(ambient music) - [Announcer] "tasteMAKERS" is brought to you with support from Missouri Pork Association and Global Foods Market.

(upbeat music) - Foeders, yes, you heard me right, foeders are traditional oak casks used to age beer.

And at Foeder Crafters of America, they custom make these oak barrels for brewers across the globe.

(upbeat music) I'm Cat Neville, and for the past two decades, I've been telling the story of local food.

In that time, American food culture has exploded in tiny towns and big cities from coast to coast.

In "tasteMAKERS," I explore the Maker movement and take you along for the journey to meet the makers who define the flavor of American cuisine.

(upbeat music) So we're about to head over to Foeder Crafters to see how these incredibly large casks are made.

And when we come back, we are going to make Norton braised short ribs with a gremolata.

(ambient music) - When I was a lender at the bank, we were working on a loan for this building when they were gonna purchase it, and I stepped in, saw the place, and went to their existing location and saw that, and I was like, wow, what a cool thing.

I had no idea foeders existed, had no idea what they were.

And I loved woodworking, I loved beer drinking.

So it was kind of a perfect match.

And I fell in love with the place.

(ambient music) Everybody asks, what is a foeder?

And I have to tell them, it's a just a big oak tank.

And they say, oh, like a whiskey barrel.

No, not like a whiskey barrel.

We're much bigger than that.

It's a large barrel.

And then people ask, why would we use that over a barrel?

I said, well, it's permanent, it'll outlast you.

You don't have to worry about leakage.

And you get a more consistent product.

They've been around for hundreds of years.

It was the default choice until stainless steel was around.

That is how beer, wine, spirits, everything was made until metal and steel became popular in the industrial revolution.

And there are still places in Europe that have foeders that are hundreds of years old.

(ambient music) Oak is kind of the neutral gold standard flavor-wise for what producers want in their products.

(ambient music) American White Oak is more the vanilla, marshmallow, buttery flavors.

It can be totally neutral.

It can add a lot of oak character.

It is what you'll make of it.

(ambient music) Missouri has very sustainable forestry practices, so we're actually growing white oak at a volume higher than what we're using it at.

And it's kind of the perfect vessel for making things that are gonna hold water.

(ambient music) - So we're standing in the shop and we're kind of where everything begins, which is the wood.

- Right.

- It's all white oak, right?

- All white oak.

We specifically use Missouri White Oak, Quercus alba is what it's called.

It's all harvested here in Missouri, cut by one sawmill.

They know exactly what we're looking for, and he sets all of our logs up to a separate pile just for us, saws it a certain way to our specs, and it's all quarter sawn.

They're water tight and it makes the wood more stable.

It also helps with sealing the wood because as the the tree grows, there's pores on the outside.

And every winter as those pores go in, when you get another layer on the outside, those fill with this gummy stuff called tyloses.

And that's what makes it watertight.

So if you look on this piece of wood, there's what, how many years worth of tyloses right here.

And that's all sealant.

- Natural.

- Natural sealant, yeah.

- So that's what makes the white oak so perfect for barrels.

And Missouri is covered in white oak.

The Ozarks generally.

- The Ozarks generally just covered in it.

I mean, it's our nasty weather.

We have hot summers, cold winters, grows really slowly.

Rocky soil, A lot of minerals.

If you look at, again, at the rings, they're very close together.

It's a very slow growing tree.

All of our logs are probably 80 to 100 years old.

- Oh wow.

- Yeah.

- The tighter it grows, the harder it's gonna be, the more dense it's gonna be, the better it's gonna make a foeder.

(saw whirring) - And sometimes we'll get here at like 3:30 in the mornings.

Sometimes we'll get here at four-ish, depending on what all's going on and what all we have to do.

It's all just get in where you fit in to make the process happen.

And we all work very well off of each other.

(torch crackles) There's a lot of pride that goes into what we do.

There's a certain level of detail and craftsmanship that all goes behind it.

Some people might look at it as a tool for the job, but for me I kind of view it as a functioning piece of art.

(torch crackles) - Everybody's just here playing with really fun tools all day long.

essentially.

- Big power tools, yep.

- All the guys in the shop, I mean, - Oh, they love it.

It's heaven.

I mean, if you're a woodworker, this is awesome.

(cheerful music) - [Cat] This is incredibly cool.

It's called a rip saw and it has like laser beams that come out and show you exactly where to put the wood in.

The boards go through, they're exactly the right size, the right shape.

And then what's next?

- [Dan] Then we mold them.

Molding is when they surface all four sides of the boards.

There's a machine that does all four sides at the same time so they can get tolerances down to within a couple thousandths of an inch.

- It almost looks like tongue and groove flooring.

- It is, it's very similar.

It's not the same as used on flooring, but that's what the idea was.

That's what makes ours different than European foeders.

