windy Brew that it's opened as a family run business with a passion and love for beer and started out with a beer kit as a gift that was given to Bill that turned into buying a kettle and going to a full grain brewing hobby. They had thought it was time to share their love with others and the dream was to give people a home brewing experience and recently that dream had become a reality. New York State allows patrons at the time to come in to use equipment, supplies, and recipes to build their own beer for the home brewing experience. They're located out in Strykersville where you can see a great tap room that I've described in a previous episode where you see the house, you see the garage, but once you round the corner you see the front of the brewery and tap room and then you walk into a completely different and homey atmosphere. I can't encourage you enough to go out there and visit them. Their tap room has beers on tap from light ale, seasonal brews, too many styles of IPAs to really even count and there's something for everyone to taste. They offer flights, pints, growlers, 16 ounce cans to go. If you're looking for a half or a sixth keg, they offer them for sale with request and deposit. Now with some of that information that I did give you, there have been some changes as a result of COVID. You'll hear those changes in this interview that's coming up right now with Russ William from Windy Brew. What started the conversation for me was the story on your site about the gentleman who came in and kind of gave you folks heat about the PTSD. During my last visit I talked a little bit with Michelle and Michelle talked to me about how it originally was marketed in stores but again you caught the heat for the name. Is it yourself or is it built? Yeah, so we're in a bar. We'll self-distribute everything. We're in a bar. I won't mention names or anything like that. I don't remember if it was a lady or a gentleman came in and just started chewing out them for having it on and saying that we were abusing the name and really didn't know the story behind it. It was one of the things that we kind of take personally. We shot a message out one time and then it kind of died down and we didn't have any problems and we stopped really distributing it just because we don't want people to think that we're just abusing it when we actually have a real message behind it. And then it popped up again a couple weeks ago. He reached out to us and told us we started going back and forth and it's really not. We're just trying to bring awareness to it and what we do for it. So obviously this is kind of how this whole business and brewery started. Bill was literally brewing and turned it into a business, which is awesome. We started on those little pots and came from that. And that's what really helps Bill and he just wants to give back to everyone that's helped him. And we'll donate, we donate a portion of every pint, growler, can to Pets for Vets, which hooks up a rescue animal with a vet that is dealing with PTSD. It's kind of our way of supporting and helping everyone that helped us do what we do. That's wonderful. Like I said, I'm a vet myself. My son's active duty and I do a lot of work with veterans organizations around the area. I'm actually a team leader for Team Red, White, and Blue. So I do work with them and I work for the federal government and that's all I can say. Yeah, no, you're good. We understand. But being able to connect with veterans on so many different levels. With Team RWB, it's more of folks who are transitioning out of the military and then they don't, it beats sitting around. To be able to get out and get active, socialize with other veterans. Team RWB, we have a lot of runners, we have a lot of cyclists. A lot of people sometimes think it's all physical, but it's not. It's really the social aspect of it. A lot of people just don't understand what PTSD is about. When President Obama was doing the troop pullout in 2012, I think it was, the job I had at the time, I had to process a lot of the troops that were coming home and they're basically debriefs for their mental health evaluations. People just don't understand. They don't. Because there's a label on it. Then it has to be strict to their letter. When they don't realize that there's an inside meaning to it, we're not making fun of it. No, definitely not. It's more about the awareness. We were going to, for Veterans Day, we were going to have a bunch of bills. Everyone that was with them in the military, they were going to come in and we were going to do a whole batch. Yakima Valley, I think, or someone has Veterans Blend. We use it all the time. It's a great blend. We were going to do a massive batch, a massive blowout on it. All that fun stuff. But we just, you know, COVID hit and we couldn't really do much with it. I forgot to take that picture before. That's all right. That just means I'm going to have to get another flight later. Darn, that's tough. I know, I'll twist my arm. So with your brewing process now, PTSD was the first beer? No, to be honest, the first beer was American Ale. Bill was brewing that in his kitchen and then Michelle kicked him out of the kitchen and out of the garage. So that's how that kind of started. And then he came up with that recipe. It's a 100% local grain hop recipe. So it's kind of a way of giving back to our local community as well and putting us back on the map with that. It's nice to be a farm brewery and see it come from, you know, another item that comes up when we talk about basically farm to table breweries is can you explain the definition of that? A lot of people don't understand that. So as far as we go, we have to have so much local supplies in our grain. We need to have, if we do a local brew, because we have both licenses, we have a farm brewery and we have a micro brewery license. So if we're doing a farm brew, it has to be 60% local, which we make it just 100%. Then we don't even have to worry about it. It's very fun. Use a little more grain, but at the same time, it works just as good