PODCAST

The Cold Side

FermentIQ

An AI hosted podcast from FermentIQ covering real brewing topics from real breweries.

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All Episodes

11:09

Six Stops, One Truck: Building a Route That Holds

The Cold Side ·

2026/10/02

Six stops, one truck: about $2,100 a year in recoverable driver hours, and only if the recovered time actually gets used. Mac and Wren argue over a real run sitting in the app — six accounts, $1,692 on the truck — on why a delivery day is built out of habit and the order the calls came in, why the truck costs an assumed $289 a day to roll (eight hours, $28 an hour fully loaded, $65 fuel), and why delivery is not a distance problem — it is a time-window problem. Mac wins the round: the

12:29

The Recall You Handled Informally

The Cold Side ·

2026/09/25

The recall you handled informally: about $2,700 for a bad date stamp, forty half-barrels, and an afternoon of phone calls. Mac and Wren on why the informal version usually works, the three reasons it worked that week (the beer was fine, fourteen accounts, caught it Thursday), and why "we handled it" is not a record.First Runnings: a call from a bar — "this keg tastes wrong." Mac drives forty minutes each way to find the beer is fine and the date stamp says February. The stamp had been

13:21

Contracted: What You Owe the Hop Farm in a Flat Year

The Cold Side ·

2026/09/18

Contracted hops in a flat year: $2,400 a year of hops you bought and did not brew. Mac and Wren on why the contract was the responsible thing to sign, the four ways out (priced honestly), and why the surplus market seizes up exactly when you need it. First Runnings: the contract was the responsible thing to do at the time — and that is what makes it hurt. The farm plants in spring off what you committed in winter. They can't plant on optimism. Hot Side: the arithmetic, assumptions

11:45

Monday Morning: What You Can Still Change

The Cold Side ·

2026/09/11

Monday morning: the $2,400 you can price is the smallest part of the problem. Mac and Wren on what to look at, what you can still change — and the three tanks that have been sitting longest.First Runnings: $2,400 a year. Six rush ingredient orders at $400 expedited freight — an assumption, stated as one. But the freight line is only the freight line. It doesn't include the brew day you moved, the beer you made with substitute malt, or the four hours somebody spent on the phone instead of

11:00

Six To One: The Taproom Math Nobody Says Out Loud

The Cold Side ·

2026/09/04

Cold Side, Episode 6: Six To One: The Taproom Math Nobody Says Out LoudA pour in your taproom and a keg on a distributor's truck are the same beer, and they are not the same business. This episode works out what a barrel is worth in each room, then spends most of its time on the costlier question of what that ratio leaves out. Halfway through we stop arguing and ask FermentIQ's built-in assistant to split a real August straight off the invoice records, and you hear the answer it

11:45

Six Hundred Kegs: The Asset You Never Counted

The Cold Side ·

2026/08/28

Cold Side, Episode 5: Six Hundred Kegs: The Asset You Never CountedMost brewers can tell you what one keg costs and almost none can tell you what the whole fleet is worth, where it is today, or how much of it is never coming home. This episode puts a number on the capital a keg fleet ties up, a separate number on what it quietly loses every year, and is careful about which of the two ever reaches your bank account. The number: $19,375 of steel you would not have had to buy. Assume 600

12:36

Your Cost Per Barrel Is Wrong, and Loss Is Why

The Cold Side ·

2026/08/21

Cold Side, Episode 4: Your Cost Per Barrel Is Wrong, and Loss Is WhyAsk a brewer what a barrel of the flagship costs and the answer comes off a card in the office: grain, hops and yeast, divided by batch size. This episode is about the second number in that division, because nobody has ever bought a barrel of wort. The number: 12% understated. Assume $600 of ingredients for a 15-barrel batch and the card says $40 a barrel. Package 13.4 of those barrels and the honest ingredient cost is

11:20

The Weekend You Get Back: Reporting Without...

The Cold Side ·

2026/08/14

Cold Side, Episode 3: The Weekend You Get Back: Reporting Without ReconstructingThe Brewer's Report of Operations takes about twenty minutes to fill in. Everything before it — the brew sheets, the keg board, the text message to the cellar guy who quit in June — is what actually takes the weekend, and this episode puts a number on that. The number: 60 hours a year. Five hours a month is an assumption and Wren labels it one on air, but at a forty-hour week that is a week and a half of an

13:15

Five Generations: What Repitching Actually Costs You

The Cold Side ·

2026/08/07

Cold Side, Episode 2: Five Generations: What Repitching Actually Costs YouMac and Wren run the math on yeast repitching — liquid versus dry, on a 15-barrel system pitching 52 batches a year, with the cost of a dumped batch written into both calculations. The number that survives depends on whether you can count your generations, and most breweries can't. The number: $51,600 a year on liquid yeast, or $7,525 on dry. Same brewery, same question. Both figures are conditional on tracking

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The Cold Side

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