Theirs are butted up flat like a bourbon barrel is.

And there's nothing to lock 'em into place.

It makes ours much more airtight.

They're not gonna leak, they're not gonna let in oxygen, which is kind of the enemy of beer making, wine making, everything.

You wanna be able to control everything.

So it really helps us out.

(ambient music) - [Cat] These are all fitted together.

Do they have a slight curve?

- They do.

The inside and the outside are both radius so that it meets the diameter of the tank we're building and then all of our pieces have the same joint on the outside.

So any of them can stick together.

We know that if we are building, say a 46 inch diameter, we take one certain piece and we take 36 of 'em and stand 'em up in a circle and put 'em together and it's gonna make a perfect circle.

No gaps, nothing.

(ambient music) (upbeat music) - So when we first walked into the shop, the aroma of toasted wood just like totally hit me.

- Oh, it's incredible, isn't it?

- It smells amazing.

And your guys are using these big torches to toast.

Unlike a traditional cooperage where they place the barrel on top of a flame and then it like shoots up in the middle.

So why do you approach it differently?

- Ours aren't charred as deeply as bourbon barrels are.

It's not meant for the char to get in there.

This is more to take off the edge of the wood so it doesn't taste so raw.

It's very tannic at first.

So we barely ever ship any without any toast on 'em at all because people don't want that raw flavor usually.

(upbeat music) - So after the barrels are toasted, they're all kind of assembled.

They have to be held together.

So then you have these metal straps.

- Yeah, there's no glue or anything on 'em.

I mean, it's just tension that's held together.

So after they stand 'em up piece by piece, they'll open up the top, drop in the head of it, flip it over with the crane, do the same thing on the bottom, and then put the pins on to hold it all altogether.

- The manway.

Are you telling me a person can fit in this thing?

- You can't work here unless you can fit in the manway.

- Really?

- Yep.

- Can you fit in the manway?

I'm not gonna ask.

- I can.

- I guess if you really scrunch your shoulder.

- Yep.

You gotta just climb in.

And brewers have to do all the time to clean out the tank.

So they're used to it.

(Cat laughing) - Oh my gosh.

(upbeat music) The manway is obviously closed, so everything is sealed up and now you're hydrating it.

Why do you do that?

- Well, we do it for a few reasons.

It swells the wood up so it gets even tighter than it was over there.

And it also pulls the tannins outta the wood.

So as it sweats, it just pushes them out and drips down.

If you were to taste it when it starts, it's gross.

And then by the end of our steam, that's kind of how we tell when it's done.

- So you're tasting the steam to know when you're finished?

- Yep, we want all the tannins gone.

Most people don't want that.

And then after that we'll fill it with water, make sure there's no leaks in it, and it sits for a few days and then we will finish it, make sure no plugs need to be made or anything like that.

- Then it's ready to go.

- Ready to go.

(upbeat music) - So when breweries, wineries, even distilleries, when they get their foeder, do they have to season it?

Like do they have to put any water in it to help it swell up, or is it good to go?

- When it leaves our shop, it has been leak tested, hydrated, it is ready to go.

We prefer they brew into it, put wine in it, whatever, the next day.

- [Cat] Your foeders made here in St. Louis, Missouri are being used by breweries all over the globe.

- Everywhere, yeah.

I mean recently we've shipped to Japan and Korea.

- It's amazing.

(machinery whirring) - Mueller Brothers Timber supplies the wood that is used at Foeder Crafters and it's not as simple as you might think.

We're gonna check in with Randy and see how these logs become the boards that are delivered to Dan's shop.

(ambient music) So I'm standing here with Randy in one of your barns.

Is all of this white oak, or is it a bunch of different types?

- In this shed, we primarily just do our thicker white oaks.

We gotta look at each log, determine what qualities they have and price 'em accordingly.

And then they're sorted into different ranks.

When we get a full rank of a certain type, we cut it and bring it down here, let it air dry usually for at least nine months.

- [Cat] Oh wow.

- Yeah.

So the lumber starts at maybe 60 to 75% moisture and we have to get it down to 8% moisture.

And it takes a lot of time.

You want to get the lumber down to a level where it's not gonna shrink anymore.

And 8% seems to be the common moisture.

- And so you air dry it, then do you use a kiln as well?

- We do.

So then after that stage we take it down to our dry kilns and we force air through.

(ambient music) Dan's particular stock is the hardest to get the moisture out of.

We have to put it on these sticks to get that air flow through each piece.

- [Cat] And nine months it'll be here.

- [Randy] At least, yeah.

- And then how many days in the kiln?

- 45.

- 45 days.

And that's amazing.

When do you think about like, the wood comes in and it doesn't actually go to Dan to make a foeder for an entire year.

(ambient music) - We're looking at each log and trying to decide what best we can get out of it.