as the other stuff. Okay. But yeah, it's just got to be a certain percentage. I'm pretty sure it's like 60 to 100%. Very few breweries in the Western New York area actually are farm. There's probably, what is it, 12 of us, I think. I don't know. I know it's us. I know us, Rusty Nickel, 5 and 20, Big Inlet, Lily Bell Mead is, Josh up at West Shore. I know Brian down at Gene McCarthy's loves using local stuff. He's always tinkering around with stuff there. And I know there's, who else? I know I'm missing someone. I think Pressure Drop might be somehow. I think they have that license, but I'm not 100% sure. I haven't talked to Carl on that, but I know there's a solid group of us that all kind of just, we banded together in the fall and made O-Fudge. I don't know if you got your hands on it, but we basically, it was 100% local. We even used, so, oh my God, what's the kid's name at Lily Bell? They got their hands on some cocoa, like cocoa leaves, and we whirl-pulled that in to get it a little more chocolatey. But that was 100% local, everything. So it was pretty sweet. And it turned out well, so. We don't have any more cans, so sorry I can't share one of them. That's okay. And then the newest collaboration you had, what was the? Off, well, it's just a Blackberry Cheesecake Sour with Firstline down in Orchard Park. They just opened back up. They're expanding exponentially, which is awesome. Have that new indoor facility they just opened up this week? Yeah, I actually took a tour of it last Saturday. We were there hanging out, talking about what their plans are and stuff, and they just, they did the same thing as us. You know, we got the new house over there, they did the same thing. They got the new brew house in there, they're tinkering around with that, but they were happy just to stop canning. Because they don't have, they didn't have a canning line, and it was all hand cans and this, that, and the other thing. It was, oh, wow. And as I understood, they, both of them were work-at-homes who were working from the brewery and trying to do the canning work and their own work during COVID. Yeah, they were, I'm pretty sure they were a kickstart before COVID happened, and then they opened up. It was really funny. I was coming back from a trip, and I just swung in there the one day because my friend had told me about it, and I was just, you know, going to go talk to them, see how they were and stuff like that if they needed anything. And we hit it off, and then all of a sudden they were like, yeah, let's throw a collaboration together. So the next one will be over there, thankfully, and they can do all the work and not me this time, but they're super good dudes. Shane and Mike really do a good job over there, so I would definitely hit them up if you got to. Good, we'll get down there, we'll get down there at some point. What is, what, now, as a brewer, do you have a particular favorite that you like to make, that you enjoy making? Right now, I mean, it's getting into the lighter season. I mean, sours are always fun because I can play around with them on the back end once they get done, but I kind of lean in trying to get like a different, a couple new IPAs going, just different flavors. We've been hanging, we've been, you know, toying around with new hop flavors and new hop combinations. I do enjoy doing the barrel-aged stouts. We just got into that, a little heavier. The first one I did, we somehow messed up and it turned out well. It was a broken turbine and it was like the perfect timing for the name because the one up there on the hill broke. It like literally blew up in a windstorm. Okay, I think I saw it coming down the hill here. It looked like one of the blades was sheared right off of it. Yeah, yeah, it blew up. It was, I think my buddy who works on them told me it was like 112 mile-hour wind that hit it, like a gust or something up that high. So, yeah, we had it in the barrel, we tasted it and it was fruity and I was like, man, it was supposed to be our lightning blonde stout and it just, it was fruity and we pushed it over and it almost like sour-ailed on us and it became a wild, but it tasted good. It took a little longer to sell. It was a little high ABV, but people enjoyed it. It was just tough to just do two goes on it. Okay. Because no one wanted to sit here and just hammer away, so. The night that I, the night that I first came in here was the night of your fourth anniversary. Oh, the thunderstorm. Thunderstorm. So, Michelle was going around and giving little tastings. Now, Michelle was so kind about this, so she, I promised her I... Ale. Amber ale. Maple amber. With blueberry. Happens all the time. No, that, hey, that's why you're here. That's why you're here. Exactly. Oh, and when the first time I was here, so Michelle was going around and she was, she was, it was a non-labeled bottle that she was giving everybody tastings of and I asked her if I could take a picture of one of the bottles that I didn't post it until after, and then I forgot to post it after the weekend, but that was phenomenal. Thank you. Thank you. It was, what a fun spin on, on a Russian Imperial. Yeah, so that aged, it was, it was like a 90 day age. I know it was a little short on some, some people said it was a little too short, they were worried about it. But it was like a 90 day age about, and I kind of, maybe I rushed it, but I have enough, I have another barrel coming out soon. Not going to give it away. Don't give it away. No, because it's coming out soon. Going to do a nice little spin, so we'll see which one I like more. You know, if the aging helps and then we just took it, I actually repurposed that, that barrel I pulled the Thunderstorm out. I just went, I took a shot in the dark and we'll see if it works out again. Did the same base Imperial and spiked it a little higher. Threw some adjuncts in right away just to try it. Probably could have waited a little longer, but we'll see how it turns out. They might work out better than I think. Sure, make me drive out here again. Yeah, of course. You know, of