So we lay 'em out and mark 'em up.

(paint can spraying) These are two logs that we would do for Dan.

Probably well over a hundred years old.

- Wow, a hundred years old.

And now it's gonna become a foeder.

- Yeah, maybe last another a hundred years, huh?

- At least, I think so.

Side Project Brewing, the second most highly rated brewery in the entire world, uses more than a dozen foeders to craft its unique beers.

(upbeat music) - We are standing in our foeder farm, this is where we oak age all of our beers.

(upbeat music) At the time we started, there wasn't a lot of American oak in the brewing industry and there definitely wasn't American oak foeders.

As breweries started making more sour beer and wild beer, which is what you would age predominantly in a foeder, the demand was way higher than the supply.

So when Foeder Crafters opened and we're starting to build them, and I could custom design what I wanted, that was huge.

It's the only people in the United States making foeders.

And so watching that craft is like, this is unlike anything else you can find in the country.

(upbeat music) This is a flavor that we were creating that tasted like Missouri, tasted like home, that gave us a sense of place, but also a thumbprint on our beers that nobody else really had.

(upbeat music) Most of our beers are Belgian inspired to start, and then from there we'll let our native culture do its work.

Well I call 'em funky, means they have other microflora in 'em, whether it's lactobacillus, pediococcus, brettanomyces, wild yeast bacteria.

It is the culture that I caught natively here in Missouri.

With all these different pieces, they do slowly produce their own personality.

So even though it all started from one culture, they all start doing different things with the way we treat 'em.

I got into brewing not to refine one recipe.

It was to brew a whole bunch of different things and drink a whole bunch of different things.

And fortunately people that enjoy our beers have told us that's what they want from us.

(upbeat music fades) - Now of course, it's my favorite part.

We get to taste some of these beers.

What's the first one?

- So we're gonna try Saison du Fermier.

This is our spelt saison.

It's fermented with a Belgian yeast strain, the Saison DuPont yeast strain, and then finished with our native bugs.

This is our oldest foeder that we own from Foeder Crafters and it produces just really beautiful beer.

- It's eight years old.

- It's eight years old, and the beer is not.

We do a similar method.

So we pull the beer when it tastes great and then we'll refill it, pull the beer, tastes great.

(upbeat music) - Oh wow.

That's delicious.

Some sour beers are like almost brutally sour.

And others don't have enough.

This is really beautifully balanced.

- These tanks are lovely 'cause they don't have a lot of oxygen exposure and that keeps the acidity low.

The more oxygen you get in there, the more food for the acid producers, and you can make brutally sour beers.

But we're always striving for balance.

I'm a wine lover, balance is key for us.

- Absolutely.

- This is my job.

(Cat laughs) - It's a nice job.

- Thanks.

(Cat laughing) Being a lover of wine, we love using grapes in our sour beer.

And we have some great friends in Noboleis in the Augusta AVA that we work with every year.

We have a series where we blend saison with wine grapes.

This is predominantly wine right now before we back blend.

It's in fermentation so it's gonna be weird right now.

- It's really interesting.

And it's Chambourcin that is in this blend, which is a Missouri grape.

It's a hybrid that grows really well in Missouri.

How fun.

- It is, it's fun.

We'll back blend more beer into it to make it more beer like.

It's become a fan favorite.

(upbeat music) - The Chambourcin grapes in this beautiful beer came from Noboleis, and they happen to use one of Foeder Crafters' foeders as well, so we're gonna head there next.

(birds chirping) - At Noboleis, we really try and think of different ways to let the uniqueness of the grapes that are grown in Missouri Shine.

So in January, 2020, we took our team to Side Project on a little field trip, and Cory was giving us the whole tour.

It's incredible what they're doing there.

And our wine maker, Gabe, saw a foeder, and I think it sparked something in Gabe and he thought, I wonder if it would work for wine.

(gentle ambient music) - The guys at Foeder Crafters, their legacy is that foeder, and then my legacy is what comes out of it.

They felt so strongly about what they built.

It just reinforced how much I wanted to experiment with and to put wine in one.

(ambient music) In a small format barrel, you can really quickly over-oak a wine, and in the foeder, you're able to retain a little bit more freshness and a little bit more of that grape character, and integrate it a little tighter with that caramel and smoke and all of the good things that you can pull from a charred oak barrel.

(ambient music) The Norton is the state grape from Missouri.

It is a very small varied red grape, big notes of black cherry, some cola.

And when it is aged properly in oak, especially over longer periods of time, it can develop nice dark chocolate characters.

Really nice, even leather and mineral characters that kind of complement some of those big fruit characters.

It does benefit from that integration of caramel and smoke and all of the other toasted oak characters that you can get from the foeder.

And it also benefits from that small amount of oxygen that can penetrate through the walls of the oak.

(ambient piano music) - The foeder that we got is 600 gallons, so it is just about equal to 10 barrels.

And so that wine is 600 gallons of the same vintage, of the same grape from the same vineyard.

So you have uniformity there, but then it also has all been in the same vessel together.

And so you just have a higher volume of a very similar taste profile.

(ambient music) - That foeder was made in Missouri with Missouri Oak and we are filling it with Missouri wine from a field that is literally a hundred yards from where it stands now.

It's really special to be able to make something that we can say is 100% local and is 100% from this place.

(ambient piano music) My goal is that 60, 70 years from now, there's still a wine maker here pulling fruit from this place, from these beautiful vineyards and still using that foeder.

(ambient piano music fades) (birds chirping) (gentle ambient music) - You didn't come from the beer industry?

You were in the finance industry.

- Right, yeah, I'm a recovering banker.

- [Cat] And the minute that you walked in, you were like, done, I have to be here.

- [Gabe] Yeah.

I fell in love with this place and I found myself spending way too much time here.

So I needed to make a move and this is how it worked out.

- I love it.

That's like the dream of so many people, to say, I started my adult life doing what I thought I was supposed to do, and now I have found what I want to do and what my passion is.

And you've been able to do that.

- Right.

I mean, I loved woodworking, loved beer.

I loved banking, but I didn't know how much I loved something else until I gave it a shot.

- Well, you're running the business so there's banking involved.

- That's true.

I'm a janitor, I'm an accountant, and I do it all.

(ambient music) - First it was just America.

We kind of started out in St. Louis and then it spread from there 'cause all the brewers knew each other.

And we did some in Europe next.

Lately we've been doing more and more in Asia and we're hearing a lot from them because they see the American beer market and they want to be like that.

(ambient music) When we see the passion that our customers have for what they do and the passion they have for our product, it makes us work that much harder.

Every time you taste a beer that comes out of our foeders, you're like, wow, I had a part in this.

We built the tank this beer was made in.

(ambient music) Seeing the list at Great American Beer Festival and seeing all the awards people have won and how hard they work on the stuff they put in, that we're a part of that is really meaningful to us.

(ambient music) It's definitely not only passion for our customers, but for the people who work here too.

(ambient music) - So inspired by that wonderful Norton wine that you just saw aging in a foeder, I'm going to show you how to make Norton braised short ribs that are going to be given a little bit of gremolata to kind of cut through the richness and add a little bit of acidity to the dish.

I have my oven preheating at 375 degrees and I'm gonna go ahead and prep everything.

Here I have three pounds of short ribs and I have about a pound of potatoes and four carrots.

I've just peeled them.

I'm gonna cut them into two three-ish inch lengths and now I'm just gonna dice up one onion.

I'm going to put five, six garlic cloves whole into the braising liquid.

And one of the easiest ways to peel a whole head of garlic, stick it in a jar and then shake.

(rattling) Before I head over to the stove, I'm gonna go ahead and make the gremolata.

This is going to be kind of sprinkled on top of the short ribs when they're served.

All I'm gonna do is zest one lemon, (scraping) chop up a couple of these garlic cloves, a whole bunch of fresh parsley.

(ambient music) I'm gonna add in a little bit more salt.

(ambient music) Okay, last thing before we head over to the stove, I'm just going to salt and pepper these short ribs.

You wanna make sure to season them well on every side.

(grinder crunching) I have a little bit of grapeseed oil, which is a nice neutral oil that has a very high smoke point.

When this heats up on medium high, I'm just gonna brown each side of the short ribs (ambient music) and add in my onion and my garlic.

Cook until they're a little bit translucent.

Then I'm gonna add in some tomato paste, so I'm gonna caramelize that before adding in my wine.

Now I just have a cup of beef broth.

I'm gonna bring this up to a simmer and then I'm going to put my short ribs all the way around the pot, add in my veg and a little bit of rosemary, and then I'm just gonna put it in the oven for about two and a half to three hours.

(upbeat music) Just took the pot out of the oven and big reveal.

This is really rich, really fatty.

And to cut through all of that, we just put a shower of this bright acidic gremolata on top.

I always pair my dishes with an American native or hybrid grape.

The braised short ribs were cooked with Norton, but I'm also going to be pairing this with Chambourcin, which is a hybrid red grape and it has a wonderful kind of lighter body and a bit of acidity so that it's going to be a nice foil to the rich beef that we have here in front of us.

(upbeat music) If you're looking for the recipe, all you have to do is head to the website.

All the information is there and I'm gonna go ahead and dig in.

I'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) Connect with us online at WeAreTastemakers.com or through social media on these handles.

(uplifting ambient music) - [Announcer] "tasteMAKERS" is brought to you with support from Missouri Pork Association and Global Foods Market.

(light ambient music) (upbeat music)