course, you know, but that actually might, unfortunately, that might actually get pulled quicker than I want it to, but we'll see what happens. Okay, all right. So you're enjoying making the Sowers? Oh yeah. And then we, oh, and then one of the big questions I wanted to, I've been asking around and pretty much everybody I've been talking to is in regards to COVID itself. When everything happened, when the pandemic started, when the shutdown happened, it affected everybody, you know, on the level, it affected everybody the same. Yeah. But everybody was able to react to it differently. How did you guys? So we took a week off just to kind of gather ourselves and see if like, if it was actually going to be a long time or if it was just going to be like, all right, we can shut down and we'll reopen. So then we went from there and it ended up being, all right, we got to figure out how to do to go. And then, you know, you had to have one way in, one way out. Everyone's got to call in. We did that for, until the summer, whenever we could open up. And as soon as we could get open where we could do pints, we had, we used our garage door behind you. We use that as our entrance and we use this as our exit and we had to rope it all off. And we would put people out on there and it was super good because the SLA said you could draw some map of your place, whatever you want to be available to use, basically outside tables, six feet apart. You know, keep all the rules there. Have it all roped off. Be very strict because you don't want the health department coming in and shutting you down or nailing you with a fine. So we, we basically took our whole brewery property and made it available to drink. So if you had to sit, if you wanted to sit in the parking lot on your tailgate, you could drink there and it would be all right. And then as the season went on, we ended up buying a massive tent and we started putting people in the tents. We got sides for the tents. It worked out great. And then we slowly, once we were able to open in here, we started doing both, but we still offered to go the entire time, which I will tell you right now, I hate hand canning and Michelle will yell at me because I tell her I want a canning line all the time. But after seeing what we, what goes into a canning line, I still kind of want one. I just don't want to be in charge of it. I saw some operations where they're literally one can at a time. And I can't imagine eight hours a day or 12 hours a day. Just talk about monotonous work. Well, the thing was, it was like a, it was a lot of growing pains because it was like, okay, let's make a 12 pack of everything. 12 times 21 turns out to be a lot. I can't do the math in my head if I pull my calculator out, but that's what we would do. And then we would find out that certain ones weren't selling, but they were still selling. And then other mainframes were like, if you don't make us 30 of these cans, you're going to be screwed in one night. So we finally figured it out. We got a tracking sheet together. And as it went, we kind of figured that, all right, our staples have to be, you know, we have to have 27 cans of stapler, 24, and then slowly cut down. I think our biggest sellers were Sheldon Bush, PTSD, American, our sour, our habanero lime cream ale had come out at that point. So that was selling. Farmers juice. It was, you know, it was nice. You could still, we could still do grower fills. We just had to clean the evergreen crap out. So that was one way we did it. We were offering specials as much as we could. We would do some fat, like four packs to specials, you know, to get these four. But then people would call me like, well, I want to pull this out. And I'd be like, all right, we'll do it as long as you're not putting, you know, something else that was like in that packet, you know, just to try and spice it up and get some of this beer moving. Because we just didn't want to sit on it. We did sit on some beer for a little too long, considering like from our perspective, but it did sell. And then one of the operations that you do, that you do here that's still been shut down as part of COVID. So that is your, looking at my notes here, where is it at here? The Western New York's first custom brew center. I saw one of the videos online that Bill and Michelle put together for basically like a little school. And it was, but you haven't been able to get that back up and running as of yet. Yeah, so it's super tricky as far as that goes. We're working on a plan to do it as soon as we can. I know I've gotten, if I don't get a call or a text or a message, when can I come brew or when are you guys starting that brewing stuff? Two to three times a week. I don't know if the brewery is still open or not, to be honest with you. But the plan is once we, once the new brew house is up and going, we're probably going to, we have a plan to bring it back. It's just, it won't be as involved. Certain stuff will be kind of already done, kind of already measured out, but it'll still, you'll still be here. You know, you will still have to do some math. You'll still be mashing in, stirring around, adding hops, taking the times and everything. It'll just be, it'll look a little different than what it was. So if you've done it before, it's not going to be the exact same, which some of you will probably be like, all right, great. I don't have to grind the grain anymore. Because, you know, that's one thing, like if we, if I told you to walk back there and touch one grain bin right now, you'd have, we'd have to completely clean everything, even if you didn't touch it. So it's, those are just the rules. They're not our rules. So we have to adapt and overcome this. So it's just a big, just a big waiting game, right? Yeah, to be honest with you. And it, it'll be, it'll be a little easier once we get the new house open. Once that starts, then this kind of expands a little bit in here, which I'm probably giving a little bit away for everyone that's watching.
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